This whole thread is an embarrassment.
Well, yeah. That was already mentioned.
Dehumanization is not defined as “animal-based insult.” It’s treating someone like they are less than human and unworthy of human considerations. It need not even involve animals. (Hence why you brought up “piece of shit.”)
In the MAGAt case, the issue is that “maggot” refers to vermin. They’re so undesirable that we kill them without consideration.
And, no, this isn’t some catch-all rubric. We’re dealing with language here. The connotations of different animal comparisons aren’t going to be entirely logical. But calling someone a “maggot” is pretty clearly dehumanization.
Jackass is not. It’s just one of many terms that means “jerk,” albeit with some slightly different connotation. And I still argue most people don’t think about its animal origins. The actual animal is called a donkey these days.
Of course they did. That’s what mockery does. It pisses the target off enough that they focus on that and not the rest of what you’re saying. That’s its rhetorical use.
I will assume good faith and say that was not your intent. But you did mock someone outside the Pit. You’re engaged in a deliberately hostile argument.
That’s going to deflate any moral counterargument you try to make. It shows your goal is more to piss them off than to convince them they are wrong.
And, yeah, yeah. My attempt to fight ignorance is “preachy” or whatever. You can always find something wrong with my character to “prove” me wrong. Ad hominem. We all know it’s bad argument.
So it’s my fault they glossed over my substantive points? Interesting.
I mocked them for making terrible arguments in a manner that would have perfectly fine in GD. And their arguments are indeed deeply flawed, relying heavily on excluded middles, excluded context, slippery slopes and hyperbole.
Or is it also my fault that you are glossing over those substantive points?
I’m not making a “moral counterargument”. I’m making a logical one.
Please learn what this means.
You didn’t make any substantive points. You once again said “but Republicans are really really bad!” As if that at all addresses my argument. There’s no context to ignore. When you call people maggots, you sound like a Nazi. That’s it.
I get that you aren’t about to start gassing Trumpers. That’s got nothing to do with my reasoning for why you shouldn’t call them “maggots”, so I don’t see how it’s a substantive point I’m meant to respond to.
What point of substance do you think you made that I glossed over, and what do you think the relevance of that “substantive” point is in countering anything I have said?
I don’t think you have any idea what the argument I am making is, because none of your “substantive” points even come close to addressing anything I’ve said.
Here, I’ll respond to your “substantive” points:
Right, we embarked on a program of denazification - something that by @Der_Trihs’ account of who these people are should have been impossible, since all they want is to see their enemies dead out of pure hatred. So I guess they were No True Nazis to begin with?
OK? I don’t see the relevance of any of this.
Yeah, the Nazis used vast amounts of propaganda to dehumanize Jews in order to get the population on board with killing them all. Maybe we shouldn’t describe our political enemies with the same terminology they used to do so.
I get that calling people you don’t like “maggots” and spelling it a funny way is a long ways away from rounding them up and gassing them, and no, I am not saying that one will inevitably lead to the other. What I am saying is that I don’t like that kind of dehumanization whether it goes anywhere or not.
What context makes it so that calling people “maggots” doesn’t make you sound like a Nazi talking about Jews?
And it failed, badly. Thus the Nazis still being a problem.
The context of reality. Calling far right wingers “MAGats”(not gonna use your substitute word because that would be deceptive) is not the same as what the Nazis did to the Jews and so many others. In fact, your comparing the two is a major insult.
My take–which I think is similar to something posted yesterday, but I can’t find it right now–is that:
- “MAGAt” is dehumanizing in the “call a group vermin” manner.
- Any equivocation over its spelling is dumb and unworthy of a response. “BUT IT’S NOT SPELLED THE SAME AS MAGGOT!!!” okay pal
- Dehumanizing is on a spectrum, with “they are vermin who should be destroyed” at one end, and “Haha I am using a dumb pun to say my political opponents are icky” on the other end. MAGAt is the exemplar of the latter.
- Just because something is a really really minor use of dehumanizing language doesn’t necessarily mean it’s okay to use, in the same way that stealing a pack of gum at the grocery store isn’t necessarily okay to do.
- Whether to use dehumanizing language has nothing to do with its target and everything to do with the speaker.
- The category of “vermin” as a term for a group has a unique history in the category of dehumanizing language that makes it inapposite in comparisons to other insulting words.
- Maybe most importantly in this context, it doesn’t accomplish anything positive; and in a time where we face an existential threat to our society, we gotta do better than puerile insults that just make us snicker.
I say all this as a person who really loathes the MAGA philosophy and thinks people wearing the hat are ignorant, racist, malicious, jerks, or compelled, in 100% of cases.
Ah, I see. That’s why Germany today is called the Fourth Reich and is the most right wing dominated nation in Europe.
Oh wait, that’s not true at all.
The Nazis are a much bigger problem in the US than in Germany.
As you often do, LHOD, you very eloquently summed up my own position much better than I can do myself. That was a fantastic summary.
Especially points 2 and 5.
You are right! That’s why I didn’t say that calling right wingers maggots but spelling it in a way a 6 year old might call “creative” is at all equivalent to what the Nazis did to the Jews. It’s a good thing I never said it was remotely close to being the same.
When you compare users of the word “MAGat” to Nazis you know exactly what you are doing.
I did.
I didn’t. Stop building strawmen.
There is. Which you appear to be continuing to ignore.
That’s a rather Manichean viewpoint. All or nothing - is that it?
Sure they do.
Another strawman, I see.
