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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’

#61

Post by ruleabidinguser »

tptacek wrote: post #59
ruleabidinguser wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have missed the half of the article which was about today's political climate

What do you think the article is saying about today's political climate? All I read is that there are American Internet Nazis and that we're not very good at getting rid of them. That seems like a banal observation.

I'll quote you the opening paragraph, which isnt about internet nazis at all:

"In certain corners of the Western world, Nazi ideology is making a comeback. For years, we’ve taken it as a given that ideas such as racism and ultra-nationalism were poisonous roads to pain, suffering and war. Pop culture, and especially video games, share part of the blame."

This is an example, not holistic

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

#62

Post by Udik »

4bpp wrote: post #25

Well, this sort of depiction is always a many-edged sword. After seeing a media argument that amounts to "Nazis are these grotesquely inhumane monsters, and therefore it's okay to punch them", you'll have some people taking away that they should punch Nazis (their own, possibly much more general definition), some people actively trying to expand the "Nazi" label to their political opposition (so they are flagged for…

I am more concerned with the fact that, when you keep depicting the baddies as grotesquely inhumane monsters, people will soon start believing that recognizing them and choosing the right side is an easy task. In reality, baddies are often not that grotesque, they might actually have a point on a few things, and their arguments might be quite spread in the culture of the time, making them sound more reasonable than they are.

And once people are trained to recognize evil in grotesque caricatures of human beings, then it becomes easy to provide them with such caricatures and send them to war, when the necessity arises. Quietly confident that the baddies are in front of them and not behind them.

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

#63

Post by peteretep »

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…

Nobody is suggesting the current regime is committing genocide. People are suggesting that the racial scapegoating and facist themes of the current administration look a lot like the start of a slide in that direction.

If I had survived a concentration camp, my feelings about the current regime would be "DANGER DANGER DANGER"

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

#64

Post by anigbrowl »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #27
glibgil wrote: post #24

Earlier 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?

Gandhi and King. Violence just leads to more violence and hatred.

OK. Serious question: have you, personally, ever been assaulted for your identity or been in a physical fight for your life?

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

#65

Post by tptacek »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #57
tptacek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not if they don't support factual sex education and easy availability of contraception. If they don't then they're probably just fascists using emotive subjects to gain power (see the blood libel against the Jews) or suckers falling for the fascist propaganda. It's great that Godwin can't be applied to this thread.

Sorry, but that's an orthogonal argument. Pro-life activists believe abortion is murder. Nothing you can say about contraception refutes that argument.

The fact that I find the pro-life argument so personally repellant is why I think it's a reasonably good example in discussions like these: it's a system of practical beliefs directly contrary to my own that is held by a great many people. Whatever ethics about speech suppression I would apply to others, I have to make work for these as well.

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

#66

Post by tptacek »

ruleabidinguser wrote: post #61
tptacek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think the article is saying about today's political climate? All I read is that there are American Internet Nazis and that we're not very good at getting rid of them. That seems like a banal observation.

I'll quote you the opening paragraph, which isnt about internet nazis at all: "In certain corners of the Western world, Nazi ideology is making a comeback. For years, we’ve taken it as a given that ideas such as racism and ultra-nationalism were poisonous roads to pain, suffering and war. Pop culture, and especially video games, share part of the blame." This is an example, not holistic

Right: video games share part of the blame by rendering Nazis not as perpetrators of atrocity but rather as all-purpose generic bad-ass villains.

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

#67

Post by tptacek »

anigbrowl wrote: post #60
tptacek wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No they're not. People who object to abortion clinics claim to be intervening on behalf of a third party (the fetus) whose legal status is that of a non-person in law and whose moral status is indeterminable by rational means. Quite a lot of the people who are willing to punch Nazis are, by contrast, people who feel their own persons are threatened, as opposed to being outsiders choosing to insert themselves into a p…

All you're saying is that you don't agree that abortion is murder. I don't either. Would that our agreement on this were dispositive of the abortion debate.

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

#68

Post by anigbrowl »

tptacek wrote: post #54
anigbrowl wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you see somebody waving a flag, you punch them? If they're carrying a battle flag (a specific design you can look up) then they're literally signalling that they're there for purposes of conquest. It's perfectly OK to oppose that. I don't like the "punch them" rhetoric. It's not compatible with free speech. It's way better to combat "racial purity" ideologies (or any other speech) with more speech, with reason…

You moved the goal posts. Virtually all of us "oppose" Nazism. That doesn't make it OK to physically attack them. Once again: if it's OK for us to punch Nazis, it must also be OK for anti-abortion activists to violently attack abortion clinics. Their argument that abortion clinics are murder factories --- and argument I vehemently disagree with --- is on firmer ground than our argument that white supremacist speech i…

If someone is carrying a battle flag, they're manifesting an intention to physically attack you.

I already addressed your abortion point in more detail elsewhere, but briefly, anti-abortion activists are intervening on behalf of a third party, the fetus. Many who support punching Nazis feel directly threatened by Nazism. These are two wildly different situations.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

zoner wrote: post #44

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 ot…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by WalterGR »

olewhalehunter wrote: post #40
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…

>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

That's some pretty sickening white-washing. I'll assume good faith and that it was unintentional.

Their primary purposes were providing protection for Nazi rallies and assemblies, disrupting the meetings of opposing parties, fighting against the paramilitary units of the opposing parties, especially the Red Front Fighters League (Rotfrontkämpferbund) of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), and intimidating Slavic and Romani citizens, unionists, and Jews – for instance, during the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

Perhaps you point out that "originally formed" and "primary purpose" aren't necessarily the same. Fair enough. So:

Some 70 people attended, and a second such meeting was advertised for 13 November in the Eberlbrau beer hall. Some 130 people attended; there were hecklers, but Hitler's military friends promptly ejected them by force, and the agitators "flew down the stairs with gashed heads."

The next year, on 24 February, he announced the party's Twenty-Five Point program at a mass meeting of some 2000 people at the Hofbräuhaus. Protesters tried to shout Hitler down, but his former army companions, armed with rubber truncheons, ejected the dissenters. The basis for the SA had been formed.

ibid.

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