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What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? And how are countries like G

What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay despite making it illegal to do Nazi stuff? Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism?

bb88 3y ago
> despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? A lot of people on the right are talking about the US having a mental health crises when it comes to mass shootings. If that's really true, then yeah, that's how we get natsies. > Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism? Well I mean if there's a mental health crisis then yeah, people are going to say that. I personally don't think the founding fathers of the US understood the future gullibility of their citizens.
- lr4444lr 3y ago
  > I personally don't think the founding fathers of the US understood the future gullibility of their citizens. They absolutely did. When only white, male, decently educated property owners could vote, they had decent reassurance that a constitutional republic with state-specific voter management could work. I think they'd be horrified to see that today we don't even demand a basic proof of civics education. And I hate that Ramaswamy made that suggestion in such an embarrassing, conversation-poisoning way.
  - plagiarist 3y ago
    We need score voting. Being able to express a preference for a third candidate without danger of flipping the election would fix quite a bit. Unfortunately doing so currently is more useless than using the ballot as toilet paper.
    - TedGetschman 3y ago
      Actually, implementing score voting (or approval or STAR or Majority Judgement) should incentivize all the candidates to move toward the majority opinion. The problem isn't the candidates, it is what platforms the current system pushes them to adopt. If we changed to any of these MaxVoting methods today, you would see majority opinion platforms emerge as the lead platforms within a year.
  - bb88 3y ago
    I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think the founding fathers could not anticipate the world we have today. The problem of course being that intelligence tests were used in the 60's to deny voting rights. But the founding fathers were okay with slavery, so would they have been okay with that for that purpose? Originalism has a purpose I think, but, we've changed so much since then...
    - chonkerz 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - refurb 3y ago
        Wow, I take it you haven’t read much about them then? Because that statement is 100% false.
        plagiarist 3y ago
        Then why didn't they write the founding documents so that black people would be free and women and black people could vote? Would have saved us a lot of conflict over the years.
        refurb 3y ago
        Because, at the time, those beliefs were not universal, and a compromise was made as formation of the Republic would likely not have happened otherwise. All the writings of the Founding Fathers are free and publicly available. You can learn all about it.
        plagiarist 3y ago
        I like learning, link us to some quotes.
        refurb 3y ago
  - refurb 3y ago
    Are you saying white male educated property owners can’t be gullible? Have you been to Marin county? The founding fathers certainly did assume there were gullible voters even among the select few who could vote. Protections such as the Constitution itself (that old archaic document!), the Senate, supermajorities, an independent legislative, executive and judicial, etc, etc. I laugh when people say “Congress is deadlocked! It needs to be fixed!”. No, it’s working exactly as intended.
  - zimpenfish 3y ago
    > I hate that Ramaswamy made that suggestion in such an embarrassing, conversation-poisoning way Are you talking about his "failed Civics 101" gaffe re: historical ordering of Constitution and Revolution?
    - lr4444lr 3y ago
      https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1656812778177347585 https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/16568127781773475... I have been convinced for a long time that a test of basic civics and current events is a necessary (and possibly a sufficient) condition to fix most of the failings we see in representative democracy, but the Overton window is nowhere near it, and Ramaswamy is hardly the candidate I'd want proposing it. The whole question and answer bank could even be given out online or in print cosr free - my bar is pretty low.
      - zimpenfish 3y ago
        > a test of basic civics and current events is a necessary (and possibly a sufficient) condition to fix most of the failings we see in representative democracy Currently I would suggest that most of the failings in, e.g., US democracy are coming from the Republican party and I'm pretty sure most of them will have passed a test of basic civics, etc., yet are demonstrably bad at governance.
HideousKojima 3y ago
>And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay Only for certain definitions of okay
- plagiarist 3y ago
  Okay, share your definition.
yanderekko 3y ago
I recall reading the other day about Germany making deadnaming a crime..
- peterashford 3y ago
  From an outsider's perspective (NZ) Germany's democracy looks a lot healthier than the US's.
  - yanderekko 3y ago
    Well, right now there's a odd vogue to think that a healthy democracy does things like ban political parties (currently an active debate regarding the AfD in Germany), or embrace indigenous apartheid movements (NZ, Australia), or to cede sovereignty to unaccountable transnational elites that promise to protect you from the ravages of political misinformation (the EU as a whole.) I don't think these notions will stand the test of time, but we'll see.
    - cycomanic 3y ago
      For those of people who are wondering about the "indigenous apartheid", the poster is talking about co-governance, i.e. giving certain "typically local", economic and political powers to indigenous organizations. This has become recently become on-vogue to call "apartheid" in right circles. I guess the people opposing co-governance are not very fond of following contracts, because at least in NZ the founding document/contract the treaty of Waitangi guaranteed a co-governance (and arguably the commonwealth for a long time ignored those obligations).
      - aydyn 3y ago
        Its not “co-governance”. Its privileging a demographic with greater power under the law based on skin color. Thats apartheid.
        andrei_says_ 3y ago
autoexec 3y ago
