Honestly I don’t know what’s going on in the USA. You’re so proud of your “democracy and freedom” yet one of your 2 political parties is able to effectively dismantle the entire thing in less than a decade. You’re now one election away from being a christofascist state.
…and yet you’re all just going to work tomorrow. You’re all doing pretty much nothing except “make sure you vote in 2024.” So I guess every 4 years you’re going to be one election away from a literal Nazi takeover?
I don’t know. Riot or something. I have no idea how you’re all coping so hard.
Conversely, I agree with the general point of the post, but not with the absurd likening of (amoral and spineless) US Republicans to “literal Nazis”. Apparently I am in the minority here. Most contributors either know nothing about 20th-century European history or think it’s fine to throw around such pointlessly inflammatory nonsense. I think they should either do some studying or grow up.
I don’t think it undermines anything to liken people who parrot 1-to-1 nazi rhetoric to nazis. Especially if you’re referring to maga republicans which have taken many steps past dogwhistle and into stochastic terrorism and promoting violence against minority groups. Yeah, of the 200 or so house republicans, only between 5-10 of them are ‘actual nazis’ in the sense that people mean, but those are also the current face of the republican party, who people actually know the names of.
It really isn’t so absurd to compare a group of people actively working against the rights of women and minorities, who actively staged an insurrection attempt, who want to install a christofascist dictatorship with their ‘red ceasar’ in the coming years to the nazis.
Yeah most of them aren’t literal members of the nazi party, only a few have been found with memorabilia, but at what point is the difference still worth fighting over? When all our rights are gone and we have no means with which to fight back?
If a group of people speak like nazis, act like nazis, plan to act in future like nazis, and are supported heavily by open nazis who demonstrate using literal nazi symbology… Then what is it you’re trying to prove by saying that they aren’t?
What you are saying almost seems to be like when racist people get upset at being called racist, not because they are or aren’t, but because they see it as some sort of grave insult instead if a description of their presentation.
Well we are obviously not going to agree and that’s okay. After all, we’re not living in a totalitarian system!
Which is my point. The word “Nazi” means something. Sure, not necessarily “member of arbitrary party calling itself Nazi”. It means someone advocating a totalitarian, genocidal version of fascism (where all those other three words also have meanings). That is something far, far worse than anything ever suggested by even those 5 Republicans you refer to. In fact it’s something that doesn’t really exist in today’s world, because we beat it so thoroughly, even in people’s minds. But perhaps it could emerge again. Perhaps.
If you think those 5 nasty Republicans, let alone most Republicans, are “literal Nazis” in any sense whatsoever, then we are going to have to disagree. Words have meanings.
IMO the word “Nazi” in political discourse has become like the word “fuck” in general discourse: a banal linguistic intensifier that’s become devalued by overuse, as you’re doing here. Possibly with the added benefit of making the speaker feel morally righteous (just speculation!). Someone who used to be a xenophobe is now a racist, whatever they claim (real racists don’t deny it). And someone who probably hates trans people (though denies it) was once a bigot, or a chauvinist, and now they are a Literal Nazi.
Do you think Nazis advocated for totalitarianism and genocide before they came to power? It was gradual and dog whistled, just like those 5 to 10 Republicans are doing today.
I’d say the only thing that has been so thoroughly beaten into people’s minds is what you’re having trouble getting past; the myth that the Nazis went full insane before they had total power.
The truth is that it was just like today: demonizing all minorities and blaming them for all of society’s problems while downplaying the calls for, and acts of, violence.
We’re seeing 1920 to 1932 Nazi party, attempted takeover and all, and those of us who see it for what it is are trying to stop them from becoming post-1932 Nazi party, the one you’re afraid of.
Sure, the slippery slope to insanity is real. Germany had an educated society, it wasn’t meant to be possible. I know all that.
But no, I don’t see Nazism happening in America in the 2020s. Because 1930 was not “just like” today. There’s been no recent catastrophic war trauma. There’s no mass unemployment without social insurance. Scientific racism is not the trendy new theory of the day. Millions of people are not talking about minorities the way they openly talked about Jews in the 1920s (quite the opposite: a big section of America is gripped by a quasi-religious fervor which turns minority power dynamics upside down).
And anyway, America is not Germany, and was not Germany even back then. Perhaps something like Italian fascism might have broken through in America without FDR, maybe. But Nazism was never possible in libertarian America, the political culture was just not there. And so it’s certainly not there today.
I am not as ignorant as you think I am, and I see that there’s a big problem. For one, a large minority of young people don’t even claim to care about democracy any more.
But Trumpist Republicans are not “literal nazis” and whatever’s coming is not going look anything like Nazism. At worst it will look like a pale version of what’s already happening in places with less strong liberal traditions than America. For example Brazil, Turkey, Philippines, India, Poland. Whatever you call that, it’s nothing like Nazis or Nazism.
Semi-ontopic addendum: I am disagreeing with you and the other person respectfully and (I hope) thoughtfully, and getting downvoted for my trouble. Downvoting makes my comment less visible. Silencing someone solely for their opinion, is that not a form of the fascism that people here claim to abhor so much? Personally, I never do this to others, and every downvote I get for expressing my view in good faith puts me one step closer to leaving Lemmy, which apparently is no better than that other place after all.