> Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.
Do I understand that while the United States is undergoing a radical neonazi revolution lead by the tech industry your take away is that the people who called out the right-wing and tech industry were wrong to do so and bear responsibility for the horrific state of the world?
In a different timeline, Trump being called a Nazi or any of the vicinity terms should have been an immediate termination of his campaign chances.
What actually happened is Trump ignored it (as he should) and the American people shrugged "OK" and went to vote for him with complete disregard.
Then Musk got called a Nazi at the inauguration, and the American people shrugged "OK" and went back to facepalming at just how much sheer waste the government has with complete disregard.
The moral you should take away is you should not invoke Godwin's Law. It's probably too late for "Nazi", "racism", "sexism", and a host of other insults the Left have thrown around to see what sticks (none have), but that doesn't mean future originally-valuable-terminology have to face the same fate.
Another moral is that insulting Americans probably doesn't actually work in general. "Deplorables", "Garbage", and others were turned around into rallying cries during the 2016 and 2024 campaigns, not unlike the original meaning behind the term "Yankee" which was originally an insult not unlike "Kraut" or "Jap" but is now one of the fondest nicknames of Americans.
Cool - it’s nice that you say this is an American trait. I was almost about to say that this entire setup was manufactured to pit Americans against each other, weaponising victimhood and identity, with the complicity of legacy media and big tech. And out of the three players in this game - the ‘left’/‘libs’, ‘right’/‘conservatives’ and the billionaire fascists up top pulling the strings, only the billionaires stand to win.
It depends on the insult; sometimes that doesn't work. One of the purest expressions of joy I've seen in politics was Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) back in 2019 analysing [0] a group of anti-Trumpers trying to rally around being called "human scum". He had a lot of interesting things to say back then about the art and science of persuasion.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_3HGjAVv0M 1:30 to 7:30
Godwin himself openly endorsed calling Trump a Nazi.
My takeaway is exactly the opposite, that not only were people right to call out radical fascist elements and influences in our society, they (we) were wrong to be cowed.
The fascism was always in the vast majority of us, if we wanted to look at it. Just look at the structure of our workplaces, which accounts for half our waking lives. There's no free speech in them. With few exceptions, they're intensely hierarchical, people passing orders downward. Those "unlucky" enough to make it inside one of them, often sleep in the nearby alley.
The bizarreness of this form of organization isn't lost on those on top of the hierarchy. They're used to battalions of people doing what they want, and they seek out philosophers who apply this vision to other aspects of life. It wasn't hard; for example, the US had a 4 year king anyway. Usually a warmonger callous to the vast majority of his population.
One problem is "calling out." Name-calling. The current administration is showing direct action, which impresses many who find their lives increasingly intolerable. Many didn't like him, but rather rationally rolled the dice with the change candidate, even if it was probably going to end up as bad change. Like hitting the computer.
Right now If I discuss the events around me, many are apathetic, because they think I'm exaggerating. Because that's what they have been used to.
And your comment is directing your anger at someone that very likely share a lot of your value system while he was trying to make a self-reflecting point. This is a waste, and it divides us.
When everything is an outrage, the outrage is worth nothing.
And while you are fighting on semantics with potential allies, for virtue signaling no less, the real threat is showing a united front, no doubt, no debate.
It’s about the Hoss family that lived next to one of the Nazi concentration camps, the father/husband ran the camp.
Also, I recently watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and it again aligns to that point of view a bit.
I mean it wasn't and isn't too late of course, that's defeatism, people can quickly be removed from power once people get their act together. Jan 6 proved that, and that was a fairly unorganized mob with only a handful actually prepared to arrest / kidnap or do worse to the congresspeople (thinking of the one guy with the tie wraps).
There was always what you might call a "particle" of fascism throughout the War on Terror (maintained by both parties! because it was popular with the public!) Things like the unaccountable secret prisons in Gunatanamo or Abu Gharib, or the US sniper who amused himself by randomly murdering hundreds of civilians (eventually convicted .. then pardoned). And then in the war on Gaza everyone (bipartisan) was falling over themselves to say that it was children's own fault for being in the same school as Hamas and that the Israeli government was right to bomb them.
Back at home in BLM, everyone stood up for the right of the police to unaccountably murder citizens. Because that power would only be used against bad people, right?
You may wish to watch this movie on the banality of the life of those who ran the concentration camps and who lived next to them:
the reason for this contradiction is that, in their view, some people are not considered human
that's how nazis see jews, how colonizers see natives, how slaveholders see black slaves, how zionists see palestinians
> Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.
In my experience, most of the people who get accused of being Nazis do turn out to be actual Nazis. Sometimes they are stupid enough to make overt Nazi gestures (e.g. Elon Musk) which is pretty much the only way the average person will accept that someone is a Nazi. Much more frequently they turn out to agree with Nazi ideas such as ethnic cleansing, but do not do the salute, and people will say they're not really a Nazi because they didn't do the salute.
They looked so normal, having fun, teasing each other, drinking and playing instruments.
There is even a video where hitler is shying away from his love companion.
This was a shock to me as a kid: evil doesn't look like the caricature of "the very bad guy", it emerges in every day people.
I think we failed to communicate that. It was too tempting to have a universal vilain you could use in Hollywood movies and instantly recognize. That you can't identify to. Black and white is so easy to sell.
But what it means is a huge part of our society cannot make the link between what is happening in their own life and the past. Because they have a vision of the past that looks like a kid show, not what really happened.
Worse, on the other side, outraged people abused the term nazi to call out anybody that had a bad behavior. But there is a huge difference between being an asshole and being ready to commit genocide.
Eventually it means the word nazi lost all of its meaning. And all of its usefulness to defend ourselves.
In the last too decades, we surely spent a lot of time playing with words until they could not be useful anymore. But it made us feel good for a moment.