And I don't often do that, but here it is...
If in your comment you compare anyone or anything to Hitler or the Nazis, you will either NOT be published OR I will mock the ever living fuck out of you.
WHY? Because one, invoking the Nazis or Hitler is a cheap, emotional gut shot and is rarely germane to the actual discussion at hand. It is a cheap argument with no solid footing. Comparing anyone or anything to a man and a group of people who killed millions of marginalized people is a total shit argument. One person is akin to Hitler- and that would be Hitler...got it? Same goes for similar comparisions to Stalin, the Khmer Rouge, so on.
If you have a point or an argument to make, make it, but do it on your own, with facts and proof, and not the emotional gut shot tactic of comparing everyone and every thing to people responsible for the deaths, torture, and suffering of millions of people.
Got it? Good.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
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46 comments:
Awesome.
I have found that replacing those kinda comments with a Hypnotoad YouTube is also a fun and effective way of getting the message across. :D
Can we say now that the Godwin Moratorium is now in effect??
Good.
When the only argument you have left is to compare your enemy to the Nazis, then your argument is pretty damn thin indeed.
Except, of course, when your opponent really ACTS like the Nazis. But that is neither here nor there...and totally irrelavent to the discussion here.
Anthony
I second Miss Caroline.
Look up Godwin’s Law in Wikipedia.
You are right, comparing people to Him-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is useless. He was a human being, everybody is like him to some extent, some more, some less. Gandhi was like him to some extent. And any mass movement has to be like the Nazis to some extent, or otherwise it wouldn’t work. You can get people marching to kill or to save, but in any case, you’ve got to get them marching. So why state what’s true in each and every case... to some extent?
Sorry for comparing each and every human being on Earth to Hitler. Please start the mockery.
Nazi much? Sheesh. You should know better than to think that you're allowed to have control over the comment-content of your own blog.
Rofl. I have the same policy on my blog. I've had people comparing Hamas to the Nazis and that's just not okay. (Of course, I've made a few statements that could be conflated to make me say that I was comparing someone to Nazis, but not recently or in public.)
@Anonytoad: If you're so damn righteous, pick a name like Ren said. Also, mocking right here? Not a good move. Just reinforces the fact that you're acting like a complete asshat. Good job, your argument thanks you.
Wow, way to go blog Nazi!
yeah, you got me fuckwipe sockpuppet. Now crawl off and cry, meatsack.
Ahhhh..Anony, dewd...you forget something very important here.
The Nazis are in a class on their own when it comes to sheer depravity (well, I'd offer up the Second Era Ku Klux Klan as a close second, myself). Comparing them to anybody is simply not feasible.
Especially when you are using them as a blunt object to divert people from the fact that your argument really can't hold water.
Getting booted off a blog is not the same as getting gassed. Never was, and never will.
Good night, and good riddance.
Anthony
Ren is a Nazi! A sexy, intelligent Nazi ;)
Really, when it comes to most of the times that people throw the Nazi reference out there, it's a lack of historical awareness. I mean, most of the time, Robespierre would have been a much better choice.
Though it does kind of bug me that no one comes back with the obvious retort: "Hey, man. There's no one here but us Schindlers."
Besides: Doug Stanhope had a point.
*applause*
Good for you.
I vote for 'Allow comment, then mock'.
**evil grin**
...or you could just say 'justify your claim' and watch them sweat.
I think Hitler's issues stemmed from having one nut and being rejected from the Vienna School of Art twice in the same year. :P
I couldn't agree with you more on this. There is plenty of evil in the world, and plenty of metaphorical ways to describe it, but it's important not to trivilize ultimate evil by using it as shorthand for whoever or whatever any individual despises.
There is nothing that compares with Nazism. It is, as Elie Weisel describes it, "an ahistorical outbreak of evil." Weisel specifically cautions against "denying the specificity of The Holocaust" for good reason. Doing so diminishes both the scale of the crime and the suffering of those victimzed by it.
