The title’s a bit disingenuous, I know: this didn’t come out of nowhere. White supremacism is as American as Manifest Destiny and has been heavily intertwined with Nazism from its inception. That overlap with the Republican party, and their gradual slip into the extreme far-right, is evident.
But Seig Heils? Even the most dense among them must know that blatant Nazism hurts their legitimacy in the eyes of the public, even among MAGATs (as is evident right now if you peek at their echo chamber on Reddit). Surely they would have a much easier time pushing their rhetoric and establishing their agenda by keeping a purposeful distance from that sort of indefensible imagery and symbolism. How do they expect to keep cohesion in the military when you imply to the soldiers that they are Nazis now, seig heils and all.
Why Nazis?
Any theories as to where this is coming from? Follow the ketamine-fueled leader? A directive for operative Krasnov, from Putin himself, to implode the country? True Nazi beliefs among the Heritage Foundation, Proud Boys, etc? I just don’t understand how they thought this would fly. I don’t understand anything anymore lol.
an important historical note is that the Nazis drew a lot of their ideology and argumentation from the American eugenics movement, which has been a major undercurrent in America since the early 1900s and never went away
Hitle was a Mussolini fanboy. He got his ideas from Italy.
given the situation, An International History of Fascism, is overdue.
First up, they are not Nazis
Second, the left has been calling the right Nazis for decades. Heck, Bob Dole called George Bush a Nazi, and we all know that wasn’t accurate. https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-08-10/bob-dole-george-bush-and-historys-most-brutal-presidential-campaign-attacks
It only seems recent because you’re young and not aware of the history of the term.
It only seems recent because you’re young and not aware of the history of the term.
Did you miss that moment when Elon Musk did two Nazi salutes, in public, at the inauguration, and no one did anything about it?
This isn’t a “they’re calling everyone Nazis” moment. The Nazis are calling themselves Nazis and making it a public-facing symbol of the power they’ve gained.
Call it white nationalist, MAGA, or whatever. Giving it a different label does not change what it is, and that’s especially true when they start raising their arms Hitler-style on national television.
Honestly, no. I’ve spent too much of my limited time on this planet checking what lefties claim are Nazis. Not a single Nazi sighting has been real. I’ve stopped checking, it’s a waste of time.
Let me guess, he waved awkwardly, and now y’all are going to swear up and down it was a Nazi salute when the video shows otherwise?
Y’all shouldn’t cry wolf. Eventually there might actually be a wolf, and no one will believe you.
Second, the left has been calling the right Nazis for decades.
No comment about the word “feminazi”?
Literary Nazis get mention
So, you lose an election and suddenly democracy is fascism, and the choice others made by voting now doesn’t count, and voters are literally Nazis because you are an electoral minority now?
Is that what you guys are going with now?
Sheesh
Fascism shouldn’t be thought of as a static “thing” or an object of ideology. Peoples beliefs come from their environment. We are so individualized as a society that often we as progressives take “personal responsibility” too far, we buy the premise implicitly without realizing there are flaws with thinking in this way. Every logical system has flaws and contradictions, its proven mathematically though I think some systems are more rigorous and based on evidence.
GWF Hegel’s philosophy of Right was written in 1820, and influenced political thought ever since. Liberalism was still in it’s revolutionary phase and theories about it were still fairly new, the Wealth of Nations was written just 50 years before, and Karl Marx was like two when it was released, although it would serve as the basis for much of his work analyzing the hidden relationships of Capital, and ethical political philosophy on the whole.
The book is the closest I think someone can honestly get to an actual “horseshoe theory” because not only did it influence the left but it also influenced the far right. Hegel, using the works of other great liberal philosophers such as Locke and Kant, who Hegel was always working to surpass, applied his dialectical philosophical methods to the writings of liberalism.
What he discovered was a natural tendency toward what we would calll fascism. Like he prefigured fascism by 100 years. He wasn’t a fascist, there was no such thing. He was just exploring the ideas of this revolutionary philosophy, one that purported to liberate the mind, body and spirit, and discovered the oppressive seeds which might grow into something quite different.
This isn’t to call liberals fascists, I’m a communist and 20th century communism had a lot of problems, to put it mildly. I would say confidently that progressive liberals are not crypto fash, in fact the term “progressive” is a typically left-Hegelian ideal, in that it describes human progress and development as the subject of history. Instead it challenges the idea of the liberatory nature of private property, a key component of liberal thought. Of course this is all depending how you look at it, right-Hegelians see this same formulation as proof of the inevitability of their ideas and justification for their actions.
