Calling someone the "N" word

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that it should always be unacceptable to call someone a Nazi. The one exception to this would be if they say or do something which you don't like and you kind of want to insult them.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

I didn't say you shouldn't refer to Nazis as Nazis.

So it's not unethical to refer to non-Nazis as Nazis?

 

[ronburgundy]

So there's nothing inherently wrong with someone on "the far right" calling someone a Nazi?

Ethics aside, it would almost always factually wrong for someone on the far right to attack someone as a "Nazi", since far right ideology objectively shares most of the features of Naziism when used in the derogatory sense.

It can be inaccurate hyperbole to derogate a person to the right of oneself as a Nazi, but it can and sometimes is largely accurate.
In contrast, it is inherently always nonsensical to derogate a person to the left of oneself as a Nazi. A more valid parallel to calling a rightist a Nazi would be to call a leftist a Marxist.

Do those here who object to calling rightist "Nazis" equally object to calling leftists "Marxists"?

It depends on what your compass says. To me, being a leftist means you are critical of capitalism itself, which is hard to do with out at least invoking Marx in spirit. To be on the right, though, you don't need to have any particular opinion about Jews. You just have to view people as having innate differences in ability that are best revealed and sharpened through competition, whether in a war or a market. That's compatible with thinking a certain race has innately lower ability, but it's less of a requirement than Marx is for those critical of capitalism. I guess left anarchists are not technically Marxist, but they agree with him on more than they disagree.

Views specifically about Jews is an incidental feature of Naziism in Germany at that time. If there were no Jews to serve as the primary scapegoats, there would still have been Nazi ideology, just more focused on other inferior groups.
So, any focus upon innate inferiority of various human subgroups is sufficient to qualify.

Given the extreme disparities in outcomes between racial groups under capitalism, one cannot defend unregulated markets without presuming that those inequalities are "just" b/c they are a product of innate inequalities. In the absence of an racial superiority ideology, large group-level disparities in outcomes must be the result of unjust abuses that the market system is incapable of correcting. Which means that pretty much anyone who supports unregulated markets and views capitalism as leading to just outcomes is an implicit racist who favor a system that ensures the inequalities they think are just.

 

[dismal]

I usually want to see them do something like march an army into the Sudetenland or start rounding up the Jews before considering someone a *real* Nazi.

If you just put on costumes and blather a bit you're more of a Nazi wannabe.

That is Nazi's with power.

Hardly proof there cannot be Nazi's without power.

And yes they want power.

Regardless, I judge people by their acts, not their thoughts.

For example, I don't find ideological fellow travelers responsible for the harm caused to millions and national destruction caused by your boys Chavez and Maduro.

Though, frankly I find supporters and apologists of current day mass destroyers of humanity somewhat more culpable than wannabe supporters of people who have been dead 70 years.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Regardless, I judge people by their acts, not their thoughts.

So Hitler wasn't responsible, just some random guys working in the camps.

 

[WAB]

I usually want to see them do something like march an army into the Sudetenland or start rounding up the Jews before considering someone a *real* Nazi.

If you just put on costumes and blather a bit you're more of a Nazi wannabe.

That is Nazi's with power.

Hardly proof there cannot be Nazi's without power.

And yes they want power.

Nazis without power is a contradiction. Check your premises.

 

[untermensche]

I usually want to see them do something like march an army into the Sudetenland or start rounding up the Jews before considering someone a *real* Nazi.

If you just put on costumes and blather a bit you're more of a Nazi wannabe.

That is Nazi's with power.

Hardly proof there cannot be Nazi's without power.

And yes they want power.

Regardless, I judge people by their acts, not their thoughts.

For example, I don't find ideological fellow travelers responsible for the harm caused to millions and national destruction caused by your boys Chavez and Maduro.

Though, frankly I find supporters and apologists of current day mass destroyers of humanity somewhat more culpable than wannabe supporters of people who have been dead 70 years.

The thoughts of people that claim to be Nazi's are desires to do what the Nazi's did.

And it was plain old dictators that killed all those people. No matter what they talked about they were just murderous dictators.

A reason to oppose dictatorship in any form.

- - - Updated - - -

I usually want to see them do something like march an army into the Sudetenland or start rounding up the Jews before considering someone a *real* Nazi.

If you just put on costumes and blather a bit you're more of a Nazi wannabe.

That is Nazi's with power.

