Something I've come across in several books (including “Heartlight”, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, the Adept series by Katherine Kurtz that I am currently reading, with references in several books to Peter Levenda’s “Unholy Alliance”, and the Indiana Jones movies and “Constantine”) is the notion that nazis have, single handedly or almost single handedly, through (alleged?) occult connections caused a series of clearly discernible as stereotypically evil (as opposed to genuinely evil) events in US history after World War Two (WW2).
My immediate reaction to that is that it is a cop out - it is easier to blame an external factor rather than taking responsibility for one’s own imperfections (including doing the hard work to make the world a better place), which is the key lesson of the legend I’d been told was behind the Devil’s Advocate (which was that the [neochristian] devil went to a Scottish village, was discovered and put on trial, but was assigned an advocate for defence who showed how the people of the village, through their faults, had allowed the [neochristian] devil in).
It is even harder to dodge responsibility in that way when your own nation has relevant scars in its history - such as the white supremacist “White Australia” policy of my nation, which contributed to South Africa’s apartheid policy (and our many years of abusing refugees has infected other nations), and the USA has a history of white supremacist abuses - including, but not limited to slavery (which is something that afflicted my nation as well) and the associated divisions of the US Civil War, which last to this day.
Both nations have a history that includes various forms of fascism - hitler’s evil crew had admirers and adherents here and in the USA (and the UK, for that matter), at least before WW2. (There was also anti-Semitism.)
During WW2, such movements at least disappeared: I’m not entirely sure whether they ended.
However, after WW2, the USA invited nazis in, predominantly through the now notorious Operation Paperclip, which sought nazi scientists for the USA to use in the Cold War against the USSR.
Think about that for a moment: a nation with a history that included fascism/nazism (amongst other problems, some mentioned already, some not) actively invited (welcomed?) people from the most extreme and abhorrent nazi regime known to that day.
Whilst I continue to hold that personal responsibility is crucial (lack of BPM action makes it easier for evil to take root), there is also a question as to whether an invitation aided the embedding of that evil.
It’s almost like the old trope about inviting a vampire in over the threshold.
