Is this in reference to my comment about “unwilling soldiers in the Wehrmacht”? Because if so, please note that the word “unwilling” modified the word “soldiers” and not the word “Wehrmacht” in that sentence. In other words, some soldiers in the Wehrmacht were unwilling, not the Wehrmacht as a whole.
That said, just as the Clean Wehrmacht is a myth (admittedly, not one I had heard of before), so too is the idea that everyone in the (largely-conscripted) German army were bloodthirsty fanatics.
I’m pretty sure it’s even possible to commit horrendous war crimes and still be an unwilling participant, for that matter…
There’s a difference between now and then. In Germany at the time, the Nazi party did not have the negative connotation it does now. It’s like me dressing up as a devil. Why are people taking on symbols that they know people will react to so strongly?
What’s interesting to me as an outsider is how this is the first time I’m seeing unequivocal condemnation for white men and their hate from places I’ve never seen it from before.
Who knew that the line was drawn at actual Nazi iconography if not ideology. Still glad there’s a line though.
It’s highly unlikely that ignorant people such as this actually understand the symbols they are wearing, and it seems to me that the understanding they have of Nazis is one derived from pop culture. In pop culture, Nazis are terrifying, cold, efficient agents of fear. In real life they were all sorts of things, some of them monsters. That your power fantasies are about being a Nazi is profoundly sad.
There is no doubt in my mind that these people are pitiful. But, they are not to be pitied. Not yet, not when they march on the streets . Their lack of understanding of what they are aspiring to does not mean that they do not indeed desire to do harm.
I don’t think they want people to hate them, but they do appear to want to be hated. What’s the difference? None when they’re in a crowd. They’ve actually traded your hate for acceptance and a sense of power and most importantly, purpose. See, I do think they’ve been let down by their leaders, I do think they’ve been forgotten by society, yet Iknow they’re not worse off than a lot of poor people in the poorest countries in the world. These people are insecure, and angry enough to take to the streets, yet their basic needs are probably met, there must be something that’s threatening to them enough to do these horrible things.
Maybe it’s them that are reacting to the symbols, they are emboldened by them.
I think that it may be useful to consider the psychological power and purpose of symbols. Many will disagree, but (from a depth psychological perspective) symbols have tremendous power at a personal level - their meaning is rooted in personal, intrapsychic phenomena. Collectively, symbols represent larger concepts, but they are also vague enough to have personal meaning projected upon them. Symbols as meaning are not created or invoked relationally; insignia or icons may be symbolic or arise from symbol but once codified, they serve another purpose, such as communication or group identification. A symbol, by it’s very nature, is personal and is not meant for or used to attract or repulse another.
I am not trying to be reductive or pedantic, but it’s the different meanings assigned to the same iconography that lead me here… I see Nazi icons and immediately feel dread, disgust, and anger. Those are my personal symbolic associations. If those associations were universal, then I think your question of “why do people want to evoke those feelings in other?” could be answered. But my associations are not universal. So, thinking about why some people adopt iconography of Nazism and White Supremacy, it may be rooted in personal symbolism of power and superiority - which in US society are generally understood as positive traits. It’s not about what it does to other people, it’s about what the symbols do for them. We could play armchair analysts and guess that these American Nazis have psychological complexes that require them to take on personas of superiority or something similar, but I actually think that’s the reductive position. Each individual who takes on overt White Supremacy and Nazism has deeply held, complicated conscious and unconscious motivations that have been activated and constellated around these symbols. Interpersonal interventions to break down these complexes may only serve to reify them, much like directly addressing a paranoid delusion. Jung himself made this mistake when dealing with Nazis in the years leading up to and during WWII.
So, no, I don’t think American Nazis are inhuman, but I do think they are irrational and possessed by powerful symbols and archetypes; which, from my perspective, such possession requires powerful rituals (such as making war) to exorcise. It’s my hope that we are able to use rituals other than war to bring about change, such as removing confederate statues and flags, impeaching Trump, and purging our government and civil service of White Supremacist actors and collaborators.
To use their language (UGH): it’s “for the lulz” because it will “trigger SJWs.” That is something they literally brag about as an achievement: making people angry.
More to the point, it’s probably an act of defiance of the society that they see as oppressing them (as fucked-up and backwards and ironic as that is). They normally have to hide their abhorrent identity, but gathered in large enough numbers, with guns and shields and helmets, they’re “brave” enough to display it for all to see.
Anyway. I am not comfortable with calling anyone “monsters” regardless, particularly right now. Sick, deluded, cruel, perhaps even “evil” but they’re still human, even if they’re the worst kind of human.
Why “right now?” Because of one of their posts calling Heather Heyer “one of the monsters” for having been both a woman and against their cause.
A former colleague took the surrender of a German submarine in WW2, after the crew shot the (fanatical Nazi) captain.
But up to the point they were depth charged they were continuing to obey orders. Who can tell what they were really thinking? (Other than the last bit, presumably “O shit, o shit, unless we shoot this crazy bastard we’re all going to die.”)
Brownshirts marching around the streets with guns ordering people about. Brownshirts in the polling booths. Your Jewish neighbour or your trade unionist neighbour being arrested.
How many people would really rather die than shout “Heil Hitler”?
The theory that the alt-right is largely a 4chan export makes sense to me – a culture of anonymous trolling will eventually drive out anyone with any non-majority identity – but this has also dug up a lot of underlying hatreds in the world beyond that environment
This is wrong. Like, all wrong. Not a shred of reason or pragmatism to it. This reads like a parody of liberals written by some alt-right hack on YouTube.