> What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis There are always going to be people who are fearful and ignorant and looking for a convenient external something to blame their problems on. There are also the people who are raised with those views and others who feel excluded and find a place to belong with a group of "outsiders". I don't think we can ever get rid of racist ideologies. We've evolved to be tribal and distrustful of outsiders and some will struggle with those feelings more than others. We're always going to struggle with racism and that's going to include Nazis. That doesn't mean we're powerless against them, but censorship and oppression certainly isn't the solution. > And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay Germany is not okay. Personally, I think Germany takes things way too far and that state censorship really is dangerous, but I also recognize that they've been in a very difficult position since the end of the war. I can't really fault them for over-correcting, but I do feel for the German people who have to live under unjust laws. To their credit they've also relaxed a bit over the years. For example, they lifted the ban on Mein Kampf and it flew off the shelves (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38495456 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38495456) not because the country was full of secret Nazis this whole time just waiting for it, but because the German people strongly desire freedom. It's worth noting that even in Germany and other EU counties that gave up basic freedoms in an effort to oppose racism there are still racists. Innocent people get hurt by oppressive laws and racists gain a talking point for recruiting that resonates with a lot of people. It's a lot easier to feed into a person's victim complex when they're actually being oppressed.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  Pretty much sums it up. Also of note is that Germany already had and still has laws against numerous forms of speech, most notably anything that could threaten the public order, which you could mold into a justification to basically stop any speech. The only thing preventing that isn't a law, it is the overall political culture. But with polarization rising, it can quickly become more serious. Most of these laws stems from a time where monarchy wanted to suppress unsanctioned speech. The Nazis made a lot of political capital because people wanted them banned and censored. Of course that was just political play and they set new standards for suppression of information and propaganda, but that came after they got into power.
hattmall 3y ago
For one thing the "Nazis" in the US aren't actual Nazis no matter how much they desire to be. German has banned things that deal with the ACTUAL, real Nazis which were a part of Germany. Germany hasn't banned racism and the reality is that Germany is quite racist. If judging by US standards Germany would be off the charts racist. Even Berlin, Germany's most diverse city is still > 80% white.
- daelon 3y ago
  Are you saying that a city having a large majority of one ethnicity is racism?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- concordDance 3y ago
  > Even Berlin, Germany's most diverse city is still > 80% white. I am confused as to what this last sentence has to do with anything.
refurb 3y ago
What do you mean “do Nazi stuff”? Germany treads very lightly when it comes to limiting speech, even for Nazi things. They have plenty of far-right racist groups that model themselves after the Nazis. As long as you don’t display the swastika gratuitously (there is no blanket ban), you’re quite free to organize a racist political party and takes seats in the government. Hell, there are still SS alumni groups in Germany. They arent banned.
- Jiro 3y ago
  >As long as you don’t display the swastika gratuitously (there is no blanket ban), you’re quite free to organize a racist political party and takes seats in the government. No. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/13/afd-party-ban-germany-far-right-extremists/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/13/afd-party-ban-ge...
  - refurb 3y ago
    "Considers". It's not banned.
    - Jiro 3y ago
      Yet. "Considers" can mean someone had an idle thought about it. It can also mean that the full apparatus of the government is able to do something, and is allowed by its own rules to do so, and just hasn't yet. This "considers" is the second kind.
      - refurb 3y ago
        But it still proves the point - association with Nazism is not outright banned in Germany. The law is actually quite delicately applied after much consideration. That was my entire point.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  > Germany treads very lightly when it comes to limiting speech, even for Nazi things. This is the image it projects, and maybe it was even true in the past. But not any more. https://www.racket.news/p/madness-american-satirist-cj-hopkins https://www.racket.news/p/madness-american-satirist-cj-hopki... American playwright and humorist C.J. Hopkins, profiled in this space on numerous occasions, has been sent a “punishment order” by a German judge, offering him a Sophie’s Choice of 60 days in jail or 3,600 euros. His crime? Essentially, insulting the German health minister in a tweet, and using a scarcely-visible image of a Swastika on a mask in a book critical of the global pandemic response, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. They're literally punishing a guy for calling someone else a Nazi due to their political policies, under anti-Nazi laws. It's the wrong way around but they don't seem to care, the victim in this case was protesting against their COVID laws so down with those sorts. Also remember the EU just handed itself the power to force tech firms to globally censor anything the EU decides is misinformation, which in practice appears to be anything that disagrees with their policies or ideology.
concordDance 3y ago
> What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? You're equivocating between two different meanings of "Nazi" in this sentence. > And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay despite making it illegal to do Nazi stuff? They aren't, they moved the Overton window so far via a ratchet effect that they're unable to calmly discuss immigration policy.
momirlan 3y ago
"nazi" is a name people call those they don't like: mother in laws, their bosses, the school principal, political opponents... it is used so often, it lost a real meaning.
- bratgpttamer 3y ago
  It retains that meaning in 99.98% of political discourse: "[topic] is something I dislike and/or reminds me of something/someone I dislike, and it's the only way for me to express that my enemy is subhuman without sounding like a psycho fascist myself"
dang 3y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314997.

