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Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, u
by GreaterFool 7y ago
Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? I mean, I'm from Europe and I don't recall growing up worrying about everyone being a secret (or overt) Nazi, which, unless promptly punched in the face, would somehow take over.
WWII and Nazis destroyed Europe. Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell.
Yet all I see from American news is Nazis this Nazis that. Can someone explain?
- tamalesfan 7y agoIn before the delete.
- CalChris 7y agoI worked in Italy and my boss was very conscious of the fact that his neighbor was a Fascist. I saw VV graffiti in the streets.
- davidw 7y agoI lived in Italy for many years, and one of the more dismaying aspects of the culture is how much some people still identify with actual fascists and communists. They're both terrible ideas that should be widely repudiated by both left and right.
- CalChris 7y agoThe Brigate Rossa was, like the Baader Meinhof Gang, just evil. But as I recall, the Communists (PCI) by the 90s were just another left wing party, democratic socialist. I think they even changed their name.
- davidw 7y agoI recall rallies where they or someone related was still waving their hammer and sickle flag around. Italy certainly has its share of modern center-left people, but it still has outright communists as well.
- opportune 7y agoI don't really understand why you're writing as if people who want to eliminate minorities are as bad as people who want to eliminate inequality. It's not relevant
- stale2002 7y ago> as people who want to eliminate inequality Communists eliminated a whole heck of a lot of minorities. Also, the only group that killed more communists than the Nazis, were other communists themselves. I'm sure Nazis themselves would make the same argument as you, about how they actually just support "traditionalist culture" or whatever. But we know what really happened. Same argument applies to communists.
- sridca 7y agoThese blanket statements would seem less provocative and more convincing if you backed them up with reliable references.
- stale2002 7y agoSure. Leftist violence against other leftists is well documented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_uprisings_against_the_Bolsheviks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_uprisings_against_th... Usually one of the first thing that communists do once they are in power is crush the anarchists, and other competing leftist movements. None of this is controversial. Soviet repression of gay people was also well documented, as well as Cuban repression/murder of it's gay population. https://www.thedailybeast.com/fidel-castros-horrific-record-on-gay-rights https://www.thedailybeast.com/fidel-castros-horrific-record-...
- GreaterFool 7y agoWhat does flagged mean on HN? Not sure why my comment got down-voted so fast. It's a genuine question. If people can't agree on what Nazi means we should ban the word altogether since it has loaded political context and doesn't foster proper discussion. It appears to me that: 1) Some use Nazi to mean Nazi Party with proper historical context 2) Some use Nazi as tool to bludgeon anyone they don't like 3) Some use Nazi to be an umbrella term for anything related to fascism, racism, right-leaning ideology, all kinds of other stuff. If a single word means all kinds of things to all kinds of people, it's a useless word.
- nkkollaw 7y agoIt's probably put in a way that can cause flame wars.
- GreaterFool 7y agoUnmoderated quickly devolve into toxic pool of "I don't actually care about what you're saying, I'm just going to downvote/report you". And it works! No discussion can take place just self-reinforcing feedback loop (ironically that's what the author describes in the article!). Moderated platforms are no better because then one is at the mercy of the moderator. What are we to do? I like to discuss anything and everything because I can't turn off my brain and I just think about all kinds of random stuff, a lot. There's no "idle" mode. There just doesn't seem to be any sane place left on the internet.
- dang 7y agoThe spirit you're describing is pretty much the intellectual curiosity that is most welcome here. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. But even when motivated by curiosity, it's easy for comments on divisive topics to get caught in, and even feed, the flames. Therefore one needs to learn how to include a bit of flame retardant each time one does so. Unfortunate, maybe, but it's a reasonable price for not having the forum burn to a crisp.
- 7y ago
- pcurve 7y agoI don't know if obsession is the right word. However there is strong reaction partly due to large Jewish population in the u.s. and there is no stronger expression of anti semitism than Nazi. Another thing. This may not be a popular opinion but based on my personal observation, ordinary Americans don't "obsess" over Nazi to the same degree as the media.
- greedo 7y agoThe percentage of Jewish people in the US is around 1-2%. Large in the sense of a significant portion of total Jews, but compared to other ethnic groups in the US, fairly small.
- natalyarostova 7y agoThat's true, but their representation in media/policy is extremely high. (and, I hate that I have to qualify this statement of fact, but I am not saying this is a good or bad thing -- or that I even particularly care).
- greedo 7y agoI don't think you can say this is a statement of fact. How are you measuring this?
- natalyarostova 7y agoI'm not measuring it, I just know that people of Jewish origin are dramatically over-represented among journalism, banking, and fields such as physics or CS. It's common knowledge, although I'm sure there are ways to confirm it if you're so interested. (nothing unreasonable about that).