You’re getting a lot of different opinions about this stuff so I’m trying to make sort of a different point about philosophy, history and action. Other reading for a deep dive on fascism is the essay Ur Fascism by Umberto Eco (great empirical analysis, but the least scientific IMO), Trotsky’s pamphlet Fascism: What it is and How to Fight It, and HA Roy’s Fasism, Its Philosophy, Professions and Practice.
In a way, fascism has always been there below the surface, informally shifting the sands of history until it was formalized in the early 20th century. I don’t think you can have a society based on private property without some elements of fascism somewhere. Mostly “western democracies” will outsource their extreme cruelty to other countries where it doesn’t affect their citizens.
But in summary, Fascism is the realization of the contradictions inherent in liberal ideology, its liberalism turned inside-out, with all its appearances of justice and freedom cut away, leaving only the logic of expansion and domination that most liberal democracies do their best to hide. This is how fascists are able to hide in our society, their individual beliefs are not completely unpalatable to centrists and conservatives who have also started to dispense with justice and freedom in the interest of national greatness. Its what makes their beliefs so malleable, and its also why liberals have such a hard time defining it. But fascism isn’t an individual’s beliefs, if it was it would be just regular bog-standard chauvinism. Fascism is a mass movement which will use charismatic leaders amenable to their politics to rally the masses.
In our society, the middle classes are the “battery” for fascism. Middle classes are constantly under attack under capitalism and the individuals often feel this and become paranoid (doomsday prepping, etc.,) and this paranoia and real social pressure to produce or be wiped out, the fear from the constant threat of precarity and uncertainty fits hand in glove with the aims and means of fascists.
The entire problem with this conversation is that “liberal” has become an overloaded term. The concept was originally anti-feudal so the context of “private property” was very different from the industrial context Marx would eventually add. You can see this in the US and French revolutionary writers who are clearly more focused on the idea of “just laws” being a product of political self determination which requires individual liberty. And now we have modern liberal progressives who have extended that idea to a kind of radical inclusivity, and modern leftists who even got as far as suggesting it is a critical aspect of the post scarcity state.
But Hegel is controversial for a reason. Elements of the Philosophy of Right is filled with equivocation and even Hegel’s personal grudges. This is why everyone just projects their own ideas into Hegel’s writing - because he spends a lot of time not saying much. Also I do not recall the conclusion being that free men inevitably create autocracy. I recall it being more like "I haven’t figured out what comes next for the state "
Fascism is extremism of the center. It’s base are the small business owners, petit bourgeois, the pickup driving contractor.
When the Hail Hydra comes out a little too early so they call it a speech impediment.
It came from LIBERALS who demanded that we protect the free speech of Nazis while they were building their death camps.
he’s trolling leftists on twitter who use the term nazi to refer to racists in general
Nah, fuck off. If you act like a Nazi “trolling” you’re still a piece of shit. If you defend it? Yeah, you’re also a piece of shit. Notice, I didnt call you a Nazi. I disagree with the practice in general, and you’d probably take it as a complement.
why do you think I’m defending it?
i keep forgetting that this is basically Reddit. if you don’t “edit: i hate elon musk lol” everyone assumes the worst and downvotes you into the ground. what a stupid community.
everyone knows the guy is a troll and that he hates leftists. im pretty sure my assessment is correct.
Nah, fuck off.
fuck you too, dumbass
If someone calls you a Nazi and you lean into it, you’re a white supremacist bag of shit. Not a Nazi, mind, but just a racist piece of shit. And likewise, if you defend doing it as “just a troll, to own the libz”.
A private citizen should be allowed make whatever gesture they want. And I am free to point out that makes him a racist shitbag, along with his defenders. Like you.
He, however, is no longer acting soley as a private citizen, so it is much worse. Go ahead and defend that now. He also voiced support for AfD. You know, the German far-right party. The one that is the spiritual successor to the actual Nazis. I’m sure you’ll argue that was just a troll and hes really a swell guy, right?
why do you think im defending him? are you even reading my comments? man, honestly I think you’re a moron. you are a real problem
Someone that bought his place at the white house did it and didn’t get shot by a flamethrower, so all the Nazis hiding literally just below the surface feel ok to talk a little louder now.
Honestly, with sufficient evidence it should be legal to kill them in public and receive any inheritance from their wills. I don’t typically enjoy personally hunting people down typically, but these aren’t people.
One comment blatantly in favor of it Goodies any human rights in my opinion. It’s the only way. They may say it too (vermin, poisoning the blood, etc) but they’ve only ever been right about themselves.
