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.

  • Ilikecheese@vlemmy.net
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    1 year ago

    Do I think that every single member of the GOP is a literal nazi? Of course not.

    Do I think that if every single literal nazi was removed from the face of the Earth there would still be a functional GOP party? Highly doubt it.

    The overlap is real. Whether you’re talking about nazis, or just old fashioned racists, They are, from an outside perspective, very much so one in the same. I’m sorry that your grandmother had to go through that. It’s awful, and it shouldn’t happen to anyone at all, but if you can’t see the parallels between what Hitler did to the Jews like your grandmother and what someone like DeSantis is doing to transgender people, then you simply aren’t capable of seeing transgender people as actual human beings. Which is exactly what the nazis thought about the Jews.

    When the events of Charlottesville happened in 2017 and trump couldn’t bring himself to denounce literal Nazis and had to claim that there were “very fine people on both sides” that should have been all any reasonable person needed to see to be convinced. There is no such thing as a very fine nazi. There is no such thing as a very fine person who thinks that all members of minority races or groups should be eliminated. How hard is it to look at a group of people that only exist to hate and reject them? If you are a principled person who doesn’t share that hate, it’s actually pretty easy. Trump cannot openly reject Nazis and racists because if he did the overwhelming majority of his supporters would immediately drop their support. Even if he himself isn’t a Nazi, the fact that he hasn’t spoke out about them says all that I need to hear.

  • Lovstuhagen@exploding-heads.comM
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    1 year ago

    God bless my man.

    I will say some prayers about this situation… Of course, it is far in the past… But it is upsetting and I pray for the repose of their souls, and I pray for peace in the world.

        • Ilikecheese@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Well, for starters most of the time I see a right wing internet site, they are the ones doing the blocking. All you have to do is push back just a little bit on their views and the ban hammer gets swung. Supposedly the admins here claim that isn’t going to be the case, so I’m testing that out. And not by name calling and mindless attacks, but by trying to make valid points. Which I did in my other post. I’m not sure what points you specifically disagreed with, you’re more than welcome to tell me here, but as long as I have the opportunity, I would like to see if I can get someone who disagrees with the way I see the world to explain it to me why they seem to think it’s a valid point instead of just blocking me and making me go away. What’s the point of only being around people that think the same way as you do? You will never expand your viewpoint if you do that (which is a MASSIVE problem with 99% of right wing safe spaces on the internet)

            • Ilikecheese@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • MomoHatesFeds@exploding-heads.com
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                1 year ago

                but I still can’t figure out why anyone who wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer would allow that sort of presence in their party.

                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.

                • Ilikecheese@lemm.ee
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                  1 year ago

                  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.