- greedo 7y agoMany things that were once considered "common knowledge" turned out to be nothing of the sort. The idea you're espousing is a damaging one that reinforces the worst stereotypes about Jews.
- hourislate 7y agoIt has become popular to associate NAZI's/Fascism with Trump and his supporters. The Far Left in the USA use this as a virtue signaling kind of thing to try and demonstrate that they are morally superior and that anyone who voted for Trump is evil and a Fascist/NAZI. I personally find the Communists far more dangerous than the NAZI's/Fascists ever were. They are responsible for the greatest human suffering the World has ever seen. A monumental evil based on murder, poverty and destruction.
- didgeoridoo 7y agoComparing Nazis and Communists is like comparing the Black Death with smallpox. You can come up with reasons why one was worse than the other, but it doesn’t shed light on any problems we’re having here in 2019.
- fopen64 7y agoI don't like either but for some reason the commies get the pass. Also, it is noteworthy everything started when the kid was falsely accused of sexual harassment (which some feminists would call "rape" happily!) and yet the left hive wants us to believe that such false accusations are exceptionally rare. Well, the kid was told by a Nazi the obvious: these things can and do happen and nobody will stand for you as a white man. Want to squash the alt-right? Stop lying.
- wwweston 7y agoThe use of the phrase "virtue signaling" has to have reached a point by now where its use is itself a kind of signal. Because more often than not, it seems to be deployed by people who, like the poster above, not only fail to make a case as to what sort of test they've devised which would distinguish between someone who is acting primarily out of internally negotiated moral belief vs someone who is primarily performing socially negotiated moral belief, but give no indication that they're even aware that this might be important in asserting the "virtue signaling" judgment. Or, in other words, one of the signals that's being sent is that the speaker is not actually making any sort of point, they're merely performing something that they don't understand using a linguistic package that they haven't unpacked but are pretty sure they can use to erode the status of another party they see as a status threat. > I personally find the Communists far more dangerous than the NAZI's/Fascists ever were. They are responsible for the greatest human suffering the World has ever seen. A monumental evil based on murder, poverty and destruction. Well, faced with a rather concrete version of that question in form of actually conforming nation-states, the allies seem to have made a different call than you did about the greater / lesser evils. There's a lot of competition on the field of ideologically-driven suffering and atrocities, including several major world religions along with communism, fascism, and to some extent, even capitalism, and the driving factor seems to be less the specific hazards associated with any one of them and more (a) human beings and (b) unreflective, imbalanced zeal.
- jnbiche 7y ago> Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Where are you in Europe? In my experience, lots of Europeans are worried about fascism. Not necessarily Nazis, but fascism and extremism.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dTal 7y agoIn most of Europe WW2 was just a terrible ordeal. In Germany it's a source of great shame. But the US? WW2 was the making of modern America. The US was catapulted into a world leader position, and got to feel like a badass hero doing it. And WW2 was the US's first major overseas conflict. Nazis are the archetypical "enemy without".
- neonate 7y agoGreat comment, but aren't you overlooking WWI? Phillipines? etc. There was even an anti-imperialist movement in the US before WWI.
- eppsilon 7y agoWWII was the last time the US "won" a war, so it gets more attention.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dTal 7y agoDamn, you're right. WW1 was certainly a major international conflict. Scratch that bit. It does offer a useful comparison though. In WW1 there were no cartoonishly evil baddies, just a bunch of pointless deaths. It didn't devastate a civilian population, either - nobody got to feel like a hero, there were no joyful liberations. WW2 was a righteous war (that also happened to be an economic goldmine). That permanently shifted American culture (and killed isolationism stone dead). So Nazis became THE enemy - the Lucifer to America's new God complex.
- thrower123 7y agoThe Germans were cast as, if anything, even more evil characters in the WW1-era propaganda than they were in WW2. A series of atrocities in the opening phase of the war while the German armies were marching through Belgium were widely reported and inflated into stories of raping nuns and bayonetting babies. In contrast, the full scale of the horrors of the Nazi regime were not widely known until the final days of WW2.
- titanomachy 7y agoIt's probably a consequence of the media. Proclaiming yourself a nazi is still an easy way to provoke outrage and get media attention in America, so attention-seekers abuse it. Also Americans value free speech over most things. Proclaiming yourself a Nazi in Europe would probably have more severe consequences socially. In Germany it could land you in prison.
- pgeorgi 7y ago> In Germany it could land you in prison. Proclaiming yourself a Nazi shouldn't. Expect to be watched closely by intelligence services though (unless you're a cop, very different rules apply then). Promoting the ideology may land in you in jail, depending on details (after a series of trials ending in fines because we believe in measured response).
