They have kinda always been a thing. Nazi’s were just one flavor of nationalist, after all.
Charles de Gaulle defined nationalism best: “Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.”
For most people, it’s extremely easy to blame others for problems of their own creation. By the same token, people who can’t see their own shortcomings will also usually latch on to leaders who are able to amplify that bias. For the Nazis, it was mostly against the jews.
Also, what you are seeing in the news is partially amplified by the news itself but also, politicians are getting more brazen in mustering the support of those groups. This has lead to people being a little more open about something that needs to stay taboo, IMHO.
These leaders all make the same promise:
Whatever is wrong in your life is not your fault, nor is it even the fault of random chance/fate/god/what have you. It not no one’s fault either. There is a clear, definable enemy called X. X is the problem, and if we just deal with X, then you will have the life you dream of. I will make sure X never hurts you again.
Another interesting property of fascists is how their “enemy” is described in lurid but contradicting ways that don’t make any sense when you think about it for more than half a second.
One minute, the “enemy” is described as weak, pathetic, disgusting, sub-human, sickly, cowardly, stupid little losers who can’t punch out of a wet paper bag. The next minute, the “enemy” is described as threatening, all-seeing, clever, oppressive, bold and brazen, powerful, influential, dominating the government, ruining people’s lives, etc.
It’s maddening. And some people are absolute suckers for it.
Like Schroedinger’s Immigrant. At all times he is stealing your job and a lazy, jobless, criminal.
Well shit, that’s a much shorter and better way to put it.
We need to spend more research funds observing these immigrants to collapse them into a single state!
You forgot cunning and plotting
Because we have been letting them run their mouths again without being afraid.
You wana know how to get them to shut the fuck up look up why nazis don’t go to punk shows anymore.
You want to get rid of them. You have 2 options 1 is illegal, and I can’t say what it is, and option 2 is through education and thearpy and them wanting to change.
A similar option that I’m willing to say is “see a nazi, punch a nazi.” I am anti-violence, but I don’t have a problem with people who punch nazis. Nazi principles are vile.
I suggested this many months ago and got a time out. Amazing how different each mod is.
If you see someone else punch a nazi, no you didn’t. That nazi fell.
Or hit a doorknob.
I can say what it is…beat the shit out of them. I probably won’t unless it came to war, and then I would use weapons instead.
Dude I live in Ohio and see the confederate flag on porches. OHIO!!! I’m so far north in Cleveland that only a lake seperates me from Canada!!!
We were NEVER part of the confederacy! And once you leave Cleveland area, into the rural farmlands, its all confederate flags and trump flags.
That should tell you everything you need to know.
Iowa here, same thing. This state has a very progressive history, but that’s being erased at lightning speed
See the same shit anytime I’m in PA and exit Philadelphia
Anyone now seeing how some people are slowly converting their house into like a campaign collage with these Trump banners printed on corrugated plastic.
Yes, and I live north of the Canadian border. They seem to think Trump is a viable alternative to Trudeau.
Was at the musuem in Gettysburg recently and the amount of Confederate flag hats/shirts I saw was wild. I’m sure the contents of the museum would’ve upset them if they could read
That should tell you everything you need to know.
That morons live everywhere.
There have always been susceptible idiots.
Nazi’s are just a byproduct of an eroding standard of living. When things are good and getting better, there just isn’t the fertile ground for that kind of ideology, even among the idiots.
When standard of living is on the decline? Anyone who gives a simple answer and a simple solution gets the attention of idiots.
It reminds me of and I don’t know where I read it at but there was this guy who was trying to sell his pet rock in Africa. And told the buyer it keeps lions away. The buyer asked how does it work. The seller simply told him you do not see any lions do you and the buyer bought it.
It could be a joke that’s been around forever, but I know it from The Simpsons: https://youtu.be/4GzMizVAl-0
It could be a joke that’s been around forever
FWIW, I think I remember Bert and Ernie doing this in Sesame Street, though I can’t seem to find a clip at the moment.
Because a specific group of populists ‘lost’, but populism still works and will continue to work wherever there is people in dire situations.
The more dire your situation is, the more you need a solution. And then someone telling you “it’s the fault of those other people”, that just offers up a real straightforward supposed solution.
