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And the Nazi's weren't a culture, they were a political party. The culture didn't put up with it...that's why we had a war.
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for someone who claims to be committed to precision, you are certainly fast and loose with things, lindsey: the nazis were not in themselves a "culture"--though they certainly had an internal culture (whatever that term means, really--it is a problem, but anyway) well before they came to power. they were certainly, obviously able to turn aspects of german culture--particularly nationalism, particularly a highly exclusionary conception of nationalism--to their advantage--as was any other fascist regime---and on that basis to remain in power after a questionable (to say the least) ascension to power in 1933. they did this in all kinds of other ways--but it is stupid to claim that they were simply a political party--they were a cultural movement that exploited nationalist signifiers, the economic and social insecurities of the lower middle classes--and gave these features a particular direction---the purification of the body politic, a national mission through military means, a destiny to spread their version of freedom throughout the world---their purification campaign involved a fetishism of military values, a total intolerance of dissent, political and otherwise, rooted in a conflation of their particular nationalism with an absolute moral code (remember that in every single fascist regime, it was the political left that was persecuted first, before any other segment of society---and that the supporters of this persecution justified it on moral grounds.)
remember also that after world war 2, the americans were really really uneasay about the fact that fascism had discredited nationalism--and that the americans were every bit as anti-left as they frascists had been--so in local elections in germany from 1945-1947, the americans preferred old fascists getting into power than communist party members, for example: and the american "understanding" of fascism tries to reduce it to a response to economic crisis--without this you would have had none of the institutional apparatus put into place that defined the post-war world--not bretton woods, not the oecd, no the world bank, not the imf--not nato and other regional military alliances--none of it. the other wing of the american "understanding" of fascism has been staged through endelss world war 2 movies, in whcih germans are mostly men with funny accents, a strange way of smoking and an unseemly affection for leather outfits whose primary function is to die in great anonymous numbers at the hands of the grizzled gi superhero.
almost never do you find any reference to the content of fascist ideology.
all this is about making the world safe for nationalism in the face of its catastrophic outcomes in two world wars. to salvage nationalism after that level of carnage took some real work. denial and revision at every level. it is pretty amazing.
if you actually look at fascism--which you obviously have not---the parallels to the contemporary political landscape in america are pretty alarming--this debate over the ridiculous claim floating about in the right ideological apparatus these days about "absolute morality"--which of course is never defined, perhaps because in conservativeland this fiction functions as common sense (if this is true, then woe be us all) or because even they know the notion of absolute morality is absurd, without content, idiotic, indefensable--that the term seems to have originated amongst fundamentalist protestants in the context of some bizarre-o "spiritual war" that you can hear talked up in sermon after sermon, week after week--all a function of their hallucinations about the end times, when they will happen and what they mean (the idea is to at least become part of the 144K)--this from a variant of protestantism that has no use for theology, no use for philosophy, that believes in a literal interpretation of the bible and so cannot be relied upon to even know what they are saying when they claim that there is an absolute morality---makes the claim all the more appalling.
that you would try to define its inverse first (amoral) is an index of how easy it is to fall into traps laid by words, by politically charged words, the ones that shape debate and the possibilities within them by boxing you in to stupid arguments and meaningless distinctions. the big concessions to an authoritarian regime are preapred by lots and lots of little ones--giving way terms of debate, twisting yourself to fit the tiny boxes provided you--do this long enough and you probably will not even know the big ones have happened--then, later, you will act surprised. these little concessions at the level of discourse are fundamental to teaching a culture of political servility that wraps itsefl up as a culture of individual rights. the irony, of course, is that atomized individuals have and can have no power.
what right ideology is about is a great act of collective political self-immolation dressed up as a defense of the autonomy of the individual.
such is a the nature of the right ideological apparatus. talk alot about democracy while actively working to gut every vestige of it at every level that is not pure form
but no matter i suppose---hell the germans of 1935 did not know how the story of the regime was going to play out--the americans of 2004 know, but they are convinced in the main that the story involving fascism obtains only for other people--so they can allow themselves to blithely slide into something not unlike fascism--defending themselves by working to discredit people who mention the word--which is obviously a sane response.