I need to talk about this point because what @dangenesis said up there really bothers me. The idea that coddling nazis is somehow important to helping them not be nazis, or that people making them live with the consequences of their actions is what keeps them being nazis.
It bothers me because itās a faulty conclusion reached through a series of useful facts. Iāll elaborate.
Isolation and insularism are common elements in authoritarian groups, of which nazis are a perfect example. Youāre dealing with people who are emotionally immature who integrate themselves into a social hierarchy in order to feel a sense of security. The social structure that they build and participate in keeps them isolated and prevents them from maturing and learning to question their fundamental beliefs. This allows the social structure and all of the people in it to continue perpetuating their ideology, which again they built in order to feel a sense of security that they otherwise lack.
It is absolutely true that breaking that isolation is one of the best ways of freeing someone from the grip of authoritarianism, but itās not anywhere near as simple as @dangenesis suggests.
Thereās a musician named Daryl Davis who famously does this with KKK members. Davis himself is black and has helped free many people from the KKK by befriending them and using his friendship as a prybar to help them question their white supremacist beliefs. Davis has also spoken openly about how difficult and unique his work is and how it canāt just be done by anyone with some spare time. It takes a significant amount of work and free time to accomplish, owing to how difficult it is to actually change someoneās mind, especially when you have to not just educate them, but also teach them how to be emotionally mature.
Okay, now to the part that made me personally angry:
Itās functionally impossible for us to approach the problem of nazis like Daryl Davis does. Some of us have the time, energy, and resources to pull it off and will do so. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to keep the nazis from hurting people. And in the end, while people will convert some nazis away from fascism, we save far more people by helping them learn to reject fascism before theyāre ever recruited. Yes, this means that youāre educating kids so that those kids donāt grow up to embrace white supremacy. Most of the fascists are going to keep being fascists and the best you can hope is to keep them from killing people and wait for them to die of old age.
Similarly, our efforts to oppose them do not sustain or in any way aid nazis or other authoritarian groups. They are entirely self-perpetuating and our efforts to stop nazis from doing terrible things are not the reason they keep doing terrible things. They do not back off just because we back off. When we back off, they escalate, because the whole point behind a fascist ideology is to sieze power and then start murdering people to establish a complete totalitarian control over a white supremacist state.
This made me angry because it took some good points, like the way we can free people from authoritarianism through care and guidance, and then used those points to make some really shitty conclusions, like the idea that you canāt harshly critizie nazis without just helping sustain them. Thatās a completely crap argument, and insulting beyond belief.
And finally, hereās a salient comment from the amazing Alexandra Erin:
2087
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