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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.
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.
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.
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"
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.
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
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.
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.
This feels like haggling over the price a bit. I'm happy to accept that at the each person's decisions are their own, but my point is indeed that neither side is blameless.
This, on the other hand, assumes that everyone, including the illiberal villains, share your moral framework. If I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, I'm not casting blame on anyone for my actions, I'm just pointing out the conduct of liberals snapped me out of my stupor and made me reassess my positions. I don't think there's much I need to temper (or rather - there are things I do, but they are character traits, not positions I hold), and I believe I'm exercising good judgement.
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