Our program of “de-Nazification” started with winning a war. Which we somehow did without either depending on a robust argument (except possibly in the Ultima ratio regum sense) or exterminating all Nazis everywhere.
Oh look - a middle ground.
You don’t see the relevance of pointing out that claims that you can somehow reason people out of an irrational and hateful ideology aren’t based in reality?
Oh look - missing context again. Yes, all other things are definitely equal between Nazi anti-Jewish persecution and < checks notes > calling someone a funny name on an internet messageboard. Particularly when that “someone” is not remotely a traditionally persecuted minority.
By your argument, we also can’t say anything bad about the Nazis themselves.
And yet you keep comparing them as if there is no difference. Particularly when you say things like:
Which Czarcasm already addressed.
You have a right not to like it. But if you persist in equating Nazis and people using the term “MAGAt” as if there is no difference (which even LHoD has noted in #3 above), the rest of us have a right not to take your viewpoints seriously.
I’ve already said I’ll stop using the phrase if it bothers people. But “Calling people MAGAts is just like being a Nazi!” remains a ridiculous argument.
Because you’re once again making an all-or-nothing argument. Either there are no Nazis at all or the Nazis run everything, right?
You might want to have a word with that guy with the name just like yours who has repeatedly asserted equivalence in this very thread.
Anyhoo - this being ATMB, I remain of the view that it doesn’t reach a bannable level of offense, although people are perfectly able to consider it to be in poor taste.
Well, yeah.
Nazis call people they don’t like vermin.
Calling Trump supporters “Maggots” sounds similar to the way Nazis describe their opponents.
That’s literally all I am saying. I am not drawing a moral equivalence between people who say “MAGAt” and Nazis. I am just pointing out that one action taken by them is a bit Nazi-like.
If you want to say “I understand that, but the anti MAGA crowd isn’t going any further than childish insults, and they aren’t truly hateful, and the Republicans are really nasty and deserve it” - fine - just say “yes, calling them Maggots is dehumanizing, but that’s OK because XYZ.”
Don’t pretend not to understand why calling someone a MAGAt is dehumanizing, though.
Yeah, you definitely aren’t arguing against anything I have said.
And like I said, if you think that the only way to deal with MAGA is to go on a massive ideological civil war of existence, then go ahead and call them maggots, don’t even bother to spell it funny.
It’s a good thing I didn’t say that these things are equal then! But I can see how pretending I did makes it much easier to argue against me.
Clearly you didn’t read my argument, where over and over I said that you can be as critical as you want of both MAGA supporters and Nazis.
Is the only way you know to say something bad about someone to call them verminn? You really can’t think of any way to criticize either Nazis or Trumpers without dehumanizing slurs?
I agree that you shouldn’t call Nazis “worms” or something, either.
I really don’t know how I can be any clearer about this.
Being a Nazi is obviously much, much, much,much,much, much,much,much,much,much,much,much,much,much,much,much,much worse than calling someone a Maggot, spelled funny or not.
The two are not equivalent in any way, shape, or form.
When you call a group of people you dislike maggots, you sound like a Nazi.
This does not mean you are equivalent to a Nazi, or comparable to a Nazi on any moral level.
It does mean that you sound like a Nazi.
Does that clarify things? Or are you once again going to say “but calling someone MAGAt is nothing like being a Nazi!”?
This is laughable. At absolutely no point in time did I ever equate Nazis and people using the term “MAGAt”. No honest and thorough reading of my post could argue that I have.
Good thing that has never once been my argument, then.
No, I don’t think I am making an all or nothing argument when I say that denazification was effective. If reconstruction had been half as effective post civil war, we would not be talking about MAGA supporters right now.
You might want to read what my posts say instead of what you wish they said or what Czarcasm said they say.
By the way, I agree completely with LHOD’s point #3, so if you think that it demolished my arguments and gives you reason not to take them seriously, then again, you have no idea what I have been arguing in this thread.
So you’re saying that people who sound like Nazis and whose actions are the same as those that led to Nazi persecution of Jews aren’t like Nazis at all, morally or otherwise, and I’m being unreasonable to draw that conclusion from your statements. Got it.
More Manicheanism, I see. Nothing whatsoever exists between polite arguments or brutal pogroms, right? Because that is the argument you keep making.
So you didn’t say this?
Oh right - you just repeatedly said that they sound like Nazis and act like Nazis, as well as insinuating that anyone doing so wants “a massive ideological civil war of existence”.
Keep splitting those hairs. It’s going great. Also: are you calling me “dishonest”?
No, it’s been your argument more than once. You may not have intended it to be, but it clearly was.
But that’s not what you actually said, was it? It may have been what you meant, but it’s not what you said.
You might want to read what your posts say instead of what you wish they said.
I endorse this as well.
Can we do how calling Tea Party members tea baggers is a homophobic slur next?
Ya know, despite the fact that that was they called themselves and it’s original protest method was, literally, mass mailing tea bags to politicians and calling that act ‘tea bagging’.
Also, ya know, the way Trump supporters called themselves MAGAs which opened their stupidity to mockery with a tiny bit of uncreative spelling.
If the Democrats start some new thing and call it Democrats United to Make things Better I too will laugh when the cs/Rs do some uncreative spelling and call it the DUMB new thing.
(Yes, that’s not dehumanizing, but so fucking what, it’s still juvenile and that’s all MAGAts is too compared to NPCs and zombies (which isn’t just dehumanizing it’s straight out saying that the target can be killed without any reason.)