Comment by KirinDave
9 years ago
I understand in these tumultuous times, life comes at you fast. Let me give you a quick guide on how to recognize a real nazi. Is your subject:
- Waving a flag with symbols associated with nazi imagery?
- Deliberately using the "heil"?
- Chanting, "Jews will not replace us!" while making a salute?
- Wearing a conical white hood, open or closed, and white (and possibly scarlet) robes at torchlit rallies?
- Calling themselves neo-nazis?
Who is actually confused? Are you?
That's not the problem. The problem is that for many, the years and years of calling your run-of-the-mill Republicans and whatnot "nazis" has diluted the term, just like GP mentioned.
So, now, when people try to get others to understand that the Nazis we now have are almost exactly the same we had in Germany way back then, people don't really make that connection (even if they say they do) on emotional level. Instead, they associate the self-professed Neo-Nazis with the "nazi Republicans" and the not-really-a-nazi-alt-righters that have been cried at in the 2000's.
Source: many acquaintances who are clearly very, very confused on the matter.
One would think the literal swastikas would clear that up. These people aren't being terribly subliminal anymore.
One would think that, for the people calling Republicans "nazis" in the 2000's, the absence of swastikas and Nazi Hails should have cleared things up. But they did it anyway.
People are not simple creatures, and things like crying the wolf actually do confuse us pretty easily.
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Sounds like an idiot anti-semite to me
Sounds like a Klan member to me
They're all deplorable, and I'm sure there's a great deal of overlap between groups, but why sacrifice accuracy by calling them Nazis?
They're calling themselves Nazis. They wave flags, with Swastikas.
I do understand that GWB wasn't a Nazi. And maybe there was a bit too much wolf-crying. But even if the boy has had this annoying habit at crying "wolf" every day–does that render you unable to recognise a wolf when he's staring you in the eyes?
Who is "they" in this sentence? The original comment was giving a hypothetical subject.
Someone waving a flag with a Swastika, non-ironically, yes, they're a Nazi. Someone calling themself a Nazi? Yes, they're a Nazi.
Holocaust-denier and notable anti-semite and crazy person David Icke? A delusional idiot, but not a nazi. KKK members who believed National Socialism was still socialism and battled Nazis in WWII? Racist fuckheads, but not Nazis. Francoist Faciscts? Probably not Nazis, although I'd forgive you for making a strong case for it.
We have words and phrases like white supremacist, anti-semite, racists, and Nazi. They all mean things, and there's plenty of overlap. I'm not sure what we gain by mislabelling one group as another, other than opening ourselves up to accusations we're crying wolf.
Wellll... I mean I gave a list of things to watch for in a collective group. If a collective group is doing all these things, on camera, proudly... you're probably safe calling them Neo-Nazis and "Nazi" for short.
While the Klan has a long and inglorious tradition, it merges seamlessly with the pro-Nazi elements of the US in world war 2, for the most part. And Nazis are what folks had in mind when they say, "Anti-semite".
So I'm curios if YOU were ever confused. Or if this is for the rhetorical masses (who by and large don't seem too confused once they see a picture, that I can discern).
If a collective group is doing any of the other things you've mentioned, I'd say they're pretty definitely a Nazi.
I don't think that's accurate. Overlap, yes. I'm not sure what muddying the water between different hate groups achieves.
I don't think that's even slightly accurate. Anti-semitism is a (terrible) feature of many many ideologies, from ISIS to mediaeval Iberian Catholicism, to people who believe that we're all controlled by shape-shifting masonic lizard aliens.
Yes. Is David Duke a Nazi? Milo Ywhatever-his-name-is? Gamergate people? The_Donald?
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The problem is that real Nazis will not do anything of the above. What you describe is just the behavior of the plebs and not of the leaders.