site banner
PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19715 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Sir, there's been four new Nazi/Hitler/antisemitic issues in the conservative community in just the past day

Following the recent Politico expose on the Young Republicans groupchat leak among mid 20s-30s leaders of the organization containing comments about gas chambering their political opponents and antisemitic remarks like this

“I was about to say you’re giving nationals to [sic] much credit and expecting the Jew to be honest,”

In the followup to this, yes you heard it right, at least four new antisemitic and/or Nazi controversies in the past day or so.

A flag with a swatiska embedded in it was spotted in the office of Representative Dave Taylor.  Rep. Taylor has called it out and condemned it, and it's quite possible he never noticed it before himself but it does seem to be another sign of the embedded antisemitic and pro nazi rhetoric in lower level staffers if one of them put it up.

“The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms,” Taylor said in a statement

Additionally, the Border Patrol posted a video on an Instagram containing an antisemitic slur. While the higher ups of the border patrol likely don't have much to do with what gets posted on the social media, it's again another bad sign that the lower levels who coordinate posts and approve them are antisemitic. Someone had to specifically pick that particular verse of that particular version of that particular song, they knew what they were posting and whatever approval process they use, the others would have heard the lyrics and yet signed on.

The third controversy is the most explicit of them all. Myron Gaines, host of the Fresh and Fit podcast (1.58 million subscribers on YouTube alone) posted

Yeah we like Hitler. No one gives a fuck what you woke jews think anymore.

Bro was a revolutionary leader and saved germany. The jews declared war on Germany first.

If can israel deny a genocide with 4k video proof, I'm questjoning everything you guys have said about the painter during WW2.

Now, I never would have imagine that the word woke includes "thinking the Holocaust is real and Hitler is bad", but that seems to be where we are at now. Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS, which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.

But in fact, all of this seems to be par for the course, according to Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab. who also wades into the ring of antisemitic Holocaust denialism with comments like

A Jew scolding me about creating fictional collectivist, grievance-based narratives is projection at its finest.

That's right, at least two major conservative names have directly engaged in unashamed pro Nazi/Holocaust denialism/etc rhetoric in response to the group chat leak and both of them strongly believe that many other high level conservatives agree with them (Myron's use of "We like Hitler and Torba saying it's normal).

As Richard Hanania (Writer of "The Origins of Woke" who has been in many conservative spaces before) explained months before the leak, this is actually pretty common. As he's said before, the two types of comments he tends to get "it can't be that bad" and "lol that's exactly what it's like" such as this agreement from National Review reporter James Lynch

Everyone involved with the young right already knew this was happening.

Hanania was first to articulate it in depth from a place of familiarity.

What's interesting is that the one thing both the Nazi denouncers (Hanania/Lynch/etc) and Nazi defenders (Myron/Torba/etc) here both seem to agree on, is that this is common among the young right. There seems to be a broad consensus that this gropyer antisemitic Nazism is growing among conservatives, especially young ones. We've seen this with Kanye and his descent into Nazism, we've seen this with John Reid and Mike Robinson both exposed over their Nazi fetish. We've seen this with Tucker Carlson and Daryl Cooper. The rapid growth of figures like Nick "six million cookies" Fuentes, Ian Carroll and Theo Von. In fact a neo Nazi inspired kid was even behind a recent school shooting in Colorado a few months ago

EW Erickson says https://x.com/EWErickson/status/1978812093773041964

This is why the “no enemies to the right of me” stuff cannot work. There are enemies there and we cannot be silent. This stuff is festering and needs to be excised from the right.

Ben Shapiro says that unity with radicals will destroy the right wing as it pushes moderate Americans away.

Right wing conservative libertarian speaker Phil Magness says

The same people calling for conservative "unity" in the wake of the Hitler chat group leaks also spent the last decade trying to purge classical liberals & free market economics from the conservative movement.

They don't want "unity." They want room for Nazis in that movement.

So with all this recent controversy, how big of a Nazi problem is actually festering, and why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism? They even seem to be dropping hints at the highest levels if the border patrol video was intended as a dog whistle to be dropped before deleting. Is this growing widespread agreement (from Hanania to Torba) that this is just the tip of the iceberg among young conservatives accurate? Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future like embracing left wing radicalism hurt Biden? And how do the non Nazi conservatives and moderates balance fighting off Nazi accusations from the left also working to stem this apparant rise of unashamed nazism and Holocaust denialism?

  • -40

I'm perfectly happy to believe Myron Gaines and the creator of an explicitly witch-friendly social media space are at least as friendly to Hitler as your average sociology professor and "community organizer" are towards Mao...but come on, using an unedited Michael Jackson track is "antisemitism" now? That's an extremely bad example.

News just in: well-known White supremacist Nazi dogwhistler Taylor Swift has been forced to remove an offensive necklace from her product line, due to the eagle-eyed TikToker who was able, with no margin of error at all, to identify it as offensive blatant Nazi symbolism:

The backlash began when TikTok user @Sampire1513, a self-described former Swiftie, posted a viral video dissecting the necklace’s design. She claimed the lightning bolt links resembled “SS bolts,” a symbol historically used by Nazi paramilitary groups.

She pointed out that the necklace contained eight bolts, which some white supremacist groups associate with the number “88” — code for “Heil Hitler.” She alleged that whether the resemblance was intentional or not, it reflected poor cultural awareness.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, both the SS bolts and the number 88 are widely recognised symbols of white supremacist hate. The TikTok creator also compared the star-shaped pendant to the Iron Cross, a German military medal later adopted by Nazis.

Just like them swastika flags, right? It had to be done on purpose, no way this could have 'just happened'. After all, she is an infamous alt-right icon!

After all, she is an infamous alt-right icon!

This is complete speculation, but perhaps that's why she might be a bit sensitive about such matters?

Good god; this is the shit that makes me embarrassed to be half jewish. It's like...have some self-respect and stop being a pants-wetting ninny.

That's why I think the best response is to say "No it isn't" and keep the merch up on the site. Some ambitious little wannabe influencer on TikTok sees a prime opportunity with Swift's new album out now to grab a piece of the attention economy pie with "this is Nazi!" (just like our kittykat pal here with the original post) and by reacting in such a manner, it's setting her/her business up for "well if it really was innocent, why did they take it down? it must be true!" further accusations.

Ignore the idiots is the only way to maintain any sanity.

The TikTok creator also compared the star-shaped pendant to the Iron Cross, a German military medal later adopted by Nazis.

LOL. The Third Reich was contiguous with the previous German governments, of course they inherited the Iron Cross (which I think was originally Imperial). It's inoffensive enough that it's sometimes used in place of a swastika when depicting things German of that era. Not that her star looks a damned thing like an Iron Cross (or a swastika) besides having four arms. Someone needs to make a version of that necklace with actual SS lightning bolts and a Black Sun (which the star also doesn't much resemble), just to give people vapors.

The German army still uses an obvious Iron Cross as a medal of honor and in the Bundeswehr symbol.

which I think was originally Imperial

Teutonic originally, but formalized as a decoration by Prussia during the Napoleonic era, and used by every German government since. And notably it's the current insignia of the Bundeswehr.

It really is just a German symbol. Like the cocarde is to France regardless of its revolutionary origins.

Oh, definitely grabbing for any kind of parallels, and if they can't find one, just invent it. There's enough fools out there who will believe it because someone on the Internet said so, they will never bother checking "what does an Iron Cross look like?"

Is Myron Gaines really on the “right”? The black Muslim host of the “Fresh and Fit” podcast fits more into the long tradition of black American antisemitism into which the Sudanese Gaines (real name Amrou Fudl) assimilated. He advocates an alliance between white, black and brown against Jews, as some others did before him.

In the end, this is a politically untenable alliance. The interests of many black and many white voters are opposed, and in debates about crime, courts, welfare, political representation and tax, in much of the country, this and other political divisions limit any political program. The reality is that in an extremely racially and ideologically divided nation, the comparatively tiny Jewish population, heavily concentrated in major coastal cities and their suburbs, is not sufficient to ‘soak up’ the grand sum of political and cultural resentment that now exists.

That is not to say that antisemitism isn’t rising rapidly, it is. But antisemitism can’t heal the political rifts that exist and are developing in this country. Nor does that mean some grand reckoning against Jews is inevitable. Antisemitism was very high in the 1920s in America, probably moreso than in Germany at the time, but it didn’t lead to actual oppression. The reality of antisemitic violence, indeed all racial violence, is that while it requires some pre-existing racial animosity its actual occurrence is often arbitrary and historically contingent.

All this alarm about Nazis and no attempt to demonstrate any policy position these supposed "Nazis" hold that would make them actual Nazis.

Holocaust denial does not make you a Nazi.

Making edgy jokes does not make you a Nazi.

Thinking Hitler did some good things (or at the very least for the German people) does not make you a Nazi.

Having some overlap with the Nazi platform does not make you a Nazi. As the classic argument goes, Hitler liked dogs, so if you like dogs, does that mean you are a Nazi?

Being antisemitic does not make you a Nazi. There are plenty of people who express antisemitic views from the left.

Heck even calling yourself a Nazi does not make yourself a Nazi. I can call myself the richest man in the world, it doesn't make me the richest man in the world. I can say I'm a Christian, but if I don't believe in Christ as savior or do anything associated with typical Christians such as going to church or praying, am I really a Christian? You have to believe in the values and core tenets of the Nazi ideology to be a Nazi.

Since you seem so keen on raising the alarm on the rise of Nazism, how about you actually define what are the core ideas and values of Nazism, that way we can actually pit all these supposed Nazis against these values to determine if they actually are Nazis or not?

Nazi is a term with an extremely negative connotation and reputation. Why were the Nazis so bad? A big part of the reason is that the Nazis killed millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Antisemitism alone does not lead to the killing of 6 million Jews. If you want to argue all these supposed new "Nazis" want to kill all the Jews, then make that argument instead of just calling them Nazis.

When you label your opponents as Nazis with little to no care, all it does is erode away the negativity associated with the term Nazi. The fact that more people are now okay with being labeled a Nazi is evidence that the term is losing the negative power associated with it, which was due to the liberal application of that term to people who actually aren't Nazis. You've called all these people Nazis, yet if I imagined any of these people you have mentioned being put in charge of a country and given complete authority to do whatever they wanted, I don't think any of them would recreate the holocaust. So how exactly are they Nazis and should be ascribed all the negative things we associate with the actual Nazis from WW2 Germany?

All this alarm about Nazis and no attempt to demonstrate any policy position these supposed "Nazis" hold that would make them actual Nazis.

Holocaust denial does not make you a Nazi.

Making edgy jokes does not make you a Nazi.

Thinking Hitler did some good things (or at the very least for the German people) does not make you a Nazi.

Ok sure lets call them "Razis" then if you don't think they should be called Nazis. Let's amend a question to be "is there a rise of "Razis" who openly praise Hitler, deny the holocaust, and say antisemitic things like Jews can't be trusted then?"

Okay, people are accusing you of being Darwin. Right now I am not convinced one way or the other; you definitely post in certain ways that are very similar, but your style isn't quite the same. However, playing "Spot the Darwin alt" is almost as annoying as playing "Spot the JB alt," so I am asking you point blank, and consider this an official mod question:

Are you Darwin aka @guesswho? Is this a new alt you are using?

Note that creating new alts (given that the previous account was not banned) is not outright prohibited, though it is strongly discouraged. However, doing so just because you wanted to ditch your old reputation is not an adequate justification. If you have some reason why you wanted to create a new account to reengage, you need to discuss it with the mod team. Right now, it looks like if you are Darwin, it's to "get one over" on the Motte, not have to face the ignominious way in which you slunk off last time, and start playing your old games anew.

So if you are Darwin, you need to come clean. You will not be banned, but you will be expected to stop this masquerade.

If you are not Darwin, then you need to slow your roll and understand why people are pattern-matching you to a notorious shit-stirring troll known for making bad faith arguments and starting thread after thread on the same topic just to rile people up.

If you deny being Darwin but you are, then if we decide you were lying, you will be banned immediately. Also you should feel a deep sense of guilt, shame, and personal inadequacy.

Okay, people are accusing you of being Darwin. Right now I am not convinced one way or the other; you definitely post in certain ways that are very similar, but your style isn't quite the same. However, playing "Spot the Darwin alt" is almost as annoying as playing "Spot the JB alt," so I am asking you point blank, and consider this an official mod question:

Are you Darwin aka @guesswho? Is this a new alt you are using?

I have no idea who that is lol so I don't think so.

As the saying goes, onus probandi, the burden of proof is on the speaker. If people wanna make shit up, they can do that. They can provide evidence if they actually want to be believed. I don't have any way to prove I'm not something compared to asinine "it came to me in a dream" tier evidence.

f you are not Darwin, then you need to slow your roll and understand why people are pattern-matching you to a notorious shit-stirring troll known for making bad faith arguments and starting thread after thread on the same topic just to rile people up.

Again I don't know who that is so it's not only literally a worthless comparison but does the opposite of "Wow is this place so opposed to disagreement that they just accuse everyone of being a secret bad faith troll?"

Okay, people are accusing you of being Darwin.

I'm voting "no", the style is quite different.

TBH, I'm more annoyed with @magicalkittycat than I remember being with Darwin.

And MKC's pattern is not an unusual one. There are lots of midwits who think posting sneering gotchas is the height of art. Look at XKCD. Hell, I used to kinda be one due to hanging around with them too much.

So no, I don't think MKC's Darwin, but he/she is certainly causing issues, and that's a problem by itself.

but he/she is certainly causing issues, and that's a problem by itself.

What issues am I causing?

TBH, I'm more annoyed with magicalkittycat than I remember being with Darwin.

And it's the complete opposite for me, I don't know if that counts as evidence, but I don't think it's him either.

It’s definitely someone we’ve seen before, but I don’t know that it’s him either.

Our old friend Impassionata is far more likely a suspect: crossposted over there. https://rdrama.net/post/403216/themotte-catches-darwin2500-in-the-act

To be honest, I enjoy a dishonest shit-stirrer, if only as a vaccination against bad arguments. It solidifies my political convictions, if anything.

I still find it amazing that as much as rdrama.net tries to be as pooptacularly irrtating as possible with ite UI it still doesn't match modern news websites for ad and popup intrusion. Getting news from reddit or here is legit a better user experience than going to the websites themselves and by the gods are we underestimating the enshittification that flows from this UX friction.

and here he stands accused by Amadanb (whose hatred of me is personal, deep, and only going to be made worse as it's clear just how wrong the SFBA Rationalist Cultists were about the fascism):

Ye gods, the man is obsessed with me.

But no, I doubt MKC is Impassionata. Impassionata is worse than Darwin at concealing himself.

I don't know, I was getting a hint of Impassionata, who has indeed recently popped back up over on rdrama.net with the same old song about TheMotte, ACX, Scott, and so forth.

I'm an expert on Impassionata, this isn't him. Lacks a certain touch.

Eh, maybe. Could explain why he's counting coup over on rdrama right now. His last few alts have been much more obvious.

Pathetic and annoying people.

I quite enjoy the stated reason for theRealImpassionata's ban on the permabanned page.

Would you like a good-faith Marxist explanation for the used panties market?

I'm so confused, why are you asking this question

the flair of the person he's asking is "Can Marx explain the used panties market?"

Sometimes reading is hard

Thank you

Sure, the labor theory of value in particular, and why my (a pretty average looking guy in his 30's) labor of wearing a pair of panties doesn't seem to generate nearly as much value as an attractive 18 year old doing the same. And especially explain how the higher value given to the attractive 18 year old's panties (for equal labor!) appears to be constant even in non-capitalist economies. Also explain how the 18 year old merely claiming to have worn them seems to create more value than if I actually wear them, which seems to create negative value for most.

Absolutely!

The explanation here is roughly the same as why a certain Argentinian dwarf can get more people willing to pay absurd amount of money just to look at him and will generate a larger worldwide audience interest than all the 18-year-old e-THOTs combined, without needing to sell his underwear whatsoever (though I'm sure if he wanted to, he would likely generate a higher price than his "competition").

The process for him acquiring this ability is slightly different than that of said attractive 18-year-olds, but not qualitatively so - it is based on people watching him do shit on their electronic devices, similarly to girls you mentioned. A 38-year-old South American male can easily generate a larger audience for anything, even cooking eggs, than the most attractive 18-year-old in history of humanity could possibly hope to.

Does that help?

Not at all. Is my labor of wearing the panties not equal to the labor of the attractive 18 year old female wearing the panties? If not, why not? That's the part Marxists seem to have a lot of trouble explaining, at least without throwing the labor theory of value out the window.

Hi there! I just wanted to pop in to say that you are acting like a literal SRDine right now. If you want to shield Republicans from all criticism because they're the good guys - do it openly. This is just sad!

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

I don't even know what a "SRDine" is, but you are as misguided and just objectively wrong as your rdrama buddy. Now behave- if you only came here to troll, you can go back to rdrama and do your monkeydance for seal claps there.

Now this is probably impassionata. (SRD = subredditdrama, I suspect the term is equivalent to lolcow)

I've had a drink with @idio3 before, unless I'm misremembering which commie I've met before, so I can vouch for him being a real person.

Idio3 is a real person, why wouldn't it be him?

Srdines are sort of hyper redditors. They're usually left wing, so I don't see how the accusation fits. But idio is a commie, so maybe he thinks everyone to the right of stalin is the same.

Idio3 is a real person

How do you know

To be fair, if you follow the link posted nearby you will see that I explicitly mentioned SRDine-like behaviour, from the other side. Obviously I'm not suggesting that @Amadan is SRDine-like in his political outlook. Au contraire, I believe that he is a mirror image of an average SRDine, with SRDine-like behaviour and characteristic self-rightiousness, but with the opposite viewpoint.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

No offence, but I'm pretty far from Impassionata, lol. It's slightly insulting that none of you guys remember me...

SRDine just means someone from SRD.

All this argument over who is an alt of whom and all I can do is shake my head. As all readers know: with BurdensomeCount™ there's none of this worry, all of my writing is provided solely under the BurdensomeCount™ name which over time has become its own seal of quality.

Next time you need incisive, deep, free-thinking insight, remember to choose BurdensomeCount™.

As others have pointed out, it's difficult to not see this entire post as an artful, nut-picking troll.

But even setting that aside, left wing antisemitism, or perhaps more specifically Islamist antisemitism from left wing political parties, is so frequent that people scarcely bother to report on it (or, perhaps, they actively suppress it because it hurts Democrat narratives). The "free Palestine" shooting of the Israeli embassy couple was much more "Nazi" in character than anything Andrew Torba has ever done. I suspect that highlighting right-wing antisemitism, real or imagined, is a case of "accuse your enemy of what you are doing while you are doing it."

That said, just speaking from personal experience, in my social feeds earlier today I read some surprisingly outright racist remarks in response to Ketanji Brown Jackson's ill-advised suggestion that being a racial minority be considered a kind of disability. As an anti-identitarian liberal this concerns me greatly, but I do think it is (as others have suggested) directly downstream of leftists spending decades crying wolf. If you spend enough time and energy insisting that your political opponents are Nazis, at some point your political opponents are going to decide that they might as well break out the jackboots, then. The story of Liu Bang, Emperor Gaozu of Han comes to mind--

Liu was responsible for escorting a group of penal labourers to the construction site of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum at Mount Li. During the journey, some prisoners escaped; under Qin law, allowing prisoners to escape was punishable by death. Rather than face punishment, Liu freed the remaining prisoners, some of whom willingly acknowledged him as their leader and joined him on the run from the law.

I don't know any Nazis, and I prefer it that way. But if--and I do not think this is the case now, but if it ever were--I were one day forced to choose an authoritarian regime to live under, and the only choices were some kind of white nationalism and some flavor of socialist wokism, I'm confident that my chances of both survival and prosperity would be much, much greater under the nationalist regime.

As others have pointed out, it's difficult to not see this entire post as an artful, nut-picking troll.

Doesn't seem that artful to me. Artful trolling would be more precisely aimed at being almost believable that this is a real person sincerely stating their real beliefs.

Edit: actually on reading the rest of this thread I take it back, it clearly landed with this audience.

it's difficult to not see this entire post as an artful, nut-picking troll.

The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?

left wing antisemitism, or perhaps more specifically Islamist antisemitism from left wing political parties, is so frequent that people scarcely bother to report on it (or, perhaps, they actively suppress it because it hurts Democrat narratives).

Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel. You and others running cover for antisemitism on the right ignore the significant presence of slogans and groups like 'Jews for Palestine' at all the rallies on college campuses. The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.

Hardcore fundamentalist Islamists who truly hate Jews and want to 'do a genocide' in the local parlance (usually by people who want to murder Palestinians) are broadly orthogonal to left and right. Were the 9/11 hijackers leftists?

