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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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If people want to corral their opponents into internment camps that's not a Nazi problem, it's a political oppression problem

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.