There are no Nazis now. There is no one like Nazis and I hope there never will be again. Even neo-Nazis, dangerous and ugly as they are, still aren't even in the same league with the genuine article.
An elderly mentor of mine, who fought actual Nazis with the Free French Forces during WWII, would get red in the face when someone casually dropped the term "fascist" into a political argument.
"That word used to apply to a very specific thing, but now it just means "someone whose politics you reallly, really don't like a whole lot," he said.
That's the process by which history and memory are converted to bullshit rhetoric.
Jeffrey Dahmer comparisons are still kosher though, right?
El: Only if it can be proven that the person who is inspiring the comparision is a canibal necropheliac serial killer.
Well I'm going to continue to compare you to J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and mock Reverend Stang every July 5th when the world fails to end.
Does that count?
I would like to point out however that there is two ways in which Hitler’s name is used one I am against the other I am not.
The first is like you pointed out: Are you in favor of gun control? Guess who else was? Hitler! So you and he share that opinion.
Are you in favor of anti-smoking laws? So was Hitler.
You are against gay marriage? Hitler persecuted gays too.
The second is like this: You know some people do not like that ‘friend’ of yours Maggie Hays but I like to say her mother loves her and we need to remember that. Comparing this statement to Hitler can be useful in exposing the stupidity of the argument.
Jeremy
I applaud the decision, but I will make the following two exceptions:
Where an organisation with a great deal of power advocates the extermination of an entire group of people, then I will compare them to the Nazis. I do not expect to need this one much.
Where an organisation or individual advocates strict ideological uniformity, with punishments, expulsion or exile for those who speak out of line, then I will compare them to Stalin (or possibly to the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages). More likely to be the RC Church/Inquisition if said person or organisation insists "it's for your own good"; more likely to be Stalin if the person/organisation says "it's for the good of the People/Class". This one may be more useful than the other...
On comparative evilness, I have heard a quotation by a historian to the effect that "In WW2, the Nazis were shocked by the Russians' callous disregard for human life".
Also, I don't like to say that Nazi Germany was a unique aberration, because that attitude can tend to make us think "it will never happen again", and therefore that we don't need to be on guard against such a slide into tyranny. The fact is that history is littered with tales of horrific genocide or ethnic cleansing, from the wars recounted in the Old Testament until the break-up of Yugoslavia, the Rwandan genocide, and Sudan's Darfur region all very recent.
That the 12 million murders of the Nazi regime outstrip earlier attempts and later attempts speaks only to the fact that Nazi Germany was a heavily industrialised nation with the resources that went with that; and that the Nazis had a bigger pool of humanity from which to draw their victims. The evilness and vileness of those other events that I mentioned is not lesser just because the massacres were on a lesser scale; and just because they looked more frenzied does not mean they were any less cold, calculated and directed.
All of which goes to emphasise rather than diminish the powerful reasons why comparisons to Nazism, the Khmer Rouge, Stalin, etc, should be utterly outlawed. Because if we diminish by overuse the impact of these comparisons, then how will we be able to recognise it when the danger is really there? And, as I've demonstrated, the danger is already more common than many people like to believe. It is perhaps the largest scale version of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".
I still think the only thing that stands between some individuals and movements and mass murder is simple lack of opportunity. So while one should shy away from historical comparisons that trivialize the holocaust or some other piece of suffering, pointing out that how dangerous some political goals are if put into practice is not inappropriate. (The old quote by Heinrich Heine "Where they burn books, in the end they will also burn people" is a truism, IMO.)
In general, I really do hope that the world won't see another Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, but at the same time I don't think that humans have gotten to the point where this couldn't happen again.
Ernest:
As much as I agree with your points, I think that there's one thing to keep in mind: the Nazis were unique primarily in their ability to do over a short span of years what other cultures did only over decades or centuries. And it's worth remembering that the pivotal element originated, primarily, with something small: the original use of the gas chambers was to get rid of people such as the physically and developmentally disabled. Only later were they unleashed in a broader scope.
