I do like me some XKCD!
mc
Well, this shows that you are are an ignorant of what I have said in the past, in the past I have pointed out that indeed it is thanks to them participating that then we are aware of who are the dupes of today. And it is funny to me how the never ending efforts from conservatives of today to undermine unions and worker rights is one reason that we have now business owners that can fire the asses of the ones that are nazi or racist assholes today, as XKCD puts it.
So, the more the better so as to deal properly with those extremists because it is looking as if conservatives today are not minding getting support of deplorables like those ones.
Of course I have to notice that what I pointed early does stand: many conservatives here do willfully forget that we are having this conversation because Nazi’s, fascists and white supremacists are silencing people that opposed to them when Nazis shoot at them or run over them.
As you say, we indeed know now (if one knows history, one already knows) what the fascists will do if they are allowed to gain power. With their actions we already do know who they are trying to silence. We have also the issue that right now they have a sympathizer in chief in the White House.
That line can only be crossed when someone moves from speech to action, and that action should be dealt with according to the law.
The thing is, no-one here is defending those beliefs, and many people are attacking them. There’s no reason to add “me too” to every post that does so. I’ve made it clear, repeatedly, that I don’t share those despicable views - and it’s precisely because I reject fascist views that I think freedom of speech is so important, as is settling things in court not through violence.
It’s worth remembering that Trump voters make up something less than a quarter of Americans, and I suspect his hardcore supporters are less than half of that. The Dems threw away the election by putting up the second-worst candidate that I can remember seeing in an election where a swing to the right was always expected. As is often the case, a poor campaign mixed with political apathy led to a terrible result.
However, Trump and the Republicans won a legitimate election, no matter how much that sucks. They are not revolutionaries nor dictators, they are working within the system. Nazis don’t do that.
More than a reason then to stop giving them oxygen.
As noted, more republicans are swallowing the idea that the media is more dangerous than the white supremacists, Hillary is not the president so she is irrelevant now, and we have to deal with the Cheeto in chief.
Deal.
The line was already crossed. Attacking them verbally and in the media and in the courts, is completely proper. Attacking them physically when they are in the process of physically attacking someone else (defending their victims) is completely appropriate too.
If you want to take that argument to say that they no longer have the right to free speech because some members are violent, then you also need to apply it to all the other groups that have violent members, whether it’s pro-life protesters or BLM.
Fuck that, you “both sides many fine people” Nazi sympathizer son of a bitch.
Only the ONE collective group has MURDERED anyone, so go fuck right off.
Hahahaha no. Left wing revolutionaries have killed more people than the Nazis ever did, you fucking moron. And that group includes the BLM “protester” who shot 5 cops - that’s 4 more people than were killed by the white supremacists at that protest, for anyone keeping count.
We are talking about what is happening in America. And what you said here does brand you a red herring moron.
The news reported that Johnson had no connection to any extremist groups. By contrast recent recordings/transcripts showed that the Nazis were geared to cause harm as a group.
Budget Player Cadet
To be clear - I’m not calling zoid or Donald or random Conservatives or anyone else, Nazis, because “I don’t like them”. This is not about my personal feelings - although admittedly I do not go to any effort to hide my feelings about Nazis. And why should I, or any other, red-blooded American girl?
This is an objective assessment of Donald’s Nazi behavior and his Conservative supporters defending his Nazism.
My point in reminding zoid that the definition for “anyone (even someone who claims to be a “fellow liberal”) who expresses sympathy for Nazis,” is, “Nazi sympathizer”, well, … seems sort of obvious to me.
Your attempt to reduce to this to a unimportant personal opinion, as if we were debating butterscotch ice cream (Gross. Come at me.) is duly noted.
I would certainly be pleased to punch a Nazi, but there don’t seem to be any in my computer room at the moment. I pride myself on maintaining a Nazi-free home. It’s just me and my elderly poodle-mix, and man, you wouldn’t want to know what he calls Donald.
You are correct that there is no such obligation. However, the default is always that you support the people you are defending. And adding a bit saying you don’t agree with them is extremely easy, and avoids misunderstandings.
Sure, maybe you don’t do so at first. You assume everyone knows you hate Nazis. Fine. But then you are specifically accused of agreeing with Nazis. If you, at that point, refuse to disavow them, then what other reason can there be?
What’s more, the longer it takes you to disavow them, the worse it looks. It’s best to do it as early as you can.
