What is a Nazi?

[Verbose]

@Verbose - to use your own argument, because "Americans" means something already. It's the opposite of a precise label. Nazi is more accurate than American, assuming you don't want to stereotype everyone living in the US as prejudiced as the caller mentioned in Hygro's OP.

So call them "Republicans" if you like?

Frankly at the pace the US political language is rotting right now, I would much prefer the Americans come up with some new, actually relevant labels for what is going in the US, rather than co-opting stuff, making a conceptual mess of things. I'm increasingly finding it a problem how all the issues of US politics into European political discourse gets imported, and all the US grievances demanding European parallelisms be found. We might need to use some other language than English the way this is headed.

 

[Kyriakos]

So call them "Republicans" if you like?

Frankly at the pace the US political language is rotting right now, I would much prefer the Americans come up with some new, actually relevant labels for what is going in the US, rather than co-opting stuff, making a conceptual mess of things. I'm increasingly finding it a problem how all the issues of US politics into European political discourse gets imported, and all the US grievances demanding European parallelisms be found. We might need to use some other language than English the way this is headed.

I think it's highly unlikely the US media does this out of some will or need to find parallels to Europe. They do it because (correctly) they identify the US as the only western power of note, so everything is about it or doesn't matter.
This would become obvious in an instant, in case of a global war.

 

[Synobun]

So call them "Republicans" if you like?

Frankly at the pace the US political language is rotting right now, I would much prefer the Americans come up with some new, actually relevant labels for what is going in the US, rather than co-opting stuff, making a conceptual mess of things. I'm increasingly finding it a problem how all the issues of US politics into European political discourse gets imported, and all the US grievances demanding European parallelisms be found. We might need to use some other language than English the way this is headed.

Can you describe a material difference in addressing the problem based on the term used by the bottom-rung layperson? What changes if a person at threat calls their (potential) oppressor Nazis or Artisanal, QAnon-fed Authoritarians? What "conceptual mess" is cleared up by this, and how does it influence resistance?

As far as I can tell, the only difference the term makes is whether or not someone will mock or dismiss you before they let the bad thing happen to you anyway.

 

[Gorbles]

So call them "Republicans" if you like?

Frankly at the pace the US political language is rotting right now, I would much prefer the Americans come up with some new, actually relevant labels for what is going in the US, rather than co-opting stuff, making a conceptual mess of things. I'm increasingly finding it a problem how all the issues of US politics into European political discourse gets imported, and all the US grievances demanding European parallelisms be found. We might need to use some other language than English the way this is headed.

You should probably check my location tag, over there on the left. You're not the first to make this mistake, mind you.

Sure, we were discussing the US in particular, but that's because of the context we were given. emzie, I believe, is Canadian. I'm British. The problem isn't just relegated to the US (there was a big mess over here when someone who really liked Hitler murdered a sitting MP, and the media was like "but can we actually call them a Nazi"), and like Synsensa has spent no small amount of time pointing out - not really to do with the precise application of the term anyway.

 

[GenMarshall]

And on the other hand, people leaning the other way keep making the silly, ahistorical argument that Nazis were socialists. Thus associating their enemies (socialists) with the Nazis.

To be fair (to a point), the historical Nazis (that is a member of the German Nazi Party from 1922-1945) was named the “Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party” (Translated from Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Though I’m giving you a due since, I am going to oversimplify this since it’s real complicated during Weimar Germany during its political upheaval in the 1920s, that they adopted the “socialist” tag as a marketing ploy to draw workers away from the communist parties at the time (this information was gathered from a Wikipedia article on said party, not from the opinion/op-ed piece).

Also, it's funny that you mention "these days", when the article notes the left-wing comparison of right-wingers and Nazis goes back half a century.

You mean opinion/op-ed piece? I’m left with a question of the guy writing that opinion piece of what are his primary sources of the right wing associating socialists with Nazis in the past half century. Can he come up with any sources from, say the 1950s, where there was right leaning people making the association of socialism with Nazism? For most of my life the term “Nazi” and “fascist” were typically used as an pejorative epithet towards authoritarian and totalitarian figures and regimes (including communist states) either justified like the USSR under Joseph Stalin or Italy under Mussolini or unjustified like when your mother told you you can’t have dessert because you didn't ate all your vegetables. The whole associating socialism with Nazism in a non-prejorarive context is a relatively new phenomenon.

