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Could you help me understand the reasons? When you are living history, you don’t know that ww2 is around the corner. I think the observations of the similarit

Could you help me understand the reasons? When you are living history, you don’t know that ww2 is around the corner. I think the observations of the similarities between the brown shirts and violent protesters is correct. I don’t know if a better historical parallel. Look what happened to Aaron Danielson. Brown shirts engaged in antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil in the same way these Antifa types do. They terrorized businesses the same way these BLM types have been doing. I do not understand the perspective of people who don’t have a regexp that fires on this- I want to be wrong, but I can’t stop seeing problems. I don't understand how these parallels can be so easily dismissed. Is it because you don’t expect it to end in a Holocaust?

Can_Not 6y ago
Yes, it does remind us of how the brownshirts spread false rumors and hysteria about people who opposed the nazis in the years before the holocaust.
- DaniloDias 6y ago
  ??
pravus 6y ago
At least from my perspective this has been an ongoing problem for many years now and I would refer you to Godwin's law. There is this weird sort of mystique about Hitler and the Nazi Party that keep people entranced that it was "pure evil" rather than a decade-plus political process taking place in a very unique time of history with many other actors in play. You can't use any sort of "slippery slope" argument because of course those don't exist. The fact that you can trace elements of both WW-I and WW-II to at least the mid-1800s in terms of holistic world upheaval doesn't even get mentioned. There doesn't seem to be many students of history these days. Instead what we get is almost fantasy horror and when you try to make serious political arguments they are just dismissed. I mean, it can't happen here because unicorns don't exist either. I also find it troubling that many people have no appreciation for Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao in light of the millions lives that were destroyed after WW-II. Some very horrific acts occurred in the 20th century and debating rather than dismissing these issues seems like not only a good idea, but probably essential if peace and humanity are truly desired.
- DaniloDias 6y ago
  Have you read the rise and Fall of the Third Reich? I appreciate your perspective on the incubation period of nazi Germany- but I think you are floating over some important events. These ‘brown shirts’ were citizen volunteer believers who evolved into a kind of political pressure group hitler could direct around. They would harass towns, intervene at businesses, assault and eventually murder people. They were not a part of the nation’s legitimate police force at the beginning of hitler’s rise, but as he acquired power, so did they. Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior? Motivations are obviously not the same, but the behavior sure looks like it. Where does “Rules for radicals” fit in your perspective?
  - leftyted 6y ago
    I wrote this in response to your previous post, which was flagged: I don't think this rioting, violence, and general unrest should be compared to the Brown Shirts. Groups engaging in "antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil" are not uncommon in history. An analogy to the Nazis in the 30s seems out of place because, as you say, of everything that the Nazis did after the 30s. If you want to talk to about ideologues, people for whom the ends justify the means, people who are willing to engage in violence and destruction for ideological goals, then you can make a comparison here. You can put the Brown Shirts in this category, you can put current rioters in this category, you can put a large number of historical groups in this category, and I think this categorization is fair. (Note that sometimes this violence may even be justified). But why pick the Nazis in particular for your comparison? Comparing this group or that group to the Nazis is almost always rhetorical trick precisely because of the Holocaust. Why not pick some other group in history that used violence to pursue its ideological goals but didn't boil over into a genocide? The answer is that, if you picked another group, the rhetorical power of the comparison would be lost. But it would be a more honest comparison.
    - DaniloDias 6y ago
      >>But why pick the Nazis in particular for your comparison? Reason 1) It is the historical event that parallels which most people have at least some familiarity with, however I don’t believe most people actually know much about the brownshirts. All I know of it comes from history books- and who knows how accurate they are. Reason 2) I don’t think the brownshirts are the best model. In fact, I think it actually better mirrors the cultural revolution, but most Americans have no idea about the details of those years, so pointing to a scenario that is more accurate but less well understood wouldn’t yield much. I have spoken with people who lived through the cultural revolution and what they said about then sounds an awful lot like what is happening now. If I hadn’t had experiences like this, I wouldn’t have this opinion- but my personal anecdote doesn’t scale. Most Americans don’t understand just how bonkers the thinking got during the cultural revolution. The “garden” in Seattle’s “CHOP” has almost direct parallels to the kind of thinking of the maoists. Btw- I didn’t pick the Nazi comparison, OP did. I don’t think it’s great, but there are parallels. Despite the weaknesses, I’d still argue that this is a defensible historical example. What would you offer as an alternative? I’ve not seen a single person in the BLM protests I would call inspiring. I see unchecked emotion and anger that regularly decays into raw hatred. There is no MLK in this movement- there are no leaders that offer a vision that everyone can believe in. Since BLM is an org with such “expertise” in what white people think, you would think they would cynically propose a soft spoken figurehead who says inspirational things. Instead, we get adversarial confrontation on the “fact” that all white people are racist and only white and white adjacent people can be racist. This is idiotic marketing strategy. You’d think they would avoid antagonizing their customer if they were serious about positive change. So if disruptive confrontation is the path to solving a cultural problem, brownshirt comparisons make a hell of a lot of sense.

