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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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Big leak of the Young Republicans groupchat, spanning multiple high level members across the nation's "premier Republican youth organization" (as it calls itself), including staffers for GOP representatives, at least one Trump admin employee, at least one elected official, and other high ranking conservatives. "Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity.

The leaks showcase praise for Hitler, jokes about gas chambers, comments on Jewish dishonesty and other antisemitic messages. Also comments supporting slavery. Along with it is generic racism and bigotry such as widespread usage of slurs.

It also shows an interesting insight into what ordinary republican activists are thinking behind close doors.

The group chat members spoke freely about the pressure to cow to Trump to avoid being called a RINO, the love of Nazis within their party’s right wing and the president’s alleged work to suppress documents related to wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex crimes.

“Trumps too busy burning the Epstein files,” Alex Dwyer, the chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, wrote in one instance.

One interesting thing is their fear that tying a political opponent within the party to white supremacists and Nazis might hurt them in the general election, but make them more popular among the base.

“Can we get them to start releasing Nazi edits with her… Like pro Nazi and faciam [sic] propaganda,” he asked the group.

“Omg I love this plan,” Rachel Hope, the Arizona Young Republicans events chair, responded.

“The only problem is we will lose the Kansas delegation,” Mosiman said. Hope and the two Kansas Young Republicans in the chat reacted with a laughing face to the message. Hope did not respond to requests for comment. Mosiman declined to comment.

The response has been mixed.

Elected state senator Rob Ortt says

In a statement, Ortt called for members of the chat to resign.

“I was shocked and disgusted to learn about the racist, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic comments attributed to members of the New York State Young Republicans,” Ortt said. “This behavior is indefensible and has no place in our party or anywhere in public life.”

Adviser for Elise Stefanik says

Alex deGrasse, a senior adviser for Stefanik, said the congresswoman “was absolutely appalled to learn about the alleged comments made by leaders of the New York State Young Republicans and other state YRs in a large national group chat.”

And Roger Stone says

“I of course, have never seen this alleged chat room thread,” he said. “If it is authentic, I would, of course, denounce any such comments in the strongest possible terms, This would surprise me as it is inconsistent with Peter that I know, although I only know him in his capacity as the head of the New York Young Republicans, where I thought he did a good job.”

However, some Republicans in high places don't seem to view it as a major deal. Such as JD Vance, whose only comment is to call it "pearl clutching"

Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler. I also have to wonder how sincere it is to deflect away the topic and talk about "powerful people call for political violence." when it seems calls for violence happened in the chat given the many jokes about gassing and even bombing political opposition. Is it not possible to be against neonazism such as "I love Hitler" and talk about sending opposition to the gas chambers your opponents and Jay Jones's awful comments? Stefanik, Ortt and others seem to manage. Plenty of others also seem capable of this feat and have criticized both.

Richard Hanania, author of The Origins of Woke, suggests that these sorts of group chats are actually really common among the right wingers he interacted with. In fact his response to this seems to indicate agreement this chat is tame compared to many conversations he has seen.

Some beginner questions for discussion.

  1. is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?

  2. In that same vein which response is better, someone like Ortt and Stefanik or Vance? And should the Republican party be concerned about the rise of neonazis and support of slavery if question 1 is yes?

  3. Often what we see now is people "hiding their power level" with extremism, and it's often not revealed till they get to the point no one seems denouce them much. This is happening with Jay Jones now, and has happened before in cases like Mark Robinson "black Nazi". Even now Vance can't bring himself to denouce this. Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?

  4. A common complaint among the right is "they called us Nazis". But often, we see some right wingers calling themselves Nazis. The aforementioned "black Nazi" Mark Robinson, candidate for LT Gov John Reid in Virginia, etc. As Hanania himself pointed out, the only major national politicians to refer to Trump as Hitler was JD Vance (and RFK per community note, but that might not have counted under his usage of "national politician"). Even the leaked group chat expressed this belief about the Kansas delegation. Now I've been a strong believer in individual responsibilities and have fought for it consistently, so I do the same here and believe that the only people who should be called Nazis are the individuals who praise Hitler/want gas chambers/call themselves nazi/etc. But question 4 is, why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP, and why do they seem to believe they might have decent levels of support? How many others are "hiding their power level" too as suggested?

  • -17

If you don't have a chat the left would cancel you over, you don't have any friends.

Could it be then that the answer to all these "what do you mean by 'Nazi'?" questions is "Nazism is just the friends we made along the way"?

The real Nazi was inside us all along.

Well, according to much of the left, Nazis are notorious for being friendly with and accepting anyone into their group, whether they be black, brown, yellow, Jewish, atheist, etc.

What base rate of private group chat leaks should we expect and why? Which groups are most and least likely to have leaks?

I encourage you to think about this the same way you told others to react to the people praising the murder of Charlie Kirk.

it's not a big deal. These people don't matter. Indeed, perhaps the people who worry you so are not even real. They are a figment of your imagination. Or maybe some curtailed rage bait. Who's in favor of this besides some random oppositional bubble you're in? Wouldn't you rather talk about something the other team did? Do you have statistics to prove who's more anti-Semitic? Have you weighed what's coming out of the other side on that front lately?

I imagine you would find it extremely frustrating to have people react in this way. So, can I ask: what makes this different? Why should I care what the crazy college kids are saying all of a sudden? I am asking you genuinely.

This may come off as a deflection, but the way I see it, this is a lot like those things, except these people were punished quite swiftly. So, why do we care, exactly? Everyone involved has been made an example of. What are you worried about?

Assblaster420 shitposting with the boys in a private chat is materially different from "these people" even the ones in power celebrating it openly on twitter.

I encourage you to think about this the same way you told others to react to the people praising the murder of Charlie Kirk.

I do, at the end of the day the individual actors are responsible for themselves. The average non Nazi conservative is not a Nazi because some other conservatives who are not them are Nazis. Many conservatives have actively condemned the growing nazi problem even, I linked some in the post!

Nothing here is contradicted in.

X person/type of person exists

Y other person is not responsible for X person.

Wouldn't you rather talk about something the other team did? Do you have statistics to prove who's more anti-Semitic?

I don't know if there's any good statistics that could show "who is more anti-semitic" but polls of Jewish people seem to be that they're about equal and I ask chatgpt for "Survey on anti semitic beliefs among left and right wing youth" and it tells me

In the U.S., a YouGov survey (fall 2020) of ~2,500 young adults (18-30) found that those who identified as very conservative were far more likely to believe long-standing antisemitic stereotypes (e.g. “Jews have too much power,” “Jewish businesses should be boycotted in protest of Israel’s actions,” or “American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the U.S.”) than very liberal youth.

And

Moderates (on either side) tend to have lower levels of agreement with overt antisemitic stereotypes compared to those who identify as far right or far left. The extremes show more of these beliefs.

So it seems about equal, maybe right slanted but overall "horseshoe theory" if anything.

Have you weighed what's coming out of the other side on that front lately?

Yep! I tend to save that for more left leaning communities. Conversations are more interesting to me talking about different perspectives and takes, rather than circle jerking around. All the things I agree with the typical Motte user on I don't bother to post too much of here, because I find it very lame. I don't need nor want people to pat me on the back and say I'm such a good boy for also opposing the rise in left wing antisemitism and violence. I see it as a waste, a conversation with little merit but stroking our egos.

  • -12

I do, at the end of the day the individual actors are responsible for themselves. The average non Nazi conservative is not a Nazi because some other conservatives who are not them are Nazis. Many conservatives have actively condemned the growing nazi problem even, I linked some in the post!

Have any of these people even been credibly accused of being Nazis as opposed to making jokes that offend people who are always on the lookout for Nazis? Its not a joke for me to assert that I have been hearing warning about the "growing influence of Nazism on the right" since I was in 4th grade, and likely the only reason I dont remember hearing about it before then is because I was not listening. To quote the personality who helped found this forum in his better days, "You are still crying wolf"

This also isn't, by contrast, people openly calling for Nazism, nor is it high level politicians calling for political violence, or materially supporting it. It is basically an assortment of group chats by low level people. So we are trying to match like for like, when in reality we are matching pawns with queens.

Look just because Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens denies the Holocaust, or Tucker Carlson "keeps asking questions" about if it was really that bad or because Myron Gaines says he really likes Hitler and denounces the "woke Jews", it doesn't mean all conservatives are to be blamed and should be denounced as Nazis.

Tons of established right wing names like EWErickson, Seth Dillon, Ben Shapiro, Hanania, Dinesh D'Souza, etc have called out the growing nazi problem in various ways. They don't deserve blame for a thing they didn't do and for things they don't believe just because others tangently related do.

Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.

Yea but this isn’t really being done except for the lols. We remember those right?

Every chat group with dudes eventually turns into your favorite -ism.

Just dudes being dudes.

The problem with the internet is it went from being handled by libertarians to, yes, pearl clutching progressives that have more in common with 90’s Christian conservatives rather than any sane person today.

They don’t really care about Hitler - they say Hitler is great because it’s provocative. Same reason Elvis gyrated.

The former marketing director of the American Jewish Congress leaked a bunch of private text messages to hurt a number of gentile Republicans, painting them as neonazis. What are these supposed “neonazis” doing? Are they using an extensive advocacy network to defend the starvation of children and the expansion of lebensraum for a chosen people? Well, no, that’s the folks over at the American Jewish Congress just this year.

It just seems like a joke. We are excommunicating people for juvenile humor, while ignoring the sophisticated agents who carry water for genuine Hitler-lite activity. How about we expel everyone associated with any organization that just this year excused or defended the conscious starvation of children, whether that be a religious organization or a secular organization? How about we no longer trust anyone with superseding ethnotribal allegiance in positions of American power? Isn’t that a better place to start?

It's my impression that the internecine struggle between the pro-Jewish and anti-Jewish right has heated up significantly in the aftermath of the Kirk shooting. Normie Republican wonks versus Groypers. The normie "Israel is our greatest ally, legal immigration is heckin' wholesome, never say slurs" Republicans obviously hold vastly superior institutional power, but long-term they're basically dead. As far as I can tell every right-wing male under forty on social media considers them complete dickless old losers.

It seems that a great deal of discourse is broken down because the definition of Nazi is no longer universal. It probably would behoove to figure out what everyone is talking about because I think I’m seeing;

Nazi means you want to register with a German party that no longer exists.

Nazi means you support the ideology of the party that no longer exists but not the actions.

Nazi means you support the actions of the party that no linger exists but not the ideology.

Nazi means you support elements of the ideology of the party but not the party or the actions or the whole ideology.

Nazi means you are not actively part of a party that continues to exist in Germany.

Nazi means you are actively part of a party that doesn’t exist in Germany.

all competing and all claiming they are talking about the same thing when I think it’s not the case. It doesn’t matter what I think a Nazi is if my debate opponent doesn’t share that definition with me but thinks she does because then conversation gets quickly confusing. It DOES matter what I think a Nazi is if my debate opponent doesn’t share that definition with me, both of us acknowledge it and then she wants to debate about that.

It seems that a great deal of discourse is broken down because the definition of Nazi is no longer universal. It probably would behoove to figure out what everyone is talking about because I think I’m seeing;

To some degree this is true and has happened with pretty much all words because people are assholes and will abuse them as they wish. Like how "communist" refers to both places like China and the idea of having universal healthcare like the UK, or how Karen means "woman at the store raising a fuss" and "female employee who told me they don't accept returns without receipt". Generic terms with negative associations are used as attack dogs in place of just saying your grievance.

It's similar to this article on estranged parents and the missing missing reasons or the usage of terms like "he thinks money grows on trees". Saying the actual thing that's in dispute risks disagreement, while everyone can nod their head to "of course money doesn't grow on trees"

But I do think you can still tell when it's real, especially when people volunteer it themselves. You can tell the pro-Stalin real commie crowd apart from the "I'm such a socialist, I wish we were like Norway" crowd by exactly what I just said right there in this sentence. They volunteer the info, one says Stalin and the other mentions the Scandinavian nations. In the same way you could tell between the Nazi "Hitler is awesome" and a hypothetical "Man I'm such a Nazi, I wish we were more like [insert normal right wing leaning country here] because I'm stupid and thinks that's what Nazism means now" by the fact that one is saying they love Hitler, think the Holocaust is fake, and that the Jews are scummy and dishonest and the other is giving a normal country.

Of course people "hide their power level" sometimes, but it's a much tougher balance then between trying to spot it vs being overly paranoid.

Are the actual transcripts available somewhere, or do we only have Politico's excerpts and commentary?

From the accusations and counter-accusations flying around, it seems to be real but also seems to be an internal power struggle, where A leaked to Politico in order to get B (and possibly C and D and E) in trouble, trigger a purge, then A gets the good-boy pat on the head and slides another rung or two up the greasy pole in the party structure.

Gotta love internal back-stabbing for the sake of advancing a mediocre career 🙄

Is it not possible to be against neonazism such as "I love Hitler" and talk about sending opposition to the gas chambers your opponents and Jay Jones's awful comments?

The "I love Hitler" quote was clearly a joke: https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1978373590060875870

I mean it is pearl clutching if the support for Hitler is a very small portion of the Young Republicans. You can find crazy people in any population of people. There are blacks who believe the Natiin of Islam’s Yacuub theory. There are outright communists on the left. There are Christian nationalists who want to make other religions illegal. I find the isolated demands for decorum to be a bit silly simply because it’s always the right who has to justify and denounce its crazy people while the left gets a complete pass. Yes, Nazis are a problem, yes we should denounce them, but im still waiting for democrats to be forced to answer for: communists, woke crazies, “the resistance” (who insist that the current administration is “the regime” to be opposed at all costs), and anti-religious zealots. It doesn’t happen. It’s just the right told to denounce crazies. Kamala was never asked about groups like “Refuse Fascism” that posit that MAGA is fascism. They are never asked to tone down the rhetoric or denounce crazies as the price of being seen as respectable. Why should the GOP be asked to pre-smear itself with craziness (by calling attention to it) when it’s so one sided? It’s the “have you stopped beating your wife” thing on a political scale. To answer is to smear yourself.

There are outright communists on the left.

Who spend most of their time denouncing each other.

I would find even hipster irony declarations of support for Hitler to be a step too far, but then I'm old. I'm out of touch. I'm two generations behind the bright young things of today and the tearing down of conventions because they stifle our individual liberties and oppress wimmen'n'minorities.

Good taste has long ago been dumped out with everything else in the bathwater, and relabelled tone policing, which is a sin because it means you are trying to restrict the expression of lived experience of wimmen'n'minorities.

These are the very same people who ripped down that fence, they don't get to be appalled when the bull runs out of the field straight at them.

I’m not in favor of even hipsters ironically Nazi-posting, in case I wasn’t clear. My issue is that the conservative movement is expected to denounce their lizard-coefficient portion of the movement, while it doesn’t happen for other groups. The Left can be pretty antisemitic in its own right. There are “pro-Palestine” people who will repeat every trope that the old-school Nazis did (own the media and Hollywood, lie constantly, cry out in pain as the strike you, etc.) but nobody on the mainstream left is asked about it. And even getting away from that, the level of hate for even regular Christians and conservatives is pretty far beyond any good taste or social norms. A guy on the Democratic side got caught texting that he wanted to kill the wife and son of his political opponent. Not only are mainstream democrats not asked to denounce it, the man still has the support of the party. It’s a one sided thing. Both sides have rare extremist elements; all groups do. But it’s very obvious that there’s a KTO KEGO dynamic here where democrats can ignore or even support their fringe movements without being blamed for them. No one sticks a microphone In Kamala’s face asking her about antisemitism on the left, communism.

The dispute is:

Person on left: "if you hold view A/believe thing B/do not agree with me on position C, you are a Nazi!"

The idea is "this is so terrible an accusation, any person wanting to be thought of as good or on the right, decent side will be so appalled, they will immediately change their views and drop the Nazi opinions".

The outcome, though, is "because everything and everyone has been called a Nazi, the sting of the accusation has faded". Hence the actual result is:

Person on right: "That makes me a Nazi? Guess I'm a Nazi, then!"

Outcome: person on left faints all over the place about "OMG, the righties really are Nazis! This person just came right out and admitted they were a Nazi!"

But the person on the right is thinking "I have good and sufficient reasons, in my opinion, to hold the views I do. Therefore, I am not going to shift my beliefs merely on the grounds of being called a bad name. I don't care if you think I'm a Nazi, I know I'm not a Nazi, so go right ahead and call me one; I don't care, it does not affect me, you might as well call me a lizard person from the planet Zogabong".

The specific case here appears to be closer to:

Person on left: "if you hold view A/believe thing B/do not agree with me on position C, you are a Nazi!"

Person on right: "That makes me a Nazi? Guess I'm a Nazi, then!"

Person on right: puts a swastika flag on the wall and gets caught talking to his pals in political private chats on how the Austrian painter was right about everything, with little to no indication of irony

Other people on left, including those who might have disagreed with Person on the Left at first: "...well I guess you really are, then."

Thanks for making my point for me. Don't hurt your backside as you plop down on the fainting couch.

I reflected a bit on this. Generally among conservatives and here on The Motte there are two types of responses, both I dislike.

  1. “The left started this with Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones so this is fine.” All I can say is that this way lies ruin. Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals? Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War? If we are hoping for mutual disarmament, how does that happen? Why can’t this be that? Doesn’t someone have to move first?

  2. “This is different from Charlie Kirk/Jay Jones, that was not okay but this is because reasons.” Here my reaction is to say that you never step in the same river twice. Even though I share the intuition that this is a nothingburger while Kirk was a big deal I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.” I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough

I am team: "This is different, and is still kinda bad."

My opinion is all these folks should exit public service, if they are in it, for 5 years or so, to mature. There are plenty of jobs at advertising agencies for Coca Cola, and THOSE companies should vigorously recruit these fellows because that is what they would do in a free market based on their comedic stylings and ability to understand the dark comedy of the modern youth.

Then in 5 years these bad jokes should be forgiven and they can do whatever.

