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Well add another to the pile of evidence that Hitlerism and Nazism is growing.
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!".
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.
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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.
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)?
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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
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?
If someone starts pushing a plan to gas all the Jews or something I'll worry about who's "rallying around Nazis" or not, but I absolutely refuse to humor anyone like you with your little list of no-no words someone said, ever again, under any circumstance. So go ahead and damn us all as Nazis and stomp off mad already, it'll be the 4000th time in the last 10 years, nobody will even remember by the next day.
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It was explained several times in the thread. Why do you keep taking quotes out of context, and ignoring answers given to you?
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Again, if you believe that someone saying
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.
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.
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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.
The standing principle is noninterference. I dont care that you dont care. If I care thats my problem not yours. The right is perfectly capable of rejecting the worst excrsses by its own terms: the expulsion of the wrongthinkers is proof of the right not being held hostage to every crazy statement within its base. That Myron Gaines or Fuentes or other random fuckwits claim to the banner of the right and have admiring listeners is immaterial, they are not thought leaders within the right wing intellectual ecoststem.
The left on the other hand does NOT abandon a single one of the maximalist positions advanced by their problematics is precisely the problem they have. Trump can happily go "I love gays" and prance with a rainbow flag and no one grouses much. The left CANNOT abandon a single position at all without being outflanked by a screeching progressive.
Maybe the issue is that the right protects its people, while the left protects "its"ideas. Kiss the ring and JD Vance gets to be Trumps jester. Question trans maximalism and the DSA smells blood in the water.
On a personal level maybe. Well you wouldn't expend many thought cycles on me, but I would farm downvotes here on the Motte if I earnestly expressed such a view, and that is itself at least a tiny form of caring. But on a meta-level I'd say The Motte does care. That's why they keep coming back to whatever crazy thing the left did today, and their refusal to take responsibility for it.
The extreme of the extreme, maybe. Though I will note Trump himself has met with Fuentes, claimed to not know who he was, and then dodged condemning him. If Trump prances with a rainbow flag, I do think that on that subject they would be very unhappy, though they might console themselves that they are happy with him on other issues.
The left mostly just ignores its crazies. Within the DNC, AOC seems to be mostly the crazy uncle that rants while everyone eats their Thanksgiving dinner and then they never talk to otherwise. For all the talk on Palestine, Biden himself didn't actually do anything college kids wanted, which may have contributed to Trump's win.
And yes, to be fair, arguably the notable exception is trans. On this issue the moderate Dems mostly seem to be along the lines of "Well the doctors say this is the right approach."
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Why is Trump supposed to be the crazy wing of Republican? The wokes being called crazy is a result of the moderate Democrats not wanting to be associated with them, but Trump being deemed crazy is purely the result of outgroup slander. Honestly, I'm a much better example of a crazy right-winger than anyone in the current administration, and as to whether the right exists me to provide reputational cover - I dunno no man, half of them are doing some weird "neener-neener" bit about the YR kids getting fired, can you provide a similar example from your side?
I don't know about you personally, but hasn't the majority of the left, in fact, taken that license?
Disagree. Even from a right-wing perspective, he lies habitually. Republicans may be protectionist, but his trade policy constantly changes. He's weirdly deferential to Putin (whereas the median Republican might not want to get involved in Ukraine but still admits Putin is bad), and his Ukraine policy is incoherent whether you think we should be involved or not. There's pretty much everything relating to RFK. He's pardoning corporate fraudsters. People are completely silent on his own blatant lawfare.
Sorry I'm confused what point you are making here. Could you rephrase?
The more charitable interpretation is they consider their bad apples to fall under the lizardman constant, similar to the responses I'm seeing regarding the right. But let's say yes anyway, because that is my criticism of the left. That they do so is in fact what I think is why The Motte hates the left so much. So why would you do it yourself? Yes the constant refrain is "Why should I better than my opponents, when that will only result in losing?" My point rests in how exactly one keeps score. It's relatively fine to say, "I'm keeping track of the bad things both sides do, and I think side X is worse." It's another thing to say, "I'm going to keep counting the score of my opponents, and stop counting my own." At that point you've decided you want to keep your head in the sand and have become just a rage reactionary. Your opponents are fully justified then in playing dirty, because you're saying you can be as corrupt as you want and it doesn't matter.