And, yes, apparently there was a nutjob who shot up an embassy and presumably wanted to kill Jews. Who was just complaining about nutpicking, again?

Antisemitism on the right rarely bothers to make the Israel/Jew distinction, particularly when it arrives at it's antisemitism via the protocols of the elders of Zion and the Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust denialism. They view all Jews, everywhere, as the problem, nowhere more so than the US government/wall street/other institutions and blame them for immigration and a supposed genocide against white people in the west. Contrasted with 'leftist antisemitism,' how many Jews do you think subscribe to this ideology?

One of these flavors of antisemitism, were it to gain power, would likely cut foreign aid to Israel and boost aid to Palestine. The other would likely pogrom the US government and elites, or worse.

but I do think it is (as others have suggested) directly downstream of leftists spending decades crying wolf. If you spend enough time and energy insisting that your political opponents are Nazis, at some point your political opponents are going to decide that they might as well break out the jackboots, then.

See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

How many times have I seen this pasted here when it comes to the gays? trans people? Communism? Cancel culture? At first they said nobody was crazy enough to change genders! Then they said it's happening, but it's good actually! Now the HR lady is crushing my balls while I have to swear fealty to the rainbow flag!

Well, fuck man, if you were calling us gay trannies who cancel people for wrongthink for the last twenty years, I guess we might as well all be gay trannies who cancel you for wrongthink, amirite? Why would you spend so much time and energy insisting cancel culture was a thing? Guess I may as well cancel you now, and also it's your fault.

No, Trump is not a nazi. Nor is JD Vance or Stephen Miller, or probably anyone in the administration. I'm skeptical that any of the incidents OP posted are suggestive that the Fourth Reich is some fifth column in the Republican party. But at the same time, there's been a groundswell of interest and support and tolerance of ideas like Great Replacement Theory and authoritarianism in the Red Tribe mainstream that's been slowly gaining steam for the last decade. And, while I know everything wrong with the Red Tribe is actually the Blue Tribe's fault, what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?

But at the same time, there's been a groundswell of interest and support and tolerance of ideas like Great Replacement Theory and authoritarianism in the Red Tribe mainstream that's been slowly gaining steam for the last decade. And, while I know everything wrong with the Red Tribe is actually the Blue Tribe's fault, what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?

Nationalism, I'd say.

The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly try not to nutpick. I thought the ethos of the place aspired to something a little grander as well.

Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel.

Yes; most people, if you can get them one-on-one in a relaxed social setting, will be fairly chill and generous on most political issues. However, those same people, in a march or mob, or when agitated against the outgroup (i.e., in a politically-activated state) will take much harder stances out of pure oppositional aesthetics or attitude.

Also, the "soft and reasonable" left position on Jews, whether or not in Israel, appears to be something along the line of "anything other than deracinated individualism and blank slatism rhymes with nazi and is verboten." This, I should hope understandably, comes off to many Jews and particularly Israelis as the equivalent of Ghandi's advice to the Jews of eastern europe.

The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.

Progressive leftism these days is as much a jewish heresy as it is a christian one - not for nothing is reform Judaism called "the Democratic Party at prayer." Truly, the monkey's paw has curled and given the right a true "judeo-christian" civilization in the form of the GAE, with its mainline protestant State Department, jewish DOJ, and mormon security service state. (said firmly with tongue in cheek).

On the other hand none of those (with the exception of the mormons) do a great job of reproducing themselves; mainline protestant churches are famously elderly, and another famous joke teaches that the way you can tell the difference between a reform and orthodox jew is that the orthodox one will have jewish grandchildren. So how "jewish" really, are these barren branches?

Antisemitism on the right rarely bothers to make the Israel/Jew distinction, particularly when it arrives at it's antisemitism via the protocols of the elders of Zion and the Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust denialism.

A much more degenerate route than the traditional "judeo-bolshevism" line, though that still has its supporters out there.

One of these flavors of antisemitism, were it to gain power, would likely cut foreign aid to Israel and boost aid to Palestine. The other would likely pogrom the US government and elites, or worse.

Honestly, I'm unclear which one is which, because a disproportionate amount of the actual anti-jewish violence in the US comes from the black nationalist and muslim side of things, which are broadly (though not exclusively) within the left/antizionist tent.

See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:

That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.

Also known as the Trial Lawyer's catechism.

[M]ost people, if you can get them one-on-one in a relaxed social setting, will be fairly chill and generous on most political issues. However, those same people, in a march or mob, [...] will take much harder stances out of pure oppositional aesthetics or attitude.

In other words,

A person is smart. People are dumb panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

That is why I support individualism. Erasing the self to identify only as a cell in the body of a collective is dangerous. When that group is defined by birth, such that non-members are permanently and irrevocably other, it is more dangerous. When this involves punching down rather than up, the danger reaches 'holding a neutron reflector over a plutonium core with a screwdriver' levels. (Seriously, Louis Slotin, what the expletive-deleted were you thinking?)

The problem is that people are social animals; you can't separate the individual from the group. At best, you can try to prune and restrict membership such that solidarity and assabiyah inside the group is so strong as to allow for greater space for individualism within its bounds. But, paradoxically, you can't do that by strengthening individual liberties; you have to do so by attending to the group.

assabiyah

I read the Muqaddimah recently and you're the only person I have seen use this word outside of that work. It really deserves to be more widespread.

We used to have a guy obsessed with assabiyah. IIRC he has some other, uh, proclivities that eventually got him the boot.

It was used fairly frequently here a few years ago, before falling out of favor.

Yet somehow people still can't spell it properly…

Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel.

Harvard, Columbia, and many other universities are still fighting court cases about their abject failures to make that distinction, aren't they? Not to mention the Trumpian attacks on them, that used that as one of the motivations.

Now, the richest, most prestigious universities in the country aren't themselves a "broad swathe," but I feel fairly comfortable saying it's not nutpicking to put them up as examples.

The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.

And the people most likely to preach that white people are the scum of the earth are progressive white women and pick-me progressive white men. Projected self-hatred is not exactly an uncommon psychological ailment.

I guess we might as well all be gay trannies who cancel you for wrongthink, amirite?

No principles to stand on? You must become what the enemy believes? I get you're trying a parallel thing but you're so bitter when you comment here now.

what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?

Still waiting to an answer on this one first.

Harvard, Columbia, and many other universities are still fighting court cases about their abject failures to make that distinction, aren't they?

Maybe you're right, I'm not particularly familiar with the details of the court cases or what specifically happened during the protests.

That said, I'm also not impressed by the mere fact that Trump decided to sue a bunch of Blue Tribe institutions.

And the people most likely to preach that white people are the scum of the earth are progressive white women and pick-me progressive white men. Projected self-hatred is not exactly an uncommon psychological ailment.

It's a bit condescending to suggest that Jews protesting Israel killing thousands of Gazan civilians must be doing it out of some psychological ailment. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone here defending American Adventurism in the 21st century (to the point of obsessively redefining George W. as a democrat, and Trump as the first true Republican in forty years), yet I imagine this is a rational argument rather than a bunch of self-hating Americans?

Still waiting to an answer on this one first.

Then you can keep complaining about woke, Magicalkitty can keep complaining about nazis, and I can write 10,000 words to gesture at the ascendant [redacted] in the west.

I honestly can't tell whether you're being ironic or just aggressively misunderstanding my point. I feel like the most generous thing I can say might be "keep in mind your aims in writing this response to me; now go back and read my post with the idea that I was trying to make the same point to magicalkittycat, for analogous reasons, as you had when writing this response to me."

Less charitably, I did find this line to be unmitigated bullshit:

You and others running cover for antisemitism on the right

I am not running cover for antisemitism on the right, and nothing I wrote can be reasonably construed that way. Hell, I am occasionally accused, here, as a moderator, of running cover for the Jews! But neither do I think that the antisemitic left should be simply allowed to do what it does because everyone is so distracted by the tiki torch cosplayers they fail to notice (or outright excuse) blatant antisemitism from the left and its political allies. (And while the 9/11 hijackers weren't formally "leftists," their presence in the United States was arguably traceable to changes in American immigration law plausibly attributed to the left.)

My beef is with identitarians. To my mind, the main difference between leftist identitarians and right-wing identitarians is that right-wing identitarians are a bunch of reactionaries doing reactionary things. Leftists set the stage, defined the terms, and picked the fight. Reactionaries are doing exactly what (as @Fruck correctly observes) the radicals were told they would do. I don't like it. I don't agree with it. I think that nothing good will ever come of identitarianism, no matter how righteous-minded its practitioners. I don't think any of it is good. But neither do I think it reasonable to apportion blame equally to both sides; this is a mess of progressivism's making.

The only remarkable thing about this post is the political valency; what is this place if not nut-picking to wage the culture war?

Discussing the culture wars is not the same as waging them. Yes, I acknowledge that people do wage them, to various degrees. But we do try to discourage that.

I honestly can't tell whether you're being ironic or just aggressively misunderstanding my point.

I am neither being ironic, nor am I aggressively misunderstanding you. Thankfully options exist outside your false dichotomy!

Less charitably, I did find this line to be unmitigated bullshit:

Thank you for your honesty. Now, moderator, ban thyself.

I am not running cover for antisemitism on the right, and nothing I wrote can be reasonably construed that way.

Your post was a mix of whataboutism, if it's true that there are nazis on the right it's not their (red tribe) fault, and oh, while I hate nazis they'll treat me better than the woke police. Insofar as 'running cover' implies you have some secret agenda to promote Nazi material, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as you're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing (lol Tiki Torch cosplayers) and whatabouting - yes, you're running cover for them.

Hell, I am occasionally accused, here, as a moderator, of running cover for the Jews!

In reality, you are a flawlessly objective crystal passing judgment from on high. You have principles that you live your life by, and you chide the left and the right equally, god damnit! Anything less would be to descend into partisan hackery.

And Nara, I am (whatever people may think) fundamentally of this place. I believe that we should strive towards objectivity, that it exists, I deeply believe in mistake theory and progress and that things are getting better and discussion is good. I reject the people on the left who claim that everything is political, nobody is objective and it's all just white supremacist/patriarchal/isms all the way down and doubly so if you're a white man.

But dude, I have to actually invoke that progressive argument here, much as it pains me. You fit the trope of the partisan pretending to be objective and principled to a T to avoid confronting the fact that you are, in fact, also waging the culture war most of the time.

because everyone is so distracted by the tiki torch cosplayers they fail to notice (or outright excuse) blatant antisemitism from the left and its political allies.

Tiki torch cosplayers vs. blatant antisemitism. I am impressed by your objective framing of the political situation!

My beef is with identitarians.

Your beef is with the vast majority of the modern left. Seriously, replace identitarian with vast majority of the modern left - is your statement significantly different?

I don't like it. I don't agree with it. I think that nothing good will ever come of identitarianism, no matter how righteous-minded its practitioners. I don't think any of it is good. But neither do I think it reasonable to apportion blame equally to both sides; this is a mess of progressivism's making.

Nara, go to West Philly. Go to Baltimore. Go to Chicago. Much as I love your race-blind ideals, much as they resonate with me, the modern incarnation of progressivism and identitarianism didn't build the slums and the poverty and the suffering. Cancel culture wasn't a thing during the Rodney King riots. You can't be naive enough to ask an entire nation not to Notice that people of one skin color are overwhelmingly worse off, and it doesn't even matter what the cause is. People take that information in the direction they prefer.

Discussing the culture wars is not the same as waging them. Yes, I acknowledge that people do wage them, to various degrees. But we do try to discourage that.

The problem is that people like waging the culture war. I commend you and the moderation team, because the failing lies with the users. You can't mod yourself a better forum population.

I am neither being ironic, nor am I aggressively misunderstanding you. Thankfully options exist outside your false dichotomy!

It looks from this post as if "aggressively misunderstanding" is still in fact what you're doing, though--including, here, by skipping the most generous recommendation I could think of. Look--

Your post was a mix of whataboutism, if it's true that there are nazis on the right it's not their (red tribe) fault, and oh, while I hate nazis they'll treat me better than the woke police. Insofar as 'running cover' implies you have some secret agenda to promote Nazi material, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as you're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing (lol Tiki Torch cosplayers) and whatabouting - yes, you're running cover for them.

My point was that magicalkittycat was engaged with a mixture of whataboutism and the Chinese Robber fallacy that is presently circulating in furtherance of running cover for Leftist antisemitism. Insofar as 'running cover' implies the news media has some secret agenda to promote antisemitism, no, I don't think it's true. Insofar as they're sequentially denying, deflecting blame, minimizing and whatabouting, yes, they're running cover for antisemitism.

Every once in a while it will happen that I am in a conversation with someone here, using the terms and tropes of this place, and it will turn into a kind of "no, you" debate. This seems to be most common with motte-and-bailey arguments--"no, I'm not playing in the bailey, you're playing the bailey!" Sometimes people find ways out by finding a good word to taboo, or through careful charity, or whatever. I'm honestly not great at this (Zorba is genuinely great at it) but I do try. Anyway we seem to be in one of those circles now, where I get accused of whataboutism (maybe simply because I'm not the OP, and so there's a "first mover" advantage or something) for pointing out how OP's sources are engaged in a kind of whataboutism.

But dude, I have to actually invoke that progressive argument here, much as it pains me. You fit the trope of the partisan pretending to be objective and principled to a T to avoid confronting the fact that you are, in fact, also waging the culture war most of the time.

Right, and the circlular firing squad for this argument is the one where I point out that you're playing the role of the leftist who simultaneously speaks as the arbiter and adherent of objectivity and truth while downplaying the possibility (or at least likelihood) of objectivity and truth. Why is it that forums with actual free speech so often begin leaning to the right--almost as though leftism can't stand on its own two feet? Clearly I am not without my priors! And yet exactly one of us in this discussion has frankly admitted the existence of, and offered criticism against, both right-wing and left-wing antisemitism and racism, and it isn't you. I wasn't kidding, here:

My beef is with identitarians.

Your beef is with the vast majority of the modern left. Seriously, replace identitarian with vast majority of the modern left - is your statement significantly different?

Yes! White supremacy is not a new kind of identitarianism, though the term "white supremacy" has gotten woefully overextended and maliciously distorted in furtherance of Leftist aims. And I think a lot of Leftists are not identitarians, though sometimes they have to be reminded of that. The anti-Woke Left is not a group of insignificant size--and relevantly, my sense of this forum is that most users are anti-Woke leftists who have been surprised to find themselves in the center-Right of the Overton window, as radicals have stretched it to reach the territory of identitarian spoils systems.

The main difference between left-wing identitarians and right-wing identitarians so far is that left-wing identitarians mostly control their political coalition (the Democratic Party) while right-wing identitarians remain at the fringes--albeit, less at the fringes than they were before the Great Awokening. With specific reference to antisemitism, the antisemites on the Right are reactionaries who fetishize a failed effort to implement national socialism in a country they often know nothing about. The antisemites on the Left, by contrast, are the vanguard of Islamofacism, a movement with at least tens of millions of supporters around the globe, who are prosecuting a centuries-long grudge against the ideological descendants of Judaism and Christianity. I don't think it's "whataboutism" or "running cover" to suggest that if we're going to talk about political antisemitism, we should talk about all of it, not just those bits of it that are most convenient to our preferred narratives.

Your beef is with the vast majority of the modern left. Seriously, replace identitarian with vast majority of the modern left - is your statement significantly different?

Why can't the left make its case in a race neutral way?

Nara, go to West Philly. Go to Baltimore. Go to Chicago. Much as I love your race-blind ideals, much as they resonate with me, the modern incarnation of progressivism and identitarianism didn't build the slums and the poverty and the suffering. Cancel culture wasn't a thing during the Rodney King riots. You can't be naive enough to ask an entire nation not to Notice that people of one skin color are overwhelmingly worse off, and it doesn't even matter what the cause is. People take that information in the direction they prefer.

I live in one of these 3 cities. The slums were built by progressives. They more recently have abandoned the slum (more well known as public housing I think) project in favor of placing impoverished citizens in housing that they cannot afford alongside productive humans.

That has also failed. Section 8 is highly associated with crime.

The only thing that will work long term is aggressive law enforcement. Particularly death sentences quickly carried out.

Much as I love your race-blind ideals, much as they resonate with me, the modern incarnation of progressivism and identitarianism didn't build the slums and the poverty and the suffering.

Oh, but they did. Riot by riot, they built them. They got their clients to move in, drive the old white people out, take over the political machines of the cities, break the cities... and then they got to keep both parts. Still do, in most cases.

Thank you for your honesty. Now, moderator, ban thyself.

Without entering into the discussion proper, I will just note (because it came up in another thread) that there is a thin but meaningful difference between calling an argument bullshit/stupid/retarded and calling a poster that. So no, even if Nara wasn't a mod, I wouldn't mod someone for saying "This line is bullshit." I would mod someone for saying "You're full of a shit."

No, Trump is not a nazi. Nor is JD Vance or Stephen Miller, or probably anyone in the administration. I'm skeptical that any of the incidents OP posted are suggestive that the Fourth Reich is some fifth column in the Republican party. But at the same time, there's been a groundswell of interest and support and tolerance of ideas like Great Replacement Theory and authoritarianism in the Red Tribe mainstream that's been slowly gaining steam for the last decade. And, while I know everything wrong with the Red Tribe is actually the Blue Tribe's fault, what word would you like us to use to describe that? Not nazism, not racism, not fascism, so...what?

Lmao. "Look, Trump isn't a nazi, neither is any republican leader, and I don't think anything in this post is evidence of Nazism. But you guys are are nazis! Look at all these things we never fucking talk about because we're too busy calling Trump or Stephen Miller a nazi! What else are we supposed to do except bring up shit that I don't think is Nazism and use it to tar you as nazis?". I don't know, talk about the shit you think is actually Nazism?

See, when this is done by people you dislike you break out the Narcissist's prayer:

The first line of the narcissist's prayer is "That didn't happen".

We have been telling you that this would happen from the very beginning.

White identitarianism is becoming more common and mainstream in the red tribe than it had been post reagan revolution. I will own this. But, importantly, this is not the same thing as naziism. Nor is it the dominant form of racism in our culture or anywhere close(which would be progressive negrolatry).

But you guys are are nazis! Look at all these things we never fucking talk about because we're too busy calling Trump or Stephen Miller a nazi! What else are we supposed to do except bring up shit that I don't think is Nazism and use it to tar you as nazis?". I don't know, talk about the shit you think is actually Nazism?

No, I'm serious - I don't want to call you a nazi, nor have I called anyone a nazi. What word would you like me to use to describe someone who believes that politicians are importing brown people to replace the white race, and all the attendant beliefs that normally swirl around that one? A Great Replacement Theorist? What word would you like me to describe someone who thinks that Trump should have power to do X, Y and Z regardless of their legality without resorting to what you see as slurs?

We have been telling you that this would happen from the very beginning.

No, progressives have been telling you this would happen since you brought the first slave ships over in the 17th century! Why would you do such a thing, Fruck?

Great Replacement Theorist

Seems fair. Alternatively ‘ethnonationalist’ seems broadly fair, or ‘white nationalist’ if that describes their opinions (ie the pro-white Americans, anti-Chinese guys seem to sit here, others not so much). Both have somewhat negative connotations in public but at least those connotations derive from the actual content of the beliefs rather than extrapolation and insinuation.

At least ethnonationalism has a falsifiable epistemology thar can be A B tested for its presence. This whole "nazi" appellation is tiresome for its definitional slipperiness. Uncharitably I would argue that "woke" as a catchall serves as the direct oppisite: everyone knows roughly what "woke" is and why its bad, but the practitioners of "woke" will never own up to being "woke". We are at the stage where calling Milo Yanawhatever or Enrique Tarrio or Herman Cain or fucking Walt Disney are all as nazi as David Duke so being called a Nazi is barely shrugworthy. Call Ibram Kendi woke and he'd screech that he's not being woke but highlighting black issues.

Broad swathes of 'antisemitism' on the left can differentiate between opposing Jews and opposing Israel. You and others running cover for antisemitism on the right ignore the significant presence of slogans and groups like 'Jews for Palestine' at all the rallies on college campuses. The largest protests against the Israeli war in Gaza in my region were led by Jewish men in kippahs with megaphones blocking traffic.

They are fools running cover for the most relevant group of anti-Semites in the modern world (a large subgroup of Muslims, fronted by the Palestinians). Though that gives you the relevant stonetoss tug-of-war -- one one side, a Jewish guy in a kippah and a bearded muslim with a watermelon logo. On the other, a Jewish guy in a spodik and a guy with an undercut and a swastika.

They are fools running cover for the most relevant group of anti-Semites in the modern world (a large subgroup of Muslims, fronted by the Palestinians).

