@packrat said in Um...What?:
He was crying when he described how his family and him cheered as the jews from their village were rounded up and shipped off though. It was not something he was ever proud of in retrospect, just stuck in a fucked up situation for everyone involved but he did end up going along with it.
People change; they gain insights and rethink how the world works and how themselves are part of it. I read an interview a few months ago you might find relevant... but first, some context.
In Greece - my homeland - during WW2 communists (who were very popular at the time) and traditionally right-wing parties fought together against the invading Germans as part of a guerrilla rebel force which fought both on the mainland and Africa with the Allies. The communist factions became pretty powerful, their ranks well trained and armed, led by experienced leaders who knew the terrain extraordinary well and meshed with the local population at will.
After WW2 ended the western powers that be were concerned communists might have too much power and that they might use it to ally themselves with the USSR even though they had stated they had no such plans. Even after they were asked to voluntarily put their weapons down (which they did, even though they were in a position to refuse) they got hunted down... hard. I'm talking death squads and concentration camps here. British snipers opening fire openly in the center of Athens years after the war was over. And once Britain's influence waned, American influence took over from them.
Eventually paranoia became too much and a western-backed dictatorship took over in the late sixties. Things got even worse - people started to disappear and get tortured, that kind of thing. The regime lasted for a few years until, in 1973, a prestigious engineering university's students rose up in a non-violent way, barred their gates and demanded change.
That change happened, but not before a tank drove through the school's gates, leading to hundreds of those students being brutally beaten up or killed.
Anyway, so the interview I read was by the guy who drove that tank back then.
He was really emotional about recalling how it felt, how everyone around him hated 'those damn communist long-haired kids' so much, and how they wanted to hurt them. To kill them. How he wanted to kill them, despite the fact they were unarmed (and said so, it was their actual slogan - 'we are unarmed, free, and your brothers and sisters'). How after he drove the tank and saw the fear and panic in them he screamed in delight, and everyone - all of his friends, his fellow soldiers, his superior officers, everyone congratulated and praised him... how proud he felt for doing it.
He was crying as he said it. He couldn't relate to his 19 year old self any more, it was like a stranger to him. Being in that kind of environment does things to a person, especially a younger one. He talked about how dehumanizing those students made it easy, almost effortless to hate them. He doesn't now, and I believe him.
I don't know if this helps at all.