Grimm 
Congratulations to everyone reading this on living to see an era wherein sober super-serious people called "thought leaders" expect me to have an earnest debate on whether it is ok to discriminate against bigots.
Y'know, when you call someone a Nazi, it pretty much just ends the conversation. And then where will you be? Not talking to Nazis, is where. Having shattered your lifelong dream of having a pleasant conversation with Nazis. Who even wants to imagine that kind of hell.
"Typical lib, just call anyone who disagrees with you a Nazi."
Yes, I sully my arguments when I disagree with perfectly well-meant patriots who slaver over and give blind blithering fealty to a singular ultranationalist infallible authoritarian figure who has convinced them that he and ONLY he can restore the country's nebulous bygone greatness by cleansing it of the heretical infidels who have conspired to destroy it from within by unholy perversions and tolerance and not knowing their place and, with this cleansing, achieve a proper herrenvolk America as their loving God and Destiny intended, patriots who literally cheerled a violent coup to throw out the will of a majority of the country's voters and forcibly establish that figure as an unelected accountable despot, and then - THEN - I go the sordid step further to call these patriots "Nazis."
Yup. You got me.
Just imagine the "normality" I could restore to my life if we could just get PAST all this ugliness - if I just ACCEPTED that my Traditional-Values-horking sister wielding zero self-awareness and our grandmother's distinct penchant for racism and I simply DIFFERED on some things, and, even if she decided all that^ fascist shit was good and godly, I could simply be the bigger person and have her again in my life enriching it with whatever Great Replacement Theory wrinkle or antisemitic trope Tucker had spunked into her calcified fucking brain on that given day.
There is no doubt that having an awful loathsome shithead in your life would definitely make it better and get America back to "normal," as long as "normal" is abiding irredeemable assholes' stupid provably garbage fucking opinions programmed into them specifically to make life worse for everyone.
Embrace the love.
That last sentence is a joke, just to be clear.
Get shitty violence-prone people out of your life and do not fucking quibble. I don't care if you "love" them in the Lifetime Movie conventional sense, we're eons past convention and American Nazis don't deserve love. They subjected people who didn't do shit to anyone to programmatic hatred and still make them live in perpetual fear not only of looming state violence but of any random white incel twat from their church or NRA chapter shooting up their mosque or synagogue or festival or shop on a fucking whim on any given day. They're awful fucking people and chances are pretty goddamn sparkling that anything that makes them sad is good for the rest of humanity.
JohnW@GrimmReality Sounds like we have/had similar families.
My Mom was the only relatively normal one, and she was distant because of the otherworldly level of dysfunctional.
~Un...fortunately they're all dead now. (Miss Mom though). I moved 2000 miles away and started a new life because I didn't want to be anywhere near that area.
Yaktuary@the_Effekt @GrimmReality Yep, this thread is setting off some pretty strong "Holy shit he knows my parents" alarm bells for me too.
Tony thefathippy@GrimmReality
I'm so lucky that all my family, difficult as we can be in so many ways, are all progressives (at least). The family I married into...varies...some progressives, some centrists, some conservatives. I wouldn't say there are any Nazis, but definitely a couple of RWNJs who love a good conspiracy with a side of racism. I don't mind that they live 1000km away. 😂
I'm so lucky that all my family, difficult as we can be in so many ways, are all progressives (at least). The family I married into...varies...some progressives, some centrists, some conservatives. I wouldn't say there are any Nazis, but definitely a couple of RWNJs who love a good conspiracy with a side of racism. I don't mind that they live 1000km away. 😂
@thefathippy You got a pretty decent roll of the dice, and good onya.
okanogen VerminEnemyFromWithin@GrimmReality
Sounds like you are the problem buddy. Probably for the gauche "pointing out racism"? Nobody likes that....
Sounds like you are the problem buddy. Probably for the gauche "pointing out racism"? Nobody likes that....
Thx4SharingJerk@GrimmReality Look it’s not like they’re burning books or anything—wait I’m getting a message in my ear now…
Doreen32128 ready to rumble!@GrimmReality Oh snap! Lol
Jill@GrimmReality Here. Here. And I will add… that was quite a sentence!
@jillholl awthanks! Yeah, multiclause rants are kind of my schtick.
LAUREN
4bzPatiently waits for the centrist to come in saying this is bad
PirateDan7@GrimmReality seems like certain folks have forgotten that there was this entire world war thingy and that Nazi's were pretty much the cause of the whole state of affairs, if we're looking to break things down by the lowest common denominator terms and the evidence that someone wants to sea-lion you about it pretty much embraces the whole bad-faith argument ethos.
D. G. MarshallMy grandfather was a POW in Germany during WWII.
He spoke of being slave labour on the farms, so hungry they pulled huge purple onions from the dirt, and ate them raw, tears streaming down their faces. Hiding their "theft" from the guards.
He spoke of the time a cat wandered into their camp full of hungry men.
"You didn't!" cried my grandmother.
"No," he said, his voice breaking, even 30 years later. "By the time it got to me, there was none left."
And while they may not have a personal connection like mine, they can read. They know what the Nazis did to Jewish people, disabled people, LGBTQIA people, Roma people.
And they look at something that should only be in the History books, and they say, yes, let's have that happen all over again.
johne@davidtheeviloverlord @GrimmReality My grandparents were in a similar situation. My grandmother told me that once the only thing they had to eat was bread they made from burnt flour. Flour that had been in a warehouse that caught fire. That was all they could get from the Nazis.
John Shirley@GrimmReality In my novel Firepower, under the penname John Cutter, the hero infiltrates American Nazis, finds that they're planning a huge domestic terrorism operation in DC which will kill a huge number of people, and has to kill several hundred Nazis to stop it. Happy ending.
@JohnShirley2023 BAM. 👊 🍻
It's like the Anti-Turner Diaries!
Shachihoko@JohnShirley2023 @GrimmReality
Would that be the one I found on Barnes and Noble, listed as "A Vince Bellator Thriller"?
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/firepower-john-cutter/1139144557?ean=9781839012129
@JohnShirley2023 @GrimmReality
Cool. One more book to check out!
(... maybe one more series. 😅 I think my bookcases are going to rise in revolt at this rate, unless I manage to prune the collection and clear some shelf space.)
@Shachihoko @GrimmReality There is a Vincent Bellator trilogy. Two of the books are in print, the third is coming at some point this year.
@JohnShirley2023 @GrimmReality
Definitely will need to check out the whole trilogy. I didn't see Firepower listed as an ebook on either B&N or Kobo, on that note? (Haven't looked on Amazon yet, but I don't do Kindle anyway ..)
@Shachihoko @GrimmReality It's available as a paperback through amazon etc
@Shachihoko @GrimmReality despite that ad copy, it doesn't target govt corruption. I don't know where the publisher's publicist got that. It targets an American Nazi militia.
(moved)Galbinus Caeli 🌯@GrimmReality if a Nazi wants to talk to me, they can just stop being a Nazi first.
william.maggosit doesn't end the conversation. what you're talking about is getting everybody to consider someone a Nazi, that does effectively silence them cause then many will discount what they say or avoid or block them, without having considered their opinions. that's the tactic of the Israeli government when people speak up for the Palestinians too.
noon99@GrimmReality nice little encapsulation of Popper’s spot-on response to the argument.