cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/159008
My grandmother was born in Berlin in 1938. Her father was essentially forced into the army, because he had skills as a mechanic. He was captured by the Russians, and then tortured for the rest of his life essentially. At the end of the war nazi Gestapo went to her home and tried to force her grandfather and all of her under age brothers into the war on the eastern front against Russia. When her grandfather refused, they put a hand gun to his head and shot him in front of the entire family, and then essentially kidnapped. All the young boys and every last one of them died. The only one who survived managed to get away by hiding in an old clothing case. Once the war was pretty much over and the Russians had control of the city, my grandmother watched as her mother was gang raped by Russian soldiers. She actually had her head shaved by her mother so that the Russians would think she was a little boy so they wouldn’t rape her because they were literally raping women of all ages. If you ask me how I view Hitler and his fanatical followers. I would tell you that I despise them because I remember being a young boy and watching an old lady cry as she told me the stories of her youth and the horrors of war. So when you guys start going around calling Republicans Nazis I’m sorry if I don’t take you seriously and I’m really offended by it. This is another reason why I can’t take people seriously that call Trump and his supporters Nazis. The fact of the matter is once Hitler gained enough power, He armed his supporters to the teeth with military grade weaponry, and began a genocide in his own nation against Jews and other minorities. If Trump really was a Nazi and so he were his supporters then during that four year time span he would’ve found ways and means to arm his supporters and begin slaughtering liberals like it was going out of style.
I’ve seen you lean on the “this is just a place for memes, bro” crutch a couple of times now. Casual racism or bigotry is still racism and bigotry, FYI. Also, I didn’t really pay close attention to everything that got posted here, I did see a bunch of memes or whatever, but this thread and the other couple that I posted in weren’t meme related in the slightest, which is why I chose to respond to them. You can’t operate under the pretense of an open discussion and then shout “It’s just memes, stop trying to have a real discussion” every time someone takes you up on it.
As far as you saying you’re not a bigot, well when you selected your username, you chose to show the world otherwise. That might be a joke to you or something that’s just funny, but going back to the first thing I said, casual bigotry is still very much so bigotry. I’ll admit, liking cheese is hardly one of the top 100 things that’s important to me, so maybe your hatred of trans people and your decision to use a slur to refer to them isn’t representative of who you are as a person, but I do find it hilarious that someone who had the entirety of all the usernames in the world available to them but chose one that literally is able hating a specific group of people and using a slur to do so has the gall to say they’re not a bigot with a straight face.
As far as my liberal use of the word Nazi, I did jump right into the middle of that conversation and that might have been a shock that I wasn’t quite intending. But I was directly responding to the part of OP’s post where he said he was offended that people associated Nazis with Republicans. As I said, I know from personal experience that there’s not a 1 to 1 correlation there, but I still can’t figure out why anyone who wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer would allow that sort of presence in their party. If you are driving somewhere and you see people on the side of the road with Swastika flags and Nazi uniforms broke down and you give them a ride to wherever it is you’re going, you helped them. You might not agree with them, you might actively dislike it. But you helped them accomplish their goal. And when literal actual Nazis are protesting with signs for GOP candidates and said candidate doesn’t actually speak out against them (https://www.news-press.com/story/news/local/2023/06/12/nazi-flags-at-disney-how-has-ron-desantis-addressed-antisemitism/70312857007/) then that’s condoning their behavior by default. If you’re standing next to a literal Nazi in the voting booth and you’re both making the same decisions, you both have the same goals, and you don’t re-evaluate literally everything you believe in, well then hopefully you can see why it’s difficult for someone who doesn’t agree with either one of you has a very hard time telling the difference.