Hardly proof there cannot be Nazi's without power.

And yes they want power.

Nazis without power is a contradiction. Check your premises.

No it's not.

A Nazi is a mode of thinking.

A Nazi without power is somebody to make sure doesn't get power.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

I didn't say you shouldn't refer to Nazis as Nazis.

So it's not unethical to refer to non-Nazis as Nazis?

It is best to be careful and use the word sparingly.

I usually want to see them do something like march an army into the Sudetenland or start rounding up the Jews before considering someone a *real* Nazi.

If you just put on costumes and blather a bit you're more of a Nazi wannabe.

That is Nazi's with power.

Hardly proof there cannot be Nazi's without power.

And yes they want power.

Nazis without power is a contradiction. Check your premises.

I generally define it as "someone holding the belief", whether or not that person has power. I think it is the most useful way to define it.

Of course I think most of the punks LARPing are nothing more than idiot punks.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It is best to be careful and use the word sparingly.

You are not directly answering the question. Is it unethical or not?

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

It is best to be careful and use the word sparingly.

You are not directly answering the question. Is it unethical or not?

Every time I have done so I have used it ethically. I can't speak for the "left" and their overuse of the word.

It is pretty obvious that those who use the word a lot don't much appreciate it being used on them. The real question is - now that leftists are being called "Nazis", is it suddenly a bad idea to use that word as an insult?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JIomeOZwEY[/youtube]

 

[PyramidHead]

It is best to be careful and use the word sparingly.

You are not directly answering the question. Is it unethical or not?

Every time I have done so I have used it ethically. I can't speak for the "left" and their overuse of the word.

It is pretty obvious that those who use the word a lot don't much appreciate it being used on them. The real question is - now that leftists are being called "Nazis", is it suddenly a bad idea to use that word as an insult?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JIomeOZwEY[/youtube]

Which leftists are being called Nazis?

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Every time I have done so I have used it ethically. I can't speak for the "left" and their overuse of the word.

It is pretty obvious that those who use the word a lot don't much appreciate it being used on them. The real question is - now that leftists are being called "Nazis", is it suddenly a bad idea to use that word as an insult?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JIomeOZwEY[/youtube]

Which leftists are being called Nazis?

Socialists.

 

[ZiprHead]

I usually want to see them do something like march an army into the Sudetenland or start rounding up the Jews before considering someone a *real* Nazi.

If you just put on costumes and blather a bit you're more of a Nazi wannabe.

That is Nazi's with power.

Hardly proof there cannot be Nazi's without power.

And yes they want power.

Nazis without power is a contradiction. Check your premises.

Would you say a person that claims to be a catholic, attends service regularly, and gives his tithes to the church is not a catholic because he isn't a priest, bishop, etc.?

 

[J842P]

It depends on what your compass says. To me, being a leftist means you are critical of capitalism itself, which is hard to do with out at least invoking Marx in spirit. To be on the right, though, you don't need to have any particular opinion about Jews. You just have to view people as having innate differences in ability that are best revealed and sharpened through competition, whether in a war or a market. That's compatible with thinking a certain race has innately lower ability, but it's less of a requirement than Marx is for those critical of capitalism. I guess left anarchists are not technically Marxist, but they agree with him on more than they disagree.

Views specifically about Jews is an incidental feature of Naziism in Germany at that time. If there were no Jews to serve as the primary scapegoats, there would still have been Nazi ideology, just more focused on other inferior groups.
So, any focus upon innate inferiority of various human subgroups is sufficient to qualify.

Given the extreme disparities in outcomes between racial groups under capitalism, one cannot defend unregulated markets without presuming that those inequalities are "just" b/c they are a product of innate inequalities. In the absence of an racial superiority ideology, large group-level disparities in outcomes must be the result of unjust abuses that the market system is incapable of correcting. Which means that pretty much anyone who supports unregulated markets and views capitalism as leading to just outcomes is an implicit racist who favor a system that ensures the inequalities they think are just.

The Nazi's didn't view the Jews strictly as inferior. Or if they did, that wasn't the salient point. Nazi thought on the Jews was essentially the culmination of centuries of anti-semitism, which is unique in that it posits a global conspiracy of Jews to undermine the Aryan race.

 

[laughing dog]

I think that it should always be unacceptable to call someone a Nazi.

Especially if they are a Nazi because then you should punch them.

 

[PyramidHead]

Which leftists are being called Nazis?

