Earlier quoted context omitted.
which is why we have all this media about fighting robo-Ottomans during the Armenian genocide or protecting Huguenots from Catholic necromancers right?
Nazis are used as all-purpose villains because the evil of their movement is universally recognized, not because of this Thule Society nonsense. It's because nobody likes Nazis.
The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
101–110 of 149 posts
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you re-state it? You know I'm not inclined to blow you off; you've been on my list of favorite commenters for something like 5 years. I seriously do not see a distinction between the two perspectives, other than that the anti-abortion activists would be employing violence to actually stop what they believe to be real, immediate, kinetic violence. Again, it's not like my argument here is novel. It's the ACLU's a…
Anti-Abortion protesters are appointing themselves as moral guardians of a fetus. Anti-Nazi protesters are declaring their own selves to feel threatened by Nazism, rather than claiming to be intervening in the defense of someone else. I don't really care about the ACLU's argument. Things have moved on since 1976 and the scope and intensity of violence perpetrated by white nationalists and similar far-right groups has…
The First Amendment wasn't repealed when Steve Bannon accepted his role as Trump's chief strategist.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nazis are used as all-purpose villains because the evil of their movement is universally recognized, not because of this Thule Society nonsense. It's because nobody likes Nazis.
The weirdness is part of what attracts people to Nazism in the first place. Fascism is an anti-rationalist ideology which caters to people's quest for a psychic identity that transcends materialistic impulses. The same dynamic is leveraged by people like Aleksandr Dugin in Russia.
I'm simply saying that movie producers and game designers don't cast Nazis in the villain role because of Nazi weirdness. They do it because we all agree that Nazis are, almost alone among historical western adversaries, categorically and indefensibly evil.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Neo-nazis and white supremacists are espousing a viewpoint that takes away rights from other people, and in many cases threatens their very lives.
That's what anti-abortionist people do too, in fact. They're trying to take rights away from women (specifically, the right to control their own body), and in many cases threatens their very lives (abortion can be used as a medical intervention to save the life of the mother).
The only real difference I can see is that anti-abortionists are more likely to be able to be reasoned with.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#105Earlier 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.
I don't see the relation. Neo-nazis and white supremacists are espousing a viewpoint that takes away rights from other people, and in many cases threatens their very lives. That's what anti-abortionist people do too, in fact. They're trying to take rights away from women (specifically, the right to control their own body), and in many cases threatens their very lives (abortion can be used as a medical intervention to…
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#106I 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…
When a word is too flimsily used against people, it loses its meaning. This is what happened with calling people racist. It got tossed around inappropriately so much, the public lost their sensitivity to it. People now roll their eyes when someone accuses them so casually of being racist. Therefore we have a new word to level at people, Nazi. The same thing will happen with calling people "Nazi". Initially people wil…
Genocide necessarily involves either suppression of fertility or active or passive killing, or some combination of methods. Passive killing might include the refusal to supply aid such as food or medical care, preferring to just let Nature run her course, or refusal to come to the rescue when brown tribes genocide each other. The passive method would cause greater suffering and would not finish the job, as there will always be a remnant population to rebound in time. Clearly, an active genocide using white man methods would be more humane than passively letting Nature or savage tribes to do a much sloppier and less complete job. In the same way that animal lovers cannot adopt and care for every stray, but must accept that many be euthanized or sterilized, so it must be with the lower races of humanity.
Having been studying the far right for a good many years now, I'm quite comfortable about my ability to distinguish between anodyne center-right policies and a small but well-organized and funded cadre of honest-to-goodness extremists, thanks. I hope you're not going to come back with some hair-splitting argument about the exact position of any given proponent of genocide in your political calculus.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 '…
I am not sure if it could have been easily avoided, unless the Nazi party was met with strong resistance from the start. When a party assumes total power, it has inertia that is hard to overturn.
A lot of people are using the word authoritarian, but we are still far from a true authoritarian regime (that said, the fact that we are given two dubious candidates every four years makes me wonder how free we really are).
I think the counter-counter-question is "will history repeat itself indefinitely?" We still have genocide today (i.e. the Yazidis by ISIL), but the last genocide to occur in a country with remotely Western values was 70 years ago (not that Western values imply moral purity).
Like the dropping of the nuclear bomb, the Holocaust was so powerful that most people (even on the extreme right) seem keen not to repeat it.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you believe you have the right to punch Nazis, I don't see how you escape conceding that pro-lifers have the right to punch women walking into abortion clinics. Nobody can ask the fetus whether it is OK or even agree on whether it has the capacity to experience suffering given that most abortions take place prior to fetal brain development. A fetus, therefore, has no legal agency of its own. By contrast, someone w…
I didn't argue that you can't hit someone who is literally about to physically attack you, and neither did the ACLU. You seem to be arguing that the mere presence of a Nazi marching under a Nazi flag in the public square justifies physical violence. What did the ACLU get wrong about that when they defended the Nazis in Skokie?
The 1st amendment does protect private parties from government interference with their political expression. It says nothing about whether other private parties should passively accept political expressions that are specifically aimed at intimidating them. Had the march gone ahead and the citizens of Skokie set about the Nazis with baseball bats, I would not consider the Nazis' first amendment rights to have been inhibited in the least bit.
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#109I 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.
"In all the time I’ve been playing video games, only one game has forced the player to deal with the toxic ideology of National Socialism...That game is 2014’s Wolfenstein: New Order and it’s a game that’s depressingly relevant today."
Re: The Surprising Importance of ‘Wolfenstein: The New Order’
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
When a word is too flimsily used against people, it loses its meaning. This is what happened with calling people racist. It got tossed around inappropriately so much, the public lost their sensitivity to it. People now roll their eyes when someone accuses them so casually of being racist. Therefore we have a new word to level at people, Nazi. The same thing will happen with calling people "Nazi". Initially people wil…
I'm glad you asked! Yes, there are people who advocate for genocide. Here's a recent example of such rhetoric from a well-established blog that I'd prefer not to link to here: Genocide necessarily involves either suppression of fertility or active or passive killing, or some combination of methods. Passive killing might include the refusal to supply aid such as food or medical care, preferring to just let Nature run…
Do I paint all of BLM with the same brush as I do with the small numbers of their group who advocate white genocide?
Do I cast all Muslims aside because a small % advocate genocide of Kuffar?
Both would be unthinkable in right-on politics, and rightly so. If you are not very careful when pushing a certain way to judge things as absolute, you will find yourself having to answer very tricky questions that are contrary to the values you believe you hold.
What I was trying to get across in my previous message is that if you really want Nazi to be a powerful, meaningful word, it should be used correctly. Unfortunately a quick look at some publications/social media shows you it not being used that way. It is being levelled against out-groups completely inappropriately and in a way that is counter-productive to the left's cause. Many of the liberal old-guard personalities are called Nazis by thousands online. Whenever someone sees an article or twitter movement accusing their favourite old-guard liberal icon being called "literally a Nazi", people start realising the stupidity and tune out. The same thing happened with "racist". There is a reason it has fallen out of favour in certain circles.