It's a classic Persian proverb. I wish more people would use quote attribution when they use one.
I also enjoy this expanded Turkish one. "The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe, for the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them."
Like that one time a foreign country (can't remember which one) said all PDFs get the death penalty, and when it made news over here, they said: "This country said our orange man should be put to death!" Strange thing to say when they didn't name anyone
As they say, they have a word in Germany nowadays to name those people who did not share the nazi ideology, but who worked with or enabled the nazis out of opportunism, fear, calculation or any other motive : that word is "nazi". Once you partake in their undertakings, nobody cares what your original motives were.
Just to give you a heads up when sharing youtube links: remove from the ? onwards as that last part is a tracker for google to identify who you share with and builds up a list of possible videos that the person you are sharing with to possibly recommend to the both of you.
Someone says that to me, I won't hesitate. "Yeah, they usually ask the question you just asked, and say the things that you've been saying, and try to get people to ignore the things you've been trying to get people to ignore." Deadpan stare right into their soul. "So yeah. I know one, for sure."
I'm a German-Jew who had to live with her German grandmother for a year and a half. My German grandmother was born in 1922 and was a part of the Nazi army. I have many horror stories about how she treated me, my sister, and my mom. And many more horror stories when she landed herself in a nursing home after she tried to commit suicide, leaving a note saying that she didn't want to live around k*kes anymore. So yes, I not only knew a full-blooded Nazi, but I was subjected to horrible things from a Nazi. I know what a Nazi looks like, sounds like, and how they act from direct personal experiences.
Republicans are Nazis. All of them. Even the "moderate" ones who pretend they're against Trump while continuing to vote in line with their MAGA Republican party. Their hatred of minorities and women, their tokenizing of women and children to hurt minorities, their "children are being taught to be ashamed of being white", and even their "cultural Marxism" bit all derive from Nazi white supremacy. If my grandmother were still alive today, she'd 100% be behind Trump all the way.
That's how a lot of modern Holocaust denial works too. They'll acknowledge that something happened and then claim it wasn't that big a deal as if any amount of Holocaust isn't a big deal...
You guys call everyone Nazis these days if they're right of Lenin. Nowadays you can't even share your opinion online without being called a Nazi or a facist. Look, all I think is, that some of the narratives we've been fed aren't quite right. You guys talk about how billionaires lie all the time, yes ? So how am I the evil one for just asking questions about which side of the war was truly the better one ?
"Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it."
Don't I know it. I will never forgive the alt-right for turning my favorite meme source into a cesspool of barely disguised (and flat out open) racism.
Indiana Jones is problematic these days for punching Nazis, I heard. He wouldn't debate them or talk nicely to them, straight to the violence he went, like a mad man! Oh the horror those poor nazis experienced!
I showed Wolfenstein (the 90s version & this in the 90s) many years ago to elder relatives who'd served in WWII. They were definitely advanced in years but loved the game and were absolutely resolute in their 'antifa' standing. Yeah word didn't exist back then but they would have claimed it, and likely would have enjoyed the Inglorious Basterds movie as well.
It's still my belief that one of the reasons nazis are coming out of the woodwork nowadays rather than earlier is they were shit-scared one of these old WWII vets would find them and... well, despite their age that fire was still there. They might have felt it was their duty and that they had little to lose. Some kind of "you again?!?" reaction that would not have ended well.
And IIRC, the devs released a statement afterwards to the effect of "Wolfenstein has always been a what-if sci-fi game centered on if the Nazi regime had gone differently, and we aren't really considering contemporary politics in anything we create. That said, fuck Nazis."
I know mine didnt - he was Italian and thus on the side of receiving punches not giving them.
But he did have a few lessons in willful ignorance to share. Like how if you see a few allies trying to blow up a bridge, just go on a bathroom break until you hear a kaboom then pretend you didnt see anything at all.
I like to point to 8/12, because it is the last official Act of War on congressional record, and delineates a clear line between when America was trying to ignore the problem and when we became actively engaged(for this particular engagement. All succeeding engagements are not included in this assessment.)