Socialists.

Well, that's as old as the hills. That's like people saying evolution is "just a theory". Does anybody really get upset about that anymore? People taking it at face value when governments call themselves socialist is a constant of political life. Gotta pick your battles.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that it should always be unacceptable to call someone a Nazi.

Especially if they are a Nazi because then you should punch them.

Clearly. If you call them a Nazi first, then they'll be prepared for you to punch them and might run away and then you have to go and chase them down the street and it just becomes a whole thing. Nazis are, after all, only Nazis and they really aren't worth that level of effort.

 

[Bomb#20]

So there's nothing inherently wrong with someone on "the far right" calling someone a Nazi?

Ethics aside, it would almost always factually wrong for someone on the far right to attack someone as a "Nazi", since far right ideology objectively shares most of the features of Naziism when used in the derogatory sense.

According to what measure of "far right"? "Far right" often appears to get used either to mean "people who like capitalism" or to mean "people who don't agree with me". These are not sufficient to qualify one as objectively sharing most of the features of Naziism. What does "far right" mean when you use it?

It can be inaccurate hyperbole to derogate a person to the right of oneself as a Nazi, but it can and sometimes is largely accurate.
In contrast, it is inherently always nonsensical to derogate a person to the left of oneself as a Nazi.

Suppose someone favors a police state commanded by a dictator and his henchmen that orders people's private lives and bans them from disagreeing with the official ideology, and he wants all of civil society subjugated to the goals of that ruling clique. Isn't that sufficient to call him a fascist?

Now suppose he also has a special place in his heart for killing Jews. Isn't that sufficient to call him a Nazi?

Now suppose he also has medieval notions of economics, feels merchants are a parasitic class who don't make anything themselves, moneylending at interest is immoral and should be banned, and people should be taxed in proportion to their property to support the poor. Isn't that sufficient to make him "to the left of" everybody who approves of capitalism?

I've just described ISIS and the Taliban. In what way is the term "Islamo-nazi" inherently nonsensical?

A more valid parallel to calling a rightist a Nazi would be to call a leftist a Marxist.

Not really. It's almost universally agreed that it's bad to be a Nazi; whether it's bad to be a Marxist is controversial even among non-Marxists. A better parallel might be "Stalinist".

 

[Bomb#20]

Given the extreme disparities in outcomes between racial groups under capitalism, one cannot defend unregulated markets without presuming that those inequalities are "just" b/c they are a product of innate inequalities. In the absence of an racial superiority ideology, large group-level disparities in outcomes must be the result of unjust abuses that the market system is incapable of correcting. Which means that pretty much anyone who supports unregulated markets and views capitalism as leading to just outcomes is an implicit racist who favor a system that ensures the inequalities they think are just.

That is fractally wrong -- wrong at every conceivable scale of resolution. You are doing nothing but making up the worst motivation you can think of for your opponents' opinions and imputing it to them without evidence, just like Rush Limbaugh defining a "feminist" as someone who wants there to be as many abortions as possible.

In the first place, capitalist ideology has no opinion on whether disparities in outcomes between racial groups result from innate or environmental differences -- and "whether markets are regulated" is not the sum-total of our environment.

In the second place, any public policy choice can have an impact on dozens of outcome measures; your decision to equate justice with racial equality does not constrain others to prefer an unregulated market to other forms of social organization because of its effect on that particular outcome measure.

In the third place, whether the market system is "incapable of correcting" a problem is not something you will be in a position to issue a ruling on until we reach the so-called "end of history".

In the fourth place, opposing the drug war does not mean you want people to snort cocaine. Our society should have learned from Prohibition that sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. Your ideological opponents can perfectly well defend unregulated markets without presuming that those inequalities are "just", by simply arguing that the cure of regulation is worse than the disease of inequality.

And in the fifth place, you have just casually taken for granted that everyone is a moral consequentialist. Defenders of unregulated markets tend, for the most part, to be rather extreme deontologists. The very notion of "just outcomes" is alien to their thought processes. To them, justice is not a matter of outcomes at all, but of procedures. To them, whether a person has been treated justly depends not on where he ends up but rather on whether their rules were followed along the trajectory by which he got there. You don't need to have the opinion that the inequalities resulting from capitalism are just in order to perceive that capitalism does not involve the initiation of force, and regulation of markets does.

 

[Lion IRC]

Nazi sympathiser softens the accusation a little.