They don’t say criticism of the govt is prohibited, they say that it’s necessary for the security of state. Doesn’t everyone want a secure state?
There was a lot of controversy around the copyright expiration of Mein Kampf in Germany a few years ago. The Bavarian government owned the copyright and refused to allow it to be printed. When the copyright expired, annotated versions were released, putting the book in context. There are certain disadvantages that not printing had: making the book more mysterious and taboo, and leaving the text to stand on its own when it was acquired (thus having no space for rebuttals, historical comments, etc.).
Personally I lean toward keeping these kinds of things but annotating them and providing ample context - the equivalent of a study on history or a museum exhibit. Maybe we as a species can learn from our mistakes. It's not like forgetting these texts will prevent the same conditions that created the rise of fascism and genocide.
That is one factor why I believe Germany to be more likely to succumb to fascism again compared to the US for example. Luckily, the 21st century doesn't allow for much content control anymore.
Mein Kampf can reasonably fail on itself. There is need for context, of course, that education can and has to provide.
If you allow people to use their own judgement, perhaps that would have served as an incentive to use it in times of dire need.
The current idea that fascism rose because of too few content control is a grave mistake.
Citation needed? From the view of my filter bubble it looks like white supremacy and it's racist ideologies seem to be on an alarming rise in both countries regardless of their approach on free speech.
Unfortunately freedom of information has come under attack in the US as well lately, so yes, the rise of some circles is no surprise or contradiction. Unfortunately that aligns fascist groups with people that see value in these freedoms. Although to those it is mostly no secret that fascists are just temporary passengers with other ambitions.
Fascism needs the antagonist, it is an essential piece of the puzzle. Only through that people are able to strip their conscience, elevate themselves above others and commit atrocities against people they see as threats. It is their personal victim role.
"White supremacy" was a laughing stock 10 years ago. And I mean really a laughing stock. Their last hope was to sweep up some anime weaboos that didn't really buy into it in any significant number, but it was their goto strategy to groom these groups in hope someone a litte too full of himself would randomly condemn them as the root of evil or just plainly associate them with facsism.
You can fight fascism with giving people more freedoms and more access to information. That collapses their victim narrative and has the positive side effect from the measures itself. Censoring a book, banning people perceived to align with fascism, or pointing out moral imperatives doesn't achieve anything. On the contrary and I believe this behavior to be a main factor to current developments.
But since the US has basic and fundamental protections to freedom of speech and against overreaching government, it is in a far better state compared to Germany, which is partly on the road to make the same mistakes again.
Fortunately, we can do both. Despite being nearly white, you can read the comment by highlighting it and it is still high the page, so it can be discussed. Seems like a model of how strongly oppositions should be treated.
0) https://archive.org/details/TriumphOfTheWillgermanTriumphDes...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ1Qm1Z_D7w
The propaganda was incredibly successful. To this day "Triumph of the Will" continues to be used as a reference point for the mental construct of the Nazi regime. The modern understanding of the Nazis is deeply informed by a propaganda film produced by the Nazis for the explicit purpose of creating that mental construct. "Triumph of the Will"'s endless lines of soldiers marching in formation is exactly the image they wanted you to think of when you thought of them.
And the light show! Camp fires and torchlight! Huge insignia, and huge billowing banners. Very moving.
There are certainly plenty of things in there that implies too much concentration in the power of the state (e.g. monopoly on communication and banking) for someone of more liberal or libertarian (whether left or right) bent if one considers a modern interpretation of the state. Which is why even many Marxists, especially libertarians, look to works like Marx writings on the Paris Commune for more specific details.
This response suggests to me it is quite likely you haven't read it.
Perhaps someone is not so adept at reading between the lines. Just a guess.
After WWII, there were definite anti-communist movements, though McCarthyism took things way too far. You cannot combat ideas with censorship, they'll fester.
Maybe, but I was referencing that the notion of a substantive association between Nazis/fascists and socialism (or the left more generally) was never taken seriously by any significant group until the last couple of years, where the American Right decided that their existing pejorative labels were losing their sting and they needed to label everything they disagreed with “fascism” and seriously try to sell the connections; Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism was a notable point in this trend.
Hitler eventually had the last remaining "left wing" faction of the NSDAP (the Strasserists) arrested and/or murdered - this purge was a large part of the purpose of the Night of the Long Knives. But even the Strasserists, despite wanting to borrow some left wing economic policies were staunchly ultranationalist and anti-socialist.