Even if it’s pretty clear that it cannot possibly actually solve the real problem, the prospect of a mild improvement will have many going along and ignoring morals.
Fascism also thrives on fear. It’s not a coincidence that far-right populism grew massively during the pan.
it’s the fault of those other people
This is what is tho… There people who are directly at fault. The issue who is who fascist blame and how they won’t ever name their daddies is part of the problem… When in reality owner class pushing this shit are the ones causing the dire circumstances for the working class to begin with.
It is a clever tactic and has proven very effective at manipulating men with fragile egos.
Funny enough, fake news will never call out anything that would endanger economic interests of the owner class. Why would anyone take these clowns seriously?
If you think your dad was sent to fight against the Nazis for ideological opposition, i have bad news for you. Maybe he personally fought out of that motivation, but must countries at the time were either fascist themselves or on the edge to fascism.
If you look at the US there was the ongoing genocide against native Americans, the racial segregation, eugenics, despicable human experimentation carried out on minorities, concentration camps for Japanese during WW2… Even the pledge to the flag in the schools was something Hitler admired and copied. Until the German Nazis became unpopular in the US the pledge to the flag with done with the “Bellamy Salute” that is the same as the Nazi salute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellamy_salute
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The truth is, they never left.
What is different though is that after WW2 it was understood which social problems, in particular fucking over the lower and middle class, create the breeding ground for fascism to be successful. Since the 1980s with Thatcher and Reagan and then the neoliberal wave over Europe, we had 40 years of deliberately empowering fascism. Now they reap what they sew.
I have to differ on your last point. I don’t think capitalism is necessarily at fault, nor must the working/middle classes be struggling for fascism to emerge. If anything, quite the opposite. It is the better off countries that end up turning fascist. All fascist countries are/were first world countries, in various states of advanced development.
I think it would be more accurate to say that fascism is an extreme form of imperialism, because they are ultimately very similar sentiments. A more powerful group taking advantage in various ways, of a less powerful group. Now you could say, “it’s all the same thing”, capitalism, imperialism, fascism, it’s all the same “hierarchy is the ultimate source of evil dynamic”, but it seems to me that this just reduces all these concepts to absurdity.
Fascism is also on the rise because of improved technology for thought control / propaganda / public relations / advertising. Social media lets the worst of humanity band together and pool their energy.
But wealth inequality, both worse effective quality of life for the poor and increased economic power by the wealthy is I believe a main driver. Technology is just the tool. The ultra wealthy and their lackeys today have more power than ever and are more isolated and inundated with ideology that is basically insane.
I wonder if there are studies that show correlations between quality of life and fascism in different nations.
I don’t think capitalism is necessarily at fault, nor must the working/middle classes be struggling for fascism to emerge. If anything, quite the opposite. It is the better off countries that end up turning fascist. All fascist countries are/were first world countries, in various states of advanced development.
That’s not right, at least not for the fascist regimes in Europe that emerged prior to WW2. The countries where it happened (specifically Germany/Italy/Spain) had all seen civil unrest or even civil war in the recent past, they were hit hard by the global financial crisis in the twenties and had high unemployment and widespread poverty. This was the very thing the fascists used to ingratiate themselves to the public at large, by creating jobs through massive public building and rearmament projects.
By the way “first world countries” is post-WW2 terminology and didn’t originally have a connotation of superior economic status, but was referring strictly to ideological alignment. Whether a country belonged to the capitalist/communist/unaligned block in international politics during the cold war.
Capitalisms’ unsustainable model of infinite growth requires something like imperialism to keep going, and even if you could point out alternative venues for capital acquisition, it’s still what people in power want, since it gives them more than just fuel for capitalism, but also more power. Countries and companies that do not rely on imperialism directly, most often rely in others that do. While it’s not entirely futile to discuss whenever that has to be the case in theorethical capitalist solution, it is the case in one we’re living under, and since it’s the ruling class of hyper-wealthy that make decisions about the worlds future and current state of affairs is result of those decisions, it is the system we have to deal with. Unless, you know, we bring out the guilottines and start over, but I don’t see much point in retrying capitalism to see if it won’t lead us down on the path to facism again.