I have no intention of trivializing this -- after all, that's not only why some of us Prussians fled, as we did, but also why we no longer have a country -- but there is some danger in viewing it as a completely ahistorical phenomenon, which is the point of mentioning these things.
The uniqueness was primarily one of opportunity, and of having the means by which to exploit it. And in that sense, it was an eminently historical event. (I'll concede, however, that I'm using the word "historical" in a very specific sense, here -- different from the simple meaning of "in the past," and more in line with "inseparable from its time and place of occurrence.")
Personally, what bothers me most when people throw around the Nazi reference isn't just the trivialization of the horror; if that were all that it were, it would be preferable. The part of it that causes the most revulsion for me is that all of those people died -- and yet, we still haven't learned the lesson.
How does one address that? If we emphasize the uniqueness of those events, we're able to preserve the proper respect for the dead; but at the same time, we stray even further from the necessary realization, the one that their deaths should have made plain, blatant, and clear.
Sometimes it seems that ridicule is the only real option. At least by doing that, it might force people to confront their own willful blindness.
SnowDropExplodes wrote:
Also, I don't like to say that Nazi Germany was a unique aberration, because that attitude can tend to make us think "it will never happen again", and therefore that we don't need to be on guard against such a slide into tyranny.
Psychological research would appear to bear you out, SnowDrop. Have you read any of the research Stanley Milgram did called 'Obedience to Authority' (aka shock experiments)? He wanted to prove that given the right set of circumstances you can make most people do the most horrible things that they would never dream themselves capable of at any other time. I am 99.99% sure Milgram himself was Jewish but I shall have to check that and make sure I'm remembering correctly.
We studied this when I was doing psychology and it was both horrifying and fascinating at the same time.
Okay, just a couple of quick addenda to my earlier comment in light of some responses.
Hitler, as opposed to Nazi genocide, is probably fair game as a standard of comparison for other fanatical lunatics who considered themselves "progressive," and a cautionary if not always applicable example.
Not only did he oppose smoking, favor gun control and outlaw gay marriage, he was also a big advocate for regular exercise and good nutrition. He himself was a vegetraian, and I won't deny that I've tossed that grenade myself at individuals who insist that eating meat makes people more aggressive (speaking of very bad science).
He was also a great believer in astrology (his astrologer may even have been a Brit intel mole who kept predicting the allies would land at Callais instead of Normandy) and better living through chemistry. It's never surprised anyone I know who happens to be familiar with speed that Nazi scientists at I.G. Farben were the first to synthesize methamphetamine and that Hitler himself was a regular tweaker. They also invented methadone, which was originally called dolophine in his honor.
So yes, as Charlie Chaplin demonstrated, Hitler himself can be a legitimate target for satirical and other rhetorical uses. Irish satirist Toby O'Brien took a famous whack at him, and his friends, in that oft quoted stanza:
Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two but very small,
Himmler is somewhat sim'lar,
But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.
It's generally set to the classic "Colonel Bogey" tune.
Evil can be absurd and ridicule is certainly a useful intellectual weapon against those who propagate it.
However, when it comes to the historical acts that followed out of Hitler's madness (and BTW, I do think his failure as an artist had something to do with it. Too bad he wasn't a better painter), I think it's important that we make a permanent distinction between the particulars of The Holocaust and other outbreaks of evil that might at first glance appear somewhat similar.
It wasn't just the effectiveness with which Nazism committed its crimes that makes it unique, though I've often heard that others, given the same means, would have acted similarly. Nor was it simply a matter of opportunity.
Nazism, unlike other genocidal political movements, existed primarily as a vehicle for genocide. That was, if you read Mein Kampf, its essential raison d'etre. No project of Nazi Germany, including its entire war effort, had a greater priority than the success of The Final Solution.
