Recently, you’ve no doubt seen some posts from a group of writers called Substackers Against Nazis(SAN for short) railing against an infestation of Nazis on this site.
I really, really don't understand Nazis. My dad fought them, and Germany banned them after the war. They have survived with the memory of Bandera, who gave allegiance to Hitler, in Ukraine. It's shocking to see the red and black flag of Bandera in Ukrainian cemeteries now, showing that Ukrainians died for Naziism.
This is a recent photo, from Zelensky's Presidential site, from his visit to a Lviv cemetery.
I think it is important to understand that conditions breed ideologies like Nazism. The conditions in Germany that led to economic hardship and uncertainty went unchallenged by the political establishment. As suffering grows and government is unresponsive, the demonization of minorities and outsiders becomes a handy scapegoat and the appeal of the strongman to get "something done" increases. Hitler exploited all that.
And Donald Trump understands it.
The Democrats? They haven't a clue.
Today we have an equally corrupt and unresponsive government. Full 60% of the inflation impacting families is due to corporate price gouging. Yet, pleas for congressional investigation goes nowhere. Somewhere around 84% of the country want Medicare for All, yet all congress will do is send money off to Ukraine (where the US is paying for their healthcare and pensions) and Israel, which has national health care made possible by our annual subsidies.
The biggest booster of Nazism here is not Donald Trump and the Republicans, it is Joe Biden and the Democrats who do not follow through on campaign promises or fight for the American people, thus permitting the conditions from which Nazism grows.
Yes, but be careful with the comparison. Economic hardship brings a wish for change, but it doesn't lead to an idea that they are a superior people over an inferior class.
Yes, but when people are stressed and abandoned they look for others to blame, which can plug into pre-existing prejudice and racial tropes, which leaders like trump leverage and exploit. We see that now with the attitudes towards immigrants and Muslims. Economic justice makes overall justice and civility more likely.
Germany's economic issues were from the outside after WW II. The US economic issues are from our own policies of putting foreign wars and corporations ahead of people.
Yes, the effects of WW I and the punishing terms of the peace treaty crippled the economy, but the Weimar Republic was very similar to our corrupt, inept, non-responsive government today. The various factions fought and squabbled rather than coming together to address the needs of the people, which created internal problems that exacerbated the effects of the treaty.
As now, the German left was inept, cranky, divisive, ineffective. The people were abandoned, creating a vacuum Hitler & Co. (with massive funding of industrialists) stepped in to fill. The similarities between then and now in the US -- including billionaire funding -- are pretty much hand-in-glove, which helps to explain the rapidly growing fascist movement here.
Did you change from WW I to WW II? My comments were regarding the rise of fascism after WW I. Maybe I misread your note.
Having learned a lesson from the aftermath of WW I, the US pumped money into Germany and the rest of post-WW II Europe with the Marshal Plan, which primed the economic pump for a relatively fast rebound from the devastation of WW II, thus reducing the kind of long-term economic stress that could have revived fascist groups and discontent.
Certainly our economic wounds are self-inflicted from our wars, militarism and billionaire welfare, but no matter where economic stress comes from -- internal or external -- it can feed fascist impulses and groups.
If democrats would get their snouts out of billionaire pockets and address the economic injustice we are experiencing now, they could cut off the fascist lifeline. Will they? Nah, too much money to be collected now.
Well said. The solution to "bad" speech is good speech. Collect your facts, review the issue, study the history, organize your thoughts and write a counter argument that reduces the speech you dislike to intellectual dust. Quit the whining. If you are offended, by something someone says, pull up your nappy and respect, defend and use your First Amendment rights to challenge -- not censor -- the speech you dislike.
The rising pool of censorship calls is really a threat to us all, especially as AI ramps up and religious bias stains government policy and the mind-numbing corporate blob oozes further and further across our world.
I live in a little isolated neighborhood in Euclid, Ohio. Statistically, the police patrol less in neighborhoods with a high percentage of legal gun owners. So long as there are no mentally ill people yelling at random hours or no tenants with a tendency to domestic violence, we never see the cops.
Liberals reading this may assume I'm in an all white, Confederate flag-flying neighborhood. The truth is it's probably 60% Black. We're all very polite to each other here. It's nice.
Enough with the censorship already! Can't we have one platform where we can write and share our thoughts without some whiny types trying to spoil it for everyone? Sheesh!! (BTW, what Nazis? I've not seen any and I don't care if I do. That's what the block function is for.)