bb88 3y ago

> despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? A lot of people on the right are talking about the US having a mental health crises when it comes to mass shootings. If that's really true, then yeah, that's how we get natsies. > Isn't it a slippery slope directly from banning Naziism direct to North Korean-style authoritarianism? Well I mean if there's a mental health crisis then yeah, people are going to say that. I personally don't think the founding fathers of the US understood the future gullibility of their citizens.

lr4444lr 3y ago
> I personally don't think the founding fathers of the US understood the future gullibility of their citizens. They absolutely did. When only white, male, decently educated property owners could vote, they had decent reassurance that a constitutional republic with state-specific voter management could work. I think they'd be horrified to see that today we don't even demand a basic proof of civics education. And I hate that Ramaswamy made that suggestion in such an embarrassing, conversation-poisoning way.
- plagiarist 3y ago
  We need score voting. Being able to express a preference for a third candidate without danger of flipping the election would fix quite a bit. Unfortunately doing so currently is more useless than using the ballot as toilet paper.
  - TedGetschman 3y ago
    Actually, implementing score voting (or approval or STAR or Majority Judgement) should incentivize all the candidates to move toward the majority opinion. The problem isn't the candidates, it is what platforms the current system pushes them to adopt. If we changed to any of these MaxVoting methods today, you would see majority opinion platforms emerge as the lead platforms within a year.
- bb88 3y ago
  I'm not saying you're wrong, I just think the founding fathers could not anticipate the world we have today. The problem of course being that intelligence tests were used in the 60's to deny voting rights. But the founding fathers were okay with slavery, so would they have been okay with that for that purpose? Originalism has a purpose I think, but, we've changed so much since then...
  - chonkerz 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - refurb 3y ago
      Wow, I take it you haven’t read much about them then? Because that statement is 100% false.
      - plagiarist 3y ago
        Then why didn't they write the founding documents so that black people would be free and women and black people could vote? Would have saved us a lot of conflict over the years.
        refurb 3y ago
        Because, at the time, those beliefs were not universal, and a compromise was made as formation of the Republic would likely not have happened otherwise. All the writings of the Founding Fathers are free and publicly available. You can learn all about it.
        plagiarist 3y ago
        I like learning, link us to some quotes.
        refurb 3y ago
- refurb 3y ago
  Are you saying white male educated property owners can’t be gullible? Have you been to Marin county? The founding fathers certainly did assume there were gullible voters even among the select few who could vote. Protections such as the Constitution itself (that old archaic document!), the Senate, supermajorities, an independent legislative, executive and judicial, etc, etc. I laugh when people say “Congress is deadlocked! It needs to be fixed!”. No, it’s working exactly as intended.
- zimpenfish 3y ago
  > I hate that Ramaswamy made that suggestion in such an embarrassing, conversation-poisoning way Are you talking about his "failed Civics 101" gaffe re: historical ordering of Constitution and Revolution?
  - lr4444lr 3y ago
    https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1656812778177347585 https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/16568127781773475... I have been convinced for a long time that a test of basic civics and current events is a necessary (and possibly a sufficient) condition to fix most of the failings we see in representative democracy, but the Overton window is nowhere near it, and Ramaswamy is hardly the candidate I'd want proposing it. The whole question and answer bank could even be given out online or in print cosr free - my bar is pretty low.
    - zimpenfish 3y ago
      > a test of basic civics and current events is a necessary (and possibly a sufficient) condition to fix most of the failings we see in representative democracy Currently I would suggest that most of the failings in, e.g., US democracy are coming from the Republican party and I'm pretty sure most of them will have passed a test of basic civics, etc., yet are demonstrably bad at governance.