Indeed, and ironically, that mad, evil fixation helped defeat the Reich by diverting resources from the war effort to the death factories. At a time when the Wehrmacht was fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the advancing Russians, troop trains were being diverted from the front to move concentration camp inmates further into German occupied territory to prevent their liberation.
In the cases of other vast historical crimes (including those of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Rwandan Hutu leadership and the engineers of the Native American genocide on this continent), those crimes were committed persuant to some other political goal.
Nazism stands alone in history as an ideology built on genocide as an end in itself, rather than a means to some greater purpose. In fact, faced with the possibility of running out of Jews to kill, Hitler was already making plans to start exterminating the Poles.
Even chimpanzees are capable of being whipped into a genocidal fury, as Jane Goodall observed to her utter dismay, but their social order can survive without it.
Nazism without genocide could not survive. This is no small distinction.
A good read on this subject is the still-controversial book by Daniell Jonah Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners," which traces the emergence of "eliminationist anti-semitism" as a political ideology. It's a disturbing book on many counts, not least of which is the extent to which it underscores IACB's point that all kinds of seemingly ordinary folk have he capability to engage in such heinous behavior. If only evil people did evil things, there would be a lot less evil in the world.
Goldhagen's scholarship does much to clarify the unique nature of Nazi ideology in comparison to other murderous movements.
It is in no way exculpatory of those other movements to say that they were evil in some manner of their own, while preserving the particularity of Nazism.
Many attempts have been made to explain it as an historical phenomenon occuring as a result of understandable circumstances, ranging from the dire economic conditions of Germany after The Treaty of Versailles to the advanced industrialized might of the Reich after Hitler's rebuilding campaign.
But none of these things, or all of them put together, fully explain the bizarre, cultish worship of hatred and death that was the hallmark of Hitler's crazed, necrophile empire. Killing right to the end, he ordered the subways of Berlin, which were filled with German civilians using them as bomb shelters, flooded as the Russians advanced.
Yes, history and even pre-history is full of horrific evil. But there is still nothing quite like Nazism, and no conventional political language adequately describes it.
I'm not a religious person in any way, but I get Weisel's point when he speaks of "the silence of god at Auschwitz."
Not only do I not think that holding The Holocaust as a unique mystery increases the probability of its repetition, I think the very fact that it stands as a singular of example of the capacity for human evil as an end itself alerts future generations to the presence of the beast within and may have some deterrent effect, particularly on the individual trigger-pullers who make crimes against humanity possible.
The very fact that there could be another Hitler someday is good reason to keep what he did as the prime example of the depths to which human depravity can descend in the grip of an ideology build on mass murder for its own sake.
Who was it? Who? Who?
Inquiring minds want to know. ;)
Ah yes, well, you'll find out from Ernest that I'm among the most guilty of all on this misuse of labeling and use of metaphors to try and describe Masses of Evil People Marching in Lockstep toward World Domination. But I do beg a touch of Sympathy for the Devil in my case.
Oh sure, I can add up the cumulative madness which has overtaken the Western World since the events of 9/11..the destruction of the WTC and the infamous Building 7, correlate that to the Burning of the Reichstag, which caused the Enabling Act and dismembering of the German Parliament like the Patriot Acts got rammed through and Congress became limp and useless, or draw parallels between the US establishment of a network of offshore torture prisons, only Guantanamo and Abu Gharib being in plain sight, with the system of concentration camps set up by the German's own Homeland Security (the SS), and I can try to equate the consolidation of all media and the Rise of the FCC as a Weapon of Terror to Joseph Goebbels and his finely tuned control of all media, even to forming his own propaganda film units and newspapers..Oh I could compare the very existance of Fox News to this. Why hell, I could go on for days.
But as Ernest has often chastised me for, I'm still not talking about anything even remotely resembling the Nazis.
