What difference does it actually make? That person is still performing Nazi-ism, even if they say they don’t believe it. That person is still showing support for Nazi-ism, and making minorities feel unsafe.
To be clear, there is a really good chance that they are full of crap, they do believe it, they’re just “joking” until the final punchline lands.
But one’s internal beliefs don’t actually mean much in comparison to their actions.
Isn’t the illegal part of Nazi-ism the actual fascism, violence, othering, couping, etc parts though and not its symbology?
Does overly assigning evil to a set of symbols give a path for similar evils with different symbols to come about? I’ve wondered about that and modern American Christian Fascism – I think it’s more invisible than it should be because people conflate fascism with the Nazis symbols directly instead of its ideals and methods.
I never know how to feel about the auditors and ‘law tester’ people – they sure seem assholish, but they do always make me think about interesting important questions about the law and society.
Flying a Nazi flag is itself, with no other acts, hurting people. This is like saying “the cross burning didn’t hurt anyone, the lynchings were the real problem”.
Sorry I meant to call that out more explicitly. The symbols do harm people because they’ve done damage, but the symbols themselves didn’t do the damage and I wondered if not being more clear about that is why people don’t see other modern fascist movements with different symbols for what they are.
What difference does it actually make? That person is still performing Nazi-ism, even if they say they don’t believe it. That person is still showing support for Nazi-ism, and making minorities feel unsafe.
To be clear, there is a really good chance that they are full of crap, they do believe it, they’re just “joking” until the final punchline lands.
But one’s internal beliefs don’t actually mean much in comparison to their actions.
Isn’t the illegal part of Nazi-ism the actual fascism, violence, othering, couping, etc parts though and not its symbology?
Does overly assigning evil to a set of symbols give a path for similar evils with different symbols to come about? I’ve wondered about that and modern American Christian Fascism – I think it’s more invisible than it should be because people conflate fascism with the Nazis symbols directly instead of its ideals and methods.
I never know how to feel about the auditors and ‘law tester’ people – they sure seem assholish, but they do always make me think about interesting important questions about the law and society.
Flying a Nazi flag is itself, with no other acts, hurting people. This is like saying “the cross burning didn’t hurt anyone, the lynchings were the real problem”.
Sorry I meant to call that out more explicitly. The symbols do harm people because they’ve done damage, but the symbols themselves didn’t do the damage and I wondered if not being more clear about that is why people don’t see other modern fascist movements with different symbols for what they are.