 

[Berzerker]

So stuff like this, right?

Antifa attacking protesters?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Yes, Canada would never engage in such behaviours. Our residential schools were fun places. We're just coming off of the uncovering of over 3000 bodies in unmarked graves this year, but who cares about that?

That isn't what amadeus said and you know that.

How do you think those bodies got there? Keep in mind that the bodies are those of children. Children, literally kidnapped and taken to Christian-run boarding schools where their languages and cultures were beaten out of them, where they were malnourished, many were raped, and some of them who tried to escape died of starvation/exposure.

Yet there are right-wingers in Canada who still insist that every last one of those kids died of TB, and their parents actively wanted them to attend the schools. The POS who oversaw the social studies portion of the new draft curriculum in Alberta denies the realities of the residential schools and calls reconciliation efforts (based on the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) a "fad."

These days, it’s more or less that leftists and SJWs call their ideological opponents “Nazis”, even if said opponent loathes Nazism.

Oh? Then you haven't noticed all the right-wing anti-vaxxers screeching about how the "Nazis" are putting in laws about accessing certain kinds of businesses and facilities and using vaccine status as the deciding factor of whether or not people will be allowed in? Some of the rhetoric is unbelievable, with talk of "segregation" and "camps" for the unvaccinated.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Sometimes I can't tell the difference between a fascist and a Nazi, especially when they're kicking somebodies head in.

 

[Zardnaar]

Sometimes I can't tell the difference between a fascist and a Nazi, especially when they're kicking somebodies head in.

Nazism involves anti semitism fascism maybe not at least to the same extent.

Both terms get overused though. I got called fascist by a D&D player when I said I don't allow certain options based on the theme of the campaign.

Even if Trump's clowns overthrew the government Jan 6 the that's still not Nazism just like if left wing authoritarians did it doesn't make them communists eg Maduro in Venezuela.

You can have a right wing authoritarian state that's not fascist or Nazi. They will all be reactionary in some way though they will share that trait.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Nazism involves anti semitism fascism maybe not at least to the same extent.

Both terms get overused though. I got called fascist by a D&D player when I said I don't allow certain options based on the theme of the campaign.

Even if Trump's clowns overthrew the government Jan 6 the that's still not Nazism just like if left wing authoritarians did it doesn't make them communists eg Maduro in Venezuela.

You can have a right wing authoritarian state that's not fascist or Nazi. They will all be reactionary in some way though they will share that trait.

Nazism involves direct veneration of the German state 1933-45 and in that sense its overused.
Fascism though a more general term. Right-wing states like that of Peron or Pinochet have definitely had fascist influences. Theres definite reason to call Trump or his GOP supporters fascist.
I'llk remain neutral on if your DMing was fascist.

 

[Zardnaar]

Nazism involves direct veneration of the German state 1933-45 and in that sense its overused.
Fascism though a more general term. Right-wing states like that of Peron or Pinochet have definitely had fascist influences. Theres definite reason to call Trump or his GOP supporters fascist.
I'llk remain neutral on if your DMing was fascist.

Some if Trump's supporters definitely fascist. Trump himself has authoritarian tendencies.

If he did "win" you would have a state more like Putin's Russia than a fascist state. Corruption, rigged elections etc.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Some if Trump's supporters definitely fascist. Trump himself has authoritarian tendencies.

If he did "win" you would have a state more like Putin's Russia than a fascist state. Corruption, rigged elections etc.

So much like Italy under Mussolini

 

[Ajidica]

And, not to get too cheesy, but we're literally at this point I feel: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The death camps and the gas chambers were the endgame. Not the start. Not even the middle. Pretty late on, as the timeline goes. Any amount of history would show you warning signs that correlate with modern-day problems. Whatever happened to being safe rather than sorry?

tl;dr: try and think charitably about why these comparisons are being used, instead of starting from the position that their inaccurate and need to be disproven. Don't be reductive.

What, so everything is now a slippery slope? The anti-vaxx and Teahadists are rightly mocked for their slippery slope arguments; saying that vaccine mandates are the same as the Holocaust or that providing income assistance to poor families is just the thin edge of the wedge for the inevitable Khmer Rouge killing fields. Where does your 'learn from history' start? Bringing things across the pond, how do we know the David Hameron and 'gammon' memes aren't the start of an attempt to denegrate white people in Britain? After all, it was within both of our lifetimes that genocide and ethnic cleansing against white people occurred in Europe.
(I know you've participated in discussions where it was increasingly unclear if ironic hating on the English wasn't being used as a cover for actual bigotry. edit: it was others saying it while you were in the discussion, not you saying it.)