Thanks for sharing your opinions. This has certainly become a divisive topic.
I feel that especially in this day and age, where there's a lot of agendas behind various actions, and information as well as news tend to be presented in a more selective, black and white manner, without much nuance.....it can indeed be quite challenging in cases like this, to correctly identify whether or not something is pro- or anti-free speech, and whether or not censorship is truly warranted.
What I find particularly galling is that many on these same writers were effusive in their praise of all things Ukraine not so very long ago, up to and including trying to explain that the Nazi insignia worn by Ukrainian “freedom fighters” were not REALLY Nazi insignia and that Putin’s call to de-Nazify Ukraine was just a big fat lie. We watched these mainstream tow rags trip all over themselves to applaud actual, real working Nazis everywhere from a Ukrainian troop photo op at DisneyWorld to giving a standing ovation to a WW2 Ukrainian Nazi in the halls of Canada’s parliament.
I mean, it’s almost as if they are being disingenuous about their concern for Nazis, and are maybe just bad faith actors...
The same people who were all into Me Too before Tara Reade surfaced, who put BLM signs in their yards in posh neighborhoods but would never dream of shopping with Black people in grocery stores, the same people who have "In This House We Believe the Current Blue Team Talking Points" signs, the same people who decried children in cages at the border until Democrats renamed them detention facilities, the same people who cheered Obama and Biden for doing the exact same things they denounced Bush and Trump for, you mean THOSE people?
Their leaders are all bad faith actors. Those people themselves are largely just heavily propagandized cult members now suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance because they are now ordered to cheer for a genocide against little brown people.
I am enough of a barbarian to admit to enjoying schadenfreude at their expense at the same time I tell them to stay off my 1st Amendment lawn.
If that's sarcasm, I salute your skill. If it's not, well, all I can say is that my friends like that all dumped ME years ago because I didn't believe in Russiagate or the efficacy of the Covid jab because Dr. Fauci said so, or because I refused to vote for Hillary or Genocide Joe.
OB,your choice of words was illuminating…”I didn’t believe in Russiagate.”.Like “I didn’t believe in God”.And that’s exactly what it was to those straight-A illiterates.You —and I —rejected the Gospel.We became apostates.
Most of these people will tell you they aren’t formally religious.But they are,under a different name,and their reaction to heretics proves it.
The need to worship and adhere to some creed or another is apparently ingrained in the human race.If it is not God or the real gospels,it would be a secular faith,be it Nazism or political parties.
Personally,I’ll take the good old Sermon on the Mount,as taught by history’s original socialist.
I've notices that a lot of the worst of the woke liberals, who so despise religion that they refuse to learn anything about it, end up adopting the worst attitudes of the Spanish Inquisition.
And they don't even know it because they know nothing about the Inquisition, other than that Bad Catholics did it.
Let’s hope that Substack never gets rid of the “uncivilized” type people — which are a not inconsiderable number although underrepresented in a democracy. But if they are people who actually do think then these ‘proletarians’ might have significance and be able to stabilize the unsteady hand of the nation. The nation currently controlled by clueless broken “high status” individuals. The ‘elite,’ in other words. We need to keep reminding Substack not to cut us!!
hey man, I caught a few anti-Semitic people. But I didn't go complaining to "The Atlantic" about it. Something is really weird about his whole issue. It seems like that guy (not good with names) is casting about for an issue or he only likes "his kind." That is what it looks like to me. He is a very good writer, b.t.w. I really learned a lot from some of his stuff. But it does not matter these days. People are just very scared that their group will not be "the" group when it all gets sorted out. But that is a bad attitude to have, because you are going to turn against any "foreign" group. Um... whom does that actually sound like? The world is changing. I don't think he is comfortable with that. With Substack there is no "power base," everybody is equal. Sort of like democracy, right? So that means here is a guy who says he is against "Nazis" (Ooooo scary word!) and is really against democracy. Kind of pathetic because, like I said he is otherwise doing apparently good work as a professional (now free-lancer) writer. So he is coming from a very professional background and he thinks Substack threatens his career. Going after "Nazis" seemed to him like a safe way to attack Substack.
I really, really don't understand Nazis. My dad fought them, and Germany banned them after the war. They have survived with the memory of Bandera, who gave allegiance to Hitler, in Ukraine. It's shocking to see the red and black flag of Bandera in Ukrainian cemeteries now, showing that Ukrainians died for Naziism.