HideousKojima 3y ago

>And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay Only for certain definitions of okay

plagiarist 3y ago
Okay, share your definition.

yanderekko 3y ago

I recall reading the other day about Germany making deadnaming a crime..

peterashford 3y ago
From an outsider's perspective (NZ) Germany's democracy looks a lot healthier than the US's.
- yanderekko 3y ago
  Well, right now there's a odd vogue to think that a healthy democracy does things like ban political parties (currently an active debate regarding the AfD in Germany), or embrace indigenous apartheid movements (NZ, Australia), or to cede sovereignty to unaccountable transnational elites that promise to protect you from the ravages of political misinformation (the EU as a whole.) I don't think these notions will stand the test of time, but we'll see.
  - cycomanic 3y ago
    For those of people who are wondering about the "indigenous apartheid", the poster is talking about co-governance, i.e. giving certain "typically local", economic and political powers to indigenous organizations. This has become recently become on-vogue to call "apartheid" in right circles. I guess the people opposing co-governance are not very fond of following contracts, because at least in NZ the founding document/contract the treaty of Waitangi guaranteed a co-governance (and arguably the commonwealth for a long time ignored those obligations).
    - aydyn 3y ago
      Its not “co-governance”. Its privileging a demographic with greater power under the law based on skin color. Thats apartheid.
      - andrei_says_ 3y ago

autoexec 3y ago

> What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis There are always going to be people who are fearful and ignorant and looking for a convenient external something to blame their problems on. There are also the people who are raised with those views and others who feel excluded and find a place to belong with a group of "outsiders". I don't think we can ever get rid of racist ideologies. We've evolved to be tribal and distrustful of outsiders and some will struggle with those feelings more than others. We're always going to struggle with racism and that's going to include Nazis. That doesn't mean we're powerless against them, but censorship and oppression certainly isn't the solution. > And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay Germany is not okay. Personally, I think Germany takes things way too far and that state censorship really is dangerous, but I also recognize that they've been in a very difficult position since the end of the war. I can't really fault them for over-correcting, but I do feel for the German people who have to live under unjust laws. To their credit they've also relaxed a bit over the years. For example, they lifted the ban on Mein Kampf and it flew off the shelves (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38495456 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38495456) not because the country was full of secret Nazis this whole time just waiting for it, but because the German people strongly desire freedom. It's worth noting that even in Germany and other EU counties that gave up basic freedoms in an effort to oppose racism there are still racists. Innocent people get hurt by oppressive laws and racists gain a talking point for recruiting that resonates with a lot of people. It's a lot easier to feed into a person's victim complex when they're actually being oppressed.

