Steelman argument: There are just as many of them holding their noses and voting for fascists because of FPTP. They just have far fewer anti-fascist candidates against FPTP.
Fair argument: What do you call someone who only voted for Hitler because they didn’t like Hindenburg? A Nazi.
If you think all Germans in the 30’s were foaming at the mouth racists, ready to pull the trigger themselves; you’re mistaken. Most were like modern Republicans. People who knew they wanted things to be better and there was one guy saying he was gonna change everything and fix it all singlehandedly. Then the camps opened the wars started, the secret police arresting anybody who dissents.
The GOP is marching the country down the same exact path and the comparisons to Nazis are absolutely justified, but ineffective. If you call a Republican a Nazi it makes them feel vindicated because “I’m not putting people in gas chambers, these leftists are being overly dramatic.” Falling to realize most Nazis just paid taxes and voted for the monsters until they got drafted.
If they’re still a maga after sending immigrants and US citizens to concentration camps with no legal rights, then they’re nazis. Hopefully, if they hear it enough, they’ll look into it.
They won’t though. They completely lack the ability to self analyze. You could show them a list of infinite things they have in common with a Nazi and the facts will simply slide off that smooth grey matter and they’ll say some dumb shit like “I don’t even hate Jews.” And that’s it for them, thinking done, argument won.
I agree with all of that, that’s true. I’m not against calling a Nazi a Nazi
But most of the people who went along with the Nazis weren’t Nazis. I’m not defending them when I’m saying that, I’m being accurate
And I’m not being accurate to be pedantic, I’m being accurate because these categories of people need to be handled very differently, and to do that we have to do a little categorizing
The distinction is lost on them anyways. They’ll never see themselves as Nazis or fascists because they see themselves as morally superior. They won’t step back and self analyze because they’re incapable of doing so on a large scale. Unfortunately we have to treat all Republicans as fascists. Despite the fact a small percent are actual openly hateful racists, the party as a whole protects them, amplifies their voices, and gets them in office.
We ought to be teaching civics every year of school, not just one year hopefully mandated by the state board of education.
Stop romanticizing it and teach what it is and how it works.
Then so so so many of the things people think they might know or believe in because of vibes that some talking head generated over the course of years would be refuted easily by common knowledge.
But then you wouldn’t have a population of useful idiots, easily manipulated by distinct emotional triggers implanted from an early age.
I feel like a tinfoil hat person typing that, but I’ve been able to befriend a few former MAGAs and it has been insightful. They have no ideological consistency and no idea what they believe as an individual, just as a member of a group following a father figure. They’re starting to learn, though.
What has been most surprising is how incredibly emotionally broken they are. Now that they’re opening up, I’ve never met such sad, scared people before. The entire culture seems purpose built to produce people like these. The US has a lot of generational trauma to unpack if we ever want to improve.
They’d give the class to a coach who would use it to push right wing ideology, like they already do for the single required class now.
Mandating that something be taught isn’t a blind fix - it’s more that our culture has a distinct anti-intellectual bent. I’ve taught and tutored a little civics, and I have had students that didn’t want to think about what they believed at all, just “I’m a Republican because my parents are.”
We need a culture shift back to recognizing and valuing competence and critical thinking.
This guy in office however is a perfect match.
No, they honestly just have no idea what we believe. They don’t live in reality, they occasionally visit and make wild assumptions
Steelman argument: There are just as many of them holding their noses and voting for fascists because of FPTP. They just have far fewer anti-fascist candidates against FPTP.
Fair argument: What do you call someone who only voted for Hitler because they didn’t like Hindenburg? A Nazi.
What is FPTP? I think I am last to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting
I don’t think that’s really true or helpful.
These people aren’t Nazis, they’re just stupid. What they actually want is what we want… To be squeezed less by billionaires
Not to be confused with the actual Nazis, there are definitely actual Nazis too. But not that many of them
If you think all Germans in the 30’s were foaming at the mouth racists, ready to pull the trigger themselves; you’re mistaken. Most were like modern Republicans. People who knew they wanted things to be better and there was one guy saying he was gonna change everything and fix it all singlehandedly. Then the camps opened the wars started, the secret police arresting anybody who dissents.
The GOP is marching the country down the same exact path and the comparisons to Nazis are absolutely justified, but ineffective. If you call a Republican a Nazi it makes them feel vindicated because “I’m not putting people in gas chambers, these leftists are being overly dramatic.” Falling to realize most Nazis just paid taxes and voted for the monsters until they got drafted.
If they’re still a maga after sending immigrants and US citizens to concentration camps with no legal rights, then they’re nazis. Hopefully, if they hear it enough, they’ll look into it.
They won’t though. They completely lack the ability to self analyze. You could show them a list of infinite things they have in common with a Nazi and the facts will simply slide off that smooth grey matter and they’ll say some dumb shit like “I don’t even hate Jews.” And that’s it for them, thinking done, argument won.
I agree with all of that, that’s true. I’m not against calling a Nazi a Nazi
But most of the people who went along with the Nazis weren’t Nazis. I’m not defending them when I’m saying that, I’m being accurate
And I’m not being accurate to be pedantic, I’m being accurate because these categories of people need to be handled very differently, and to do that we have to do a little categorizing
The distinction is lost on them anyways. They’ll never see themselves as Nazis or fascists because they see themselves as morally superior. They won’t step back and self analyze because they’re incapable of doing so on a large scale. Unfortunately we have to treat all Republicans as fascists. Despite the fact a small percent are actual openly hateful racists, the party as a whole protects them, amplifies their voices, and gets them in office.
if they were “just stupid” they would have at least tried to learn something by now. They are willfully ignorant
To be fair, many of them don’t know what they believe either.
This right here can not be overstated.
We ought to be teaching civics every year of school, not just one year hopefully mandated by the state board of education.
Stop romanticizing it and teach what it is and how it works.
Then so so so many of the things people think they might know or believe in because of vibes that some talking head generated over the course of years would be refuted easily by common knowledge.
But then you wouldn’t have a population of useful idiots, easily manipulated by distinct emotional triggers implanted from an early age.
I feel like a tinfoil hat person typing that, but I’ve been able to befriend a few former MAGAs and it has been insightful. They have no ideological consistency and no idea what they believe as an individual, just as a member of a group following a father figure. They’re starting to learn, though.
What has been most surprising is how incredibly emotionally broken they are. Now that they’re opening up, I’ve never met such sad, scared people before. The entire culture seems purpose built to produce people like these. The US has a lot of generational trauma to unpack if we ever want to improve.
They’d give the class to a coach who would use it to push right wing ideology, like they already do for the single required class now.
Mandating that something be taught isn’t a blind fix - it’s more that our culture has a distinct anti-intellectual bent. I’ve taught and tutored a little civics, and I have had students that didn’t want to think about what they believed at all, just “I’m a Republican because my parents are.”
We need a culture shift back to recognizing and valuing competence and critical thinking.
Educated populaces make better informed decisions than uninformed ones.