Or they genuinely believed the lies about 'Never Again' that they were sold by their leaders.

A line, of course, which largely has been historically understood to be the justification for muscular jewish/israeli military capacity and an unapologetically hair-trigger attitude towards percieved slights.

If they thought "never again" meant nothing bad would happen to anyone ever, they were mistaken. "Never again" was popularized by Meir Kahane, who was a bit of a radical and didn't like Palestinians much. That is to say, he was a terrorist who supported the ethnic cleansing of both Israel and the occupied territories, in favor of Jews. There's no doubt that "Never again" meant "you don't do that shit to Jews", specifically.

Anyway, if you think "Never again" means something, you should probably avoid siding with "From the River to the Sea" people, and those fools have not.

Guys just let the muslims cleanse this area of jews itll be the last time thryll get it out of their system and then the middle east will be a multicultural paradise of saturday morning cartoon rainbow tree huggers guys just listen to me guys

the more you call people wanting functional societies "nazis" and any policies which accomplish that "nazism," the more people will will stop caring whether or not you call them nazis and the result of this desensitization will be more comments/jokes like the ones being discussed

at this point, it appears anything other than a current open-air prison with drug zombies is nazism

maybe the comments, or jokes, or even LARPs will turn into something real at some point in the escalating "Nazi!" rhetoric

and so many respond, "so be it"

the foundational issue on the right is most of the people with power are complete losers who are incapable of delivering what their constituents want and they've been lying, stealing, and cheating for decades while wholly failing to deliver

half the commentators you're bringing up aren't "anti-nazi,"( really, many of them have been cheering and doing PR for neonazis in Ukraine for a few years now) it's that they're pro-Israel more than anything else and they see this as an opportunity to purge anyone who isn't from the rightwing the way they've done a few times over the last 70 or so years

Same thing happened in the other direction; conservatives equated anything other than mass Dickensian poverty with Communism, and many responded "so ve it".

This already happened with 'racist', which was replaced with 'white supremacist' around 2021. Nazi is just the next word on the euphemism treadmill

Rather than "replaced," I see it more as "flattened & equated." In the 00s, when you called someone a White Supremacist, it meant something more than just being the type of "racist" who might laugh at some offensive joke or something. In the 10s - far before 2021, by my observation - White Supremacist became one of many "correct" terms to refer to the latter type of person.

This is because it around then that the whole "racism is prejudice plus power" definition broke out into the mainstream, which put forth that racism wasn't merely treating an individual unfairly on the basis of their race, it was being part of a structure that oppressed black people and other people of color (specifying whites and white-adjacents as not capable of being subject to racism). As such, all racism was declared as a part of White Supremacy, and thus some random 4 year old with no understanding of race or racial history who shows any distaste for anyone with dark skin is exactly as much of a White Supremacist as Nathan Bedford Forrest. And Forrest was exactly as racist as that 4 year old, no more, no less.

Around the same time, I saw the same thing happening with "sexism" and "misogyny." In the 00s and before, the latter term was understood to mean someone with a true, unambiguous antipathy for women as women, and "misandry" as the reverse. But because "sexism" was declared a part of being of the misogynistic patriarchy, it was deemed that some 4 year old saying "girls are icky" is exactly as much of a misogynist as Andrew Tate. And Tate is exactly as sexist as that 4 year old, no more, no less.

In the 10s - far before 2021, by my observation

It's not without reason that people often peg the "Great Awokening" to ~2014. I don't know how the literal President of the United States can be an underappreciated contributor to social trends, but nevertheless--I think that President Obama's direct impact on the federal bureaucracy was to replace broadly egalitarian neoliberal political machinery with explicitly identitarian political machinery.

This article also has empirical data on the explosion of identitarian propaganda in the news media beginning with Obama's first term in office.

2014 was the Michael Brown shooting where a criminal who resisted arrest by grabbing a policemans gun was transformed into a gentle giant backing away slowly saying 'hands up dont shoot'. Facts of the cases never mattered before but the unreality being canon is new.

Incidentally this was around the time Cops had a major network shift and stopped being "boys in blue chasing a black guy in a wife beater through picket fences". I can't definitively prove that this was a major factor in the great awokening but it sure seems related somehow.

So probably backtrace to 2008 then. The backlash against Obama definitely had some racial undertones

A flag with a swatiska embedded in it was spotted in the office of Representative Dave Taylor.  Rep. Taylor has called it out and condemned it, and it's quite possible he never noticed it before himself but it does seem to be another sign of the embedded antisemitic and pro nazi rhetoric in lower level staffers if one of them put it up.

You really are doing bad-faith arguments. I looked this up, and it seems to be something between a hoax and an (ahem) false flag operation:

Multiple GOP congressional offices earlier this year received American flags with "optical illusion" swastikas embedded in them, two Republican sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.

The news comes one day after Rep. Dave Taylor, R-Ohio, called the flag with the swastika “vile” and “deeply inappropriate” after the symbol was seen in one of his staffers’ offices in the background of a meeting.

One of the sources, whose office received a flag back in January, said it was initially difficult to see the flag's swastika with the naked eye, calling it an “optical illusion.” But once the swastika in the center of the flag was discovered, the flag was thrown out, the source said.

The matter is also being investigated by the GOP-led House Administration Committee, in addition to the U.S. Capitol Police.

So unless you want to argue that NBC is right-wing propaganda (and since some of the committed made that very argument about the NYT nothing is beyond the bounds of possibility), then the story is that some person or persons unknown did this in secret, possibly for the very purpose of causing a scandal about GOP swastika flags, and if so, that someone is probably from the very same wellspring as you, magicalkittycat, with your eagerness about "oh noes DAE realise the GOP was a swarm of fascist Nazis parading around swastikas?"

I was inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this second post makes it very plain that you are grinding a partisan axe, and now I have no trouble ignoring anything you may hyperventilate about.

I’m sorry the quality of discussion on this forum can’t meet your post with respect. The dogpiling and plain antagonism is sad to see

  • -21

Did you happen to notice the first one? Cat is not operating in good faith and does not wish to answer any questions.

Nah, this was a shit post and it generated way more thoughtful discussion than it, or OP, deserved. OP brought zero respect, light, or thoughtfulness to the table, just pure culture warring, and this forum is worse off for having it here.

What else does the mainstream left have then the nazi-scare? Free medical care, cheap housing and no more forever wars are popular policies with the base but the elite veto these policies. Trans ideology is losing steam and winning 50+% of votes on trans issues and BLM isn't going to work. What are they going to run on? Free trade fundamentalism, open borders migration and increased deficit spending? The only other issue that they really could run on is a repeat of the inflation reduction act. However, this would require massive deficit spending.

The democrats have Trump = Putin and Trump = Hitler. Other than that they have few policies of their own that they could actually win on.

Free trade fundamentalism, open borders migration

Depending how much Trump chickens out of his favorite policies, this may actually be enough to win the elections.

In the past, the US has profited immensely both from free trade and from attracting the best and the brightest people of the world to their universities.

Trump's zero-sum mentality (roughly: "If we don't fuck over our trade partners, we are the ones getting fucked over") towards trade and the general xenophobia of the his administration both harm the US in this regard. Investment is kinda risky if you do not know if Trump will put immense tariffs on your raw materials. And if I wanted to study abroad, I would think twice before going to the US, which very much makes it clear that they do not want me to stay there. Canada, the UK, or China also have decent universities, and at least the first two are much less likely to cancel my visa over political views expressed online. And while a few professors might be DEI hires, their governments are not waging a war on the university system to get them to DEI-hire 50% Trumpists.

The lack of international students will only be felt in 10-15 years, but I think the tariffs are already felt. If the AI bubble bursts by 2028, and it becomes apparent that the Stargate money went down the drain, that will likely spell a recession.

In such an environment, the Democrats only will have to say "our economic policies are mainstream, like under Clinton, Obama, GWB", and that will be enough to attract voters.

Voting based on the positions on transgenders in bathrooms is something you can only afford to do if both parties have sane economic policies, after all.

the UK, or China also have decent universities, and at least the first two are much less likely to cancel my visa over political views expressed online

LOL no the UK seems much more likely to do that; they throw people in jail for tweets longer than they do for rape.

Canada, the UK, or China also have decent universities, and at least the first two are much less likely to cancel my visa over political views expressed online.

Note that Canada is changing policies to reduce the number of student visas issued going forward, and the UK is considering some similar changes.

University profitmaxxing has had extremely negative soxial and economic externalities due to the cost of bad faith exploiters being borne by the general public, and leftists (which university admin overwhelmingly is) either ignore the costs or revel in the local proles being culturally enriched.

What else does the mainstream left have then the nazi-scare?

One argument many moderate conservatives are making is exactly this, the rise of Nazism is literally feeding left wing discourse a valuable weapon. When figures like Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Myron Gaines, etc openly deny the holocaust and spread hateful neonazi conspiracy theories, they push away the normies and validate calling the right Nazis.

In politics you don't outrun the bear, you outrun the other party. The Dems made themselves too caustic, the pendelum swung too far. While they seek to moderate their image now, the growth of unashamed open air nazism by high level conservative figures is a great way to make the exact same mistake.

  • -15

To give the other side of the coin it’s due, Nick Fuentes and Myron Gaines are not super influential outside of far far right politics. Tucker is still sorta mainstream, though he’s not really on public airwaves or mainstream cable. And as I keep pointing out, as far as I can tell, a vanishingly small near lizard man constant levels of conservatives have any serious support for Nazi/Neonazi ideas. It’s simply not mainstream in conservative circles in any real sense, and only helps the left to constantly denounce Nazis as if they’re a major faction in conservative politics. Constant denunciations of nazism are a win for liberals because it feeds the impression that the left wants to create that the right is crawling with Nazis and therefore dangerous.

If a guy is constantly starting every conversation saying “I hate child molesters”, it doesn’t actually create the impression that he’s actually against child molesters. Instead, it causes normies to ask “why is it that this guy is always talking about child molesters?” And a good portion of the people noticing that will come away thinking that he must either be a child molester or be protecting one because most people do not go around denouncing things everyone else hates. I don’t want anything to do with child molesters. But im not bringing it up because I have nothing to do with child molesters.

Fuentes has the most popular podcast, bar none. Yes, more popular than Rogan. More popular than liberal woman dating podcast. More popular than the successor to coast-to-coast AM(RIP). More popular than cryptoscam shilling.

Antisemitism and white identitarianism are increasing in mainstream red tribe circles, just as they are elsewhere. This doesn't make them quite mainstream, yet, and republicans are much less likely to make a serious turn against Jews than democrats(the red tribe, being a peasant population, will keep whatever personal prejudices within reasonable limits imposed by their leadership- as they did when the leadership said you can't have jim crow anymore). 'Christian nationalism' is probably best understood as red tribe nationalism(you basically have to claim to be Christian, even if an unobservant one, to be accepted in the red tribe) rather than a real religious movement.

"though Tucker's not really on public airwaves or mainstream cable."

Yep. My parents miiiiight remember him if he were to go back to FOX. As it stands, they know Kimmel far better.

And the point being that wasting time and energy going after the 1% of supposed Nazis in the conservative world not only wastes time that should be used for policy, but actually cements the view and gives oxygen to the idea that fairly minor figures that nobody not already in the far right knows about are prominent figures in the right movement. Like let’s play that movie. JD Denouces Fuentes. And the story then is a million profiles of prominent Nazi Nick Fuentes, who is important enough to the conservative side to get the attention of JD Vance. Does this actually make people think the right is dealing with Nazis or do they think that the right is full of Nazis. If you denounce wife beating, people would assume that you abuse your wife and you are deflecting. They aren’t going to hear that and think it’s not a problem.

It's not so much about whether Nazi ideas are held by a significant number of Republicans/conservatives, but whether there is a popular perception that they are. A lot of people on here seem to think that the Democratic Party is hostile to men, or white men, or whatever. It's a reasonable conclusion to come to if you listen to certain voices that are amplified by people looking to influence your opinion, but if you take an objective look at the party itself, it's absurd. The party chairman is a white guy. The most recent president was a white guy. All across the country, at all levels of government, there are white guys in elected positions as Democrats, and there are plenty more who were nominated by the party and lost.

In 2022, when Pat Toomey's seat opened up, there were four options for the Democrats. Val Arkoosh was a doctor who showed some early promise but withdrew before the primaries. Malcolm Kenyatta was a black, gay, state legislator from Philadelphia who was able to wrangle some early endorsements and seemed like the favorite son of the party. But when Conor Lamb entered the race, practically everyone who mattered in the party threw their support behind him, aside from the state party and Governor Wolf, both of whom declined to endorse any candidate. Lamb is about as sterotypical upper middle class white guy as it gets. Hell, just being an attorney from Mt. Lebanon signals as much to anyone from Pittsburgh. Lamb eventually lost the nomination, though, to a non-stereotypical white guy with a higher public profile.

These do not come off as the actions of a party that is hostile to white men. But there's a perception nonetheless that it is, and there's certainly a brand of lefty that is hostile to white men, and, as I've been saying for years, the influence of this kind of person among normie Democrats is wildly overstated by people trying to portray the party as a caricature for political purposes. And it's a problem for Democrats, and while I won't go as far as saying that it has cost them elections, it is certainly plausible to think so. If people get the impression that the Republican Party is insufficiently condemnatory of white nationalists, or Nazi sympathizers, or people who make racist jokes in private, or whoever, then it could come back to bite them in the ass regardless of whether these people make up a significant number of registered voters or elected officials.

This is why people like Stefniak are quick to condemn these people and call for their resignations. If you recall Stefniak was gunning for a UN Ambassadorship, only to have her nomination pulled by Trump. She's in a nominally safe seat, but Trump had recently had to travel to Florida to after the seat vacated by Mike Walz was in danger of being lost to a Democrat, a seat Walz had carried by 30 points. the GOP underperforms when Trump isn't on the ballot, and if Trump's popularity declines it could spell trouble in 2026. Probably not enough trouble for Stefniak to lose her seat, but an opponent being able to roast her for ignoring people from her district in party-affiliated offices making these kinds of remarks in a semi-official forum then it could be enough to tip things over the edge. It's at least enough of a concern that Trump was unwilling to risk a special election.

whether there is a popular perception that they are

People called Mitt Romney fascist. When Mitt Romney attempted the beloved progressive policy of affirmative action, he was called sexist instead. The game is rigged and the principles don't matter.

A lot of people on here seem to think that the Democratic Party is hostile to men, or white men, or whatever. It's a reasonable conclusion to come to if you listen to certain voices that are amplified by people looking to influence your opinion, but if you take an objective look at the party itself, it's absurd. The party chairman is a white guy. The most recent president was a white guy.

Broad hostility is not actually contradictory to the affected group continuing to have high-level positions, especially when those positions go to people that have been, ha ha, grandfathered in. I think the hostility was actually quite useful to Biden's win, since he became the only candidate with name recognition that wasn't an Official Group, and as such he becomes the default since he is entirely forbidden from campaigning for and on his identity.

There's also the slim and fractured line between malice and indifference. The Democratic Party, and liberal-progressives writ generally, are not necessarily hostile to white men, though they have a lot of constituents who are, and they do not disabuse those constituents like they do for hostility towards other groups- remember that Biden was forced to apologize to a murderer. It is, in my opinion, utterly undeniable that the Democratic Party and liberal-progressives have a deep unconscious indifference to white men, that can often be taken for hostility in comparison to the endless praise and generosity to every other demographic.

This laundry list from the Green New Deal has long stuck with me for its thoroughness of such callouts:

Whereas climate change, pollution, and environmental destruction have exacerbated systemic racial, regional, social, environmental, and economic injustices (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘systemic injustices’’) by disproportionately affecting indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this preamble as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities’’);

Some of those groups do, indeed, include white men. But 'white men' is virtually the only group not outright named!

Who called Romney a fascist? The only example I can find is a comment made around the time of the Democratic convention by a delegate from Kansas, but I'd bet you couldn't name him without looking. Maybe you can find something I can't, but I've done a bit of looking and I can't find any contemporaneous sources describing him as such. The "binders full of women" comment is a different kettle of fish entirely, largely because he embellished the story. He didn't go out and look for female appointees and compile a binder; it was handed to him by MassGAP, a bipartisan advocacy group. The further criticism was that he spent 25 years in business and evidently didn't know any qualified women.

As for the rest of your comment, the glib thing to say would be that Democrats are indifferent to white men while Republicans are indifferent to everyone else, but that would be overly reductive. In another post I made today about jury instructions I say that:

I'm pretty defensive of the legal system here, because it usually works better than people give it credit for, but I'm not so in the bag for it that I don't realize that a system run by lawyers and judges gets us a system that works well for lawyers and judges. We spend so much time immersed in this stuff that it's easy to forget that people out in the real world don't have a clue about any of this and will do things that make sense to them but not to the court, which is a big problem when we're relying on them to make important decisions.

The rest of the post gives some additional context, but the upshot is that lawyers need to put themselves in the shoes of the people who will actually be acting on the jury instructions rather than automatically assume that since they make sense to them they'll make sense to anyone. And this is true for most of the legal system; if you have a system created and run by lawyers and judges you have a system that works great for lawyers and judges, even though when the system fails it ultimately isn't lawyers and judges who have to deal with the consequences. Any number of legal reforms over the years were met with stiff resistance from within the legal community along the lines of "that won't work because this is the way we've always done it and it simply can't be done any other way. This is true even for things that seem blindingly obvious in retrospect. In 1843 there was a murder at Yale University. A young man was charged with the crime, posted bond, then returned home to Pennsylvania, at which point the Connecticut prosecutors closed the case. In the view of the lawyers involved in the case, this was an appropriate resolution. That’s the way things were done. A bond is posted to ensure that the defendant appears at trial. If the defendant doesn’t appear for trial, he forfeits the bond, and the books are closed. It has to be done that way, the lawyers argued. Otherwise, what is the point of posting bond? The press had a different take. As the press saw it, the failure to prosecute the murderer because the murderer was wealthy enough to forfeit the bond was an outrage. The lawyers thought that the reaction of the press was ignorant. These people just didn’t understand the process. The press brought to it a different perspective—and the press was right, and the press won. The practice of abandoning warrants when a defendant posted bond and fled the jurisdiction was gradually curtailed.

What we've had in America, historically, is a system that works well for white men and varying degrees of less well for everyone else. And while it hasn't worked well for all white men, as a group white men have been in the best position. You can mock the Green New Deal statement, and I'm generally not a fan of this kind of posturing but it at least makes sense. It doesn't name white men, but every group named has a counterpart, and alleging indifference to the counterparts ranges from cringe-inducing to ridiculous:

  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of those descended from settlers
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of majority-white communities
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of native-born Americans (okay, this one does have some traction)
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of people in areas with good economies
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of people who live in big cities
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of the rich
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of high-income workers
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of men
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of working-age people
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of able-bodied people
  • Democrats are indifferent to the plight of adults

The whole point is that some people in the US are in a worse position than the should be as a result of policies that were designed with indifference to them but which worked well for certain majorities, and that it is more just to change those policies so that we have a system that works equally well for everybody. One of the more recent frontiers in legal reform is getting rid of the plea bargain system. There are arguments to be made on both sides, and I'm not necessarily in favor of the idea, but one of the worst arguments against it is that it isn't feasible because there's no way we could have that many trials. Complaining about alleged Democratic indifference to white men is like arguing that the plea bargaining system is necessary because it's easier for the lawyers and judges.

but if you take an objective look at the party itself, it's absurd. The party chairman is a white guy. The most recent president was a white guy. All across the country, at all levels of government, there are white guys in elected positions as Democrats, and there are plenty more who were nominated by the party and lost.

No, this fits exactly with my beliefs on the matter. It was Darwin (who is likely OP) who clarified the matter for me. It was a post long ago, and he was being grilled about why his extremely progressive beliefs didn't compel him to offer his own well-paying job to an equally deserving woman or minority. And his response was annoyed bewilderment that these autistic nerds kept trying to actually apply the ideology consistently. Didn't they understand that it was just a manipulation? You're not supposed to actually suffer for it, you're supposed to make rivals suffer for it. Joe Biden doesn't give a fuck about black people, he's just shameless enough to use them as a weapon against Mitt Romney.

White Democrat men are like the pick-mes of the Democrat Party. They talk the talk specifically to sabotage other white guys and surround themselves with less competent identity people who are less of a threat to their striving and status.

These do not come off as the actions of a party that is hostile to white men.

