Quick! Someone crosspost this to [email protected]

Feature, not bug. Never forget that the cruelty is the point.

Copy job posting. Paste into email body. Send.

I mean, I was listing a few examples out in another conversation, and just off the top of my head… and I’m no historian or anything - I’m sure there are similar lists orders of magnitude more detailed floating around the internet somewhere. Anywho:

1921 - The Sturmabteilung – More commonly known as the ‘brown shirts’, militant branch of the Nazi party, loyalists who used violence and intimidation against opposing parties and targeted populations. Today we have MAGA or ‘red hats’ who use the same tactics but in a less organized fashion (arguably groups like the ‘Proud Boys’ are a closer match, but those are all just smaller subsets of MAGA). A few recent key highlights were the Jan 6 insurrection and the caravan that ran a bus of Biden supporters off the road; and of course countless individual instances of targeted bigotry.

1923 – Speaking of Jan 6, that was the modern equivalent to the Beer Hall Putsch, which was also an unsuccessful attempt at an insurrection.

1924 – Hitler was sentenced to a 5 year prison sentence for his involvement in the Beer Hall Putsch, for which he only served 10 months; during that time he wrote his manifesto “Mein Kampf”. Our current president was recently convicted of 34 felonies, for which he faced zero consequences. Around that time, Project 2025 surfaced, which echoes many of Mein Kampf’s key points, most notably a disdain for democratic institutions and a call to restructure the government into a more authoritarian model made up of loyalists. Trump has also directly quoted Mein Kampf multiple times, and borrowed other language from Hitler like “Lügenpresse” (Lying Press) as “Fake News”.

1926 - League of German Worker Youth, or “Hitler Youth” – heavy exploitation of teen impressionability, especially teen boys, to woe support from a young audience. Today there are youth groups for just about everything, but leveraging insecurities of young boys played a role in the recent election, with exit poles showing Gen Z males leaning disproportionately to Trump.

1929 – The Great Depression left pretty much the entire planet dreaming of a more economically secure future, which gave opposition parties to the status quo a major point to criticize those currently in power; the Nazis were no exception, and gained a lot of their support promising an improved economy. The modern world economies were recently all hamstrung by covid, and remain weakened, once again giving opposition parties something to blame on their opponents – costs of groceries, housing, etc are a huge part of why people justified support for Trump (and more broadly, a global shift toward authoritarianism).

1933 – Enabling Act of 1933 – The gist of this one is that Hitler used their existing legal framework to completely undermine and rewrite their legal framework. He put out a rapid slurry of legal decrees and took a grand total of 53 days to basically destroy their constitution and grant himself absolute power. Today, we’re seeing a similar rapid-fire of concerning legislation from Trump via his executive orders.

1933 – Hitler appointed Chancellor by German president Hindenburg. Hindenburg was in his mid-80s at the time of that appointment. Trump may be more of a Hitler’s-enabler figure than an actual-Hitler, but it doesn’t take long to spot a younger vocal appointee that’s been handed power without the say of voters: today’s actual-Hitler could be Elon Musk. *as I understand it, voting for a party then appointment to chancellor was pretty standard for the German govt at the time, so this was very much Germany’s equivalent to Trump taking the majority vote.

1933 – Book Burnings – Basically material that didn’t align with Nazi ideals was made contraband. Today, we’ve seen a push to remove things like LGBT or civil rights content from public schools and libraries.

1934 – The Night of Long Knives – Purging of non-loyalists from government positions by execution. Today’s equivalent is happening right now, starting with the email that was sent to all federal employees essentially bribing them to resign, and threatening firing of those remaining as part of a restructuring of the federal workforce, and continuing with the gutting of non-loyalists from the military.

There’s also the seeming never-ending list of examples of minorities who support Trump.

Not lifting a finger means the literal bare minimum: voting. In the face of evil shitstains like Trump, a third of the country couldn’t even be bothered to color in a quarter-inch rectangle in opposition, they just shrugged and let it happen.

