What's Different About Nazis

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I didn't think this needed to be spelled out, and I don't know how long this thread will survive before it gets locked, but I'm laying it out here.

You can be a Communist without enacting Stalin-esque great purges.
You can be a Capitalist without buying and selling slaves.
You can be a Democrat without shooting up a Republican baseball game.
You can be a Republican without bombing a Planned Parenthood clinic.
You can be an Anarchist without setting things and people on fire.

You cannot be a Nazi without advocating genocide.

All of the above ideologies have been used to excuse horrible things, yes. All of the above groups have had bad people in them. The difference is, there is nothing inherently evil about being a democrat, a republican, etc. Anything can be corrupted or used as a pretense.

Nazism...is different. The core ideology of Nazis is the supremacy of the "Aryan" race at the expense of all others, with a special focus on the persecution of Jewish people, Romanis, the LGBTQ population, the physically or mentally disabled, and anyone else they consider "impure." The end game is always going to involve skies choked with cremation smoke and boots stomping on faces.

There are a wide variety of political ideologies and practical stances that a good person can hold. Nazi is not one of them.

In short, not all evil people are Nazis, but all Nazis are evil people.

[Antiboyscout]

No, you can't be a communist without enacting Stalin-esque great purges. If you want proof, ask any communist what they think of the Kulaks. You ether get more stutters out of them than a crack addict in the middle of the arctic circle or they will come right out and say those greedy f*kers deserved to die.

[GandALF]

No one here is defending Nazis, they're defending freedom of speech. You get human rights for being human. That is the only requirement. You respect their humanity. Not their views. This is BASIC liberalism.

[LittleRaven]

You cannot be a Nazi without advocating genocide.

Of course you can. All you need to do is convince yourself that you can set up an ethnostate without killing lots of people.

But Raven, you say, that's impossible! Lots of people have tried variations on that idea, and they ALL ended up killing lots and lots of people!

And you would be right. But that doesn't mean people don't honestly believe it can be done. Just as lots of people believe you can somehow implement Communism without leaving a trail of bodies a mile wide, or that pure Capitalism really doesn't rely on the exploitation of the working man, or that the government would be perfect if only we would put God in charge. It's nothing short of astonishing what people can convince themselves of. We're very fortunate that cognitive dissonance isn't usually debilitating, otherwise we'd never survive as a species.

As to whether or not 'good' Nazis exist, well, I dunno. I don't actually know any Nazis personally. But in my experience, most people don't really put very much thought into their political positions, and they're especially bad about projecting them beyond an immediate situation. That doesn't make them bad people...but it does make them vulnerable to bad people.

[GandALF]

Of course you can. All you need to do is convince yourself that you can set up an ethnostate without killing lots of people.

Well technically that would be only ethnic-nationalism. Not full Nazism.

[excalibur]

I think, like communism, the core idea of the National Socialist Party, as it's fully name implies, started out as something completely different and people got roped into the party because the idea that the government and the rich elites have taxed your money and you should have your fair share. In the case of the NAZIs, it turned into an excuse for the Jews and then devolved worse and worse as it went on. When you got a population that's in extreme poverty and beaten from a great war, anybody with a good speaking voice can rattle on ideas of saying they deserve better and the best way to get a mob rolling is to push them to hate an actual person or people.

[LittleRaven]

Well technically that would be only ethnic-nationalism. Not full Nazism.

True. But I suspect that most of the people Fuzzy Necromancer is talking about aren't 'full Nazis' either. If you go watch recruiting videos for these movements (and I really, really don't suggest that...they're terribly repetitive!) they're almost exclusively promoting the 'white country for white people vision' They never really get past the ethnic-nationalism phase.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

...the ethnic-nationalist phase is a rubber skin they pit on so they don't alienate centrists.
They are full-on Nazis.
They chant "blood and soil", the complain about "white genocide", they wear the damn swazticha and celebrate the legacy of Hitler. They are Nazis.

Excalibur, do you have any evidence that the National Socialist Party was ANYTHING other than the political arm of Hitler's evil?

I don't care if, allegedly, nobody on this forum is defending Nazis, because you know who IS defending Nazis? THE PRESIDENT OF A NUCLEAR-CAPABLE NATION!

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

To clarify:
You cannot be a part-time Nazi.
You cannot be a "mild" Nazi or a partial Nazi or a quasi-Nazi.
You cannot be a Nazi ironically.

Nazism IS an absolute. It IS a binary state. Either you are one, or you are not.

[Wild_Kraken]

Of course you can. All you need to do is convince yourself that you can set up an ethnostate without killing lots of people.

Well technically that would be only ethnic-nationalism. Not full Nazism.

That's really a distinction without a difference, as capital N Nazism and "ethnic-nationalism" both have the same result. You can't create an ethnostate without ethnic cleansing and genocide.