No, it totally does. They are very open about projecting believing that everyone else is super, super racist, and will never vote for or support non-whites. Kamala Harris literally just said that this exact logic was why she passed over her preferred VP pick!

and there's certainly a brand of lefty that is hostile to white men, and, as I've been saying for years, the influence of this kind of person among normie Democrats is wildly overstated by people

Nah, we've had this argument and it isn't plausible. 90%+ of Democrat politicians and leaders are openly misandrist (even if they are male themselves). There's a tiny handful of influencers trying to triangulate their way around that, timidly suggesting that maybe more Gen Z men would support Dems if the Dems spent less time actively shitting on them, and those influencers were themselves mean girls ganged into submission.

I can’t imagine massive denunciations of far left woke ideology is going to fix that either tbh. The wings have sucked the oxygen out of real politics and has nothing to do with political power. They also generally don’t drive policy. They’re not important except in managing the banding of the party.

To give the other side of the coin it’s due, Nick Fuentes and Myron Gaines are not super influential outside of far far right politics.

Gaines I'd accept given some of the comments of "who?" and he is a relatively new influencer (although 1.5 million in a few years would be evidence of the Nazism growing) but Fuentes seems to be pretty well known in political communities.

Tucker is still sorta mainstream, though he’s not really on public airwaves or mainstream cable.

He runs one of the most popular podcasts in the US! Sometimes, as recent as last year, he has even had more than Joe Rogan

So it might not be "mainstream" by some restrictive definitions but there is a lot of momentum here!

Tucker Carlson is big but did not "openly deny the holocaust"; he merely had a guest on his show who did.

Yeah but the emergence of new antisemitism has been enabled largely by people on the Left who incoherently decided Palestinians were the absolute pinnacle of moral behavior due to their 'oppressed' status, plus centering opinions from African Americans who have always trended towards a lot of antisemitism not really expressed by white people. Your screeds are questionable when most of the overton window to allow this has been opened from the Left.

You've been catching a lot of flak over this, and I am already tired of the "Nazi!" topic, and besides there's probably a lesson to be learned from history about spotting extremism early and preventing it from turning moderate societies into failed states...

...but given the last decades, I really don't care anymore. Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs. Thank you but it's been quite enough. My patience ran out with some finality at some point in 2021. If we can't have nice things, then I'll be living on spite.

...but given the last decades, I really don't care anymore. Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.

Well add another to the pile of evidence that Hitlerism and Nazism is growing.

  • -21

You know he is very literally not a republican, right? As in, literally doesn't even live in the right country.... probably in the only one where he's been beaten over the head even more with false alarms of "Nazi! Nazi! They're back!".

You know he is very literally not a republican, right?

Did I say he was?

I said that it's just more evidence of growing Hitlerism and Nazism which is what "Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler" is.

Let me second Southkraut's comment and say that, if this serves as evidence for you, then this comment of yours along with the rest of your comments on this thread have convinced me more than ever that Nazism being a problem in the right is basically entirely the invention of motivated reasoning by their political enemies. This is due to seeing the type of reasoning that you employ that leads you to such a conclusion.

Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.

This is what they said. I didn't write this, they did. I don't think you're gonna convince me that this isn't pro Nazi rhetoric, I'm typically opposed to calling things "gaslighting" or "telling me to ignore what is in front of my eyes" or something, but I don't see any serious argument that "bring on the Nazis, I'd rather have Hitler than the left" is anything other than a pro Nazi sentiment. Unless he's not being serious in the comment in which case whoops!

"Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs."

Is it common knowledge that Nazis in the 30s were only into it because it wasn't communism? Or were they positively proactive about it (as was my impression)?

I don't think you're gonna convince me that this isn't pro Nazi rhetoric

Nobody thinks they're going to convince you of anything, they're just letting you know that your magic words don't work anymore. Just skip to the part where you post a big angry screed and never come back, because the part where everyone decides to humor your precious moralizing is just never coming.

Go ahead, explain how this isn't pro nazi

Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler

If you're asking people to gaslight themselves, it never works. You get the loyalists to close their eyes sure, but the loyalists aren't the ones who need to close their eyes. You want the moderates and normies to side with you.

This is what Ben Shapiro is talking about. Rallying around the nazis is not just a bad idea to begin with (because the Nazis are bad to begin with), but also the normies don't like Nazis and it's a stupid political idea to actively associate yourself with widely unpopular statements like that. The progressives lost because they embraced their radical wing, why make the same mistake?

Go ahead, explain how this isn't pro nazi

It was explained several times in the thread. Why do you keep taking quotes out of context, and ignoring answers given to you?

Again, if you believe that someone saying

Bring on the nazis. I'd rather have literal Hitler spread his brain-rot than give the left another day to spread theirs.

means "Hitlerism and Nazism is growing," then your standards of evidence show me just how much this sort of conclusion requires grasping at straws. Preferring literal Hitler brain-rot over leftist brain-rot doesn't mean that the person is either into Hitlerism or Nazism.

Preferring literal Hitler brain-rot over leftist brain-rot doesn't mean that the person is either into Hitlerism or Nazism.

Biden was a terrible president, but if you'd have rather have Hitler over him then yeah, you probably are into Hitlerism. The average American doesn't feel that way.

Personally, while I do think kitty is grasping at straws making equivalences, I do think there is smoke here. I don't think "I wouldn't care if the party I seem to support became pro-Nazi" is to a significant degree better than actual support for Nazis.

I am in the unenviable position of being anti-woke left. I am pro legal immigration; want regulated, anti-oligarchy capitalism; some gun regulation; and broadly think the the Republican party does more shitty things than the Democrats. But I hate the left's obsession with race and identity. That's why I'm here, because I'm looking for places I can talk that aren't too group-thinky one way or another.

But the popular sentiment here seems to be that because I vote left I bear some culpability for the shit leftists do because I enable them. Conversely, the right gets basically an unlimited-use free pass so long as there is some leftist act that can be deemed worse. They never cancel each other out either. The same leftist act could be used to excuse 10,000 different right leaning actions.

And here it's stated pretty much crystal clear. Right up there with MovieBob's "There are no bad tactics, only bad targets." It's a pretty flat admittance that there's no point engaging with you because you don't have any standards. It's not even "I don't care about this example," it's "I will never care."

I'm not looking to change anyone's mind on which side is worse. What I'm aiming for it consistency on whether a side is culpable for its own bad apples. Everywhere I go, left or right, it's "excuses for my side, maximum uncharitability for my opponents." I won't say I'm immune to it either, but I try to see things how the other side would see it.

The moderate left exists to provide reputational cover for the progressive left and the moderates are too cowardly to stand up to the progressives. Biden bails out the teamsters as an expensive reward but also issues communiques with language about birthing persons latinx, opens the border for millions of illegal migrants while pretending that border encounters are what people care about and threaten title ix trans compliance for school funding. The nonwoke left is now viewed (rightly) as hypocrites pretending to champion Common Sense things but actually are just going to run full tilt into progressive cause celebres immediately.

The problem for the nonwoke left is that the extreme far right is now back in play thanks to the tarring of everyone unwoke as a nazi. Partially though this can be attributed to woke tactics being employed in new battlefields where previous rules limited employment of such tactics. If wokes want to play race essentialism, then whites are happy to play that game too. Once you westerners are done with bronze league white-black racism you can play in gold league balkan racism to get your toes really wet before diving into asian ultraracism.

This sounds like the horseshoe version of the progressive complaint that centrists provide cover for the far right. But no. The moderate left exists because they have their own policy goals, and a democratic system often involves allying with people whom you don't entirely agree with but can tolerate to an extent. This is true for the right as well, which is why Mr. "Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office" is now playing second fiddle to the guy he once insulted.

But again, my point is the consistency. Does the right exist to provide reputational cover for every crazy Republican, up to and especially Trump? Do you also have to answer for everything your side does, and abandon your beliefs if someone odious holds something vaguely similar? Because that's the same argument progressives lob at me whenever I argue against wokism.

Many on this forum have said they flat-out don't care about the right's excesses but the left's are so egregious that nothing could top it. If I say I believe that I believe the right's excesses are actually pretty damn egregious, does that give me license to just dismiss any complaints about the wokies with "I don't care?" No, it wouldn't. It would just prove there's no point engaging with me, because I'm just a partisan with no principles.

More comments

If this serves as evidence to you, then you are really, really desperate for it.

I mean while I find left-Pearl clutching over Nazi claims extremely tiresome, you did literally say "Bring on the nazis"

I guess you're more of a "subtle acceptance" than a "full throated supporter" but still, you didn't exactly make it hard for him there lol

I guess you're more of a "subtle acceptance" than a "full throated supporter"

It's the Chen Sheng Rebellion of support. Damned either way.

Yes, bring them on if the choice is between them and the modern left. Was I unclear about that?

That being held sufficient to qualify as outright nazism in itself...it illustrates why this entire discussion is absurd.

But a number of Nazi supporters in 1930 Germany would have voiced their support in term of "better them than the Bolsheviks", no? I don't think you can no-true-Scotsman a form of Nazi support away if it would rule out a plurality of actual 1930s Nazis.

And at the time, they were right. The Bolsheviks were worse and hobbled the entire region for decades.

Rather unfortunate about what happened in between, but eastern Germany is still far behind the west in terms of economics and development, 70 years later, isn't it?

If your point is comparing progressives to the Bolsheviks... then I'm gonna take my chances that the current right isn't genocidal, because I'm pretty sure the current progressives are just as destructive as the old given a chance.

Rather unfortunate about what happened in between, but eastern Germany is still far behind the west in terms of economics and development, 70 years later, isn't it?

FWIW, West Germany did get a lot of help after the war, while the east was thoroughly exploited by its overlords.

More comments

If the choice is between Nazis and the modern left, what is the actual difference in practice between an outright Nazi and someone who "only" would rather have Nazis than the modern left? It looks like they're both working towards the same goal. Even if the "preferrer" intends to try and slow the swing of the pendulum from the left to Nazism once it starts being too Nazi for his taste, at the moment he's all too happy to help it gain momentum.

For the record I do not believe that the choice is between Nazis and the modern left, although I grant that picking "nazis" appears a lot simpler for many than picking the middle.

If the choice is between Nazis and the modern left, what is the actual difference in practice between an outright Nazi and someone who "only" would rather have Nazis than the modern left? It looks like they're both working towards the same goal.

You said it yourself. The "preferrer" and the actual nazi are aligned in their purpose temporarily. Yet they are not the same.

As for whether this is the choice - that depends on

  1. whether you accept the premise that the modern right is nazis, and on
  2. how many options you have, politically. The Americans probably do indeed only have two choices. So do we Germans - there's the right-wing party usually smeared as "nazis" (not sure how accurate that is), and then there's the leftist parties and the parties who stick try to do liberalism or conservatism within leftist narrative frameworks.

If the choice is between Nazis and the modern left

As some Spartan once allegedly wrote in a message,

If

Even if the "preferrer" intends to try and slow the swing of the pendulum from the left to Nazism once it starts being too Nazi for his taste, at the moment he's all too happy to help it gain momentum.

I think the issue is that, generally (dunno about Southkraut himself), people who genuinely prefer Nazism to modern leftism see modern leftism as having the same sins as Nazism, but worse, or perhaps more dangerous. So if things became too Nazi for their taste, it wouldn't make sense to push for modern leftism, since modern leftism is even further along the spectrum in the direction they don't want to go.

At this stage, where everyone to the right of Karl Marx is a Nazi, I too am "Bring on the Nazis". If we're going to have fascists under every bush, let them be real fascists out in the open where we can fight them and not "well you are not convinced that someone can be a non-binary trans femme presenting masc butch two-spirit gender fluid genderqueer person with a feminine penis who is a Real Woman in every sense the same as your cis het self, so you are indeed Goering come again" fascists.

I’m also super over this. It’s like these people have never heard of a self fulfilling prophecy; if you keep telling people that wanting to have a functioning society is fascism, do you think that will just scare people away forever?

Ironically I get huge “hitler in the bunker / battle of Berlin” vibes from these increasingly shrill and desperate progressives who keep spamming the “hitler” button hoping to score a critical hit. Maybe with a touch of Baghdad Bob.

Increasingly the only people listening are just the most thoroughly propagandized. The story of multiple institutions desperately vying for the support of a shrinking and increasingly socially isolated group of people is just the story of progressives in The Long Current Year.

It’s also extra funny because

1.) I’m not white 2.) I’m very pro Israel 3.) I’m not even remotely anti-Semitic
4.) I’m married to a non white immigrant with non white children 5.) I live and work in a very high percentage immigrant community

And I’m not even the only person who I know personally that meets this description that I know of that is entirely over this shit. On paper someone like me would have sympathy for the supposed “anti-Nazi” side but at this point I wouldn’t piss on a progressive if they were on fire.

Because I firmly believe this dominant progressive narrative which superficially is ‘on my side’ is deeply toxic and extremely bad for everyone. I don’t want to live in South Africa, and I don’t want my children to live there either, but if the supposed “anti-fascist” forces prevail that’s increasingly what looks like would happen.

Ironically I get huge “hitler in the bunker / battle of Berlin” vibes from these increasingly shrill and desperate progressives who keep spamming the “hitler” button hoping to score a critical hit.

“Mit dem Angriff Politicos wird das alles in Ordnung kommen.”

“Mein Führer … Politico …”

When Oliver Hirschbiegel staged the famous bunker scene in his 2004 movie, with Bruno Ganz as Hitler, he wasn’t expecting it to be appropriated for comedy; a dramatic recreation of Hitler’s last stand is not exactly a laugh-out-loud subject. And yet the German filmmaker is pleased, nay, thrilled that YouTube enthusiasts have taken it upon themselves to reinterpret it to address anything from Hillary Clinton’s loss to the Taylor Swift-Kanye West feud.

“Someone sends me the links every time there’s a new one,” says the director, on the phone from Vienna. “I think I’ve seen about 145 of them! Of course, I have to put the sound down when I watch. Many times the lines are so funny, I laugh out loud, and I’m laughing about the scene that I staged myself! You couldn’t get a better compliment as a director.” Some of Hirschbiegel’s favorites are the one where Hitler hears of Michael Jackson’s death, and one in which the Fuhrer can’t get Billy Elliot tickets.

As for the idea of such a serious scene being used for laughs, Hirschbiegel thinks it actually fits with the theme of the movie. “The point of the film was to kick these terrible people off the throne that made them demons, making them real and their actions into reality,” he says. “I think it’s only fair if now it’s taken as part of our history, and used for whatever purposes people like.” He adds, “If only I got royalties for it, then I’d be even happier.”

http://www.vulture.com/2010/01/the_director_of_downfall_on_al.html

A noble sentiment from a more civilised age.

He seems like a thoughtful guy. I hope he's stayed that way and hasn't succumbed to one of the various flavors of brainrot circulating these days. We need sane artists.

Easily one of the top 20 memes of the 21st century, never fails to entertain

why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism?

Not only is this begging the question, your whole post is a Gish gallop. There have already been plenty of posts pointing out that the Young Republicans chat is not pro-Nazi. Someone already has pointed out that Myron Gaines is a pro-Palestinian Muslim--yeah, he doesn't like Jews, big surprise. Maybe he even identifies with Nazis. That reflects on the Democrats, who support the Palestinians and who Muslims are allied with, not on "conservatism". And the swastika flag, being nonobvious, was probably planted there to discredit Taylor. You clearly have not bothered checking any of your items for accuracy before posting them.

If you have a list of 20 reasons why creationism is true and the first item is about how the sun couldn't be millions of years old (written before nuclear fusion was discovered) it's not worth looking at the rest of the list.

And the swastika flag, being nonobvious, was probably planted there to discredit Taylor.

I have seen zero evidence for that. I mean, sure, perhaps some Democratic staffer was willing to trespass in the office and hang the print there, picking a spot where it would be seen by the zoom camera, and made it exactly so non-obvious that the poor innocent staffer who got screenshotted with the flag in the background did not notice it.

But my priors are that the sort of people who share edgy gas chamber 'jokes' (scare quotes because they were not particularly funny beyond simply being edgy, imho) also seem like the sort of people who would print out edgy enhanced US flags. They simply fucked up by having them in the view of the camera.

Your priors are your priors, not evidence. My priors are that even if one or more staffers in a Congressional office were to want to put up an edgy swastika flag, there are plenty of other staffers who would notice and object strenuously.

There have already been plenty of posts pointing out that the Young Republicans chat is not pro-Nazi

Even if we don't count it as "Nazi" despite the constant jokes, they were making a bunch of antisemitic remarks.

That reflects on the Democrats, who support the Palestinians and who Muslims are allied with, not on "conservatism".

But he's also a conservative who has associated with other conservatives like Nick Fuentes and Sneako. He's worn Trump sweaters and said "It's Trump 2024 or this country is going down the toilet" and "Everybody's got to go out there and fucking vote for Trump, especially if you live in Florida. Bro, he is the last stand we got, man".

And the swastika flag, being nonobvious, was probably planted there to discredit Taylor.

Possible! Taylor at least called it out, so let's hope they didn't notice and some staffer just happened to use the US flag with a secret swatiska instead of the tons of normal flags they would have access to.

  • -21

He's worn Trump sweaters and said "It's Trump 2024 or this country is going down the toilet" and "Everybody's got to go out there and fucking vote for Trump, especially if you live in Florida. Bro, he is the last stand we got, man".

So voting for Trump makes one a Nazi? Well, thanks for the clarification of your viewpoint.

No, it makes one a conservative, which is what @magicalkittycat was addressing - ie Gaines's fault (should he be judged to be a Nazi on his individual merits) should be blamed on the Republicans and not the Dems.

So now we've moved from "they're Nazis, Harold" to "they're conservatives (which is the same thing)".

Why am I getting subtle hints of motte and bailey here?

He's both a nazi and a conservative.

Not even close. Please reread the comment thread. Here is how it went: first, Myron Gaines, in particular, was argued by the OP to be a Nazi due to his personal demonstrated antisemitism. Then, someone claimed that, due to his support for Palestine, Gaines's antisemitism should really be ascribed to a trend among Democrats, not to a trend among conservatives. It was in counter to this that we got onto the topic of proving Gaines is indeed a conservative. The point is not "Gaines is a conservative, therefore he's basically a Nazi". Everyone in the comment thread agreed that Gaines is a Nazi-sympathizing antisemite: the debate was between "Gaines is Nazi-ish and this reflects badly on conservatives because he is one" vs , or "Gaines is Nazi-ish but this says nothing whatsoever about conservatives because Gaines, as pro-Palestine Muslim whose antisemitism is downstream of that background, could as easily be argued to be D- as R-aligned".

What's interesting is that the one thing both the Nazi denouncers (Hanania/Lynch/etc) and Nazi defenders (Myron/Torba/etc) here both seem to agree on, is that this is common among the young right.

As Ross Douthat(?) said 10 years ago, "if you don't like the Christian right, you're really not going to like the post-Christian right." Whoops!

We've seen this with Kanye and his descent into Nazism

anon, pls

So with all this recent controversy, how big of a Nazi problem is actually festering, and why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism?

Nazis aren't real in 2025. You need to more precisely define what you mean. A guy waving a Soviet flag in 2025 isn't a Bolshevik, he's a progressive.

Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future like embracing left wing radicalism hurt Biden?

What is "Nazi radicalism" in the 2025 American context? In any case, no, I think normies are experiencing a hangover from woke and are desensitized to this pearl-clutching nonsense.

And how do the non Nazi conservatives and moderates balance fighting off Nazi accusations from the left also working to stem this apparant rise of unashamed nazism and Holocaust denialism?

All the defections have already happened. Nobody on the right cares about "fighting off Nazi accusations from the left." Why should we fight any accusation from the left? Why not just lean into it while mocking the left and winking to the audience? That seems to be working.

I think your perspective on TheMotte could actually be extremely valuable, if only you would directly state your opinions and drop all of the accusations and attempts at reader manipulation. You've already been called out on the "have you stopped beating your wife?" style questions, so why not try to write another post about these events seeking to understand people who might have had a different reaction from yours?

Nazis aren't real in 2025. You need to more precisely define what you mean. A guy waving a Soviet flag in 2025 isn't a Bolshevik, he's a progressive.

This was pretty specific. People who say themselves that they are Nazis or openly praise Hitler like Myron Gaines, or those who engage in blatant and strong Nazi apologetics such as Holocaust denialism like Fuentes or Carlson.

All the defections have already happened. Nobody on the right cares about "fighting off Nazi accusations from the left." Why should we fight any accusation from the left? Why not just lean into it while mocking the left and winking to the audience? That seems to be working.

There are! I even linked some prominent conservatives who are opposed to it. Your "defense" apparently being "actually no one on the right cares about neonazism and hitlerism" seems like a very negative view of right wingers and conservatives. There's plenty of anti Nazi conservatives like Dinesh D'Souza and Seth Dillon. And I showed Ben Shapiro's argument of how apologizing and defending and empowering radicals hurt the left and why he doesn't think it's good to do on the right now. I'm sorry if you have such a negative view of modern conservativism that you can't imagine them without the rising Nazism, but there are tons of perfectly fine ordinary non antisemitic right wingers around.

