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The ox bow incident book7/7/2023 Peer pressure in its ugliest, most terrifying form. While those who are complicit via their conflicted silence are the significant majority, who if forced to act alone or lead would not find the drive or justification. As if fear wasn't a prerequisite of bravery. Those who speak against are considered crazy or worse, weak. The slow build with abundant chances for a changed course - even though we can see the inevitable murders ahead. I had the parallel in mind, all right, but what I was most afraid of was not the German Nazis, or even the Bund, but that ever-present element in any society which can always be led to act the same way, to use authoritarian methods to oppose authoritarian methods.Ī peeling back of the baseness, absurdity, and horror of mob justice framed in the comforting setting of the Wild West. They did not see, however, or at least I don't remember that any of them mentioned it (and that did scare me), although it was certainly obvious, the whole substance and surface of the story, that it was a kind of American Naziism that I was talking about. A number of the reviewers commented on the parallel when the book came out in 1940, saw it as something approaching an allegory of the unscrupulous and brutal Nazi methods, and as a warning against the dangers of temporizing and of hoping to oppose such a force with reason, argument, and the democratic approach. The book was written in 1937 and '38, when the whole world was getting increasingly worried about Hitler and the Nazis, and emotionally it stemmed from my part of this worrying.
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