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I'll quote you the opening paragraph, which isnt about internet nazis at all: "In certain corners of the Western world, Nazi ideology is making a comeback. For

I'll quote you the opening paragraph, which isnt about internet nazis at all: "In certain corners of the Western world, Nazi ideology is making a comeback. For years, we’ve taken it as a given that ideas such as racism and ultra-nationalism were poisonous roads to pain, suffering and war. Pop culture, and especially video games, share part of the blame." This is an example, not holistic

tptacek 9y ago
Right: video games share part of the blame by rendering Nazis not as perpetrators of atrocity but rather as all-purpose generic bad-ass villains.
- olewhalehunter 9y ago
  >generic bad-ass those two seem to be mutually exclusive writers/designers like Nazis not because they're generic but because they were horribly weird, they were associated with multiple mystic organizations like the Ahnenerbe and the Thule society, they worked on crazy engineering projects like superweapons, megacities, and rocketry, they did lovecraftian experiments on people in concentration camps the reason people use Nazi Germany in their media is because they were extremely interesting
  - tptacek 9y ago
    No, I don't think this "weirdness" is at all why writers and designers like Nazism.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      which is why we have all this media about fighting robo-Ottomans during the Armenian genocide or protecting Huguenots from Catholic necromancers right?
      - tptacek 9y ago
        Nazis are used as all-purpose villains because the evil of their movement is universally recognized, not because of this Thule Society nonsense. It's because nobody likes Nazis.
        olewhalehunter 9y ago
        http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Thule_Medallion http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Thule_Medallion
        tptacek 9y ago
        Not interested, sorry.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        The weirdness is part of what attracts people to Nazism in the first place. Fascism is an anti-rationalist ideology which caters to people's quest for a psychic identity that transcends materialistic impulses. The same dynamic is leveraged by people like Aleksandr Dugin in Russia.
        tptacek 9y ago
        I'm not arguing about what attracts adherents of Nazism to Nazism. Something is deeply wrong with anyone who decided to become a Nazi, and I'm not qualified to diagnose what. I'm simply saying that movie producers and game designers don't cast Nazis in the villain role because of Nazi weirdness. They do it because we all agree that Nazis are, almost alone among historical western adversaries, categorically and indefensibly evil.

tptacek 9y ago

Right: video games share part of the blame by rendering Nazis not as perpetrators of atrocity but rather as all-purpose generic bad-ass villains.

olewhalehunter 9y ago
>generic bad-ass those two seem to be mutually exclusive writers/designers like Nazis not because they're generic but because they were horribly weird, they were associated with multiple mystic organizations like the Ahnenerbe and the Thule society, they worked on crazy engineering projects like superweapons, megacities, and rocketry, they did lovecraftian experiments on people in concentration camps the reason people use Nazi Germany in their media is because they were extremely interesting
- tptacek 9y ago
  No, I don't think this "weirdness" is at all why writers and designers like Nazism.
  - olewhalehunter 9y ago
    which is why we have all this media about fighting robo-Ottomans during the Armenian genocide or protecting Huguenots from Catholic necromancers right?
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Nazis are used as all-purpose villains because the evil of their movement is universally recognized, not because of this Thule Society nonsense. It's because nobody likes Nazis.
      - olewhalehunter 9y ago
        http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Thule_Medallion http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Thule_Medallion
        tptacek 9y ago
        Not interested, sorry.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        The weirdness is part of what attracts people to Nazism in the first place. Fascism is an anti-rationalist ideology which caters to people's quest for a psychic identity that transcends materialistic impulses. The same dynamic is leveraged by people like Aleksandr Dugin in Russia.
        tptacek 9y ago
        I'm not arguing about what attracts adherents of Nazism to Nazism. Something is deeply wrong with anyone who decided to become a Nazi, and I'm not qualified to diagnose what. I'm simply saying that movie producers and game designers don't cast Nazis in the villain role because of Nazi weirdness. They do it because we all agree that Nazis are, almost alone among historical western adversaries, categorically and indefensibly evil.