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"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.
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.
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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 warmass 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?)More options
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If serious, then it's proof of LARP.
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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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Okay, how about composing and performing a song about it being springtime for Hitler?
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Did you read the context?
Do you think that last line, if this was written with acting cues as in script, would be:
or
or
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.
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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".
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There are no literal Nazis, and there haven't been in 80 years. That's part of the point here, you're chasing boogeymen.
The difference between Vermont and New Hampshire.
So "I love Hitler" is about as literal Nazi as possible in a world where the Nazi party is no longer around?
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.
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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).
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