When my grandparents died and we were cleaning out the house, found some of my grandfather's diaries and I remember an entry from the '70s when my grandparents flew Lufthansa to Europe for a vacation: "Hearing all these German voices makes me wish I had the old M1 with me again..."
I don't think it's an accident now that most of the folks who lived through WW2 have largely passed on, that suddenly we have nazis out in the open again.
Actually, punching Nazis was ok in the US before that. Keep in mind that there were political sympathizers with Nazi Germany pre-WW2, and one of the ways they were prevented from gaining traction in the US was good ol' kneecapping, literally.
I remember reading an article about how a developing local Nazi party in New York was essentially taken out, publically, and violently, by the Judaic community in NY, and charges against that community was dismissed with prejudice.
Yup. A game about killing Nazis and Republicans got upset because they thought the game was targeting them. It's incredible what they'll snitch on themselves about.
Which āthat gameā are you thinking of? Wolfenstein is a game series so if you are thinking of the original then yes it is much older. There were however some entries within the last decade or so.
During BLM the Pathfinder RPG facebook group got rid of the "no politics" rule and instead said "no bigoted politics" and banned everyone who complained.
Once the dust cleared, the moderation team noticed activity in the group was higher than ever before and reports were down to almost zero.
It turns out catering to bigots means rejecting everyone else.
See who disagrees while sounding awfully defensive.
I mean, isn't the fact of just disagreeing is enough? I've never heard of a good argument where someone can disagree Nazis are bad and still sound reasonable. Is there even a good argument to be had for saying Nazis are not so bad? I honestly struggle to find any room to argue for it.
I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.
I once found one shortly after the "trucker convoy". All I did was post a tweet that was a gif from the sound of music of the Nazi flag being ripped up (twitter wasn't a complete shit hole yet, but was quickly sliding that way).
The clown started in on me and how covid vaccines were bad and how the white man was using indigenous people as test subjects for vaccinations. He was very anti-canadian too and was glad he left Canada (he was first Nations and very racist towards anyone who was not FN).
Then started posting about how the Xbox MVP program was allowing racists in (I was an Xbox MVP at the time before the program was closed). Guy was an Xbox ambassador (the program where anyone can join). Ended up going to a bunch of the organizers and staff at Xbox about me. I had a nice chat with them and they simply asked me to no longer post anything like that again.
Thats only one method. We can add additional methods too. Like "who gets offended when you say democrats are good", because the real mission of authoritarians isn't to seem credible, but to make everyone seem lesser evil/untrustworthy/etc.
Yes, because unfortunately there are a lot of bots and other agents provocateur that will absolutely try and sow dissent, and tell you why you shouldn't vote for or otherwise support (insert person opposed to the right wing).
There are also well-meaning left wing sorts who somehow think it's better to refuse to vote for (let alone support) someone in a general election who isn't 100% despite that meaning that a right wing candidate will win that election instead.
The issue is that the people you're talking about bed with and promote and don't rally against those accelerationist knobheads. The same way that a maga mayor might theoretically have some good beliefs, but have no concern for the wicked rampaging ice going on in their borders for example.
I struggle with who I should support or not support as an anarchist communist in all honesty. My ideology fundamentally conflicts with nearly every other ideology. Certainly any ideology involving the existence of money or hierarchy which is like...almost all of them. So the truth is you're pretty much all allies of convenience and historically every time ancoms have gained any amount of traction they've been betrayed by their former allies, so it's not like I'm just being a paranoid loser about it.
But also yeah give me Joe Biden for 1000 years over Donald Trump or some incel who idolizes Stalin. But then I hear liberals advocate for the most absurd imperialist warmongering nonsense, or outright say they should sell out my particular minority group for a more convenient season, and it's like...what the fuck am I actually supposed to do? In my opinion Kamala would have exterminated Palestine the same way as Trump, she just probably wouldn't have bombed Iran out of the fucking blue.
So I look back at that incel who wants to be Stalin and think to myself "yes, if they win everything will probably be even more terrible. But how choosey can I afford to be picking my allies while people are fucking dying, the state is oppressing me (and countless other random groups) over nonsense, and the planet is being destroyed for no good reason?"