This is a recent photo, from Zelensky's Presidential site, from his visit to a Lviv cemetery.
https://img.pravda.com/images/doc/9/b/9b963cb-a8702645b1dfe5c1eb6f9a518b93f2f2-1702641630-extra-large.avif
I think it is important to understand that conditions breed ideologies like Nazism. The conditions in Germany that led to economic hardship and uncertainty went unchallenged by the political establishment. As suffering grows and government is unresponsive, the demonization of minorities and outsiders becomes a handy scapegoat and the appeal of the strongman to get "something done" increases. Hitler exploited all that.
And Donald Trump understands it.
The Democrats? They haven't a clue.
Today we have an equally corrupt and unresponsive government. Full 60% of the inflation impacting families is due to corporate price gouging. Yet, pleas for congressional investigation goes nowhere. Somewhere around 84% of the country want Medicare for All, yet all congress will do is send money off to Ukraine (where the US is paying for their healthcare and pensions) and Israel, which has national health care made possible by our annual subsidies.
The biggest booster of Nazism here is not Donald Trump and the Republicans, it is Joe Biden and the Democrats who do not follow through on campaign promises or fight for the American people, thus permitting the conditions from which Nazism grows.
Yes, but be careful with the comparison. Economic hardship brings a wish for change, but it doesn't lead to an idea that they are a superior people over an inferior class.
Yes, but when people are stressed and abandoned they look for others to blame, which can plug into pre-existing prejudice and racial tropes, which leaders like trump leverage and exploit. We see that now with the attitudes towards immigrants and Muslims. Economic justice makes overall justice and civility more likely.
Germany's economic issues were from the outside after WW II. The US economic issues are from our own policies of putting foreign wars and corporations ahead of people.
Yes, the effects of WW I and the punishing terms of the peace treaty crippled the economy, but the Weimar Republic was very similar to our corrupt, inept, non-responsive government today. The various factions fought and squabbled rather than coming together to address the needs of the people, which created internal problems that exacerbated the effects of the treaty.
As now, the German left was inept, cranky, divisive, ineffective. The people were abandoned, creating a vacuum Hitler & Co. (with massive funding of industrialists) stepped in to fill. The similarities between then and now in the US -- including billionaire funding -- are pretty much hand-in-glove, which helps to explain the rapidly growing fascist movement here.
Just saw this in HuffPost ... Trump is following the script: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-campaign-trump-parroting-hitler-anti-immigrant_n_657e76a8e4b0e142c0bdf065
Did you change from WW I to WW II? My comments were regarding the rise of fascism after WW I. Maybe I misread your note.
Having learned a lesson from the aftermath of WW I, the US pumped money into Germany and the rest of post-WW II Europe with the Marshal Plan, which primed the economic pump for a relatively fast rebound from the devastation of WW II, thus reducing the kind of long-term economic stress that could have revived fascist groups and discontent.
Certainly our economic wounds are self-inflicted from our wars, militarism and billionaire welfare, but no matter where economic stress comes from -- internal or external -- it can feed fascist impulses and groups.
If democrats would get their snouts out of billionaire pockets and address the economic injustice we are experiencing now, they could cut off the fascist lifeline. Will they? Nah, too much money to be collected now.
Not intentionally - just a typo. But it was WW II where we saw the worst application of Naziism.
Well said. The solution to "bad" speech is good speech. Collect your facts, review the issue, study the history, organize your thoughts and write a counter argument that reduces the speech you dislike to intellectual dust. Quit the whining. If you are offended, by something someone says, pull up your nappy and respect, defend and use your First Amendment rights to challenge -- not censor -- the speech you dislike.
The rising pool of censorship calls is really a threat to us all, especially as AI ramps up and religious bias stains government policy and the mind-numbing corporate blob oozes further and further across our world.
Fury is my favorite movie. And, here I am kinda throwing some love on the Nazis. Jesus fucking Christ. With the Nazis.
Praise God and pass the ammunition. Good to be fighting the good fight alongside a Marxist from Texas. God bless you my brother.
I live in a little isolated neighborhood in Euclid, Ohio. Statistically, the police patrol less in neighborhoods with a high percentage of legal gun owners. So long as there are no mentally ill people yelling at random hours or no tenants with a tendency to domestic violence, we never see the cops.
Liberals reading this may assume I'm in an all white, Confederate flag-flying neighborhood. The truth is it's probably 60% Black. We're all very polite to each other here. It's nice.