This is, of course, a very high standard in comparison to the left, but it is what I prefer. Unfortunately, it also requires leftish cooperation because most ad places are run by the exact sort of people fake-outraged by this. So they kinda have to give up something to be reasonable.

it also requires leftish cooperation

Right, approximately no one left public service over open and unironic anti-whiteness, and Kittycat almost certainly didn't care one jot about any of that.

It's an asymmetric game.

My opinion is all these folks should exit public service, if they are in it, for 5 years or so, to mature.

In a perfect world, where this is a society-wide norm, maybe.

I'm not conservative so maybe you aren't counting me among the responses you read, but I wouldn't fit in either of those categories.

I think people are allowed to be ugly imperfect beings within private spaces, because we already have a great deal of "public" spaces and the judgement within those public spaces is already very harsh.

Politicians and political actors need to be good about distinguishing between private and public spaces.

The Charlie Kirk situation seems totally different then this one or the Jay Jones one. The outrage there is about leftists making public comments of glee or happiness at the man's death. These aren't leaked conversations, its people posting it widely on social media, or saying it on a TV show.

The Jay Jones situation is comparable. And I think the democratic machine mostly did the correct thing and the republicans should have done it too: just entirely ignore this and pretend it didn't happen.

Which is a norm I'd kindly suggest everyone adopt: ignore all leaked private conversations. At a minimum, know that the leaker or publisher of the leaks is an asshole. The reason I'd suggest this norm is that society with zero privacy in communications is awful for everyone. And incentivizing leaks is going down the road of zero private communications.

The difference between this and the Jay Jones situation is that the Jones conversation was seemingly more serious in tone. It wasn't otherwise soaked in irony and hyperbole, but rather a one-on-one conversation with someone who felt uncomfortable with what Jones was saying and even pushed for clarification. Maybe Jones felt like it was just private joking between friends, but it was less obviously that. It came across as relatively more sincere venting. I did not take it as a statement of intent by Jones, and it was certainly not a realistic threat. Mostly it just reflects the rising hostility between the political tribes. It's certainly more concerning for a prospective AG to be saying those kind of things, though not unexpected in my opinion. Both sides think terrible and horrific things in private, because in private you frequently give voice to thoughts and feelings that you don't even agree with yourself. However, it's important that you can have those thoughts, otherwise you'll be blindsided by people who have those thoughts and actually intend to act on them.

I don't think it's an inconsistent opinion to believe that:

  1. These are obviously jokes and that this is substantially different than actually wishing death on political enemies and doubling down on it in public.

  2. I want serious people to be staffers and serious people don't put jokes like this in writing these days.

Have you never jokingly pretended to eat your toddler? I have of course. But if I wrote out the joke it's different. We've begun to treat writing like it's conversation, when of course it's not.

This is friends engaging in taboo banter. Saying taboo things is part of the friendship bonding process, because it's a demonstration of trust.

Yes, in person.

People don't talk in person anymore.

Discord chat is conversation. It's not like these were published essays, or even top level The Motte posts.

It's Computer-Mediated-Communication, which lacks several important features of in-person communication, like tone, body language, and synchronous feedback. Most importantly it is easy to reproduce/leak by malicious actors.

Eh, Young Republican chat thread isn't on the same level as pissing on the altar. I'll save my outrage stocks for worse things.

Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?

Cooperate-bot is a good way to lose forever.

Are we expecting some kind of come-to-Jesus mutual disarmament moment or just escalation until Civil War?

There needs to be a sufficiently-influential and popular figure that can actually, credibly lead the first move. Unfortunately, no one like that exists on either side, and neither side believes they need to be the one to produce that figure. There's no longer a messianic organizer, an MLK or Billy Graham, that can credibly speak to and for enough people.

I have to recognize it is always possible to conjure self-serving reasons why “this time it’s different.”

I started reading Nussbaum's From Disgust to Humanity yesterday, and was immediately struck by how self-serving and blinkered liberal usage of the disgust concept is. Indeed, it is always possible, and this circles back to the lack of the messianic figure.

I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough

Is public versus private similar enough for these purposes? Or is this, as an anti-parallel to recognize one can always conjure self-serving reasons as to why it's different, a desire to conjure a self-serving reason why it's not? Jay Jones is much more similar than the Kirk commentary, and I think lumping them together weakens your broader point for that reason.

We don't have to go fully braindead and think that Lawrence v Texas means public indecency laws are moot.

What is the escalation on the part of the Red Tribe in this case?

Where does endless escalation lead and tit for tat reprisals?

It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.

I think peace requires you to put aside the different river instinct and recognize it is similar enough

It really isn't, and we aren't going to have peace anyway. If one side gets to do all sorts of shit and get away with it, and then not only excuse all of it but have the other side punished for doing something which vaguely rhymes, we've still got nothing but who/whom for a standard.

It's amazing how this point is brought up when someone defected thinking the other side could do nothing, and then realized they were wrong.

I think all us righties, of whatever degree of farness to the right, on here smile wryly when the outrage emanates from the other side. It's like something Scott posted a while back about honour versus dignity cultures. The clash between the two, when someone dares the other person "what are you gonna do about it? gonna hit me, you coward?" and then acts shocked and surprised when they get a punch in the face. That's not supposed to happen! You're not supposed to resort to violence! You're supposed to back down when the tough talking goes on! But someone from the honour culture comes from a system where if you talk tough, you better be ready and able to back it up. Dare someone to punch you in the face, nobody will think you were mistreated when you get punched in the face.

The lefties engaged in a lot of "yeah, what are you gonna do about it?" talk and behaviour. Now they're shocked and appalled when the other side don't play by their rules of their game and just back down and take it.

A missed element of this discussion is that some people are lambasting these young men for just using the lingo they grew up with. Why are our progressive friends so full of hostility for other cultures? Do they just hate black people? Is there anything in those chats that isn't weak and mild compared to an all time hip-hop banger? (Appologies in advance for scaring the hoes and Will Stancil).

I'd be okay with that argument, if you accept that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Surely "bash the fash"/violent communist revolution LARP is equally "the lingo they grew up with" for the Twitter crowd that was dancing on Kirk's e-grave.

Are they doing it in private?

And that rhetoric has, in fact, recieved an enormous amount of lattitude, to the point where it's users can't even recognize a moment (say, immediately after a political assassination driven by said rhetoric) to settle down and have an ounce of respect.

Though I guess I can understand why leftwingers would assume this was water-testing for literal violence - it's what they do, after all.

Progressives seem to have zero idea what blacks believe and actually talk like. Watching modern tv post 2015 and blacks are basically all Eloquent Respectable Middle Class White People But With Racial Grievances, like they're all Ta-Nahisi Coates or whoever the black sidekick was for the Iron Man series. At least in 2010 people knew what threats were, I was warned against bringing my 'hoodrat' hard-R speaking black friends to this 'diversity' party being held in brooklyn, which while ironic at least seemed to betray an understanding of empirical reality.

It's especially hilarious because they do show trashy, low class, black-coded people and every one of them is a wigger and it's still as cringy and lame as a white principal trying to "rap with these kids" in 1990 because not a single person involved in the production has ever had a five minute conversation with a black person who did not have a college degree.

These people will cite The Wire as one of their favourite showa but only remember Ziggy as the irritating gangster.

I don’t want to be the edgy guy here. But hear me out. None of these people are or support neo nazis. But they likely think the actual nazis had some good ideas. Especially since the nazis were dealing with a lot of similar problems like Leftist degeneracy. And were quite successful!

The Nazis weren't wrong about everything, but the things they were right about were not uniquely or especially Nazi. That said, an alarmingly large number of people seem to have confused being an inverted Nazi* with being a good person, because Hitler is the secular devil.

*May not correspond to actual historical Nazis.

The Nazis were relatively gay and not particularly trad. Limited moves to deal with the red light districts in a few major German cities were halfhearted at best. Single women were in some cases even encouraged to become single mothers, women weren’t removed from the workplace, there were forms of proto-feminism that certainly clashed with traditional Christian views of a woman’s place, even as fertility was lauded (but in a technocratic kind of way, not necessarily a trad one). Economically although heavily supported by small petit bourgeois business owners, the nsdap increased the presence of the major German corporations in the economy and was broadly supportive of the major capital markets through 1939. Exhibits on entartete kunst existed in an uneasy relationship with plenty of relatively modernist sculpture, art and especially architecture that, a few short decades earlier, would definitely have been considered degenerate and abstract by critics.

Being anti-gay was an area where the Nazis went above and beyond tradition. Sure, there were a few Nazis who were able to get away with gay sex, allegedly, but the median man accused of sodomy would have very much preferred to be in the Kaiserreich.

The Nazis were not big on Christianity or traditional families. Basically, the Fuehrer needed cannon-fodder. Turning kids into Nazis was not the job of the family, but of their youth organizations. As long as both partners met the Nazi definition of racial purity, the Nazis had no problem with supporting single mothers.

Their economic politics are likewise downstream of their ideology. Like every aspect of the nation, the economy had to be under the control of the Fuehrer. That is hard to accomplish if your economy is based on small businesses, so favoring big companies made sense. Typically, non-Jewish industrialists were not considered enemies, a lot of them had supported the NSDAP financially and did thrive under them. But ultimately, the Nazis called the shots, telling Hitler that your factory would not produce tanks because you believed that cars would be a more profitable product would not have gone well.

I don't know a lot about Nazi art, but I think generally their culture was a melange of different trends which were in the water supply at the time, together with a largely faked appreciation of the pre-Christian history of the German peoples.

So I guess I mostly agree with you, the TL;DR version is that the Nazis were a revolutionary and not a conservative movement, even if they kept lots of the social structure in place and embraced their version of RETVRN. I think the Fascists and Francoists were more pro-Christian and pro traditional family values.

Francoism wound up as a de facto theocracy, so it can accurately be pointed to as a genuine example of pro-Christian societal upheaval(and would've gotten away with it to, if it wasn't for Vatican II).

Being anti-gay was an area where the Nazis went above and beyond tradition. Sure, there were a few Nazis who were able to get away with gay sex, allegedly, but the median man accused of sodomy would have very much preferred to be in the Kaiserreich.

So would the median man accused of anything else. 'The Nazis were far more brutal than average' is a statement that's just true, it isn't specific to homosexuality.

Politico: ‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

This is apparently the context of the headline "I love Hitler" comment:

AD: Yea I had some back and forth with the VC in Michigan, current chair is a deer in headlights

AD: We have a call Wednesday

PG: Many agree

AD: He did say "My delegates I bring will vote for the most right wing person"

PG: Great. I love Hitler

This is obvious sarcasm mocking the idea of automatically voting for whoever is most right-wing.

Skimming the article seems to indicate this dishonesty is a systematic issue. For instance it specifically claims "the watermelon people" was referring to black people without providing context, when it very likely refers to Gaza supporters in reference to their use of the watermelon emoji as a symbol. If you search "watermelon people" on Twitter every usage I can find before this article is about Gaza, it seems to be an established term.

"Watermelon" means using the environment (green) to mask advocacy for communism (red). It's been a term since at least 1980. The newspaper pretending not to know this and hieing to the fainting couch is classing pearl-clutching.

While this is true, amongst the young it’s mostly used to describe pro-Hamas types on social media who use the watermelon emoji because it has the same colors as the flag of Palestine (🇵🇸 🍉)

When I think of a watermelon in a political sense I think of what you’re describing, a commie using (often fake) concern for the environment but only when it pits them against their favored enemies.

I've literally never heard of this interpretation as a fairly lively culture war reader. Either Palestinian watermelon emojis or 'black people like watermelon' feel overwhelmingly more likely

Green on the outside but red within — pretty common

It's somewhat older but had a resurgence when AOC was doing her Green New Deal schtick, which was called green but was mostly about wealth redistribution and spoils for the preferred groups.

Used to be common, maybe these days a bit less so as ‘Reds’ stopped being a thing 95% of people could agree are bad.

I had heard of it before, but using "watermelon" in reference to pro-Palestine types seems overwhelmingly more likely.

Ironically, the usage of watermelon by the pro Palestinian crowd is fitting because they seem to be influenced into sympathy for them through a misguided perception of the Muslims being the "brown", non-white party in the conflict, despite them being more of less ethnically identical to most Jews.

Richard Hanania, author of The Origins of Woke, suggests that these sorts of group chats are actually really common among the right wingers he interacted with. In fact his response to this seems to indicate agreement this chat is tame compared to many conversations he has seen.

It is. In a darknet chat, I once saw someone say AI is a bubble. That's where gen-Z politics really is, though nobody dare admit it.

Every post of yours in this thread shows a steadfast and truly exceptional dedication to pretending to be retarded and I am genuinely impressed from a rhetorical standpoint. I know you are smart enough to understand the concept of a joke and the concept of irony, which makes your constant and wilful refusal to ever engage with what these people said in context impressive imo. I think it sucks from every other standpoint though.

I think nobody suggested that the they should be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder wrt the gas chamber chat. Everyone understands that they were not seriously suggesting that.

However, the attitude of a group about what is or is not appropriate to joke about is often indicative of deeper beliefs. And there is such a thing as "haha only serious" (think Eliezer announcing MIRI's 'Dying with dignity' strategy on a first of April). Joking gives you plausible deniability to hint at deeper beliefs which are outside the groups overton window to state outright. If A is into B, A might joke about A being into B. It puts the possibility into the open without creating common knowledge.

If you do not want to expand the overton window in a certain direction, you typically would not make jokes in that direction. For example, if a guy tends to joke about having taken 20 cocks in the ass during the weekend, that will do little to cement his reputation as straight.

Take rape jokes, which are deeply outside the overton window today. The reason is not that they directly lead to rape, but that they serve as a completely deniable signal for the opinion "rape is acceptable". Not everyone who tells rape jokes is into rape culture, obviously, some people just like dark humor, but they can certainly be used to transport the message "rape is not a big deal".

So X making jokes about gas chambers does not mean that X is a Nazi who has read Mein Kampf five times. But it indicates that X regards updating his group's beliefs towards him being a Nazi at least neutrally.

Personally, I would like to see people indicating that they have noticed the skulls of those who came before them, and strive to learn from their mistakes.

If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot, this would make me very much disinclined to trust them with any power, as they have clearly not learned from the past. If a right-wing group chat thinks that gas chamber jokes are fun and edgy, that does not necessarily mean they will build Auschwitz 2.0 at the earliest opportunity, but still it is sufficient for me not wanting them to have any power either.

  • -13

If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot, this would make me very much disinclined to trust them with any power, as they have clearly not learned from the past.

I would instead be more inclined to trust them. Considering the typical handling with denial and apologia, leftoid humor at the expense of the genocidal tendencies of communist regimes would indicate that these atrocities at least occupy some mind share rather than ignorance and sweeping under the rug.

Not everyone who tells rape jokes is into rape culture, obviously, some people just like dark humor, but they can certainly be used to transport the message "rape is not a big deal".

While I think those jokes are tasteless and crude, I am now reminded back when me and my peers were twelve to fourteen year old girls telling dead baby jokes. Good grief, où sont les neiges d'antan! Did dead baby jokes back in 1978 lead to the liberalisation of abortion in the Ireland of 2018? After all, they must have been used to transport the message "dead babies are not a big deal".

If you do not want to expand the overton window in a certain direction, you typically would not make jokes in that direction.

So X making jokes about gas chambers does not mean that X is a Nazi who has read Mein Kampf five times. But it indicates that X regards updating his group's beliefs towards him being a Nazi at least neutrally.

At the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner president Barack Obama made the following remark:

"Eight years ago, I was a young man, full of idealism and vigor, and look at me now. I am gray and grizzled, just counting down the days 'til my death panel."

Do you think Obama was trying to expand the overton window to make more acceptable the idea that a panel of doctors would decide on the euthanization of non-productive or otherwise undesirable individuals? Do you think Obama's remark indicates that he and his group regard the idea of these "death panels" at least neutrally?

Or do you think that Obama was actually mocking his opponents and critics? That he considered the criticism so ridiculous in itself, that he did not even bother constructing a joke based on it, he just repeated the criticism verbatim while being fully confident that laughter would ensue?

Now, if it is the case that Obama was reminding everyone how ridiculous his opponents were just by repeating their words, then it could be the case that the people being ridiculed were fully aware that this is what was happening, and that there is no good way to defend against this kind of ridicule. And in this case someone who is being ridiculed could resort to lying, saying maybe something like "they told us they are not setting up these death panels, but here is Obama himself casually talking about them in an approving way!", and hoping that at least some people will believe the lie.

That whole line of argument is illegitimate, and like, so 2020. I’m not sacrificing a single joke for your ideological witchhunts. Hilarity aside, such jokes protect and normalize rape and nazi apologia? Good! I want all opinions protected, and every citizen participating in the political process.

I don’t want to blame the entire state of the world on your line of argument, but it did single-handedly make it more polarized and censorious, and what is even less forgiveable, mirthless.

If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot, this would make me very much disinclined to trust them with any power, as they have clearly not learned from the past.

Jokes on you, nobody else cares! I mean, I agree that they absolutely shouldn't be trusted with so much as town dogcatcher. But that hasn't stopped anyone to the left of Mitt Romney in my lifetime. Praising communist psychopaths gets you elite university professions and has no negative consequences.

For example, if a guy tends to joke about having taken 20 cocks in the ass during the weekend, that will do little to cement his reputation as straight.

Hey, have a little respect for the MSM crowd that don't like the gaudy flags.

Often indicative of deeper beliefs

It can be that, but it can also be the complete opposite. For example, I trust myself to not engage in immoral behaviour, therefore I do not walk on egg-shells around moral subjects (this scares the shit out of some people, though)

Homosexuals might find it easier to joke about how gay they are, but as will straight people who have overcome any fear of being thought of as gay, because they know for sure that they're not. As with the Horse Shoe Theory, the correlation is curved.

A lot of people with dark humor have been victims of the things that they joke about, by the way. I find it quite distasteful when people who haven't experienced such things accuse them of being insensitive, which is often what happens. Too much morality is performative, and I find this whole situation to be another instance of people point fingers at others in order to feel morally superior and score virtue signaling points, or at the very least it's a reaction prompted by fear (rather than goodwill, taste, actual concern, etc)

You could argue that some jokes are bad taste, but I think this depends on a lot of factors, and that most of them are hard to judge from an outside perspective. Once you know a person well, you will be able to tell their real attitude towards things that they joke about, and the mindset which prompted the joke.

