Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to I hope your tongue is in your cheek.

Nope
Robert — (archived)

No matter how many times you claim otherwise, I still never advocated namecalling. The term "likening" is too fuzzy to be useful, but I'll happily cop to drawing comparisons between tactics used by Nazis and tactics used by NeoRepublicans. That is in no way the same as saying that the Neos are Nazis.

You're taking this denial of any comparison to absurd lengths. In the early days the Nazis worked within the democratic system to gain a toehold; by your lights I'd be saying then that anybody who engages in democracy must be a Nazi. Do you have any idea how silly you're being?

Similarly, so many people these days use propaganda techniques originally developed by Joseph Goebbels that, again, by your lights I'd be accusing advertizers and the advertizing industry of being Nazis...every politician who ever ran an ad a Nazi, every religion that ever proselytized would be Nazis, every single person who dressed up before cruising for mates would be a Nazi...get it yet?

The problem is that at the level of strategy and tactics, the Nazis have a monopoly on nothing. Their tools of power were, for the most part, nonideological. Communists can use Nazi techniques just as well as anybody.

And my god, to think we're even having this discussion on a thread about NeoRepublicans using one of the most chilling of the social control techniques used by the Nazis, the informer system. Students spying on teachers, children spying on their parents, employees spying on employers...only those with totalitarian ambitions would see any benefit in making Americans fear each other.

You can splutter all you want, but I'm not about to stop pointing out the very real danger to American democracy. In fact, the more you squawk, the more certain I am that I'm on the right track.

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