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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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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?

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?

Most commonly they will choose a set of characteristics that describes the modern group they don’t like, but that fails to uniquely describe historical Nazis, or fails to describe the consensus “bad parts” or historical Nazis and instead focuses on the contested parts (Hitler liked dogs, Nazis were pro-family, etc.)

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?"

  • -20

Of course, when you put it like that, it's basically symmetrical with the way academia and significant chunks of lefty popular culture have treated the Soviets and other murderous communist regimes for decades. So all in all, not super outside the overton window, right?