What is a Nazi?

[Valka D'Ur]

But many other countries had Nazis, sometimes in government, even if they were not in sole control of the government or were propped up by Germany.
Germany was the only country where a Nazi party gained control of the government largely by its own efforts but even there they were helped by the right-wing of traditional conservativism.

A few years ago there was a woman living in Banff, Alberta who made a YT video about being "lied" to. Her mother and the children had emigrated from Germany to Canada shortly after WWII when she was a child, and when she went to school here she heard all sorts of things about the Holocaust, that Hitler/Nazis were bad, Jews were good.

Fast-forward a few decades, and the rant in the video spewed such a disgusting amount of hate speech, it was literally sickening. Oh, no, there was no Holocaust, it never happened, and even if it did, the purpose wasn't to kill anyone, but to "educate" them and "give them jobs"... the same sort of rhetoric used by the residential school deniers to excuse the Catholic and Anglican churches' attempted cultural genocide of the indigenous children who were forced into those places.

This woman's video was reported multiple times (I'm one of the people who reported it as hate speech - by Canadian law, it absolutely was), but YT did nothing about removing it.

However, this woman traveled to Germany with her brother, and... discovered that her views were not welcome there. She and her brother were arrested. I don't recall what happened to him; she was eventually released and I don't know where she is now. Hopefully not in Banff. Living in Banff is a privilege granted to relatively few people, as it's in a national park, and I really don't think she deserves to be one of the people who can take advantage of it. If anyone deserved to be ridden out of town on a rail, she'd qualify, music teacher or not.

As I understand it, her disgusting video was finally removed.

utter lack of compassion?

You don't have to have an utter lack of compassion to be a Nazi. You just have to be a sociopath. Political party is optional, though I've noticed that there are more of this sort in the right-wing parties than otherwise.

We have a gang of such people running my province right now, who see nothing wrong with shoehorning their own religious beliefs and ideology into the new draft curriculum. The POS who oversaw the social studies portion is a residential school denier with some really hateful views.

 

[Lexicus]

I’m curious as to how you think this adds to the discussion.

Well, you tell me. I said it, and then it added to the discussion because some posters who feel a bizarre need to defend the Confederacy got triggered and had to weigh in.

correct me if I’m wrong on it

You're mostly wrong. Yes, the Confederates had slavery, but it's deeply historically ignorant to pretend Confederate/American slavery is just the same as Roman or other forms of premodern slavery. I'll avoid going in-depth into the anthropology of slavery now, but the tl;dr is that the Confederates had the benefit of many centuries of anti-slavery tradition in Christian thought that the Romans, Mongols, Mexica etc. could not draw on. The Confederates saw the light, and deliberately turned away from it, whereas the Romans never even saw it (I know I'm simplifying a great deal there because the antislavery tradition in Christianity actually emerged out of the Roman context in late antiquity but that's getting too in the weeds). In any case, even the Roman Twelve Tables identified slavery as "contrary to nature."

So, I do not consider all historical examples of slavery to be all the same, and there are other reasons I call the Confederates Nazis. Their slavery, as they themselves proudly declared in their treasonous declarations of secession, was about reifying the rule of the superior race over the inferior. And when the war began to go against them and they began to feel the pressure, they responded by taking steps toward racial eliminationism, which eventually were reversed when they realized the war was lost and they tried to arm the slaves to fight for them.

I'd also argue that the Roman society did have some important parallels with Nazism (I'm not knowledgeable enough about the other examples to comment usefully) but again that's sort of beyond the scope of this post.

 

[stinkubus]

Nazis have been generic movie, game, etc. enemies and a cultural meme in the US for so long I don't know how anyone can put any limitations on its use.

"The Soup Nazi" episode of Seinfeld was aptly titled, imo.

 

[Kyriakos]

Well, you tell me. I said it, and then it added to the discussion because some posters who feel a bizarre need to defend the Confederacy got triggered and had to weigh in.



You're mostly wrong. Yes, the Confederates had slavery, but it's deeply historically ignorant to pretend Confederate/American slavery is just the same as Roman or other forms of premodern slavery. I'll avoid going in-depth into the anthropology of slavery now, but the tl;dr is that the Confederates had the benefit of many centuries of anti-slavery tradition in Christian thought that the Romans, Mongols, Mexica etc. could not draw on. The Confederates saw the light, and deliberately turned away from it, whereas the Romans never even saw it (I know I'm simplifying a great deal there because the antislavery tradition in Christianity actually emerged out of the Roman context in late antiquity but that's getting too in the weeds). In any case, even the Roman Twelve Tables identified slavery as "contrary to nature."

So, I do not consider all historical examples of slavery to be all the same, and there are other reasons I call the Confederates Nazis. Their slavery, as they themselves proudly declared in their treasonous declarations of secession, was about reifying the rule of the superior race over the inferior. And when the war began to go against them and they began to feel the pressure, they responded by taking steps toward racial eliminationism, which eventually were reversed when they realized the war was lost and they tried to arm the slaves to fight for them.

I'd also argue that the Roman society did have some important parallels with Nazism (I'm not knowledgeable enough about the other examples to comment usefully) but again that's sort of beyond the scope of this post.

At least after the civil war ended and the nazi confederates were defeated and returned to a non-nazi state, the non-nazi manifest destiny could take off, later used as a slogan by the german nazi party.

Imagine if someone in a field like math would insist on things being always explainable by a specific and simple function. And yet in real life, which is more complicated than most math, so many do.

