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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44988 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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If you're looking for right-wing examples, replace 'Nazi' with 'socialist' or 'communist'.

While there certainly are right-wing groups and individuals that throw accusations of being a socialist or communist at people they disagree with, I wouldn't say the example is equivalent. The point of calling someone a nazi or a fascist is to draw ire from the public since the words are both nearly universally synonymous with "ideological bully". Calling someone a socialist isn't exactly a head turner for the majority of the public and calling someone a communist is mostly going to draw confused glances at the accuser. From my own observations I'd also say it's significantly more common for leftists to call opponents nazi/fascist in an attempt to discredit them than right-wingers calling their own opponents socialist/communist because it is simply not enough to discredit someone; though I do think it would be just as common if being a socialist were considered culturally taboo as being a nazi.

Perhaps another analogy would be the current craze among (American, somewhat picked up by European) right-wingers at calling their opponents pedophiles (which "groomer" is at least heavily supposed to imply).

Great point, as of late I've noticed a fairly substantial increase in "groomer" rhetoric on twitter, mostly surrounding transgender issues.

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