So the part of them that supported Nazism was suppressed because it wasn’t exactly politically correct, and because overt Nazi speech was now illegal. They could stop spewing hate when they needed to, because most human beings do that instinctively. That doesn’t mean they shifted away from Nazism and became anti-racist liberal Green Party members. It doesn’t even mean they became moderates, just that they could pretend to be moderates when it was necessary. Y’know, like the American racists did in the days after the Civil Rights movement.
I’ve gone through that and much worse, but I didn’t become a Nazi. Imagine that. In fact, what you’re describing is more like angsty bullshit that every white suburban teenager in America goes through, but most of them don’t become Nazis either.
If they’re tattooing white supremacist symbols on their bodies, I’m guessing they are actual literal white supremacists, and it’s serious. If they’re traveling hundreds of miles to participate in violence, they’re pretty damn serious.
Look at any of the numerous photographs from Charlottesville. Do these people look like scared little boys to you?
Hell yeah we should react with condemnation. This is indefensible. We have to condemn it. They crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed lightly, and can’t be uncrossed once it is crossed. Ever. There is no undoing this damage.
sigh…
There is no conversation, but whatever this is, it should be shut down. These are people who want to commit genocide on me several times over, for no good reason. Do you think I should listen to what they have to say, [cringe] consider both sides [/cringe], and then tell them that while they say I have no right to exist, I respectfully disagree and love them as a human being, and would like to kindly ask them to let me live?
Fuck that shit. Fuck all that shit. Fuck it so hard.
Which Americans would that be? The “isolationists” (aka Nazi sympathizers) from WWII? The John Birch Society and the supporters of McCarthyism, which was actually very thinly veiled antisemitism? The Americans who were against the Civil Rights Act? The Americans who voted for Reagan in overwhelming numbers and lapped up his speech in Philadelphia Mississippi and his racist bullshit about welfare queens? The Americans who seized onto the OJ Simpson trial like a dog with a bone (or a whistle)? The Americans who totally lost their shit when a black man became President?
These Americans have always been here. You are just now noticing them for the first time.
Probably you mean the Americans who taught their children to not be overtly racist, but taught them that black people were given free college education and jobs they weren’t qualified for and free this and free that, and taught them that the Jews are incredibly powerful and run the media and the banks and Hollywood and do each other favors like a secret cabal, and taught them all this other racist bullshit that they internalized in their nice little anonymous cul-de-sac houses. We internalized all this shit growing up and never even questioned it, for the most part, and then passed it down to our children… and that is where these inexcusable freaks come from.
Ah, I respectfully disagree with your assessment. They are saying:
I am a brave member of a proud tradition of White Supremacy.
I am not afraid of standing up for what I believe.
I am willing to take risks and make sacrifices in order to build a better world for White People and our White Children.
Our White Children should not have to suffer the indignity of growing up in a world where inferior races act like they were real human being.
Wearing these symbols, I can attract friends who believe as I do. Together we White Supremacists will make the inferior races bow before us and take what is rightfully ours.
Like most pale-skinned untermenchen, I get an earful until I risk life and limb to tell them to stop talking to me.
I see no point in trying to convert White Supremacists.
Yes, exactly this. What @ChickieD says about using Nazi iconography to goad a reaction out of people is true of a lot of so-called Nazi punks but these guys? These guys are flying Nazi flags because they wholeheartedly agree with Nazi ideology and are proud to show their allegiance.
From their point of view, you are only upset about this show of strength and racial purity because you are one of the enemy. These are not suburban kids wearing t-shirts that say “fuck” because they’re angry their parents didn’t get them the car they asked for. They are not doing it for the lulz, although that’s the first step in robbing these symbols of their baggage when these guys are being indoctrinated.
These are actual Nazis, with actual white supremacist views, that actually want to kill people in order to set up a Nazi state in America. Don’t downplay this by asking why they want to upset people by using Nazi symbols. They want to kill people and they are proud of the Nazi iconography.
It looks like you are just noticing it. Otherwise you would recognize it for what it is. There is no polite discussion, there is no debate. These are people who want genocide, because they wanted it 40 years ago, and they wanted it 20 years ago but felt they couldn’t talk about it freely.
Nonviolent communication is a joke. It’s very privileged and very white. It’s for people who really have no dog in the fight, so they don’t care if they lose badly.
Asking actual literal Nazis to pretty please stop being actual literal Nazis ain’t gonna work, period. Treating them like they’re poor innocent victims of circumstance when they come from infinitely more privilege than I do also makes no sense. I’ve gone through far worse, so why am I not a Nazi?
Stop trying to relate to irredeemable human scum, and stop trying to have a dialogue with people who have no interest in having one.
Moot allowed 4chan to become a recruitment tool of American domestic terrorists in the name of unfettered anonymous free speech and privacy. The rise of the alt-right has been documented really well years before it was known as the alt-right, when /pol/ was taken over by extremists playing the game the right way. Over the years, the red pill became a badge of honor and a point of pride when it’s a symbolic recruitment tool used by these groups that marched with torches.
The alt-right didn’t come from 4chan, it came to 4chan when it was literally booted from everywhere else. Until a week ago they had their private chat on discourse, but before then they had all sorts of private chats to organize. Troll culture didn’t become the alt-right, it got converted along the way as technology and general opinion favored those recruitment tools.
Until very recent history, literally everyone fought tooth and nail to keep Nazis from gathering at sites - but starting with a few backwater sites proud of allowing it to go on 100% unmoderated social networking became something declared the “most moral” way to run things by young tech pioneers that were raised with those backwater sites that appreciated them. Once that idea went mainstream, so did the alt-right.