Edit: Extra thing of note: If somebody is a bad person, it's better for everyone if they show it than to hide it. For this reason, I see no point in punishing speech even if it's vile.

A lot of people with dark humor have been victims of the things that they joke about, by the way. I find it quite distasteful when people who haven't experienced such things accuse them of being insensitive, which is often what happens. Too much morality is performative, and I find this whole situation to be another instance of people point fingers at others in order to feel morally superior and score virtue signaling points, or at the very least it's a reaction prompted by fear (rather than goodwill, taste, actual concern, etc)

Agreed. There is this joke about a holocaust survivor dying, going to heaven and telling God a holocaust joke. God tells him that this is Not Funny. He replies, "well, I guess you just had to be there."

I think cjet has the right of it below. The stupid thing these people did was not follow the golden rule of the internet - don't say anything you don't want held against you.

Also question: Is Wayne Hope a nazi? What about Francis Greenslade? Or what about Shaun Micallef, it's his show. Did that clip in anyway make you think any of them might be a nazi? Or did the context tell you they weren't serious, even though Wayne explicitly states that Nazis really are a superior race?

Now that we've established that this is not about celebration of evils like the Holocaust, we can talk about what is really going on here.

There is nothing wrong with pushing the overton window. You make the implication that Holocaust jokes are made so that one day we can genocide Jews again, but that's silly. With logic like that, I should have voted against gay marriage so that they wouldn't try to trans the kids next!

Yes, telling jokes are a way to wage the culture war. Since it is quite literally who/whom the entire topic is rather boring to talk about.

With logic like that, I should have voted against gay marriage so that they wouldn't try to trans the kids next!

Err, aren't you making his point for him?

I would say the quoted text is a bad reason to be against gay marriage. You can just let gays get married and then not trans the kids. He is saying it's bad to allow [fine thing] because its in the same direction as [worse thing]. What am I missing?

Once they got gay marriage, they DID try to trans the kids next.

Of course but with logic like that, you also shouldn't abolish race slavery because next they'll give them the right to vote and then after that they'll be given Noble privileges without responsibilities and then...

I think nobody suggested that the they should be investigated for conspiracy to commit murder wrt the gas chamber chat. Everyone understands that they were not seriously suggesting that.

Governor Gavin Newsom today formally requested that the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform open an investigation into the shocking and deeply offensive text messages sent by leaders of Republican National Committee (RNC) linked organizations across the country.

Calling for gas chambers. Expressing love for Hitler. Endorsing rape. Using racist slurs. This is not a ‘joke.’

Totally fair politics, for what it's worth, but Newsom is at least pretending to think they were being earnest.

If a leftwing group chat made jokes about the Holodomor, Mao or Pol Pot.

They don’t need to. They can just say that to the entire class of students they teach with a straight face.

Maybe we could start a left-wing group chat called "The Young Turks", named in honor of the group behind the Armenian genocide. Nah, that'd be too obviously bait.

/s

Your position can only be taken as substantive if one believes that there is some degree of separation between X and Y. No one can demonstrate this because no such separation exists. It's just young people. The only real difference is how the Overton Window is positioned.

Not really much to say but "lighten up, Francis". People do use jokes for that. They also use jokes for other things. For instance, if the members of a group knows that people who don't like them much think certain jokes are beyond the pale, they might use them as a shibboleth. Or if they know what their opponents think of them, they might jokingly adopt that persona as a way of jeering in their general direction.

As Stalin once said, dark humor is like food; not everyone gets it. Doesn't mean everyone who uses it is Stalin (or Hitler)

So we can safely assume that anyone who's ever been in the vicinity of an "eat the rich" joke in private is just itching for some cannibalistic Stalinism?

Will you be calling for AOC to be censured and removed from congress?

Considering the events which transpired, vanilla Stalinism appears to have been cannibalistic enough.

Thank you, I broke out in laughter for about 2 minutes.

  1. The question is wrong -- I don't think these texts indicate any of those things. For example: "support of slavery." What is going on here is the left treats race and slavery as sacred topics, which means no joking. Rejecting this taboo does not mean someone supports slavery. It could just mean they think HR ladies are cringe. Also it could mean they are a young boy.
  2. Personally, I like Vance's response. I think these texts are a nothingburger. I would prefer if all our powerful politicians made racist jokes behind closed doors, which indicates loyalty to my tribe (Reminder to those who cannot read: the tribe in question does not support slavery). Although I didn't answer yes to (1), I'll talk about concerned Republicans: certain portions of the Republican party may still be concerned. Upon contact with young male voters, these politicians might consider switching the letter next to their name. These things happen from time to time.
  3. No. The "hiding ones power level" phenomenon is not related to extremism. As I explained earlier, telling racist jokes is a shibboleth and tribal signal. Another example of ingroup-jargon is "trans women are women." Whether that slogan is "extremism" probably depends on if it's post-2020, or closer to 2015. Hiding ones power level is just code-switching so you don't scare the hoes normies. Since what is normal changes over time, you find that some signals and slogans will enter the mainstream and it is no longer necessary to code-switch. What we are witnessing is Vance's attempt to shift the Overton window (or perhaps evidence that it has already shifted). Violence has nothing to do with this, at all.
  4. The answers to this could vary because everyone is a little different. But i would say it's safe to assume it goes like this: the Democratic party is hostile to white men and the GOP is not. A particular white man who is not married to the Democratic party (on account of: economic resentment, sexual deviancy, class anxiety etc.) inevitably can only feel at home in the GOP. A self-identified Nazi could believe he has support just because of typical-minding.

telling racist jokes is a shibboleth and tribal signal.

So naturally, you would also support lefty people joking about Kirk getting shot, which is likewise a very powerful shibboleth and tribal signal. Or Palestinians wearing para-glider badges after Oct-7.

(Personally, I feel an intense dislike for anyone who makes jokes which trivialize or celebrate either the holocaust, the Kirk assassination, or the Hamas attacks, but that is probably because I am a liberal snowflake.)

Tim Walz style "black pepper is too spicy" is a racist joke, shibboleth, and tribal signal.

"That fascist deserved to get shot in front of his kids, let's do it again" may be a tribal signal, but it's not a joke. Wearing a symbol of terrorism is a tribal signal, but also not a joke.

I, for one, am not such a free speech advocate that I would be opposed to banning all of it. The only stumbling block is that, as we already see, enforcement would be wildly biased in favor of the left's shitbirds having no consequences.

Kirk is not a saint and it's fine to joke about his death. I'm not sure I've seen many jokes though. I've seen a lot of "he had it coming" and a lot of glee. Those are not jokes because they are being serious.

That posters in this thread are comparing to Jay Jones is ironic and illustrative: he outright said he was being serious! I suppose his irony has more layers than even 4channers, eh? The only joke Jones told was the "2 bullets" joke, but everything else he said was serious.

Wearing an SS-armband would be a celebration of the Holocaust, which is not a joke.

Claim (1), that these are all just jokes, seems doubtful. Many 'ironic' posters pretty clearly are using their irony for plausible deniability, and do basically believe the things they think they're being ironic about, so I guess to the assertion that these are all just jokes, I'd say 'I don't really believe you. Some of them are, some of them aren't.'

  • -17

The kind of guy who mentions the Holocaust every day, in a "joking" manner is not joking. He celebrates the Holocaust. I suspect this groupchat does not have a Holocaust reference every day. I wrote this sentence before I read the Politico article in full.

The writer says 2900 pages of chats, and Giunta says 28,000 chats. The article says 251 epithets. These guys were not slinging epithets left and right. It is highly unlikely they are making Holocaust jokes every day, or else the Journalists would have said how many holocaust jokes.

Damned right I am minimizing this. They are joking. Nobody is trying to Holocaust the Jews. I bet these guys don't even support Hamas lol.

Do they need to be cagey and ironic around others of their ilk?

So these people believe that sex is gay? They ACTUALLY have a goal of creating the greatest physiological torture methods known to man? They think the Kansas Young Republicans support slavery?

No, this whole "You made a joke but that means you really believe it" stuff is nonsense. Maybe you really believe it, but sometimes a joke is just a joke.

A joke is very rarely "just a joke". See my reply here.

  • -16

It's very rarely "just a joke" in the sense that it has other meanings and functions. It is very often just a joke in the sense that the accusations tossed at the people making the joke are false, and the accuser usually knows that in advance.

Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.

Would you agree with your vice president on the nature of pearl clutching opposition by people who claim they are opposing support of Hitler, when they are opposing things that are not actually support of Hitler?

Some beginner questions for discussion.

is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?

Is there a reason to believe the young conservatives in the group chat demonstrate / support neonazism, support of slavoery, and unabashed bigotry?

Others have noted the locker room banter nature of the discussion, both on the structural language dynamics and personal experience. You have confessed not understanding such forms of humor, which is a fair admission of a substantial limitation that could be a result of a lack of personal experience and/or ability to model others. However, the nature of such admissions of self-limitation is that the self-limited do not get to set the framing over those more familiar with the topic.

In that same vein which response is better, someone like Ortt and Stefanik or Vance? And should the Republican party be concerned about the rise of neonazis and support of slavery if question 1 is yes?

Since inserting a pejorative assumption is a timeless form of political attack, why should anyone be concerned enough to address such a framing? Should the Republicans be concerned about the rise of wifebeaters after being asked if they've stopped beating their wives yet?

Often what we see now is people "hiding their power level" with extremism, and it's often not revealed till they get to the point no one seems denouce them much. This is happening with Jay Jones now, and has happened before in cases like Mark Robinson "black Nazi". Even now Vance can't bring himself to denouce this. Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?

Is there any evidence that denouncing these not-Hitler-supporters would have any correlation, let alone causation, with extremism and violence?

If so, what is this evidence? If there is no evidence, why does the question link the non-dunciations of not-nazis to empowering extremism and violence?

A common complaint among the right is "they called us Nazis". But often, we see some right wingers calling themselves Nazis. The aforementioned "black Nazi" Mark Robinson, candidate for LT Gov John Reid in Virginia, etc. As Hanania himself pointed out, the only major national politicians to refer to Trump as Hitler was JD Vance (and RFK per community note, but that might not have counted under his usage of "national politician"). Even the leaked group chat expressed this belief about the Kansas delegation. Now I've been a strong believer in individual responsibilities and have fought for it consistently, so I do the same here and believe that the only people who should be called Nazis are the individuals who praise Hitler/want gas chambers/call themselves nazi/etc. But question 4 is, why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP, and why do they seem to believe they might have decent levels of support? How many others are "hiding their power level" too as suggested?

Why do you believe there are any self-identifying actual Nazis feeling at home in the GOP?

Your own article only points to satirical-Nazis, for whom self-association is a matter of in-group humor that you have treated as dark matter Whether you understand dark-matter-humor or not is actually irrelevant, though. Whether you get out-group humor or not, Satire-Nazis are not Actual-Nazis.

We know this not least because Actual-Nazis had a historical record of being murderously serious about their agendas as identified in formal Nazi literature, and openly self-identified as Nazis in very serious contexts. By contrast these very leaks show the satire-Nazis being not murderous or serious or openly self-identifying as Nazis, and only privately doing so in unserious contexts. Actual-Nazis did not need to resort to clandestine humor groups for safety or security. Doing so is, itself, evidence against feeling 'at home,' as Actual-Nazis at home did not need to cloak their intent with banter. Their open racial animus was one of the historically defining things about them, which this leak- by its nature as a leak- demonstrates a lack of in these young republicans.

We know this not least because Actual-Nazis had a historical record of being murderously serious about their agendas as identified in formal Nazi literature, and openly self-identified as Nazis in very serious contexts.

Come on, that is a strawman you are beating. Nobody is suggesting that these guys are members of the NSDAP, an organization which was disbanded long before they were born. Since 1945, only the very stupid have openly expressed admiration for the NSDAP in the Western world. The ones with a bit of a brain have noticed that openly flying the swastika is a good way to become a social outcast.

In Germany, there are numerous links between the far-right anti-migration AfD and neofascist organizations.

Imagine you are a 25yo white nationalist in today's America. Now you could get a swastika tattoo and join the Aryan Brotherhood or something, but then you will never make a difference. Or you could join one of the two major parties, and the one closer aligned to your views are the Republicans. Of course, merely supporting mainstream Republican policy will not save the White race, you want to increase support for your own world view.

Jokes in small groups are a great way to reach a common understanding that Nazis are not icky. Obviously not everyone who plays along is a Nazi, perhaps some only like the jokes because the SJ people are whining about the Nazis all the time, but it is very much a step in the right direction, moving the overton window where you want it to go.

  • -17

Nobody is suggesting that these guys are members of the NSDAP, an organization which was disbanded long before they were born.

...Imagine you are a 25yo white nationalist in today's America. Now you could get a swastika tattoo and join the Aryan Brotherhood or something, but then you will never make a difference. Or you could join one of the two major parties, and the one closer aligned to your views are the Republicans.

....Jokes in small groups are a great way to reach a common understanding that Nazis are not icky. Obviously not everyone who plays along is a Nazi, perhaps some only like the jokes because the SJ people are whining about the Nazis all the time, but it is very much a step in the right direction, moving the overton window where you want it to go.

So... they're not Nazis but they totally are Nazis. Just because we (the side calling them Nazis) are not saying they are formally members of a defunct political party but in fact we do mean that they are indeed members of a defunct political party in everything but formal name of the party.

My head hurts. Clearly I am too stupid to get the fine nuances of "I'm not saying they're Nazi Nazis but I am saying they are Nazi Republicans" or "Republican Nazis" or "Nazi fascist nazi Fascist".

If nobody is suggesting that these guys are members of the NSDAP, an organization which was disbanded long before they were born, then there is no honesty or virtue in trying to tar these guys with the moral connotations of members of the NSDAP by equating them with members of the NSDAP by labeling them as members of the NSDAP. Many people do so, including the OP, who repeatedly insists on this connection and the sincerity of their beliefs on the charge.

Now, if you want to accuse the OP of bad faith, lying, incompetence, or of being an irrelevant minority akin to a lizardsmen constant, by all means feel free to do so. It will not change that the behavior cataloged here is not the behavior of the Nazis who made the term Nazi a multi-generational accusation.

Jokes in small groups are a great way to reach a common understanding that Nazis are not icky. Obviously not everyone who plays along is a Nazi, perhaps some only like the jokes because the SJ people are whining about the Nazis all the time, but it is very much a step in the right direction, moving the overton window where you want it to go.

The overton window moving towards 'Nazis are not icky' is a natural and not particularly tragic development if people want to use Nazi for things other than members of the NSDAP or people particularly like them. Whether people who would prefer it remains associated with the past connation so they can tar their political enemies with the connotation want the overton window to shift in the direction they are actually pushing it is rather irrelevant.

The overton window being shifted to 'everything icky is Nazi and that is a Bad Thing' is also being dressed up by extremely tired checkboxing of Umberto Ecos work. The language police must move in concert with the intellectual police in order to maintain the unfalsifiable moral high ground - you actually are nazi because according to this Smart Man what you are doing is in line with nazism!. That the intellectualism is being rejected is just further proof of the moral and intellectual superiority that the Not Nazi faction wishes to enjoy. Pity about the whole practical power translation bit, but thats not as important as self actualization.

why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP, and why do they seem to believe they might have decent levels of support?

This was a private group chat, no? Saying this sort of stuff in private but not in public seems like the opposite of "believing that they have decent levels of support".

People say wild things in chat sometimes, at least in the spicier chats. If you've never been invited to any of the spicier chats, this may be surprising to you.

Epithets like “f----t,” “retarded” and “n--ga” appeared more than 251 times combined.

I just found it funny the writers censored out "faggot" and "nigga", but not "retarded". So they're trying to get the list of the worst offensive things that were said but the 3rd item on the list wasn't offensive enough to censor but it's all grouped together to get the 251 count?

Mosiman was derided by members of the chat as “beaner” and “sp-c.”

How come they didn't censor out "beaner", isn't that racist too?

What's with the self-censorship, anyway? Politico had no problem quoting faggot just a year ago:

https://www.politico.com/search?q=faggot&s=newest

Same with bitch, cunt, nigga, nigger, spic, and chink. All words that have appeared in previous politico articles uncensored.

Isn't it great that we can talk in a place where swears are freely allowed? Gah, I love freedom. Thanks mods.

swears are freely allowed

The moderators are aware of the use–mention distinction, but the rules still include "be kind", "be no more antagonistic than is absolutely necessary for your argument", and "write as if everyone were reading and you wanted him to be included in the discussion".

I love you as well, my autistic friend. Thanks for being here.

Yes I understand the rules, but I’m saying with proper context, we are allowed to swear.

More importantly, why didn't they count hard Rs and soft As independently? I need to know how close to a real MW2 lobby we're talking here.

Milo at least is saying there were zero hard-rs. He is very disappointed in these young men.

Gay* men are quipping about having more balls in public than young republicans in private. Grim.

is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?

No. Well, not really- opposition to involvement in WWII/stalin was the worse evil than Hitler is very common. Mildly antisemitic views on Israeli influence are very common. Opposition to women’s suffrage is common. HBD is fairly common.

Gas chambers and support for Hitler and slavery is just edgy humor.

Opposition to women’s suffrage is common.

That is not very reassuring, actually. It is also a platform which is widely unpopular. I guess that >90% of the women will oppose it, along a majority of men. The only way I see women losing the franchise is along with everyone else.

Sure it isn’t popular. Doesn’t mean woman suffrage was a good thing for women or society.

[ideas fundamentally, perhaps existentially hostile to the intersectional coalition] are common, [ideas fundamentally and existentially hostile to the intersectional coalition] are not

You see why they treat the two as equivalent?

Well yeah, you see how they're wrong, though?

"Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity.

I ran into this in my local Republican party, I was invited to join the Young Republicans and I laughed, saying I'm 30 and I'm married and I have a mortgage, I think I'm just a regular Republican. They said oh no it goes up to 40, and I was flabbergasted.