It’s better to not be misunderstood in the first place than to have to try and fix things after the fact. Another thing about people: once they decide something, that thought has inertia. It’s harder to come back from being thought to be a Nazi than to make it clear you aren’t one from the beginning.
Define “Nazi”.
My whole point here is, we can either treat the group as universally worth our scorn and worth denying basic rights, or we can have a loose, vague, unclear definition that apparently includes some half the fucking country. We can’t have both. Like, the guy in that NYTimes piece who identifies as a Nazi? He’s a Nazi. You can tell because he supports ethnic cleansing and fascism, and also calls himself a Nazi.
Richard Spencer? A little tougher of a call, but as a fascist who supports ethnic cleansing, yeah, sure, he’s a Nazi.
Donald Trump? Debatably a fan of fascism, and I’ve seen no indication of him being into ethnic cleansing, and very little indication that he’s even particularly more racist than much of his demographic. In what universe does he count as a nazi?
Milo Yiannopolous? He’s literally a gay Jew! He’s an asshole, and he holds a bunch of regressive, harmful, stupid beliefs and spouts them in particularly offensive ways, but anyone calling a gay Jew a Nazi needs a new term or a fucking reality check.
I think that in denying certain fringe groups basic rights, we cede the high ground, admit that we cannot beat them on an even playing field, and leave ourselves open to the same tactic being used against us and to the inevitable blowback when we go too far and someone seems sympathetic. (Did the Berkeley riots help or hurt Milo Yiannopolous’s social cachet?)
Does the above paragraph make me a Nazi sympathizer?
I think one of us is misunderstanding the other, because I have no idea what you’re talking about here.
Self-hating gays exist, as do anti-Semitic self-hating Jews. Stands to reason that anti-Semitic self-hating gay Jews also exist.
A Nazi is a person who supports the goals, actions and beliefs of the Nazi Party, including, but not limited to:
- Ahistoric ideas about Aryans and Indo-Europeans
- Unsupported beliefs in the superiority of the White Race
- Unsupported beliefs in the existence of the white race in any sort of meaningful biological way
- Irrational and unscientific ideas about the inferiority of other ethnicities and sexualities
- Support for segregation, discrimination & wholesale destruction of other ethnicities & sexualities
- Perpetuation of Nazi-era slogans (Blood & Soil) or accoutrements (Swastikas)
- Reverence for the historical leaders of the Nazi party
- Willingness to commit violence in support of any of the above stupidity
- Willingness to defend and support those who commit violence in support of the above stupidity
- Refusal to condemn violence in support of Nazis and Nazism
- Endless sealioning about ethics in anti-Nazi journalism and “What even is a Nazi, really?”
That last one is you, Budget. That’s what I am talking about here.
The only person saying that we have both is you - and it’s only true if you’re under the impression that those of us who call Donald and his supporters Nazis, are using “Nazis” as a synonym for, “Bad Hombres”.
Again, I think that’s just you, dude, and I think you’re saying it’s vague because you don’t want to have to stop sympathizing with people who act like Nazis in public.
FTR - I don’t have a vague, unclear definition of Nazism. It’s actually not that hard to spot a Nazi. Let’s play a few rounds!
See! This isn’t so hard!
What is so tough about this one? Dude supports Nazi beliefs = Dude is a Nazi. It’s really not complicated.
Same rule as with Richard Spenser: Dude supports Nazi beliefs = Dude is a Nazi.
Using my definition I established above, Donald trips on:
- Irrational and unscientific ideas about the inferiority of other ethnicities and sexualities
- Support for segregation, discrimination & wholesale destruction of other ethnicities & sexualities
- Perpetuation of Nazi-era slogans (Blood & Soil) or accoutrements (Swastikas)
- Willingness to defend and support those who commit violence in support of the above stupidity
- Refusal to condemn violence in support of Nazis and Nazism
Additionally, Donald’s repeated retweets of stuff from hate sites on the internet make it crystal clear where his interests lie.
Sure, he lies, and plays dumb about it, but everyone who wants to can pick up what he’s laying down.
(We’re skipping lightly past the question of whether Donald is “particularly more racist than much of his demographic.” A person’s Naziness is not judged on how much more or less other people are Nazis. I will only note that if a man is judged by the company he keeps, Donald should stop hanging out with Stephan Miller and Sebastian Gorka.)
