Tristan SnellNov 12, 2023

“This vermin must be destroyed. The Jews are our sworn enemies, and at the end of this year there will not be a Jew left in Germany.” — Hitler, 1939

“We will root out the Communists, Marxists … and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within … our country.” — Trump, today

Show threadFirefighterGeek 

@tristansnell Not all fascists have to be compared to Nazis. The Nazis were fascists, for sure -- but fascism is bad enough on its own.

Kids aren't learning just how fucking evil the actual Nazis were. They aren't learning about actual fucking traincar loads of people, with 13 million of them shipped to camps where they were systematically incinerated or shot to fall into mass graves they had dug themselves at gunpoint.

Let's save the Nazi comparisons for actual fucking nazis.

Nov 12, 2023 at 4:07amWeb
Show threadDisplay NameNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell they didn't fill the trains on day one. It is a process that takes time and similarities (like dehumanizing wording by a leader) are strong enough to flag as the direction we are going. If you are going to wait till you see the trains, I'm sure you'll find other excuses then too.
Show threadAaronNov 12, 2023
@alper @FirefighterGeek @tristansnell Right. They haven't built the gas chambers *yet*. I'm not going to wait for that before I speak up.
Show threadtiny_mNov 12, 2023
@hosford42 @alper @FirefighterGeek @tristansnell they have however built metal cages in detention centers where they are rounding up children and separating them from their parents as they try to cross the border and if that isn't starting to sound familiar or ring any alarm bells in your head that actually we have been here before then I'm not sure what will. The signs are very clear in the UK too. They are trying to house our asylum seekers in unfit conditions before deporting them to Rwanda
Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 12, 2023
@tiny_m @hosford42 @alper @tristansnell agreed. That was pretty horrific.
Show threadDisplay NameNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell also, Godwin himself allowed it a while back.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2017/08/14/the-creator-of-godwins-law-explains-why-some-nazi-comparisons-dont-break-his-famous-internet-rule/
The creator of Godwin’s Law explains why some Nazi comparisons don’t break his famous Internet rule

"I have been very careful to avoid policing how people invoke it,” Mike Godwin said. “But this was a no-brainer.”

The Washington Post
Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 12, 2023
@alper @tristansnell not universally, but where it makes sense. In most of these cases it doesn't.
Show threadDisplay NameNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell You responded to a specific post with the words of the ex-president that the Nazis in that article (and Godwin in his tweet) are following and nobody has any doubt that he's speaking to them. Like he did "stand down and stand by" etc. If he's not just followed by Nazis and also leading them, well, he's the leader of Nazis. And by Nazis I mean the less shy ones literally carried swastika flags, I don't know what you're objecting to. It is a movement.
Show threadTechyDadNov 12, 2023

@alper @FirefighterGeek @tristansnell I replied separately about the same thing with a story from my visit to the Holocaust Museum in DC, but that museum also gave me a lesson in the power of dehumanization.

At one point, you can go through or around a train car. I went through. The plaque outside had said how many people were stuffed in so I stopped in the middle and tried to picture putting that many people in. I couldn't.

1/

Show threadTechyDadNov 12, 2023

@alper @FirefighterGeek @tristansnell Then I realized my problem. I was trying to fit PEOPLE in the train car. Even with imaginary people, I was giving them basic human dignity. I switched to fitting human shaped luggage in the car & was able to do it easily.

It was a lesson in the power of dehumanization. Without dehumanizing Jews & other groups, the Nazis wouldn't have been successful. When Trump & the Republicans dehumanize people, I flash back to that train car & it scares me.

2/

Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 12, 2023

@TechyDad @alper @tristansnell That's my point. Some similar language from someone we already know is a fascist, using language that's a common as dirt for fascists and populists, doesn't rise to the level of stuffing human beings into train cars like lumber and moving them en masse to literal death factories.

Making those links just reinforces the lack of education in schools about just how fucking evil these people were.

Show threadJon LauridsenNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @TechyDad @alper @tristansnell Sure no one is literally Nazi except for actual Nazis, but the near-identical othering rhetoric sets a direction that is identifiably early-Nazi-rise-to-power-1930s esque. Like the speeches leading up to #kristallnacht. Technically yes they’re just ordinary fascists, but calling out Nazi now clarifies their potential for vast destruction.
Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 12, 2023

@gaggle @TechyDad @alper @tristansnell there are people who call themselves nazis today. Generally though, most nationalist populist rhetoric is the same all the way down to petty tyrants.

As they say, "Hitler probably liked donuts, too". It takes more than reading from the same nationalist statements to make someone that level of evil.

