(no subject)

[lliira]

People calling Republican assholes "Nazis" has been bugging me. Not because I think it's politically inexpedient, though I do. Not because I care about Trump supporters' feelings, because I don't. (Though I wish people would stop pretending they're working class. Trump won far more votes among the upper class than the working class. The typical MAGA type lives in a 4-bedroom on a cul-de-sac, not in a trailer.)

No, it bugs me for the usual reason: Someone is Wrong on the internet. Nazis were, and are, a specific phenomenon. They're fueled by anger and hate. Further, if you don't have a burning hatred and conspiratorial resentment toward Jews, "Nazi" truly doesn't fit. Republicans, however, are fueled by arrogant indifference with a spice of  wounded superiority complex. It's a different thing. It's not a new thing, but it's not Nazism. So I lay there thinking of what it was like, and it didn't take long to remember a historical parallel:

The prosperous English during the Irish so-called "Potato Famine." I say so-called because it wasn't the fault of natural forces -- it was because of policies purposefully put in place by the English government in order to harm and kill the Irish. The wealthy and most of the middle class among the English saw the Irish exactly the same way the MAGA crowd sees most immigrants: As criminal "pests".

A Modest Proposal is as spot-on a satire today as it was then.

Comments

[iosonochesono]

There are, however, a lot of white nationalists in the Republican Party, including Neo-Nazis. California's GOP candidate is a Neo-Nazi T___T

Otherwise, I agree, and it's pretty annoying, especially living in Europe now

[silveradept]

It's not the same as National Socialism, no. And thankfully so, even though whatever one calls this strain of conservatism isn't that much more morally superior. It isn't okay.

[lliira]

Obviously. One of my issues is that people go to "Nazi" as if this kind of crap doesn't have a far longer history than early 20th century Germany. I'm not sure about "thankfully so" -- once you're at completely and utterly evil, I think you're tied with Nazism, and societies have been completely and utterly evil many times before.

I basically don't like the Nazi exceptionalism that goes on. They're the worst. A lot of others are and were also the worst. They didn't invent this shit. No one remembers the Armenians, as Hitler said... no one remembers anything, it seems.

Tacitus wrote that the Gallic leader Calgacus said, "To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace." That's what Rome was, it's what Egypt was, it's what China was/is/will be, and it's what we are. It's every empire. Just as Trump is a very usual Republican under the bad hair, these ways of behaving are very usual for the powerful. That's why we need democracy, as the best check anyone's come up with -- and we don't have it.