this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2023
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Nazis aren't welcome here, best they learn that now rather than through a long process of being told by everyone else here to fuck off.
Telling Nazis to fuck off rarely leads to them actually fucking off, because they're Nazis.
If enough of the community makes it sufficiently clear that we're not going to let them peddle their Nazi bullshit unopposed, including by taking whatever moderator actions are possible to get rid of them, most of the Nazis will go somewhere else and we'll only have to deal with the typical number of Nazis for an internet platform rather than become inundated with them. Making them unwelcome by any means necessary is the name of the game.
then we will scrape them off our shoe as we always do with dog shit
If enough of the community makes it sufficiently clear that we're not going to let them peddle their Nazi bullshit unopposed, including by taking whatever moderator actions are possible to get rid of them, most of the Nazis will go somewhere else and we'll only have to deal with the typical number of Nazis for an internet platform rather than become inundated with them. Making them unwelcome by any means necessary is the name of the game.
I like how you make it sound like they're a type of vermin.
T-they are..
English is hard
What's your definition of a Nazi? A member of a national socialist party? I want to understand what is being banned before it's banned.
My criteria for what makes "a Nazi" are something like this.
A belief that race is an immutable genetic concept, that reproducing outside one's race is inherently wrong, and that some races are inherently superior to others; most often the superior groups are "white", while the "inferior" groups include Africans, Jews and travelling people
Reverence for cultural "tradition", real or imagined, with any departure from these traditions classified as "degenerate" and dangerous to society. For example, a belief that avant-garde art is immoral and without value because it doesn't root itself in what are popularly perceived to be the artistic traditions of "the west", a neat line from Greek marble statues to Wagner.
Hatred of diversity, seeing it as a plague that rots a society. For example, the belief that women are unfit to hold a social position outside of motherhood, that non-heterosexual sexualities are "degenerate", that allowing people from another race to exist in your race's society inevitably leads to that society's destruction, that gender as a concept is a "mental illness" because only two biological sexes exist and each biological sex has a set-in-stone role demanding a certain presentation and certain values, that societies which follow one religion must not allow followers of another religion to exist within it.
Heavy use of absolutism. Everything is either wholly good or wholly bad. Nothing can be a mix of good and bad, or neutral. And everything is a matter of utmost urgency. Anything that is "bad" is an existential threat to all that is "good" and must be immediately and utterly annihilated.
An authoritarian outlook. Anything opposed by a Nazi must be forbidden by the full force of the law. There is no space for differences of opinion, or a nuanced debate, or reviewing the facts. If they oppose something, whether it's big or small - the use of marijuana, reformative justice programs, abortion, media with female protagonists - it must be banned under pain of death.
Violence. To a Nazi, the use of violence isn't an escalation, but the norm. They have no qualms about beating people to death simply for espousing an opposing view, or even just for existing if some aspect of their existence offends their beliefs. Likewise, their rhetoric often alludes to the indiscriminate or nonchalant, even gleeful use of deadly force - "physical removal", "showers", etc.
Shameless hypocrisy. The people who say "facts not feelings" as a rebuttal are often the same people whose beliefs are motivated almost entirely by feelings, and will happily mock others for trying to use evidence in their arguments instead of simply saying "it's common sense". They will shame someone for being rude and aggressive while also calling them the N word and telling them that on "the day of the rope", they'll be among the dead.
Veneration of strong leaders and mocking of "weakness". Consensus-builders are seen as spineless "cucks", while people who enforce their every arbitrary whim with total force are held up as "based" exemplars of good leadership and models to be emulated. People who are comfortably being themselves in ways that aren't conventionally masculine are addressed with slurs and told to kill themselves while ignorant, bullying asshats are applauded for "rustling jimmies".
You can meet all of these criteria without being a member of a National-Socialist party, or even identifying as a Nazi, but if you do meet most or all of them, your ideology can be pretty confidently described as Nazi-like.
By the way, cheers to you for actually answering the question. I've seen "BAN NAZIS" before, but I haven't really understood what the requestors are looking to ban, and when questioned they seem to disappear quickly.
This seems pretty well thought out.
I'm a little confused by: "A belief that race is an immutable genetic concept". If I was born in Spain and my whole family has lived there for centuries, am I not Spanish / a Spaniard?
I'd agree that saying things like "all Spaniards are terrible at math" is racist, but I don't see how one's race is mutable in this fashion.
Spanish would be a good description of your ethnic background in that situation, but there are quite a number of ethnic identities within Spain as well - the Basque, Galicians and Catalans, just to name a few. "Spanish" isn't a racial monolith. There would be plenty of people whose ethnic background looks quite different to yours but who are no less Spanish.