Ah. Hm. Yeah. How to put this delicately. Apparently you’re not aware that there were quite a number of Jews who actually helped the Nazis. They hoped that their assimilation into the dominant German culture would protect them and win them official acceptance. It did not … although initially the Nazi party was happy to exploit them in rounding up non-cooperating Jews and stealing their property.
There’s a list of some of these collaborationist groups, including the Judenrat and the so-called Jewish Gestapo (Group 13) here -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_Nazi_collaboration
And here’s a list of some of the notable Jewish collaborators -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_Nazi_collaborators
including Calel Perechodnik, a member of the Jewish Gestapo -
All of this to say - Milo being Jewish and/or Gay doesn’t mean that he can’t a Nazi.
The Jewish collaborators (who were, admittedly, in a nightmare situation) were motivated by fear, self-loathing and self-interest. Many of them were openly anti-semitic, either before or after their experiences.
I’m not going to track it down right now, but I’ve certainly heard enough of Milo’s chatter to have heard him speak of his self-loathing and homophobia. He says that being gay is abnormal, that he wishes he could cure himself, that gay men should go back in the closet because it’s bad for society to have gay relationships and gay households, that lesbians are just confused straight women.
Granted - it’s possible that Milo is just an amoral sociopath, saying whatever keeps Daddy Trump and his fans happy because the pay is good. I’ve read enough of that too, from people who know him personally. That doesn’t absolve him of being a Nazi.
Oh yeah, Milo’s either a Nazi or a sociopath, or both, because he trips point number 4 & 5 in my definition:
- Irrational and unscientific ideas about the inferiority of other ethnicities and sexualities
- Support for segregation, discrimination and/or wholesale destruction of other ethnicities & sexualities
No, not when you’re talking about “What is an appropriate tactic to employ when one encounters a Nazi”.
It’s when you dismiss the idea that there are actual Nazis operating openly and insist that we have no reasons for calling people Nazis, and try to defend the nazis - that’s an expression of Nazi sypmpathy.
Since you asked - Milo Yiannopolous has no social cachet to speak of. His “Free Speech Week” was a joke that became a “Free Speech Weekend” and then a “Free Speech Rally” and then finally a “Free Speech Photo-op”. All of his God Emperor’s friends stood him up. He was wildly outnumbered by the anti-hate protestors exercising their freedom of speech. He stuck Berkeley with an $800k bill for security and clean up - you think they’re going to invite him* back*? Milo came out of this looking like a desperate, washed-up, twerp. Anyone who hears him speak knows what he’s selling, and it’s not any kind of “freedom”.
I don’t know why I spent so long talking about this choad.
You’ve never heard of the kapos?
Someone needs a “fucking reality check”, but it’s not Merneith. I suggest you do some research of your own.
Think of all the closet cases out there who hate gays. The violent racists who turn out to have black or Jewish ancestry.
And just to cover the other side of the whole “gay Jewish Nazis are impossible!” thing, Ernst Rohm.
And that BTW should be a good warning for the ones that think that being simpatico with the Nazis will spare them, it might… until the long knives come out.
Congratulations, you just pigeonholed myself, most of the rationalist community, and most people even remotely concerned with how we’re responding to the incredibly tiny wave of white nationalism surfacing into the role of “nazi”.
My thesis is this: we are far too hasty to call people “nazis”, and we simultaneously have a cultural convention where our reaction to nazis is a visceral rejection up to and including excluding them from the public square. I have little problem with the latter, but if we’re going to go to such extreme lengths, we need to be very clear on who we’re actually targeting. Let’s take a look at who we’re targeting, eh?
Does this include Charles Murray, who advocates for universal basic income and sees the cultural or genetic inferiority of black people as something best solved through help from the government? I mean, he’s noxious, but he’s probably not a Nazi. This throws a whole lot of people - please note: stupid, racist, unpleasant people, who we should definitely do something about - into the “nazi” category that kinda don’t belong there.
Hey, same problem. Did you know that people can be wrong about racial issues, and/or be racist idiots, without being nazis?
Again, is Charles Murray a Nazi? I don’t think so. There are a lot of ways to be wrong on race without committing the cardinal sins that make the Nazis so heinous. They’re still bad, but you just swept a whole bunch of garden-variety racists under the Nazi banner. Hey, is Ben Shapiro a nazi? I don’t like the guy, I think he’s a racist asshole, but he’s still not a Nazi, as one might be able to tell by his big thing being constant accusations that anyone who isn’t 100% pro-israel is antisemitic.