I missed this one, sorry to pick on you twice. There should be no discernable difference between homophobia and antisemitism. We should have a zero tolerance policy for both. Positing this rather dubious binary of "a rude comment" vs. "gas chamber reference" is playing down the former (while pushing the latter to its semantic extreme).

There is a vast difference, in isolation, between a rude comment and mass slaughter. However, contextually, the reality is that the Nazis and their supporters had a lot of use for "rude comments" as well, and nobody can deny the link between homophobia, or transphobia, and physical violence against the respective minorities. The same goes for the homeless, too (independent of any homeless person also being a marginalised minority).

I think we can all understand that one of those things is not like the other, and noting that difference doesn't mean you have to approve of the other comment. I was watching a Top Gear clip where Richard Hammond made an attempt at a 'joke' involving male homosexuality. It was unfunny, confusing, and somewhat offensive. That is vastly different than the weirdos on Russian television news talking about how homosexuality is a western plot to sexually assault children. One of these things is not like the other. We can acknowledge the Russian talking head is engaging in bigoted nonsense and encouraging a hostile -or even violent- environment in Russia. We can also acknowledge that Hammond is an irritating twerp with no sense of when to shut up.
Unless you want to be telling me how I should be feeling vulnerable (if I lived in the UK) because of Richard Hammond's dangerous words encouraging a violent environment.

How do you think those bodies got there? Keep in mind that the bodies are those of children. Children, literally kidnapped and taken to Christian-run boarding schools where their languages and cultures were beaten out of them, where they were malnourished, many were raped, and some of them who tried to escape died of starvation/exposure.

Yet there are right-wingers in Canada who still insist that every last one of those kids died of TB, and their parents actively wanted them to attend the schools. The POS who oversaw the social studies portion of the new draft curriculum in Alberta denies the realities of the residential schools and calls reconciliation efforts (based on the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) a "fad."

Amadeus wasn't saying that the Canadian government hadn't engaged in exceedingly brutal and abhorrent activities. Rather, amadeus was saying that Canada wouldn't be instituting death camps in the future. Despite Trudeau winning the tone-deaf award to bail on meeting with native representatives to go on vacation, I think we can all agree Canadian death camps are not something we can expect to see in the next twelve years.

edit: made a few sentence changes, I had accidentally typed a phrase that was the exact opposite of what I meant to say because I forgot how dashes work in a sentence.

 

[Zardnaar]

So much like Italy under Mussolini

Well some traits are systemic of authoritarian regimes eg corruption but Mussolini was a fascist. Trump had no coherent political philosophy it was all about him.

 

[Hygro]

I’m trying to find the words to describe what is obvious.

what we are calling nazis is A Thing that the historical German nazis embodied the most clearly and obviously.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Hygro
Perhaps:
Nazis were the Hitler regime of the 1930s and 40s.
Wannabe Nazis are frequently found in the world today. They take on many, if not all, the trappings of of the originals.

 

[Ajidica]

I wouldn't go that far. There are actual Nazis out there, many far closer to power or have sympathisers in power than anyone should be comfortable with.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I wouldn't go that far. There are actual Nazis out there, many far closer to power or have sympathisers in power than anyone should be comfortable with.

There may be, but Hitler and the Third Reich died. The only Nazis under 90 years old are those people who wannabe Nazis and revisit some fantasy Fourth Reich. My two definitions also solve the problem of identifying Nazis with a simple term.

 

[Ajidica]

There may be, but Hitler and the Third Reich died. The only Nazis under 90 years old are those people who wannabe Nazis and revisit some fantasy Fourth Reich. My two definitions also solve the problem of identifying Nazis with a simple term.

The Tiki-Torch brigade may be wannabe-Nazis, but that doesn't mean they aren't legit supporters of Nazi ideology with dreams of violence and destruction. The moment you start shouting 'Jews will not replace us' or waving flags embazoned with the sigel runes, the hakenkreuz, or black sun rune, I consider you just as much a threat as those Nazis in 1941 planning to starve 30 million eastern europeans to death.

 

[red_elk]

Wannabe Nazis are frequently found in the world today.

They are called Neo-Nazis sometimes.