this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
244 points (88.4% liked)

Showerthoughts

37880 readers
722 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

It has nothing to do with anti-semitism, and in fact nothing to do with ethnicity at all.

Conversely, the people who today don't protest against the Palestinian Genocide would not have protested against the Holocaust.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 3 points 1 hour ago

I 100% agree but you do realize most people did not go out and protest the jewish holocaust while it was going on?

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

protests the Holocaust

"Oh my god, that's so Germanaphobic! You monster!"

[–] balance8873@lemmy.myserv.one 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I would be 0% surprised if the 1930s version of that did in fact happen. "Those fucking poles can't run a country, good on Hitler to show them how to keep their rabble in check" or something like that, and spoken in a transatlantic accent.

[–] AWistfulNihilist@lemmy.world 12 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

They did, there was a lot of backlash against anti-nazis, especially pre-holocaust. Partially because nazi propoganda was so effective across the world. But also partially because anti-Semitism was practically mainstream across the world.

US famously rejected a boat of 900 jewish and other German refugees cause 1 dude lied (these people would be sent back and 40% of them would later die in the holocaust). We were terrified of foreign spies, which is an attitude that culminated in it internment of the Japanese. We were offered Jewsih refugees many times, including like 20,000 children, we rejected them.

[–] DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 hours ago

US famously rejected a boat of 900 jewish and other German refugees cause 1 dude lied (these people would be sent back and 40% of them would later die in the holocaust). We were terrified of foreign spies, which is an attitude that culminated in it internment of the Japanese. We were offered Jewsih refugees many times, including like 20,000 children, we rejected them.

Right on track, the US is deporting Russian dissidents back to Russia, where they'll likely be tortured. Thank a lot, republicans! Really helping out your pal putin.

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 68 points 1 day ago (4 children)

wwii earth didnt have undeniable evidence until like 1944 or 1945, when troops literally freed concentration camps. today we KNOW, and are complacent - except those fucking heros in the story, they will be on the unashamed side of history

[–] apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 57 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

A Polish resistance fighter willingly infiltrated Auchswitz in 1940 and broke out in 1943 with incontrovertible evidence. They just weren't taken seriously. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki#Auschwitz

Also worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_of_the_Holocaust_in_Nazi_Germany_and_German-occupied_Europe

[–] Cyberflunk@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

what a phenomenal story, holy shit

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

That's nation-state apologia. They just ignored all the evidence because genocide wasn't even defined yet in International Humanitarian Law, they just didn't care. Remember that even the US had concentration camps inside the US for foreigners, almost all of them Japanese people. They just felt this was a normal thing armies did to control populations deemed risky (see the ghettoisation of black communities, history of segregation and the systematic wipe out of indigenous tribes). They knew, armies even went directly to the locations of the concentration camps, they already knew where almost all of them were. Like, inside Germany it was not entirely a secret either. German officials boasted about the whole thing in international forums and in propaganda.

The term Genocide, even, was coined by a polish-Jewish lawyer in 1942, Raphael Lemkin precisely because of what was known at the time of what the Nazis were doing against Jewish people and his own experiences surviving the Holocaust.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 7 points 1 day ago

He saw genocide as an inherently colonial process, and in his later writings analyzed what he described as the colonial genocides occurring within European overseas territories as well as the Soviet and Nazi empires

Based.

Honestly it sounds like we need to go back to his definition of genocide. So many have since been led to believe it can only look like a Zyklon B shower.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Concentration camps yes, but Death Camps with gas chambers and crematoria, not intended to hold people for any longer than it took to "exterminate" them, were new. Even slave-labor camps of the sort where inmates were starved and worked to death were frowned upon, not considered normal. That's why the Nazis lied, and created false camp films for propaganda.

Edit to add this from the article about the Rosenstrasse protest:

Goebbels swiftly realized that to use force against the women protesting on the Rosenstrasse would undermine the claim that all Germans were united in the volksgemeinschaft. Using force against the protestors would not only damage the volksgemeinschaft, which provided the domestic unity to support the war, but would also draw unwanted attention to the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Stoltzfus wrote: "A public discussion about the fate of deported Jews threatened to disclose the Final Solution and thus endanger the entire war effort."[18]

[–] dustyData@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Agree, but it was just how normalized internment camps were (Hitler claimed he got inspired by US ideas of population control). Which facilitated the German use of propaganda. If you said, "they are killing everyone there, my family died in there", no one would believe you even if you were an eyewitness. Although there weren't executions in the US camps, the conditions were so bad that at least 1800 out of 120 thousand people died. Even today, some people don't believe the testimony of the families of Japanese victims of the camps and trivialize and downplay their suffering.

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

literally freed

Is there any other way?

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

"Earth" already knew before the war started.