Amusing factoid: Hitler honed his public speaking skills while working as a government mole in the socialist party.
It's corporatist, but not socialist (you can probably make an argument that non-libertarian socialism is also corporatist, but not vice versa.)
But, yeah, the cult of manichean capitalism tends to use “socialism” as the generic label for “opposed to capitalism”.
Er, what now?
It really took root against communists (and socialists), even those of both of the those groups that weren't Leninists, in the US almost immediately after the Russian Revolution and only started to fade a bit after the fall of the Soviet Union 70+ years later, and even now a full century later it has significant, though less, pull in the US.
It did, there was plenty of paranoia and hatred of communists during the Cold War days, we just never fought an actual war against communists (edit: except in Vietnam and Korea, I forgot that for some reason...) Of course, a lot of that Red Scare stuff was just a thin coat of patriotic paint over anti-semitism and anti-gay bigotry, but I digress.
Also, it's not in-vogue to hate Nazis. Everyone other than Nazis has hated Nazis consistently ever since Nazis were a thing.
What is in-vogue, however, is to be a nazi (little n, colloquial meaning, because I know sometimes people like to be pedantic) amongst the American right and alt-right, as the current American President's election has coincided with a revival of right-wing populism and white supremacist identity politics. No, I am not calling Trump a nazi nor am I calling all Trump supporters nazis so they can stop clutching their pearls ... that white supremacists decided to turn the populist movement that brought him into power into a narrative of racial identity and purity has been well documented, and it actually depends little whether Trump has sympathy for them, or is just their dark horse.
And that is why America is currently concerned about nazis (little n) and not communists. Because the nazis (little n) managed to meme a President into office, and the communists did not.
>It's almost like that type of political ideology took root in american institutions thus paving the way for this new narrative to take hold that communism is good and facism is bad.
There is no such "new narrative." Communism has never been trusted in the US, and fascism has always been "bad."
Can I offer a different perspective?
A vocal minority on the left likes to assert that everyone on the right is a bunch of nazis but that doesn't make it true nor does it make it "in-vogue". If you move past that broad group ("the right") and just consider the more vocal/visible/strident right-wing activists, they are almost all promoting western civ cultural values, which is not the same thing as "white-supremacy" but irks the multi-cultural crowd quite a bit as it requires making value judgements on other cultures and ideologies (which is not the same thing as making a value judgement on other races or people with particular skin colors). I think the visibility/growth of this group is more of a reaction to the identity politics, multi-culturalism, and intersectionality ideas of the left than to Trump's election.
And if you move past both of those groups to the remaining folks who are indeed advocating for some sort of race or blood based supremacy theory you are talking about a insignificantly small group that has no support anywhere, certainly isn't in-vogue, isn't being "revived" in any substantial way, and mainly serves as the bogeyman that the left uses to smear anyone who disagrees with them.
The thing they promote as rooted in "western civ" and say is shared among "westerners" is not related to anything I know here. It is also surprising to hear about the opposition to "multi-culturalism" when Europe has never had one single culture.
So please if you want to promote that thing of yours, stop calling it "western". Call it american, or what you want that doesn't represent it as rooted in some thing we'd share in your imagination.
* individual rights
* equality for women
* limited government (especially at the national level)
* free market economics
* personal responsibility
* separation of church and state
As for multiculturalism, your comments suggest that your use of that term is not the same as mine. Multiculturalism from the left is not about assimilating people from disparate cultures but instead is about insisting that the ideas I listed above aren't to be valued and instead all cultures and ideologies are to be accepted as is, leading to balkanization, discord, and the devaluation of the ideas that have made the "West" and America successful.
Promoting your ideas as "western civ" in order to give them polish is an unfounded appeal to authority. The fact that Europe succeeded despite not sharing your views shows why this appeal is wrong.
Please keep your internal politics at home, and don't get us involved.
I'm not willing to accept your pushback on its face, but it certainly has me thinking a bit more about my own assumptions about what we share with Europe.
I'm still in the dark about what has made you hostile to whatever you think the American "far-right" is advocating. If it is some of the ideas I listed that would be good to know. If it is some mistaken understanding about what the "far right" is in America, that would also be good to know but I can't really tell from your comments.
I've heard Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker called neo-nazis.
Maybe you're a neo-nazi. Since neo-nazis always deny being neo-nazis, then your denials are further proof that you are a neo-nazi. B&
> I’ve heard jordan peterson and steven pinker called neo-nazis.