Part of the problem is cultural. See, I'm Cherokee. My father and his whole side of my heritage full blood Dawes Registry Phillips.
There are less than 600 Cherokee remaining who carry the name Phillips. Because you see, I am a descendant of people who suffered a genocide of their own, at the hands of Government troops ordered by Government officials carrying out official Government policy to exterminate an entire race by any means necessary. Indeed, if I wanted to make a more accurate comparison describing what is pure evil in the context of MY cultural experience, I would call out epithets like "Indian Agent!", or "Buffalo Soldier!".. or the Ultimate Satan, you "Andrew Jackson" you!
But you can quickly see how these fall short and in most cases, would merely confuse. What Congressman would be even lightly disturbed if I called him an "Andrew Jackson?"
So yes, in the face of inadequate words and sadly, horrific acts perpetrated by America's government-gone-wild, I too fall back on the ONLY term I know for absolute fact will be universally understood. I whip out the Nazi. And even though, in my heart of hearts, I truly know and believe that there actually ARE Nazis running amok in the American halls of power, men who's grandfathers adored Hitler and financed his rise to power, sold him steel for his columns of Panzers, and avoided even going near the European theatre of war by choosing to serve in the Pacific in WW2..even with all this, I am wrong, TERRIBLY wrong, to compare these little cowardly tin-horn petty dictators we now have in America to actual Nazis. Once I had fully digested Ernests' last harsh chastisement of me for once again using the "N" word the other night, it dawned on me how right he is about this. As if on cue, my favorite revolutionary ranter on radio, Mike Malloy, took up that very subject and further set me straight. The Spirits do move mysteriously, yet with purpose.
Because by equating such people as Dick Cheney or Negroponte' or Alberto Gonzales to Nazis, I am actually diminishing the importance of Nazis. I am, in a twisted sort of way, insulting Nazis and marginalizing them. I am bringing them DOWN to a lesser level than they truly deserve. Now realizing this was at once sobering and a tad humorous, but reality finally came to me. History has never seen a monster like the Nazis, and pray to whatever diety suits you that it never does again, though in my view conditions are rapidly approaching which could spawn a Version 2.0 very easily..regardless, the views of Renegade Evo and Ernest are absolutely correct on this. There is nothing presently here on Earth which could even shine the boots of real Nazis, no less here in the US. And by invoking the name of the fearsome Nationalist Socialist Party in connection with ANYTHING in today's American politics at once diminishes and marginalizes the scope and hellish evil truly inherrant in that doctrine, and gives far TOO much credit and credibility to our own wanna-be closet dictators. Yes, I'm insulting the Nazis, and complimenting mere Globalist-Capitalist-Corporatists far FAR beyond their true convictions and courage.
So I guess I'm going to have to go out and find myself some new more accurate metaphors. The one I've been using is not only inappropriate, it's just totally wrong. As Renegade, Ernest, and even Mike Malloy have recently pointed out to me, right at this moment there is no army of scientists in a great factory hidden in the mountains toiling over plans for a huge infernal machine designed to grind us and all our children into bloody mulch to fertilize their wheat fields with. Real Nazis would be doing that.
People are just going to have to be confused for awhile as I sort this out though. I can't wait to see the look on the first guy I call a fucking "Indian Agent."
Agree with SDE. Also, I think even Godwin made/makes exceptions to his own rule. That said, comparing such things as o I don't know blog regulation to Nazis deserves nothing less than thorough, vicious mocking. And no, "Stalin" is not an improvement.
The thwarted artist thing--yeah, I think there's something to the idea of evil being partly thwarted creativity; but honestly, even if he'd gotten into that school or sold more paintings, I don't think it would've changed his basic goal or outlook much; paint was not his medium, and it wouldn't have afforded enough power.
Roberts-
I am fond of "hateful powermad tool" myself...kind of sums it up without sending us Jewish/Eastern European folk into a tailspin....
