7 ms·

Are you asking what we think the chances are the literal supporters of the long-dead German party are going to "take over" the US? Because if so that's a strawm

by 1_2__4 9y ago

Are you asking what we think the chances are the literal supporters of the long-dead German party are going to "take over" the US? Because if so that's a strawman and you know it. If you really want to set it up as a dichotomy I'd characterize the first category as "people who believe in racial superiority, authoritarianism, bellicose and arbitrary foreign policy, and in general favor short-sighted, poorly-executed and simple solutions - most of which involve completely neutering government as we know it - over sober and data-backed policy"... Then I'd say we're already teetering on the edge, and yeah, I'd consider that a lot more likely than the US government using its power and influence to label and suppress opposition. You might notice, by the way, that the first begets the other. So turns out enabling (1) also hastens (2). So it's not really a dichotomy at all, is it?

aetherson 9y ago
For everyone who's unconcerned that the definition of "Nazi" will expand without limit, note the above. I mean, I don't like Trump either. But he's a very long way from a Nazi. If we can't draw a line between "unlimited war to annex your neighbors" and "unwise brinksmanship with North Korea," or between "explicit campaigns to at the very least expel all Jews or alternately to just genocide them" and "professes to have no problems with minorities but seems to enact some policies that are consistently somewhat hostile to them (but which are a million miles away from expelling them)," then where can we draw the lines?
- Tannic 9y ago
  No offense, but have you not been watching for the last thirty years? The US has, under Democrat and Republican alike, invaded and annihilated more countries than the rest of the world combined(1). And who are the people in these countries? Largely non white, powerless people. We literally just sold huge numbers of weapons to a country to help them annihilate their neighbor (Saudi Arabia, and Yemen respectively, which in many parts is in its death throes). I mean hell, in the last administration alone we annihilated the entire civil infrastucture of Libya. Ask yourself this: if you are heavily invested in the idea of your society as some kind of fundamentally virtuous project, as many in the west are, isn't it possible that you can't even see that we are in a flavor of mercenary fascism that is less ideological but equally destrucive and evil? 1. Map of US 20th century interventions: https://williamblum.org/images/uploads/interventions_map.png https://williamblum.org/images/uploads/interventions_map.png
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Nazi Germany didn't turn into a totalitarian state overnight. It took place relatively slowly over a period of years and remained within the letter, if not the spirit, of the Weimar constitution. I have to say your argument of contrast seems a bit disingenuous.
  - defen 9y ago
    I would say the two main differences are: The leader of the Nazis was writing about the need to exterminate the Jews well before he had any sort of political power, so we can't really say it's surprising he ended up trying to do that once he had power. There's no analogous thing for Trump. Similarly, the judiciary was sympathetic to pre-power Hitler, letting him make long impassioned speeches at his trial for treason, which ended up netting him just 9 months in prison. Trump doesn't need that kind of thing for publicity in this day and age, but I think it's fair to say that the judiciary views him as an embarrassment at best, or hates him.
    - enraged_camel 9y ago
      >>The leader of the Nazis was writing about the need to exterminate the Jews well before he had any sort of political power, so we can't really say it's surprising he ended up trying to do that once he had power. There's no analogous thing for Trump. Uh, what? Trump absolutely used racist, hateful rhetoric to rile up his base and get elected. Have you listened to any of his campaign speeches? Any of the debates?
      - ameister14 9y ago
        I have yet to see anywhere that Trump said a type of people should be exterminated. Mostly he said that people shouldn't enter the country illegally and take our jobs. Racist, not the same thing.
        legostormtroopr 9y ago
        Can you explain exactly how the idea that "people shouldn't enter the country illegally and take our jobs" is racist? Why is enforcing well known national borders and stopping people crossing in an incontrolled fashion racist?
- csours 9y ago
  > I mean, I don't like Trump either. But he's a very long way from a Nazi. He's not what we retroactively think of as a Nazi; but he's not very far from an early 1930's Nazi.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    Exactly. People who say "Trump is not a Nazi" simply don't know the history of 1930s Germany and how Nazis actually went from a fringe movement to the major party in power. Back then the German middle class, who were similarly sheltered in their own bubbles and concerned with their own mundane troubles, also watched from the sidelines and engaged in whataboutism and pointed fingers at anti-fascists who violently opposed Nazis. This only served to empower the Nazis though and we all know how things ended up.