This is where I see the problem with nazis. Nazis, unlike many other kinds of garden-variety racism, very explicitly support this. They are in favor of segregation, discrimination, and ethnic cleansing. That’s what makes them so bad. Similarly:
All of this is AOK. In fact, this is why we oppose the nazis so fervently. Because the ideology is inherently violent and intolerant.
But a lot of the excess stuff seems… well, superfluous. This is where I get hung up here. If someone asks, “Why are Nazis Evil?” and I respond, “Because they’re Nazis”, I haven’t actually answered the question. I’ve just given them a label. What’s actually wrong with nazi ideology? My answer: should they ever actually take power, their ideology leads inexorably to a conclusion of ethnic cleansing and historic atrocities. By signaling that they support this ideology, they have made it clear that they see no problem with that end point. Furthermore, their actual path to political success and their actions once they have political power is characterized by violence. This is far from a comprehensive look at “why Nazis are bad”, but I feel like it’s not that hard to fill in the blanks for any given ethical system.
So when I ask “Is Donald Trump a Nazi”, what I’m looking for is not shit like “has Nazi insignia” or “is racist” (most rich white old men are more than a little bit racist, as it turns out), I’m looking for support of ethnic cleansing, discrimination, and taking firm action on racism.
There’s a lot we can criticize him for, and we should be worried about his autocratic tendencies. But we should be worried about that for reasons entirely separate from the idea that he’s a fucking nazi. Because he isn’t.
And if you spent like five minutes looking over my posting history, you’ll see that I’ve spent quite a bit of time slagging off exactly the people you argue I’m “sympathizing” with. I wrote at least one pit thread on Milo, I’ve been quite vocal about cutting family members out of my life for supporting Trump, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever posted about Richard Spencer but if I did it probably had something to do with me laughing at him being used as a human speedbag. So fuck your bullshit accusations. You clearly haven’t read anything I’ve posted here if you’re able to sit there and say something this fucking stupid.
This is a pretty cogent argument. Counterpoint: his Jewish family, his fairly explicit courting of racial demographics (clumsy, crappy, uncomfortable, but imagine how racist it would look if a president didn’t explicitly go out of his way to mention how much he likes African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans), his rejection of David Duke (yes, he did in fact reject David Duke), and so on, and so forth. So why’s he defending neo-nazis? First thought: he might not have figured out that they’re neo-nazis. Second thought: he did. It wasn’t a clear-cut, powerful refutation the way most people would have hoped, but he did, in fact, condemn the violence in charlottesville, and he did condemn the neo-nazis responsible. His attempts to control the narrative were transparently bullshit, but it had worked up until then to just reflect anything with whataboutism, so why stop? I don’t think he’s a Nazi. I think he’s an idiot grasping for any possible partisan advantage.
Look, to me the key question is this: does Donald Trump support ethnic cleansing and a return of discriminatory policy and practice? I don’t think he does, or if he does, he does a pretty good job of hiding it.
(Bolding mine)
Good news: I’ve done no such thing. I haven’t done any of that. Stefan Gorski is almost certainly a nazi. Richard Spencer: definitely a Nazi. Those assholes who marched in Charlottesville: Nazis, or close enough to be willing to share a parade ground with 'em.
I just think if we’re going to make a definition so broad as to include basically anyone who’s a racist, we should be careful what connotation we attach to it. That’s the point here. If we’re going to call every garden-variety right-wing racist a nazi, we cannot then turn around and say, “we should punch Nazis”. You’d start in Bumfuck, Alabama, and before clearing the city limits your hand’s gonna be broken and a bunch of pissed-off randos who don’t identify as Nazis, think Hitler was awful, and more (but just happen to be casually racist) are going to be mighty pissed at you. I think there aren’t very many nazis.
And of course, nowhere does **Merneith **proposes doing your straw man.
As for Trump, I have to notice that he is like Nixon, no matter that he had a secretary of state that was a jew and that he listened to his advice, Nixon was shown later to be a jew and minority hater.
And while I do agree that Trump is not a Nazi, (he does not help much to discourage that people like David Duke or American Nazis from thinking that Trump is actually doing his public condemnations of then under duress) Trump does sabotage himself to make his wink of his eye* to look even better* to the fascists.
Hitler speeches published with Donald Trump as cover illustration | Books | The Guardian