Watching yet another one of the myriads and myriads of videos out there about "antifa" and the totalitarian left acting like retards in the United States, something one of them said suddenly made me realize something. It may seem like a relatively obvious thing, and something I should have realized sooner, but somehow I just didn't think of it before nor paid much attention to it.
These people genuinely believe that they are fighting against actual real "Nazis". They aren't using that word as a generic insult, or as a metaphor (as you would use the word eg. in milder expressions like "grammar nazi"). They aren't using the word figuratively, or as a dehumanizing insult to denigrate their opposition. No, most of them really believe that the United States is full of actual bona fide Nazis, exactly like in Germany in the 1930's. Real Nazis, or neo-Nazis, who embrace Hitler's ideology and teachings, and in secret use all the same symbology, parafernalia and gestures (many of them even going so far as to claim that they can see "Nazi symbols" being used by the other side, even though clearly there isn't any.)
In a way, this shouldn't be surprising. As the joke goes, "consider how dumb the average person is. Now consider that half of people are even dumber than that." When you push for a certain narrative for long enough, people in your side will start believing it. They get indoctrinated. What perhaps started as a pure insult and attempt at denigrating and dehumanizing the opposition, has become the real bona fide thing in their minds. They actually believe it.
This is dangerous. It only requires the wrong person at the wrong place, with the wrong kind of mental illness or problem, to believe all this rhetoric and act on it. Somebody somewhere along the line will feel himself justified to commit an act of terrorism in order to fight these "Nazis", and will commit eg. a mass shooting or bombing. People will die because of this narrative that's being pushed.
These people genuinely believe that they are fighting against actual real "Nazis". They aren't using that word as a generic insult, or as a metaphor (as you would use the word eg. in milder expressions like "grammar nazi"). They aren't using the word figuratively, or as a dehumanizing insult to denigrate their opposition. No, most of them really believe that the United States is full of actual bona fide Nazis, exactly like in Germany in the 1930's. Real Nazis, or neo-Nazis, who embrace Hitler's ideology and teachings, and in secret use all the same symbology, parafernalia and gestures (many of them even going so far as to claim that they can see "Nazi symbols" being used by the other side, even though clearly there isn't any.)
In a way, this shouldn't be surprising. As the joke goes, "consider how dumb the average person is. Now consider that half of people are even dumber than that." When you push for a certain narrative for long enough, people in your side will start believing it. They get indoctrinated. What perhaps started as a pure insult and attempt at denigrating and dehumanizing the opposition, has become the real bona fide thing in their minds. They actually believe it.
This is dangerous. It only requires the wrong person at the wrong place, with the wrong kind of mental illness or problem, to believe all this rhetoric and act on it. Somebody somewhere along the line will feel himself justified to commit an act of terrorism in order to fight these "Nazis", and will commit eg. a mass shooting or bombing. People will die because of this narrative that's being pushed.
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