I guess we have to disagree. Growth is an inherently good thing in my view, and I don’t based that on capitalistic ideology. Without growth, the metaphorical pie is finite. What does this mean? It means there is some distribution of this pie, however equal or unequal. Now on one side you will have people like you trying to make the distribution more equal. On the other side you will have war lords, dictators, and power hungry individuals trying to grab more of the pie for themselves. All of you will have to resort to violence to make that happen.
And the magic of economic growth is that you can enrich the world without having to physically fight other people to steal their shit.
The bottom line is, we would have even more imperialism if we did not have economic growth.
Where does that growth come from?
Growth isn’t a problem when it’s sustainable. However, there are natural limits to how far and how fast technological development and resource extraction will allow us to grow the economy.
Additionally, competition within capitalism forces the wealthy to seek out any and all means of growth. If they do not they actually risk all of their wealth becoming devalued. This drives innovation but it also is the driver of imperialism, exploitation, environmental degradation, all of which grow the economy.
When growth because less attainable due to various natural constrains, the wealthy start to cannibalize the systems that keep society stable. Again, they can’t help themselves. If they don’t their class position is threatened as some other capital owner beats them to the limited profits that come from privatization and austerity.
This usually results in mass unrest across all the various classes in society. That includes some of the middle classes who also rely on exploitation to maintain their standard of living. In response to threat of social unrest, the wealthy usually align themselves with right wing authoritarians that claim to be able to bring order to the chaos and renew growth through imperial expansion. This kind of politics is often supported by some of the downwardly mobile middle classes. That’s how we get fascism.
Considering the Nazi’s were inspired by the US in many ways and the US continued promoting their racist opinions on immigrants, doing coups, and installing far right dictators around the world im more surprised the resurgence isnt bigger.
look at the genocide being funded and armed by the US in Palestine. Israel is invading and preparing for war with like 4? Countries already? Arguing they can rape people they detain and the US threatens the International Criminal Court after they deemed Netanyahu is a war criminal.
The US leads the world culture in a big way, the US is promoting an authoritarian who admires Hitler and the opposition to him continues sending bombs to a war criminal and threatens people who want to stop him.
Hitler called the genocide of native Americans ‘the first great cleansing’ and used it as a framework for ‘his second’. To think that Hitler looked up to the United States really starts to change you as an American. Especially in our current context.
He was also inspired by how racist the US was and how they had demonized and segregated Black peoples as second class citizens while still having a great public perception as a country on the world stage
Nazis also used Zyklon B in gas chambers inspired by the US using it in Mexicans crossing the border to have to work
Its been a long slow boil. And Nazis were only part of the problem. In the early 1930s many businessmen and Republicans in the US plotted a Hitler style coup against FDR. They did worse than Hitler, but escaped most consequences. And over the last century quietly plotted and built. Here and abroad. Fostering the “right kind” of fascism. Theirs.
It probably would have gone on a little longer. Because I don’t think they were quite ready to actually try to coup again. But they’ve been socially engineering a new class of supremely manipulable Voters who lack any critical thinking skills. However a childish malignant narcissist managed to get the attention of that tool. And stole it from the Republican fascist. Basically largely spoiling the plot. And causing them to have to move before they were ready.
Also the ability for instance Global and often still largely Anonymous communication made propaganda easier and cheaper than ever before. The old style leaflet drops over territories were never very effective. And even radio broadcasts or easy to thwart. Now enemy Nations only need to pay a few people for online shitposting in hot beds lacking critical thinking. And they can turn their enemies people into their own tools.
Short version: the Nazis lost but the fascists won.
WWII basically ended in fascists vs fascists - Nazi Germany pulled a lot of their ideas from the US and before Pearl Harbor the US stance was ambivalent. They thought Hitler had some good points, but it would be OK if he lost.
Are you serious they pay people to troll? Kind of make me wonder how much and is it even worth it.
Definitely. In a lot of developing countries with basic internet access these people can actually make good livings doing that. As long as they’re skill in the foreign language is adequate enough. Though today a lot of that is being taken over by basic low-end generative machine learning models. Something else false information faster than it takes to debunk it.
