Whole lotta chatter about normalizing Nazis over the weekend. I wonât link to the article that initiated it, because the idiots who perpetrated it donât deserve to be rewarded with clicks for their tone-deaf and sloppy - and thatâs the best possible interpretation of it - work. So here are the parodies instead:
The Atlantic: Nazis Are Just Like You And Me, Except Theyâre Nazis
How about a link to the NY Times defending the article, rather than the article itself?
I mean⌠how do you defend shit like this:
Wasnt the intent of the article to show how apparently normal people go wrong? Clearly that was (imo) the intent.
But we live in unsubtle times with abstraction an apparently 20th C quaintness. And we deplore othering while expecting our enemies to be utterly othered.
Except the dude isnât normal. At all. Heâs an organized Nazi with plans to bring about a fascist America that heâs acted on.
I think itâs ok to other Nazis.
Again though, thats the point. How do âweâ become Nazis.
What everyone wants desperately for the NYT to do is make it clear that he is not Us. Even though this is a guy that goes to Applebees and Panera and looks just like any old schmo, and has never had any dramatic racial antagonisms that drove him to his position. Hes most certainly not One Of Us.
Well maybe we should look hard at how people like him radicalize because like it or not he is One of Us, as surely as racism or sexism is as well.
By being worthless sacks of shit.
Iâve known plenty of white supremacists. They get there by people coddling them and letting them be that way.
I knew a guy who wished the Klan was still around so he could join it. Why? Because his life was shitty and he was a shitty person and he wanted to blame someone else and all he could take pride in was being born. This was in the late 90âs.
Maybe if he hadnât flunked out of high school and gotten chain DUIs for driving while too drunk to stand, things wouldâve been different. Of if heâd used less drugs. Maybe it was his parents. All I know is that at no point was he âusâ in any real way that I ever saw. He hated everyone. Maybe if that girl he liked hadnât dated a black dude he wouldâve turned out better? Somehow I doubt it.
Sure, we should look at all that stuff. Nazis are people too, literally, by definition. When I reread Shirer I find it scarily easy to identify with that crazy gang of misfits who took on the world and almost won. Then I think about Riga and all the rest of it.
Once someoneâs got a swastika tattoo and saying Hitler was an OK fella, then I at least will view them as an Other. You donât âagree to disagreeâ with people who think it was all right to murder large swaths of the population; you shame and shun them.
And nothing in that article was about agreeing to disagree. My point - literally being made here in this thread - is that we see today the failure to directly condemn, over and over, the same thing as acceptance. You canât talk about how people become Nazis without deliberately saying âYes, Nazis are bad, and yes, everything this person stands for is terrible.â
It also works the other way - itâs not you enjoying your privilege, itâs that other guy. Itâs not you being sexist in society, itâs them over there! Itâs not you supporting the status quo, youâre an angel of progressive values. Iâm not the other! Iâm One of Us! The good people!
Not condemning IS accepting. Thatâs not okay. These are Nazis, documented killers who want to destroy others who are barely, barely held back by laws.
I havenât decided what I think about the article, actually. I just objected to the term âotheringâ being used in a pejorative sense about condemnation of Nazis. They are âother,â except in the trivial sense of âwe are all h.sapiens.â
I mean obviously. But being unable to comprehend or even look at why normal people turn bad is like screaming NAZIS! in a circular argument any time someone asks how do people become Nazis (or some other extremist view). Nazis are the other because the other are Nazis. Theyâre comic book villains who come from mud after rainstorms and disappear into the dust when defeated, waiting for the right climate to spring forth again.
And this is way more relevant than the USA. Weâre hyper sensitive to this. Places like Hungary or Poland⌠not so much. Theyâre unable (for various reasons) to look at why people turn Nazis⌠and lots of people are now turning Nazi.
And this, in a nutshell, is social media.
No, theyâre actual human monsters that kill people. And we have one of the largest media organizations in the world whitewashing them.
Also: I fucking hate when someone does a great analysis on Twitter of all places and then you canât find it again.
The dude wasnât a sympathizer, heâs part of this:
Heâs got a podcast where he chat with his other Nazi buddy and complains about âthe Jewâ destroying everything.
You keep asking: âWhy do these people become Nazis?â
The answer is: theyâre terrible fucking people. Terrible people have always existed and will always exist. The end.
They only show up because we stop shooting them.
Heimblach from that SPLC link is the dude he does podcasts with iirc.
Hell, Hovater is even on that page.
Honest question, what did you think i was saying?
No itâs not. Not condemning Nazis has nothing to do with Social Media. Nazism and the destruction and murder that it causes happened long before Social Media. The fact you are equating the two is ridiculous. Nazis were already judged. Itâs not new, and the new group of dangerous wannabes are no different. Where Social Media might go wrong is applying labels to the wrong people, but the widespread condemnation of Nazis⌠nothing wrong with that.
Are these the Tweets youâre referring to?
https://twitter.com/studentactivism/status/934959380902146048
It actually is. Nazism is so wrong that it doesnât actually need to be stated, like (PBUH) is in devout followers of Islam when writing, that itâs bad.
Nazism [the philosophy we abhor], was founded in Germany. Nazism [the philosophy we abhor] was the guiding political principle of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
We live in a time where, for some reason, everything has to be explicit, where nothing can be assumed. Who would genuinely be arguing, from a national paper, that these philosophies are acceptable?