- titanomachy 7y agoI am not German or living in Germany, so I have to rely on secondary sources here. I understand that there are laws in Germany banning the use of Nazi symbols [1], as well as very strong laws against hate speech. Maybe I should have said "face criminal penalties" instead of "end up in prison". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strafgesetzbuch_section_86a
- kmm 7y agoI find it curious that you got downvoted. I'm European as well and I have had the same question for a while. We have far-right, nationalist parties and even more extreme fringe groups, but no threat of secret Nazis. Maybe it's because we had to deal with the consequences of the actual Nazis and they're not just comic book villains to us. Or because it's the last big war America fought in with a clear bad guy, whereas more recent events are harder to defend.
- tootahe45 7y agoNobody wants to have that conversation because when you break down Nazi ideology a lot of it starts to point left.
- Jotra7 7y agoNo one wants to have the conversation when disengenous people like you make absurd arguments like this one.
- cyberpunk 7y agoSerious question: can you give an actual example of this because I can't think of a single one. A lot of commentators without thinking seem to call the nazi's a 'left' party -- I assume because of the word socialist in the party name -- there are many books on the history of the nazi party, and reading any of them should be enough to clear anyone of this misapprehension.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tropo 7y agoIt's not just about the word "socialist" in the party name. Policy actually fits, on that and more. They were into government intervention and social spending. They had gun control. (a prerequisite for hauling off the Jews) They shipped an ethnicity off to prison camps, just as FDR did. FDR is on the left, is he not? They had the Sturmabteilung to break up opponent's political meetings, rather like the violent protesters that were sent to attack Trump supporters at campaign events. So it seems you may need to clear up a misapprehension. I suspect the mistake arises from the desire to maximize political distance from the Nazi party for yourself, while minimizing that distance for your opponents. You might also wrongly associate nationalism with racism. They are not the same. Both can be found on both sides of the political divide. It is fair to say that the Nazi party was to the right of communism, the popular alternative at the time, but of course everything is to the right of communism.
- frozenport 7y agoWe have a lot of Nazis, fascist sympathizers. Unlike Europeans, you don't grow up with stories about how your grandparents fled the Germans or lived in fear of the totalitarian regimes that appeared afterwords.
- sonnyblarney 7y agoThe answer is simple: America had a history of slavery, a massive civil war over it, and there are deep issues still rooted in it etc. So there's a huge degree of sensitivity over these kinds of things, and 'Nazis' represent the existential boogeyman in it all, the militarized klan, if you will. The general population is not very well educated (Kim Kardashian is #1) and words, images, thoughts have power. Basically, in pop culture, there can never be any nuance or discussion, it's more black and white 'nazis bad' etc.. There's a visceral sensitivity to this most places in the US. Europe simply does not deal with these issues on a daily basis, moreover, every European nation has a direct history with WW2 and much, much more information about it.
- tootahe45 7y agoWell didn't you see the rally in 2016? they amassed a whole 5 people from across the US. For the MSM that's an international security threat.
- b_tterc_p 7y agoI believe this is a lasting effect of the PR campaign to vilify Hitler and the Nazis. Don’t get me wrong, Hitler and the Nazis are obviously villains and deserve every ounce of contempt. But the US went to extra efforts to make sure people knew it was the work on Hitler and the Nazis and not the Germans so that we could quickly forgive the Germans and make them an ally. Fun fact, before Hitler, the worst person euphemistically was the biblical Pharaoh Edit: getting some down votes. I hope it’s clear that I’m still trying to say that hitler was maximally bad and not trying to reduce anything to that effect.
- wtdata 7y agoI would say that the US also went to great lengths to vilify Stalin and and Communists (and rightly so), and yet, it's absolutely appalling the amount of people these days that feel they are morally superior for identifying with them.
- thrower123 7y agoAlt-right and Nazi have become such reflexive insults that they have lost all meaning. In most cases, it just means that someone dislikes the person, often for imaginary reasons.
- AlexB138 7y agoParaphrasing, because I can't find the original quote: You can start a movement without a god, but not without a devil. It's mostly a boogeyman used to galvanize and justify another extremist group.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- topranks 7y agoI’m European and I’m very worried about Nazis. In both Europe and America for what it’s worth.
- closetohome 7y agoPortions of our far-right literally wear Nazi regalia. If it weren't for that, we'd probably be less concerned.
- vzcx 7y agoDon't worry about the LARPers. There are so few of them, they are so dumb, they have so little power, and they never will. Worry instead about those quiet ones out there reading old and problematic books: the free spirits, burning forth, ready to smash all our tablets of values.
- FlowNote 7y agoMaybe we should burn those old books, just to be safe
- vzcx 7y agoYes, you'd better... In case it wasn't clear (Poe's law, and all), I am speaking about myself and people like me, who get along just fine but find themselves quite at odds with the modern world and it's mythologies, and also deeply uninterested in what these radical groups and "activists" have on offer.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- closetohome 7y agoI may be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure Conservatives are the opposite of "free spirits."
- vzcx 7y agoI am not talking about conservatives.
