Generally I believe that if someone tries hard to say something, they’ll generally be able to say it. For example, if I wanted to say “Nazis are despicable” I would say “Nazis are despicable.” Easy.
Likewise if someone says “there are despicable people in the world…people in Virginia”, then I assume they’re not referring to Nazis, on account of if they wanted to discuss Nazis they would have used the word.(maybe spelling was a concern?). Those people were a bunch of things: They were Nazis, they were Trump supporters, they were white… I can think of at maybe two things in that description that would qualify as despicable.
Now you want to come back and claim that a post that didn’t mention Nazis was about Nazis. OK, but a) no it wasn’t and b) I agree with you that Trump supporters are despicable.
Excessive pedanticism when applied *only to one viewpoint *is just another way to make excuses or diminish responsibility for that side. They are both heavily invested in trying to make excuses and draw false equivalencies (Blood and Soil doesn’t literally mean death to others, What about those Marxists???). They may not support Nazis or white supremacists (and I don’t think they do) but they have no problem carrying water for them and sure as hell have done their best to avoid assigning any blame or consequences to them.
A true pedantic would insist on that viewpoint for all sides but their consistency is only one side.
The main problem I see (and HD just did it again) is that compulsive need to keep ripping things out of context. I’m sure we can all universally agree that a WW2 re-enactor or performance artist is not necessarily advocating genocide. Duh. We’re talking about the subject of this thread, an alt-right protest full of white supremacists. When we say, “the don’t get the benefit of the doubt” we are talking about the motives of these people in Charlottesville, or white supremacist events like it. I would think that would be obvious given the thread’s subject but I wanted to say it explicitly just in case.
The “pedantics regarding neo-nazis and whether or not they were literally or figuratively chanting threats against jews and people of colour” were mostly because I thought we were, at the time in a “breaking news” thread and I wanted the information to be as accurate as possible. I’ll note here that the “breaking news” thread rule of “no political jabs” sure AS FUCK has not been adhered to in this thread, so it’s quite probable that I was mistaken about the nature of the thread.
In hindsight, it was probably a bad place to try and make that point, and further points about the possible nuanced meanings of a Nazi flag display were probably not appropriate for the time and venue. I generally hope that Dopers can overcome their emotions and respond logically, but I’ve realized that’s not always the case. Probably less so in any thread regarding Nazis, and even less so when people have been physically harmed by a Nazi, and particularly so when one of those injured is married to one of our own Dopers.
In the future I’ll try to limit my pedantry to times and places a little less swamped with emotion.
Yes, and it also done to me again recently. I thought my comment about “despicable people” was understood in the context of “these people in Charlottesville” too, but it clearly was not.
I’ll tell you what: for the rest of this thread I’ll do my best to avoid pedantics and address the spirit of the arguments, and try to confine my commentary to the Nazis that marched in Charlottesville (who, by the way, just so we’re all clear, I think are evil assholes, regardless of whether they explicitly chanted “Death to the Jews” or not). Will that help ease some of the tension?
Whether or not anyone chanted the words “death to Jews”, or publicly sig-heiled proudly or waved a nazi flag, it’s all the same shit. And it’s no political belief.
I think it’s inevitable there would be an incredible amount of tension around this issue and for the most part I think we’ve all done pretty well. Maybe some reactions have been less charitable than necessary but I’ve seen a lot of us fighting to work through the confusion and get at what the other person is really trying to say despite heightened emotions. One reason I continue to be proud of my membership here.
FWIW I never questioned for a second whether you think Nazis are bad. Nor did my earlier reaction have anything to do with you asking for clarification of the facts. I was just peeved you saw a difference between chanting ‘‘death to Jews’’ and waving a Nazi flag. That read to me like a minimization of what those fucks were doing at that rally.
There is so much talking at cross-purposes happening with this event. I tried to break it down here. I’d say you and octopus are both #2 and I confused you with #3. This is a real #3. And a lot of people have confused me with #4.
The good news is that the American people in general understand that Nazis are the bad guys: per Gallup, Trump’s approval rating today fell to an all-time low of 34% and his disapproval rating rose to an all-time high of 61%. I guess while Trump was trying to decide whether or not to condemn Nazis (tough decision!), his supporters went ahead and made up their own minds.
Wow, interesting. So he managed to get down to 34% on just general incompetence, even before the Nazi thing. I imagine he’s going to have an interesting polling week ahead of him, and we’ll find out what percentage of Americans are down with the Nazis. I suspect it’s not a large percentage.