And this, people, is why we should extensively teach fascist and colonialist history. Bet >90% of Americans don’t know this. Many don’t seem to have an issue with Stephen Miller’s Nazi rhetoric, or Trump speeches often suspiciously sounding like the ones from a certain Austrian painter. They simply don’t recognise simple patterns like this.
I don’t think the author is at fault at all. I would rather ask their educators about what the fuck they were doing that this person doesn’t know these words.
I don’t know that I agree with that. Nazis suck, but just because they are trending at the moment doesn’t seem like a great reason to spend time dwelling in their ideology. Lots of people have done lots of ghastly things and you can’t unknow some of them. And now they live rent free in your head on the off chance someone’s words collide with an old phrase.
I don’t have a great answer, but I would have been happier if we taught people to recognize what fascism actually is and how to stop it rather than focusing on the icons and word choice of one set of awful people.
Tangential: Recently, I was talking with a friend of how in Colombia, schools don’t teach much of recent (say, last 100 years) events (Colombia has been in a pseudo-civil war for almost 80 years), but we learn A LOT about WWII, Vietnam war, Korean war, cold war, etc.
Given that the Goverment has done extremely nasty things in these decades, I’m somewhat convinced this is intentional.
To take this a step further, wolf-whistles (neo-Nazi dog-whistles) are often intentionally vague, and spotting them is important in recognizing cryptofascists because they will try and claim plausible deniability, “oh leftists call everyone a nazi” is something open nazis say to downplay themselves to other reactionaries. They know that their beliefs are still unspeakably disgusting to most societies, they tend to disguise it, downplay it and rationalize it.
Sometimes it’s language and phrases itself, you can often see cryptofascists use the same phrases, euphemisms or odd terms as famous fascist speeches or texts, whether as an intentional subtle allusion or just unwittingly echoing what they’ve read. And that’s where they’ll chuck in terms like “Final solution” in memes.
Other times, it’s more direct coded language and symbols. It’s probably less unknown these days, but some common examples of codes are the sonnenrad ‘Black Sun’ symbol, Nazi-era pseudo-runes (not to be confused with legitimate historical Germanic runes!), the numbers 14 and 88, and more.
Other times, it’s more direct coded language and symbols. It’s probably less unknown these days, but some common examples of codes are the sonnenrad ‘Black Sun’ symbol, Nazi-era pseudo-runes (not to be confused with legitimate historical Germanic runes!), the numbers 14 and 88, and more.
I know someone who used 88 in a username on accident, not knowing how cryptonazis use it. He found out because he got called out for it and asked to explain. After finding out what 88 can mean, he changed his username because he didn’t want to be mistaken as a nazi. TBF, his initial reaction was “wtf, why would someone suggest I’m a nazi and want to ban me because I have some numbers at the end of my name?” I think some people take it for granted that others are aware of these things.
Exactly. Luckily, back in high school, my IB History class spent a good couple months just learning about authoritarian rulers and their tactics.
I especially like pulling out Pinochet because he’s a clear and relatively recent example of right wing authoritarianism, manipulation of existing religious structures, and US government support of authoritarian regimes that help contextualize its trend towards authoritarianism.
In defense of the author and their education… They’re Brazilian so English probably isn’t their native language, and their history education was almost certainly in Portuguese. I don’t think it’s necessarily an indictment of their education that they weren’t taught about the English translation of a German phrase, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to apply the same standards of subtext awareness to native and non-native speakers either.
I also don’t think it makes sense that people who haven’t even taken history as a major, need to be taught each and every phrase that was used by a fanatic group.
A lot of these words, phrases and symbols tend to be taken from stuff that meant well in the past or even now. See swastika, svaha[1].
Just knowing those terms, while might help prevent them from being used in accidental cases, is not as important as being able to recognise the pattern of peoples actual actions.
Because a group that has copied stuff from other traditions, can always do that again with other sources, to replace that stuff.
It’s important that out of history, we make sure to identify the part that we actually need to be against, which is the specific actions that cause grief back then, instead of just picking each and every unrelated thing, which any new group can simply replace, while also getting to keep the original grievous actions.
