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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026

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Oh oops if I mixed that up but going on to add "you're ruled by millenarian fanatics worse than Shia Muslims" I'm fairly sure that's in reference to the reporting about U.S. leadership.

Also things like the later "Hegseth, Trump – are barely human but instead some degenerated swine from a Fromsoft game."

I mean that's Nazi talk. The level of dehumanization is I think new and totally collapses much of value of the contribution since you know it's all hiigghhhhly colored.

that's Nazi talk

Please, no, not that can of worms again.

If you insist, please lead with an opener about your exact definition of nazi.

Systematic dehumanization of someone you dislike and leadership figures of them is a classic sign of disordered thought processes that often lead to things like the rise of authoritarian states, ethnic cleansing, justification of deaths of people in that group (ex: Charlie Kirk).

I'm not a person who throws around Nazi very often, can't remember the last time I did it - but referring to people you disagree with as subhuman animals and drawing connections to literal demons, shit that's a pretty good reason.

You can be mad at Americans and their political stances without hitting that level of rhetoric.

It's not about Nazis specifically, it's about the modes of thought that lead to behaviors the Nazis are famous for. "That's Khmer Rouge" thinking or "that's woke thinking" are equally appropriate.

It's not about Nazis specifically

How about "fanatic", "crazy", "demagogue" or "ideologue", all of which refer to more or less suitably vague but not historically burdened concepts?

I don't think those are quite strong enough for how significant the espoused rhetoric was - yeah Nazi is a loaded term, but people who make that much of an effort to dehumanize are up to some bad business most of the time.

Demagoguery can result in someone being hyped for the latest tech product.

I think "dangerously dehumanizing" is probably more accurate, for the reasons you elaborated on: Nazis are just one subcategory of that. I don't like that the euphemism treadmill has left us with no more-extreme synonyms for "dangerously" (though post-Charlie-Kirk I'd say "atrociously dehumanizing" is fair), but in the end reaching for the word "Nazi" doesn't permanently take us off the treadmill, it just pulls "Nazi" further onto it. Godwin's Law is decades old now, and if you run the risk of someone mistaking your serious point for hyperbole regardless then you might as well make the serious point as precisely as possible.

(this is all analysis in leisure and in hindsight; obviously you're not going to spend this much time analyzing every single word you use and I'm not upset that you might have chosen one slightly-suboptimally)

Ironically this has generated an element of perverse incentive - the comment has generated a lot more engagement because of people taking issue with the word Nazi. It's superficial engagement, but it is engagement.

Ha! I was wondering if I was the only one who noticed that. That's what slipped the "might" into my last sentence. I know there are other posters here who've gotten good mileage out of phrasing something in a way that's supportable but inflammatory and initially-unsupported, so that they can lure out and then argue down objections.

I'd even say it's not superficial engagement, once you get to the "argue down objections" part. At the start it's literally trolling if you do it on purpose, and in the end I'm not sure whether it's productive (it does get people to stake out a position that can be countered) or counterproductive (if the counter isn't perfect people tend to just entrench), but it does attract a real conversation, it's not pure outrage bait.

I mean I recently had called out another user on language precision, I assume that's generating some or most of the kvetching, I still stand by the central point however - the dehumanizing language etc is a notorious tactic of many of the great dangers to society and resembles what the the one we all know gets up to.

I don't think it's an exaggeration and I don't think it should be that eye catching of a statement, at the same time it clearly was. I'm not sure anything was really gained from the ink spilled here and Dase was not saved.