Is there anyone who thinks the Young Republicans is an important organization, and not a kind of hanger-on group that doesn't really achieve much if anything? It strikes me as an organization that exists within the party structure so that it doesn't not exist, and hierarchy-wise it gives you a few sinecures for minor apparatchiks working their way through the party, but I don't think the Young Republicans carry any real power.

Whether they achieve much, I don’t know. I do know that in my industry, the “young” group also has a cutoff age of 40. I wonder if that is perhaps somewhat common in well-established organizations and clubs.

I haven't heard of the Young Republicans before this.

Their Wikipedia page is almost empty except for the story that just broke out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Republicans

They have under 4000 followers on Twitter https://x.com/yrnational

I checked their website and most state chapters have at most a Facebook page.

They haven't seem to have accomplished much that would be newsworthy.

I'm sure they do stuff, but as an outsider doing some minor research, I can't say I'm impressed.

I’ll say this much. Someone I knew who was active in young republican circles met the current president far before his rise to power

Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.

The guy has been dead for 80 years. Let it go. There are no Aryans enough left for Aaryan supremacy.

This is just a normal milquetoast man space group chat. The ones I participate in are way worse.

They should be fired for being so lame in being edgy and for terrible opsec. But morons will moron I guess.

  1. Only because you included “like this.”
  2. Both are basically devoid of value. The lower-level politicians are covering their asses against attacks like the one you’re making. Vance is putting his on display to score a couple political points.
  3. No. There is a vast gulf between speaking and doing, and our violent extremists continue to be uninterested in hiding much of anything.
  4. Because the (young?) GOP is more receptive to this kind of humor.

Underpinning all of these answers is the obvious point that these people aren’t Nazis by any reasonable definition. Like Key and Peele, they’re putting on a little caricature. You have to be very motivated to find it damning.

I mostly don't care; it's layers and layers of irony, and there's not enough information to determine what they believe in their hearts of hearts. Most likely, their error is not in being Nazis, but simply in treating a professional(?) forum like a personal 4chan. Organizations don't have to go total longhouse to have some standards of conduct, and heads should roll (NOTE: I am not calling for a Robespierre-style solution to this problem; it's a turn of phrase indicating someone should be fired).

I do think this lack of ability (real or affected) to detect irony is part of the puzzle of why Democrats are losing young men. Conversations like this happen all the time, among both Democrats and Republicans, and treating obvious jokes as literally as possible gives a strong out-of-the-loop school principal or humorless HR lady vibe.

This failure to detect irony goes both ways in multiple senses, both in the sense that Republicans are also prone to it (if less so) and in the sense that it also takes the form of defending your own side's genuine expressions of malice as Just Fooling Around (the Jay Jones thing is still heavy on my mind).

that both sides say extreme things and that both sides get indignant at the other does not prove the situation is symmetrical. How do you prove that someone is joking or if they are being serious?

Available evidence suggests that a lot of young conservatives ironically pretend to be omega-level authoritarian bigots to hide the fact that they're merely authoritarian-curious and extremely bigoted. Comedy (for weak values of comedy) gets deployed as ablative armor because being aggressively, overtly racist isn't quite socially acceptable yet. You just laugh at the libs for taking your jokes seriously before you go back to fulminating about how blacks and latinos and enfranchised women are ruining America.

  • -12

being aggressively, overtly racist isn't quite socially acceptable yet.

Uhhh it certainly is if you're from an oppressed demographic and directing it against an oppressor demographic, as framed by the left.

Not really. Most people are racist, but very few Americans publicly gloss their racism as racism. There's almost always an excuse or deflection or pretext. You might not find them very convincing in a given context, but they're there.

Most people are racist, but very few Americans publicly gloss their racism as racism.

I'm sad Avenue Q doesn't seem to have any productions going around anymore. There is a high school adaptation, but I feel like that wouldn't be quite the same.

Is "I've rewritten the dictionary so I can't be racist" really an acceptable reason to call them not racist, though?

That whole "whiteness doesn't mean white people" thing was loathsome racist gaslighting and that 'deflection' does not change the state of reality.

Yea, anyone that has been on 4chan or Discord knows that young conservatives are most likely full Deus Vult if they are engaged enough to care about politics, and this stuff is truthfully pretty run of the mill.

That said, this is bad, I have no problem saying this is bad. However, I think it is a sort of LARPing for 99.9% of these people, the same way Eat the Rich/Punch a Nazi is LARPing for the majority. But in the Kirk discussions we already hashed out the reasons this is bad. I think there is a crisis of earnestness, people are absolutely allergic to being serious which creates this sort of “Haha just joking….unless?” aspect which rightly scares people. In part I blame Trump for the degradation of seriousness as a virtue in American politics, but perhaps he was more a effect than a cause.

Now a bit regarding Nazism specifically. The left has so abused the term Nazi/fascist, similar to abuse of Antisemite or Communist/Socialist, that at some point you can’t be surprised when people start to think Nazism isn’t so bad, and start to wear the badge in defiance. In a weird way it becomes analogous to blacks reclaiming the word “nigger”

I think there is a crisis of earnestness, people are absolutely allergic to being serious which creates this sort of “Haha just joking….unless?” aspect which rightly scares people. In part I blame Trump for the degradation of seriousness as a virtue in American politics, but perhaps he was more a effect than a cause.

Surely the crisis of earnestness is downstream of the fact that the overton window was tiny for a very long time in regards to subjects people really cared about? Trump and the current irony-drenched commentators succeeded because they were able to parley common opinions such as

'maybe driving blue-workers' wages down with illegal immigration is hurting them'

and

'maybe white people aren't responsible for everything bad that happens to people of colour and everything bad done by people of colour'

past the censors. The earnest people were stomped on repeatedly until everyone except the most quokka of quokkas got the message.

Now a bit regarding Nazism specifically. The left has so abused the term Nazi/fascist, similar to abuse of Antisemite or Communist/Socialist, that at some point you can’t be surprised when people start to think Nazism isn’t so bad, and start to wear the badge in defiance. In a weird way it becomes analogous to blacks reclaiming the word “nigger”

Lots of people manage to be called Nazi/fascist inappropriately without becoming pro Nazi. I wonder what the difference here is between the anti Nazi conservatives and the pro Nazi conservatives are. My guess at the most obvious explanation would be that the pro nazis are just pro nazi to begin with and any excuse they give is just that, an excuse.

Now maybe we could say that it's because "Nazism" as a term has become diluted, like how "Communism is when the government does stuff" happened among many youth.

But diluted communism/socialism is typically like "I'm such a socialist, I wish we were like Norway". For Nazism to be diluted, I wouldn't expect Hitler and gas chambers, I'd expect "I'm such a Nazi, I wish we were like Slovakia" or something. The dilution in the mainstream is typically from shared misunderstandings.

  • -16

My guess at the most obvious explanation would be that the pro nazis are just pro nazi to begin with and any excuse they give is just that, an excuse.

You have people like Daryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson who may not be full-on sieg heiling but look an awful lot like they think the Nazis were directionally correct about maintaining national purity. For them, rehabilitating the Nazis is an important of legitimizing their own political program. As long as the Nazis are the Worst Thing Ever and not just one among many authoritarian movements, that's a major impediment to the respectability to reactionary authoritarian ethnonationalism. Hence the efforts to downplay Nazi atrocities and/or cast them as wartime misfortune while shifting the blame to others (e.g. Churchill).

Of course, that's much too subtle for the rank and file.

Now maybe we could say that it's because "Nazism" as a term has become diluted, like how "Communism is when the government does stuff" happened among many youth.

A significant point is that there are lots and lots of socialist movements, including democratic socialist movements that have at least occasionally governed in western democracies to something less than absolute disaster. Liberals, socialists, and traditional conservatives alike can all point to something, say "that's what I want", and have the thing they're point to not be something totally atrocious. If you're a fascist or fascistically inclined, you've got Hitler and Mussolini.

"Nazi" might be diluted as an insult, but it's not diluted as an ideology. There's no moderate, democratic fascism.

  • -13

If you're a fascist or fascistically inclined, you've got Hitler and Mussolini.

There's always Franco, though of course classifying him as a fascist is controversial. I think "Franco was alright" is somewhat more in the Overton window than saying the same about Mussolini and Hitler (to the extent people know anything about Franco in the first place).

There's also FDR, for that matter

Salazar?

You have people like Daryl Cooper and Tucker Carlson who may not be full-on sieg heiling but look an awful lot like they think the Nazis were directionally correct about maintaining national purity.

Is this just your uncharitable interpretation of them saying things like "hey maybe we don't need a million immigrants from poor countries who have very different cultures than ours and who don't share our values" or do they actually talk about racial or "national purity?" People seem to get their panties in a bunch because these two guys don't genuflect to the WW2 mythos that has been handed down to the American public through Hollywood and high school history class, but I'm not convinced that saying something like "actually WW2 was more complicated that just Good Guys vs Bad Guys" is in any way remotely near "full-on sieg heiling."

Is this just your uncharitable interpretation of them

No.

People seem to get their panties in a bunch because these two guys don't genuflect to the WW2 mythos that has been handed down to the American public through Hollywood and high school history class, but I'm not convinced that saying something like "actually WW2 was more complicated that just Good Guys vs Bad Guys" is in any way remotely near "full-on sieg heiling."

Yeah, but they're not saying that. They're peddling ahistorical nonsense to try and whitewash Nazi aggression and Nazi crimes while shifting the blame for these things to their enemies for having the temerity to resist. Cooper wants to paint Nazi atrocities as tragic accidents in a war they were forced into, using arguments make little sense and that can be trivially debunked if you possess basic factual knowledge^1. This suggests that Cooper is either an idiot or a liar, and I see little else to indicate that he is an idiot. If Cooper is deliberately misrepresenting WW2 in a way that minimizes the crimes of Nazism, it raises the question of why? Given that he's on record praising reactionary authoritarianism, it's probably because he's sympathetic and thinks it's useful to soft-pedal Hitler.

Are these people full on fascists? Don't know. Clearly, however, they do find an interest in trying to rehabilitate fascism.

1: for example, blaming Churchill for the escalation of the German invasion of Poland into general European war

So, uncharitable it is. Dan Carlin sources his stories very well. They often have a slight, particular slant to them because of his political leanings, but I would not call him a "liar" who posts trivially debunked (there's that word again) stories that contradict "basic factual knowledge" (cf. "basic logic," "basic human decency"). Dan Carlin emphasizese a specific set of facts to spin a particular narrative. Some people say this means all history is bunk, but IMHO that's a uselessly sweeping and reductive judgement. There is no narrative-free history.

try and whitewash Nazi aggression and Nazi crimes while shifting the blame for these things to their enemies

This complaint is always levelled in bad faith at people who try to understand the internal state of the "bad guys." If you try to explain, even with disavowels, why e.g. how Communists came to power in Russia by tapping into legitimate grievances that certain groups had, you will invariably be called a Communist sympathizer by those on the right too idiotic to understand hypotheticals or too Machiavellian to feel shame. I see little to indicate that you're an idiot.

Given that he's on record praising reactionary authoritarianism

Am I supposed to shrink back in fear at this? So what? Your words have no power here. I've been jaded by the pearl-clutching about "our democracy" by libs for the last decade.

Cooper is deliberately misrepresenting WW2 in a way that minimizes the crimes of Nazism, it raises the question of why?

He isn't, and you don't get to smuggle your tendentious accusation into the question, sorry. As for why he is telling this story, he is doing it for the same reason he told the stories of the Zionist Jews, the Palestinians, the (leftist!) People's Temple, the (leftist!) early labor movement in the U.S. -- because he thinks it's important to tell stories from within the frame and perspective of the people who lived that story, rather than as a "neutral" or baised outsider. An impossible goal, but a worthwhile aspiration (and given how preoccupied leftists are with lived experience, you'd think they would approve, but instead it's just another case of "no not like that!!"). Do you think Cooper is a People's Temple booster? A Zionist Jew sympathizer (Check his Twitter to find out about that one)?

Are these people full on fascists?

There's that word again. There's nothing I can really say in response to this that won't get me in trouble, so let me just recommend that you find a more effective line of attack, because scolding and panicking about "fascism" is so 2017, it doesn't work on anyone anymore save the most dyed in the wool leftists. And it undermines any concern you are trying to create in me about "reactionary authoritarianism."

"Nazi" might be diluted as an insult, but it's not diluted as an ideology.

This isn't quite true. Jew-exclusionary white supremacists are universally called, and often own, the label "Nazi" whether or not they're fascists.

See also: newfags, britfags, poorfags

"the poorfags, the mentalfags, the Frenchfags, the cripplefags, the collegefags"

My understanding of 4chan culture is that none of these are remotely homophobic in practice, and the term "fag" has become sufficiently debased that someone needed to coin the term "gayfag" to describe male homosexuals.

debased

Heh.

Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.

Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats? I get the feeling it's a lot less irony-infected than this kind of thing.

is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?

Is Hanania a person to trust, here?

Two, for a long time nobody gave a shit about unabashed bigotry from the left perpetrated by every major institution and every university in this country, and most people still don't care. While I think these jokes are very trashy and a kind of male socialization I've never really understood, I'm gonna need a little more than trashy jokes to get up in arms about.

When we get "blackness is evil and must but abolished, but don't worry that technically doesn't mean black people, wink wink nudge nudge" unironically preached by a major university or newspaper, I'll be concerned.

Is this tribalist loyalty helping to empower extremism and violence?

Do you want to revisit a 2020 discussion?

why do so many of these self identifying Nazis seem to feel at home in the GOP

Nazis have replaced the Devil. If you wanted to spit in the eye of Christians, you identify as Satanist and make dead baby jokes. If you want to spit in the eye of hypocritical liberal-progressives, you identify as a Nazi and make those jokes.

For Mark Robinson it was a weird fetish thing, not quite the same example as the rest, btw.

It doesn't take hacking to get democrats(more important than these guys) proudly swearing allegiance to incredibly off-putting things. The dems are very proudly on the losing side of a lot of 80-20 issues so you just have to dig through their speeches until they say things like 'parents shouldn't have a say in their kids' education' and 'illegal immigrants should get transgender surgeries at taxpayer expense' and 'babies who were born alive after a failed abortion should be kept comfortable until they die'.

Yeah, true. They just say it out in the open, rarely any consequences! Well, except for losing to Trump twice.

Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats? I get the feeling it's a lot less irony-infected than this kind of thing.

You would think any Democrat group with a modicum of foresight immediately deleted their chat histories the moment this story broke.

You don't need to be infiltrate a groupchat to find obvious examples of democrats wanting to do things they know their opponents find terrible. They openly talk about why Democrats should pretend to support economic populism so that they can sneak in trans rights and unlimited immigration, at the direct and explicit expense of white people. Its the entire existence of Lib Of Tik Tok and the progs out this out openly because they think cons are too stupid to ever pierce the barrier to entry of looking at a phone screen.

this is similar to what o'keefe was doing with his 'stings'. basically getting left aligned people to confide to him or his operatives like a friend.

find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats

How do you mean this? 1. As a Chinese robber fallacy thing, like surely there are some racist Democrats out there. Or that 2. Democrats are doing their soft racism thing of belittling minority groups? Or that 3. Democrats in private are just as racist as Republicans are in private. Or 4. Democrats say racist jokes in private, but don't mean them? Because to be honest, as someone very much adjacent to and in those Democrat group chats. I don't think 3 is likely, and 4 is far less likely then it used to be 15 years ago. There is too much self policing, infighting, virtue signaling, effectively causing leftists to get brownie points for calling each other out on such things all the time.

Democrats are doing their soft racism thing of belittling minority groups?

Doesn't count as racist for these purposes, but really should be more damning for Dems.

Democrats in private are just as racist as Republicans are in private

Democrats in public have spent several years being way more racist than Republicans in private or public, they just don't call stuff like "white people are goblins" and "whiteness is a contract with the devil" racism, because they gerrymandered racism to primarily be about black people. Belittling white men is a favored pastime. Et cetera and so forth.

So I would imagine whatever they say in private is even worse than what they've been publishing in public for my entire adult life.

Ah yeah, I left that one off my list, but that makes sense. Leftists do say that sort of thing all the time in private, and it would be kinda damning if that were seen more, but not as much as the gerrymandered racism.

Yeah, I think the issue with this sort of complaint is that there's nothing horrifyingly racist that Democrats can say in private group chats that would be more horrifyingly racist than what come out of Democrats' mouths in public. Democrats openly saying horrifyingly racist things is just "baked in" to people's expectations of them, such that similar private group chats just wouldn't be scandalous; . And, indeed, a somewhat similar-but-mirrored analog happened in the past month with some small Democratic Virginian politician, with basically no hubbub, in large part because Democrats openly and unironically espousing such hateful and pro-violence rhetoric has just been normalized.

some small Democratic Virginian politician

Point of nitpicking. I would consider a small time politician to be, maybe, one member of the state legislator, or mayor of a small or medium sized town. Attorney General of the entire state is starting to get up into a large Democratic Virginian politician. State AGs often make nationwide news due to the policies they pursue unilaterally. I have to hear about Ken Paxton, AG of Texas, all the damned time.

Paxton is kind of a standout but yeah, my understanding would be the AG is the second-most important politician in most states, or at least not lower than third.

Paxton is probably the third most influential Republican politician in Texas nationally at most- Abbott and Cruz at least beat him, and there’s an argument that Dan Patrick does too.

Is there really not a single right-wing hacker competent enough to find whatever horrifying racist nonsense Democrat-associated activists say in their group chats?

Were you not here last week, where we discussed how Virginia politician Jay Jones was outed as wanting to see a political rival's wife wailing in despair as her child bleeds to death in her arms?

No, saw that name in this thread but didn't check the context. How disgusting!

is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?

How many layers of irony are you prepared to dig through?

I've been in groupchats where varying levels of racism, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for minority groups is tolerated. Never out-and-out calls for extermination, but at worst places where everyone can quote crime statistics from heart and Pinochet/Helicopter memes are in vogue.

Generally speaking, my perception is that the ratio of participants who engage in edgy humor and thoughtcrime for purely signalling purposes to those who truly have a core belief that is reflected in the statements is at least 3:1.

Which, under standard lefty logic makes them all just as culpable.