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      Or, the alternative is that some people have also extensively studied history and see no important parallels.
      - katastic 9y ago
        Don't you love how people here seem to parrot whatever cliche talking points that come from the standard left reading magazine stand? Salon, Huffington Post, Mother Jones (dear god), MSNBC and CNN. They'll do a PR blitz with no supporting evidence and then for the next few weeks you'll hear the same phrase and comparisons over and over as if these people coincidentally all came to these conclusions on their own. Remember a few weeks ago when you couldn't go one post without hearing "No moral equivalency between ANTIFA and neo-nazis." It hit the news. Then it hit the social media battleground as people basically parroted back what a couple of rich elites thought would be a good talking point for the sheeples. And then ANTIFA beats the shit out of a white guy while a black journalist covers him to protect him and all a sudden the PR machine changes and decides to stop defending them. ... And now nobody is parroting the "no moral equivalency" cliche. What happened? If the logic was sound and truly generated by unique individuals, why did it magically stop? Why would a chorus of people with the same argument stop thinking something they portrayed as a core, sound belief?! Oh wait, we all know the answer. People aren't unique. People aren't smart. And people are just using logic they borrowed from someone else, to smugly "win" arguments. An easy way to tell people who have no actual depth understanding in their arguments is to simply ask them questions. The more you probe, the more you'll realize they don't have any fundamental understanding. They're the liberal equivalent of someone yelling bible verses at policy debates. "But God said X!" "But what did he mean in the surrounding verses?" ".. uhh.. uhm.. But God said X!"
- pjc50 9y ago
  Remember that the Nazi genocide plans were secret; while elections were still going on, the talk was only ever of "the Jewish problem" and e.g. a registry of Jews. Now compare http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-muslim-registry-immigrants-policy-kris-bobach-reinstate-wall-a7420296.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum... : the "muslim registry" appears to have gone away but the discriminatory immigration ban has not.
  - gras 9y ago
    94% of Muslims outside the Middle-East are antisemites, see Wikipedia. You don't want to force Western Jewry to migrate to Israel, do you? Besides, people have a right to self-determination and that's why nation states exist, so if you say the US doesn't have this right you're trying to deligitimize the United States.
  - aetherson 9y ago
    I know that the Nazis originally weren't claiming they'd genocide the Jews. But they called for the total separation of Jews and Gentiles in their 1920 Party Program. Immediately on their assumption of power, the Nazis banned Jews from the civil service. They restricted the number of Jewish children at schools. By 1935, they'd stripped Jews of citizenship and forbade Gentile/Jewish marriage. The explicit, unapologetic goal of the Nazi ideology was the removal of Jews from German public life. It's just not comparable with the actions of the Trump administration. Maybe in his heart of hearts Trump wants to be a full-on Nazi. I don't know, I'm not telepathic. But he has not presented himself as a Nazi, and he was not elected as a Nazi. Not even a 1932 Nazi.
  - katastic 9y ago
    I'd love to live in your head for a day. It'd make for a great fear-based novel since you can somehow link a travel ban with... "the implication" ... the implication being "Yada yada holocaust." And at no point do you feel the need to really have any extra data points inbetween those. Now let's apply the same logic to something that won't get applause. Violent video games. Yada yada. Columbine. Clearly, we need to get rid of violent video games. What's that? Oh... some of the raised hands in the room going back down as the room no longer feels the answer is obvious.
- beepboopbeep 9y ago
  How about fascist? That seems to fit very well. Very well.
  - teddyh 9y ago
    “Yes, he rejects modernism, appeals to a selective populism, and espouses a cult of machismo.” http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/the-important-thing http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/the-important-thing
forapurpose 9y ago
While I generally agree with you ... > I'd characterize the first category as ... I'd say the first category is widespread, institutionalized racial discrimination. And the question is not whether it will happen - there's no denying it's been happening since the founding of the nation - but whether it will get worse.
malandrew3 9y ago
> racial superiority, authoritarianism, bellicose and arbitrary foreign policy, and in general favor short-sighted, poorly-executed and simple solutions - most of which involve completely neutering government as we know it - over sober and data-backed policy That describes the American far right, but if you modify that to "ideological superiority, authoritarianism, bellicose and arbitrary social policy, and in general favor short-sighted, poorly-executed and simple solutions - most of which involve greatly expanding government as we know it - over sober and data-backed policy" you also have an apt description of the American far left. Other than that, I completely agree with the rest of your observation.

