Look our politicians may refer to themselves as nazis on porn forums,
we may use nazi symbology at our national conference,
our campaign rhetoric may mirror nazi rhetoric exactly,
our leader may have publicly praised hitler,
our policies may be carbon copies of nazi policies,
we may count literal nazis as some of our most fervent supporters,
our leader may have praised a public nazi march,
our leader may have hosted and praised literal nazis at his estate,
our leader may curry favor among socialite nazi sympathizers in charge of large swaths of american media,
and we may perform nazi salutes at our leaders inauguration,
but… we are NOT NAZIS 😤 😭 🤡
Why would it matter if we got our own definition? The original Nazis are within living memory. Their symbols are within living memory. So when someone performs those symbols while advocating for many of the same tenets of that ideology, we just call it by the same name.
we already do that with “Liberal” and it makes it hard to have an informed conversation with other non-American English speakers.
Another reason is because fascists who are not Nazis can highlight the differences between them and the big bad Nazis. This causes people to forgive and underestimate fascism. The USA just installed a fascist administration which I believe is partly due to the fact that too many already identify fascism as only being Nazis when the Spanish fascists weren’t much better but were more successful because it wasn’t as obvious.
We don’t need to encourage more ignorance.