  • -18

Against my better judgement, I'm going to go "yes, and?", given that even downthread there is another top level post about ACT trying to separate Fascism the ideology from Fascism the viable target.

I could argue the semantics of "Nazi" but given that the term has almost entirely lost relevance in the modern day and is equivalent to "people on a political side I don't like" as pointed out by others in this thread, let's take the bog standard meat and potatoes definition: members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei who held political dominance and control in Germany and whose expansionist policies, among other things, led to the outbreak of the European chunk of World War 2.

Is your position that the "Nazi Problem" is still a problem? If so, then what do you recommend happen? More funding for Nazi-hunting activities and groups in the era of global information flow? I hear a lot of them might still be hidden in South America, you might find some teeth there. Is it your position that members of the NSDAP feel comfortable in modern conservatism? Well, I'm not sure about how comfortable they would be given their advanced age. Is it your position that Nazis are in control of the highest levels of American border control, in a country that - while responsible for the most advanced Nazi science of its era - actively fought the Nazis during World War 2?

You talking about the "Nazi problem", to me, kind of sounds like some crazy wonk talking about the "Hun problem" in Eastern Asian politics. Maybe try the "Han problem".

Okay, fine. Let's take your argument at face value; let's say the NSDAP has survived to this day, and has crossed continents, regions, and time to fester within the American Republican party. So what's your goal then? If the goal is the same as it was in World War 2, and you believe Nazis are hiding in one of the two political parties America has, what would you do about it? Talk about it on some internet forum full of wordcels? Or would you pick up a helmet and gun? After all, the only good fascist is a dead fascist, and you have no shortage of targets given the wide definition of "Nazi" used today. You don't even have to escalate to gunfire, if "bash the fash" is considered acceptable political discourse these days.

"Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future" is a moronic question. After all, they're Nazis. America went to war against Nazis. Then why are you even talking about "moderates" like you care about the optics of Nazis?

Maybe it would be worth studying about how the NSDAP gained power in the first place, and the political, economic, and social conditions in the streets of Germany that allowed them to seize power?

See, I'd be way more convinced by the "no, nobody is trying to say that modern Nazis are members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei from back in the 30s" were they not, like magicalkittycat, so desperately dragging out "look! swastikas on flags! fascist salutes! they're Nazis!"

Make their damn minds up: if they don't mean "Nazi as in Hitler" then say so, but they can't. They want the connotations of "Nazi like Hitler, no literally, if you tolerate this then you will have the Fourth Reich" to whip up fear and loathing and resistance and opposition. But then they also want to try and make any critics of their hysteria look absurd by "no you idiot of course we don't mean literal Germans from 1936, you oaf, you buffoon, you cretin".

I mean, quite plainly they mean "modern-day Hitler LARPers whose Hitler LARP will not stop short of actually killing people". If we suddenly had to deal with an exact Zodiac Killer copycat killing people, then it would be fair enough to describe this problem as "there's a new Zodiac Killer" even if the claim isn't that the actual geriatric 60s guy has come out of retirement. You may disagree with the factual question of whether the alt-right trolls who like to LARP as Nazis to trigger the wokes would in fact keep it up all the way to concentration camps given the chance. But supposing they did, describing that as a "Nazi problem" would be perfectly sensible whether or not they had a genuine, material line of descent from members of the original Nazi party.

It's too late. The Nazi label has been stretched from warmongering fascistic Jew-killing Fuhrer worshippers to anonymous posters on the internet making the okay sign. It's too late to roll it back to "does all the things the Nazis did" after so many decades of "does none of the things the Nazis did".

If I tell you my teacher at school was a Nazi what do you think it means? Bear in mind I was in school at a time before the WW2 generation were all retired. What kind of person was my teacher? A good teacher who was maligned by immature students? A poor teacher who was over-eager to use harsh punishments to maintain classroom discipline? Or an unremarkable teacher approaching retirement with a distinctly German accent, a stiff way of walking suggesting lasting physical trauma, and would shudder whenever a heavy book was slammed on a desk?

If people want to corral their opponents into internment camps that's not a Nazi problem, it's a political oppression problem. That's a serious enough problem when it's stated plainly, it doesn't need to borrow from anyone else's historical political oppression to point it out.

That's what many of the posters here are implying: If they had to choose between someone who makes crass and ill-judged comments in a chatroom, or someone with a meaningful degree of social power who uses the politically correct language to cast them as irredeemable threats to social stability and a barrier to progress on account of their majority identity markers, they'd choose the chatroom troll.

I could argue the semantics of "Nazi" but given that the term has almost entirely lost relevance in the modern day and is equivalent to "people on a political side I don't like" as pointed out by others in this thread, let's take the bog standard meat and potatoes definition: members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei who held political dominance and control in Germany and whose expansionist policies, among other things, led to the outbreak of the European chunk of World War 2.

Yes if you pick highly restrictive definition and choose to not include things like "People who literally call themselves Nazis" like Mark Robinson, or "People who are openly saying Hitler was good" like Gaines then yeah, it's gonna look really silly.

  • -18

This is the motte & Bailey on display; as far as I can tell people like Robinson & Gaines are well within the Lizardman constant on the right.

People shrink or expand the circle that includes “Nazi” at will to defend their argument, I’ve seen it right here in this discussion.

Therefore

”Nazis aren't real in 2025. You need to more precisely define what you mean. A guy waving a Soviet flag in 2025 isn't a Bolshevik, he's a progressive.”

Is correct.

On the first two points, I don't know what's going on with the flag (apparently Taylor's office claims that some outside actor put them up in multiple offices, and most were removed), and I can't say I'm a fan of the clumsy edgelording from various government social media accounts lately. I don't care if being the social media dogsbody for a government department is boring, you're supposed to be boring. The other two "examples" are worth correcting:

Myron Gaines, host of the Fresh and Fit podcast (1.58 million subscribers on YouTube alone). Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS, which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.

For those who don't know, "Myron Gaines" is a /fit/ and Misc meme ("mirin' gains"), and the screen name of a Sudanese-American Muslim manosphere YouTuber. Think knockoff Andrew Tate and you'd have it on the nose, but even his knockoffs can get huge followings nowadays. He had Nick Fuentes on back in 2023, so has been JQing for a while, and is extremely pro-Palestine. The """connection""" that OP draws to the GOP is that, before becoming a podcaster in 2020, Gaines was a DHS special agent - i.e. a regular employee of the department, with no connection to the Republican Party whatsoever.

But in fact, all of this seems to be par for the course, according to Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab. who also wades into the ring of antisemitic Holocaust denialism with comments like

Gab and Torba are far out of even the hardline fringe of the professional Republican Party, and have been for almost a decade. Gab is a classic example of "free speech platform that doesn't just get witches but exclusively markets itself to witches" - they started out aligned with Spencer and the Charlottesville Crew, and have only gone further off the deep end since. Torba claimed that Trump explicitly refused to join the platform, and the most recent connection to the GOP seems to be the Mastriano campaign paid them $5k for promotion in 2022, which they then disavowed and apologized for. It's basically a sump pit for online crazies who can't even stay on 4chan (naturally, Gab has since gone big on Qanon), with no relevance to GOP politics whatsoever.

As Richard Hanania (Writer of "The Origins of Woke" who has been in many conservative spaces before)

You are trolling. A faux-naive/faux-serious description of "Richard Hanania, writer of 'The Origins of Woke'" could be a little flourish one time, twice makes it pretty obvious you're trying to build a schtick. What I find amazing about posters like you, AlexanderTurok, that one other more forgettable EHC poster, etc. is that you seem to genuinely believe you're coming on here and winning arguments and unmasking the chuds. The thing is, you're just not very good at trolling - all you're doing is making yourself and the little Hananiac niche look silly and obnoxious. You should probably spend more time studying how Richard does it.

Gaines is also a former employee of the DHS which is just another point of evidence of low level gop aligned staffers having pro Nazi/antisemitic views.

I have no idea who Gaines is and I care even less, but as a former low-level public service minion that part made me laugh. The DHS in the USA is a hive of scum and villainy, huh? If you're a low-level employee, then you must be... dun-dun-dun... a Nazi!

Let's take a look at the demographics of the DHS (ain't statistics wonderful?) All them low-level female, disabled, BIPOC employees who are secret Nazis! Tidying up the table a bit:

White (Non-Hispanic or Latino) 51.7%
Hispanic or Latino 22.8%
Black or African American (Non-Hispanic or Latino) 16.7%
Asian 6.3%
American Indian or Alaska Native 1.0%
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander 0.7%
Two or More Races 0.8%

Male 65.4%
Female 34.6%
Individuals with Reported* Disabilities 15.4%
Individuals with Targeted** Disabilities 1.3%

*"Reported disabilities" includes employees who self-identify as an individual with a disability or targeted disability ...and employees who were appointed under hiring authorities that take disability into account, i.e., 30% or More Disabled Veteran Appointment and Schedule A Hiring Authority, who have not otherwise self-identified as having a disability.
** "Targeted disabilities" are a subset of reportable disabilities that the Federal Government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis. Targeted disabilities listed on the SF-256 form include: developmental disability, traumatic brain injury, deaf or serious difficulty hearing, blind or serious difficulty seeing, missing extremities, significant mobility impairment, partial or complete paralysis, epilepsy or other seizure disorders, intellectual disability, significant psychiatric disorder, dwarfism, and significant disfigurement.

Federal workforce in general, stats from 2023:

Sixty percent of the federal workforce identified as white compared to 76% in the private sector. Nearly 19% of the federal workforce identified as Black and 10% identified as Hispanic compared to 13% and 19% of the U.S. labor force, respectively.

While 40% of the federal workforce was comprised of individuals who identify as part of a racial or ethnic minority group, this number diminishes significantly at higher levels on the General Schedule scale. People of color make up much of the federal workforce in positions from the GS-2 to GS-6 level, these grade levels typically comprise lower and entry-level administrative positions. White employees make up much of the workforce above the GS-7 level, which consists of mid-level technical and first-level supervisory positions and top-level technical and supervisory positions.

Twenty-six percent of career Senior Executive Service members identified as a person of color in fiscal 2023, a small increase from 25% in the previous year. Of the federal workforce that was not on the GS scale, 37% identified as a person of color.

The overall federal workforce was 55% male and 45% female, compared to 53% male and 47% female in the total U.S. labor force.

Women made up the majority of the federal workforce in GS-3 to GS-9 positions. Notably, 73% of GS-6 employees are female. Men made up much of the workforce above the GS-10 level, the SES and positions not on the GS pay scale.

Women made up the majority of the federal workforce in GS-3 to GS-9 positions, while men made up the majority of the workforce above the GS-10 level, the SES and positions not on the GS pay scale.

Individuals who have served in the uniformed military service constituted a considerable segment of the federal workforce. At the end of fiscal 2023, 30% of federal employees were veterans compared to 5% of the total employed U.S. civilian labor force. In the same year, 25% of new federal hires were veterans.

In fiscal 2023, 21% of the federal workforce identified as having a disability or serious health condition. Of those employees, 2.7% indicated having a targeted or serious health condition and 7.8% identified as having other disabilities or serious health conditions. The other 10.5% of employees with a disability had either an unlisted or undisclosed disability.

Thirty-two percent of federal employees hold a bachelor’s degree, and another 21% have an advanced degree. Federal workers possess bachelor’s and advanced degrees at a higher rate than the overall U.S. labor force—53.8% to 40.4% in 2023.

So - feds are slightly less white and Hispanic and slightly more black than the general workforce, slightly more male, especially in higher-level/more technical grades (the higher up you go, the whiter and more male the management levels get, which tracks with private industry as well), more likely to be veterans, and somewhat better educated than the general workforce.

Pick your Nazis out of that.

AlexanderTurok

RIP in peace our rage bait king

Requiescat. I'll raise a glass to him tonight - just a montepulciano d'abruzzo, my seething prole resentment won't let me drink anything fancier.

Even Alexander can make reasonable points with which I agree every so often. Granted, it's a blue moon type of thing, but it does happen. So far, magicalkittycat is not even in "when all six planets line up" frequency.

Turok was a smart guy who didn't happen to engage very well, seemingly because he didn't want to.

Please, he can't even try to contend with someone like @BurdensomeCount for that crown.

You are trolling. A faux-naive/faux-serious description of "Richard Hanania, writer of 'The Origins of Woke'" could be a little flourish one time, twice makes it pretty obvious you're trying to build a schtick.

It's a great way to establish that these aren't "leftist concern trolls" but conservative aligned names with proven history in right wing spaces. Hanania, Ben Shapiro, Seth Dillon, etc are all established conservative leaning names who are against this rising Nazi radicalism.

  • -16

I'm right-wing and I wouldn't wipe my shoes on Hanania. I think you're trying way too hard, to the point where I'm getting paranoid "are you Impassionata?" vibes.

It's a great way to establish that these aren't "leftist concern trolls" but conservative aligned names with proven history in right wing spaces.

No it isn't. That Hanania wrote "The Origins of Woke" tells us nothing about his alignment (which does happen to be conservative, though a highly idiosyncratic one), nor does it prove history in right wing spaces. I'm not even sure what the reasoning could be, other than the idea that "woke" is something only used by "woke's" enemies, which is ridiculous, since I was one of the very people who self-identified as "woke" when that term was getting mainstream popularity to describe this ideology (though I admit this was right around when I started more fully rejecting such illiberal ideas).

You're right that alone isn't much but my other comment showing his long history in conservative spaces, including pointing out he was described as a friend by JD Vance a few years ago makes for a strong case.

nor does it prove history in right wing spaces.

Yeah, but his time writing for Project 2025, multiple appearances on Tucker Carlson, etc does. I suppose I should have written "Richard Hanania (Author of the Origins of Woke, prior Trump voter, Tucker Carlson guest, Project 2025 writer, former friend of JD Vance, describes himself as "part of the original alt-right 1.0.") and whatever else proof there is, but I figured that would be getting silly.

Yes, you are a different kind of troll from a leftist concern troll, but not a particularly original or interesting one. I notice no rebuttal on the other points?

I notice no rebuttal on the other points?

Go see other comments I've written on this replying to similar points. That's what I've been told to do by mods before instead of reposting the same thing over and over in response to different users, even if it's a rebuttal to the same argument from those users. There's a lot of people trying to make these similar arguments so if you want to know my views, you'll have to check out the prior responses from me.

For my sins, I checked through all your responses. You provide no response to my point that describing Gaines' employment with DHS as somehow linking him to the Republican Party is dishonest, and you haven't addressed Torba in a single comment. For what it's worth, I don't think you're Darwin - Darwin at least tried.

You know I get like 30+ replies every time I check back here? I do not have the time in my busy life to read every single part of every single comment, yet alone reply to them all. I glance through and pick a few.

For what it's worth, I don't think you're Darwin - Darwin at least tried.

Meaningless, I don't know who that is so it's not worth anything.

If you're trying to imply that I'm some other poster for disagreement then that just seems odd. Do you not think there are lots of people in the world who don't share 100% of every belief this site holds? Is TheMotte really such a circlejerk that voicing major disagreements is seen as an oddity only done by a few?

Hanania is not an "established rightwinger". He's a purportedly recovered racist troll whose whole schtick is leveraging his experience as being a shitstain of a person to shit-talk the right in exchange for goodboy grifter points from the left.

He promoted Trump over Harris, wrote a whole book on being anti-woke, contributed to the Heritage Foundation's project 2025, was called a friend by JD Vance back in 2021, and was on Tucker Carlson Tonight twice

Hanania has a very well established right wing conservative history. Maybe you think he no longer counts, but that just makes him, the "man whose tweets helped kill DEI" as some have referred to him as before, an example of someone who got pushed away.

an example of someone who got pushed away.

I'm glad to see the right is ousting nazis like Richard Hanania. Shame on you for citing him so credulously, but that makes him a problem for your side now.

Is there any particular reason you're posting about this, and then ignoring anyone who raises points that make your entire thesis look it relies on manipulating information, if not outright lying?

Hey you can look them up for yourself and see that stuff like Torba and Myron Gaine's posts are literally still there on X.

  • -18

That's not answering my question. You've been caught several times omitting essential context, or misportraying things from your own links. When it's pointed out, you promptly disappear, only to start another post where you do the exact same thing again. Why?

Because OP is a returning poster who was well-known for maximizing ragebait posts that were barely within the rules to try to generate responses that were over the line. If you check said poster's reddit account, they're currently posting about the exact same topic there and making the same arguments.

Can you link to the relevant reddit posts?

Look up /u/darwin2500.

Darwin came back before and famously crashed out (and refused to respond to a bunch of questions) over J.K. Rowling: https://www.themotte.org/@guesswho

Ah, that old friend instead of the other old friend I suspected!

If can israel deny a genocide with 4k video proof

That looks like the lead-in to a statement you'd see from someone pro-Palestinian on Reddit, which does not usually line up directly with the far right (who I believe want everyone in the Levant to lose).

who I believe want everyone in the Levant to lose

Based centerism

It seems safe to assume that sending multiple GOP congressional offices American flags with "optical illusion" swastikas embedded in them is the action of someone who dislikes Republicans and probably associates them with Nazism. The same way that protestors with signs coupling Bush or Trump with Nazi imagery are virtually always anti-Republican, while protestors combining Obama with Nazi imagery are anti-Democrat, except even more so because of the aspect of deception and trying to produce negative headlines about the targets. So how is it indicative of "the embedded antisemitic and pro nazi rhetoric in lower level staffers", rather than the rhetoric of the person who sent it?

You know I don't think people are being fair to you. I can only address this by speaking to my own experiences.

I remember being there in 2007 or so, forming swastikas in Club Penguin with the other anons. Obviously at the time this was pure shock value and didn't indicate any serious ideological commitment. Now we may argue about exactly how serious /pol/ is today, but it's hard to deny that it is a lot more serious about Nazism than we were as teenagers in 2007 harassing kids in Habbo Hotel and Club Penguin.

But what about me? Am I meaningfully more Nazi now than I was in 2007? Did those formative years on 4chan have any lasting influence on my politics? It's hard to say, of course from my own perspective our jokes in 2007 had nothing to do with it. My beliefs seem to me to be merely a logical progression based on what I've learned and experienced over the past 18 years. But either way I've somehow ended up reading SecureSignals posts thinking to myself "Hey this guy may have a point" and to some degree embracing beliefs that would be described by some as white nationalist.

Perhaps this is just another manifestation of the fully generalizable Toaster Fucker Problem. 30 years ago I may have done my fair share of "noticing" but dismissed it without a community of noted race scientists like the Motte to further radicalize me. It seems obvious to me that while "haha just joking" extremism doesn't literally mean the jokers hold those specific beliefs in earnest, it does meaningfully shift the Overton Window and creates a space where serious discussion of previously taboo beliefs can blend with the jokes. If you believe that White Nationalism and Antisemitism are very evil then it is reasonable IMO to be concerned about these jokes and want to stamp them out.

Basically I don't think most of the people engaging in these jokes are seriously Nazis but I do think it creates a space for those ideas to spread and does probably contribute to the popularity of taboo far right beliefs if not outright Nazism. To be clear I think the Left has their own version of this same problem, in fact, to a much more advanced and concerning degree.

30 years ago I may have done my fair share of "noticing" but dismissed it without a community of noted race scientists like the Motte to further radicalize me. It seems obvious to me that while "haha just joking" extremism doesn't literally mean the jokers hold those specific beliefs in earnest, it does meaningfully shift the Overton Window and creates a space where serious discussion of previously taboo beliefs can blend with the jokes. If you believe that White Nationalism and Antisemitism are very evil then it is reasonable IMO to be concerned about these jokes and want to stamp them out.

I think this is an eminently reasonable position. However, I disagree with it, and I have another position which I consider just as reasonable, but more convincing. Which is that, without overwhelming tyrannical force, no one individual, organization, or even side can control the Overton Window. Despite the recent performance by the modern left, such tyrannical force just isn't viable in America, certainly not in the long run (except maybe in the really long run where America as we know it doesn't exist anymore). As such, we can't rely on our ability to keep Nazism out of the Overton window; so we should have ample protections against it when it does enter the Overton window, so that it doesn't go from "within the Overton window" to "ruling us by convincing enough people."

And I see no better way to prepare such defenses than analyzing and practicing against the best, strongest, most well-developed and convincing versions of their arguments, put forth by their smartest, most charismatic proponents. Just like how any professional athlete will tell you that no amount of practice scrimmages against teammates can make up for actual playtime against an opposing team in terms of teaching one's flaws and building resilience and grit. For that to occur, we need these people to argue with each other and with us, so as to better refine their ideas and arguments. This can only happen openly if their ideas are in the Overton window. So I want it in there. Otherwise, I'd be dealing with artificially weak versions of their arguments and/or be ignorant of what they're cooking up outside my view. Leaving me worse prepared for defending against them.

