Um…Rex? She’s point blank said that she wants me and my family stripped of our assets, shipped to Israel and nuked.
It’s not that I perceive our new Nazis as “primitive, ignorant, nenderthal opposition”. It’s that they are. (With apologies to neanderthals everywhere.)
**
Really? What sort of debate would you advocate with someone who wants you dead? “I say, old bean. I quite object to that y’know.”?
(On preview: Weirddave, she is a Nazi in all respects that matter. Other than the fact that she hasn’t tried to annex the Sudetenland, she’s met every other requirement. I see no problem whatsoever with David calling the Nazi a Nazi and pointing out that she’s dodging his questions)
Fenris,
I dont know what to say. I am going to be laughing about that for hours. My coworkers are all looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Thank you so much, I needed that.
Just to clarify something, Sinnoach said something to the effect that she wouldn’t shed a tear if Israel was nuked, not that she advocated that course of action. And since we have no idea to what extent, if any, she adopts any of the tenets of national socialism, calling her a Nazi is just shorthand for accusing her of a bundle of nasty things associated with that regime.
But so what? Maybe she is all the things you say about her and more. What good is it to focus on some possibly smarta$$ remark about “jewspeak” when there are actual issues, positions, arguments about fact being discussed? I was the first person on this board to mention that they used that term, but I did so in the original Pit thread, not GD. I feel fairly certain that many of you would have been much happier about the GD thread if Sinnoach had broken down and said something offensive like “you fcking kkes can go to hell.” Then you could have had your self-aggrandizing Pit Parade, with a free pass to try out all the great insults you’ve been saving up.
IMHO, that’s what we ought to try to do. I say “try”, because I know it’s unrealistic to expect a total detachment from one’s emotions and personal circumstances. However, we knew when we invited a GD thread about this that many of us would feel personally affected by the opinions that would be stated by the white nationalists. You can’t invite a debate, knowing what you’re probably going to hear, then hear it, then cry bloody murder when you do. People did just that more than once with the homosexuality debates, baited people into saying something controversial then piling on them. I suspect that David B was hoping to do just that. What you can do, and IMHO ought to do in this situation, is try to remain emotionally cool to the positions expressed and treat it as an intellectual exercise.
Personally, I say we mercilessly attack-but not with flip remarks, but with logic and reason. Like most of us are doing. It works so much better.
Flip remarks don’t do much. But constantly pointing out the flaws, falsehoods and foolishness of her position will simply expose her and her group for the pathetic morons that they are.
Actually the things she’s adopted are the nasty things associated with that regime. Unless you feel that there are some other even nastier things associated with the Nazis that are not generally well known.
Whether the WNs should be tolerated at all is apparently a matter of some dispute here. The idea that we have some need to have serious debates with WNs is apparently your own.
See, that’s not what I object to. Weather she is or is not a Nazi is immaterial. The word, as David B used it, was pejorative, and that’s verboden in GD.
Look, I don’t like these racist bastards any better than the rest of you, but we did say that we would be willing to debate them ( as much as is possible when your opponent has a lunatic’s view of the world ) civilly as long as they followed our rules. ( The correct decision, IMHO ) Like Rex, I see a great value in torching their strawmen and exposing their lies, if only in the name of fighting ignorance. Sinnoach has followed the rules, and David B simply attacked her personally, my guess is because he views her position as invalid. I would agree, but the proper response to that is not sarcasm and insult (in GD), it’s to prove them wrong with facts and figures. Insult them and they just take it as confirmation of their twisted world view. Their only response to facts is to either ignore them, or, possibly ( itsy bitsy possibility, but it exists ), change their thinking in some small way. If they ignore facts, fuck 'em, we tried, but that second part…that’s worth trying for.
I’m not an authority on GD rules. But as I would see it, Nazi as used to describe her actual views as expressed in the actual thread is not an insult, and not verboten.
Weirddave: I see your point, but I’m not sure that I agree. Are we, by debating “rationally”* with them, granting them a degree (albiet a small one) of legitimacy?
I have never seen a Nazi converted. I have no desire to try to “enlighten” them. Let 'em take it as proof of their worldview, I don’t care.
What I am concerned with in this sort of exchange is to win over the audience…the undecideds.
In my opinion, giving Nazis the legitimacy of honest debate is a mistake. Treat their drivel as the joke it is. Mock them, use sarcasm, react to them like the pathetic laughingstocks they are. But don’t give 'em the courtesy of treating their position like it’s rational.
Fenris
*as much as the word can be used to describe people who believe that Jews are inferior AND that they are the secret masters of the world AT THE SAME TIME.
National socialism, like all variants on fascism, believes first and foremost that the individual exists for the benefit of the state. Everything else is just frosting. Anytime people found a state on that supposition, state-perpetrated atrocities have followed. The exact nature of those atrocities would likely depend on which state was attempting national socialism, and what it’s further ideals were. In Germany, the state was equated with the German race, and thus the benefit of that race was goal #1. In other countries, national socialism might have worked out differently. National socialism would not necessarily have to correlate with racial nationalism.
