It’s weird… because the guy is still profoundly shitty. But he’s also pathetic.
I mean, it inspires pity, but it doesn’t normalize him or make you think, “Oh, well maybe he has a point.”
It’s just like, “He was kind of a loser willing to cling to any cause to gain acceptance, and he got progressively more and more disturbed… and eventually landed in a community of losers, and Nazism is where he found acceptance.”
It’s like, if that’s something anyone thinks is something they want to be part of… I dunno what to tell them.
At the core of the matter, the vast majority of these guys are redeemable because they are fundamentally broken. It’s a weak ideology with very obvious logical flaws. You don’t have to look far to find stories of Neo-Nazis renouncing their beliefs after getting decent guidance or maybe meeting the right person or simply just growing the fuck up.
It’s fun to fantasize about rounding up all the self-declared Nazis and, I dunno, systematically incinerating them in giant ovens or something, but these are human beings who ARE capable of changing. It’s just hard work is all.
Tin’s right, although on some level I feel like it’s not really my job to convert them back to the light. Right now, they are pursuing an ideology which is harmful to the human species.
Having a bunch of white guys standing around talking about how nice it is to save other white guys and those white guys are actually wanting to and actually are killing black guys and the black guys question that is not about retribution.
Those white guys going the saving… Almost zero consequence upon failure. Not so for the rest of us.
I’m not going to try and convince you or Timex to change your views. I understand where they come from and respect them, even though I disagree.
However, this is moving the goalposts out of one stadium and hauling them into a baseball diamond somewhere in a neighboring county. If someone is committing a crime they should be held accountable and pay the price. If someone is spouting hatred or slurs, they should be called out on it and exposed. Nowhere have I said that an amnesty for crimes should be awarded to these people, and I doubt I’ve even implied it.
Feel free to tell me that people who hold some beliefs are beyond contempt and not worthy of any effort of reintegration into society; I think there is a case to be made there. But at least try and do so without accusing me of excusing murder. That’s not fair and I suspect you know it.
Nazis murdering people is not moving the goalpost. It’s their goal. It’s what they want. It’s what they literally did. This is not just beliefs. These people want the rest of us eradicated. I suspect you know that but for some reason want to minimize this integral piece of their belief system.
Everyone knows I have no problems beating up nazis.
However, I think that it’s worth noting that for some of these guys, these racist ideologies may not hold any specific attraction to them. It’s almost like they just needed some kind of ideology to join up with, and this is what they ended up joining, because there’s seemingly no minimum requirement to be part of the Nazi group.
The utility in recognizing this is not just for the purpose of somehow “saving” these people, because frankly I think that may be impossible.
I think that the real utility here lies in that if we understand that society’s treatment of folks sometimes pushes them to the fringes, where they are then vulnerable to be swept up by these radical ideologies. Nazism isn’t the only group that does this. We see the exact same thing happen with ISIS.
If society does a better job taking care of folks, maybe we’ll get less nazis and terrorists.
Well you know, except being white. The ladies joining this group, they’re learning they have requirements too, just unspoken ones except if they read history at all, like really read it, they’d know those too.
Yup. In particular, angry, disenfranchised (or at least, believing-themselves-disenfranchised) masculinity is evidently an extremely powerful force that can be channeled to do immense evil.
If we could somehow magically shield the rest of the world from harm, I’d be very happy for ISIS and Nazis to have a war with each other. The funny thing is, I’m sure they’d be happy to do it, too.
Last I heard, we don’t anyone Congress catering to ISIS. I also don’t believe there has been a lot of talk about setting up happy camps to get these people back into society. In fact, Al Queda, ISIS, street gangs… there was actual anger at the idea of trying to make the world a better place as a means to solve these problems so we just declare war on these groups. Now we have Nazis, a real life actual went to war, defeated, was all American to defeat and it’s somehow different. Why is it different?
These members are not former. These are articles are about practicing members, and that young man, who called his girlfriend a slut when she was raped. He sounds like he was a piece of shit before he was a Nazs. So that answer is, it depends, but again we don’t have congressmen catering to ISIS and Alqueda. Hell for these other groups, we created even new ways to wage war, made up terms like War of Terror, War on Drugs, Police Wars where no actual war can occur. For the one group we actually want to war against, somehow now it’s so different. Again,why?
I’ll merrily give Soapy the answer he’s probably hunting for:
Nazis and ISIS members are unforgivable and inherently irredeemable. They might be coaxed into a position where the immediate threat they present to the world is diminished more or less permanently, or even come to hold less objectionable views.
But I think there are certain things a man can do that can’t ever truly be forgiven, a weight upon his “soul,” such as it were.
I mean, it also happens that I consider “having voted for Trump” sufficient grounds for this case, but that’s a different thread.
I absolutely believe in forgiveness. There is nothing someone can do that can’t be forgiven. Forgiveness is more about the person doing the forgiving than it is the person who committed the act, but the act of forgiving can lift the weight off the shoulders of the person who did something most would consider unforgivable. But forgiveness is not the same as being freed of consequences.
You read these stories, and they’re often the same, these are young white men who not only thought they would have different lives, they felt entitled to them. They’re not the only ones who feel lost at times, want to belong. Men, women and children of all races feel that way… but what are we doing right now with ISIS, that’s right, arresting people who are trying to aid them, who go to join them, who send money to them and what are we doing with the Nazis… reading articles about them and trying to get to the heart of the matter. These groups are dangerous, but only one of them is predominantly white and doesn’t pose a direct threat to many whites. The others want to kill us all pretty much equally.
It reminds me of the pyscho years ago who blew up abortion clinics who said it wasn’t okay for white women to have abortions but he thought it was okay for black women to do it. He thought that because he doesn’t mind murdering black people. It had nothing to do with his views on abortion.