Show threadDisplay NameNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @gaggle @TechyDad @tristansnell so you choose to wait and see the trains. Ok. Not ok for us.
Show threadDisplay NameNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @gaggle @TechyDad @tristansnell you know what, scratch that. I'll try harder. I really would like you to feel the urgency of it.
As a firefighter do you have a different name for a smaller fire? Does it irk you if someone calls a a bed on fire in a single house a fire and you tell them to wait until we see if it compares to a whole neighborhood/city burn down kind of fire? Or do you act as early as possible?
This is it for the rest of us folks who have an idea how it spreads. Never again doesn't make sense after it happens again, does it?
Show threadFabio G.Nov 12, 2023

@alper @FirefighterGeek @gaggle @TechyDad @tristansnell

“Yeah never again, i know, but it hasn't happened again yet, so let's chill, okay?”

Show threadGrandpa DonNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell
The quotes are accurate.
Hitler had not started slaughtering trainloads when he said that. Waiting until tfg is actually doing it is foolhardy.
"Fool me once..."
Show threadlucretiaNov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell this policy would make it impossible to ever draw any comparison between the actions of one group and nazis though, until it was too late and both groups were definitively nazis.

It is useful to be able to make comparisons and draw parallels. If someone is saying/doing things that have clear parallels with Adolf Hitler I think it's silly to shy away from pointing that out, just because there's still room for them to be even worse.
Show threadTechyDadNov 12, 2023

@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell The thing is, though, that the Nazis didn't start with train cars full of people. They started with smaller measures.

I visited the Holocaust Museum in DC a few decades ago. (Highly recommend it, but it's emotionally shattering. Don't plan anything else that night!) There was a "kid's exhibit" called Daniel's Story. You enter a room in the life of a Jewish kid named Daniel just as Hitler is rising to power. Everything seems normal.

1/

Show threadTechyDadNov 12, 2023

@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell As you move from room to room, time moves forward. There are changes, but they are small and are easily dismissed as "not so bad" once you've accepted everything that comes before.

Then you enter the last room which is the gates to a concentration camp. Suddenly, you realize that each of those "not bad" steps led you to this point and how bad they really were.

2/

Show threadTechyDadNov 12, 2023

@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell So when Trump uses language that echos early Nazi rhetoric, it's totally fair to call him a Nazi even if he's not saying - yet - that we need to build death camps to kill all the Jews.

If we get to the point where Trump is in charge and is going full Nazi Final Solution, then it's too late. We need to point out the Nazi parallels early and avoid them.

3/

Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 12, 2023
@TechyDad @tristansnell are you suggesting trump has anything like that planned?
Show threadAdrian Riskin Nov 12, 2023

@FirefighterGeek @TechyDad @tristansnell Did Hitler have it planned from the beginning? It doesn't actually matter. Without enough like-minded followers his initial plans would have been irrelevant. This is why he put out feelers at every stage to learn what he could get away with.

Likewise what Trump currently has planned is irrelevant. The relevant questions are what would he do if he could get away with it and where are his feelers leading. The answers are anything and genocide. The argument you're trying to make is astonishingly ahistorical.

Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 12, 2023
@TechyDad @tristansnell are you suggesting that any of these groups n the middle east have anything like that planned?
Show threadKagan MacTane (he/him)Nov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek If it talks like a Nazi and acts like a Nazi, but doesn't come right out and say "Hey, I'm a Nazi" or wear a swastika... guess what, *it's still an actual fucking Nazi*. The comparisons are 100% correct and appropriate. @tristansnell
Show threadDarwin WoodkaNov 12, 2023

@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell

"Well, first they only came for me RHETORICALLY"

Show threadPedestrianError  Nov 12, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell Do you think Trump and other Republicans are borrowing dehumanizing inflammatory buzzwords like “vermin” from the actual fucking nazis by accident? It’s not even a word modern people routinely use to refer to rats. There’s no reason to use it other than to evoke actual fucking nazis and mobilize bigots who have been on the sidelines because being an actual fucking Nazi or klansman hasn’t seemed safe for a few decades.
Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 13, 2023
@PedestrianError @tristansnell I think in some of those cases, Trump is talking to people who actually consider themselves real nazis -- and that your claim of them being unsafe for a few decades is mistaken. There are plenty of these assholes that revel in their ability to safely wear the symbols of the holocaust openly in the U.S. (though not in some other countries who have figured out the unlimited free speech without consequences may not be a great idea)
Show threadKeith AmmannNov 13, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell You seem to think Nazi comparisons are only appropriate when people are acting like 1944 Nazis. But before there were 1944 Nazis, there were 1933 Nazis. And it's extremely apt to compare our right-wing authoritarians to 1933 Nazis. The parallels are becoming too numerous to count.
Show threadFirefighterGeek Nov 13, 2023

@KeithAmmann @tristansnell

What I think is that referring to every two bit piece of shit wanna-be fascist dictator to the actual nazis diminishes what the nazis actually were and did in the minds of young people who aren't getting the education about it in schools any more, and don't personally know people with their number tattoos on their forearms.

Show threadKeith AmmannNov 13, 2023
@FirefighterGeek @tristansnell And what I think is that my dad was born in Germany in 1940, and I know a Nazi when I see one, and I'm damn well going to point them out before they can do all the damage they're capable of doing.