I don't think my reasoning is foolproof or proven beyond a reasonable doubt. And I certainly wouldn't condemn people who want to keep Nazism outside the Overton window as being secret Nazi sympathizers who want to leave society vulnerable for when they've gathered enough power on the margins outside the Overton window to pounce. Because I know that they have their own thinking, a way of thinking that I think is reasonable that makes them believe that they're actually helping to prevent the rise of Nazism in our society in the future. I think they're reasonable and wrong, but it's being wrong that is their crime, not supporting Nazism.

You know I don't think people are being fair to you.

He posted a long rant which left out the fact that one of his "Nazis" is a pro-Palestinian Muslim. People are being plenty fair to him.

IMO it's more true than not. We are not being fair to him. We're dogpiling him pretty hard, even though technically there really is a point to be made about nazism being bad and extremism being possible in the republican party.

I also think that he really set himself up for it because he's very obviously trying to exaggerate the supposed nazism angle for shock effect, and this falls completely flat here.

So, shrugs all around.

I remember being there in 2007 or so, forming swastikas in Club Penguin with the other anons.

Respect. I was there, Gandalf...

Do not cite the deep magic to me, witch! I was there when it was written.

CS Lewis / Tolkien tag team, a classic

I partially agree with you, but would shift 80% of the blame for the establishment of this environment to the left. The left made Nazis cool again, by being simultaneously awful and anti Nazi. 99% of people's experience with Nazism is bad people on the left equivocating between Nazis and normal people on the right. If Trump is a Nazi, and Elon Musk is a Nazi, and Joe Rogan is a Nazi, then someone who likes all of those guys is going to think Nazis are pretty cool. Or at least, make jokes in that direction. People are going to feel comfortable pretending to be a Nazi, because what's the worst that's going to happen, some angry leftist is going to accuse you of being a Nazi? They were already going to do that just by you not supporting open borders.

When you spend ten years crying wolf, and telling everyone all their pet dogs are wolves, don't be surprised when kids grow up thinking wolves are cool, and the dog lovers start wearing wolf shirts and howling to mock you.

Fair enough, but there might be a substantial percentage of young people on the right (though it might be approximately zero for all I know) who want to round up all the jews and exterminate them and return all the blacks to chains. At least they claim this is what they want, or so the rumor goes.

Evidently we can't call these people Nazis because the term's become meaningless and, besides, some kids get off on being shocking. So the discussion has essentially gone nowhere. Though now I'm curious how many people here are actually supportive of an American Jewish genocide or a return to legal private slavery or of some other course of action that is way, way, waaaaay outside the Overton window and just a minute ago was super-duper-ultra-taboo. The discussion of those particulars can't really be derailed by someone's individual definition of what he thinks a Nazi is.

Evidently we can't call these people Nazis because the term's become meaningless

No, the problem is that you lose all the oomph when you also use that word for anyone who works out and doesn't hate themselves. It's archetypal motte and bailey arguing. Wanting to kill all the Jews is terrible, but also insanely fringe. Working out is much, much more common, so by tactically conflating the two, you can pretend that the number of people who want to kill all the Jews is much larger.

Meanwhile, a third of the left is over there chanting "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab".

Everyone's a little bit Nazi

“If you continually tell people that everything they want is fascism, they’ll eventually come to the conclusion that fascism is everything they want.”

Or as Sh0eonhead comically put it in a clip I can’t find;

“Oh wow, that sounds great! You’re telling me this is fascism? Uh, waiter! More fascism please!”

without a community of noted race scientists like the Motte to further radicalize me

I feel like I showed up to this site too late and missed all of this because I keep seeing people make side references to this/HBD but no one ever actually talks about it, they just talk about talking about it.

Well first off the best way to make people want to talk about something is to tell them they can't talk about it. And that happened a lot with hbd, the ssc mods literally banned discussion of it for a while.

To be fair, you do have to keep in mind that on reddit having your entire community summarily banned because people are making cogent, well-reasoned, and factually grounded arguments that reddit admins don't like, as opposed to merely posting acceptable content like rape fantasies, is an everpresent threat. So it was understandable.

Hbd is an annoying topic too because it was just constant ping ponging between, "No populations can't possibly differ on genetically derived mental traits even though they are no different genetically than height or skin color or hirsuteness which clearly and measurably differ the average brain is identical between every single human population no matter how you divide them because it just is ok you nazi?" and, "Ok now that we've agreed races differ in intelligence let me explain why every other race but mine are all untermensch and need to be confined to ghettos and we shouldn't waste time educating them."

But its so tempting to debate the merits of the second! Its not "keep them stupid" its "look after our own" and oh no magicalkittycat is right I can feel the hitlerstache growing noooooo

Personally, I was mostly HBD-pilled by Scott Alexander, who once hosted the ancestor of the motte. It helps that I had read a lot of other stuff from him, which convinced me that he was a kind and thoughtful person, not some Nazi looking for an excuse to enslave the Untermenschen.

Basically, Ashkenazi performance in science is very hard to explain without group differences in intelligence. The alternatives are either silly ("Reading the Torah as a kid outperforms any science education known to man.") or very silly conspiracies ("The Jews have controlled academia since the early 20th century, and favored their own kind (but not the Sephardics, for some reason). Their shadow organization probably murdered the gentile scientists who had written the four Nobel-worthy papers in 1905 and had Einstein publish them instead, despite him not even having a post-doc job.")

Of course, I also try hard not to over-update on HBD. For individuals, I will update much more on education attainment and similar metrics than on ethnicity. I do not even have a coherent model about what the racial bonuses to INT are. Mostly, I think that HBD is a rock under which humanity might have well avoided to look, if not for the SJ insistence that unequal outcomes are always indicative of systemic racism.

It was a hot topic in the earliest days of the forum (like around the 2016 election) because a lot of people were suddenly encountering these ideas for the first time.

Interest has dropped a lot since then because the old regulars have simply had those arguments many times now and don't find them as interesting as they used to, plus it's not quite as hot a topic in internet discourse as it used to be so we don't have as many new people wanting to learn about it for the first time. Even after the move to themotte.org it still came up sometimes but over the last year or two it's been quiet.

Ah, the Before Days. You didn't miss much, I can tell you. The same old same old trotted out and fought over until everyone was too exhausted to keep going and agreed to stop (much like the Wars of Religion in 16th to 18th century Europe).

This is just my personal opinion, not an attempt to consensus-build, but the way I see it (picture your friendly bartender chatting about the customers he's seen come through over the years), the forum went through the HBD wars relatively early on in its lifetime and, well, the HBD side won so conclusively it's sort of in the background now. This isn't to say that any particular hard HBD thesis has been proven ("the IQ gap between Belgians and Malaysians is x points and y% genetic!"), our scientific knowledge isn't there yet, but the soft HBD thesis ("genetics matter and vary between groups") won. Sometimes arguments just get won. People move on. Like I say, this isn't a crushing victory, it's mostly just disproving the hard environmentalist thesis ("humans are blank slates, environment explains all mental differences") and the specifically anti-HBD hard thesis ("genetics may matter for the individual but don't vary meaningfully between groups") - and we still do have plenty of environmentalists arguing softer theses (e.g. "we just don't know yet, so we can't assume a genetic cause"), and even right-wingers arguing against HBD from religious/tribal perspectives. But this has a couple effects which massively reduce the level of HBD discourse:

  • HBDers no longer feel the need to argue as passionately for their basic beliefs here, obviously.
  • Discussion that takes any level of HBD as accepted, or even discussion that doesn't give environmentalists the null hypothesis and HBDers the burden of proof, is viscerally unpleasant (and, back in the day, seriously personally/professionally threatening) to many anti-HBDers, so they either left or stopped discussing it. There are also plenty of more centrist/liberal posters whose position is now "it's probably real but I don't want to think/talk about it", and nobody can force them to.
  • Once you accept some level of HBD, the next discussion is finding the policy implications, usually in the context of how to make effective and humane public policy in an HBD world. This is both wonky/unsexy discussion, and also fairly depressing for anyone who likes good policy and dislikes race wars. (It also turns off low-quality anti-HBD posters, for whom the assumption is that anyone acknowledging HBD is advocating for Jim Crow at best, so they don't join in to create toxoplasma and therefore visibility).
  • The level of scientific knowledge required to discuss new findings in the field keeps going up. Back in the day just twin studies and similar stuff was enough to push back against hard environmentalism - nowadays, while I consider myself conversant with what's going on in genetic research, particularly paleogenetics, I'm not so confident I'd stake a mottepost on reading the studies right.
  • Many of the smarter HBDposters have moved on beyond the basic question of HBD. This can mean a huge gamut of things - getting big on Twitter on their own, performing Hakanian/Druqkpan ethnography, pondering the spiritual natures of various groups, getting really into fine-grained genetic history, Ray Peat as the missing link to synthesize genetic and environmentalist theories, BAPist vitalism and selective breeding, etc. etc. Speaking for myself (never a massive HBD argument partaker), if I get into an argument over it, I don't expect to hear anything new, just arguments I saw refuted here ten years ago, often with a heavy dollop of bad faith. That's pretty boring.

Once you accept some level of HBD, the next discussion is finding the policy implications, usually in the context of how to make effective and humane public policy in an HBD world.

I do not think that this is especially hard. Meritocracy performs well both in worlds where HBD is highly relevant and in worlds where it is irrelevant. There is no reason to select for Ashkenazi ethnicity as a proxy for academic performance when you can just select for academic performance directly instead.

On the flip side, "have a progressive tax system which lessens the burden of people whose economic output is not highly valued, so that they still can live a decent life" is basic compassion, and utilitarianism (the marginal dollar helps the poor man a lot more than the rich man). I am very capable of feeling the pain of those who work in minimum wage jobs without first inquiring to their ethnic distribution and then deciding if they deserve my pity or not.

I will grant you that things might become more icky once a state decides to maximize the number of smart babies. But even there you would not directly select for ethnicity. Instead you might use IVF to create embryos from the gametes of humans with family histories of high education attainment, and then pay surrogates to turn them into babies and have them adopted by couples. Or just CRISPR the heck out of any embryos.

At the end of the day, the gaussians overlap, substantially. There are no large gaps as there are in the intelligence between dogs and humans, which is the reason why we do not allow dogs to even attempt to gain a driving license. Anyone who is arguing for a similar level of discrimination among ethnicities is simply using HBD as an excuse to be a racist.

I agree with you almost entirely. But that's the issue, there's not that much to debate, except the boring old "how much exactly should we redistribute and how much exactly should we reward merit?" That sort of Bush v Gore stuff doesn't really get people fired up. Of course, there is the CRISPR point, which I think can reasonably safely (between the anti-HBD FAQ and Society is Fixed Biology is Mutable) read as Scott's esoteric position: "Don't talk about this shit until we can just gene-edit everyone to decent IQ and prosocial personalities". Then when you get to the practicalities of moving towards these policies, it's a tremendous kettle of worms that nobody wants to even think about.

I just want to say, this comment describes almost exactly how I feel about HBD. I see the progressive/leftist/liberal principles I subscribe to and try to follow as being completely orthogonal to whether HBD is true or not. But HBD's truthiness does heavily influence how we would go about accomplishing our goals. Which is why I want my side to openly accept HBD as being possible and begin investigating it using actual science. Because if we actually want to accomplish our goals, then we need to get as accurate and precise a map of the landscape as possible. How true HBD is and to what extent it influences our society are things that we need to actually investigate, because right now, it's been declared by fiat that it's False and 0 respectively, and our strategies for achieving our goals using this faith have left something to be desired.

Once you accept some level of HBD, the next discussion is finding the policy implications, usually in the context of how to make effective and humane public policy in an HBD world. This is both wonky/unsexy discussion, and also fairly depressing for anyone who likes good policy and dislikes race wars

This is profoundly interesting. Aside from digging into the archives here, know anywhere to read about this?

Closest I’ve got is:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/

Hmm, that's actually a really hard question. Bronze Age Pervert makes an excellent argument against the "Dork Right", but it's in service of fighting the threat of high-IQ Asians to his Nietzschean dream rather than supporting small-l-liberal-HBD public policy. Likewise Nick Land, whose "hyperracism" (racism as the pure ranking of intelligence) is a very reasonable response to HBD - if you're a Landian in service of totalizing intelligence maximization instead of looking for any policy goals that would be palatable to the typical American. Freddie DeBoer acknowledges individual ability from a leftist perspective, but understandably can't bring himself to say anything about groups. Yarvin approaches it at points (Moldbug-era Yarvin is a small-l-liberal, fight me), but obviously he's trying to be maximally provocative and maximally against existing American models of government. Scott's writing may often be informed by an understanding of HBD, but it's buried under infinite layers of esoteric writing. I don't think there is a single figure who presents the maximally reasonable version of the "HBD, so what then?" perspective. A market niche many here could fill if they wanted (don't get attached to your job). Education Realist might be the closest, in his particular field, and he does seem to have genuine empathy for students of all classes, races, and abilities, but I haven't read him in a long time.

but it's in service of fighting the threat of high-IQ Asians to his Nietzschean dream

This is why I love HBD discussions. It makes everyone on both sides seethe.

Thanks for the comment, it's a great write up

Cheers!

but that’s bad. One of the rules is literally don’t do consensus building or assume everyone agrees. And now everyone is dogpiling a view; where are the mods when someone called magicalkittycat retarded? The quality of this debate forum has dropped so bad because of bad moderation this place isn’t really a debate anymore just a rightwing echo chamber.

Hello brand new account that was created yesterday. I see that every comment you've ever made has either been defending magicalkittycat, replying to magicalkittycat, or attacking their detractors. I find it interesting that you would say the quality of this debate forum has "dropped" since you've only been here for about twenty four hours. What baseline has it dropped relative to?

Either you're a longstanding lurker who decided to create an account for the sole purpose of defending magicalkittycat's honor, or...

Well, it's hard not to connect these chains of logic with a certain someone has been accused of using alts and/or being an alt.

justawoman has been around the block here before, and parsimony would suggest that this is her rather than magicalkittycat (or whoever mkc may be).

Well, if mkc is Impassionata rather than Darwin, you have to throw out parsimony and assume he's got at least a half a dozen alts of various ages participating. But I doubt it, Passionflower usually couldn't keep his main alt sounding sane-ish for this long, nor resist the urge of obviously arguing among his own alts.

I don't think he's Impassionata or Darwin (justawoman is also clearly not Impassionata, though I thought Imp was a woman for quite a long time). I'm not even sold on him being an alt. There are a lot of these Hananian contrarian-against-the-right types floating around in our general sphere now, Turok was far from the only one. Mkc is clearly not a practiced or polished troll, so my guess lands closer to my comment on "people coming here to argue with the forum".

I don't know how I could make it clearer that I'm not trying to consensus-build - should I add in another couple disclaimers that this is just one old-timer's opinion? Why, when I was a boy, this town was a great place, we all used to go down to the soda fountain...

As for magicalkittycat, people shouldn't call him retarded, and I should think the mods will get to whoever did once they see the reports. But he is a very bad poster even at making the arguments he wants to make. While themotte is supposed to show charity to people who make arguments against the prevailing winds, they still have to be good arguments, and you can't ask people here not to tear apart bad ones, and particularly not bad ones made in bad faith. Dogpiling a bad post has nothing to do with building consensus when it's being done to magicalkittycat any more than when it was done to securesignals.

The other thing I have noticed is a consistent decline in the quality of non-RW posters (some honourable mentions excepted) - RW posters have declined in quality somewhat, but not nearly as sharply. We started off with some great non-RW posters, some of whom were driven off by the ickiness of the HBD debate (rip yodats), more by the continuing success of HBD arguments against the strong environmentalist thesis, more of whom were lost due to 2020 covid/blm/election fedposting, and more of whom have since evaporatively cooled off, or flamed out over some particularly emotional point and gotten banned. There are a couple reasons for this, some better and some worse, though I suspect a major one is that there's just a deep incompatibility between the discourse norms of themotte and those of liberal/leftist spaces, such that somebody who is a high-quality poster in those spaces is unlikely to be able to transition to themotte, and that there will always be a certain psychic friction for people who are on themotte to debate in good faith but are otherwise marinated in those spaces (there's also an incompatibility with people who are totally in the jug of hard right-wing spaces, but they usually get themselves banned pretty quickly).

Your assessment of themotte as an echo chamber does bring up my assessment of the stage of decline we're currently at. I've seen this happen on many 4chan boards, for instance - it's the stage of forum decline where people come in specifically in order to argue with the forum. Incels on /fit/ are the purest example, but also just about everything on /pol/ post-2020 or so (and /pol/'s decline into that started much earlier). Both low-quality liberal posters and low-quality Hananian contrarians like kittycat/Turok all see this place as a featureless Outgroup blob and want to come here to Argue With The Forum. I'm not sure where we get new blood at this point; I see every non-RW poster with the intellectual subtlety and emotional stability to hang here as a minor miracle.

Are Hakan and Drukpa the same guy? I had heard that Hakan had a new account, but I had not linked the two as the tones are quiet different even if the subject matter is the same.

No, they’re not. Very different guys. But I think there’s something similar, not the same but similar, in their general approach to race/culture (though KD has taken it to the next level with all his travels).

tl;dr: Given a whole fuckton of spiled ink, it turns out that yeah, there are biological differences between ethnic groups, but you can just use IQ as a proxy metric rather than talk about ethnicity directly, so you don't get stuck in the nazi corner, and we* do that instead.

*for a given value of we

I am not sure that if you want to select for e.g. the genetic component of intelligence, ethnicity would do a better job than IQ.

My belief is that the quantity which should (!) be unproblematic to discriminate on is also the one which is closer to what we actually care about.

Of course, once we have excellent genetic models to determine which genes actually causally affect intelligence (as opposed to being merely correlated with it), states might want to use that for immigrant selection instead (if the goal is to raise the long term sanity waterline of the population).

But given that government discrimination based on genetic scores is a third rail politically, I would avoid it before such a time. The only reason it is useful for embryo testing is that measuring the intelligence of any embryo directly will always yield a value of zero, which makes the current IQ a terrible proxy.

I do remember when it was both everywhere and tedious.

The Motte goes through waves - for a while it was HBD/racism, for a while it was Holocaust denial, every now and then some people are determined to force their pet issue and it's everywhere. I won't say it's not a problem, or that it isn't a reason to avoid this place sometimes, but it does come and go.

I do remember when it was both everywhere and tedious.

Again, the reason it was "tedious" is because the left-leaning side wasn't satisfied with "maybe it's true, but I oppose doing anything about it on moral grounds", and had to own the chuds on factual grounds as well, which just left a huge opening for a handful of autists to slap them down over and over.

Arguably it could be no other way, as it's something that struck at the core of unspoken rationalist premises, and possibly even liberalism itself, that's why we couldn't help but pick at that particular scab. Trusting The Science, and following Reason and Rationality was supposed to be The Way to manage society, and The Way was specifically supposed to result in progressive social democracy. Suddenly it turns out that Trusting The Science makes you racist, and distrusting The Science undermines the foundations of your own legitimacy, so there was nothing left to do but SegFault over it.

I suppose the other option is to act like the conversation is tedious, and it's just evil chuds going through a wave of an obsession for no reason at all.

”I suppose the other option is to act like the conversation is tedious, and it's just evil chuds going through a wave of an obsession for no reason at all.”

Lot of people took that option. It’s the progressive version of the cope cage.

Yeah, there was a time when people would discuss it so often, the more left-leaning mods decided to ban the entire topic for a month. Partly a result of 1-2 posters having a hobby horse, and partly of the more left-wing posters not being satisfied with making moral arguments against it, insisting that it must be false, and stepping on rake after rake in the process.

Most people are happy to leave well enough alone, if you don't press the subject.

insisting that it must be false, and stepping on rake after rake in the process.

This is why I commented, this sounds hilarious and I'm sad I missed it

I'll see if ChatGPT can find threads with good argument density later when I'm not working

My understanding is that the HBD crackdown (more often just: conspicuous non-moderation of rule-breaking anti-HBD posts) was a project by the "bourgeois right" leaning (right but emphatically not alt-) mods, in the class of @Amadan or Hlynka (PBUH), rather than the handful of more "left" ones such as @netstack. This makes sense, too, as to the latter any HBDers are just the fargroup, while the former would feel irritated and threatened by the possibility of association with them ("I just wanted order, discipline and capitalism, but everyone including the racists insists that I am on the racist team").