[–] DaMummy@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Jews becoming supremists, falling for a Reichstag fire event, staying quiet, and following orders to comitt a genocide against a semite population is not something I had on my bingo card.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Do you know nothing of Israels history? Even before the country was formed (and before WW1) when it was Zionist extremists pouring into the region, this was always the end goal.

Einstein even clued onto what Israel was very quickly once he saw it.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Who protested against the Holocaust?

[–] fort_burp@feddit.nl 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 4 points 13 hours ago

University never apologised. Turns out universities always sided with fascism, that's not a new thing

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's against Nazis. Not a lot of people knew about the Holocaust outside of Germany.

I found this one, which happened in Berlin and led to the release of 1800 Jewish people (!).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenstrasse_protest

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

A lot of people knew.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Resistance networks who hid and smuggled targets out of reach at the very least.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A form of protest, perhaps, but probably not what OP was thinking of.

[–] bryndos@fedia.io 3 points 13 hours ago

Yes and that started before the outbreak of war. For example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindertransport

Seems mostly driven by religious, Jewish and Quaker groups who I'm sure organised demonstrations and petitioned governments and so on.

They might not have known the full details, or how it escalated and spread into occupied territory after the war started, but most of europe's political leaders knew for sure something pretty awful was causing tens of thousands of refugees. I think krystallnacht was public knowledge and made it pretty much impossible to ignore.

I think most of these countries could have done more a lot sooner. Accepting the child refugees was pretty much a bare minimum that they just couldn't refuse.

But even FDR didn't get this bill through in the US, which seems pretty crazy in retrospect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagner%E2%80%93Rogers_Bill

[–] allo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Idk. I think that is a large factor. But there are also other large factors. Beside that one arabic group that is like the bros of isreal, i think like all arabic ppls are against palestinian genocide. aka i think it also has to do with who the involved parties are and the relationships linked cultural groups have to them.

[–] troed@fedia.io 4 points 1 day ago

Are you sure they were not just anti-germanic!?

[–] Duke_Nukem_1990@feddit.org 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I mean not exactly the same people because there are definitely some antisemitic shit heads that are using the protest as cover and are trying to radicalize people that rightfully protest the israeli government to also hate the israeli population.

The whole situation has nuance that I don't see talked about a lot on here.

[–] cheesorist@lemmy.world -1 points 2 hours ago

guess what, Palestinians are the real semites in this genocide. israelis are european.

[–] trashcroissant@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 23 hours ago

I've been to a pro-pal protests few around different cities and have never met any real anti-Semite on the side of the protest. I have, however, met a couple of counter protesters that hold the Israeli flag yet proudly call themselves white supremacists.

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not a lot of nuance to bombing hospitals.

[–] essell@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Thank you for demonstrating the issue.

You're not contradicting their point, you know?

Then there are those who ask to expand the Holocaust and increase the throughput that disengaged people indirectly support by not arguing/voting against their wishes at least.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

Jews in other countries probably protested against the Holocaust but most didn't for the Gaza War(s)

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

My current plan is to wait for my basic coworkers to have kids, and those kids to be old enough to ask "what did you do in the 2020s to fight fascism?". They'll lie and say they did a lot, and I'll burst through the wall to shout "NO THEY DIDN'T. THEY DID SHIT. THEY STAYED HOME AND PLAYED VIDEO GAMES. YOUR DADDY IS A COWARD".

Hopefully somehow this will result in my coworkers dying alone and unloved in a pit of shame or something.

But the reality is their egos are indestructible and they will always think they're good people, and their kids will probably be the same.

[–] Tuuktuuk@piefed.ee 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

To be fair, most of Russian dissidents are angry about how the war is fought.

They would have wanted Ukraine to be taken over in a way that doesn't spill Russians' blood.

There are people in the Russia that are really against the whole war and want to see all of Ukraine's territory liberated, but those are not many! I would estimate their number is somewhere between 100 and a bit over 1000 individuals. Among 140 million.

A good way to figure this is asking "who does Crimea belong to?"
Everyone who is really a dissident will say "Ukraine", because in reality the case is crystal clear. Everybody who moved there knew it's not part of the Russia in the same manner as other regions where the white-blue-red flag is waved. And yet they elected to move there. It's a sad thing they'll need to move away, yes, but they knew or at least had the responsibility to know what they are doing. And this is what Russian dissidents (both of them...) think.
But almost all "dissidents" will say "it's complicated" or something similar. That's how you know a person protesting against how the war is done.

And let me say: it is statistically extremely unlikely that the deported ones were among those 0,00071 % of the Russia's population that are real dissidents.

[–] Deceptichum@quokk.au 8 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And when the kid turns around to you and asks “What did you do to fight fascism”, you will say…?

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 3 points 1 day ago

Went to protests, volunteered for better candidates, tried to get other people involved. The bare minimum, perhaps, but more than another run of Baldur's gate 3.

load more comments
view more: next ›