Enough with the censorship already! Can't we have one platform where we can write and share our thoughts without some whiny types trying to spoil it for everyone? Sheesh!! (BTW, what Nazis? I've not seen any and I don't care if I do. That's what the block function is for.)
Thanks for sharing your opinions. This has certainly become a divisive topic.
I feel that especially in this day and age, where there's a lot of agendas behind various actions, and information as well as news tend to be presented in a more selective, black and white manner, without much nuance.....it can indeed be quite challenging in cases like this, to correctly identify whether or not something is pro- or anti-free speech, and whether or not censorship is truly warranted.
What I find particularly galling is that many on these same writers were effusive in their praise of all things Ukraine not so very long ago, up to and including trying to explain that the Nazi insignia worn by Ukrainian “freedom fighters” were not REALLY Nazi insignia and that Putin’s call to de-Nazify Ukraine was just a big fat lie. We watched these mainstream tow rags trip all over themselves to applaud actual, real working Nazis everywhere from a Ukrainian troop photo op at DisneyWorld to giving a standing ovation to a WW2 Ukrainian Nazi in the halls of Canada’s parliament.
I mean, it’s almost as if they are being disingenuous about their concern for Nazis, and are maybe just bad faith actors...
The same people who were all into Me Too before Tara Reade surfaced, who put BLM signs in their yards in posh neighborhoods but would never dream of shopping with Black people in grocery stores, the same people who have "In This House We Believe the Current Blue Team Talking Points" signs, the same people who decried children in cages at the border until Democrats renamed them detention facilities, the same people who cheered Obama and Biden for doing the exact same things they denounced Bush and Trump for, you mean THOSE people?
Their leaders are all bad faith actors. Those people themselves are largely just heavily propagandized cult members now suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance because they are now ordered to cheer for a genocide against little brown people.
I am enough of a barbarian to admit to enjoying schadenfreude at their expense at the same time I tell them to stay off my 1st Amendment lawn.
But... some of these people are my friends! It's killing me!
If that's sarcasm, I salute your skill. If it's not, well, all I can say is that my friends like that all dumped ME years ago because I didn't believe in Russiagate or the efficacy of the Covid jab because Dr. Fauci said so, or because I refused to vote for Hillary or Genocide Joe.
I've made better friends since.
I lost the worst of them when I insisted a vote for Hillary was a vote for Trump.
Well, the Clintons DID pick him as their opponent!
OB,your choice of words was illuminating…”I didn’t believe in Russiagate.”.Like “I didn’t believe in God”.And that’s exactly what it was to those straight-A illiterates.You —and I —rejected the Gospel.We became apostates.
Most of these people will tell you they aren’t formally religious.But they are,under a different name,and their reaction to heretics proves it.
The need to worship and adhere to some creed or another is apparently ingrained in the human race.If it is not God or the real gospels,it would be a secular faith,be it Nazism or political parties.
Personally,I’ll take the good old Sermon on the Mount,as taught by history’s original socialist.
I've notices that a lot of the worst of the woke liberals, who so despise religion that they refuse to learn anything about it, end up adopting the worst attitudes of the Spanish Inquisition.
And they don't even know it because they know nothing about the Inquisition, other than that Bad Catholics did it.
Let’s hope that Substack never gets rid of the “uncivilized” type people — which are a not inconsiderable number although underrepresented in a democracy. But if they are people who actually do think then these ‘proletarians’ might have significance and be able to stabilize the unsteady hand of the nation. The nation currently controlled by clueless broken “high status” individuals. The ‘elite,’ in other words. We need to keep reminding Substack not to cut us!!
hey man, I caught a few anti-Semitic people. But I didn't go complaining to "The Atlantic" about it. Something is really weird about his whole issue. It seems like that guy (not good with names) is casting about for an issue or he only likes "his kind." That is what it looks like to me. He is a very good writer, b.t.w. I really learned a lot from some of his stuff. But it does not matter these days. People are just very scared that their group will not be "the" group when it all gets sorted out. But that is a bad attitude to have, because you are going to turn against any "foreign" group. Um... whom does that actually sound like? The world is changing. I don't think he is comfortable with that. With Substack there is no "power base," everybody is equal. Sort of like democracy, right? So that means here is a guy who says he is against "Nazis" (Ooooo scary word!) and is really against democracy. Kind of pathetic because, like I said he is otherwise doing apparently good work as a professional (now free-lancer) writer. So he is coming from a very professional background and he thinks Substack threatens his career. Going after "Nazis" seemed to him like a safe way to attack Substack.