As part of the pedantic minority(?) that subscribes to HBD as stated but is genuinely not interested in its common application as a resistance band for "therefore whites are superior" mental gymnastics (usually of the "IQ matters, but also the >100-average-IQ groups all have a disadvantage in some nebulous additional category like creativity so they are not actually superior" type), I just find the whole situation sad.

Your diagnosis of me and Hlynka is comically off-base. Also, the brief moratorium on HBD posting was before my time as a mod.

After looking through your posting on the topic (search author:Amadan HBD), I concede that in my impression of it you seemed to be more hostile than appears to have been the reality (which could be because I only encountered the handful of posts of yours that I thought were out of line - ones where you were a bit too quick to lump it in with a rather less commonsensical/more universally reviled position ("our still sizeable retinue of HBD enthusiasts and Holocaust deniers") - or because those left more of an impression). However, I don't understand how you reason that my diagnosis of Hlynka is "comically off-base": you talk about his open disdain for HBD yourself, and surely the gloss of "order, discipline and capitalism" applies to a proud salt-of-the-earth ex-military man like him.

If Hlynka was here to see you call him "bourgeois right" I think he'd get himself banned again. Hlynka was an actual Red Triber and as far as I can tell he saw HBD as Blue Tribe Right egghead nonsense.

"Bourgeois" was probably the wrong term, I should have said something like "normie right" - I intended to contrast with a group that would include Moldbug fans, frog posters, antisemites who hate Jews for their treatment of Euro gentiles rather than for their treatment of Muslims, Great Replacement theorists and the "dark enlightenment". This includes a lot of people you would consider "Blue Tribe Right".

Yeah I'm not debating your wider point, just couldn't let the amusement of the Hlynka point go. Something I do notice is that non-liberal anti-HBDers tend to end up getting a lot more emotionally het up about it (sometimes, not in the case of the mods here, but sometimes jumping straight into outright dishonesty, like Michael Lind). It's understandable, in that the threat is coming from inside the tribe and so can't be instantly dismissed as liberal anti-HBDers prefer.

My understanding is that the HBD crackdown (more often just: conspicuous non-moderation of rule-breaking anti-HBD posts) was a project by the "bourgeois right" leaning (right but emphatically not alt-) mods, in the class of Amadan or Hlynka (PBUH), rather than the handful of more "left" ones such as netstack.

If memory serves the episode I referred to happened on /r/SSC, where neither of the people you mentioned were mods. Hlynka and Amadan started in /r/TheMotte, Netstack only became a mod after we moved here.

I'm also not talking about mere toleration of rule-breaking coming from one side, there was at one point a literal moratorium on the subject.

I remember the moratorium you are talking about, but thought you were talking about a more recent incident (I think we also got a sort of moratorium after moving here for a while? Maybe I'm mixing it up with a moratorium on SS's single-topic SSposting, which felt like another instance of right-wing mods wanting to bury the wrong and cringe kind of right-wing posting?). Not sure who were the mods back then and what was their motivation, though my instinct would be that it must have been similar, since the outgroup/fargroup relations to HBD in the SSC/Motte community have been like this for the longest time.

I remember the moratorium you are talking about, but thought you were talking about a more recent incident (I think we also got a sort of moratorium after moving here for a while?

Didn't happen - pretty sure we've never imposed a topic ban in the Motte. (We have occasionally told individual posters to grind something other than their singular axe for a while.)

I don't know if I can make a case backed by any specifics, but my subjective impression was that there was a qualitative difference between the moderation style of /r/TheMotte and /r/SSC, even when the former also had it's biases / failure modes.

You might well be right; if nothing else, /r/SSC mods lived in constant fear of the Reddit ICE busting into our sanctuary city and tried to limit discourse that would draw their ire.

This is really bad faith. You just can’t pretend like this is a massive problem on the right when in the last six months, there have been multiple left‑aligned incidents that are as bad or worse.

• Western University (May 2025) – A WhatsApp group of pro‑Palestinian students contained Hitler memes, calls for “taking action against the Yahoodis (Jews),” and videos praising Hamas. The university refused to investigate despite clear antisemitic intent.

• Colorado attack (June 2025) – Egyptian guy attacked pro‑Israel demonstrators in Boulder with a makeshift flamethrower while shouting “Free Palestine.” He told the fbi he wanted to “kill all Zionists”.

• D.C. shooting (May 2025) – Guy shot and killed two Israeli embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum, yelled “Free Palestine,” and later told police he did it “for Palestine.” The indictment noted he had posted “Death to Israel” online.

Add to that several other campus incidents: the University of Washington’s “Super UW” statement that called the Oct 7 Hamas massacre a heroic victory and the UC Berkeley protest where demonstrators chanting “Long live the intifada” forced police to evacuate a Jewish event.

Trump has made elite progressive universities take account for their indifference to antisemitism btw, because it’s very popular on the left to be anti Israel / seem super compassionate by being pro Palestine. I agree with another poster that even if your examples are real, they sure aren't affecting the stance of the biggest people on the right. Honestly I feel that there are probably foreign influence ops trying to grow antisemitism in both parties - but at least be honest that there is a bigger problem on the left.

Frankly, it seems like the left will have a harder time sidelining their antisemitic supporters. Do you think Ilhan Omar is a friend to the Jewish people?

you just can’t pretend like this is a massive problem on the right when in the last six months, there have been multiple left‑aligned incidents that are as bad or worse.

As the meme goes, porque no los dos? In fact antisemitism is one of the things often used for Horseshoe theory, so the idea that it could be a major issue on the right too doesn't contradict any claims that it's also an issue on the left.

  • -11

I do agree in a certain sense. It seems that young people in general people dislike Israel. And yes there has always been an edgy undercurrent of antisemitism in a lot of radical online right wing spaces like 4chan. The examples you mentioned probably originate from there. For better or worse, people feel more comfortable saying ugly stuff online now (black fatigue, recently saw the phrase ‘crying Lupe’ etc). Not a great time for racial unity. Pretty glad what happened to Kanye - losing your mainstream credibility - is still what you’ll face if you unironically act this way though. I think it’s pretty contained and that leaders will not stand for it becoming anything more than edgy jokes in private group chats. I think your post would have been better received if you argued that it’s a growing issue on both sides.

What concerns me is that it’s outright fashionable to dislike Israel on the left. You have semi mainstream people saying it’s fine to commit violence against ‘the colonizer’, which is pretty easy for nutjobs to generalize to regular Jewish people (as was the case in the examples I mentioned). I see it as pretty insidious to characterize a group that’s historically faced a lot of backlash as a ‘colonizer/oppressor’ some 70 years after millions of them were killed for beliefs about those peoples’ motivations.

And again I’ve seen this grow on the left in the way it just hasn’t on the right. It’s dangerous and real, serious antisemitism is not dead / just stupid jokes elsewhere in the world.

I sound like a stout Israel defender because I am. I had a film teacher in high school show us a movie about a Palestinian getting convinced to bomb a public bus, the underlying message being (much like lefty views on misadventures in the Middle East) that horrific things ultimately result from the colonizer’s actions. A lot of parallels to Oct 7th (which, don’t forget, was truly celebrated in a way that right wing people pretended 9/11 was).

The "right" is currently a big tent alliance against the woke-globalist-progressive-socialism thing, so it includes a lot of strange bedfellows. This alliance will not last indefinitely, but for the moment there is a common enemy.

The factions of the "right" are fighting for control of the goose that lays the golden eggs, but they all agree the left is trying to kill the goose and so they have common cause for now.

Edit: The Great Journey is a lie.

You know, I appreciate that you immediately thought better of that post and deleted it, but I'm still giving you a one-day ban because it was up long enough to attract four reports and you really need to control yourself.

Hey, while you're here I'd like to gesture vaguely in the direction of this entire thread. It's actually pretty well constructed ragebait, slinking right under the rules. I admit I got baited. There's been an uptick in this recently, entirely from two posters, and they seem to be refining the schtick. If this kind of post (especially with the grade of replies from OP) is going to fly, then I expect we'll rapidly descend into just a pure shitflinging forum. FFS, most of the OP is just links to twitter posts.

Is there a single line here that seems intended to shed light, instead of generate heat?

It's been noted and he's already gotten a couple of warnings. That said, one person's "ragebait" is another person's outside-the-local-overton-window argument. We're not going to mod someone for being aggravating and unpopular. Failing to engage in good faith is another matter, but we're not mind readers.

That said, one person's "ragebait" is another person's outside-the-local-overton-window argument.

I expect that a post consisting of four twitter links and a "doesn't this prove all my outgroup are just the worst?" would invite a warning for being obviously boo outgroup antagonism. Like, I can imagine a post talking about Hasan Piker's scandal over torturing his dog and how doesn't this prove Democrats have a psychopath problem? But I can't imagine the community norm thinking that was a good faith contribution.

Failing to engage in good faith is another matter

More concerned about this as a consistent pattern. If it's on the radar, I'm happy enough.

I was the one who wrote the Hasan post and nowhere in it did I allege that Democrats approved of or condoned such behaviour. Twitch drama may be lowbrow, but it is undoubtedly culture war. Hasan's bad behaviour - not just rhetoric, mind you - reflects only on himself.

I somehow forgot about that. I think I saw a bunch of posts about dog training in the firehose feed first, and maybe missed the top-level. But that drives home my point - your post was about Hasan, not using it as a massive leaping off point to tar an entire political party.

Bruh if you're going to invite a mod spanking at least do something funny to earn it.

You know I'm just going to cut through the epistemic fog once again.

If there's a festering level of antisemitism amongst the GOP/Conservatives, its not having any noticeable impact on actual outcomes at the Federal or State level.

Can you name a single policy proposal, let alone an actual piece of legislation that was debated and voted on that could legitimately be characterized as 'antisemitic?' There are at least 38 states that explicitly passed laws that discourage anti-israel activities.

"Hints" and Dog Whistles and carefully cropped photos don't signal much to me when the actual legislation that is passed and enforced doesn't reflect that attitude in the slightest.

And uh, at risk of pure whataboutism, its been the left that is assassinating Jews and electing actually antisemitic politicians to congress.

Near as I can tell, there's <1% of honest-to-goodness Nazi sympathizers on the right. There's a larger contingent (still, <10%) who aren't antisemitic but also 'notice' that Jewish activists are behind a whole lot of the subversive activities on the left, and provide a lot of the intellectual cover for its beliefs. The kind who see Soros funded plots behind every tree.

Then there's an actually significant contingent who are seeing the tension between "America First!" as a guiding principle and the GOPe's continual preference for assisting Israel and protecting Jews in ways they clearly do not prefer or protect other racial or religious groups, and find that suspicious.

I model this mostly as a tug-of-war between the waning Evangelical right that considers Israel their greatest ally, vs. the more secular newer right that doesn't consider the U.S.-Israel or Christian-Jewish relationship to be sacred and mutually beneficial. The latter may in fact admire Israel as a functional example of a Nationalistic, Jingoistic homogenous ethnostate with strict border controls, but wants some actual justification for spending U.S. tax dollars as economic or military aid to such a country.

And hey, it is actually obvious that Israel puts their thumb on that scale and does in fact use different forms of leverage to impact U.S. domestic and foreign policy outcomes, which is precisely why the aforementioned tension/tug-of-war isn't going to subside for a while.

So with all this recent controversy, how big of a Nazi problem is actually festering

Pretty bad, but Trump is trying to deport the ones he can. Feel sorry for the Jews in NYC though. I can't imagine how emboldened they'll be with Mayor Zohran.

why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism?

They mostly seem to pretend to be progressive, because that where the ethnonationalism they feel comfortable with is.

Sorry, you were talking about Hamasniks, right? The organization founded by Nazi allies and Hitler admirers, who are carrying on the work of Final Solution to this day?

Also, this Richard Hanania fellow sounds extremely vile given how comfortable he's admitted to being around shocking Nazi rhetoric. Didn't I just see something about him supporting the sexual assault of children, too? Sorry, I would check his substack, but I don't want to go to a place with that sort of vile rhetoric. Perhaps one of our resident leftwingers who love citing this odious monster can check for me?

It's zero problem. There are no real nazis, there are plenty of anti-semites on both sides. Beating the "muh nazis" dead horse only hastens the day when it reaches negative social connotation. We may have already passed it.

Yeah the whole Israel/Palestine thing seems to have eroded the taboo around open Antisemitism to a large degree and this all just coming off that. Whether people have changed their privately-held views is another question, but generally taboo enforcement is down to Leftwingers so once they've decided to flip on an issue the whole discourse is gonna change.

Yeah I don't know what to tell you dog, Hitler's death has passed out of meaningful living memory and the left has been screaming Nazi at every Republican presidential candidate of my adult life. You're flogging a dying taboo that will only continue to get weaker.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it has plenty more flogging left in it, but given how Dem-aligned cohorts ranging from campus wokies to random working-class black dudes all seem to hate Israel/Jews now I don't think it's going to be the decisive issue of the age.

Sorry if you constructed your entire political worldview around the equivalent of being able to denounce Bonaparte to thunderous applause for all eternity.

Additionally, the Border Patrol posted a video on an Instagram containing an antisemitic slur.

Which is to say they posted a video containing a Michael Jackson song. Of all the controversies surrounding Michael Jackson, that was the least.

A flag with a swatiska embedded in it was spotted in the office of Representative Dave Taylor.

"Was spotted." This was an op... did you send them?

Myron Gaines

Who?

Which is to say they posted a video containing a Michael Jackson song. Of all the controversies surrounding Michael Jackson, that was the least

Sure so why that particular verse in that particular version of that particular song? Even if you were to blindly pick Micheal Jackson songs at random, that seems unlikely.

"Was spotted." This was an op... did you send them?

Yeah it was spotted hanging there, with photographic evidence. That article came out recently and I did not see it yet, although there still lies a question of why did Dave Taylor's office use the flag while others threw theirs away.

Who?

Host of the Fresh and Fit podcast with over a million and a half subscribers in four years.

  • -24

Sure so why that particular verse in that particular version of that particular song?

Because a zillion people used a zillion verses from a zillion songs, and that particular one was somewhere in there, and someone found it. Do you think that was the only song anyone ever sang?

Somebody enlighten me, what was the slur verse of a Michael Jackson song (of all things)?

"Jew me, sue me, everybody do me/ Kick me, kike me, don't you black or white me."

It caused a bit of controversy at the time.

"The idea that these lyrics could be deemed objectionable is extremely hurtful to me, and misleading. The song in fact is about the pain of prejudice and hate and is a way to draw attention to social and political problems. I am the voice of the accused and the attacked. I am the voice of everyone. I am the skinhead, I am the Jew, I am the black man, I am the white man. I am not the one who was attacking. It is about the injustices to young people and how the system can wrongfully accuse them. I am angry and outraged that I could be so misinterpreted."

— Michael Jackson

You really think their team in charge of social media is picking random song lyrics completely at random and editing them into footage without a single listen? It's possible, but that would be a sign of extreme incompetence.

  • -10

Yes having worked in that kind of role the whole thing'd just begin and stop at 'oh it's Michael Jackson and the name is Don't really care about us'

Sure so why that particular verse in that particular version of that particular song? Even if you were to blindly pick Micheal Jackson songs at random, that seems unlikely.

Song was picked by Gen-Xer who liked it? Who cares?

"Was spotted." This was an op... did you send them?

Yeah it was spotted hanging there, with photographic evidence.

So you did send them?

Host of the Fresh and Fit podcast with over a million and a half subscribers in four years.

Never heard of it, or him.

Yes, it's a big problem, and it's your fault. To be specific, it's the left's fault for calling everyone they disagreed with a Nazi. They called Bush a Nazi. They called McCain an Nazi. They called Mitt Romney a Nazi. They even called Trump a Nazi (how a unashamedly pro-Zionist figure such as him could be is beyond me.) The sum total of all your pearl clutching and ad hominems is that actual Nazis have snuck back into the Overton window.

The very understandable reaction: "fuck it, you're calling me a Nazi, I might as well be one."

So stop using it as a slur against milquetoast social conservatives and Christians, for fuck's sake. You, and people like you, have welcomed the browns back into the political discourse because they are the only ones who have the steel in their spines to tell you to go to hell. And boy, do they look strong in telling liberals and wokes to fuck off. An entire generation of young men thinks it's cool to give you and those like you the middle finger.

What you can do to stop the Nazi menace is to stop calling people to the right of Stalin Nazis. You, in fact, possess the agency to turn down the heat. The left have purged all of the people that could be coerced with shame: now, only the shameless remain. Why are you so surprised at this? Why do you come here and post these links - which amount to insinuating that your political opposition are Nazis? I've never heard of that one before. Don't you see that your actions are counterproductive?

You don't say the devil's name because you tempt him to come. Now he is here.

They even called Trump a Nazi (how a unashamedly pro-Zionist figure such as him could be is beyond me.)

Well, they call Zionists Nazis too, so it's not so mindboggling.

We don't find it mind-boggling that when an Italian steals something from a German, it's the Italian we call a "vandal". This genericization of "Nazi" grates on me too, but it cannot be stopped and isn't worth the capital to try.

Stealing isn’t vandalism, though. Nobody calls a thief a “vandal”. Vandalism is its own class of crimes (intentional defacement of public or private property, basically). The closest thing we have in English to an ethnic word for thievery is “gypped”, from “Gypsy”. (There’s also “to Welch/Welsh on a deal”, which is theft-adjacent, as well as “Indian giver”, which is not theft as such but is still more theft-adjacent than vandalism is.)

Perhaps the best example of this mentality from the great Ye

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oDuxP2vnWNk

The very understandable reaction: "fuck it, you're calling me a Nazi, I might as well be one."

So are you saying you're a Nazi then? I guess add another on the pile of growing unashamed nazism.

  • -46

If this be nazism, make the most of it.

"Nazi" in the current parlance just means "politically sane".

"Nazi" in the current parlance just means "politically sane".

Are swatiskas "politically sane?" Is "We like Hitler?" politically sane? Is Holocaust denialism politically sane? Because those are the things being called Nazi in this post.

  • -12

"Sidney Sweeney's jeans ad is nazism"

"Wtf I love Hitler now"

The saying goes that leftism is basically just pretending not to understand simple concepts, making dialogue untenable.

Are swatiskas "politically sane?"

Be very careful clicking on this link, as those of sensitive sensibilities may be shocked to a degree hazardous to health. I realise that I am outing myself as a regular viewer of their disgusting Nazi-themed output, but truth must prevail!

Honestly, yeah. Those are signals of tribal allegiance - signals of belonging to the right-wing vanguard. Nobody really gives a shit about in how far the Holocaust really happened, the swastika isn't some magic rune that makes Wunderwaffen strike down your enemies, and whether someone likes Hitler or not makes no difference because Hitler has been dead for 80 years. What matters is that the sacred cows of the left are being butchered. That is the thing that actually bothers the left, and the thing that actually tickles the right.

Honestly, yeah. Those are signals of tribal allegiance - signals of belonging to the right-wing vanguard. Nobody really gives a shit about in how far the Holocaust really happened,

That doesn't seem to match the behavior and words of conservative influencers like Ben Shapiro, Seth Dillon, EW Erickson, Dinesh D'Souza etc unless your argument is that even the conservatives who claim to be against Nazism are lying and don't actually care.

Very pessimistic view of modern conservativism IMO. I disagree with it, I think most conservatives still are opposed to neonazism. But I suppose I can't prove they aren't all lying about it.

  • -11

unless your argument is that even the conservatives who claim to be against Nazism are lying and don't actually care.

My argument was about those who display sympathy for nazism, not those who try to earn good boy points for chanting "nazi bad".

This appears to me to be engaging in bad faith. Either that or it's a low effort attempt at a zinger. Either way, don't do this.

I'm asking for clarification. He literally said

"I might as well be one" is understandable to him.

This is basically saying "I am a Nazi" but of course in good faith I assume that the large majority of people I interact with are not Nazis. I suppose I could interact in bad faith and just assume he literally means it and has embraced Nazism if you prefer.

  • -16

If you're genuinely failing to understand the point, then this explains a great deal. I don't really want to speak for @crushedoranges but saying you understand why someone feels the way they do does not necessarily mean you feel the same way. That is in fact one of the purposes of the Motte, to explicate your viewpoint in a way that people who don't share it can understand why you hold it.

I am not sure what to do about you if you lack this basic perceptual ability, because if someone says "I understand why people being called Nazis would decide to embrace the label" and your interpretation is "You're a Nazi," there is a pretty large inferential gap that isn't conducive to heated engagements.

No, you can speak for me. It's fine.

Amadan wtf is this mod judgement? Appears to be engaging? Do you have any proof other than your feelings? What does “don’t do this” even mean?

I’ll say it again; you are a terrible mod and need to give it up to new blood.

  • -14

nah fam, this isn't it. He is a pretty good mod that if anything isn't going hard enough on the Darwin alt.

