So here we are, taking pity and normalizing the people that supports the mass killing of +6million people.
We truly never learn....
Every generation or so, culture changes rapidly. A lot of what a historian does, is dissecting recorded history through different periods to see how the biased narrative changes.
People today are further removed the horrors of WW2 than our grandparents generation. In a thousand years, people might talk about Adolf Hitler, how we talk about Alexander the Great or Ghenkis Khan today. All it takes is time, because human beings don't really give a shit about anything other than what is closest to them. The world is too big, there is too much death, and your main concern is just keeping those alive who are most important to you. Everything else is then like layers that losses importance as you go further out towards irrelevance.
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The nazi-children anology is silly, but I think a lot of you are wrong to dismiss hypotheticals. If you're not willing to engage in the hypothetical of someone you're discussing someone with, then there is no discussion. And that goes on the part of you wanted to be understood.
To say that violence is okay against neo-nazis because if we don't do anything, then they will take over. That statement is a hypothetical. A shitpost response to that would be to say that it is a slippery slope and dismiss it. Let's all be above that, and instead of meme driveby shitposting peoples concerns, then actually spend the time to argue for why/why not, various outplays might come to pass. This is predicting the future will screening for ramifications and consequences of normalizing behavior.
If trump supporters and conservatives by extensions are neo-nazi sympathizers and deplorable, how thin is the line or veil, where violence is okay against them?
Or people wearing the confederate flag. A symbol of hate- Why not go out and actively harm them? The main argument here is that, you are basically the symbol you wear. If you scream you're in ISIS, you're in ISIS. If you wear the neo-nazi symbols, you're a neo-nazi.
That seems like a pretty low level and rudimentary way to dig yourself into an ideological hole to justify violence. And that is a slippery slope. Because collective guilt has a habit of getting a lot of people killed- The class prosecution which the hammer and sickle represents- a symbol which is responsible for even more death and mayham than the swastika proves that.
If you fuck with other people, of course you're going to get hurt. But I can easily see this sort of antics evolving into something where it becomes much more justifiable to hurt someone because they wear a symbol that represents hate. You cannot really have it both ways or look at this in a vacuum.
And really, the right is going to internalize and excuse it themselves. It's okay to demolish someone who wear the hammer and sickle, because what it represents directly hurt someone close to them in the past. No critical thinking needed. No separation of just standing passively, from the act itself.
And it worries me, we don't vet one another. Mob justice is scary if you can snap a picture of someone, and get them assaulted relatively quickly.
The line between nazis and being a republican is getting very close, and I don't know if it's because republicans are becoming nazis en masse, or if conservatism always had a lot in common with fascism. After all, many of your founding fathers were authoritarian a frighteningly idea.
At the core of fascism is nationalism, and I don't know a country that is more entrenched in its own patriotism than America.
I really worry, that 5-10-20 years from now, that this behavior and behavioral mode of responding to things I hate with violence, will have mainifested itself into another form, like a boomerang. It makes sense today and everyone is happy, but then as the decades roll by, the political climate changes and suddenly it takes a dark turn. It has in the past.
Don't forget that nazis are ordinary people, and if you lived in 1930s Germany, the statistical likelihood is that you would have been nazi too. If we fall into this pitfall where we further distance ourselves, we risk repeating past mistakes, where we give ourselves the morale highground to cleanse evil with violence, because we're above it.
We really are not. So we should not respond with authoritarian violence- Which hunting nazis is. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It makes sense today, we all benefit today, but we don't know or care what it could lead to. Which to me is just intellectually laziness to look at this in a vacuum.
This is an awesome book about how german soldiers get psychologically tricked into committing the mass atrocities. It's not that these people are inhumane devils, but that through the absolvement of self as part of their group structuring, becomes part of a whole. And then it literally becomes a slippery slope.
The behavior here exactly the same that caused American soldiers to torture prisoners in Abu Ghrabi or commit other atrocities through its conflicts.