Like I said, what happened to OP’s grandmother was awful, but I don’t see how voting for people who appear to be aligned with the same people who did it in any way shape or form honors the people who were put through those atrocities. If you think that me pointing that out makes me a jerk, so be it. That wasn’t really my intention, but then again I was responding to someone who, in another post, has already admitted that he enjoys getting downvotes and considers them to be a success. I believe I saw a similar comment of yours as well. By your own logic, if I’ve managed to piss you off then I believe I’ve won? Is that how it works? Again, not really my intention, but I really am curious how someone can get their mind as twisted as you two are and actually try to use logic to explain their way out of it. You’re all so quick to dismiss someone who disagrees as nothing more than a troll or a member of the hivemind, but when push comes to shove and you have to explain why you think the way you think about the things you say, there’s quite often very little actual argument. For a group of people that talks about the left and their feelings I just see a lot of confusion, hate, and naïvety as the main driving force for most of the talking points for the right.
Lot here and I’m getting tired so sorry if I skip some stuff / have more typos than usual.
Point was more that if the sub is about posting memes, I’m not there to have long political discussions. A little short back and forth is one thing, but purely if I’m posting memes I’m not there for long form chats andbis more what I meant. I don’t always have time for long form which IMO is what the best discussion is but popping on to post a quick shit post while you’re dropping a deuce at work usually doesn’t take too long.
As far as this and the crutch part from earlier, I really do just consider it joking around. You want to call me a racist for that, I don’t really care. I have had black friends that call me cracker. That’s racist too. My Jewish friend has called me goy before. Same shit.
There was a Broadway play awhile back with a song something like everybody is a little racist sometimes or something to that effect. I believe similarly to that or maybe that it is a spectrum not unlike autism. To my way of thinking, there’s a big difference between someone that gets fed up with politics and memes things up / acts like a twat in one specific place as an outlet but is otherwise a decent person and someone that is calling for mass eradication of a group of people. Maybe you see someone with high functioning autism (formerly Asperger’s) and low functioning as the same thing just because they’re both called “autism”? I dunno but for me there’s a difference.
And I think the fact that everything is confined to a specific sub is also a point worth considering. I do post on other subs but like for instance on EH’s funmemes the rules are a lot different and I don’t do that stuff outside of the designated areas for it.
Ok, if I came off as trying to crucify you over it, wasn’t my intent. Meant it more in terms of time management and compartmentalizing different stuff in different areas. TBF, I get that lemmy’s ui does not always make this an easy task and that I probably come across as a lot more of an asshole when I’m in a rush and firing things off more rapidly. When I have the time, I have tried to help folks out that don’t like that kind of content.
I’m not offended at all if people want to block me. Honestly, I really wish Lemmy had some kind of tagging system and the ability to filter in/out posts based on tags (at community and post levels, possibly for comments and users too tho). I think that would be a much better solution than wholesale defedding / user-blocking of entire sub or everything another user posts. Or at least a real cool and novel alternative for those that want to take advantage of it.
But at the end of the day, I came there specially to vent and relax and I’m not breaking any rules. So if someone isn’t trying to actually engage in discussion and just wants to give a hard time about it, then I either ignore them or if they are persistent then probably will block them and move on.
Honestly, when I selected it what was going thru my head was I was frustrated with trans activists (not necessarily all trans people) and thinking
I think I’m allowed to change my name on here and now that I know the instance is truly free speech, I might even consider looking into it at some point. I haven’t ruled it out or committed to it yet but we’ll see.
As far as “showing the world”, in terms of what “world” is encompassed in the corner of the fediverse that hasn’t defedded us, I’m fine with that perception/misconception/deception if the trade off is that it encourages more radical elements to leave me be. I’m not opposed to calm discussion here and there but I don’t come here to defend my viewpoints that I’m “not allowed” to have on mainstream sites. TBH, if people on mainstream sites weren’t so easily offended like things used to be 10/15/20 years ago, I doubt I would feel the desire in the first place.
Minor distinction but I don’t actually hate trans people - only the pushy activists types. What most people would call sjw’s. Many of whom are not even trans themselves.