So if I learn a couple languages and put a post on craiglist that I am a willing troll. I will get hired?
Not unless you live in a country with a low standard and cost of living. And not likely even then. Because even at a Payday they generally work ed for larger businesses and weren’t a freelance Craigslist sort of thing. That and here in the United States there’s too much free competition to really be effective for them to pay anyone over here as well.
Funny that you mention payday and am sitting here in the hospital eating one.
I hope you’re having your head checked!
capitalism. fascism is the logical conclusion of capitalism, so the entire world living in a capitalist society helps fascism rise. if you crush people’s spirits hard enough, you can give them easy solutions to their problems so they can get off your scent.
no no, the billionaires are awesome; it’s the immigrants honey. the education system would be awesome if not for drag queens baby. you would have healthcare but see it’s all the DEI hire sweetie.
it’s just lizard brain shit. “brown people bad” is just an easier and more convenient message to digest than trying to understand how the government and the economy actually works.
I mean no sarcasm in this but you seem very knowledgeable do you got any links or something to support it because I love reading.
Not OP, but maybe the following: “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” by Wilhelm Reich provides an analysis of the psychological appeal of fascism, examining how economic conditions and capitalist societies create environments where fascist ideologies can thrive.
Sigh. One could also make the argument that capitalism is the only reason we have democracy at all. I am not allergic to socialist thinking, but putting all the blame on capitalism for everything is intellectually lazy.
I doubt the person you’re replying to would disagree that the advent of capitalism is in fact what brought liberal democracy into existence. The point though is that such progress is unsustainable under a capitalist system and that it will result in various crises, war, and fascism. Therefore we do need to find a way to move past capitalism if we want even the possibility of creating a better world.
billionaires are so afraid of being taxed they’ll happily fund people and groups who want to kill people who want to tax them.
The real billionaires love taxation. It helps them getting rid of the competition.
Severely undereducated selfish people who think all of their problems is someone else’s or some other tribe’s fault.
Almost all Nazis share one common trait: a complete lack of empathy.
And almost all American Nazis share two additional traits: no critical thinking skills and gullibility.
most of people lack criticall thinking skill
In your opinion would you consider the orange face dipshit a nazi?
You didn’t ask me but I’ll respond. I would call him an opportunist. If it benefits him to attract nazis, he will. He doesn’t seem to have any political leaning. He is a conman.
He shares traits with them. But no, he’s an 8 year old boy trapped in a 78 year old body trying to compensate for his tiny penis and no balls. He will use Nazis just like he uses everyone. As the other commenter said, he’s a con artist and grifter.
When he’s long dead, aside from a footnote in American history books stating he was the worst president since Buchanan, he will be forgotten. Of course this can’t come soon enough.
They didn’t lose. You’re probably talking about Nazi Germany. Yes, that country lost. Doesn’t mean Nazis in Germany magically disappeared. Doesn’t mean Nazis anywhere else disappeared. Your dad never won over Nazis, just one particular Nazi country.
Even though he fought all across Europe?
The Nazi party fled to many corners of the globe. Fascism exists outside of the Nazi party. Between those two things, fascism never really died. The Nazi party was shut down, made illegal in much of Europe. The other fascists welcomed those that made it out. Most modern day fascists that use Nazi imagery are called neo-nazis. Not the same group from WW2. Neo-nazis have been around for decades. Until recently they were not nearly as organized.
Not promoting violence but can we do something against them to make them feel marginalized?
I’m honestly not sure. You could try doxing the lower ranks, they need jobs and employers don’t usually love Nazis.
Just thought I would cash in on making fun of all the nazi bullshit if someone would sponsor me LOL.
Now that’s an idea. I’d join that patreon.
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That still doesn’t mean that all Nazis just magically stopped existing. Sure, a lot of them were killed in the war, but way more of them weren’t
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Is your dad still around? Maybe he was holding them at bay.
His dad sounds like a good man. I’d like to shake his hand. Or if thats not an option, salute his headstone.
As actual living memory fades away it almost seems like a natural inevitability. It is already as mythologicial to many as World War 1 cavalry.
This.
Good people make soft people make bad people make good people.