What I mean in that statement is that Nazis believe that "race" - as in "Germanic", "Hispanic", "Black" (they tend to lump all sub-Saharan Africans together), "Middle Eastern" - is a useful way of classifying people, and that substantial differences in things like intelligence and physiology between humans are primarily the result of these categorisations.
But none of that is mutable, is it?
Your DNA isn't going to change, but those ethnic groups are transient things rather than an inherent feature of reality. An ethnic group is ultimately a relative thing. Some "African-American" people might be genetically closer to the African people from whom their ancestors came than the other ethnic groups living in America, but they're not simply "African" - they are a separate diaspora. Those ethnic groups change their makeups over time.
It's not like, say, elements. 1,000 years from now, the average genetic makeup of any given ethnic group will be observably different from how it is today, but a Hydrogen atom will still be defined in exactly the same way as now. Nazis believe that races are a concrete, reified structure that doesn't shift over time - it is a "pure" and "natural" state that becomes degraded and diluted by what they term miscegenation, rather than a fuzzy construct that changes over time.
Let's say you were born in Spain and your whole family has lived there for centuries, but your family are black - say, some of your ancestors arrived from North Africa long ago. I would still call you Spanish, but a Nazi would call you African (or more likely some kind of slur). They care about the colour of your skin more than your actual background. Likewise, no matter how many generations your family has lived in a country or how well they pass, Nazis assert that if any of your ancestors was a Jew, you are also a Jew, and that as a Jew, you are inherently inferior to non-Jews and consequently a racial contaminant.
I wonder how anyone stereotyping individuals based on far-distant ancestors square up these beliefs with hominid evolution. I guess the answer is "they don't".
That or some pseudoscientific bullshit. Or just lying. Plenty of Nazis call the "out of Africa" theory politically-correct propaganda and assert without evidence that white people are a different species from sub-Saharan Africans.
Just adding to this, following this same supposedly biological argument that advocates for a natural and morally correct path for the furthering of genetic lineages, Nazis persecuted homosexuality, bisexuality and trans people as a national policy, shutting down sexology research institutes, literally burning years of scientific advancements, and revoking official acknowledgements the Weimar Republic granted transgender people. It's often forgotten, but the inherent homophobia, biphobia and transphobia of neonazis and adjacent movements is not a recent development at all: https://www.advocate.com/news/holocaust-lgbtq-victims-german-parliament
They may be talking about ethnicity vs race? Google says in basic terms, race describes physical traits, and ethnicity refers to cultural identification. Race may also be identified as something you inherit, whereas ethnicity is something you learn.
So ethnicity is certainly mutable
My criteria for what makes "a Nazi" are something like this.
A belief that race is an immutable genetic concept, that reproducing outside one's race is inherently wrong, and that some races are inherently superior to others; most often the superior groups are "white", while the "inferior" groups include Africans, Jews and travelling people
Reverence for cultural "tradition", real or imagined, with any departure from these traditions classified as "degenerate" and dangerous to society. For example, a belief that avant-garde art is immoral and without value because it doesn't root itself in what are popularly perceived to be the artistic traditions of "the west", a neat line from Greek marble statues to Wagner.
Hatred of diversity, seeing it as a plague that rots a society. For example, the belief that women are unfit to hold a social position outside of motherhood, that non-heterosexual sexualities are "degenerate", that allowing people from another race to exist in your race's society inevitably leads to that society's destruction, that gender as a concept is a "mental illness" because only two biological sexes exist and each biological sex has a set-in-stone role demanding a certain presentation and certain values, that societies which follow one religion must not allow followers of another religion to exist within it.
Heavy use of absolutism. Everything is either wholly good or wholly bad. Nothing can be a mix of good and bad, or neutral. And everything is a matter of utmost urgency. Anything that is "bad" is an existential threat to all that is "good" and must be immediately and utterly annihilated.
An authoritarian outlook. Anything opposed by a Nazi must be forbidden by the full force of the law. There is no space for differences of opinion, or a nuanced debate, or reviewing the facts. If they oppose something, whether it's big or small - the use of marijuana, reformative justice programs, abortion, media with female protagonists - it must be banned under pain of death.
Violence. To a Nazi, the use of violence isn't an escalation, but the norm. They have no qualms about beating people to death simply for espousing an opposing view, or even just for existing if some aspect of their existence offends their beliefs. Likewise, their rhetoric often alludes to the indiscriminate or nonchalant, even gleeful use of deadly force - "physical removal", "showers", etc.