- deanCommie 7y agoThat's because Europeans have their heads in the sand like ostriches about all forms of societal change. I'm a Canadian that just moved back after 4 years in Europe, and I found it impossible to have a progressive-minded conversation with most europeans (not all, but much higher ratio than at home) - about feminism, rape culture, about racial discrimination, about unconscious bias, about migration and immigration. Europe has figured out a pretty good well-balanced society for its' citizens, and is incapable of reacting to change. This is why nationalism, racism, and yes - fascism - are on the rise throughout Europe. Because nobody worries about it, and nobody pays attention to it. They just see brown people at the train station, get nervous, and ask no follow-up questions.
- orf 7y agoWho's getting nervous about brown people at train stations? This whole observation seems pretty weird. A foreigner from a different continent finds it hard to talk to most Europeans (because they are all a singular block) about feminism? Don't be ridiculous. They likely just didn't want to talk to you about it, and it sounds as if you laboured on such points a few times. And, depending on how well you knew the people you where talking to, they likely mistook your accent for American (I'm English and this happens even to me), which would certainly affect how people see your views on such topics and would impact their willingness to talk to you about it. All in all, not many people want to talk to American sounding people they might not know very well about issues like their views on feminism or racial discrimination. I see this more as a "you" thing than a "Europe" thing.
- deanCommie 7y agoWhen you have intelligent coworkers that say things like "Most black people in town are drug dealers, so if I see a black person I'm going to assume they're a drug dealer", or "Sexism wasn't a problem in Europe until North America invented it as an issue", and the other Europeans agree and the other North Americans don't, and when this type of thing happens over and over in many circumstances, I come to the conclusion that it's not me. Before you wonder if it's just my coworkers and company. * Person I'm buying a car from 2 hours from my city telling me "It's a good thing you're buying a car from me and not one of them black boys, they rip you off" * Landlord I'm viewing an apartment for saying "I would prefer to rent to a white renter. We have a lot of indians that try to rent and they smell" These kinds of things happened way more in 4 years in Europe than in 20 years in Canada.
- PorterDuff 7y ago"Why are Americans so obsessed with Nazis? " Good question. Maybe different reasons. There sure are a lot of Nazi documentaries on cable. . Twelve year old boys like snappy uniforms and the idea of a warrior ethos. . You don't need a God to form a religion, sometimes a Devil is enough. The secular Left, now that culture has taken the place of economics as something to argue about, seems to have built a philosophy with Hitler at the bottom. Enemies are, of course, Hitler. . WWII makes for a great story. Good guys, bad guys, worldwide (thus the name), heros and villains. Maybe the US is bored with Cowboys and Indians.
- sergiotapia 7y agoWhy indeed. I believe it is because its massively funded to perpetuate it in the mindsphere. Who benefits? I don't know.
- yellowapple 7y agoPart of it is that Nazis and Communists (with a capital C, usually taken to be communism in the Chinese/Korean/Soviet sense) fit the "bad guys" archetype in American media (or - more precisely - said archetype developed in response to them being our adversaries in WWII and the Cold War, respectively). Naturally, that means accusing someone of being a Nazi or Communist is an effortless way to paint that someone as a pure and classic villain. Now we have people overtly and brazenly affiliating identifying as Nazis (usually citing The Bell Curve and other pseudoscientific racist drivel) and Communists (still with the capital C; they might claim to be lowercase-c communists or plain socialists, but it doesn't take long before "Stalin did nothing wrong" or "China's more ethical than the US" starts peeking through the façade). Both have always existed, of course (at least as long as those ideologies have existed), but nowadays folks are more open about their abhorrently-anti-democratic viewpoints (especially on the Internet, where they enjoy relative safety while simultaneously reaching worldwide audiences).
- rdiddly 7y agoThat which is obviously true or obviously false needn't even be mentioned. That which is secretly true must be contradicted constantly. That which is secretly false must be affirmed constantly.
- Viliam1234 7y ago> Are Europeans worried about Nazis? Not as far as I can tell. It probably strongly depends on the bubble one lives in, both in America and Europe. I remember reading the Millennium trilogy, written by a Swedish author, where (spoilers, I guess) every unsympathetic guy, without exception, turns out to be literally a secret Nazi. The books sold 80 million copies worldwide, multiple movies were made of them. Or, if you read Russian propaganda, they never stopped fighting Nazis; it's like WW2 actually never ended. Recently they have liberated Crimea from the Nazi attack. All this seems crazy to some people, and serious to others.
- madengr 7y agoThe author is so obsessed she identifies a black Nazi. What a load of crap.
- booboolayla 7y agoAmericans have (for generations) been indoctrinated into an extremely narrow view of WW2, where Holocaust is front and center and everything else is made irrelevant. In an American mind there are no real victims of WW2 other than the Jews, which is very insulting to pretty much half of European nations that suffered immensely.