I'm a left-wing Jew, and I used to get so aggravated when people compared Bush to Hitler or America to Nazi Germany. Its like, can't we call things awful and wrong and fucked up without saying they resemble Nazis. Right?
Also why I hate the term "feminazi." And to be honest it also irks me when people throw around the word "fascism" (see Earnest's point). I HAVE seen radfems described as "fascist" and advocates of a "police state" and while such terms are not inherently linked to Nazism, they do evoke it and they are hyperbole, which I find offensive and obnoxious.
-penny
Woo! Codifying Godwin's Law into practice. Rock on.
"Also why I hate the term "feminazi." And to be honest it also irks me when people throw around the word "fascism" (see Earnest's point). I HAVE seen radfems described as "fascist" and advocates of a "police state" and while such terms are not inherently linked to Nazism, they do evoke it and they are hyperbole, which I find offensive and obnoxious."
And I'd be one of those "obnoxious" people who would say that. And honestly, considering the legal strategies many radical feminists have pursued and the hateful and stigmatizing rhetoric they use against anybody who opposes them, is it any wonder people suspect them of the absolute worst? Jesus, some of them are quite explicit about wanting to throw all of the "misogynists" (male and female) up against a wall come the "revolution".
How "nice" to these assholes do you have to be?
Bottom line – my feelings of solidarity are absolutely with the people who are targeted for jail time under the "extreme porn" laws and the like, not with the scum that are putting them there.
You certainly don't have to be "nice" to anyone, but you can call people out and criticize them without pulling out exaggerated terms that evoke Nazi Germany.
(For instance, I am a feminist but I wouldn't dream of comparing housewives to plantation slaves, which I have seen done)
-penny
"Fuckwipe sockpuppet"? God, Ren, I'm impressed. And thank you for this. Have you ever read "Hitler on Trial" about the trial for libel by David Irving against Debra---Oh, crap, I can't remember her name. What was so disturbing was that after the trial, people forget that he sued her when she rightfully called him a Holocaust denier. There was all sorts of whining about free speech and stuff, but Irving had tried to clamp down on her, not the other way around.
Gin: I have a way with profanity. It's a gift, and a curse.
I like it. I think you should start a consulting service.
Penny,
First of all, I'm concerned about the repeated use of the word "evoke" in your arguments. Just as with metaphors and similes directly equating Nazis or Nazism with other individuals or ideologies, the implication that any use of language that "evokes" such comparisons is morally or rhetorically indistinguishable from actually doing so unduly diminishes the gravity of the offense.
Certainly a vile coinage like "feminazi," for which we can "thank" Rush Limbaugh (and not sexual libertarians who oppose radfem dogma) is a moving violation of Godwin's law. I find it revolting, as I'm sure do the vast majority of those who reject radical feminist doctrines on their own merits, or lack thereof.
And you already know, as you refer to it, what I think of the misuse of the word fascist, which I regard as a misdemenor abuse of rhetoric and evidence of sloppy thinking, but not equivalent to calling someone a Nazi. Fascism has existed in other places and times in addition to Nazi Germany and there may be other situations in which the term could be applicable. It just usually isn't where it's used.
But accusing fanatical adherents of an authoritartian belief system of advocating a police state, while possibly incorrect, commits no violation by mere implication of something that might be taken, equally incorrectly, by someone else to "evoke" a comparison to Nazism. That is a vast inductive leap of reasoning, or more likely a visceral emotional response, for which responsibility rests with the inferrer.
Accusing someone of using language that might "evoke" a parallel with Nazism where no such parallel has been explicitly drawn hardly honors the intent of avoiding such odious comparisons.
And while we're at it, as you seem eager to have us know that blood libels of the sort everyone here appears to find reprehensible have been hurled at radfems by those who disagree with them (and I don't deny they have), let me take this opportunity to remind you that the sewer pipe flows both directions.
