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I find the constant comparison of present-day US to Nazi Germany a bit disrespectful. Not disrespectful of people in the present day (necessarily), but to those

I find the constant comparison of present-day US to Nazi Germany a bit disrespectful. Not disrespectful of people in the present day (necessarily), but to those who actually survived Nazi Germany. What would you think, if you were a someone who survived a concentration camp, to have people consistently claim that the modern-day US is anywhere near as bad? I understand that the US is far from perfect, but we are also not engaging in genocide against our own citizens, and I do not think that there is anything that realistically signals that we ever will. Really, I guess it boils down to nitpicking over how watered-down the term Nazi has become. Lets not forget what the Nazis actually did.

bashinator 9y ago
Let's not forget that the Nazi's took power during a time of democracy, with full support of a plurality of the vote. Between that and Trump's overt authoritarianism, it's fair that people will draw analogies between the situations.
- gavanwoolery 9y ago
  Yes, also important not to confuse correlation and causation IMHO. Even if we fully mirrored the rise of the Nazi party (in the political sense), it would not necessarily imply that we would mirror their actions (genocide, etc). In situations like this, its important to step back and ask - under what circumstances would the US actually cross the same line that the Nazis did? (And I do not mean anecdotal instances - I mean the US performing outright genocide on a large subset of its own citizens). The odds of this are so low, in my opinion, that I would place a monetary bet it will not happen within the next four or eight years. I am personally not a big fan of Trump, but I also do not think he is anywhere near Hitler-status.
  - bashinator 9y ago
    Then let me turn the question back to you - what historical precedent is there for a major power having a disputed election amidst war and economic inequity, where they turned things around and maintained a free and open society? We're asking the same question - what can the US do differently from Germany in the 30s? Edit: or to reframe the question, what could the German public have done differently in the '20 and '30s?
    - gavanwoolery 9y ago
      Good question :) I am not sure if it could have been easily avoided, unless the Nazi party was met with strong resistance from the start. When a party assumes total power, it has inertia that is hard to overturn. A lot of people are using the word authoritarian, but we are still far from a true authoritarian regime (that said, the fact that we are given two dubious candidates every four years makes me wonder how free we really are). I think the counter-counter-question is "will history repeat itself indefinitely?" We still have genocide today (i.e. the Yazidis by ISIL), but the last genocide to occur in a country with remotely Western values was 70 years ago (not that Western values imply moral purity). Like the dropping of the nuclear bomb, the Holocaust was so powerful that most people (even on the extreme right) seem keen not to repeat it.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    You're only willing to bet 4 or 8 years out, which is itself worrying. There are certainly people who actively espouse genocidal intentions openly in our body politic, and the connections between them and powerful figures in the administration are not very distant. In situations like this, its important to step back and ask - under what circumstances would the US actually cross the same line that the Nazis did? Have you heard about this plan to build a wall and forcibly move millions of people to the other side of it?Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population seem heartily in favor of this idea.
    - alva 9y ago
      > and forcibly move millions of people to the other side of it?Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population seem heartily in favor of this idea. Yeah, only a true Nazi would deport millions of people. If someone deports millions of illegal immigrants they must be punched as they are Nazis. Can't believe Obama was a secret Nazi all along :'(, Alex Jones was warning us all along. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/21/donald-trump/trump-right-deportation-numbers-wrong-talks-about-/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/...
    - gavanwoolery 9y ago
      Betting any further out would make me presumptuous. :) I really cannot be so bold as to say I know what the far future holds, and I can only make educated guesses about the near future. As far as domestic policy, deporting illegal immigrants is a far cry from genocide (FWIW I am pro-immigration anyhow). At least 50 percent of our country is to the left, and probably less than 10 percent of the country is on the extreme right. There is enough healthy disagreement that I do not see one side assuming authoritarian-level power any time soon IMHO.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        Of course there's a big difference, but the Nazis didn't start gassing people the day after they took power; as late as 1940 they were considering just resettling Jewish populations in Madagascar. The chilling fact about the Holocaust was not that it was directly ordered from the very height of the Nazi government as that lower-level officials decided it was the most practical solution to an operational problem that seemed compatible with Hitler's fanatical loathing of the Jews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution My anxiety about this stems not from any belief that this or a future administration has a detailed plan to murder large numbers of people, as from a coincidence of political momentum and the existence of a decent number of people who would be just fine with or outright enthusiastic about that outcome, as well as a much larger number of people who'd rather just look the other way any time unpleasant topics appear on their radar. I have much less confidence that you do about demographics and the health of the body politic. Just to add some context I'm not basing my opinions on blogs but on lengthy analysis from military intelligence professionals, counterterrorist analysts, and other high-quality primary sources, as well as extended personal study of the far right. I hope I'm wrong about this.
