Near Miss of the Day 649: Driver makes close pass on cyclist – then gets out of car to confront rider

Nigel Garage wrote:

...the remark, which is rooted in the anti-semitism of the 1930s and 40s. Describing others as "vermin", "cockroaches", etc is straight from the National Socialist playbook

Really? So Swift, Walpole, Luther and others - they all got it from the Nazis? I'm surprised - if they had time travel, why didn't they make use of it to go back and change things so that they won the war?

Hate is hate Rendel.

Hating people who you consider yourself morally superior to is the most dangerous form of all.

Some of the worst crimes in human history have been carried out for political reasons by people with exactly the same attitude as you.

That sounds very lofty, Rich, until you actually consider what you're saying. As you, like your sidekick Nigel (with apologies for comparing you to him as you do actually have a brain and try to make an argument), see fit to introduce Godwin's law, let's just think about it: do you not consider yourself morally superior to the Nazis, or Stalin, or Pol Pot? Do you not hate them for their crimes? If not why not? If you do, then your assumption of moral smugness completely dissolves.

When Stalin's acolytes were rounding up tens of millions to be sent to the gulags and suffer horrific deaths what were they thinking?

Did they 'despise' those with different politics to them?

Did they seek to dehumanise their victims by referring to them as ​'vermin'?

Ask the same question of Pol Pot's followers or even those who committed political murders during the Spanish Civil war.

If we want to avoid repeating history we have to learn from it.

The worst crimes against humanity have not been carried out by monsters but ordinary people who, in certain specific circumstances, become capable of awful crimes.

Take your personality type, your sense of moral superiority, your hatred for those who think differently from you and your willingness to dehumanise those people, place it in Soviet era Russia or Pol Pot's Cambodia.

In those circumstances are you a perpetrator of a crime against humanity?

I would argue that your attributes make that very likely.

I hate the crimes committed but when I think of the people who carried them out they are usually ordinary people just like me.

Instead of considering myself superior I try to understand what made them commit such crimes? What drove them to such extremes?

Why were they so full of hatred?

Your desperate attempt to portray me as a potential war criminal because I despise the party you support is beneath contempt and not worth answering; what is very interesting is that I asked you if you despised the Nazis or Stalin or Pol Pot, and you replied in detail relating to Stalin and Pol Pot, throwing in additional references to the Spanish Civil War, and yet didn't mention the Nazis at all. Subconscious no doubt, and highly revealing.

Incorrect as usual Rendel.

I said I hated 'the crimes committed' that encompassed all the crimes by the regimes you mentioned.

The reason I did not go into detail about the Nazis was because I was never referring to the Nazis in my previous posts.

I was discussing crimes that were politically motivated, as you are surely aware the Nazi's crimes were primarily driven by racism/antisemitism/ablism/homophobia etc and therefore not applicable to my argument.

The worst crimes in history were carried out by ordinary people just like you and me. In the right circumstances some of us will willingly commit atrocities.

If you are already prone to dehumanising your opponents and are already motivated by hatred then you are far more likely to become a perpetrator.

Try and reflect on that.

To precis: when extremists on the left commit crimes against humanity, it's because they're on the left; when extremists on the right do the same, it has nothing to do with their politics. The Nazis weren't politically motivated? What a very revealing perspective. Totally erroneous of course, but highly revealing.

Do you understand the meaning of the word 'primarily' Rendel?

I'm sure you do which means you're deliberately misconstruing my argument in a desperate attempt to avoid addressing my actual point.

In a vain attempt to derail this fruitful political debate into a timewaste about something involving bicycles it does appear Nazism correlates with bike theft:

https://dutchreview.com/culture/how-the-netherlands-became-a-cycling-country/#h-blitzkrieg-against-bicycles-nazi-bike-theft

https://sciencenordic.com/denmark-history-second-world-war/how-hitler-decided-to-launch-the-largest-bike-theft-in-denmarks-history/1438738

Nigel Garage wrote:

It's quite unbelievable that he finds it acceptable to speak about others in this way, simply because they have a different political opinion to him.

It's quite unbelievable that you find it acceptable to speak about others in the way you do simply because they're a different race or body shape to you, and yet you do.

I wondered how long it would be before Sir David's tragic murder was dragged out for political point scoring; it was fairly obvious it would be you who would do it. Desperately cheap.

I was really hoping that recent events would lead to a change in attitude for many on these pages as it, apparently, has for Angela Rayner.

It appears that was overly optimistic on my part.

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right. Also weird that you are denouncing negative descriptions of refugees.  This is a welcome development in your progression towards the caring person that you sometimes claim you'd wish to be. 

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right. Also weird that you are denouncing negative descriptions of refugees.  This is a welcome development in your progression towards the caring person that you sometimes claim you'd wish to be. 

One wonders how his alleged opposition to negativity and hatred sits with his oft-stated belief that President Trump was "the greatest president in world history." 

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right. ...

Heading to the right is the more socially acceptable way because a) it's done very well throughout history b) well we're not german c) at least they made the trains run on time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QAvkFS_cgk

Yes, you classified them by making it clear that as well as the Nazis, the sort of hate mentioned wasn't only them, it was also used by the far right:

This kind of hate speech isn't confined to National Socialism by the way, it's also been used by the Americans to intern Japanese people during WW2, by the far right to describe refugees, and notably in the Rwandan genocide.

