Yes, disturbing to watch these people up close. I think it’s important to see how they are behaving and shut them down.
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This is why we need fact checking (like Snopes). But it’s the left that does fake news?
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I wonder what attracts people to want to become Nazis in Germany. I mean considering all that happened last time.
Is there a thought like “we’ll do that Nazi thing again, but this time we’ll do it right!”
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You could probably ask the same thing about why anyone in the south US should want to repeat the Confederacy, though I guess in that case there are also rose-colored memories everywhere.
Either way, though, I suspect there’s something about awful failures that is itself attractive to some people who want to give their lives meaning at the expense of others. There’s always what Orwell said about the original Nazis at the time:
Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings *don’t* only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.I forget where, but someone pointed out to me we've reached a decade where everyone who personally remembers how those things worked out are dying off, and it may not be a coincidence.
Also, an editorial I thought was might be worth considering here:
This kind of hate and terrorism comes from working hard to radicalize people, and a lot goes under the cloak of tolerating political differences and both-sides-ism.
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The effect became highly visible in Australia about fifteen years ago.
Before then, Australian military rememberance ceremonies were solemn events openly dedicated to the prevention of war.
Once the bulk of the WWII veterans died off, they turned into drunken festivals of jingoistic idiocy.
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I had the bad luck to go on a date with a German Nazi who was the son of a German Nazi. (He was horrified to discover my family were from formerly occupied countries and not German as he had assumed because – fuck I don’t know why, I probably mentioned I liked sauerkraut or something. I spent the date finding polite ways to say “are you fucking kidding me?” until I could leave early gracefully. We had friends in common who didn’t believe he was serious about this crap, so it was awkward.)
Anyway, the big motivation for this guy and apparently his dad too was: self-pity. His dad had been in a POW camp and things hadn’t been too good there (yeah, I know, it was still better than Belsen, but try telling him that). And despite being well-to-do he felt that he had suffered… somehow. Because things would have been even better for them if the Reich had been sustained.
Self-pity and snotty comments about how the rest of us were inferior were all that ever came out of him on the subject. Our friends learned not to invite us to the same things because I wouldn’t let any of his crap slide, and eventually they figured out it wasn’t just a running gag for him.
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You can’t beat that good old Nazi humor!
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It is weird when someone who seemed otherwise rational spouts that stuff for the first time. I remember when he first said my family was inferior because we came from countries that were invaded, it took a few beats before “holy shit, he’s serious” sank in.
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There’s this thing among some types of Christians where they feel like, if they’re not being persecuted then they’re not religioning hard enough. The best way to do that in our culture is to be offended by LGBT people, invent and fight in the War On Christmas, pretend that Muslims are trying to take over the country with Sharia law and halal meat, and so on.
I suspect the Confederacy types have a similar thing going on. Being on the losing side, the wrong side, gives them that coveted underdog status. Plus they have that bit where all black people and brown people and Muslims and Jews, somehow, are going to take over everything, so they’re extra-victims. And there’s a strong connection with MRAs, because women are also going to take over everything. So they’re practically martyrs! Awesome!
Also our culture romanticizes rebellion.
I kind of get the underdog/rebellion thing though – even though a majority of Americans are anti-Trump at this point, it still feels a bit like we’re extras on the ragged and desperate side in Rogue One. And being socialist, nonbinary and pagan gives me plenty to feel aggrieved about when I want to do that… 
No need to join the dark side to get that dubious thrill.
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I am Jewish and so of course the Holocaust has been a leitmotif of my life forever. I became involved with a Temple here on Long Island. A few years ago, I had an adult Bat Mitzvah. Most of the people in my class were older women who had grown up in the era when women simply did not go through the ceremony, only boys. The oldest woman was in her late 80’s.
Our class became used to being together, so after we had our ceremony we continued to meet. For one meeting we read a short story and discussed it. The story was called What We Say When We Talk About the Holocaust. Spoiler: They say, “Who of my friends would keep me if it was happening here now?” I was shocked at how all of these older women who grew up in New York (most of them grew up in Brooklyn in very Jewish neighborhoods) said, “Oh, thank God. I am not the only one.” This was, for REAL the thing they asked themselves about their friends all the time.
One woman had a mom who was around 101 at the time we were meeting. Her mother is a Holocaust survivor; she was not in a camp, but spent the war running, running, running, until she got to the Ural mountains where it was known that if you could cross, you could be safe. During all this running, my friends’ brother, who was just a toddler, died. My friend was born in the US and never knew her older brother, but of course his death hung over their family. Her mother was so shattered by her experiences that she was never able to work once they arrived in America.
That’s the kind of story I’ve read in books or heard tell of, but to hear it from a friend, the deep dark secret of her family, it really changed for me how awful it was, how it personally affected so many people that I know.
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The underdog/rebellion thing is baked into our culture. In my Torah studies class, we were talking about all the Bible stories where it’s the younger brother who takes over the older brother’s right. Sure, David and Goliath is the classic underdog tale, but it was surprising how every single story we read was like, “And then the younger brother told the older brother to suck it.” I think it’s very in our culture that this is how a hero is made. You think all these stories you haven’t read didn’t affect you personally, until you read them and are like, “Wow, this explains so much.”
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Which, interestingly, is omitted from Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, although now that you’ve mentioned it, yeah!
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I know, weird that he didn’t go into it.
So, for example, this story:
The birthright was a sacred privilege enjoyed by the first-born son. This privilege made the first-born the real heir and successor to his father, as the head of the family. Isaac’s first-born son was to be devoted to the service of G‑d and to the sacred traditions of the family. But in the case of Esau, it soon became apparent that he was not the one to fulfill this sacred duty. Esau did not wish to shoulder this responsibility, preferring a happy and carefree life as a hunter and man of the fields. Jacob, on the other hand, seemed the ideal inheritor and successor. The day that Esau returned from that fateful hunting trip, his clothes still covered with the spatter of mud and blood, Jacob rebuked him for neglecting his holy duty as first-born. Esau, however, ridiculed Jacob and spoke very mockingly of the birthright. Jacob was shocked to hear such abuse of, and disrespect towards, the sacred privilege of the first-born, and proposed to buy the birthright from Esau who willingly agreed to make the deal. Thus Jacob came into the possession of something he cherished more than all the treasures of the world.
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A classmate at Mason Middle School told police in 2012 that Borden held a knife inches from his face, according to a police report. He also said Borden drew swastikas, called him “Jew Boy” because he had a big nose and claimed he belonged to a gang called Brothers of Confederacy, the report states.
Clearly, one of the “very fine” people.
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Joseph Campbell if around today would surely be a leader of the alt-right.
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