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The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

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Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#41

Post by lilyball »

elefanten wrote: post #35
danharaj wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

Neo-nazis and their ideology directly threatens the very lives of a lot of people, and it's basically impossible to argue against them because they already understand these ir position and just don't care about any of the myriad reasons why they're wrong.

This is where the "punch a nazi" thing comes from. They're a very real personal threat to people, and they can't be convinced to change their mind, so all you can really do is get them to shut up and go away, and the way you do that is by punching them. If you can make them afraid to express their neo-nazi ideas, then that's a win.

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#42

Post by tptacek »

lilyball wrote: post #41
elefanten wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Neo-nazis and their ideology directly threatens the very lives of a lot of people, and it's basically impossible to argue against them because they already understand these ir position and just don't care about any of the myriad reasons why they're wrong. This is where the "punch a nazi" thing comes from. They're a very real personal threat to people, and they can't be convinced to change their mind, so all you can r…

This logic ends nowhere good for anyone. If you can punch away evil, so can the people who believe abortion clinics are murder factories --- in fact, their arguments are even better than ours.

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#43

Post by pheldagryph »

glibgil wrote: post #24
lucio wrote: post #18

It'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…

> 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?

One of the most chilling comments I've ever read on this site. How does one provide evidence of the content of their heart?

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#44

Post by zoner »

It's okay to speak ideas whatever it is. It's also okay to dislike other ideas.

I do the same.

What is not okay is to promote violence against anybody you think their ideas are harmful. Who decides if an idea is harmful? I think liberalism is harmful. Through abortions, millions are dying every year.

No one should have the authority to say these motherf-kers are free to live, lets celebrate their defects and these other motherf-kers should be punched on the face.

This liberalism-atheism is a religion. They do witch hunting, they purge their heretics, they don't allow opposition.

However, Wolfeinstein 3D helped me to become who I am, even though it's purpose was the opposite :) Even a 8 years old feels if a game was designed to deform his thinking.

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#45

Post by tptacek »

SamUK96 wrote: post #9
aaron-lebo wrote: post #2

Having played the game, it's just a shoot em up with a goofy story to justify shooting things. Nobody is going to care about it in 10 years. The only reason anyone cares about it now is cause everything is a culture war and complaining on the Internet about games you aren't gonna buy is a great way of fighting it, apparently. I ran into some Holocaust deniers on Reddit a couple of weeks ago. Those people are so far g…

Quoted post unavailable.

I don't think litigating Holocaust denial is a good use of Hacker News.

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#47

Post by danharaj »

elefanten wrote: post #35
danharaj wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

There will always be unreasonable people, in fact everyone's idea of what is unreasonable will be different. It's ok though because we're a social species whose individuals like to share their thoughts and values and refine them together. The fact that people will disagree about what warrants violence is not a refutation of the idea that it is possible to justify violence. It is not a justification for refusing to ever analyze the merits of a particular justification for a particular act of violence.

Instead of discussing the merits of whether it is justified to violently oppose the ideology of white supremacy, whose latest form includes doublespeak like "peaceful ethnic cleansing" (Richard Spencer), you've shifted the topic to abstract considerations where the implicit demand is an argument that decides for all instances of violence whether or not they are justified. I can justify punching Richard Spencer, for example, without considering the rather absurd claim that someone who touches black hair (I presume you mean without consent) should be considered a white supremacist and therefore worthy of violence.

Just because a problem is difficult doesn't mean it's not worth examining. The fact that one cannot analytically decide a priori when violence is justified or not is just one of the many messy facts of the world that necessitate politics and taking conflict seriously.

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#48

Post by bashinator »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #36
bashinator wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Then let me turn the question back to you - what historical precedent is there for a major power having a disputed election amidst war and economic inequity, where they turned things around and maintained a free and open society? We're asking the same question - what can the US do differently from Germany in the 30s?

Edit: or to reframe the question, what could the German public have done differently in the '20 and '30s?

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#49

Post by thinkfurther »

lucio wrote: post #18

It'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…

Even from what you quote I noticed you took it as an endorsement of what it criticizes, but it goes on:

> To be clear, sometimes the only way to win against a Nazi is to punch them. But we also need to understand and be ready to explain the reasons why racism, genocide and white nationalism are bad. This may seem simplistic and rudimentary, it may even make you angry, but we must be ready to explain to young people why these ideas are so poisonous. It is no longer enough to just point at the history and say “because.”

or, as you said:

> Kind of like "It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech"

Ironically, disallowing speech and interpreting it as the opposite of what it very clearly says are both closer together than they are to free speech. What's the point of being able to say something when you then feel free to turn it on its head? That's shifting the point of breakage. And is it some kind of joke that EliRivers got downvoted for stating what you should have realized, much less other readers; without even a response?

Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’

#50

Post by SimbaOnSteroids »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #20

I 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…

We don't have to wonder what they think, all we have to do is ask them. [0][1][2]

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-the-age-of-trump-...

[1] http://time.com/4717077/holocaust-survivor-trump-immigration...

[2] http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chicagoinc/ct-holocaust-s...

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