…and that first half of this comment is more directed any onlookers who happen to wander into this conversation: As for you, your sea-lioning is glaring as all hell. Take that shit somewhere else.

Unprecedented? Not according to the playbook we’re following to the fucking ‘t’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

Dude definitely looks good in green.

It’s from the side bar to this sub - if you’re on mobile or something it might not be showing, but the rule states:

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.

Hoping for the fatal removal of a few literal supervillians is significantly less violent than allowing them to run rampant on the world, imo, but I’ve been temp banned a few times over “advocating for violence” by pushing for the less violent of the two options. I’m kinda tired of being told to just sit quiet and pretty in the face of a surge in neonazism though, so… fuck it.

I’m not asking people to go full Inglorious Basterds on MAGA or anything… but if you’re one of very few people with the means and opportunity to take a shot at Hitler… please don’t miss.

Voted against it directly, voted against it indirectly in every smaller election I’ve been eligible for since 2016, phone canvassed against it, volunteer for local orgs that are targeted by it, and am vocal on and offline against the Nazi rhetoric currently taking over our government.

Why, am I only allowed to criticize evil if I’ve aimed a gun at it or something?

What about you?

In this case I think the point is to be on the nose about how fucking ridiculous it is - just from this article:

Steve Bannon made a gesture that is identical to a Nazi salute

Bannon made the gesture — extending his arm, palm down, fingers straight, at an upward angle away from his chest, which is also what Nazi salutes look like

the gesture was also identical to one made by billionaire Elon Musk

extended his arm straight out, palm down, fingers straight, at an upward angle away from his chest. Which, whatever the billionaire’s intention, just happens to be precisely how a Nazi salute is performed.

Musk repeated the gesture. Here’s how that looked. <pic of Musk doing a Nazi salute>

*expanded previous comment - original version was posted from mobile which is significantly more tedious to rant on.

And yes, more Luigis please!!

Against the government - no of course not. Against the handful of people driving it into the ground - absolutely.

… and what’s ‘fine’ is at the mods’ discretion. I’ve been temp banned several times for having basically this conversation. Thing is, the options on the table right now are sit quietly and let the Nazis continue to take over the US government (shit tons of violence on a massive scale), or in the absence of any form of checks and balances to include effective peaceful protests or voting: cut the snake’s head off (still violence, but the least violent option we have). …but pulling that trolley lever to take the less violent path is still ‘advocating for violence’ here.

We’ll find out soon if this comment crossed the line.

yep. in every single election, not just presidential ones.

Far more than lifting a finger. That alone puts you in the non-evil third of our population.

I mean, part of the answer isn’t against the rules: leave your cell phone at home.

Answering that directly would be a violation of rule #6.

What should the individual German citizen have done in the 1920s and 1930s to prevent the Nazis from rising to power and/or to resist them once they were in power? Cuz… that.

Sorry Ukraine. Turns out most of the US is either just fucking evil, or not bothered enough by evil to lift a fucking finger to stop it.

I really thought we were better than this. We’ve failed the entire planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

He’s one of the good guys.

We’d save a lot more than that if that fucker would just stop breathing.

Not wrong, but also not helpful in the goal of boosting public health. Even if we’re not able to reach literal herd immunity, boosting your own defenses still mitigates the spread and still plays a large role in reducing vulnerable people’s exposure.

Combine that with other reduction practices like hygiene and masking and we’ve got a solid defense.

And don’t get me wrong - I’m well aware that’s a pipedream, cuz good fucking luck convincing Cletus and Billybob that an itchy nose and a scary poke in the arm are worth not killing some grandma they’ll never meet… And until we can reach dipshits like that, there’s not much hope in controlling something like covid.

I’d also expand my initial post to vaccination habits in general, and the less mutatey pathogens than covid do give us a bit more wiggle room in dealing with morons.