But I simply disbelieve that anything like a majority of them are actually in favor of literal Hitler taking power, rather than just noticing that he is one of the few taboos left that you can actual 'violate' for comedic effect. Decades of media programming that "NAZIS ARE THE ABSOLUTE WORST EVIL", you're going to get some people who find it amusing to trample on that message.

Indeed, digging into the actual texts make it clear much of what was being said was sarcasm with a negative valence towards the subject.

Anyway, I used to be the guy that occasionally reminded people not to go too blatant in their poasting since everything being said could in theory get publicized at an arbitrarily later date. I myself use the same sort of discipline I do in professional e-mails where I assume that I might have to explain what I wrote to a Judge at some point, so don't put it in writing unless you're okay with it being read into a Court record later.

I've since stopped doing that sort of policing... unless I see something that could be read as an actual call for violence or statement of intent to commit violence. The norm against such calls is what I myself dearly want to maintain.

Otherwise, trangressing taboos is ultimately a pretty standard way of establishing camaraderie, and a group chat is inherently not a space where these words are being exposed to people who would genuinely be offended or 'harmed' by them, so it seems obvious that the 'intent' is not to offend or harm. This is distinct from the types who go on twitter and elsewhere specifically to troll or get a rise out of others. I still disdain those ones pretty universally for polluting public discourse.

There are practical reasons to rein in the language a bit b/c of the risk of exposure like this, but at this point I am more in favor of adjusting the larger social rules to be more permissive than I am in punishing young guys for being uncouth or poorly socialized.

And of course, if the most benignly controversial statements of the kind Charlie Kirk used to make (and he was light-years from spouting slurs) is enough to justify killing you, why hold back at all? There's value in signalling to peers that you'll have their back if the left comes for them because you're stuck just as deep in thoughtcrime as they are, and there's value in signalling to the left that you're not afraid of thoughtcrime and there's more people on your side than they expected.

I've happily made many a macro of Bill Hicks screaming "HITLER DIDNT GO FAR ENOUGH" paired with Dave Chappelle just eyebrow waggling. It is AMAZING what people read into that.

Without reading the article, a line from the original Star Trek comes to mind:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

The article comes off as a typical left-wing shaming Gish gallop:

  • It quotes a bunch of things said by alleged right wing people out of context
  • It does not examine the context of the quote nor why the writer said the quote, but immediately assumes the worst.
  • It makes a long list of these quotes, all of which are done out of context

Without letting other people see the source of these quotes, we are left guessing. And, quite frankly, to give just one example, the mainstream left-wing press was really dishonest when quoting RMS out of context to shame him, either quoting things he hasn’t believed for years to decades, misrepresenting jokes others made about him as something he said or did, quoted something out of context to imply something he never endorsed nor said, etc.

Until we get full context, we can not damn anyone. And we haven’t gotten that context to examine the facts for ourselves.

It doesn't even have real life traction, thats the thing.Firing some young republican nobodies is costless for republicans, and now everyone sotto voce thinks the liberals are the crazy moralizing karens they spent the ladt year pretending they werent. There is an extremely aggressive attempt to memoryhole the shaming and screeching of the late 2010s but this just shows the libs can't help themselves from beating the racism gong when some supply actually instantiates to feed their unlimited demand for wrongthink.

It's funny because Politico would have a stronger article if they did not fixate on this obvious joke mentioning Hitler, some of the edgelord racist stuff would have the potential to shock prudish normies or at least create enough of a problem for the right that it would have to address as if the public and the private are not different spheres of communication, but the Hitler quote Politico (and magicalkittycat) highlight as if it was the worst of it is so obviously said in jest that it's easier to dismiss the rest.

TBF, many very sincere progressives find joking about Hitler even worse than sincerely praising him, because what kind of moral monster jokes about the worst person ever? (Meanwhile, Free Palestine, and its 2 million unironic Hitler admirers.)

I have heard stories from Germans on pilgrimage...

The world is simple: we are the good guys and they are the bad guys. The existence of bad guys isn't fundamentally bad; indeed, it's what justifies the program of the good guys.

But to joke about the dichotomy undermines it, and that's very dangerous indeed.

Citation needed?

I don’t think I know anyone who’d be more upset about a Hitler joke than a straight-armed salute.

Nor do I know what you’re talking about for Palestine. 2 million?

Right. Curb Your Enthusiasm has toyed with Hitler. (But then maybe until like a week after Oct 7th it was being safely done from a solidly NYC Jewish place of "we can do this"?)

I don’t think I know anyone who’d be more upset about a Hitler joke than a straight-armed salute.

A straight-armed salute probably usually is a Hitler joke.

is neonazism, support of slavery, and unabashed bigotry such as this actually common among young conservatives as Hanania and the group chat themselves seem to believe?

See, this is the problem with the question. Someone asked recently about what the building consensus rule here meant, and I think this is a stellar example: it presumes that what you're referring to is clearly "neonazism, support of slavery and unabashed bigotry", where someone not highly motivated to see it as more will just see joking and edgelording. Tasteless, yes, and ill-advised in a context that had the possibility of being leaked, but looking at the quotes in the articles I see nothing that reads to me like neonazism or support of slavery, just laconic jokes. As for the bigotry, there's a better case there (though nowhere near a slam dunk) but at this point the right has run out of shits to give about following the left's rules for what they're allowed to notice and think about groups of people. Or at least joke about.

Begging the question does not violate our rule on consensus-building.

Users are allowed to make controversial assumptions! Then they’re liable to get grilled on those assumptions, as is the case here.

However, some Republicans in high places don't seem to view it as a major deal. Such as JD Vance, whose only comment is to call it "pearl clutching"

This'll teach me to read the linked text (particularly ironic because I'm bullish on 'go back to the sources'). Vance had a leetle more to the comment than just "this is pearl clutching" (so ignore it); he was contrasting it with the guy who was talking about hoping Jennifer Gilbert's children would die:

This is far worse than anything said in a college group chat, and the guy who said it could become the AG of Virginia. I refuse to join the pearl clutching when powerful people call for political violence.

(1) Bunch of twenty-somethings are idiots (2) This includes edgelord stuff like making jokes about Hitler and other topics deemed "should not be joked about" (3) Whatever really was said in the thread remains to be determined

Also, is "to cow before Trump" a direct quote or just the people writing this article being illiterate? "To cower before" makes sense, as does "to kowtow to/before". This is what happens when you let AI write your article for you! Or be too young to know how to English properly, if it's direct Young Republican quote.

(How did Politico obtain the leaked thread, I wonder?)

Yeah, if it's genuine, it ranks between "young idiot guys need a slap upside the head" and "if old enough to know better/comments are genuinely bad and not just white guy saying 'nigga' as though he's a rapper, heads must roll".

EDIT: Thank you, TheMotte, for permitting me to post a slur like "nigga" and not force me to use a dash as though this was the 18th century or I were writing for Politico, though I guess that makes me as reprehensible as a Young Republican 😁

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat.

This includes edgelord stuff like making jokes about Hitler and other topics deemed "should not be joked about"

Bah, making jokes about Hitler is lindy.

EDIT: Thank you, TheMotte, for permitting me to post a slur like "nigga" and not force me to use a dash as though this was the 18th century or I were writing for Politico, though I guess that makes me as reprehensible as a Young Republican 😁

Interestingly, they spell out "retarded" in the article but in the balloons in the header they make it "r------d"; I'm not sure if this means they censored it in the header or if the actual Young Republican wasn't willing to spell it out. Anyway, "this girl is fully retarded" is hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?

Anyway, "this girl is fully retarded" is hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?

Remember a little while back when there were finger-wagging lists of words that were no-no because they were ableist, including describing things as "things are insane round here" or "we're crazy busy this week"?

So terms like 'retarded' are no-no because slurs and because 'excuse me, my brother is retarded, how dare you?' as per this article ("When someone casually says, “she’s so crazy” in an off-handed way, they could be talking about someone like my mom.")

Amusing that that list omits words like "stupid," "dumb," "blind," "lame," and "crippled."

That was one of the record-scratch moments that turned me, back in the day. Getting told I was ableist for saying something (not even a person!) was stupid.

If adopted, it certainly would make reading the Gospel at Sunday Mass a lot of fun 🤣

"4 Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and observe: 5 the blind persons of low vision see, the lame persons with a mobility impairment walk, lepers those who are in need of dermatological services are cleansed receive appropriate medical care, the deaf persons with a hearing impairment hear, the dead are raised, and the destitute people whose incomes are below the federal poverty threshold hear the good news are empowered by targeted aid regarding their circumstances. 6 How blessed is anyone who is not offended by me does not commit microaggressions by the use of ableist language!”

I'm aware of why a lot of leftists object to the term. I'm just not sure why anyone to the right of Tim Walz should care. It's not like that n-word which indelibly stains the soul of any white person who dares to utter or type it (not sure if the hard-r is required, gotta be safe); they're only allowed one of those at most.

It might be a microaggression, the more up-to-date please fill me in on whether microaggressions are still the equivalent of burning someone at the stake or if we've moved on to trans genocide instead as the most heinous of crimes?

Trans genocide is caused by microaggressions (and macroaggressions as well). If you accidentally call a transwoman who identifies as "xe/xer" a "he," then that can worsen xer dysphoria, resulting in xer's mood being slightly more negative than otherwise, which could be the difference maker in crossing the threshold to successfully acting on suicide from just thinking about/play-acting it, which would mean that xer death would be entirely the fault of every individual who committed a microaggression against xer with respect to xer gender identity.

It could also discourage trans-curious youths away from going forward with a transition and instead embracing their original sex and trying their best to live a happy life within it, because they would observe how trans people tend to have convinced their brains to feel wronged when someone else does something with entirely good intentions. This would mean one less trans-curious person becoming trans, which is another form of genocide than just killing the already-trans.

More to the point, there's no rational or consistent hierarchy of heinousness of crimes in this worldview. Rationality and logical consistency (not to mention hierarchy) are inventions of White Supremacy and Patriarchy for the purpose of oppressing minorities and women. Any crime is the most heinous if it's useful to you if everyone else believes that it's the most heinous thing ever, and the vice versa applies as well.

hardly worth clutching pearls over... maybe imitation pearls?

New flair day, thank you.

After the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination I absolutely don't care about this, and will never care about anything like this from my own side ever again. OP wildly overestimates the number of fucks the right has left to give.

Well, the flip side of this is that with the righty reaction to the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination, the Right has also thoroughly burned its "it's just banter" card. If the two competing party programmes in the US actually start being perceived as "install a modern version of Hitler" vs. "shoot all Charlie Kirks", which one do you figure will have majority support?

(In other words: any fucks you give are for your own sake, not the left's. As with everything in US politics, it doesn't matter what someone who would vote the same party no matter what anyway thinks, except to the extent this thinking becomes known to those who are willing to change their vote.)

Well, the flip side of this is that with the righty reaction to the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination, the Right has also thoroughly burned its "it's just banter" card. If the two competing party programmes in the US actually start being perceived as "install a modern version of Hitler" vs. "shoot all Charlie Kirks", which one do you figure will have majority support?

Fuck 'em anyway. Anyone who still wants to go soothe ISIS's concerns about blasphemy at this point will have to do it without me.

The difference is that after getting his opinions from (relevant) people on the left, someone went and did shoot all (relevant) Charlie Kirks. And the reaction was mostly (with notable and appreciated exceptions) not a sobering realization of the impact of their words. To compare, no one (relevant) installed, attempted to install or even proposed installing a modern version of Hitler.

That should inform as to which was only banter and which was not.

/* (using relevant here to exclude non-central, lizardman constant people on both sides)

By "all Charlie Kirks", I meant outspoken relatively extreme right-wingers, not the set consisting of just Charlie Kirk. Otherwise it would make no sense that posters here (who are presumably not his reincarnation) would feel personally threatened by the rhetoric.

Shooting Charlie Kirk was at most a small step towards a hypothetical end goal of shooting so many of the most outspoken right-wingers that even some Motte posters make the cut. My impression is that, in the Left's eyes, the Right has already gone relatively further towards a hypothetical goal of installing Mecha-Hitler - after all, they have installed a norm-breaking nativist president with a significant cult of personality who removes ethnic outsiders and openly defies mechanisms that are meant to prevent concentration of power in the system.

After the lefty reaction to the Kirk assassination I absolutely don't care about this, and will never care about anything like this from my own side ever again. OP wildly overestimates the number of fucks the right has left to give.

Do you believe that all of politics can only be summed up as "left" and "right" and that it is impossible to be both against killing people like Kirk and against racism/neonazism/etc?

If you do believe this, then why do Republicans like Gov Scott, Elise Stefanik, Roger Stone, etc seem to be able to denounce the chat without saying positive things about killing Kirk? Are they fake right wingers or something?

  • -14

Do you believe that all of politics can only be summed up as "left" and "right" and that it is impossible to be both against killing people like Kirk and against racism/neonazism/etc?

Yes.

Let me put it like this. When a high profile Jan 6 defendant gets tenure at a major university, and becomes the mentor to the next president, I might be willing to entertain the notion that I have enemies to the right. If the town my daughter is growing up in doesn't flip from 80% white to 30% white over her lifetime like mine did, I might be willing to entertain that I have enemies to the right. If I can look up resumes in my field and not see that 50% of them have some variation of "we prioritize hiring diversity", I might be willing to entertain that I have enemies to the right.

But my life has been made so infinitely worse by my enemies to the left, I don't understand why I could possibly care about these theoretical enemies to my right. They've literally never done anything to me.

Feels a bit like being a Weimar conservative who would rather get shot by the Nazis than give the Communists one more inch.

But such is life.

You appear to think of politics entirely on the basis of whether policies create material problems for you in your life (and, granted, in your daughter's). Don't you have a concept of politics as rooted in moral values unrelated to your own personal fate? Is there any amount of evil that people to your right could wreak on strangers that would outweigh making the trains run on time in your specific neck of the woods?

  • -15

You appear to think of politics entirely on the basis of whether policies create material problems for you in your life (and, granted, in your daughter's). Don't you have a concept of politics as rooted in moral values unrelated to your own personal fate?

1990's colorblind liberalism is dead and it wasn't the right wingers who killed it. Since we now live in some kind of post-liberal racial spoils hellscape, I'll be voting for my own team, thanks.

I ask again: how do you justify this morally? Some might say that unpleasant circumstances when doing the right thing will give you a material disadvantage is when it is most important (and indeed admirable) to behave ethically.

  • -15

How does a soldier morally justify shooting the enemy instead of his squadmates? Traditionally, it was by begging forgiveness from God, though I have no idea what the modern recommendation is. The point is, it's in almost every case a secondary concern to victory.

Yes, but the more apt analogy to the problem I had in mind is the temptation to commit war crimes that would increase your odds of victory. "Well the enemy have started torturing toddlers for information, so we might as well do the same thing" = "Well the Left aren't doing anything to rein in their evil loonies, so why should I lift a finger about evil loonies in my own tribe?". In both cases, ethics dictate that if you actually hold a moral belief that [torturing children in wrong]/[a given Tribe has a responsibility to rein in its crazies], you should hold fast to that principle even if your enemy violates it first and indeed, even if it places you at a material disadvantage in a given set of circumstances. Fair-weather principles are not principles at all. They're just norms.

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how do you justify this morally?

Clearly

I'll be voting for my own team

is a moral position.

It may not be one you agree with, but it's no less a (n a) moral position than the "post-liberal racial spoils hellscape."

You seem to be begging the question that there is an objectively correct morality and deviating from the progressive racism violates that, without actually filling in the gaps of why that is objectively correct and the losers should enjoy being in the hands of an angry god sacrificing their children for the wellbeing of the ungrateful.

You seem to be begging the question that there is an objectively correct morality and deviating from the progressive racism violates that

None of what I've been saying has been about racism, or indeed any object-level Right vs Left issue. My objection is to the principle of basing one's politics exclusively on what will lead to one's personal comfort. That seems to be a textbook example of amoral behavior no matter what moral principles you subscribe to, assuming you have any at all. Sure, "support my own team" could be a moral position! But what @Skeletor posted was:

Since we now live in some kind of post-liberal racial spoils hellscape, I'll be voting for my own team, thanks.

And what bothers me about that is the "Since" clause, not the "I'll be voting for my own team" in a vacuum. It makes it sound rather as if he is voting in whichever direction will maximize his personal comfort at a given time, not in a principled way based on moral positions for which he would be prepared to make sacrifices to his own personal welfare. "I'll always vote for my team no matter what" would be a moral position. "It seems the outgroup has defected and it's a free-for-all, so I'm looking out for Number One" is not.

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Why should I need to justify it morally at all? Whose team should I be on if not my own? I didn't create this system, I just refuse to play along with progressives who seem to think I'm obligated to accept the bottom rung in it.

Whose team should I be on if not my own?

You shouldn't be on a "team", not to the extent that it directs all your actions. You should be trying to do the right thing, whatever this appears to be to your conscience.

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Don't you have a concept of politics as rooted in moral values unrelated to your own personal fate?

The other side sure doesn't care about my fate. Why is it on me to be their infinite moral superior, to sacrifice myself and everyone I care about?

Is there any amount of evil that people to your right could wreak on strangers that would outweigh making the trains run on time in your specific neck of the woods?

Any, yes. When the amount of evil is somewhere near the "actual death camps or radio broadcasts telling people to hack apart their neighbors" level, I would care.

Does that amount include my people being the only acceptable target of racism and sexism, to the point the other side tried changing the dictionary so their bigotry doesn't count? No.

Why is it on me to be their infinite moral superior, to sacrifice myself and everyone I care about?

I wasn't asking anybody to sacrifice themselves. I was just really struck by the way WhiningCoil's grievances seemed entirely rooted in "my daughter", "my field", "my life" and wanted to interrogate that, because I was curious whether he would genuinely endorse the idea that he chooses his politics for the benefit of himself and his immediate inner circle, and not for any question of principle. This isn't even really a Blue versus Red thing - it would satisfy that condition if he mentioned some important Red Tribe moral causes which might guide his vote, but where policies have no material effects on him or anyone he knows.

I was going to post a reply of my own but I think I'll just updoot this one.

…did you ever?