I can hardly see people who describe themselves as conservatives agreeing with a political philosophy that subjugates the individual to the state. Rush Limbaugh, who most people consider an accurate example of conservatism, has been trumpting exactly the opposite of that idea for many years now.
OTOH, I do think the WNs are sort of dodging around the fact that the achievement of their “White Nation” would inevitably involve vast and systematic violations of property rights. This strikes me as extremely statist, but then they seem to think that once “White Nation” was achieved, they’d go back to conservatism. Out of this murky quagmire of belief, I surely wouldn’t feel comfortable equating them with national socialists.
It’s not my idea, nor would I say we need to have a serious debate with them. What I am saying is that the WNs were invited to have such a discussion in GD, and many people took the opportunity to critique the WN positions with reason and logic and cold, hard facts. David B wanted to sidetrack that process and derail the entire debates, merely to squabble over some WN slang term.
I saw a special on the History Channel once that pointed out, what the Nazis were creating was a cult of mediocrity. Nothing new. Stagnant, bland culture. Nothing was allowed to evolve. They were killing themselves.
I completely disagree. First you prove their drivel is factually incorrect. Then you mock them, employ sarcasm, and make fun of their gay muscleman avatars.
I don’t think so. I would venture to guess that what most people find most horrifying about Nazis, and the reason people would regard Nazi as an insult is the fact that they slaughtered millions of people - not the political ideology. Once you’ve established that you are OK with the killing, you can’t consider it an insult if you don’t necessarily agree with the political ideology.
I don’t know - the fact that Lib “invited” someone does not preclude others from acting as they see fit. Lib does not own the SDMB. (Further, I think David’s questions had a point to them, as noted earlier).
That’s a load of crap. The posters in that thread, including me, were takling Sionnach seriouslly, debating her points and demolishing them one by one. When I looked at the lamentable Straight Dope thread on the SF board, what steamed me was that the posters there said that the Dope was afraid to argue, and this only bolstered their conviction that they are right. I don’t want the genocidal sons of bitches to get that satisfaction, so I will debate them and show them that their “facts” are utter bilge.
I am just infuriated that people like Sionnach wish to harm good folk like Fenris, Eve, Zev-Steinhart, CM_Keller, Jonathan Chance, just to name a few of our esteemed Jewish posters, for no other reason than that their ancestors were Red Sea pedestrians. There is no excuse for giving even one inch of quarter to people who think harming our friends and neighbors is a neat idea.
The foul ideas of the Aryan suprmeacists need to be refuted whenever they pop up.
The thing most people find horrifying about the GERMAN national socialists is that they murdered alot of people, I’ll grant you that. (However, it is the political ideology of statism that led directly to the atrocities committed by that murderous regime.) I see only two ways that somebody could accurately be described as a “Nazi”:
Member of the German National Socialist Party, 1930-1945. In this case you would literally be a Nazi, the slang term for the party’s acronym auf Deutsch. For these people, the murders of the regime under their control are essential to their identification, because they were responsible for them.
Shared ideology with that party. Belief in statism, anti-individualism, nationalism, thorough government control of industries, and Lebensraum attained through war (satellite imperialism). For these people, the murders of the German regime 1933-1945 are not essential to their identification, because it is possible (even if there are no such people) that somebody could follow that ideology and not believe in state-sanctioned murder.
I don’t think Sinnoach is either of these. Genocide against jews and gypsies and others along racial lines is not essential to national socialism, rather it is incidental. Since the actions of the rulers of Germany during that period have received more mention in public discourse than the political ideology that made them Nazis in the first place, the accurate meaning of the term has been confused. It would be more accurate to say that these WNs share some goals with the real Nazi Party members of that era, but that they themselves are not Nazis in any historically or politically accurate usage of the word.
No, Ms. Accurate. There is no GD rule against mocking another poster’s willful ignorance, factual inanities, or all-around state of being fucked in the head, particularly when that poster has persisted in a state of intentional stupidity for six straight pages of racial hatred. And there’s nothing special about the white supremacists on that count, either. Perhaps you will recall the GD experiences of some of our other loonies, such as Hiryuu? I ain’t cutting these assholes any slack.
Well I guess that’s our point of disagreement. I would say that the common usage of terms is more significant than the technically accurate usage. In general, words mean what people think they mean.
Sorry Minty, this is yet another area upon which we disagree. I say that one mocks them, employs sarcasm, and makes fun of their creepy gay musclemen avatars. Then, when they’ve flounced out of the room in a huff, you have a clear field to demolish their drivel. I’ve got no problem demolishing their drivel, but meeting them in a one-on-one debate gives them legitimacy that they don’t deserve.
An analogy. Not a really good one, but I hope it gets the point across. To meet them in a debate is like insisting that “scientific” creationist books be put in classrooms alongside biology and geology books. Simply putting the “scientific” creationist books in the classroom, in and of itself adds legitimacy to the drivel espoused.