I think that quote works the same way I argued. That quote forces the recognition of the other via danger to oneself, e.g. it lists the step-by-step extension of persecution, with those feeling safe at first and not feeling solidarity with the first victims coming on the line at the end.

I wasn't thinking of historical what-ifs, but present-day what-ifs. Germans in the thirties might have been incredulous that a step-by-step elimination of freedom and democracy can be a road to such monstrous crimes and such brutal a war loss, but people today can be warned that it happened before, and we should get off the train while it's still just rolling out of the station.

It is precisely the in itself minor advance of each new advance in one direction (each pull on the Overton Window) that people should be warned to not dismiss as insignificant. First they went after Saddam, then the terrists, then the suspicious Arabic-origin immigrants, then the loonie-leftists, but I am safe, I am neither of them...

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}