raxxorraxor 3y ago
Pretty much sums it up. Also of note is that Germany already had and still has laws against numerous forms of speech, most notably anything that could threaten the public order, which you could mold into a justification to basically stop any speech. The only thing preventing that isn't a law, it is the overall political culture. But with polarization rising, it can quickly become more serious. Most of these laws stems from a time where monarchy wanted to suppress unsanctioned speech. The Nazis made a lot of political capital because people wanted them banned and censored. Of course that was just political play and they set new standards for suppression of information and propaganda, but that came after they got into power.

hattmall 3y ago

For one thing the "Nazis" in the US aren't actual Nazis no matter how much they desire to be. German has banned things that deal with the ACTUAL, real Nazis which were a part of Germany. Germany hasn't banned racism and the reality is that Germany is quite racist. If judging by US standards Germany would be off the charts racist. Even Berlin, Germany's most diverse city is still > 80% white.

daelon 3y ago
Are you saying that a city having a large majority of one ethnicity is racism?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
concordDance 3y ago
> Even Berlin, Germany's most diverse city is still > 80% white. I am confused as to what this last sentence has to do with anything.

refurb 3y ago

What do you mean “do Nazi stuff”? Germany treads very lightly when it comes to limiting speech, even for Nazi things. They have plenty of far-right racist groups that model themselves after the Nazis. As long as you don’t display the swastika gratuitously (there is no blanket ban), you’re quite free to organize a racist political party and takes seats in the government. Hell, there are still SS alumni groups in Germany. They arent banned.

Jiro 3y ago
>As long as you don’t display the swastika gratuitously (there is no blanket ban), you’re quite free to organize a racist political party and takes seats in the government. No. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/13/afd-party-ban-germany-far-right-extremists/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/13/afd-party-ban-ge...
- refurb 3y ago
  "Considers". It's not banned.
  - Jiro 3y ago
    Yet. "Considers" can mean someone had an idle thought about it. It can also mean that the full apparatus of the government is able to do something, and is allowed by its own rules to do so, and just hasn't yet. This "considers" is the second kind.
    - refurb 3y ago
      But it still proves the point - association with Nazism is not outright banned in Germany. The law is actually quite delicately applied after much consideration. That was my entire point.
nvm0n2 3y ago
> Germany treads very lightly when it comes to limiting speech, even for Nazi things. This is the image it projects, and maybe it was even true in the past. But not any more. https://www.racket.news/p/madness-american-satirist-cj-hopkins https://www.racket.news/p/madness-american-satirist-cj-hopki... American playwright and humorist C.J. Hopkins, profiled in this space on numerous occasions, has been sent a “punishment order” by a German judge, offering him a Sophie’s Choice of 60 days in jail or 3,600 euros. His crime? Essentially, insulting the German health minister in a tweet, and using a scarcely-visible image of a Swastika on a mask in a book critical of the global pandemic response, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. They're literally punishing a guy for calling someone else a Nazi due to their political policies, under anti-Nazi laws. It's the wrong way around but they don't seem to care, the victim in this case was protesting against their COVID laws so down with those sorts. Also remember the EU just handed itself the power to force tech firms to globally censor anything the EU decides is misinformation, which in practice appears to be anything that disagrees with their policies or ideology.

concordDance 3y ago

> What I'd like to figure out is how there are still so many Nazis despite readily-available facts that Naziism is racist delusions? You're equivocating between two different meanings of "Nazi" in this sentence. > And how are countries like Germany still doing kinda okay despite making it illegal to do Nazi stuff? They aren't, they moved the Overton window so far via a ratchet effect that they're unable to calmly discuss immigration policy.

momirlan 3y ago

"nazi" is a name people call those they don't like: mother in laws, their bosses, the school principal, political opponents... it is used so often, it lost a real meaning.

bratgpttamer 3y ago
It retains that meaning in 99.98% of political discourse: "[topic] is something I dislike and/or reminds me of something/someone I dislike, and it's the only way for me to express that my enemy is subhuman without sounding like a psycho fascist myself"

dang 3y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314997.