I’ve found the people most interested in policing comments about Kirk are the ones who were already jumping at the bit.

Ever is a long time. Probably the single largest cohort of people here are disaffected liberals who would have been pretty seriously offended by those group chats 15-20 years ago, I certainly would have been.

Fellow former liberal here. I also would had been offended by those chats 10 or 15 years ago. These days, I just shrug. When the left wing stopped being about tolerance and acceptance and started being about finding a new group of people to hate (e.g. how the illiberal left hates men who date in other countries[1]) I became a lot more jaded, cynical, and apolitical.

[1] I have a lot of real world female platonic friends, and they all universally support me living in another country and dating women there. The only people in the real world who at all opposed me dating in another country are both men: One straight man and one gay man.

…did you ever?

Who the fuck are you to say otherwise? Back before the blue team made being racist against me hip and tried to get my niece to cut her tits off, I was a Daily Show watching Dem-voting asshole internet atheist. Now when the thing that side has become comes calling, wearing its little civil rights skin suit, to tell me how so-and-so said some no-no words, I just snuggle in among all the Jesus freaks and right wing dickheads I used to think of as my enemies and say, well, at least they weren't aimed at me.

Thanks for asking.

I was a Daily Show watching Dem-voting asshole internet atheist

Even the guy who used to write for John Oliver and still is liberal in every conceivable way is getting fed-up of the activists blowing up mountains out of molehills and the 'trust the science' bullshit being, well, bullshit.

Interesting link. Does anyone else feel the author writes jokes exactly like ChatGPT?

Guy drives me up the wall about 90% of the time with his posts about how he used to write for John Oliver, but every so often reality bonks him over the head hard enough that there is common ground between us on "this is freakin' stupid".

And he was where I heard about Katie Porter's performance, and that one was genuinely funny (though with the material he had to work with, it would have taken real genius not to be funny there).

Would you happen to be the Twitter Skeletor? That guy rocks and you rock.

Nope, never heard of them, but thanks. lol

the ones who were already jumping at the bit.

It is interesting to see it potentially developing as the last straw for a lot of people, where a passive lack of charity crosses into something more active.

Once, I did care, but I burned out before this. I don't really consider the right "my side" in an affirmative sense, but my anti-leftness solidified sometime during the whole "whiteness is the source of all evil but technically doesn't mean white people wink wink nudge nudge" era of egregious bigotry.

This is not good for society, and it's definitely not good for my intellectual charity when talking to whatever infinitesimal fraction of the left refused to tolerate that shit, but I don't really feel like the ball is in my court for solving it, either. For all my many flaws and failures, I've never declared an ethnicity a contract with the devil, or tried to create high-minded academic fig leaves for virulent racism.

…did you ever?

I did. The whole reason I got into /r/SSC and The Motte is because I thought they represented a chance for dialogue between the two sides, and a chance for each of us to say "I guess they make some good points sometimes", come together, and either forge a common path, or at least forge a pact to purge the crazies on each respective side. All I got for the trouble was "not good enough" said in so many ways, and a litany of denials that there's anything wrong with the progressive side, and that if I think otherwise, it's because I'm being uncharitable.

Now... you know me (and I know me), I know I'm prone to sperging out at times, but I was actually trying, but at this point, why bother? This isn't even accusatory, I know your heart's in the right place, but I know that you and people like you are incapable of stopping the things I find offensive and distasteful that come from your side, so why should I police mine?

This isn't even accusatory, I know your heart's in the right place, but I know that you and people like you are incapable of stopping the things I find offensive and distasteful that come from your side, so why should I police mine?

Well, "morality" would be the obvious reason why. Policing evil on one's own side is desirable in itself, by definition. If my brother has gone crazy then it is my duty to do something about it, whether or not my neighbor is dealing with his crazy brother.

  • -10

If my brother has gone crazy then it is my duty to do something about it, whether or not my neighbor is dealing with his crazy brother.

I'll take another stab at this, and try to answer the point you were actually making. Going with your analogy:

  • If I run into my crazy brother and my neighbor's crazy brother kicking the shit out of each other, knowing that either of them is crazy enough to turn on me if I come close, or hell that they might even team up against me, if I get between them, oh and there's my neighbor watching the whole thing from afar, not make a single movement or giving any hint he will help, but expecting I will do something about it, do I still have a moral duty to intervene?
  • If I run into my crazy brother kicking the shit out of my neighbor, but the last 3 times it was the neighbor's crazy brother kicking the shit out of me, and the neighbor's intervention consisted of saying "ok let's go home now" after his brother beat me to a bloody pulp, do I still have a moral duty to intervene then? In this analogy we are assuming there's no police or higher authority to appeal to.

Your brothers are crazy and I've never seen a single indication that you even think it's a problem. You just engage in pure "arguments as soldiers" arguing.

But by all means, show us the way. Demonstrate some policing of your own side.

Your brothers are crazy and I've never seen a single indication that you even think it's a problem.

Again, morality is not a tit-for-tat game. If you actually believe people on your own side to be evil then you have a duty to oppose them if it is in your power. Whataboutism regarding the outgroup's bad behavior is simply not relevant, no matter how bad that behavior is!

You have to be trolling, right? This is the most naked and shameless call for a double standard I've ever seen.

Everything you just said also applies to you. If morality is not tit-for-tat, then you still have an obligation to police your own side. And you don't even engage with the concept! Just slide right past it and press the attack. It's like you're brain damaged, or suffering some kind fo anti-memetic effect.

Or just egregiously obnoxious.

Everything you just said also applies to you. If morality is not tit-for-tat, then you still have an obligation to police your own side

Which I do! I didn't emphasize the point because like, you have to take my word for it. I'm not going to self-doxx and I'm not important enough to make an observable difference on the general state of leftist discourse. But I happily acknowledge that I have a duty to push back against evil in my own Tribe. I have never claimed otherwise, and I do not claim the behavior of the Red Tribe affects this duty in any way. Red Tribers in this thread are the people who claimed that defection on the Blue Tribe's part freed them from any responsibility to oppose evil among their tribesmen, and that is the claim I sought to refute. That my own position on evil in my own Tribe reflected the values I espoused, I thought was obvious from context and didn't need to be spelled out.

I also want to emphasize that I am not saying "Red Tribers have a responsibility to repress fellow Red Tribers whom I, a Blue Triber, deem evil". I am saying "Red Tribers have a responsibility to repress fellow Red Tribers whom they consider evil by their own standards" - eg if you're Right-wing but consider slavery to be evil then you should be putting genuine effort into opposing slavery apologists on your own side. If you don't claim to consider slavery apologia evil, or if you don't think people currently accused of being slavery apologists are actually pro-slavery, then fine! Where I push back is when they say "sure, I agree slavery is evil and that there are pro-slavery crazies in the Red Tribe, but the Blue Tribe doesn't punish its equally-evil pro-assassination crazies so why should I lift a finger to stop my crazies?", which I think is a morally untenable, hypocritical stance.

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I mostly agree in theory, but as far as I can see, this being applied in a rather one-sided manner has serious real-world consequences that can't be overlooked. In many parliamentary democracies, the moderate right refuses to work with the far-right, while the moderate left happily works together with the far-left, which means there is a strong bias in favor of the far-left of getting their way. Germany is the most extreme example here, as the moderate right has boxed itself into a corner of now only being able to coalition with left-wing parties. Only a fool would think this has no practical impact on politics, and indeed, the CDU was forced to put extremely stupid far-left green current-day demands into the german constitution just to avoid working together with the far-right.

The same happens with violent protests ; Several dozen organized, masked left-wing extremists can storm a moderate right (CDU) office, threaten staff and trash furniture and it will not even go into political violence stats since it gets recorded as a "protest". The moderate politician has to fear violent altercations with the left if he speaks or votes the wrong way. Again, this has practical impacts on political outcomes.

The same, again, in science, my own field of employment; Far-left activist-scholars (their own moniker!) get to openly admit that they consider their political views as more important than there scientific integrity, can openly involve themselves in blatant witch hunts, and there will be not only no repercussions, but they will be, if anything, rewarded with government money. On the other hand, a politically unaffiliated researcher who gets unfortunate results (by left-wing views, that is) in a study but stands by them due to the methodological strength of the design risks his whole career, and other moderate scientists around him are pressured to denounce him as far-right lest they get the same fate. That this is possible is a direct result of genuine right-wingers having been stringently excluded much earlier - not only would they have the moderate's back on this topic, it also means that the demand for right-wing extremism exceeds supply, so you have to start to cancel moderates to keep the far-left happy.

And I can only repeat it, I don't even consider myself right-wing. All I want is being able to do independent research(in my employment) or common-sense governance (in politics), and the far-left is fucking scary, has actual positions of power and can openly do what it wants with little fear of reprisal. The far-right is a bunch of truckers or anons that have to keep their head down lest it gets chopped.

This is the reason why Trump got elected, and why the Afd in germany is literally the largest party.

I can understand going out of my way to police the shitposters on my side when the two sides have roughly the same values, mutual respect for one another, and are committed to having a rational conversation. In that case this sort of policing of my side to conduct itself in a way that is not offensive to you reaffirms our mutual respect, serves as tangible evidence that our values are mostly aligned, and helps ensure that the rational dialogue continues. But when:

  • These gestures are not reciprocated
  • When they are offeres by my side unilaterally, they are not interpreted as proof our values are aligned
  • Rational dialogue is not only not happening, any attempt for my side to engage in it is met with coordinated efforts to shut it off
  • It's not even clear whether anyone is actually offended by any of this, or if it's just a cynical ploy to disrupt coordination on my side

Why should I work to make my side conform to your aesthetics? This has nothing to do with morality, your aesthetics are not morals.

Oh, if you don't believe that the shitposters in this particular case are evidencing any evil beliefs, or potential for harm, as you would recognize them in moral terms, then that answers that. I understood your talk of "coming together to (…) forge a pact to purge the crazies on each respective side" as applying to 'crazies' who you would find morally reprehensible by your own standards, as much as a sincere principled leftist might find assassination-supporting accelerationists or an indiscriminate cancel-mob morally reprehensible. I hadn't understood it as a question of 'aesthetics' at all. It is in that framework that I was arguing that you should still deal with the evil extremists on your own side even if the opposite side isn't repressing its own. If you agree with this principle, but simply don't think it applies to the YR chatlogs then we have no real disagreement and I'd simply misunderstood you.

Yeah, I think I was all over the place. The "purge the crazies" bit applied to past conversations that got me here. I wasn't sure how much the YR situation applied originally, but now it seems pretty clear to be humor.

…would you actually believe him if he said ‘yes’?

any number of players can play this game.

It seems rather obvious to me that for a very large number of people on the right or their sympathizers, the bottom has absolutely fallen out in terms of their regards to how they are perceived by their self-declared enemies.

On a personal note, I certainly don’t care. I’m interested because I’m intellectually inclined to want to really understand and discuss why things are the way they are, I enjoy it and it gives me pleasure and I think it makes the world a better place.

But I don’t care about leftists, at all. Certainly not about their perception of me and the right. I have no concern for their wellbeing, even just as people, and any pangs of sympathies I might have had for them are gone. I don’t actively want them to suffer, at least for no reason, but for most of the people who celebrated Kirk’s death I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire.

I did not feel this way ten years ago when I was more of a garden variety paleo-libertarian, I didn’t even feel this way five years ago after I had become a really strident right winger. Not even close.

As far as I’m concerned, open war is upon us whether we will it or not. The way the culture war has proceeded simply cements that notion.

Eh, it’s possible. People here are unusually likely to pass that sort of Turing test.

And I don’t disagree that the bottom, so to speak, has fallen out. There are a lot of people who are feeling more afraid, alienated, polarized. What they aren’t feeling is vindication. That’s something you get from people who were already thinking about a CW model.

If the turing test for denying wrongthink can be made by people on this board then the turing test isn't especially useful as a gauge, just like the actual turing test is just copeslop for teacher pets obsessed about their defining characteristic of intellect being supplanted by fancy calculators.

Also, how does one assess what other people are actually perceiving in their mental reward mechanism? This typical mindedness is especially uncharitable, and runs the serious risk of overinterpreting basic metaphor for much deeper meaning simply to fit ones own biases. Reading others as scared dumb animals simply because they find it unnecessary to explicitly verbalize the readily obvious sneering at the moral masters being shown as toothless is just contempt levelled from a different direction.

The test isn’t for denying wrongthink, but for “caring about anything like this from my own side.” More likely here than on the vast majority of forums. ArjinFerman and professorgerm both gave credible, level-headed examples of how they gave something genuine thought.

And I’m not interpreting mental rewards mechanisms. I’m arguing that we’ve gotten “the bottom falling out” on the object level, but not the meta level. People are rightfully upset about Kirk’s murder without coming to the same conclusions as Skeletor.

jumping at the bit

A daring synthesis.

Damn. I really screwed the shark.

Damn. I really screwed the shark.

I dare you to share your favorite search result for 'Shark Waifu'.

It has been 15 years since I have had occasion to use this.

https://i.postimg.cc/9F82dHCz/9b3qjdl5vpx21.jpg

It's water under the bus.

No no no, it'll be water under the duck once your bridges are in a row.

I should have known better than to count my gift horses before they hatch!

We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

Now, now don’t get your horses in a bunch.

You're replying to a filtered comment.

Yeah, I'm going to need anyone leaning left to rank these comments on a scale of "I want to shoot you in the head and watch your children die in your wife's arms".

Have you not been paying attention?

From what I've seen of the jokes, I couldn't help but be taken aback by how completely run-of-the-mill banal these would have been coming out of the mouths of standard issue blue tribe liberal progressive young adults in the 90s-00s with some equivalent nouns swapped around (or perhaps not, depending on how edgy they wanted to be), as someone who was one of those in that time. I feel like it exemplifies better than almost any single event I've seen recently of how much of the blue establishment and the Democratic party has taken on the role of the excoriating church lady, and as much as I hate the "[side] pounces" meme, this fits "Democrats pounce" to a tee. 2028 is still a ways away, but Vance's response is the one thing here that makes me slightly more optimistic about that, since he's probably the front runner to win that election right now.

Not just in the 90s-00s. This is absolutely bog standard group chat stuff that you'll see everywhere across the political spectrum to this day, with some variation in the specific memes used. I've been in group chats where the chair of a local DSA chapter exclusively used stars of David and watermelon emojis to react to messages, and where we regularly joke about how we won't hesitate to shoot the other in the street come the revolution. I've been in group chats where lefty academics in good standing call Donald Trump a faggot before joking about sharpening their guillotines. And I have yet to meet a conservative who can be half as cruel about someone's physical appearance as a catty gay man who assumes he's in friendly company.

Wherever young people (particularly young men) speak to each other privately, this is more-or-less what the conversations look like. I would expect a treasure trove of leaked democrat activist messages to appear very similar in a lot of ways.

A fair amount of those actually aghast about this stuff consists of old Republicans (the sort of figures that would be called "GOPe", though they're not really the establishment any more), with many libs/leftists more in the exasperated "Yes, of course they're saying that stuff, have you not been playing attention?" mode.

Well gosh golly gee willickers, mister! All of that combined sounds almost as bad as a Weekend Update joke swap! By the inverse property of bipolar politics, I'm now feeling much friendlier towards the young democrats, the people who've spent the last two years in open, full-throated support of the demonic death cult that wants to rape and murder my children for being Jewish.

Nah, I'm just kidding. Michael Che goes way harder than any of the stuff in that Politico article during the left's weekly religious services. The crocodile tears are worth nothing until Colin Jost's head is on a pike.

And finally, no one but the most repulsive monsters would ever interact with a horrid goblin like Richard Hanania. I'm sure the Kamala Harris supporters of the "right", like Fuentes, are quite terrible in private. I join the chorus of condemnations for Hanania and anyone else lowly and contemptible enough to invite him to a private group chat.

I join the chorus of condemnations for Hanania and anyone else lowly and contemptible enough to invite him to a private group chat.

Well since you're a fan of throwing out condemnations, I notice there is one thing you didn't condemn. The support of Hitler mentioned in the article.

Why is Hanania deserving of condemning but not neonazism? I don't want to assume you're a neonazi then, but "Hanania bad and needs condemning, neonazism ok don't condemn it" suggests that.

  • -25

Was there any actual support for Hitler? The single quote appears to be, as per the context The_Nybbler provided, a reducto ad absurdum joke.

Obviously, if the only "support" in this entire leak is that line, then you'll join us in condemning Politco for being disingenuous scumbags, right?

But yes, for the record, actual neonazis are contemptible retards. Also for the record, this includes affiliates and allies like Hamas and the young Democrats who support them :)

Was there any actual support for Hitler? The single quote appears to be, as per the context The_Nybbler provided, a reducto ad absurdum joke.

I don't understand what the humor here is in

A: "Let's elect the most hardcore of our beliefs"

B: "That would be Hitler"

Seems like an admission that the beliefs are Hitler Lite, not a great sign.

But ok, sure let's take that as just a joke and not read into anything. What about the other comments like the one about the Kansas delegation possibly liking someone more if they painted them as Nazis? It seems over and over again the joke here is "boy we sure are a lot like literal Nazis".

Republicans like Gov Scott, Stefanik, Roger Stone, etc all seem to be appalled by it, so it's not some just Bad Faith Left Wing thing either unless anyone who breaks tribal loyalty is inherently considered an outsider enemy.

  • -23

"Let's elect the most leftwing candidate we can."

"Great, so Stalin then?"

Does rephrasing it that way help you understand the joke, or are you going to go down with the USS Waging The Culture War?

The rightmost and "our beliefs" may be different things. Extrapolating your views to the most extreme failure state possible is not endorsing hyperbolic extremism.

If a Young Democrat said we need more government control over the economy and another one sarcastically replied "okay, Chairman Mao", I would not interpret that as literal support for Maoist economic policies.

This reads a lot like the "50 Stalins" dialog, and I at least see a plausible reading where "That would be Hitler" is rhetorically "No, 50 Stalins!" in a way that is pointing out the extremism of one's own side.

I guess it depends on how earnestly "Hitler" is supposed to be taken here, or if it's a clearly-over-the-top suggestion. Still relatively unprofessional for such an organizational forum, though.