 

[Zardnaar]

Wasn't defending the CSA nor claiming they're not racist. Racism a d slavery alone don't mean Nazi that's all.

Nazi (internet use) any right winger who's not neo lib or conservative with small c.

Or
Any government law I don't like.

 

[uppi]

When it comes to 'Nazi' specifically, I think that self-identification helps. It's also how I help discern a Christian from someone who believes Christian mythology.

This.

Someone waving a swastika flag gets called a Nazi. Same for similar Nazi symbols and their dog whistle replacement.

Anybody else can claim that they are technically not Nazis, usually resulting in a very unproductive discussions.

We should still point out fascist ideology and similarities to Nazi ideology but often there are significant gaps to actual Nazi ideology so that you won't accomplish much by accusing someone to be a Nazi.

 

[Kyriakos]

That symbol, of course, existed for millennia before it was appropriated by a german political party. In India it seems to still be routinely used. It's essentially a right-angled four-side branching spiral, and was a common geometrical adornment in many ancient Greek pieces of art.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

That symbol, of course, existed for millennia before it was appropriated by a german political party. In India it seems to still be routinely used. It's essentially a right-angled four-side branching spiral, and was a common geometrical adornment in many ancient Greek pieces of art.

Yep. One of the things I learned in my heraldry course in the SCA is that once upon a time the swastika was just one of many dozens of crosses that could be used on heraldic devices. But due to WWII and the Nazis, it's forbidden in the SCA regardless of historical precedent.

 

[Zardnaar]

The swastika is context. If you're in Asia it means something else.

 

[Kyriakos]

The swastika is context. If you're in Asia it means something else.

Everyone is happy and Polyphemos is drunk.
Also visible is how the symbol goes on in meandering (literally) patterns.

 

[Zardnaar]

View attachment 613162

Everyone is happy and Polyphemos is drunk.

If yeah you're probably not gonna see stuff like that walking around modern Greece.

In Asia you'll see the swastika more. I didn't think anyone is gonna get to upset about that.

 

[Hygro]

CSA was Nazis. Some of the peculiarities of their culture was other kinds of authoritarian and violent that served them nicely as Nazis. I don't think there are too many cleaner comparisons to the Nazi ideal type, other than Nazis, than vanguard confederates.

 

[Zardnaar]

CSA was Nazis. Some of the peculiarities of their culture was other kinds of authoritarian and violent that served them nicely as Nazis. I don't think there are too many cleaner comparisons to the Nazi ideal type, other than Nazis, than vanguard confederates.

Fascism as a political philosophy didn't exist until 1919 or so.

Did CSA gave any coherent political philosophy? They had slaves but so did the Islamic world in 1861 and they're not fascist. For the most part by then they were preying on Africans.

See my point? Slave state even a racist one isn't fascist. They also lacked the duce/fuhrer principle.

American Nazis often exalt the CSA but that's because they tend to blend extreme right ideas or are racist.

 

[Hygro]

I see your point that a racist slave state doesn't make one a Nazi, but that point does not cover the CSA, which was a racist Nazi slave state.

 

[Zardnaar]

I see your point that a racist slave state doesn't make one a Nazi, but that point does not cover the CSA, which was a racist Nazi slave state.

How what makes them Nazi apart from the fact actual USA Nazis tend to fetish it? Jefferesen Davis was a joke and they had no real philosophy or anything else.

Nazis sterilized blacks when they could. Had the CSA survived they might have eventually ditched slavery.

Nazis bit hard to do that if they've murdered all the Jews. CSA was nominally democratic as well.

 

[Kyriakos]

Wasn't Hitler's aversion of the jewish people primarily due to his belief that they caused ww1? (and would bring about more wars in the future too etc). At the time there was a massive popular theory about jewish people in certain western countries, being in control of the banking sector and funding wars. Many newspapers in Germany and Austria promoted this (I recall F. Kafka reading some of those, after WW1).
Along with this theory about war funding, there was also the idea that jewish culture is simply incompatible with "aryan" culture (you can read this in Lovecraft's epistles too).

 

[Gorbles]

Wasn't Hitler's aversion of the jewish people primarily due to his belief that they caused ww1?

I mean, and? Even if it was just that, it's still racist, lol.

Maybe I missed a greater point, but I'm not seeing it.

 

[Kyriakos]

I mean, and? Even if it was just that, it's still racist, lol.

Maybe I missed a greater point, but I'm not seeing it.

It could be in the rest of the post? Like everything else, racism isn't something you arrive at from a singular venue.
There is a wealth of information on how the anti-jewish stance appeared and then progressed; it's not something one can diminish to a single point/one size fits all.

 

[amadeus]

The myth about WWI was that “the Jews” had engineered Germany’s defeat, that Germany had actually won (armistice was signed with German armies 40? miles into France)

I believe the German army did at one point conduct a census to “prove” that German Jewry had been disloyal, but had to suppress the report when they found out that Jews were overrepresented in the military, not skirting their duty.

 

[AmazonQueen]

The myth about WWI was that “the Jews” had engineered Germany’s defeat, that Germany had actually won (armistice was signed with German armies 40? miles into France)

I believe the German army did at one point conduct a census to “prove” that German Jewry had been disloyal, but had to suppress the report when they found out that Jews were overrepresented in the military, not skirting their duty.

Many are the reasons claimed by Hitler for his hatred of Jews.
eg his time spent in Vienna as an artist when he claimed to have seen the ways Jews exploited Gentiles.

None of them actually stand up to examination, they were just attempts to justify his irrational prejudice