This is also to prevent us from getting our willpower drained from always getting outraged by multiple instances of minor similarities that are much more probable to be a false +ive, to have the power to push back when we find the actual problem creators.
which I am not sure of the Nazi reference, but it was being chanted by people being portrayed as Nazis in a game ↩︎
And this, people, is why we should extensively teach fascist and colonialist history. Bet >90% of Americans don’t know this. Many don’t seem to have an issue with Stephen Miller’s Nazi rhetoric, or Trump speeches often suspiciously sounding like the ones from a certain Austrian painter. They simply don’t recognise simple patterns like this.
I don’t think the author is at fault at all. I would rather ask their educators about what the fuck they were doing that this person doesn’t know these words.
I don’t know that I agree with that. Nazis suck, but just because they are trending at the moment doesn’t seem like a great reason to spend time dwelling in their ideology. Lots of people have done lots of ghastly things and you can’t unknow some of them. And now they live rent free in your head on the off chance someone’s words collide with an old phrase.
I don’t have a great answer, but I would have been happier if we taught people to recognize what fascism actually is and how to stop it rather than focusing on the icons and word choice of one set of awful people.
Tangential: Recently, I was talking with a friend of how in Colombia, schools don’t teach much of recent (say, last 100 years) events (Colombia has been in a pseudo-civil war for almost 80 years), but we learn A LOT about WWII, Vietnam war, Korean war, cold war, etc.
Given that the Goverment has done extremely nasty things in these decades, I’m somewhat convinced this is intentional.
deleted by creator
To take this a step further, wolf-whistles (neo-Nazi dog-whistles) are often intentionally vague, and spotting them is important in recognizing cryptofascists because they will try and claim plausible deniability, “oh leftists call everyone a nazi” is something open nazis say to downplay themselves to other reactionaries. They know that their beliefs are still unspeakably disgusting to most societies, they tend to disguise it, downplay it and rationalize it.
Sometimes it’s language and phrases itself, you can often see cryptofascists use the same phrases, euphemisms or odd terms as famous fascist speeches or texts, whether as an intentional subtle allusion or just unwittingly echoing what they’ve read. And that’s where they’ll chuck in terms like “Final solution” in memes.
Other times, it’s more direct coded language and symbols. It’s probably less unknown these days, but some common examples of codes are the sonnenrad ‘Black Sun’ symbol, Nazi-era pseudo-runes (not to be confused with legitimate historical Germanic runes!), the numbers 14 and 88, and more.
I know someone who used 88 in a username on accident, not knowing how cryptonazis use it. He found out because he got called out for it and asked to explain. After finding out what 88 can mean, he changed his username because he didn’t want to be mistaken as a nazi. TBF, his initial reaction was “wtf, why would someone suggest I’m a nazi and want to ban me because I have some numbers at the end of my name?” I think some people take it for granted that others are aware of these things.
Considering that pcmr (PC Master Race) is now an acceptable term on reddit and now elsewhere, I’d say you were right.
When that whole thing started up Nazis seemed a lot less “real” imo. I liked it better when they occupied a similar space as pirates and ninjas…
Exactly. Luckily, back in high school, my IB History class spent a good couple months just learning about authoritarian rulers and their tactics.
I especially like pulling out Pinochet because he’s a clear and relatively recent example of right wing authoritarianism, manipulation of existing religious structures, and US government support of authoritarian regimes that help contextualize its trend towards authoritarianism.
In defense of the author and their education… They’re Brazilian so English probably isn’t their native language, and their history education was almost certainly in Portuguese. I don’t think it’s necessarily an indictment of their education that they weren’t taught about the English translation of a German phrase, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to apply the same standards of subtext awareness to native and non-native speakers either.
I also don’t think it makes sense that people who haven’t even taken history as a major, need to be taught each and every phrase that was used by a fanatic group.
A lot of these words, phrases and symbols tend to be taken from stuff that meant well in the past or even now. See swastika, svaha[1].
Just knowing those terms, while might help prevent them from being used in accidental cases, is not as important as being able to recognise the pattern of peoples actual actions.
Because a group that has copied stuff from other traditions, can always do that again with other sources, to replace that stuff.
It’s important that out of history, we make sure to identify the part that we actually need to be against, which is the specific actions that cause grief back then, instead of just picking each and every unrelated thing, which any new group can simply replace, while also getting to keep the original grievous actions.
This is also to prevent us from getting our willpower drained from always getting outraged by multiple instances of minor similarities that are much more probable to be a false +ive, to have the power to push back when we find the actual problem creators.
which I am not sure of the Nazi reference, but it was being chanted by people being portrayed as Nazis in a game ↩︎