by 1_2__4 9y ago

aetherson 9y ago

For everyone who's unconcerned that the definition of "Nazi" will expand without limit, note the above. I mean, I don't like Trump either. But he's a very long way from a Nazi. If we can't draw a line between "unlimited war to annex your neighbors" and "unwise brinksmanship with North Korea," or between "explicit campaigns to at the very least expel all Jews or alternately to just genocide them" and "professes to have no problems with minorities but seems to enact some policies that are consistently somewhat hostile to them (but which are a million miles away from expelling them)," then where can we draw the lines?

Tannic 9y ago
No offense, but have you not been watching for the last thirty years? The US has, under Democrat and Republican alike, invaded and annihilated more countries than the rest of the world combined(1). And who are the people in these countries? Largely non white, powerless people. We literally just sold huge numbers of weapons to a country to help them annihilate their neighbor (Saudi Arabia, and Yemen respectively, which in many parts is in its death throes). I mean hell, in the last administration alone we annihilated the entire civil infrastucture of Libya. Ask yourself this: if you are heavily invested in the idea of your society as some kind of fundamentally virtuous project, as many in the west are, isn't it possible that you can't even see that we are in a flavor of mercenary fascism that is less ideological but equally destrucive and evil? 1. Map of US 20th century interventions: https://williamblum.org/images/uploads/interventions_map.png https://williamblum.org/images/uploads/interventions_map.png
anigbrowl 9y ago
Nazi Germany didn't turn into a totalitarian state overnight. It took place relatively slowly over a period of years and remained within the letter, if not the spirit, of the Weimar constitution. I have to say your argument of contrast seems a bit disingenuous.
- defen 9y ago
  I would say the two main differences are: The leader of the Nazis was writing about the need to exterminate the Jews well before he had any sort of political power, so we can't really say it's surprising he ended up trying to do that once he had power. There's no analogous thing for Trump. Similarly, the judiciary was sympathetic to pre-power Hitler, letting him make long impassioned speeches at his trial for treason, which ended up netting him just 9 months in prison. Trump doesn't need that kind of thing for publicity in this day and age, but I think it's fair to say that the judiciary views him as an embarrassment at best, or hates him.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >>The leader of the Nazis was writing about the need to exterminate the Jews well before he had any sort of political power, so we can't really say it's surprising he ended up trying to do that once he had power. There's no analogous thing for Trump. Uh, what? Trump absolutely used racist, hateful rhetoric to rile up his base and get elected. Have you listened to any of his campaign speeches? Any of the debates?
    - ameister14 9y ago
      I have yet to see anywhere that Trump said a type of people should be exterminated. Mostly he said that people shouldn't enter the country illegally and take our jobs. Racist, not the same thing.
      - legostormtroopr 9y ago
        Can you explain exactly how the idea that "people shouldn't enter the country illegally and take our jobs" is racist? Why is enforcing well known national borders and stopping people crossing in an incontrolled fashion racist?
csours 9y ago
> I mean, I don't like Trump either. But he's a very long way from a Nazi. He's not what we retroactively think of as a Nazi; but he's not very far from an early 1930's Nazi.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  Exactly. People who say "Trump is not a Nazi" simply don't know the history of 1930s Germany and how Nazis actually went from a fringe movement to the major party in power. Back then the German middle class, who were similarly sheltered in their own bubbles and concerned with their own mundane troubles, also watched from the sidelines and engaged in whataboutism and pointed fingers at anti-fascists who violently opposed Nazis. This only served to empower the Nazis though and we all know how things ended up.
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Or, the alternative is that some people have also extensively studied history and see no important parallels.
    - katastic 9y ago