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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
It's the Chen Sheng Rebellion of support. Damned either way.
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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.
FWIW, West Germany did get a lot of help after the war, while the east was thoroughly exploited by its overlords.
Yeah, I was underrating the Marshall Plan and other programs. Thank you.
And yet I'm unsure whether it was decisive in the East VS West Germany comparison. Even if there had been no Marshall plan and no soviet exploitation, the socialist East would probably have fallen behind on its own like all the socialist countries did. Just perhaps not quite so badly.
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Evil rapacious capitalism less exploitative than the dictatorship of the Kremlin proletariat?
Unpossible.
Well, as you know, we did receive this generous American aid on the condition that we would be the first line of cannon fodder in case of the cold war going hot, so it wasn't entirely altruistic.
But I'd still say that's a better deal than what the Ossies got.
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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.
Take out the word 'Nazi' for something less polemic, and step back from the American political pendulum metaphor that treats the range of outcomes as a linear spectrum of 'left' to 'Nazi', and you'll find that this point is irrelevant. The primary purpose of conflict decision making is to maximize your own position, not to maximize harm to another particular other party's. This is particularly true in situations where there are multiple enemy parties, and prioritizing one leaves the other the space and ability to continue to target you.
Just start with the pendulum framing. It's a bad conflict map, straight up. There are far more variations and potential future outcomes for political momentum than left-wing political collectivism and right-wing political collectivism. Not only is there entire non-collectivist paradigms, both left and right, but even the premise of left and right is fundamentally flawed. It inherently implies a duality to a more-than-two agent problem.
Take a three-way conflict between A, B, and C. Your argument rests on the premise that A must choose between B and C. This is incorrect- A can choose neither B or C. B and C can both be enemies to A, as well as each other. Whether A chooses to attack B or C first or most is not an implication or insinuation that it is choosing to align with the other. It is a reflection of limited action capacity, and that one can only be 'first' or 'most' opposed against a single party. More generally, there is a limited capacity to action.
That party C would be all to happy if party A targets party B, and could use it to gain momentum for themselves as party C, is not actually any sort of reason for party A to not target party B. After all, the same logic applies for party A to target party C, which would thus let party B gain momentum. The momentum definition, by its nature, means party A is 'all too happy' to enable the momentum of the party it is not targeting first/.
The only ways for party A to not grant this sort of momentum to either party B or C is to either not attack either of them, or to attack both of them equally. Both are terrible ideas for A, in terms of opposing either (and both).
Non-attack, or more specifically non-response to attacks from B or C, allows both of them to generate their own momentum. After all, both B and C have their own sources of momentum, independent of A, hence why they are separate parties and not subsets of A in the first place. Non-action also gives momentum.
But equally splitting attention against B and C is also bad, because B and C are almost certainly not equivalent threats needing equal opposition. This could be because they are different in nature (which they probably insist they are), or in capacity, or some other distinction. Capacity to threaten is a considerable, and often overriding, difference.
But even if B and C were equivalent, it would still be the wrong move for A to divide resources to oppose both equally. That, after all, would considerably reduce- even halve- their ability to take out either. Party A may not have the capacity to take out either even with full capacity. But worst of all, equal and equally split opposition would be an invitation / incentive to encourage parties B and C to tactically cooperate against A. This would increase the degree of threat / harm A faces, and also reduce its ability to counter either B or C.
But to bring this back to the start-
It does not matter to A if A attacking B helps C build momentum, because C's momentum is not the terminnal / primary value of success. Party A does not lose if C has momentum, unless C has such momentum that it would overwhelm A. Party A does not win if C has no momentum, and can lose if B has enough momentum to overwhelm A. Party A's interest is based on Party A, not Party C (or B).
But it certainly is in Party B's interest for Party A to prioritize Party C, and especially if Party A harms others parts of Party A that aren't part of Party C.
Or- to translate it back to less-theoretical-
You do better when you prioritize your own interests, not when you prioritize harming your opponents, and especially not if you prioritize targets based on another opponent's judgements.
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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
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As some Spartan once allegedly wrote in a message,
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.
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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.
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