  - rmc 9y ago
    > Even if we fully mirrored the rise of the Nazi party (in the political sense), it would not necessarily imply that we would mirror their actions (genocide, etc). It's a debate within historians if this is true. Some people contend that racism was so inherent to Nazi ideology that you can't have Nazis who don't commit genocide (if they can), and that the Nazis (and Hitler) always planned to commit genocide. And some claim that the Holocaust sort of evolved, and there was no original plan. So you can't be certain that you can have nazis without genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intention...
- rmc 9y ago
  Minor nitpick: The nazis never won a majority of the vote, needing to use another party to prop them up, and were not in support of democracy. There were various steps on the way to the Nazi dictorship which all had the veneer of democracy, but were all fake. Sure the majority of the parliament voted for the Enabling Act, but they changed the voting rules, they arrested and detained opposition members, during the vote armed villiganties were in the voting hall. The nazis didn't sieze power democratically.
dom96 9y ago
I think the point of this article is more about the fact that there are signs which suggest that the US is heading towards Nazi Germany, not that it already is as bad.
tptacek 9y ago
Where does this article make that comparison? I don't see it. I see it pointing out there that is a loud new crop of American Internet Nazis, but that is not remotely the same as saying the US is like Nazi Germany.
- gavanwoolery 9y ago
  Its only faintly suggested, to be fair. "In all the time I’ve been playing video games, only one game has forced the player to deal with the toxic ideology of National Socialism...That game is 2014’s Wolfenstein: New Order and it’s a game that’s depressingly relevant today."
SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
We don't have to wonder what they think, all we have to do is ask them. [0][1][2] [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-age-of-trump-grim-warnings-from-holocaust-survivors/2016/01/27/c65ea38c-c549-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html?utm_term=.5d9ded38fa50 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-age-of-trump-... [1] http://time.com/4717077/holocaust-survivor-trump-immigration/ http://time.com/4717077/holocaust-survivor-trump-immigration... [2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-holocaust-survivors-diss-trump-0203-chicago-inc-20170202-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-holocaust-s...
peteretep 9y ago
Nobody is suggesting the current regime is committing genocide. People are suggesting that the racial scapegoating and facist themes of the current administration look a lot like the start of a slide in that direction. If I had survived a concentration camp, my feelings about the current regime would be "DANGER DANGER DANGER"
alva 9y ago
When a word is too flimsily used against people, it loses its meaning. This is what happened with calling people racist. It got tossed around inappropriately so much, the public lost their sensitivity to it. People now roll their eyes when someone accuses them so casually of being racist. Therefore we have a new word to level at people, Nazi. The same thing will happen with calling people "Nazi". Initially people will be scared that they will lose social capital if called a Nazi. Eventually, people will have seen enough obviously non-Nazi folk be called Nazi, that the word will again lost meaning and power. Nazi will fall faster than other social weapons, simply because it is so ludicrous. When they level that charge are they really suggesting the person follows the National Socialism doctrine? That they advocate for mass genocide? That they follow the numerous ideas of Nazi-ism? They have a strong position on Anschluss? This is bizarre (and amusing) watching from a European perspective. There is a much more widely held ideology that is closer to what the left perceives the right to hold, but it would Never fly to accuse people of that.. edit: I fully agree with the parent that the term being used in the way it has been is Incredibly insulting to those who suffered under the Nazi regime.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  I'm glad you asked! Yes, there are people who advocate for genocide. Here's a recent example of such rhetoric from a well-established blog that I'd prefer not to link to here: Genocide necessarily involves either suppression of fertility or active or passive killing, or some combination of methods. Passive killing might include the refusal to supply aid such as food or medical care, preferring to just let Nature run her course, or refusal to come to the rescue when brown tribes genocide each other. The passive method would cause greater suffering and would not finish the job, as there will always be a remnant population to rebound in time. Clearly, an active genocide using white man methods would be more humane than passively letting Nature or savage tribes to do a much sloppier and less complete job. In the same way that animal lovers cannot adopt and care for every stray, but must accept that many be euthanized or sterilized, so it must be with the lower races of humanity. Having been studying the far right for a good many years now, I'm quite comfortable about my ability to distinguish between anodyne center-right policies and a small but well-organized and funded cadre of honest-to-goodness extremists, thanks. I hope you're not going to come back with some hair-splitting argument about the exact position of any given proponent of genocide in your political calculus.

