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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 ab

by 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.
    - scollet 6y ago
      > 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. Wow. You really are a racist. Or at least an authoritarian on some level. You want people of color to convince you - a task of which is not theirs to fulfill - that they should have basic social rights in the US. You then refuse to be convinced because they aren't 'being nice' about it? How on earth is fighting for social and civil rights a task of political suppression? BLM represents a bloc that has been disincentivised from voting from the founding of America until 2020. Something screams authoritarian, and it certainly isn't protesting.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior? Yes. It's very clear that organised violence in the US is overwhelmingly from the far right. Anyone denying this either isn't paying attention or is being dishonest.
  - DaniloDias 6y ago
    Persuade me with documentation.
    - qqqwerty 6y ago
      From the source: "In analyzing fatalities from terrorist attacks, religious terrorism has killed the largest number of individuals—3,086 people—primarily due to the attacks on September 11, 2001, which caused 2,977 deaths.10 The magnitude of this death toll fundamentally shaped U.S. counterterrorism policy over the past two decades. In comparison, right-wing terrorist attacks caused 335 deaths, left-wing attacks caused 22 deaths, and ethnonationalist terrorists caused 5 deaths."[1] [1]https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office [1] "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent). The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right-wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively). However, 41 percent of the deaths attributable to radical Islamist violent extremists occurred in a single event—an attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016." In 2018, most ideologically motivated murders in the United States of America were linked to right-wing extremism [2]. As of 2020, right-wing terrorism accounted for the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the US[3] and has killed more people in the continental United States since the September 11 attacks than Islamic terrorism [4]. [1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf [2] https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018 https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018 [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/27/us-far-right-violence-terrorist-threat-analysis https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/27/us-far-right-v... [4] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/right-wing-terrorist-killings-government-focus-jihadis-islamic-radicalism.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/right-wing-terro...
- pjc50 6y ago
  > Motivations are obviously not the same You said it yourself. The political content of protests matters. Why not parallel with the Hong Kong protestors? The brownshirts were paramilitaries operating in the open, in defense of the existing power structure. More in parallel to the KKK. After the ascent of Hitler, the police were explicitly forbidden from interfering with the assaults and murders.

by pravus 6y ago

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.
  - scollet 6y ago
    > 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. Wow. You really are a racist. Or at least an authoritarian on some level. You want people of color to convince you - a task of which is not theirs to fulfill - that they should have basic social rights in the US. You then refuse to be convinced because they aren't 'being nice' about it? How on earth is fighting for social and civil rights a task of political suppression? BLM represents a bloc that has been disincentivised from voting from the founding of America until 2020. Something screams authoritarian, and it certainly isn't protesting.
DanBC 6y ago
> Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior? Yes. It's very clear that organised violence in the US is overwhelmingly from the far right. Anyone denying this either isn't paying attention or is being dishonest.
- DaniloDias 6y ago
  Persuade me with documentation.
  - qqqwerty 6y ago
    From the source: "In analyzing fatalities from terrorist attacks, religious terrorism has killed the largest number of individuals—3,086 people—primarily due to the attacks on September 11, 2001, which caused 2,977 deaths.10 The magnitude of this death toll fundamentally shaped U.S. counterterrorism policy over the past two decades. In comparison, right-wing terrorist attacks caused 335 deaths, left-wing attacks caused 22 deaths, and ethnonationalist terrorists caused 5 deaths."[1] [1]https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office [1] "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent). The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right-wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively). However, 41 percent of the deaths attributable to radical Islamist violent extremists occurred in a single event—an attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016." In 2018, most ideologically motivated murders in the United States of America were linked to right-wing extremism [2]. As of 2020, right-wing terrorism accounted for the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the US[3] and has killed more people in the continental United States since the September 11 attacks than Islamic terrorism [4]. [1] https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf https://www.gao.gov/assets/690/683984.pdf [2] https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018 https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018 [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/27/us-far-right-violence-terrorist-threat-analysis https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/27/us-far-right-v... [4] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/right-wing-terrorist-killings-government-focus-jihadis-islamic-radicalism.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/right-wing-terro...
pjc50 6y ago
> Motivations are obviously not the same You said it yourself. The political content of protests matters. Why not parallel with the Hong Kong protestors? The brownshirts were paramilitaries operating in the open, in defense of the existing power structure. More in parallel to the KKK. After the ascent of Hitler, the police were explicitly forbidden from interfering with the assaults and murders.