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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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.
Yes, but if those people want to do that and kill all the Jews and align all of society behind a charismatic militaristic leader… and on top of all that they explicitly call themselves Nazis… then surely it would be weird not to call them Nazis? (Again, this is all an "if". I'm not saying that I think the Republican Party are especially heading in that direction. I certainly don't believe the YR chat logs show anything of the sort.)
I suppose at the limit it's possible that something could resemble something else so closely that it would be reasonable to share the label. But, like men who pretend to be women, the limit that delineates between the source and the imitation remains and can be revealed should it be necessary. If those hypothetical people call themselves Nazis you can point out that they'll never be real Nazis until they fail, lose, kill themselves, are executed, live in exile, see the ruins of their nation carved up between Russia and America and their political movement become lawfully systematically repressed and used as the popular byword for evil for the next 80+ years.
Personally I think Neo-Nazi would be a more accurate label, "if". It encompasses both the important similarities and the critical difference. People are reluctant to use it though I think because instead of conjuring the threat of global military conflict it instead summons the idea of low class skinheads beating up isolated immigrants, which is bad in itself but also suggests a degree of impotence and unpopularity. There are simply far bigger contemporary problems than Neo-Nazis. The average inner city drug gang is a bigger problem.
I'm no expert on historic Nazi psycho-sociology but I imagine the dynamism and authenticity of the movement played some role in its appeal. That is, not being a throwback to a previous failed movement from a foreign culture. It's more than something they can believe in, it was something/someone that reciprocated and believed in them. Post WW1 Germans looking to a living German for leadership of the German nation is more coherent than post WW2 non-Germans looking to a dead failed German for leadership of a non-German nation. For anyone living post 1945 it's not possible to sincerely heil Hitler. He's dead! A dead loser and an abject fucking failure, and yet to give him his dues he made it his own, he didn't try to call himself Genghis Khan or march around saluting the Sun King or some such.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link