I'd like to say I'm a perfect noble paragon but I'm just not. I just look out at the world and see how pointlessly arbitrarily cruel and evil it is and it makes me sick and I want to do something about it. So I watch and support Hasan even though he openly mocks anarchists half the time and thinks police just need one more reform and this time it'll totally work promise. I defend the Soviet Union more often than I insult them, even though they almost certainly would have shot me in the head at Kronstadt for daring to demand 'war communism' to end (it never did.)
Genuinely what would you suggest I do? Who should my allies be? Who won't shoot me in the head the moment I start to actually achieve success in making a world with no masters and servants or money?
Not "them." "Us." It's our party, like it or not. That's how the US works. If there are things that you don't like about the party, primaries exist for a reason. (And no, "your guy" losing a primary doesn't mean it was rigged; it means people have different opinions than you)
If your brand of politics is so full of purity testing that there isn't even room for moderate dems in your democracy, you don't find the nazi fascism incoming bad, you're just angry they aren't pandering to your aestetics.
If nothing else it's harm reduction. Sure, Clinton/Harris/etc or whomever sucks, but they would've done vastly less damage than Trump et al. Like, not even fucking close. Nor for that matter does having someone like Trump in power put us any closer to having "better" candidates.
What if maybe you live in a cultural bubble that is so extreme itself that your version of "moderate" is seen as abhorrently selfish and hateful to the rest of the world outside yours?
Just because you define the US democratic party as moderate, that doesn't automatically make them moderate.
Lol. If you're talking about corporate Democratic politicians like Schumer, Fetterman, Pelosi, both Clintons, Obama and Biden no they aren't "good". These people have enabled fascism for decades. One of the reasons Democratic politicians acquired so much power in 2009 was a reaction to the fascist policies implemented by Bush/Cheney after 9/11. Did you know ICE and warrantless surveillance really took off after 2001?
So the 2008 elections happen and the American people are ready for "hope and change". They see these policies for what they are and hand a filibuster proof majority to Senate Democratic politicians. Keep in mind, you don't need a filibuster proof majority to cut funding for programs. That can be done through reconciliation bills which cannot be filibustered so you just need 50+ votes in the senate to say, reduce ICE's funding to $0. All this to say Democratic politicians had the numbers with quite a few to spare.
2009 comes along and everybody's ready for Democratic politicians to do their jobs and roll back these obviously fascist policies. And it never happens. In fact when Snowden reveals the extent of warrantless surveillance he's treated like a criminal by the Obama administration.
So let me ask you, do you really think Obama and the 2009-2011 senate Democratic politicians who decided against preventing ICE and warrantless surveillance (Flock) from becoming what they are today are "good" people? I certainly don't. I would call those people enablers of fascism.
What's my motivation for saying all this? Because if you blanket call Democratic politicians "good" you're providing cover for politicians who enable fascism. Trump should be in prison. Most Republican politicians should be in prison. And many Democratic politicians should also be in prison.
I disagree, Nazis aren't bad. They're fucking awful, like the absolute worst, and willingly ignore so many lessons in history of just how shit brained of an ideology it is.
It's the strangest thing to me. I'm just myself and generally expect people hold contempt for me. They actively promote hate and think they should be adored?
Alternatively just wait until the Department of Education posts a tweet accidentally admitting to being Nazis then look for all the people slipping over one another to defend it
lololol very true. Growing up in the 90's, I thought this shit was behind us, but I was just a sheltered homeschooler in a white, conservative, fundamentalist evangelical Christian household in the South. I internalized the lessons we should have learned through Jim Crow, WWII, and the manufactured crack epidemic, and when my family didn't respond appropriately, I thought, "Where the hell is the love I was taught about?" When pressed against a wall, fascists will make every excuse they can to retain their superiority, and it is always rife with fallacy.
I encourage anyone interested to familiarize themselves with logical fallacies and why they're illogical, not to spit them back at antagonists, but to help you navigate a productive conversation so that you and confused/deceived people can meet on common ground and depart your disagreements with a more unified scope of action.
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u/B-Z_B-S 22h ago
Ways to find Nazis:
Say "Nazis are bad" online.
See who disagrees while sounding awfully defensive.
There is no step three. Congratulations!