bashinator 9y ago

Let's not forget that the Nazi's took power during a time of democracy, with full support of a plurality of the vote. Between that and Trump's overt authoritarianism, it's fair that people will draw analogies between the situations.

gavanwoolery 9y ago
Yes, also important not to confuse correlation and causation IMHO. Even if we fully mirrored the rise of the Nazi party (in the political sense), it would not necessarily imply that we would mirror their actions (genocide, etc). In situations like this, its important to step back and ask - under what circumstances would the US actually cross the same line that the Nazis did? (And I do not mean anecdotal instances - I mean the US performing outright genocide on a large subset of its own citizens). The odds of this are so low, in my opinion, that I would place a monetary bet it will not happen within the next four or eight years. I am personally not a big fan of Trump, but I also do not think he is anywhere near Hitler-status.
- bashinator 9y ago
  Then let me turn the question back to you - what historical precedent is there for a major power having a disputed election amidst war and economic inequity, where they turned things around and maintained a free and open society? We're asking the same question - what can the US do differently from Germany in the 30s? Edit: or to reframe the question, what could the German public have done differently in the '20 and '30s?
  - gavanwoolery 9y ago
    Good question :) I am not sure if it could have been easily avoided, unless the Nazi party was met with strong resistance from the start. When a party assumes total power, it has inertia that is hard to overturn. A lot of people are using the word authoritarian, but we are still far from a true authoritarian regime (that said, the fact that we are given two dubious candidates every four years makes me wonder how free we really are). I think the counter-counter-question is "will history repeat itself indefinitely?" We still have genocide today (i.e. the Yazidis by ISIL), but the last genocide to occur in a country with remotely Western values was 70 years ago (not that Western values imply moral purity). Like the dropping of the nuclear bomb, the Holocaust was so powerful that most people (even on the extreme right) seem keen not to repeat it.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  You're only willing to bet 4 or 8 years out, which is itself worrying. There are certainly people who actively espouse genocidal intentions openly in our body politic, and the connections between them and powerful figures in the administration are not very distant. In situations like this, its important to step back and ask - under what circumstances would the US actually cross the same line that the Nazis did? Have you heard about this plan to build a wall and forcibly move millions of people to the other side of it?Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population seem heartily in favor of this idea.
  - alva 9y ago
    > and forcibly move millions of people to the other side of it?Somewhere between 1/4 and 1/3 of the population seem heartily in favor of this idea. Yeah, only a true Nazi would deport millions of people. If someone deports millions of illegal immigrants they must be punched as they are Nazis. Can't believe Obama was a secret Nazi all along :'(, Alex Jones was warning us all along. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/21/donald-trump/trump-right-deportation-numbers-wrong-talks-about-/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/oct/...
  - gavanwoolery 9y ago
    Betting any further out would make me presumptuous. :) I really cannot be so bold as to say I know what the far future holds, and I can only make educated guesses about the near future. As far as domestic policy, deporting illegal immigrants is a far cry from genocide (FWIW I am pro-immigration anyhow). At least 50 percent of our country is to the left, and probably less than 10 percent of the country is on the extreme right. There is enough healthy disagreement that I do not see one side assuming authoritarian-level power any time soon IMHO.
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Of course there's a big difference, but the Nazis didn't start gassing people the day after they took power; as late as 1940 they were considering just resettling Jewish populations in Madagascar. The chilling fact about the Holocaust was not that it was directly ordered from the very height of the Nazi government as that lower-level officials decided it was the most practical solution to an operational problem that seemed compatible with Hitler's fanatical loathing of the Jews. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution My anxiety about this stems not from any belief that this or a future administration has a detailed plan to murder large numbers of people, as from a coincidence of political momentum and the existence of a decent number of people who would be just fine with or outright enthusiastic about that outcome, as well as a much larger number of people who'd rather just look the other way any time unpleasant topics appear on their radar. I have much less confidence that you do about demographics and the health of the body politic. Just to add some context I'm not basing my opinions on blogs but on lengthy analysis from military intelligence professionals, counterterrorist analysts, and other high-quality primary sources, as well as extended personal study of the far right. I hope I'm wrong about this.
- rmc 9y ago
  > Even if we fully mirrored the rise of the Nazi party (in the political sense), it would not necessarily imply that we would mirror their actions (genocide, etc). It's a debate within historians if this is true. Some people contend that racism was so inherent to Nazi ideology that you can't have Nazis who don't commit genocide (if they can), and that the Nazis (and Hitler) always planned to commit genocide. And some claim that the Holocaust sort of evolved, and there was no original plan. So you can't be certain that you can have nazis without genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intentionalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_versus_intention...
rmc 9y ago
Minor nitpick: The nazis never won a majority of the vote, needing to use another party to prop them up, and were not in support of democracy. There were various steps on the way to the Nazi dictorship which all had the veneer of democracy, but were all fake. Sure the majority of the parliament voted for the Enabling Act, but they changed the voting rules, they arrested and detained opposition members, during the vote armed villiganties were in the voting hall. The nazis didn't sieze power democratically.