There are left extemists from history you could have chosen but you didn't.  You specifically chose the nazis as your example as being other than the far right.  Claiming the nazis were not far right, or even right-wing would be laughable if not for the fact that it's used by modern day alt-right, far-right, racist, fascist and holocaust-denying  groups to play down the hate politics of the right or just to provoke the left into a reaction.

You're in very nasty company if you try to make this claim. Anyone coming on here to defend this, would be showing themselves up too.

National Socialism's position on the political spectrum is controversial, as Rich has pointed out.

It's really not. 

But Nigel wow. I'm loving your gradual conversion to anti-racism, supporting all of these minorities around the world. Even if it's just a disingenuous way of attacking others and even if you are reticent about condeming the Nazis, keep reading about these struggles, you will learn something. If you want any further reading there are many anti-racist organisations who can help.  

NB Why would anyone want me to disown a different poster quoting a context specific quote from 1948, not raised in this thread? Whether it's an attempt at obfuscation or because you know your slightly more intellectual friend will wade in because it's Rendel, it's not working well for you as a tactic.

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right.

To be fair it's a common point of contention.

How do you classify right and left?

Rich_cb wrote:

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right.

To be fair it's a common point of contention. How do you classify right and left?

I've got it written on my shoes if that works for you?

Which shoe are the Nazis in?

Rich_cb wrote:

Which shoe are the Nazis in?

The jackboot.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right.

To be fair it's a common point of contention. How do you classify right and left?

I've got it written on my shoes if that works for you?

I tried that, but I could never work out which foot went in which.

mdavidford wrote:

chrisonatrike wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right.

To be fair it's a common point of contention. How do you classify right and left?

I've got it written on my shoes if that works for you?

I tried that, but I could never work out which foot went in which.

Use the Cinderella method. If that still doesn't help check this post, or you might have someone else's shoes.

chrisonatrike wrote:

...you might have someone else's shoes.

That'll be it. Someone told me to walk a mile in them, but it just hurt my feet and made me cross with the world.

mdavidford wrote:

chrisonatrike wrote:

...you might have someone else's shoes.

That'll be it. Someone told me to walk a mile in them, but it just hurt my feet and made me cross with the world.

"Before getting into a fight with someone always remember that saying. Try to follow it - if you can you'll be a mile from them and have their shoes." - various comedians.

Rich_cb wrote:

markieteeee wrote:

Interesting, but not surprising, that you don't classify the Nazis as far right.

To be fair it's a common point of contention. How do you classify right and left?

It really isn't, the only people who contend it are conservatives desperate to disown the extremes of their side - great intellectuals such as Candace Owens and so on. One of the primary raisons d'être of the Nazi party from its inception was to fight "Jewish Bolshevism", to claim there's something equivocal or debateable about classifying the Nazis as far-right is risible.

How do you define right or left wing then Rendel?

There's a good article about the motivations of the Nazi party here:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/hitler-and-the-socialis...

It's not quite as straightforward as you'd like it to be.

Funnily enough I knew George Watson (the author you quote) personally, he was my father's English tutor at Cambridge. A nice old boy and excellent literary critic but a shaky historian who became somewhat obsessed with forging a link between Hitler and Marx in his dotage, his primary thesis being based around a mistranslation of the word "Völkerabfälle". You can learn more about this on George's Wikipedia entry, if you're interested.

Hitler and the Nazis suppressed trade unions, banned the Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party and executed thousands of their members - in fact the very first Nazi concentration camp, at Dachau, was built to house not Jews but communists and socialists.

The idea that Hitler was not right wing and even somehow left wing is absurd and has been roudly debunked by numerous renowned historians, for example Sir Richard Evans (Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, 2008-2014): "Despite the change of name, however, it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth from, socialism….Nazism was in some ways an extreme counter-ideology to socialism” and Sir Ian Kershaw, generally regarded as one of the world's greatest experts on Nazi history and Hitler: "Hitler was never a socialist."

Did you read the article? Your argument makes it appear that you did not and have just lifted some quotes from Wikipedia.

The argument that the Nazis were socialists does not rely on any mistranslation. That relates to the argument that Socialists promoted genocide.

You often attack authors of pieces but never seem to critique the actual articles themselves.

The article has multiple primary sources indicating that many Nazis did see themselves as Socialists.

You also didn't answer my question, What is your definition of right and left wing?

I read it when it was originally published in the Independent, as it happens - as I mentioned I knew George personally (though not well) and always made a point of looking out for his work. I've also read the work of the two far more reputable historians I quoted (as I mentioned, George was an English specialist, not a trained historian) and watched The Nazis: A Warning from History for which Sir Ian was historical consultant, all of which made it clear that any allegations that the Nazis were somehow socialist is risible. I also commend to your attention Alan Bullock's majestic Hitler: a Study in Tyranny; although it's many years since I read it I clearly recall that he stated that any reference made by Hitler and the Nazis to socialism in their early years was solely opportunistic and intended to capitalize on the popularity of socialism amongst certain sectors of the German population, and that they never had any genuine ideological committment to socialism. However, if the best you can do in the face of such solid evidence from world-renowned experts is to wail "You haven't read it, you got that off Wikipedia!" I see little point in continuing the debate, so I shall bid you good day.

If you're so familiar with the article then why didn't you reference a single point from it in your reply.

You've instead relied on an 'appeal to authority' fallacy.

Your complete refusal to define right and left wing also speaks volumes.

Most modern 'right wing' beliefs such as a small state, a free market economy and respect for individual freedoms (eg freedom of speech) couldn't be more different to the government of the Nazis.

How can they both be right wing?