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Notes -
The classic example of people saying nice things about Nazi Germany is the autobahn, right? I think historians still feel free to compliment that.
I suppose I think the consensus around Nazi Germany has moved in the direction that they did make some right calls and pick some low-hanging fruit, but also that a lot of their strengths were either inherited (e.g. the military system) or illusory and exaggerated (e.g. taking credit for the German economic revival). Nazism as a system wasn't uniquely brilliant.
The way TOS frames it is as something like a deal with the devil. You get efficiency, power, a rapid rise to power, social solidarity, etc., and all you have to do is be evil. That's not what was going on with Hitler's Germany.
My understanding is that at least some historians are arguing that the autobahn was started as a project before the Nazi takeover and they just completed an existing good idea.
But really, I think the thing that people secretly feel the Nazis did good with was the drip (as the kids call it), and the aesthetics. Triumph of the Will was one of the most cinematographically influential films ever made. Even when I was in school we watched that film in order to understand how compelling Nazi propaganda was, when I took a class on single-party states.
Star Wars took a lot of influence from Nazi aesthetics when depicting the empire (obviously -- stormtroopers!), and it's a meme in the Star Wars fandom that the empire's aesthetics are way better than the rebellion. I think in a lot of way that's people sublimating the psychological appeal of authoritarian aesthetics into a fictional format, where they can engage in memes that reference the appeal without actually calling for authoritarianism, which was obviously horrific to a great many people.
Communism also has great aesthetics, though limited by... the economic problems of socialism in the USSR. I think that's a feature of authoritarianism; control over cultural output means that culture can be oriented towards state goals, and all the psychological tricks of manipulation, persuasion, and appeal become essential to cement the regime's power. No one will ever create an election billboard more chilling than Mussolini. And look at this mosaic of Kim Il Sung: it shows nice composition, and the color is so cheerful and compelling. And the Great Hall of the People in Beijing just looks cool.
I think that kind of intense symbolism only becomes possible in religion, monarchy, and authoritarianism. Systems of power where the appeal is totalizing.
Just food for thought.
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