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Nothing feels as self-justified as pre-emptive revenge. They might hurt us, I know this in my heart, so I must destroy them first. Of course, you are the one

Nothing feels as self-justified as pre-emptive revenge. They might hurt us, I know this in my heart, so I must destroy them first. Of course, you are the one who gets to define who is innocent, yes? That they are defending their innocent children against your influence means nothing. "I think those people want to subject my children to medically unneeded procedures, maybe sterilize them. I am defending the innocent. Therefore ..." I think your approach lacks humility, allowance for genuine disagreement, and the general principle of not attacking first.

neaden 3y ago
But Nazis want to murder me, like it's a central part of their ideology and they murdered millions of people when they were in power. You are the one who lacks humility because you want to take an ideal and apply it to the most extreme examples in the real world instead of accepting that their are some ideologies that can't be engaged in that way.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  That sounds good, but then remember that someone will point a finger at some political figure and refer to them as a Nazi. Are they? Is the finger enough? Are you looking at the finger and not seeing the person? My basic point is that when you combine two very popular flavors of the day ("punch/kill Nazis" and "that person is a Nazi"), you get a recipe for more or less random bloodshed based on little more than conjecture. It's like the Satanic Panic of the 1990s all over again, driven more by self-righteous bloodthirst than reaction to anything anyone has actually done.
  - neaden 3y ago
    You said "Imagine a non-violent Nazi", you asked about a hypothetical where someone was a Nazi, now you're trying to change the conversation about "Imagine a person who may or may not be a Nazi" which is a very different conversation and trying to act like I answered the second instead of the first.
    - at_a_remove 3y ago
      Absolutely not. You're missing a very real situation, and that situation is "That guy's a Nazi." You hear it over and over. This person is a fascist, that person is a Nazi. Go head, hit Google, search for (and use quotes) something like "Donald Trump is a Nazi." You'll find thousands of results returned. So, can we just go be violent at someone because someone else says "They're a Nazi"? That's what I'm talking about. You have a person, you haven't seen them do anything, they haven't done anything to you, but Rick says "He's a Nazi," so do we go punch them on Rick's word? I keep hammering on this because we have people feeling fully justified in physically attacking others who haven't physically attacked anyone else (non-violent), but someone has ascribed Nazi to them. This isn't just a hypothetical, take that bike lock basher guy. He struck seven people on the head with a bike lock. (Interestingly, at least one of them was friendly fire.) Now, you won't get anyone to call that left-wing terrorism, for some odd reason, and the guy completely skated. So we have these non-violent people just standing there, someone thinks "that person is a Nazi," and attacks them. That's my non-violent Nazi. Are they actually fondling an Iron Cross at home? Doing a little seig heil before bed? We don't know, and we generally will never know. And I focus on that because, let's be honest, there's almost no actual Nazis. Probably some elderly "were Hitler Youth" hanging out in Brazil, but aside from that, it's just really sloppy slang, and I've had to hang with some people who will gleefully refer to anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders as a fascist Nazi.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
[flagged]

neaden 3y ago

But Nazis want to murder me, like it's a central part of their ideology and they murdered millions of people when they were in power. You are the one who lacks humility because you want to take an ideal and apply it to the most extreme examples in the real world instead of accepting that their are some ideologies that can't be engaged in that way.

at_a_remove 3y ago
That sounds good, but then remember that someone will point a finger at some political figure and refer to them as a Nazi. Are they? Is the finger enough? Are you looking at the finger and not seeing the person? My basic point is that when you combine two very popular flavors of the day ("punch/kill Nazis" and "that person is a Nazi"), you get a recipe for more or less random bloodshed based on little more than conjecture. It's like the Satanic Panic of the 1990s all over again, driven more by self-righteous bloodthirst than reaction to anything anyone has actually done.
- neaden 3y ago
  You said "Imagine a non-violent Nazi", you asked about a hypothetical where someone was a Nazi, now you're trying to change the conversation about "Imagine a person who may or may not be a Nazi" which is a very different conversation and trying to act like I answered the second instead of the first.
  - at_a_remove 3y ago
    Absolutely not. You're missing a very real situation, and that situation is "That guy's a Nazi." You hear it over and over. This person is a fascist, that person is a Nazi. Go head, hit Google, search for (and use quotes) something like "Donald Trump is a Nazi." You'll find thousands of results returned. So, can we just go be violent at someone because someone else says "They're a Nazi"? That's what I'm talking about. You have a person, you haven't seen them do anything, they haven't done anything to you, but Rick says "He's a Nazi," so do we go punch them on Rick's word? I keep hammering on this because we have people feeling fully justified in physically attacking others who haven't physically attacked anyone else (non-violent), but someone has ascribed Nazi to them. This isn't just a hypothetical, take that bike lock basher guy. He struck seven people on the head with a bike lock. (Interestingly, at least one of them was friendly fire.) Now, you won't get anyone to call that left-wing terrorism, for some odd reason, and the guy completely skated. So we have these non-violent people just standing there, someone thinks "that person is a Nazi," and attacks them. That's my non-violent Nazi. Are they actually fondling an Iron Cross at home? Doing a little seig heil before bed? We don't know, and we generally will never know. And I focus on that because, let's be honest, there's almost no actual Nazis. Probably some elderly "were Hitler Youth" hanging out in Brazil, but aside from that, it's just really sloppy slang, and I've had to hang with some people who will gleefully refer to anyone to the right of Bernie Sanders as a fascist Nazi.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

[flagged]