Shameless hypocrisy. The people who say "facts not feelings" as a rebuttal are often the same people whose beliefs are motivated almost entirely by feelings, and will happily mock others for trying to use evidence in their arguments instead of simply saying "it's common sense". They will shame someone for being rude and aggressive while also calling them the N word and telling them that on "the day of the rope", they'll be among the dead.
Veneration of strong leaders and mocking of "weakness". Consensus-builders are seen as spineless "cucks", while people who enforce their every arbitrary whim with total force are held up as "based" exemplars of good leadership and models to be emulated. People who are comfortably being themselves in ways that aren't conventionally masculine are addressed with slurs and told to kill themselves while ignorant, bullying asshats are applauded for "rustling jimmies".
You can all of these criteria without being a member of a National-Socialist party, or even identifying as a Nazi, but if you do meet most or all of them, your ideology can be pretty confidently described as Nazi-like.
But I thought a nazi was anyone I disagreed with.
Man, being thoughtful and specific seems like a lot of work.
Yeah well it's really much easier to call someone a Nazi as an umbrella term for such indivuals rather than some scientific term no one really understands. It's kinda actually taking from the playbook they use themselves: associate something with a negative connotation.
Let me guess. Trump and people who like him are Nazis to you?
No. Trump isn’t really an ideologue. He’s just a grifter.
But trump publicly during a debate told a Christian nationalist terrorist organization convicted of insurrection to “stand by and stand back” as if he commands them, and as if they work on his behalf.
I have zero love for Trump or his dick riders. I'm just annoyed when every time somebody posts something about "Nazis" it ends up being about idiot Trumpers so we just dilute the word to mean somebody we think is mean or has the wrong opinions.
I think it’s obvious when people say “nazis” they’re being lazy and saying fascist, bigoted, ultra nationalist, transphobic, Christian zealot-ed, islamophobic, chauvinistic, etc.
On the internet with short posts people don’t feel like typing that all out. So no, they’re not all literal nazis. But they’re very nazi adjacent. And the online communities are even more open about it than Trump is.
If you’d prefer I can go point by point I how trump and his platform are all those things. Just let me know. It would be pretty easy, but I think it’s obvious when you look at each aspect individually.
Edit:
Fascist: marching on the capitol to prevent the certification of a democratic vote. Literal insurrectionist. Convicted of sedition. Just like Mussolini Marcia su Roma.
Ultra nationalist: I mean I don’t feel like I need to do this one. It’s his entire platform. They’re not afraid to admit this.
Bigoted: Mexicans are rapists. Massive blue lives matter movement right after a very public murder by the police. The Central Park 5. Trump losing civil cases where he avoided renting to selling homes to black people. Promoting the idea, baselessly, that Obama, the first black president, is disqualified because he’s not American enough. That’s he’s a Muslim African born foreigner.
Transphobic: pretty much every red state has passed anti trans laws. They’re calling trans people pedophiles on Fox News. DeSantis entire platform (which Trumpers overwhelmingly support) is based on anti trans policy.
Christian zealotry: passing laws based on the Bible. Anti abortion laws passed in states literally citing the Bible. gay marriage opposition based on the Bible. Open call for declaring the US a Christian nation, and teaching Christianity in schools. Having prayer in schools.
Islamophobia: banning Muslims from entering the country. Using terrorism as an excuse, when every single politically motivated murder in the US last year was committed by right wing perpetrators. Birthirism.
Sexism/Chauvinism: that’s the proud boys stated ethos. Trump is extremely open about this in how he speaks. How he constantly calls non white states shitholes, how he always criticizes women for their looks etc. Trump being found liable of sexual assault. Trump constantly attacking the victims. Openly bragging on tape about sexual assault.
The thing is, every thing I can say about trump personally on this, the online communities are 10x more open about it.
Trump has the politics that gets him the most personal benefit. I think everything he does follows from that, and being an actual boomer.
That doesn’t disqualify him and his base from being called nazi like. People aren’t calling him a nazi like because of what happened in WWII. They’re calling him nazi like for how he’s similar to how Hitler behaved when he was coming to power. The rise of Hitler and Mussolini has a lot of similarities to how trump behaves now. But his online fringer base, like the one we are discussing, is even more similar.
I find it interesting that in a thread entirely about Nazis, and nothing but Nazis, you heard Trump.
Make of that what you will
Because the instance being discussed is basically TheDonald and related ideologies. Because you all don't seem to understand what reality is.
Not necessarily, but he and people who like him are dumbasses that (at the very least) enable Nazis. To be fair, it doesn’t matter what you call them. Instead of Nazis you could say Troglodytes and everyone would know who you talk about, them included.
Only just got a notification from this, but anyway, I gave my definition for what I consider "a Nazi" here. Make of it what you will.