Can_Not 6y ago

Yes, it does remind us of how the brownshirts spread false rumors and hysteria about people who opposed the nazis in the years before the holocaust.

DaniloDias 6y ago
??

pravus 6y ago

At least from my perspective this has been an ongoing problem for many years now and I would refer you to Godwin's law. There is this weird sort of mystique about Hitler and the Nazi Party that keep people entranced that it was "pure evil" rather than a decade-plus political process taking place in a very unique time of history with many other actors in play. You can't use any sort of "slippery slope" argument because of course those don't exist. The fact that you can trace elements of both WW-I and WW-II to at least the mid-1800s in terms of holistic world upheaval doesn't even get mentioned. There doesn't seem to be many students of history these days. Instead what we get is almost fantasy horror and when you try to make serious political arguments they are just dismissed. I mean, it can't happen here because unicorns don't exist either. I also find it troubling that many people have no appreciation for Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao in light of the millions lives that were destroyed after WW-II. Some very horrific acts occurred in the 20th century and debating rather than dismissing these issues seems like not only a good idea, but probably essential if peace and humanity are truly desired.

DaniloDias 6y ago
Have you read the rise and Fall of the Third Reich? I appreciate your perspective on the incubation period of nazi Germany- but I think you are floating over some important events. These ‘brown shirts’ were citizen volunteer believers who evolved into a kind of political pressure group hitler could direct around. They would harass towns, intervene at businesses, assault and eventually murder people. They were not a part of the nation’s legitimate police force at the beginning of hitler’s rise, but as he acquired power, so did they. Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior? Motivations are obviously not the same, but the behavior sure looks like it. Where does “Rules for radicals” fit in your perspective?
- leftyted 6y ago
  I wrote this in response to your previous post, which was flagged: I don't think this rioting, violence, and general unrest should be compared to the Brown Shirts. Groups engaging in "antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil" are not uncommon in history. An analogy to the Nazis in the 30s seems out of place because, as you say, of everything that the Nazis did after the 30s. If you want to talk to about ideologues, people for whom the ends justify the means, people who are willing to engage in violence and destruction for ideological goals, then you can make a comparison here. You can put the Brown Shirts in this category, you can put current rioters in this category, you can put a large number of historical groups in this category, and I think this categorization is fair. (Note that sometimes this violence may even be justified). But why pick the Nazis in particular for your comparison? Comparing this group or that group to the Nazis is almost always rhetorical trick precisely because of the Holocaust. Why not pick some other group in history that used violence to pursue its ideological goals but didn't boil over into a genocide? The answer is that, if you picked another group, the rhetorical power of the comparison would be lost. But it would be a more honest comparison.
  - DaniloDias 6y ago
    >>But why pick the Nazis in particular for your comparison? Reason 1) It is the historical event that parallels which most people have at least some familiarity with, however I don’t believe most people actually know much about the brownshirts. All I know of it comes from history books- and who knows how accurate they are. Reason 2) I don’t think the brownshirts are the best model. In fact, I think it actually better mirrors the cultural revolution, but most Americans have no idea about the details of those years, so pointing to a scenario that is more accurate but less well understood wouldn’t yield much. I have spoken with people who lived through the cultural revolution and what they said about then sounds an awful lot like what is happening now. If I hadn’t had experiences like this, I wouldn’t have this opinion- but my personal anecdote doesn’t scale. Most Americans don’t understand just how bonkers the thinking got during the cultural revolution. The “garden” in Seattle’s “CHOP” has almost direct parallels to the kind of thinking of the maoists. Btw- I didn’t pick the Nazi comparison, OP did. I don’t think it’s great, but there are parallels. Despite the weaknesses, I’d still argue that this is a defensible historical example. What would you offer as an alternative? I’ve not seen a single person in the BLM protests I would call inspiring. I see unchecked emotion and anger that regularly decays into raw hatred. There is no MLK in this movement- there are no leaders that offer a vision that everyone can believe in. Since BLM is an org with such “expertise” in what white people think, you would think they would cynically propose a soft spoken figurehead who says inspirational things. Instead, we get adversarial confrontation on the “fact” that all white people are racist and only white and white adjacent people can be racist. This is idiotic marketing strategy. You’d think they would avoid antagonizing their customer if they were serious about positive change. So if disruptive confrontation is the path to solving a cultural problem, brownshirt comparisons make a hell of a lot of sense.