Hell, if you asked me what a “troon” was even 10 minutes before I registered, my dumbass probably would have confused it with a “macaroon” and started getting hungry. While trying to find something for point #2 above, I saw a post mentioning it meant trans activists or goons or something, but tbh I don’t even really know for sure how its used.
Ok, maybe bc the word is so reductive that it doesn’t account for someone being annoyed by a group of people or for where on the spectrum of bigotry one falls or what they are bigots about. I dunno.
But like I said earlier, I see a huge difference between someone that is literally a member of KKK and wants to literally kill people, someone that casual says slurs to their buddies, and someone who is neither of those things but disagrees with using political power to artificially put one group on a pedestal or is willing to tolerate but not cater to demands.
If people want to call me a bigot for the stuff I’m posting in dankmemes, I don’t really care. It will fall on deaf ears and if someone wastes my time too much, I’ll probably block them.
Outside of that, if I’m on some other instance with some other name and just expressing a different political opinion, I think it’s kind of a dick move calling someone a “bigot” over nothing but having a different point of view.
I dunno about the official party/ GOP. But most of the guys I personally know that vote Republican aren’t officially affiliated with the party and mostly just don’t want stuff the other side is pushing but they identify as Republican. I know a couple guys that vote entirely along the 2A lines and don’t seem to really give a damn about anything else but call themselves Republicans. Haven’t known any of them to express any race hate whatsoever. Lgbt support varies a bit tho… Especially the T part. But most of them are pretty indifferent to LGB.
You could day they are bigots I guess. I don’t think it fits. Racist definitely doesn’t. Transmisic / transphob maybe. But that kinda implies disliking the people. Most art like ne and just don’t like how the political side is getting thrown at them wihy no discussion, no input from the other side, just “do as we say” mentionality.
Same reason democrats allow communists to vote for them. You get the same vote as everyone else regardless of how utterly stupid you are, and given the nature of the two-party, first-past-the-post system, the overwhelming majority of people, even at the extremes, will end up voting for one of the two major parties, even if they barely actually align ideologically.
I agree the 2 party system is a joke and only serves to give the illusion of choice in all but the most superficial of cases. But your implication that communism is on the same level of outright evil as Nazism is so far fetched, I’m not even sure what point you’re trying to make.
Also, if there truly was a large group effort to establish actual communism (and not just ramping up programs like socialized healthcare and improved infrastructure) and make it mainstream within this country, I would have no problems combatting those efforts in any way I saw fit, as I believe the large majority of people that vote democrat would. I was going to ask if you could say the same thing regarding Nazis with the GOP, but that’s not even a hypothetical question I have to ask you, as there are plenty of examples of that simply not happening.
True. I failed to Emphasize how much worse communism is
If the OP still wants to get offended when people think that Republicans are the same thing as Nazis, here’s your reasoning why. Taking material items away from people is far more evil to you people than genocide (of minorities though, so it’s all good)
Sorry I even tried to have a civil conversation with you. At least you showed your true colors before I wasted too much of my time.
Lol just immediately jump to your retarded strawmen. Typical leftist troll
Nah, this entire thread discussion is me actively trying to not be a troll. I could break out the insults or tell you how stupid you are or what a piece of shit you are, but at the end of the day, you just openly admitted to being at the very least a Nazi sympathizer. There’s no intelligent civil discussion to be had following that. Period.
“You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into.”
You’re not doing a very good job
Nah, idiots like you like to twist the definition of words to suit your agenda. So to you a troll is just someone who disagrees with how you’ve been brainwashed, just like me posing fact based arguments is what you called propaganda. Up until you admitted to being a Nazi lover I was engaging in this conversation genuinely, but now that you’ve shown your true colors, you can go fuck yourself with a rusty dildo and then fellate a shotgun. There’s no point in me even trying to have an intellectual debate with someone who isn’t capable of the same in return.
That’s a small taste of what it would look like if I were actually trying to troll you.