Punching Nazis

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, obviously, yes, if I really had encountered him, I'd have blown him to bits with of my cartoonishly over-sized bombs, which I keep hidden in my great bushy beard for the short-notice doing of wicked deeds.

If you talk like you type I have no doubt that some cartoonishly oversized bombs have come out of your great bushy beard!

 

[Mouthwash]

The over-simplification of Marxism and the history of Marxism is... Well, you can probably guess where I'm going with that, but I think there's something to his explanation, at least so far as it applies to Americans. But I think it's mistaken to regard differing reactions to reaction and Stalinism as a simple matter of proximity, as if people don't have some grasp of the broad historical distinctions between the two, as if they're motivated only by guilt and narcissism. It all plays a part, to be sure, but a greater horror towards Nazism than Stalinism is consistent enough across many societies with varied histories, to the point where a rejection of this distinction is widely understood as a clue that you probably shouldn't invite this individual out for a bagel, that we can't reject the actual, historical differences between the two, or the popular apprehension of those differences, in forming that reaction.

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/05...nderrated-duterte-world-war-ii-nazi-politics/

 

[Timsup2nothin]

....

Do you have an opinion to share? Not that you have any credibility that would make it likely I would care, but I'm curious.

 

[Traitorfish]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/05...nderrated-duterte-world-war-ii-nazi-politics/

This mostly seems to be a list of sociopathic macho strongmen, and it's not really a surprise they found something to admire in a sociopathic macho strongman, or that those who admire them find something to admire in another sociopathic macho strongman.

After all, these people exist in the West, too, hence President Trump.

 

[Mouthwash]

This mostly seems to be a list of sociopathic macho strongmen

It's their entire countries who don't seem to find Hitler particularly villainous. Did you do anything more than skim it?

 

[Traitorfish]

It's their entire countries who don't seem to find Hitler particularly villainous. Did you do anything more than skim it?

I'll cop to skimming it, but I'm familiar with the phenomenon you're highlighting. And the thing is, these are countries where communists can still regularly win elections, so it's unrealistic to suggest that there's simply a collective blindness to the fact that Hitler was a sub-excellent sort of dude. All it really tells us is that fascist sympathisers sympathise with fascists, and, well, yeah.

Anyway, it seems besides the point. My argument is that a greater abhorrence of Nazism is based fundamentally on an at least tenuous grasp on the historical distinctions between Nazism and Stalinism, and the article isn't at all inconsistent with that, if one assumes that Westerners have had greater exposure to both Nazism and Stalinism than those in the developing world, which seems a reasonable assumption.

 

[Mouthwash]

But most Westerners have less exposure to Stalinism than Nazism, especially since the worst atrocities of the former took decades to become public knowledge (and even then were denied by sympathizing intellectuals) but we've had nonstop exposure to Hitler's for seven decades straight.

 

[caketastydelish]

Well, obviously, yes, if I really had encountered him, I'd have blown him to bits with of my cartoonishly over-sized bombs, which I keep hidden in my great bushy beard for the short-notice doing of wicked deeds.

I am scared of you, Comrade.

 

[Traitorfish]

But most Westerners have less exposure to Stalinism than Nazism, especially since the worst atrocities of the former took decades to become public knowledge (and even then were denied by an intellectual class of sympathizers) but we've had nonstop exposure to Hitler's for seventy years straight.

Westerners also had the entire Cold War, a fifty year period in which it was received wisdom among the professional and business classes of three continents that Karl Marx mixed bourgeois blood with his Passover bread. Communist fellow-travelers only seem like a cultural force in retrospect: at the time they were marginal everywhere outside of Italy and France, and actively criminalised in Spain, Germany, and at times in the United States. This may not have amounted to an eyewitness experience, but the idea that Stalin was a sub-excellent dude was not a revelation that came to light only in 1991.

I mean, Trotsky had been saying it since the 1920s, if anyone would have cared to listen.

I am scared of you, Comrade.

A specter is haunting CFC!

 

[caketastydelish]

Except demonstrating by example the correctness of showing people's outsized concern for Malcolm X and thus the unlikely favor of MLKism....

The reason I like MLK has absolutely nothing to do with Malcom X.

 

[Hygro]

The reason I like MLK has absolutely nothing to do with Malcom X.

You know about MLK because he was successful, because of people like Malcolm X.

 

[Hygro]

Well, obviously, yes, if I really had encountered him, I'd have blown him to bits with of my cartoonishly over-sized bombs, which I keep hidden in my great bushy beard for the short-notice doing of wicked deeds.

They'll be the most food crusted bombs the world ever known.

 

[W|M]

If "we" are evil, as you say, who is held to account? Who do we hang? It is not possible to say.

But say that the Nazis were evil, who do we hang? We know exactly who to hang. We hanged them. It wasn't a tough call.

We didn't hang enough of them

 

[Timsup2nothin]

We didn't hang enough of them

More like we stopped too soon. There are whole generations of them that were born after the hangings stopped, and that may be a mistake.

 

[Synobun]

Eh. The feel good mantra of "you can't kill an idea" when the baddies are killing the good guys rings just as true when it's the other way around. You can't eliminate a philosophy or belief system through killing it.

 

[caketastydelish]

You know about MLK because he was successful, because of people like Malcolm X.

I don't think that's true, and you certainly haven't proven it. You may as well say Islamaphobia was improved thanks to the efforts by Osama Bin Laden.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Eh. The feel good mantra of "you can't kill an idea" when the baddies are killing the good guys rings just as true when it's the other way around. You can't eliminate a philosophy or belief system through killing it.

Maybe. But the fact remains that (admittedly after a huge contest of arms) the world was fairly unified in "this is something that we can't afford to tolerate in ourselves" and taking action on that assessment. Now, three generations removed we get all in a dither about whether it is okay to punch them, much less hang them.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't think that's true, and you certainly haven't proven it. You may as well say Islamaphobia was improved thanks to the efforts by Osama Bin Laden.

This is one of those times when the burden of proof falls on the maker of the seemingly wrong claim. Someone, most likely me, pointed out that when people say "MLK proved peaceful resistance works" they are pretending that his peaceful resistance happened in a vacuum, which it did not. His peaceful resistance was effective because it took place against a background of "and if you don't respond the next guy to protest is gonna be someone like Malcolm X."

Just about everyone but you has acknowledged that that is true, and that using MLK as this example of peaceful protest being generally effective is an error. You trotted out what a horrible person you think Malcolm X was, and since it was not on point no one has argued that and I'm still not, which is not to suggest I completely agree. But that actually does more to prove the point that MLK's peaceful protest was very far from taking place in a vacuum.

So here we are. You are standing alone against an argument that has otherwise been accepted as just making sense. So instead of making silly parallels about Islamaphobia, prove your point. Or don't, but don't pretend that everyone else should just agree with you because you repeat yourself forcefully.

 

[caketastydelish]

Wrong. I can name plenty of people on CFC that disagree with you. I think it is against the rules to name specific users that aren't even a part of a specific discussion, but we all know who they are.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Wrong. I can name plenty of people on CFC that disagree with you. I think it is against the rules to name specific users that aren't even a part of a specific discussion, but we all know who they are.

LOL...yeah, the people who would disagree with me if I said that up was up, because they disagree with me at some root personal level and just are compelled no matter how silly it makes them look. That's not a really powerful argument for your position that MLK proved peaceful protest works and the obvious threat that if peaceful didn't work Malcolm X et al were waiting in the wings had nothing to do with it. That position is glaringly absurd, and unless you have some way to make it look sensible you should probably revise it.

And again, just restating it more forcefully isn't very convincing.