Giving everyone involved credit where credit is due, Darwin was never banned so doesn't need an alt if he wants to come back in and Just Start Asking Questions again.

Instead, they come across as a sort of 'Why aren't you getting back in the longhouse' style of moral harassments that's honestly aghast as to why thier decades-old tactics aren't functioning properly anymore.

I'm assuming he uses alts because it's more effective to troll when you don't have a reputation for doing so. If your interlocutor thinks you are a normal mottizen, he is more liable to offer charity and make several attemps to discuss things with you; where you can try to get a rise out of them and get them banned or at least a warning.

Perhaps, yes. But Darwin's argumentative style was fairly distinct in that he operated in isolation, stripping everything of context and focusing on single and individual elements and proceed to wear the argument down until you more or less gave up while refusing to concede ground on what he choose to argue about.

Hence why I don't think it's a Darwin alt.

Stop, you'll hurt my feelings.

Didn't you flounce already to "show me"? Why did you create a new account? Your old account wasn't banned. Do you think coming back with a new account means it doesn't count as flouncing? Now you're in the new user filter again. See what a kindly mod I am, unfiltering you just so you can bitch at me?

Trying real hard to be maximally charitable, but it appears you misread that statement and might need to reread the comment.

It's been made very clear over the last few years that when leftists say "Nazi", they mean a family with a mom and dad who love each other and their kids, people who work out, people who are attractive and successful, people who are mentally healthy, who aren't unhinged neurotic messes and people who don't hate themselves for no reason.

Why, what did you think that word meant?

You want to call all of the right wing Nazis, so that doesn't make me particularly special in that regard. Give me some credit. I'm not stupid. Obviously you made this post not out of a desire for sincere debate but to tar every Republican as a Nazi by association.

So call me a Nazi if you'd like. So what? What does that change? What should a hot-blooded American do to a Nazi? Tell me what you're darkly hinting at.

Apply some symmetry to this.

It's your fault that the left is full of communists. To be specific, it's the right's fault to calling everyone they disagreed with a commie. They called Carter a commie. They called Clinton a commie. They called Obama a commie. They even called Biden a commie.

The very understandable reaction: "fuck it, you're calling me a commie, I might as well be one."

So Bernie and Mamdani and Mangione and Hasan and Chapo and CHAZ and the entire fifth columnist anti-American left is actually the right's fault for calling the left commies all the time.

This is ironically a very lefty type of argument. Blaming other people and systemic issues for personal failures.

My impression is that this was actually true for an earlier period of American history, though. American media from the last 70 years is rife with caricatures of scared mean old men or stupid meathead bullies calling anything perceived as effete or unusual "Communist" or "pinko." My right-wing extended family uses "What? What are you, some kind of Communist?" in response to the same as an ironic self-deprecating joke. And so if you call someone a "Communist" in 2025, all but the most brainrotted boomercons will just laugh at you.

There is no symmetry to this, because you could be openly and without hesitation be a communist and still be in polite society. Hell, you could get tenure. Do you know of any explicitly fascist professors in American academia? Is there a organization of fascists in similar scale to the DSA, heck, the Communist Party of the United States of America?

No. There was a cordon sanitaire that was working very well until leftists started to abuse it to push social and economic conservatives out of the overton window. There is no red scare in the modern day that is comparable to the brown: your argument is basically 'no u' with a bit of effort. Communist is not a slur in the same way fascist is. It should be - given how much atrocity has been committed in the name of class warfare - but it isn't. And you know it is.

your argument is basically 'no u' with a bit of effort

I was trying more for "bad things are bad"

You said it's okay for people to go from being regular conservatives to Nazis because people kept calling them Nazis. This is implied by you deflecting any attempt to put the blame on them, and by you putting all the blame on the people overusing the word.

It's actually still bad to be a Nazi (or fascist) even after being called one a whole lot, even if by very powerful institutions, even if over long periods of time.

It's also actually still bad to be a commie, even if it's the chic, avant-garde, fashionable thing that all your friends are into.

Anyway, I think you're onto something that shame is broken. It used to be an effective way to make people behave. Now, with the Internet, it's too effective. Only the shameless remain. Everyone else keeps their head down. That's why the inmates are running the asylum now.

So I guess this post may be as pointless as yours. Here I am, shaming you for shaming them for shaming others.

Can you be redeemed? or do I put you on a mental list forever of "partisan rightoid who blames the left for everything"

Can I be redeemed? or do I go on a mental list forever of "partisan leftoid who pretends not to know things"

It's actually still bad to be a Nazi (or fascist) even after being called one a whole lot, even if by very powerful institutions, even if over long periods of time.

Can you break down what "being a Nazi (or fascist)" is supposed to entail here? If you mean "wanting to gas the Jews" I agree, if it's "losing faith in liberalism" or "wanting out of the multi-kulti salad bowl", I'm not really seeing the badness of it.

It's also actually still bad to be a commie, even if it's the chic, avant-garde, fashionable thing that all your friends are into.

I even disagree with that. I believe that given human nature communism is doomed to turn people evil, but there's nothing inherently bad about believing in the superiority of centrally planned economies, or something.

I view one losing faith in liberalism much like a good Christian views a fellow believer losing faith in God: understandable, yet nonetheless misguided.

The siren song of authoritarianism is strong, and it is foolish to listen to the devil's lies. But even still, many of us are fools. So it goes. How well they can be redeemed depends on how much they let those lies corrupt their soul. So there is in a sense both nothing and everything bad about believing anything at all. Our free will both condemns us to sin and allows us to forgive.

All to say, as a liberal I view all illiberalism as evil. And this view is to some degree a matter of faith. I could try writing words to rationalize it, but you would almost certainly be better off reading Mill or Scott or some other better writer. Ditto your request for definitions: I will defer to Wikipedia if you still want those. My apologies.

At best I can offer https://youtube.com/watch?v=xGeOEr6yFL4?si=klFr_r8Y2oPSaaju

The sin of dictatorship is that the people can push off failures of government to one man.

All illiberal societies converge into dictatorships, and/or they collapse or liberalize. There are no stable illiberal democracies.

I would rather die as Socrates did, a free man condemned by his own foolish people, than to prosper like a child under the rule of a benevolent King.

(Now, a God King is another thing entirely, but I am unfortunately an atheist.)

For the subject at hand, the people in this story are likely redeemable given proper guidance, and many are just victims of context collapse. Young men making crass jokes amongst themselves is normal behavior and nothing new.

All to say, as a liberal I view all illiberalism as evil. And this view is to some degree a matter of faith.

Don't worry about definitions then, I think this answers my questions better than any encyclopedia could.

I think each paragraph you wrote here could spark a fascinating conversation all of it's own, but I'll try to stick to the subject that started ours. If we change the scenario somewhat, to be about your fargroup, rather than your outgroup, would it change any of your calculus?

For example if a mostly secular Arab moves into a western Christian town, is met with rejection and bigotry, runs into a Wahhabi mosque that welcomes him with open arms as a brother, would you not say the westerners share some blame for his radicalization, even when the final decision is on him?

I don't think that changes anything. Neither the bigots in your example nor the people overusing the word "Nazi" are blameless. Just as well, in neither case is the subsequent action justified, only understandable. (Almost all behavior is understandable if one tries hard enough to understand it, but understanding does not preclude judgment.)

Ultimately, everyone must take responsibility for their own actions. Casting the blame outwards, as if our actions are mere cascading effects of the people with true agency, is to concede we have none. It's an intoxicating idea. It frees us of the burden of temperance and good judgment. But without that burden we are nothing but machines following a routine.

More comments

There are no stable illiberal democracies.

There are no stable societies. People change, cultures change, and whatever laws and customs suited them at one point will no longer do it at another. Any system can be gamed, any ruleset subverted, any institution compromised, any social consensus undermined. Anything can be corrupted, exploited, turned against its purpose, cannibalized for someone's benefit at someone else's expense. Any form of political organization that is worth abusing will be abused, and that is all of them.

All liberal societies converge into atomized free-for-alls, and/or they collapse or become dictatorships after all. Nothing lasts forever, and liberal democracies haven't even been around for that long. So far it seems they're pretty great at creating prosperity - but that also makes them extremely attractive to subvert and exploit. And malicious actors are getting better and better and doing that, far faster than benevolent social engineers can patch up the social-cohesion-leaks, procedural deadlocks, cultural backdoors and other assorted failure modes.

So with all this recent controversy, how big of a Nazi problem is actually festering

This is, unfortunately, not something that I can give a solid answer for, given that I am not a conservative myself and don’t partake in the particular self-punishment in going around trying to hang out in conservative crowds (…well, aside from this site). Polls on this are, for obvious reasons, going to be somewhat unreliable, so I’m operating purely off gut feelings and vibes here.

Based on those vibes & gut feelings, I’d guess that the number of committed, truly ideological neo-Nazis on The Right are probably still quite low, for now. Unfortunately, seems to me that the cohort of fascism-curious rightists is small but growing, and firmly in the drivers seat of The Right. Certainly, the majority of American conservatives don’t see them as a problem, and are not likely to be an impediment to them.

and why do the Nazis seem to feel so comfortable in modern conservativism?

Because Modern Conservatism™ by and large doesn’t view this as a big deal. See all the responses to your previous top-level post; it’s just not a problem, and if it is then it doesn’t matter; the Left is ultimately such a horrifying boogeyman to The Right that in the end they’ll still side with anyone if it leads to The Left’s defeat- even if it requires ever-more-uncomfortable rationalizations.

They even seem to be dropping hints at the highest levels if the border patrol video was intended as a dog whistle to be dropped before deleting. Is this growing widespread agreement (from Hanania to Torba) that this is just the tip of the iceberg among young conservatives accurate?

I don’t know… any young conservatives, so, uh… IDK? I imagine this kind of rhetoric is pretty common amongst young conservatives. I doubt (hope?) they don’t really believe it, but I don’t think that actually matters. As long as the next generation of conservatives continue to vote deranged MAGA Republicans into office, I don’t really give a shit whether they’re really true believers or just horrendously foolish.

Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future like embracing left wing radicalism hurt Biden?

If everything Trump and his toadies have done and are currently doing haven’t caused the “““moderates””” to wake the fuck up, then those moderates are probably a lost cause until the administration does something so disastrous that they can’t just bullshit their way out of it like they do for everything else- at which point, it’ll be far too late.

And how do the non Nazi conservatives and moderates balance fighting off Nazi accusations from the left also working to stem this apparant rise of unashamed nazism and Holocaust denialism?

Simple.

They won’t. Hard to correct a problem if you just refuse to admit a problem exists.

Nobody on the right takes the nazi shit seriously. It's seen as juvenile shock humor, not something real.

Because Modern Conservatism™ by and large doesn’t view this as a big deal. See all the responses to your previous top-level post; it’s just not a problem, and if it is then it doesn’t matter; the Left is ultimately such a horrifying boogeyman to The Right that in the end they’ll still side with anyone if it leads to The Left’s defeat- even if it requires ever-more-uncomfortable rationalizations.

This is actually a big tribalist issue that seems to be happening across both aisles right now and it genuinely scares me. There's a joke that goes

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.

The man in the in the joke is unlucky. Despite all the assumed similarities between the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, and the Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912 ("on the same side"", he stumbled upon a radical 1879er who supports violence on disagreement.

Had a normie non violence supporting Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, or any other religious group member stumbled upon on him, he would still be alive. Despite all the similarities between the two councils, and all the differences between his religions and the other beliefs, the only one that truly matters there is the willingness to use violence.

Look at authoritarian dictatorships and you see something like this. You can be a great and wonderful ally to Xi, or Putin, or Kim Jong Un, you still don't get a pass to disagree with them much. Deng Xiaopeng was a true believer with relatively minor variance from Mao, and he was condemned as the "number two capitalist roader" and purged twice in 1967 and 1976.

Things like the two party system and the idea of "left wing" vs "right wing" leads people to forming tribalist ideas of sides, but there are no sides. There are loose coalitions, with wide disagreements inside them. Communist left wing groups splinter all the time from purity tests and purging, and I'm sure there was plenty of Jews in Germany that approved Hitler's non antisemitic policies yet they died just the same.

The true threat of the Baptist man in the joke isn't the normie atheist, or the normie Hindu, or the normie Buddhist but of "his own side" willing to use violence over disagreement.

  • -13

Any thoughts on which side of the political aisle tends to be prone to ruthlessly enforcing purity politics over relatively small schisms?

Things like the two party system and the idea of "left wing" vs "right wing" leads people to forming tribalist ideas of sides, but there are no sides. There are loose coalitions, with wide disagreements inside them. Communist left wing groups splinter all the time from purity tests and purging, and I'm sure there was plenty of Jews in Germany that approved Hitler's non antisemitic policies yet they died just the same.

Unfortunately, the sides we choose are as real as we make them.

Emphasis on the “we” part. It doesn’t matter if you don’t view yourself as being on a particular side if the other person does.

If everything Trump and his toadies have done

You're trying to connect Trump to anti-semitism? Donald J. Trump? The guy with the Orthodox Jewish convert daughter, whose Orthodox Jewish husband was one of his senior advisors in his first term? Netanyahu's best buddy, darling of the US Haredi, that Donald Trump?

Andrew Torba may well be a neo-Nazi. Or Myron Gaines, whoever the fuck he is. But Trump obviously isn't, and every time someone tries to connect him to anti-semitism they only discredit themselves.

Anyone calling Trump a Nazi is an idiot. But you can be a fascist without being a deranged anti-Semite (see Mussolini before he was Hitler's bitch). The argument that Trump is a fascist has very little to do with his views on racial issues and almost everything to do with whether you take his rhetoric about suspending the Constitution, beating up political opponents, arresting political opponents, developing a new culture of lethality in the armed forces for the purpose of waging a war against political opponents, running for a third term etc. seriously or not.

Empirically, right-populist movements tend to drift in an anti-Semitic direction over time. So do left-populist movements. If the leaked chats reflect the sense of humour of MAGA millenials, MAGA is indeed drifting in an anti-Semitic direction despite the best efforts of MAGA boomers. I smell bear scat in the woods, and in a possibly surprising turn of events Pope Leo XIV is indeed Catholic.

Trump's most fascist things are where the Democrats don't even really oppose him (industrial policy, basically). Other than that, Trump's not a fascist. He hasn't suspended the Constitution; talk is cheap and politicians engage in it all the time. It's not in any way, shape, or form a violation of the constitution or 'fascist' to talk about running for a third term.

His actions for the last three weeks have been flatly illegal for constitutional reasons; the president exercising budget authority is literally banned by the constitution.

Violating the constitution, if indeed he has been, is not in the same neighborhood as suspending the constitution. Violating the Constitution results in court cases; suspending it even in part has only happened in war.

The arguments I've seen are "he says they're good with money, which is stereotyping", and "he's encouraging people to hate them, both by generic bigotry and by doing things like recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which made a lot of people angry and therefore more likely to attack Jews."

The first one seems more than plausible (Trump, a bog-standard bigot who agrees with stereotypes? Say it ain't so!), even if it's a bit milquetoast; the second is... IMO one hell of a reach.

I… wasn’t trying to accuse Trump of antisemitism at all? His many, many other flaws notwithstanding, I’ve not really seen any evidence that Trump himself has any particular beef with Judaism.

———

What I am saying is that increased Republican radicalism isn’t going to move the needle politically. As Trump himself put it, he could shoot someone in broad daylight and the GOP would still fall in behind him, and a lot of the “moderates” in the country would follow as well, presumably out of some baffling sense that the Democrats would still be just as bad, if not worse.

...saved [G]ermany.

That's an odd way of describing 'got his country squashed like a bug and occupied and split in half for 4+ decades'.

So young right are ironic antisemites and young left are unironic ones. This does not bode well for the jews and Israel. There has been way more howl for (and spilled) jewish blood from the left than the right since 2023.

Edit: A bit more - young people like the austrian painter for the same reason they like Tate. If you squish all the moderate versions of nationalism, patriotism and masculinity - the toxic ones will thrive.

One of the things I think on is that Hitler was quite popular when elected. He got 43.9% of the vote. Presumably there would have a bunch of Jewish people (just like now with Jewish people having a wide range of beliefs) who would have gone "Wow Hitler is so great in so many ways" and agreed with him on most topics and just wished he dropped the antisemitism part. But of course, Hitler didn't drop it and those Jews died too.

You could have a hypothetical Jew with 99.9% of policy agreement with Hitler on every other topic except antisemitism, and that .1% is the difference between life and death. The same hypothetical Jew would be better off with someone who they disagree 99.9% of policies with as long as that .1% they agree on was "don't kill the Jews"

The violent and hateful members of "Your own side" will come after you too, because they are violent and hateful and that .1% of disagreement on "should the Jews die?" or "should I attack people who disagree with me?" is all that matters.

  • -14

He got 43.9% of the vote.

The 1933 election after the Reichstag Fire wasn't exactly a free and fair election. The Communist leadership was in prison, and von Papen had seized control over the Prussian police in 1932 and a number of other states had Nazi-led governments, so most of Germany was an anarcho-tyranny in favour of the Nazi SA and DNVP-aligned Stahlhelm.

The NSDAP's best result in an election that was a real test of public opinion was 37.3% in July 1932. There was never a right-wing majority in a Weimar election until after Hitler had already taken power - even if you include anti-Nazi right-wing parties such as the Bavarian BVP.

This is of course, a quibble - the Nazis were broadly popular in the sense that 30-50% of the German electorate thought that a Nazi-led government was a good idea, and Hitler would never have come to power if this had not been the case.

I think you've figured out why Jews don't like Hamas.

The same hypothetical Jew would be better off with someone who they disagree 99.9% of policies with as long as that .1% they agree on was "don't kill the Jews"

Yeah, so Jews should probably disassociate from the "River to the Sea" people, who are the main group who want to kill Jews nowadays. They don't call themselves Nazis... but to be fair, their forefathers have been wanting to kill Jews since before Adolf was a gleam in Aloysius's eye.

I agree.

Neither the Hamas left side or the neonazi right side seem to be good spaces for Jews. They are safer with non violent moderates of any belief than the violence loving bigoted extremists even on "their own side"

Except the mainstream of the left includes the River to the Sea people, while the mainstream of the right doesn't include the groypers or the "dissident right" (you can tell from the name).

Glad that's established.

There appears to be about 1,000-10,000 pro-Hamas left for every neonazi on the right, with vastly more institutional support. The left has rising star politicians that refuse to condemn Hamas, and strongly hint at open support. Their controlled institutions, like the unviersities, openly support and coddle Hamas partisans. Their biggest influencers, like Hasan Piker, openly support the mass murder of Jews and cheer on literal, organizationally-continuous-from-the-1930's NDSAP allies.

So do you agree that the left has ten thousand times the nazi problem that the right does, right? Or are you engaging in some sort of Terryology math?

My understanding is that the Muslim/Jew blood feud goes back to the Zionist project (A Jewish diaspora was more-or-less tolerated by most Muslim kingdoms/empires until then). So we're talking 1920s or so, after Mr. Hitler was an adult

Goes back WAY further than that, to the days of Muhammad.

I'm aware of the Quran passages, but I thought that Judaism mostly cozied up to Islam throughout middle ages and early modern ages, and that Jews were willingly employed by Muslims as spies and 5th columnists against Christian kingdoms. AFAIK the current Jewish-Muslim feud did start with the Zionist settlement of the Levant.

Islam is a religion of peace and has only had somewhat contentious interactions with any other faith or civilization in the last 100 years as a direct result of colonialism and Zionism. How dare you suggest otherwise

This does not bode well for the jews and Israel.

I expect Israel will be fine, though it's going to be really weird when the ironic antisemites are on their side but the woke Jews oppose them.

(What am I saying? That's already largely the case)

Will this growing trend of Nazi radicalism destroy the Republicans chances among moderates in the future like embracing left wing radicalism hurt Biden?

Biden and his viziers(because let's be honest, he wasn't calling the shots) refused to disown left wing radicalism the way you yourself note republican highers-up disowning nazi rhetoric.

The left doesn't have any equivalent to "TND". Right wing radicalism is just worse. It's pure unadulterated evil that takes pride in its own immorality. Whereas radical leftists at least think they're doing the right thing.

Biden and his viziers(because let's be honest, he wasn't calling the shots) refused to disown left wing radicalism the way you yourself note republican highers-up disowning nazi rhetoric.

I agree! Heck as many will point out, the silence around Jay Jones currently is a pretty good mirror at how people seem unwilling to disown and denounce those "on the same side". I think that "same side" rhetoric is nonsense and that the extremist radical violence lovers make themselves the enemies of all moderate non violence wanting folk regardless of any similarities shared, but the tribalism seems to have taken discourse everywhere.

  • -11

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats