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This is: A Parable On Obsolete Ideologies, published by Scott Alexander on LessWrong.
Followup to: Yudkowsky and Frank on Religious Experience, Yudkowksy and Frank On Religious Experience Pt 2
With sincere apologies to: Mike Godwin
You are General Eisenhower. It is 1945. The Allies have just triumphantly liberated Berlin. As the remaining leaders of the old regime are being tried and executed, it begins to become apparent just how vile and despicable the Third Reich truly was.
In the midst of the chaos, a group of German leaders come to you with a proposal. Nazism, they admit, was completely wrong. Its racist ideology was false and its consequences were horrific. However, in the bleak poverty of post-war Germany, people need to keep united somehow. They need something to believe in. And a whole generation of them have been raised on Nazi ideology and symbolism. Why not take advantage of the national unity Nazism provides while discarding all the racist baggage? "Make it so," you say.
The swastikas hanging from every boulevard stay up, but now they represent "traditional values" and even "peace". Big pictures of Hitler still hang in every government office, not because Hitler was right about racial purity, but because he represents the desire for spiritual purity inside all of us, and the desire to create a better society by any means necessary. It's still acceptable to shout "KILL ALL THE JEWS AND GYPSIES AND HOMOSEXUALS!" in public places, but only because everyone realizes that Hitler meant "Jews" as a metaphor for "greed", "gypsies" as a metaphor for "superstition", and "homosexuals" as a metaphor for "lust", and so what he really meant is that you need to kill the greed, lust, and superstition in your own heart. Good Nazis love real, physical Jews! Some Jews even choose to join the Party, inspired by their principled stand against spiritual evil.
The Hitler Youth remains, but it's become more or less a German version of the Boy Scouts. The Party infrastructure remains, but only as a group of spiritual advisors helping people fight the untermenschen in their own soul. They suggest that, during times of trouble, people look to Mein Kampf for inspiration. If they open to a sentence like "The Aryan race shall conquer all in its path", then they can interpret "the Aryan race" to mean "righteous people", and the sentence is really just saying that good people can do anything if they set their minds to it. Isn't that lovely?
Soon, "Nazi" comes to just be a synonym for "good person". If anyone's not a member of the Nazi Party, everyone immediately becomes suspicious. Why is she against exterminating greed, lust, and superstition from her soul? Does she really not believe good people can do anything if they set their minds to it? Why does he oppose caring for your aging parents? We definitely can't trust him with high political office.
It is four years later. Soon, the occupation will end, and Germany will become an independent country once again. The Soviets have already taken East Germany and turned it Communist. As the de facto ruler of West Germany, its fate is in your hands. You ask your two most trusted subordinates for advice.
First, Colonel F gives his suggestion. It is vital that you order the preservation of the Nazi ideology so that Germany remains strong. After all, the Germans will need to stay united as a people in order to survive the inevitable struggle with the Soviets. If Nazism collapsed, then people would lose everything that connects them together, and become dispirited. The beautiful poetry of Mein Kampf speaks to something deep in the soul of every German, and if the Allies try to eradicate that just because they disagree with one outdated interpretation of the text, they will have removed meaning from the lives of millions of people all in the name of some ...
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