      Don't you love how people here seem to parrot whatever cliche talking points that come from the standard left reading magazine stand? Salon, Huffington Post, Mother Jones (dear god), MSNBC and CNN. They'll do a PR blitz with no supporting evidence and then for the next few weeks you'll hear the same phrase and comparisons over and over as if these people coincidentally all came to these conclusions on their own. Remember a few weeks ago when you couldn't go one post without hearing "No moral equivalency between ANTIFA and neo-nazis." It hit the news. Then it hit the social media battleground as people basically parroted back what a couple of rich elites thought would be a good talking point for the sheeples. And then ANTIFA beats the shit out of a white guy while a black journalist covers him to protect him and all a sudden the PR machine changes and decides to stop defending them. ... And now nobody is parroting the "no moral equivalency" cliche. What happened? If the logic was sound and truly generated by unique individuals, why did it magically stop? Why would a chorus of people with the same argument stop thinking something they portrayed as a core, sound belief?! Oh wait, we all know the answer. People aren't unique. People aren't smart. And people are just using logic they borrowed from someone else, to smugly "win" arguments. An easy way to tell people who have no actual depth understanding in their arguments is to simply ask them questions. The more you probe, the more you'll realize they don't have any fundamental understanding. They're the liberal equivalent of someone yelling bible verses at policy debates. "But God said X!" "But what did he mean in the surrounding verses?" ".. uhh.. uhm.. But God said X!"
pjc50 9y ago
Remember that the Nazi genocide plans were secret; while elections were still going on, the talk was only ever of "the Jewish problem" and e.g. a registry of Jews. Now compare http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-muslim-registry-immigrants-policy-kris-bobach-reinstate-wall-a7420296.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum... : the "muslim registry" appears to have gone away but the discriminatory immigration ban has not.
- gras 9y ago
  94% of Muslims outside the Middle-East are antisemites, see Wikipedia. You don't want to force Western Jewry to migrate to Israel, do you? Besides, people have a right to self-determination and that's why nation states exist, so if you say the US doesn't have this right you're trying to deligitimize the United States.
- aetherson 9y ago
  I know that the Nazis originally weren't claiming they'd genocide the Jews. But they called for the total separation of Jews and Gentiles in their 1920 Party Program. Immediately on their assumption of power, the Nazis banned Jews from the civil service. They restricted the number of Jewish children at schools. By 1935, they'd stripped Jews of citizenship and forbade Gentile/Jewish marriage. The explicit, unapologetic goal of the Nazi ideology was the removal of Jews from German public life. It's just not comparable with the actions of the Trump administration. Maybe in his heart of hearts Trump wants to be a full-on Nazi. I don't know, I'm not telepathic. But he has not presented himself as a Nazi, and he was not elected as a Nazi. Not even a 1932 Nazi.
- katastic 9y ago
  I'd love to live in your head for a day. It'd make for a great fear-based novel since you can somehow link a travel ban with... "the implication" ... the implication being "Yada yada holocaust." And at no point do you feel the need to really have any extra data points inbetween those. Now let's apply the same logic to something that won't get applause. Violent video games. Yada yada. Columbine. Clearly, we need to get rid of violent video games. What's that? Oh... some of the raised hands in the room going back down as the room no longer feels the answer is obvious.
beepboopbeep 9y ago
How about fascist? That seems to fit very well. Very well.
- teddyh 9y ago
  “Yes, he rejects modernism, appeals to a selective populism, and espouses a cult of machismo.” http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/the-important-thing http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/the-important-thing

forapurpose 9y ago

While I generally agree with you ... > I'd characterize the first category as ... I'd say the first category is widespread, institutionalized racial discrimination. And the question is not whether it will happen - there's no denying it's been happening since the founding of the nation - but whether it will get worse.

malandrew3 9y ago

> racial superiority, authoritarianism, bellicose and arbitrary foreign policy, and in general favor short-sighted, poorly-executed and simple solutions - most of which involve completely neutering government as we know it - over sober and data-backed policy That describes the American far right, but if you modify that to "ideological superiority, authoritarianism, bellicose and arbitrary social policy, and in general favor short-sighted, poorly-executed and simple solutions - most of which involve greatly expanding government as we know it - over sober and data-backed policy" you also have an apt description of the American far left. Other than that, I completely agree with the rest of your observation.