I would give a pedo human rights before them. And that’s saying something.
They’re just rabid animals, and I defy anyone to give a reason they deserve a single second of life at all, for any reason, in any context. Maybe with the one exception of using them to find gatherings of others. But that’s it.
Dehumanization is always a bad idea.
You right. I shouldn’t have been commenting shit yesterday. I’m honestly not like that, I just let this news vortex get in my head and I boil over sometimes.
They’re such an easy target to get righteous anger over. Part of be realized it even as I typed it, but I should’ve just deleted it like you would trash a handwritten note just to get it out of your system.
Right Wing did deluded me for years (almost at 10 years since I started leaving that culture behind). Nazis kinda combine the hatred I have for them specifically and lately it’s combined with my triggers for how right wing garbage poisoned me for so long that it doesn’t just boil over, it goes from soup cooking temperature to a nuclear reactor when they’re in lockstep.
And of course the blind rage reverts back to it’s familiar roots, and I fucking destroy what I’m trying to be with what I say.
Good on you for calling it out.
Just a lack of Nazi hunters.
It’s always been there. Trump just told them it’s ok to be nazi in public? He’ll protect them. Because he is a damn nazi.
They’ve been doing Zeig Heils for years.
I wish I could find the documentary, about a woman who dated some alt right weirdo and he started taking her to like Turning Point USA meetings and other groups meetings and she describes how the first time she did Zeig Heils, and they just did this shit like it was normal. She describes going to a book burning, thinking it was a joke, and then it was like an actual book burning.
It’s all nudge nudge wink wink. They’re doing Nazi salute because they are Nazis.
Edit: Believe the documentary is called "White Right: Meeting the Enemy." Available here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ0rhh5mbnA
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Cognitive dissonance is a lot of it.
Maybe don’t actually realize they are Nazis. I like to talk to these types and describe the events of the Boston Massacre (kid got shot after throwing snowballs and possibly rocks at the police, then a riot broke out and some rioters got shot) the Boston Tea Party (government raised taxes in an obvious money grab, so a bunch of protesters broke into a warehouse and destroyed a bunch of private property). Get them to take the side of the British, then tell them which events I’m talking about. They know from school, hopefully, at least as to those two events, how they felt about them when they learned about them, and you can see the dissonance contorting their faces.
Others are Nazi sympathizers. I knew a dude who felt that the coolest thing he owned was a Nazi dagger from WW2. It was his “everyday carry” knife. Only visible as a Nazi knife if you looked at the hilt. He thought the Holocaust was a ln exaggeration and that the Nazis had a lot of good ideas that would translate well to today’s problems; he thought Jews controlled the media, that blacks and browns were taking jobs from better qualified white people (hated “DEI”). He was delusional, living in a world that wasnt real. Brainwashed. Maybe not his fault, but he’s responsible for his behaviors. If an alt right style cleansing or war breaks out, he’ll be the first non-open Nazi to get excited to kill minorities.
Then there are actual Nazis. Two types. Dumb, racist poor people who feel comforted by Nazi rhetoric. And intelligent, wealthy people, who want to steal all wealth from minorities and send them to ghettos (or worse), so their companies and investments have no competition and their personal wealth may go unhindered. These are people who want to use racism to bring about oligarchy and a new age of imperialism, and they recognize the oath of least resistance is a friendly dictator, brought to power based on Nazi rhetoric. This is Musk and Bannon. The people who now feel emboldened to do Nazi salute in public, as a homage to the group above, who might get caught up doing them in private.
My hot take, anyway.
Reminds me of the Rule of Goats:
If you fuck a goat ironically, you’re still fucking a goat. Same goes with ironic Hitler salutes.
Reminds me of McGregor the Goat Fucker.
Nobody called him McGregor the bridge builder, despite a long and successful career as a bridge engineer. But he fucked one goat…
Sorry to be pedantic, but it’s “Sieg Heil”.
Sieg means Victory, so it means “Hail victory”.
we’re in the end stages of a campaign by assholes to overthrow our deomocracy.
It’s been getting waged for decades. they’ve been doing this shit for years, behind closed doors and they now feel comfortable with being nazis in public.
MAGA has always been run by nazis; the blatancy came from winning the last election.
So according to Putin, Nazis in Ukraine is not ok and must be stopped. Nazis in the US government is ok and while we’re at it let’s meet them and make a deal.
Fuck Nazis and fuck Putin.
Oh my, you had me just now realize: As long as US aid is coming into the Ukraine, putin is finally right: he is, technically, fighting against nazis - US.