Here's a little gem posted by Demonista a few months back re myself:
"One thing I'll also address is this: re: greene. of course he's human. of course he has family and friends. duh. But people who do a various assortment of awful/bigoted/racist/misogynist/etc things are, according to those close to them, often the "fine upstanding citizens who are too lovely to do such a thing"--from pornographers, to men who rape their daughters, to KKK members, to Nazis, to abusive johns, to gay bashers, etc. Nazis have family who love them, fer christsake."
I'd say that goes a little beyond hyperbolic language that might evoke some vague implication.
And then there's the lovely individual on ZNet who characterized my partner, Nina Hartley, as "a Jewish Kapo in a concentration camp."
You give some good advice here. Take it home and administer it to a few of your own.
@penny: "For instance, I am a feminist but I wouldn't dream of comparing housewives to plantation slaves, which I have seen done"
Read up on your history. Many feminists during the colonial period made the comparison. Is it fair? I don't know, but neither one of them had rights, were not considered citizens, could be abused (and were) without any legal recourse and had to defer to the master of the house.
Aspasia - I'm actually currently getting my Masters in women's history : ) But I should have been more clear and said contemporary or modern housewives, since, yes, housewives under coverture in the 1800s and prior were in many ways treated similarly to slaves in terms of rights, violence, etc. I don't want to derail here though.
Ernest - I don't identify as a radical feminist, nor am I in any sort of radfem online community, so I'm not sure what your last sentence is supposed to mean to me. And I certainly don't agree with Demonista (never heard of her & that comment is absurd and icky).
I guess I disagree with the other point you made because I don't think something has to be made explicit for it to sound hurtful and inappropriate to (some) members of a marginalized group. And this:
"more likely a visceral emotional response, for which responsibility rests with the inferrer"
rings very "you are being too sensitive about it" to me, correct me if I'm wrong. But I do agree with you that "fascist" and "Nazi" are distinct, and do not have identical effects when used incorrectly. (And like you, I find Nazi comparisons the more repugnant).
-penny
"I guess I disagree with the other point you made because I don't think something has to be made explicit for it to sound hurtful and inappropriate to (some) members of a marginalized group. And this:
'more likely a visceral emotional response, for which responsibility rests with the inferrer'
rings very "you are being too sensitive about it" to me, correct me if I'm wrong."
This is coming damn close to saying one shouldn't make any argument or point that might hurt some feminist's fee-fees.
And, I'm sorry, that's wrong-headed on so many levels, I barely know where to begin. But two main counters, 1) stifling an argument because somebody might be offended by it is totally counter to any kind of free and open debate; 2) I don't see what's so terribly feminist about treating women as shrinking violets who need to be protected from an argument that might be upset them.
Didn't Patrick Henry keep his wife locked up in the basement while he was going on and on about freedom and liberty and shit? And didn't John Adams laugh at Abigail Adams when she said, "Remember the ladies, because all men would be tyrants if they could." Adams responded by referring to something he called "the tyranny of the petticoat". Not to mention Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings. Which is not to argue with Ren's rule, which I agree with, but just pointing out a few things. Discrimination against women has always been a matter of individual men carrying out discrimination to whatever degree they prefer. Other forms of discrimination---against both males and females of a targeted population---are carried out by the State, so that just proves Ren's point that you can't logically compare these forms of discrimination.
Women are needed to perpetuate the species. Nevertheless, some women are expendable. Not all, but some. That keeps some women safe.
Ah, yeah, rambling. Very tired.
As for the "police state" argument, I really don't think that's at all the same as calling somebody a Nazi. I think anybody with historical knowledge at all is aware that there have been many more kinds of police state than the Nazi one (e.g, the East German Stassi state), and, yes, many such police states in recent history were products of what might be called broadly the political left, which to my mind makes calling out authoritarian leftists and "progressives" in this way not entirely inappropriate.
