Neo Nazis and the Alt Right

Politics and religion
2469

That’s weird, the roughly 35% of Germans who supported the Nazi party seemed to be redeemable in the years that followed the war, including a member of the Waffen SS who won the Nobel Prize for Literature, another ex-SS member who was Secretary General of the UN in the 1960s, or you know, major parts of both the East and West German’ governments who remained largely run by former Nazis well up into the 70s (and later).

Former nazis played a large part in forming the organisation that would become the European Union, former nazis would play large parts in re-arming west Germany and joining NATO. Given that former nazis made up 1/3rd of the German population, former Nazis undoubtedly played a role in everything positive that came from West Germany post WW2.

They’re all irredeemable though, and they should have all been killed, and blah-di-stupid-blah.

2470

Shit, let’s have another ethnic cleansing, seems to have produced a lot of good people.

/s (almost forgot, but this IS is the internet after all)

2471

Well one group has killed 1 person in the last few years and the other group has killed 100,000+ people in the last few years. And the one person the Nazis killed was white. But yeah, you’re totally right, only a racist would see a distinction between them.

2472

White supremacy killings in America, which includes Nazis, has not been one in the last few years. You can’t use the tiki torch march as your only data point.

The people we are talking about are not former Nazis. They have not renounced a thing… and again, we are not treating this group like we treat all the other violent groups… why not? And Germany is not at all tolerant really of Nazis today…

2473

Irredeemable means they are never able to be redeemed. ArmandoPenblade said Nazi’s are inherently irredeemable. Post WW2 Germany would suggest Nazi’s are eminently redeemable, and it’s possible to quickly and effectively rehabilitate Nazis who actually murdered, killed and supported the killings of others.

Yet Armando believes that neo-Nazis who thus far have used only words, are irredeemable.

It’s just stupid and ignorant of history, reality, or evidence.

It’s also lacking in any sort of empathy or humanity, ironically enough.

2474

“Post WW2 Germany” and “Nazis” are two different things.

It’s arguable that post-WW2 Germany is what it is today because the post-Nazi government excluded former Nazis from power and banned the rise of new Nazis. Which is not rehabilitation at all, in fact it’s the response of a government that believes that Nazis actually are irredeemable.

2475

This is simply not true, they have done a lot more than just use words. Why on earth do you think we’re dealing with a bunch of pacifists?

2476

It’s generally not best practice to revise history, and it’s certainly inadvisable when a cursory google search shows your information to be completely wrong. For example, From Dictatorship to Democracy: The Role Ex-Nazis Played in Early West Germany - DER SPIEGEL

E.g.

Starting in October 1945, the British practiced the so-called “piggyback procedure” in the recently established judicial administration: For each judge without a Nazi past, one judge with former Nazi connections could be appointed. But, by the summer of 1946, even this restriction had been dropped.

Now the halls of justice were even staffed with judges who had once served on the Nazis’ People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof), which was set up in 1934 to handle “political offenses” and became notorious for the frequency, arbitrariness and severity of its punishments. Nevertheless, the civilian courts handling the de-Nazification process merely classified them as “hangers-on.” In 1953, at least 72 percent of judges on the Federal Supreme Court, Germany’s highest court for criminal and civil law, had former Nazi connections. The number increased to 79 percent by 1956 and, in the criminal division, it was at 80 percent by 1962.

Or

After the war, the restoration of former officials to positions in the Foreign Ministry occurred at an astonishing rate. The political division alone soon counted 13 former Nazi Party members among its top officials, while 11 of the 17 senior members of the legal department were former Nazis. “There is no other federal ministry,” then SPD parliamentarian Fritz Erler concluded, “that is maintaining the continuity of Berlin tradition in this manner than the Foreign Ministry.”

Or

The situation was even worse at the BKA. At times, former members of the SS’s Totenkopf division held more than two-thirds of all senior positions. When the agency began looking into the past of its employees in 1960, about 100 officials, or a quarter of the entire workforce, were investigated.

Any history book I have read about post WW2 also suggests that de-nazification was quickly abandoned by Allied Powers (indeed, former Nazi’s were co-opted by the Allies due to the existential threat the Soviet Union provided), and didn’t take hold in the German consciousness for decades.

Please provide your sources. I know you hate facts and evidence, but it would be nice for you to use them at least once. There are apparently a great number of nazis in the USA according to you and others, please present evidence of their great number of violent crimes.

2477

I have one Tiki Torch parade and jail time that already proves your ONLY WORDS claim wrong asshole. And a report that shows how badly the police failed to protect the protests. I promise you they didn’t fail to protect from WORDs.

2478

So, you have evidence of one violent crime out of tens or hundreds of thousands of nazis, but that means they’re all violent.

Thanks for your incredibly insightful contribution as ever Nesrie.

2479

We’ve been through this before. This guy is a Nazi apologist.

2480

That should be easy to prove. I have ten or so posts in the thread, quote me apologising for Nazis.

2481

And apparently a history revisionist if he thinks Germany just gathered up all the old Nazis and sent them to happy camps to give them hugs and here we are today.

2482

Also an asshole.

2483

Well Nesrie, unlike you I’ve provided a source. You know, that awkward thing called evidence? I’m going to guess Timex won’t provide a quote, he also has an aversion to evidence and instead likes to talk big.

2484

Don’t get lost in the weeds folks! That’s how forum friendships fall apart. Ya’ll are arguing over the definition of violent.

2485

Your quotes simply show that it is very difficult to replace a bureaucracy overnight. But the motivation is clear: Nazis were not welcomed with open arms, they were begrudgingly hired when there was no other choice.

That’s not evidence that they were redeemable, that’s evidence of pragmatism. Your own article provides no better proof: this policy was not widely publicized at the time and caused embarrassment when finally brought to light. Why be ashamed of hiring someone who really is “redeemed”?

And as time went on and the need became less acute, a Nazi past presented a greater and greater obstacle to power in Germany. Today it is almost fully disqualifying. That’s the opposite of redemption.

2486

That bears no relation to your original statement. Thanks for disingenuously changing the goalposts though!

I also never argued that Nazism was redeemed, I stated that former Nazis were. Your counter argument is that because Nazism as philosophy hasn’t been redeemed, that’s proof former Nazis weren’t redeemed.

Your original statement was wrong. I proved it. You changed your argument and accused me of stating something I quite demonstrably didn’t.

If you aren’t bothered arguing with what I did in fact post, why are you arguing at all?

2487

I’ll spell it out: you said that former Nazis were redeemable, and provided immediate postwar Germany as an example. But that’s simply an example of pragmatism.

If former Nazis were redeemable, then a former Nazi would face no difficulty achieving political power in modern Germany. But that’s not the case.

2488

kedeha is right on the history here. West Germany integrated former Nazis into the government, and ended up with a stable democracy. East Germany did not, and ended up with a totalitarian dictatorship. (Of course being a former Nazi now is disqualifying, since it means being upwards of 90 years old).