Suddenly? Where have you been the last 20 years?
In the 1930’s the robber Barron legacy wall street families got together and hatched a plot. A fascist coup attempt to overthrow FDR and install a fascist wall street /Military industry controlled regime that was modeled after hitler’s Germany. Wall street mostly unanimously supported the third reich. They funneled money to him, as well as equipment, put him in the cover of tine magazine as 1938 person of the year and held a rally for him at Madison square garden. The usa didn’t want anything to do with the great war till it became evident that Germany was likely to lose so they allowed pearl harbor to happen to give the US carte Blanche via public support to enter the global theater then we pillaged their military secrets and gave asylum to many war criminals we deemed useful like werner von braun and many others (project paperclip) But anyway Prescott bush was one of these new money wall street people who spearheaded this coup attempt. They propositioned one of the most highly decorated generals in us history- smedly butler, author of the short autobiographical/ social critique war is a racket, to head this coup and take the white house by storm with several thousand military veterans. Butler played along until the last minute when he blew the whistle and testified to congress and the house un-American activities committee/ HUAC who deemed his testimony credible but were very likely paid off and did nothing to hold those responsible accountable. Now fast forward 90 or so years to today and the main architect of this coup’s son and grandson were both sitting presidents (one was cia director and very likely involved in the JFK assassination and was in Dallas on November 22, 1963) and all branches if the us government are now obviously controlled by the intersection of wall street and industrial military power whom also simultaneously control the press and use it to disseminate propaganda that the general public are easily swayed by in major part due to nixon and Reagan cutting education standards at the recommendation of their mutual advisor roger a freeman who said an educated proletariat was a major threat to their movement. Those two administrations were some of the most damaging to the American proletariat and did so much to dismantle the progress that the civil rights and labor rights movement did in conjunction with the new deal policies of fdr that allowed the middle class yo thrive for 3 decades until hyper inflation reared its ugly head and gave way to the modern age of austerity in America our government and their mouthpiece puppets are lying about. They intentionally devalued the us dollar while adequately adjusting corporate executive pay to compensate for this reduction in value to eradicate the workers and civil rights progress of the 40’s 50’s and 60’s and sent a majority of us manufacturing jobs to the third world to cut labor costs by 90-95%+
For the first 172 years of the us dollar as a standardized currency the price of gold only fluctuated 95% from $18 to $35 when FDR temporarily suspended the gold standard made it illegal for the rich to hoard gold and bought up the majority of the supply then revalued it from $19 to $35 an ounce so he could double the money supply and repair the damage done by the great depression. But since nixon permanently ended the gold standard in 1971 the price of gold has increased 8400% from $35 to $2900 today. This is directly in tandem with the increase in the national debt from $400 billion in 1971 to 36 trillion and change today or toughly 9200% meanwhile wall street uses the IMF/ world bank inflation figures to lie to us about the extent that the working class has been looted right before our eyes. the inflation statistics they parrot are based on consumer price index which is an inadequate and inaccurate measure of inflation since it does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply which the price of gold does by design. So that means the minimum wage in the US has lost between 84-93% of its value in 54 years which in 1968-71 earned the equivalent value of 95 ounces of gold a year which would be $130/hr or $270,000 annually at a 40 hour a week salary of $1.60/hr even in 1950 75¢/hr was 60/hr today or 125,000 and in 1956 it was $1/hr or $82/hr/$168,000 today. This is why one adult working a full time job at any time from 1945-1975 could supply a family of four with enough left to save for their two kids college, their retirement (if they weren’t part of the 50% of workers with a pension) own 2 or 3 used cars or one new car(which cost under $1000 at the time) and go on a modest family vacation once a year, today it would take both parents working 80 hours a week with overtime (which the current fascist regime wants to eradicate) at a base pay of$30 an hour to come close to the same quality of life. The American working class were turned to wage slaves and most were so poorly educated they didn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand this reality. Today 2/3 of workers live paycheck to paycheck with insufficient savings to cover a $500-1000 emergency expense. Most millennials and gen z will never own a home and have to work till they are too sick to do so or worse while hoping that social security, medicaid and food stamps are not destroyed/ defunded and or privatized so we can survive the end of our lives. This is the sad reality of america and anyone disagreeing with my assessment is choosing to believe the words of career liars who commit fraud regularly and with impunity and have fleeced the American people countless times while our tax dollars have gone to their tax breaks and bailouts so they can enjoy lifestyles of opulent luxury at our expense. Its time to MaGGA- make guillotines great again.
