@jeffzugale @cstross You're assuming it's axiomatic...

@jeffzugale @cstross You're assuming it's axiomatic that nazis are bad.

Being a nazi is one of those simple, obvious, and wrong solutions to an insecurity management problem about having lower social value than you can stand having.

(Generally speaking, if you have the capacity to fix that problem yourself you don't have the problem in the first place. This awkward fact doesn't help with the general tractability of the entirely real issue.)

Like 3 November at 21:35 | Wall-to-wall | Open on canada.masto.host

8 comments

Jeff Zugale

@graydon @cstross are you fucking shitting me with that first statement?

3 November at 21:36 | Open on mastodon.art

Graydon

@jeffzugale @cstross Not in the slightest.

You can argue that it _ought_ to be axiomatic that nazis are bad, but this very obviously isn't the case considered across the population.

Trump's dad was at the American nazi rally in Madison Square Garden; there's a French far-right party that's hereditarily at least Vichy since Vichy, there's any number of people out there with completely voluntary swastika tattoos, and so on. About a third of the US electorate appears to fall into this category.

3 November at 21:44 | Open on canada.masto.host

Jeff Zugale

@graydon @cstross are you absolutely sure you want to step to me, in this thread, as a Nazi Apologist? Because here’s where I stand on the subject:

Meme: Fascism is not to be debated, it is to be SMASHED.

3 November at 21:50 | Open on mastodon.art

Füsilier Breitlinger

@jeffzugale The claim is not "Nazis aren't that bad", it is "Nazis exist, they don't see anything wrong with it, and they would see a course like that as an instruction manual, not a warning".

3 November at 22:00 | Open on infosec.exchange

Jeff Zugale

@barubary that was well-stated, thanks. I agree with this - in fact the person who gave me my current copy of the book has turned out to be a deeply racist elitist Republican- but you have to read past the chapter where they invade Russia, or you don’t get the lesson.

The fact that a third of the US thinks Nazis are just fine doesn’t validate it as in ideology. It indicates that they’re assholes who need to get taught the lesson again. To wit:

Werner Herzog with his quote “Dear America, you are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that 1/3 of your people would kill another 1/3, while 1/3 watches.”

3 November at 22:08 | Open on mastodon.art

Jeff Zugale

@barubary and my point is, why in hell does ANYONE think that this time, it will be different? On the left and center, people aren’t getting that, as @cstross has stated, NO ONE is safe. On the right/fascist side, why do they think that THIS time, it will work, and they’ll be able to cleanse the world and enslave everyone they don’t kill?

If they win and consolidate power, MILLIONS of people are going to die. That’s how it always works. This is what they do.

3 November at 22:19 | Open on mastodon.art

econads

@graydon @jeffzugale @cstross
Just because there's a lot of it, doesn't make it OK. We can understand why it happens, and that can come from suffering, but none of that excuses the thing itself.

The Front Nationale or whatever they're calling themselves these days is also not OK by the way.

4 November at 0:29 | Open on mendeddrum.org

Graydon

@econads @jeffzugale @cstross I entirely agree that just because there's a lot of it doesn't mean it's OK.

Quantity does constrain the effectiveness of responses, and some of the responses need to be directed at preventing replication irrespective of quantity.

4 November at 0:47 | Open on canada.masto.host