Perhaps the more authoritarian feminists who are calling for suppression of porn as "anti-feminist propaganda" may or may not have a police state as their end goal, but they take a rather massive step in that direction by calling for state suppression of speech and expression because its contrary to their pet ideology. The inherent authoritarianism of such political campaigns should be denounced in the strongest possible terms.
IACB -
I think you misunderstand where I am coming from. To clarify, terms that evoke Nazi Germany whether explicit (like what Ren is talking about) or more implicit (like "fascist" and "police state," albeit to a lesser extent) do NOT offend me as a feminist, but as a Jew whose relatives were subject to the horrors such regimes.
-penny
I'm all for the application of Godwin's Law in most cases. The problem is that it's used to dismiss valid criticism of genuinely authoritarian policies, like Guantanamo or the USA PATRIOT Act. It is not hyperbole to condemn the Bush administration's history as fascistic.
That being said, whenever Godwin's Law is applied, there needs to be a corollary: the phrase "politically correct" is also mainly used to shut down conversation, rather than to extend dialogue. It's one of those phrases that's does describe a real tendency, but has been inflated far beyond its legitimate application to mean "I don't like what you're saying, so I'll dismiss you."
"To clarify, terms that evoke Nazi Germany whether explicit (like what Ren is talking about) or more implicit (like "fascist" and "police state," albeit to a lesser extent) do NOT offend me as a feminist, but as a Jew whose relatives were subject to the horrors such regimes."
Gotcha. But what I'm saying is that "police state" does not automatically equal "Nazi" and is not meant to make light of the Holocaust or other very specific kinds of oppression that people have suffered historically.
I reiterate the point that there are forms of "police state" other than Nazi genocide against the Jews, Roma, Poles, and others. The Stasi state of East Germany I'd definitely describe as a "police state", even if it wasn't genocidal in nature and, in its late stages at least, probably outright killed only a few people. Nonetheless, it exercised very brutal and complete ideological control over the people who were subject to its rule.
So when I see people pushing an ideology that demands that individuals submit to its dictates rather totally (and make no mistake, having to remake your sexuality according to the dictates of an ideology is pretty damn extreme) and demands the state censor forms of expression that are contrary to that ideology, a lot of us pointy-headed libertarians (of both the left and right varieties) see shades of a would-be Stasi.
I'll also point out that Natalia Antonova, who spent part of her life growing up in the tail-end of the Soviet Union, has also made an analogy between Soviet communism and aspects of radfem ideology, so in that regard, I really don't think I'm talking out my arse here. (Apologies in advance if I'm misquoting Natalia.)
"That being said, whenever Godwin's Law is applied, there needs to be a corollary: the phrase "politically correct" is also mainly used to shut down conversation, rather than to extend dialogue. It's one of those phrases that's does describe a real tendency, but has been inflated far beyond its legitimate application to mean 'I don't like what you're saying, so I'll dismiss you.'
I'm sorry, but it strikes me that its the rabidly pro-PC crowd who seems to be shouting down discussion here. Yeah, the term "politically correct" is overused, but as you said, it describes a real tendency, and one that not all of us agree with.
Let's see, so what's on the banned list so far, "sex-positive" – "politically correct" – any others? Hell, lets just have a blanket ban on hurting the fee-fees of anybody who calls themselves "progressive".
OH FFS...
people can call them sex positive all they want and I can think it is a stupid term, the world will go on...
as for nazis...
Here's the deal. Nazi's...snazzy dressers, but FUCKING ASSHOLES. I happen to be an eastern european jew, so, I find compairing anything or anyone, aside from actual nazi of course, rather insulting, and guess what? It's my blog...which I generally run pretty free fire zone and allow people to say whatever the fuck they want.
I make ONE SIMPLE FUCKING RULE and it turns into the biggest goddamn comment thread around here in a LOONG TIME.
Closing down a disucssion? Okay. Yeah. Watch this.
Discussion Closed.
DONE.
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