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The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#32It's pretty scary how the article goes from killing Nazis is fantastic, to anybody at my right is a Nazi and it's morally ok to punch them. >Too often, when we engage in arguments with extremists who talk of racial purity, we falter to explain our side. Instead, we punch them and tell them “because.” >Nationalism leads to war So if you see somebody waving a flag, you punch them? I don't like the "punch them" rhetoric…
I believe you are misrepresenting the article.
It does not say that punching nazis is ok. The closest it comes to that is "To be clear, sometimes the only way to win against a Nazi is to punch them."
The article is clearly advocating coherent argument over violence, dialogue over silencing.
I believe you have significantly misunderstood.
It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason and truth than with violence.
You mean as advocated in the article, where it states: "... we also need to understand and be ready to explain the reasons why racism, genocide and white nationalism are bad"?
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#33If you think "nazi ideology" or their actions are uniquely horrible, you are either historically illiterate, or so parochial that only their particular victims are of concern to you. History, especially twentieth century history, is a charnel house.
It doesn't have to be uniquely horrible to be absolutely horrible.
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Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason and truth than with violence Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
Are you advocating violent suppression of views you dislike? Do you not see an irony there?
It's grossly dishonest to reduce white supremacy to "views one dislikes". Yes, if you remove all of the content of views and just focus on the act of liking or disliking them, you can make any disagreement look unreasonable.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you advocating violent suppression of views you dislike? Do you not see an irony there?
It's grossly dishonest to reduce white supremacy to "views one dislikes". Yes, if you remove all of the content of views and just focus on the act of liking or disliking them, you can make any disagreement look unreasonable.
The problem with that is that, especially when emotions run high, it becomes very difficult to tell where the line is for sufficiently "dangerous" views that deserve punching.
If you look around today's blogosphere and social media, for example, you'll see a significant variance in what gets labeled "racist" or "white supremacy" (to use the most germane example).
If someone is declared a white supremacist for touching a black person's hair and the standard is "it's ok to punch white supremacists because they are violent and dangerous"... it will become a mess fast.
Which is one reason why it's generally a good decision-rule to not employ violence (as a citizen) unless violence is imminently being used against you.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#36I find the constant comparison of present-day US to Nazi Germany a bit disrespectful. Not disrespectful of people in the present day (necessarily), but to those who actually survived Nazi Germany. What would you think, if you were a someone who survived a concentration camp, to have people consistently claim that the modern-day US is anywhere near as bad? I understand that the US is far from perfect, but we are also…
Let's not forget that the Nazi's took power during a time of democracy, with full support of a plurality of the vote. Between that and Trump's overt authoritarianism, it's fair that people will draw analogies between the situations.
Yes, also important not to confuse correlation and causation IMHO. Even if we fully mirrored the rise of the Nazi party (in the political sense), it would not necessarily imply that we would mirror their actions (genocide, etc).
In situations like this, its important to step back and ask - under what circumstances would the US actually cross the same line that the Nazis did? (And I do not mean anecdotal instances - I mean the US performing outright genocide on a large subset of its own citizens). The odds of this are so low, in my opinion, that I would place a monetary bet it will not happen within the next four or eight years.
I am personally not a big fan of Trump, but I also do not think he is anywhere near Hitler-status.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason and truth than with violence Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
Are you advocating violent suppression of views you dislike? Do you not see an irony there?
Careful. Whether it's OK to retaliate violently against odious views is one question (personally, I think: no). Whether Nazism is simply a "view one dislikes", like a particular ice cream flavor, is another.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's grossly dishonest to reduce white supremacy to "views one dislikes". Yes, if you remove all of the content of views and just focus on the act of liking or disliking them, you can make any disagreement look unreasonable.
The problem with that is that, especially when emotions run high, it becomes very difficult to tell where the line is for sufficiently "dangerous" views that deserve punching. If you look around today's blogosphere and social media, for example, you'll see a significant variance in what gets labeled "racist" or "white supremacy" (to use the most germane example). If someone is declared a white supremacist for touchin…
See now you've introduced a third debate. If this was simply an attempt to deal with whether it's a good idea to punch Nazis (again, I think: no), we'd be much more careful. But now we're asked to debate whether touching a black person's hair (also: huh?) is "white supremacist".
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#39I find the constant comparison of present-day US to Nazi Germany a bit disrespectful. Not disrespectful of people in the present day (necessarily), but to those who actually survived Nazi Germany. What would you think, if you were a someone who survived a concentration camp, to have people consistently claim that the modern-day US is anywhere near as bad? I understand that the US is far from perfect, but we are also…
Where does this article make that comparison? I don't see it. I see it pointing out there that is a loud new crop of American Internet Nazis, but that is not remotely the same as saying the US is like Nazi Germany.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#40It's pretty scary how the article goes from killing Nazis is fantastic, to anybody at my right is a Nazi and it's morally ok to punch them. >Too often, when we engage in arguments with extremists who talk of racial purity, we falter to explain our side. Instead, we punch them and tell them “because.” >Nationalism leads to war So if you see somebody waving a flag, you punch them? I don't like the "punch them" rhetoric…
>anybody at my right is a Nazi and it's morally ok to punch them.
ironically enough the Sturmabteilung, precursors to the SS, were originally formed to protect meetings from leftist street violence