At least some of the “praise for hitler” was mocking their own side/base for being far right.

Don’t know much about the rest. They should resign, but for being stupid and a liability not for their jokes.

In this day and age how is anyone dumb enough to make edgy jokes in professional or at least “official” forums.

Save it for the bar. Be friends with people IRL that you can meet with physically and say dumb shit to.

At least some of the “praise for hitler” was mocking their own side/base for being far right.

I don't think it was even that, it was a straight up joke.

AD: "He did say 'My delegates I bring will vote for the most right wing person'"

PG: "Great. I love Hitler"

A lot of seems to be a joke. For example, the gas chamber comment was in reference to republicans that didn’t vote for him or even republicans that did but weren’t full throated supports. It seems obvious that he doesn’t and would never actually want to gas them. It’s a clear joke. Maybe the sin is it isn’t that funny but it is a joke.

The terms nazi or hitler has no common meaning anymore, but it must be emphasized that the public generally understands the intent of meaning based on who the speaker is. A right winger calling himself a nazi is appropriating the maximalistically offensive affect to piss off liberals since a 13-52 Noticer is equivalent to a nazi anyways. A left winger levelling the accusation is trying to reputationally damage the other party by association, not actually sincerely believing that the right winger wants to implement dirigisme economics or cease supporting israel. Even right wing conspiraticism about Israel is AIPAC Noticing and old school WASP contempt for an uppity ingerior. not left wing desires for Israeli disarmanent and Palestinian rightmaxxing so the jews can be sacrificed on the multicultural altar. @cjet79 is absolutely correct that the leak of this groupchat is lame pointscoring at its worst and in fact reinforces the notion that leftists are hypocritical scolds (we can celebrate charlie kirk getting capped but nono words are proof of the Bad Nazi!)

If there was another group that was categorically evil and widely understood as such the left would totally use that label on their enemies. The problem for the left is that the term has been so devalued thanks to overuse that the right can just yeschad the accusation, and the shifting of the overon window has made previously verboten issues like black underachievement fit for discussing now.

absolutely correct that the leak of this groupchat is lame pointscoring at its worst and in fact reinforces the notion that leftists are hypocritical scolds (we can celebrate charlie kirk getting capped but nono words are proof of the Bad Nazi!)

"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible. If that is not "proof of Bad Nazi" to you, what is?

And it's not just "leftists", the Republican governor of Vermont has also joined in condemning the group chat. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5556112-vermont-gov-scott-calls-state-senator-resign-gop-group-chat/

Or maybe the group chat's commentary about the pressure they feel to never publicly disagree with the leader or else they get labeled RINOs is true, and "leftists" just includes Governor Scott and Elise Stefanik as exiles who spoke up against the tribe.

  • -36

Phil Scott is, quite literally, a liberal republican. That doesn't mean he has nothing to say, it just means that using him as an example of how not all conservatives get the joke is... questionable.

I would assume that Stefanik's statement was written by a PR team, like those of state republican chapters.

Well I guess we've proven the group chat's fears that any disagreement = getting called a RINO and lib correct.

  • -14

If that is not "proof of Bad Nazi" to you, what is?

Is Hitler in the room with us right now?

Look. The reason communists hate fascists is because the driving impulse behind both are identical except for who, whom. It's bikeshedding.

The reason Germany and Italy went one way and Russia and China went the other is simply due to which gender role [gender is too reductive in the face of mechanization] found itself in oversupply relative to its output given the technological conditions at the time. Working class men were in undersupply in the former nations, and in oversupply in the latter (sometimes called the 'unneccessariat').

That is why communism usually goes full civil war mass murder dependent on the poverty of the nation, whereas fascism does not need to. (That's not a guarantee it won't, of course, but since when have dictatorships- including communism/fascism, which is the dictatorship of the working class- ever really been rational?)

"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible.

If serious, then it's proof of LARP.

If that is not "proof of Bad Nazi" to you, what is?

Nothing anymore. I'm in agreement with @KMC. Nazi is a meaningless term nowadays. Back when there was an actual nazi party, you could be a nazi. For a few years after the war, with a network of your old nazi buddies, you could maybe claim to be a nazi. But by now, the term has lost its original meaningful application, and anyone even actively claiming to be a nazi is a joke. Anyone claiming that someone else, someone else who has not just woken up from an 80-year slumber, is a nazi, is either historically ignorant or just complete indifferent. The word nazi, in the 2020s is, and I am very serious about this, nothing but a signal, a target painter, a LASER designator meant to point out POLITICALLY BAD GUY.

Show me the modern nazi. Point him out. And explain to me what it is that makes him a nazi, the true heir to a label that described one political movement and its adherents in 1920s and 1930s Germany, who made up their ideology as they went along. And why that label fits better than "trolling LARPer".

I wasn't the one asked, but... We've got at least two of them right here on the forum. SS being a good example of a modern Nazi. He thinks the Holocaust was a good thing (while also denying its scale).

Alright. Even granting that SS is indeed a bonafide National Socialist who got frozen at the end of WW2 and thawed just a few years ago, and not just a trolling LARPer or an outright schizo, what does that even mean? Is he angling for German racial supremacy, AND the extermination of the jews, AND an infinitely powerful totalitarian autocracy with an extractive party aristocracy, AND militant territorial expansionism AND rapid flip-flopping on modernism VS tradition, AND vigilante anticommunism, AND occasional heavy-handed attempts to regulate the markets...

...or is he just a holocaust revisionist, and that's the label that actually describes what he does, while "nazi" raises more questions than it answers?

Obviously I mean "neo-nazi" when I say modern nazi. Why are you getting wrapped up in semantics around whether it's right to call a holocaust defender a nazi? Pretty dubious move.

Because they're not the same thing. Even our terminology right here is divergent.

A holocaust defender claims that the holocaust was good. A holocaust denier claims that the holocaust did not happen. A holocaust revisionist claims that the holocaust happened other than commonly told. A neo-nazi is an edgy punk with swastikas instead of anarchy symbols. A nazi is a member of the NSDAP, and maybe by association someone who directly collaborates with them. A "modern" nazi would be an ideological national socialist, but good luck pinning that down.

Of course, these distinctions aren't required if all you want to say is "BAD RIGHT WINGER". Then it's indeed all the same.

Nazi = bad.
Nazi apologia = bad.
Nazi apologist =/= Nazi.

The problem with applying the label of Nazi to connote badness is that the charge is so easy to reject on account of the labelled not actually being an actual Nazi (I assume SS isn't a WW2 veteran living in a German care home). It's intellectually lazy. Nazi apologia is bad on its own merits, it doesn't need the laziest boo-light in the world to fortify any criticisms.

Hyperbole and false equivalence are a cancer on discourse, and getting away from that cancer is why I came to TheMotte.

["But isn't 'laziest boo-light in the world' also hyperbole?". No, because I can't think of a lazier one other than maybe "eww, you're smelly".]

When a confirmed neo-nazi can't get away from being called a "nazi", the place has really gone to the dogs...

This is a weird argument, and it's been cropping up a lot lately. It's one thing to argue that as a matter of fact there aren't any Nazis around - it's one thing to argue that the term has been broadened in common usage so as to be useless as anything but an insult - but the idea that it would be impossible for the term to be meaningful anymore? If there was a prominent movement which actually supported applying modernized versions of all core Nazi policies to 2020s America then I don't think it it would be useless or meaningless to call them Nazis. They don't have to prove that they are somehow "true heirs" to the 40s Nazi Party as an institution for that to, in principle, be a useful descriptor of something that quacks and goose-steps like a duck. That would go double if we posit that they explicitly aspire to rehabilitate Hitler and reclaim his legacy. Maybe there aren't any "modern Nazis" outside of a Lizardman's constant, but there could be, it's easy to imagine how that would work and how it would differ from the trolling LARPers we more commonly observe. The obvious comparison is the continued existence of Stalinists, Maoists, or even, like, European royalists in countries that abolished their monarchies centuries back.

Show me the modern nazi. Point him out.

The last real Nazi I'm aware of got a standing ovation in the Canadian Parliament.

Azov? Pretty sure they are indeed trolling LARPers trying to amp up the edgy factor. Which, granted, is something the nazis also did, but that's hardly exclusive to them or essential to nazism.

I'll give you that they can seem somewhat more real if you angle your perspective just right to see some Freikorps or anticommunist parallels...but I'd still call it LARP overall.

I think he means the centenarian SS collaborationist. Famous for being invited to speak at the Canadian parliament as a veteran of WW2 and a fighter for Ukrainian independence against Russia. Allegedly, the people in charge of the ceremony were blissfully unaware of what kind of military formations were conducting Ukrainian resistance against Russia at that time.

Ah, my bad, I should've actually read the damn thing.

Yeah, fair enough, that guy might have been an actual nazi or at least a hanger-on to actual nazis once upon a time.

Okay, how about composing and performing a song about it being springtime for Hitler?

"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible. If that is not "proof of Bad Nazi" to you, what is?

Did you read the context?

AD: He did say “My delegates I bring will vote for the most right wing person”

PG: Great. I love Hitler

Do you think that last line, if this was written with acting cues as in script, would be:

PG *with stars in his eyes at the thought of a Fourth Reich* : Great. I love Hitler!

or

PG *deadpan* : Great. I love Hitler.

or

PG *sarcastically* : Great. I love Hitler

We aren't elcor who need to prefix our emotional framing with our statements, we can simply read a statement in its isolation and make the value judgment. It should be pointed out that 'Great. I love Hitler' is about as anodyne a statement as 'Great. I love mac and cheese', meaning context is actually necessary to understand the totality of that statements value and renders the statement useless as a singular point of evidence. If you have to ask 'what did you mean when you said you love hitler' it means that 'i love hitler' has been so degraded as a totalizing phrase that you can't make any associated terms stick with it. That is entirely the lefts fault for making Everything I Don't Like Is Hitler.

A group chat of your friends is leaked. The text:

A: I'll vote for the leftmost candidate

B: Great. I love Stalin

Would you consider calling B "a leftwing extremist praising Stalin" a fair reading?

My suggestion for the punchline would be

B: Great, then we'll have a Great Leap Forward!

which would then be characterized as "support for genocide".

"I love Hitler" seems about as literal Nazi as possible.

There are no literal Nazis, and there haven't been in 80 years. That's part of the point here, you're chasing boogeymen.

Republican governor of Vermont

The difference between Vermont and New Hampshire.

There are no literal Nazis, and there haven't been in 80 years. That's part of the point here, you're chasing boogeymen.

So "I love Hitler" is about as literal Nazi as possible in a world where the Nazi party is no longer around?

  • -22

No. Otherwise it would mean you've just become about as literal Nazi as possible in a world where the Nazi party is no longer around.

This storm in a teacup seems to be getting more juicy/spicy, since rumours are swirling. Milo (yes, 'tis he) is claiming that the leaker was Gavin Wax who co-operated with Politico (in a way that frankly reminds me of the guy who pointed Cade Metz at Scott and fed him tidbits as part of his axe-grinding with the Rationalists).

Is this the result of internal power-struggles or in-fighting, and Wax is trying to destroy a particular opponent/rival? Has anyone got the inside scoop on this? If this is all a catfight over person or persons trying to get into the inner circle/back in/kick the other guy out, it becomes way more interesting than "bunch of idiot college kids do idiot stuff" (because the kind of people who join The Young Whatever Party groups in college, no matter what country, tend to be a particular type who are both politics wonks and politically ambitious, hoping to parlay involvement in such groups into some sort of political career, and nobody else gives a damn. See William Hague).

I was gonna say that if this all blew over with nothing happening then I would finally admit that the pendulum is swinging and woke is on the downturn. But I see that a few people have already stepped down, so, yeah. Anyone trying to say that “the era of woke is over” is coping.

Has the definition of woke gone so far as to cover "Being against the love of Hitler"? If that's the case, the pendulum is going to start swinging back into "woke" pretty quickly given how most of the US do not support the Nazis.

  • -31

More like "being against bad jokes in groupchats."

Anyone been fired recently for calling white people goblins? No? Yawn.

My feel (can't of course fully tell the atmosphere as a non-American) is that this sort of a thing would have got a bigger reaction and more fallout in literally any preceeding era than the current one. At this point basically anyone in politics under 45, left or right, has probably factored in the idea that young right-wingers are going to make rape and Holocaust jokes in private groupchats, but it's still evidently a wild concept to those over 45. (Since the olds are also likely the ones who hold the purse strings in orgs like this, of course the organizational leadership also has to react.)

Such as JD Vance, whose only comment is to call it "pearl clutching"

He's got a good finger on the pulse. If you had the same access to 'Young Democrats' or whatever it is on a college campus, you could 'both sides' this pretty quickly. Edgy backroom shit-talking isn't the same as public mass incitement to violence.

If you had the same access to 'Young Democrats' or whatever it is on a college campus, you could 'both sides' this pretty quickly

Indeed, Vance did exactly this, bringing up the Virginia AG candidate who called for the deaths of conservatives’ children in a text message exchange.

Now I have to disagree with our vice president here, I don't think it is pearl clutching to oppose support of Hitler.

I probably should write something more elaborate, in the spirit of cjet's post, but I'm sorry I cant be arsed to take any of this seriously anymore. I believe all this is, in fact, pearl clutching, that there is no actual moral outrage expressed by people trying to make a mountain of this particular molehill, and it's just a cynical attempt to make the outgroup jump through the ingroup hoops.

I refuse, and I will need material evidence that anyone is actually bothered by any if this, before addressing it seriously.

I probably should write something more elaborate, in the spirit of cjet's post, but I'm sorry I cant be arsed to take any of this seriously anymore. I believe all this is, in fact, pearl clutching, that there is no actual moral outrage expressed by people trying to make a mountain of this particular molehill, and it's just a cynical attempt to make the outgroup jump through the ingroup hoops.

To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not? If supporting Hitler is acceptable when done in private conversations, then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?

  • -32

You keep repeating this but seem oblivious to the fact that the statement appears sarcastic.

then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?

Betrayal, disloyalty, perfidy, treachery, and supporting foreign migration.

Interesting how pretty much all of this is just "people who don't show perfect loyalty to the tribe". In which case I suppose there's a question to be asked.

Why should the Gov Scott/Stefanik/Roger Stone/etc crew who are appalled by Nazism and bigotry have to show their loyalty to the Nazi side and accept their anti American values, instead of the Nazi side having to show their loyalty to the Gov Scott/etc side and stop being Nazis?

  • -20

If you're really curious about what I think about actually supporting actual Hitler, than I'm against it and don't find it acceptable, but the point is you don't get to tell me what constitutes supporting Hitler.

This is in fact lame

I know discord chats. I know signal chatrooms. I know locker room joking. I can't help but roll my eyes at this, and I probably agree with Vance the most that it is Pearl Clutching. I'd also agree with Hanania that for a private group chat this is tame (and I'd go further and say that it is in fact kind of lame for how tame it is).

There are public spaces and there are private spaces. In public spaces you should expect hostile audiences and for people to take your words seriously. You better say what you mean and mean what you say, because you be held to account. In private spaces ... well we aren't actually robots capable of perfect emotional control all the time. Sometimes you want to blow off steam, or say ridiculous things you don't mean, or exaggerate for a joke. Or god forbid, the worst of all, have a friendly audience reading and interpreting your thoughts.

I understand trying to use whatever ammo you get against your political opponents. I just can't imagine any scenario where I'd condemn my political allies for this kind of leaked chat group. Especially one with younger professionals. God forbid I ever get judged for the things I have said in private spaces.

Making friends 101

I've had a mostly tame internet life because around 2009 I started considering everything I typed and wrote online to be public, even when written under a pseudonym. I try to write things that I am willing to attach to my name and identity. I do not have the same rules for spoken conversation or private group messaging. If you have not said things in private conversations that would get you pilloried and lampooned in public then I would submit that you have no real friends. Its a trust exercise. Say heinous crap, get a laugh, then they say heinous crap back. Or if its not funny, you still say heinous crap back because its a sign of trust in a society where certain opinions can get you "cancelled". Even if its your real opinion and your real opinion sucks and I hate it and think its evil, I can signal that I'm a real friend by being like "ok im not gonna hold that shit opinion against you".

And why the hell am I explaining all of this? Is everyone else just pretending this is not how the world works while we put on a public facade of 'oh yes this is so terrible, how could anyone ever say this'? Or is it genuinely secret knowledge to people about how to make friends and socialize? If its the former, drop it, we don't need to lie about the world here. If its the latter ... I'm sorry I don't mean to be harsh. But try something for me ... go nurse some beers at a bar. Try and find a lonely guy to talk with. One hour into the conversation start making it clear that you are something absolutely reprehensible. A nazi, a closet racist, a former criminal, etc. As long as it is not something directly antagonistic to the guy you are speaking with (can't be a racist to a black guy, that is hard mode and you can try it next time) they will mostly shrug it off and proceed to tell you something equally reprehensible about themselves. It can sometimes accidentally turn into a one-upmanship of "im the worst human ever". I was drunk enough to type up an example of what me and one of my friends do in the "worst human ever" one-upmanship game. But that violates my other rule of treating this like a public space.

As always I can test my acceptance of this by how I'd respond to people of different viewpoints saying this shit. And I remember "oh yeah I lived with a guy who was kinda communist". He definitely joked that me and my libertarian self would be one of the first ones up against the wall when the revolution came. I have another person I knew that is now a mayor in a small Pennsylvania town. I have video of him petting an endangered species (manatee), and saying the n-word just to get a rise out of another person on the trip we were on (I might have that on video as well). I like him more for having done those things. But I actually strongly dislike the guy. If he had not done those things in front of me, but I had evidence of him doing it, I'd probably happilly release those things.

Someone failed the trust test, or just didn't want to be a part of it all anyways. All the people that got caught saying heinous shit should resign, but mostly because they failed in the judgement test between a private and public space. Probably one of the most important social skills to have if you are a politician. This whole incident says little else.

Thank God you are here, it feels like I woke up yesterday and suddenly everyone I previously trusted was claiming the sky was green and had always been green.

To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not? If supporting Hitler is acceptable when done in private conversations, then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?