It still isn’t clear to me what this brings to a discussion. It seems like such a strange question.
Are any of us under the impression that label misapplication somehow means a label is no longer used? Of course not. After 30 years in the same house, my partners mother still calls the tree in her front yard an oak tree despite the fact it has always been and will remain a maple. Her misapplication of the label doesn’t mean oak trees no longer exist. Tree experts, dendrologists and arborists aren’t throwing their arms up and declaring their entire fields deprecated because a random person, in a casual setting, uses the wrong term.
My father still calls disk storage, RAM.
My partner still calls the serrano peppers she grows, jalapeños.
I regularly see politicians who lean to the right call obvious capitalist liberals, commies.
I still sometimes call giant ships, boats.
None of these misapplications matter, there are still an awful lot of people who rely on what words actually describe, despite a random old lady calling a maple tree an oak.
As always, casual conversations with casual people will at some point lead to casual use of words. It will continue to happen, for as long as we’re a species.
What if your partners mothers mom was put in charge of a maple tree conservation arboretum, and decided to cull all the oak trees, but she kept confusing maples for oak trees?
I'm not arguing that neo-nazis don't exist. I'm arguing that we shouldn't arbitrarily censor stuff just because some people call it nazi propaganda.
> I'm not arguing that neo-nazis don't exist. I'm arguing that we shouldn't arbitrarily censor stuff just because some people call it nazi propaganda.
She’s not in charge of any arboretum, that’s the point I’m attempting to get across.
We have reached a point where the collective We are treating random people having random casual conversations as if these random casuals have the same weight as experts in their fields. We have collectively started to treat what used to be completely understood as casual forum discussions and casual opinion pieces as if these hold the same weight as an authority in their field publishing a well documented, far more rigorous, and well cited paper. We’ve allowed a fogging in the ability to distinguish between casual people and rigorous experts and this is the outcome. An intelligent collective should never hold these two opinions at the same weight.
My idiot cousin by marriage, who has a very real lack of critical thinking, who has a degree in “google research” from “the school of hard knocks” however, she does have a knack for writing in such a way which absolutely resonates with uneducated mothers. She writes as if she’s an authority in child vaccinations, she regularly goes into her closed facebook group and convinces other mothers why they should ignore their doctors and not vaccinate their children. Her words have more weight than medical research and medical professionals.
She seems to pull the card which almost always seems to work on a certain segment of the population – the “narrative” card. The target of this “narrative” charge is for some reason automatically assumed to be nefarious and the person who spotted this so-called “narrative”, their words now hold more weight than the actual expert in their field who had a “narrative.
We need to get back to a point where my words regarding the best methods to pick coffee beans mean little when compared to an actual coffee bean farmer, because my field of expertise lies elsewhere. I can read an article or three on coffee beans, but there is no rational universe where my words should hold the same weight as actual experts in coffee bean farming.
Until the collective We are able to say, “I don’t know.” or “I can give you my opinion, but you’d be far better off listening to Jill, she has far more knowledge on the subject.” until we get back to a rational discourse, we’re going to continue to find someone who is outraged because some idiot on a forum or some idiot made a video, used the wrong term and falsely labeled someone.
We need to get back to a point where the smartest people in the room are the people who say “I’m not sure. I’m not an expert. I don’t know. I don’t know the nuances of that vast field. I don’t know.”
When the meaning of a word isn't likely to have a big impact on people's lives we can be a bit more forgiving (though personally I still want to move towards a clearer thinking population).
Yes, the term "neo-nazi" is sometimes misapplied. That misapplication doesn't mean that neo-nazis don't exist, or that the term has no meaning. If the term didn't have an established, commonly agreed upon meaning that referred to a specific ideology and movement in the real world, then there would be no reason to quibble about its misuse, because calling someone a neo-nazi would be as meaningless as calling them a flarndingle.
If someone was being harassed and censored because they were accused of being a flarndingle, I would have a problem with that. If corporate America were calling for mass censorship of "flarndingle" literature, I would be opposed to that.
I would not like being called a flarndingle if I knew it would mean that I would be censored. It does not matter that flarndingle is a meaningless word.
The term neo-nazi is actually quite abstract. For many younger people and activists, it has just become a synonym for "person I do not agree with".
It has become a catch-all insult that can be applied to anyone. There is nobody who that insult won't stick to. You can be a Jewish academic with controversial opinions about society and have "anti-fascist" activists target you for being a neo-nazi.
So, obviously we can't ban anyone that is called a neo-nazi.