dom96 9y ago

I think the point of this article is more about the fact that there are signs which suggest that the US is heading towards Nazi Germany, not that it already is as bad.

tptacek 9y ago

Where does this article make that comparison? I don't see it. I see it pointing out there that is a loud new crop of American Internet Nazis, but that is not remotely the same as saying the US is like Nazi Germany.

gavanwoolery 9y ago
Its only faintly suggested, to be fair. "In all the time I’ve been playing video games, only one game has forced the player to deal with the toxic ideology of National Socialism...That game is 2014’s Wolfenstein: New Order and it’s a game that’s depressingly relevant today."

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago

We don't have to wonder what they think, all we have to do is ask them. [0][1][2] [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-age-of-trump-grim-warnings-from-holocaust-survivors/2016/01/27/c65ea38c-c549-11e5-8965-0607e0e265ce_story.html?utm_term=.5d9ded38fa50 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-age-of-trump-... [1] http://time.com/4717077/holocaust-survivor-trump-immigration/ http://time.com/4717077/holocaust-survivor-trump-immigration... [2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-holocaust-survivors-diss-trump-0203-chicago-inc-20170202-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-holocaust-s...

peteretep 9y ago

Nobody is suggesting the current regime is committing genocide. People are suggesting that the racial scapegoating and facist themes of the current administration look a lot like the start of a slide in that direction. If I had survived a concentration camp, my feelings about the current regime would be "DANGER DANGER DANGER"

alva 9y ago

When a word is too flimsily used against people, it loses its meaning. This is what happened with calling people racist. It got tossed around inappropriately so much, the public lost their sensitivity to it. People now roll their eyes when someone accuses them so casually of being racist. Therefore we have a new word to level at people, Nazi. The same thing will happen with calling people "Nazi". Initially people will be scared that they will lose social capital if called a Nazi. Eventually, people will have seen enough obviously non-Nazi folk be called Nazi, that the word will again lost meaning and power. Nazi will fall faster than other social weapons, simply because it is so ludicrous. When they level that charge are they really suggesting the person follows the National Socialism doctrine? That they advocate for mass genocide? That they follow the numerous ideas of Nazi-ism? They have a strong position on Anschluss? This is bizarre (and amusing) watching from a European perspective. There is a much more widely held ideology that is closer to what the left perceives the right to hold, but it would Never fly to accuse people of that.. edit: I fully agree with the parent that the term being used in the way it has been is Incredibly insulting to those who suffered under the Nazi regime.

anigbrowl 9y ago
I'm glad you asked! Yes, there are people who advocate for genocide. Here's a recent example of such rhetoric from a well-established blog that I'd prefer not to link to here: Genocide necessarily involves either suppression of fertility or active or passive killing, or some combination of methods. Passive killing might include the refusal to supply aid such as food or medical care, preferring to just let Nature run her course, or refusal to come to the rescue when brown tribes genocide each other. The passive method would cause greater suffering and would not finish the job, as there will always be a remnant population to rebound in time. Clearly, an active genocide using white man methods would be more humane than passively letting Nature or savage tribes to do a much sloppier and less complete job. In the same way that animal lovers cannot adopt and care for every stray, but must accept that many be euthanized or sterilized, so it must be with the lower races of humanity. Having been studying the far right for a good many years now, I'm quite comfortable about my ability to distinguish between anodyne center-right policies and a small but well-organized and funded cadre of honest-to-goodness extremists, thanks. I hope you're not going to come back with some hair-splitting argument about the exact position of any given proponent of genocide in your political calculus.