Like I can hardly imagine something more awful than that. Jay Jones comments were nasty, but even that is about just a few kids instead of millions and millions of people.

  • But try something for me ... go nurse some beers at a bar. Try and find a lonely guy to talk with. One hour into the conversation start making it clear that you are something absolutely reprehensible. A nazi, a closet racist, a former criminal, etc. As long as it is not something directly antagonistic to the guy you are speaking with (can't be a racist to a black guy, that is hard mode and you can try it next time) they will mostly shrug it off and proceed to tell you something equally reprehensible about themselves. It can sometimes accidentally turn into a one-upmanship of "im the worst human ever". I was drunk enough to type up an example of what me and one of my friends do in the "worst human ever" one-upmanship game. But that violates my other rule of treating this like a public space.

Should the standards we have of politicians and their staffers be "random lonely guy getting drunk at the bar"? Sounds like we're selecting for losers if our baseline is losers.

Idk, maybe you've talked about your love of Hitler in a bar before. But I've never said that I love Hitler, and I'm sure tons of other people never have so clearly it's not required to have a friendship or a private chat. Considering some of the Republican response here like Gov Scott, it seems many of them don't consider loving Hitler as normal chat topics either.

What is the difference between a person who says they love Hitler and a person like me who doesn't say it?

  • -44

Are you familiar with the concept of sarcasm? Personally, I've never believed in it.

I love Stalin and Hitler and Pol Pot btw.

Ah but it wouldn't advance your argument soldier to obtusely pretend to not understand jokes like an inhuman robot in this circumstance, so I'm sure you understand the non-literal subtext perfectly.

To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not?

I think you are confusing someone saying "I support Hitler" in a private, friendly conversation with actually supporting Hitler. Of course everyone who supports Hitler would say they support him, but not everyone who says they support him actually supports him. That is part of the point @cjet79 is getting at, I think.

For example, I have cracked jokes in the presence of friends to the effect of "slavery was great, we need to go back to that". But I do not actually want slavery to be practiced, it is just an edgy joke. One I would probably get turbo canceled for if I were a public figure, no doubt, but still just a joke.

I get the sense that with these Republican messages, you're taking them completely at face value (because they are your outgroup and it's just human nature to believe bad things about your outgroup). But you can't just assume that at the start, and then ask pointed "wait so supporting Hitler is ok?" questions. First we need to come to an agreement whether these dudes actually support Hitler, or if they were making edgy jokes. Only then can we have a well-founded discussion about "is that ok for them to do".

What is the difference between a person who says they love Hitler and a person like me who doesn't say it?

What is the difference between a person who says they love terrorism and a person like me who doesn't say it?

A degree from Cambridge? A job at Harvard? The presidency? Man, loving terrorists must be good for your career... as long as they're left-wing terrorists, of course.

To be clear, is support of Hitler acceptable from politicians and staffers or is it not? If supporting Hitler is acceptable when done in private conversations, then what behavior if any is unacceptable to you?

It is absolutely unacceptable and abhorrent behavior to leak private group chats. See, I have standards!

In my opinion there is literally nothing that can be said between two consenting adults in a private conversation that I would consider unacceptable behavior.

When I was in middle school and highschool kids around me would make dead baby jokes, Holocaust / gas chamber jokes, they'd say all racial slurs, and they'd talk about fucking each other's mothers and sisters.

I think you missed the part above where I said this is lame because of how tame it is. These people are nerds. And the only thing I find lamer is pretending that this is horrible as a way to score political points.

Of course some Republican dude condemned them. As I said above they should resign for failing to distinguish between a private and public space.

You seem really stuck on the Hitler thing. But I clearly was talking in general terms about many different ways we can be terrible human beings.

My assumptions for someone that says they have not experienced this kind of bonding:

  1. They are female
  2. They are autistic
  3. They have no intrusive thoughts
  4. They are lying

It's fine if you are 1-3. You'll just have to trust me when I say that these conversations take place all the time. I'm 100% certain that you know a man who has had a "say horrible things" conversation within the last month. I'm decently certain (80%) based on your comments that none of these men would be stupid enough to admit it to you, so you'll never know who they are.

In my opinion there is literally nothing that can be said between two consenting adults in a private conversation that I would consider unacceptable behavior.

So two adults coordinating a child porn ring is acceptable as long as it's done in private? Might need to walk back your literally nothing claim here.

It's fine if you are 1-3. You'll just have to trust me when I say that these conversations take place all the time

I'm sorry, but if you're in such a world where you genuinely believe that every man jokes this way and anyone who doesn't is just a liar, it says a lot more about you and the people you hang out with in your dark matter world than about men in general.

This type of defense is truly incredible just as a concept though. Like it's literally "Yes all men!" but as an endorsement, it comes off as a lack of imagination and theory of mind.

  • -23

The world that looks more like the dark matter world from my perspective is the bubble that has formed adjacent the Western progressive ideology, where the healthy and fun trust exercise of saying outlandish things in private company, knowing that all present trust you to not really mean it, is taken deathly seriously.

If the men you know never make offensive jokes and can't even fathom why making offensive jokes is fun, I think they have poorer lives for it.

So two adults coordinating a child porn ring is acceptable as long as it's done in private? Might need to walk back your literally nothing claim here.

I italicized "said" for a very specific reason. Plenty of things you can do that are unacceptable behavior. But the doing is the bad part not the saying. And ya you can larp being pedos in your own private time. As long as you don't do it why should I care?

I'm sorry, but if you're in such a world where you genuinely believe that every man jokes this way and anyone who doesn't is just a liar, it says a lot more about you and the people you hang out with in your dark matter world than about men in general.

This "world" I'm living in is also called TheMotte. Every other comment here is agreeing with me. I don't think it is literally every man, but it's close. Similar to the percentage of men that jerk off to porn. Sorry if that is also a revelation to you.

This type of defense is truly incredible just as a concept though. Like it's literally "Yes all men!" but as an endorsement, it comes off as a lack of imagination and theory of mind.

I don't think I'm the one lacking in theory of mind. Everyone here is telling you this is a common experience and your response has basically been 'no way!' how many people would you need to hear it from to believe us? I can find you clips of famous people talking about it, but unless you pre-commit to some threshold that would change your mind I'm sure you'll just find new reasons to dismiss that evidence.

This "world" I'm living in is also called TheMotte. Every other comment here is agreeing with me.

That's crazy, the place you choose to associate with has similar opinions to you? Incredible! That totally disproves the idea that other people exist with different views.

Also "every other comment" except for the ones like me who are disagreeing with you.

Similar to the percentage of men that jerk off to porn. Sorry if that is also a revelation to you.

If you think the amount of men who joke about their love for Hitler and say Jews are dishonest is the same as men who like porn, you seem to have a very pessimistic and sad view of men. There are lots of fantastic guys. Even lots of fantastic conservative guys who are actively condemning this behavior like Governor Scott, or some of the guys at the Babylon bee or some of the National Review reporters.

I don't think I'm the one lacking in theory of mind. Everyone here is telling you this is a common experience and your response has basically been 'no way!' how many people would you need to hear it from to believe us?

And there are also lots of men who say "No, I don't talk about how Jews are dishonest all the time". Sure maybe they're pretty much all lying, but it's also possible that you are stuck in a Hitler Bubble where you associate with others in the hitler bubble and you can't fathom that there are tons of great and fine men not in the Hitler Bubble.

  • -21

Even lots of fantastic conservative guys who are actively condemning this behavior like Governor Scott, or some of the guys at the Babylon bee or some of the National Review reporters.

AKA "guys who know and accept the work rules."

What is your threshold for being convinced? If you don't have one that's fine, that saves me even more time.

I believe you'll find the threshold is "just the other side of whatever is on offer".

Literally "Yes [practically] all men!" That's correct. "Locker room talk" is real.

There's a Chappell Show sketch about a woman who develops psychic powers and hears men's thoughts. She is comedically horrified at every man she meets including a middle school boy. You are resembling that character a bit.

I think you have a very sad and hateful view of what men are like if you believe they're all joking about how Jews are dishonest and gas chambers.

  • -23

I think you have a very sad and hateful view of humor if you believe that someone joking about how Jews are dishonest and gas chambers is something that reflects badly on them.

So two adults coordinating a child porn ring is acceptable as long as it's done in private? Might need to walk back your literally nothing claim here.

Yes. Why wouldn't it be? They'd still obviously be liable for creation/distribution/possession of the child porn itself so there's no need to crack down on mere "coordination" other than an authoritarian desire to sneak in more control over private speech in general.

I am happy for my female friends, for they are enriched: they have heard the most horrible things I have ever said out loud.

My assumptions for someone that says they have not experienced this kind of bonding:

  1. They are female
  2. They are autistic
  3. They have no intrusive thoughts
  4. They are lying

Or they're putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin' frogs gay!

Sometimes I am shocked at how poorly the female mind grapples with things like this. Like, I've heard my wife have abhorrent conversations with her best friend on the phone that she absolutely does not mean. And yet when confronted with someone else having had a similar conversation, she cannot relate. How horrible. Clutch the pearls!

I remember when Trump's Hollywood Access tape leaked, and she really was in the grips of the "My father would never say something like that" propaganda that was going around. I had to gently remind her that her father served in the military. No effect. I went further, that he's told the same joke a dozen times about telling a waitress she "gave good head" and offending her when she served him a beer with the perfect amount of head on it. That had some slight effect. Still, those pearls were clutched, if slightly less hard.

Ha, ya the military is often the Pinnacle of male bonding rituals. I'm sure any given barracks regularly has the most heinous shit said in it.

The military is the most racist and sexist and homophobic culture that is also the gayest race blind society in practice (except the USN which is race segregated by shop). Still sexist as fuck but thats the reality of kinetic capality being inviolate.

I think you missed the part above where I said this is lame because of how tame it is. These people are nerds. And the only thing I find lamer is pretending that this is horrible as a way to score political points.

To be fair, I don't think many left-wingers have these spaces. Just toxic longhouse cesspits where no irreverence is permitted because that would release tension and distract from the seething Twenty-Four Hour Hates. That's why places like Chapo and CumTown were so important.

I knew more leftists growing up than righties. They absolutely had these places. One of the most leftist people I knew in highschool was a Jewish guy and he had all of the best Holocaust jokes.

I know fewer super lefties today. But the moderate democrat dads I know are still willing to sling around the wild stuff in private conversations.

Back when SBF was in the news for massive fraud etc. I made some random comment about him having a Jew-fro. My sister was quite offended by this and said it was a rude thing to say, even though I first learned the term from a Jewish friend in high school who rocked a pretty awesome Jew-fro (unlike SBF's nasty greasy rat's nest).

Heck, the very term "Jew" was declared offensive in some blue tribe circles 5+ years ago! There was even a This American Life episode featuring the Jewish host Ira Glass asking one of his younger interns or recent hires to describe what person he is in terms of his religion, and she insisted on calling him a "Jewish person" or something of the sort, while explicitly refusing to call him a "Jew," despite the fact that he self-identified as a "Jew."

I don't think it caught on, but then again, the blue tribe environments in which I reside don't have that many Jews and don't talk about Jews much, so it could be one of those things that just quietly passed under my radar and is actually dominant in the blue tribe.

Jew is a slur or the proper terminology depending on how much stank is put on it. So it's one of those things that's a lot easier to parse the meaning of when spoken, less so over text. I'm completely unsurprised young people who primarily communicate via text rather than speech would be uncomfortable with Jew as a term

Yeah, as with a lot of things Jewish, there's two kinds of people who use the noun "Jew" to refer to a Jewish person -- neo-Nazis and Jews.

(OK maybe boomers too)

I am so profoundly glad I had my teens and 20-somethings before the age of, whatever this is. We had ICQ, AOL IM, irc, and to the best of my knowledge none of this was really permanent? Logs were all stored locally, if you missed something in irc, you just missed it. It was all far more ephemeral by nature.

I'm especially glad there are no recording of what went on at LAN parties even into our 20's. Or the insane conversations we had at college. Or the things we said drunk post college. Or the chauvinistic things we joked about when we started having some success with women.

Side note: Didn't we just get done watching liberals melt down over "comedy being illegal" because Jimmy Kimmel almost lost his job? Isn't Jay Jones still running in my state on a platform of making me suffer because I'm evil, I'm breeding little fascist, and I need to feel the boot until I change my politics? And not a single Democrat has called for him to drop out, or even withdrawn their endorsement?

JD has the right of this.

I am so profoundly glad I had my teens and 20-somethings before the age of, whatever this is. We had ICQ, AOL IM, irc, and to the best of my knowledge none of this was really permanent? Logs were all stored locally, if you missed something in irc, you just missed it. It was all far more ephemeral by nature.

I'm especially glad there are no recording of what went on at LAN parties even into our 20's. Or the insane conversations we had at college. Or the things we said drunk post college. Or the chauvinistic things we joked about when we started having some success with women.

Same. I said a lot of things as a teen and in my early 20s that I would deeply regret if they had been made permanent online. Thank goodness social media, and more importantly Twitter, wasn't a thing when I was most stupid.

My observation of young, confident males is that they are often disagreeable by their nature. The most hilarious thing in the world to me when I was young was watching one of my friends do or say something absurd that either straddled or blatantly crossed the line of what was considered acceptable to decent people. CKY (and then Jackass) had some of the funniest things I'd ever seen on video. I wasn't nearly as wild as some of the people I was acquainted with, but I would laugh very hard at the wild things they did. The incentive to be edgy in young male social circles is pretty high. All that being said, when you're running a political organization in the current era you cannot say the things they said and expect those logs not to be leaked. I think having some cooth goes a long way, even in today's world.

All that being said, when you're running a political organization in the current era you cannot say the things they said and expect those logs not to be leaked. I think having some cooth goes a long way, even in today's world.

Why? This was probably the first all male inclusive space (or so they thought) that they'd ever experienced. They'd been denied any third space to be boys their entire lives.

I mean, you aren't wrong, but also, what you expect is impossible in context.

Because politics and bed fellows, and because it has gradually become common knowledge that this is a "do so at your own risk" type situation where the risk appears to be increasing almost daily.

It is no longer smart to exchange jokes of that nature in text groups with your name attached to them while being a public figure of any kind, especially if you are a political figure.

If the context is, Young males should never make obscene jokes no matter the place or setting, then yes, that is impossible. If the context is, Young males who work with the public in a political role should never make obscene jokes in text chats that could be used against them later, then I think that is possible and it will work itself out naturally. Young, smart, politically active males looking to fill these roles will either take this story as a cautionary tale or they won't.

Or you could just work to remove the stigma against making obscene jokes in private chats. Vance's comment works toward this goal. The left has already done this for their people, there's no reason for the right to keep punishing their own.

See, but you skipped the part where I pointed out, how?! They have no third spaces to do so. None. Zero. Zilch. There is zero third space for male bonding. So of course the moment they find themselves in a remotely male third space, they begin doing the repressed male bonding rituals that are their nature. It's unfortunate that the first third space they found that fits the bill is a Young Republicans Group. But society failed them first, by denying them any other third space before that one.

Yeah, I see the predicament and agree it is a major problem for young males. To answer your "how?" question, I honestly don't know for the general population of young males, and it is a fair point. It currently serves as a natural filter to weed out those prone to edgy remarks and the occasional anti-social behavior (that is actually pro-social in context), but if the filter is applied to almost everything a young male does digitally, then the weeding out isn't just limited to bad weeds.

I googled myself in 2009 when I was a senior in highschool and the fourth result that came up was me on a Facebook post saying that a movie was stupid. In a group that I thought was private.

That was when I scrubbed what I could of old posts from Facebook and elsewhere that had my name attached. I started using reddit more instead to comment. But even on reddit I had it in the back of my mind that my username might be linked to my real name at some point.

Something in society has been damaged from everyone living in the panopticon. I don't even know what it is, because it has been this way my entire adult life. I do know that the way most people cope is by making the private spaces as different as they can.

Anyone leaking private space conversations is always the asshole. I try not to change my opinion of the victim of the leak, but that's not always doable.

'Did JD have anything to say about the comments on Charlie Kirk's shooting' is the pertinent question here, I think.

Don't care, and this is also a false equivalence. To the best of my knowledge, nobody was fired because of things they said about Charlie Kirk in leaked private messages. They were fired because they were in positions of trust (teacher, doctor, etc), and they posted horrific things endorsing his assassination publicly and proudly under their full name. These are not the same thing, don't pretend they are, I'm not playing along.

But that's how these arguments always go. Jay Jones wasn't directly telling his political opponents over SMS and then a phone call that they deserve to die, something which if I'd done would have been a terroristic threat, it was a "leaked private conversation" and a "joke". No, it fucking wasn't, and also, that's exactly what these Young Republicans are getting fired for.

I said before, when teachers were getting fired because nobody wants psychos like that teaching their children, that the left wasn't upset that the right were hypocrites, they were upset that the rules they thought were meant only for them were being used by others. Then Jimmy Kimmel was back on TV after blood libeling his political opponents, and people pretended cancel culture had been defeated.

I don't know how many times this needs to happen before people stop pretending the defectbots will never stop smashing defect.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody was fired because of things they said about Charlie Kirk in leaked private messages. They were fired because they were in positions of trust (teacher, doctor, etc), and they posted horrific things endorsing his assassination publicly and proudly under their full name. These are not the same thing, don't pretend they are, I'm not playing along.

They are the same thing. Both of these situations reflect the same interior motivations, and insofar as feeling joy at Charlie Kirk's death is horrific, all of these people ought to have been punished. It makes sense from a practical perspective to punish only the highest profile cases as a warning to the rest, but the point was not to punish people for "saying things".

Don't care, and

You waste time typing anything after "and" if you've already admitted you don't care. Anyway, pivoting from pearl-clutching over the other side being publicly edgy towards you to calling out pearl-clutching when it is directed at you, for any reason, is a whiplash hazard.

Not "did people who are freaking out about this have anything to say about the comments on Charlie Kirk"?

The principle of "who whom" has been, to my understanding, established to broadly apply to both sides. So the most new information that can be gained is whether it applies specifically to JD Vance.

The question is whether you are particupating in the "who whom" yourself.

Naturally.

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