“Barely human”.. that’s a pretty nazi-esque way of looking at others. Perhaps people simply have different opinions and priorities.

Unnecessary reference to Nazism. I agree with your general idea, but being intolerant and unempathetic isn't something only some people in the 30s started to do.

Below average empathy is pervasive and a pretty common human characteristic, like being tall or having curly hair.

Darned if you do, damned if you don't. You need to block fascists but need to stop short of fascist levels of intolerance or else you're the fascist. Strive not with monsters, as Nietzsche said.

I understand that there are different opinions and priorities but consider that a lot of people to be entirely lacking in any virtue and compassion restricted only by the power that they do not (currently) possess.

To empower those folk is how you end up with nazis, which is the point.

>A colleague a few years ago went as far as to suggest that this is how you ended up with nazis.

Your colleague does appear to have done a lot of reflection and/or reading ( feel free to ask him to contact me if he finds the stuff on my profile of interest). Most people just think Hitler=evil as the sole contibuting factor to the holocast, but I say that it's people around him, who did not have the conscience or who ignored it, that lead to his rise. There are a fair number of potential 'hitlers' around us, but it's primarily people around those dysfunctional individuals that keep them in check.

Oh no he has. His grandparents were tortured to death by nazis. He’s been to Auschwitz.

There are two types: the ignorant and the complicit. The complicit are who you have to worry about. It was seen as a means to an end and was without compassion or care of others just the personal gain of rank or power.

Ah, near first hand experience. Unfortunately that wisdom will be lost in another generation, and to even most contemporaries that did not experience it, it's just another story. History will repeats and teching history will not help.

Indeed. My mother actually said that only fresh blood keeps the thoughts of war at bay. She wasn't wrong. I really hate this about our culture.