As soon as someone calls Nazi, it’s time to leave
Oh no, Nazis!
The podcast was fascinating, with both speakers making strong arguments about what they believe and why. Sure, there was cherry-picking of which science one should believe (always the science that supports you, never the science that doesn’t), but overall, it was going well and could be a lesson for others who disagree. Then the Nazis arrived.
Like the real Nazis in 1939, the accuser was smug and sure of himself, as if his argument had the same air superiority of the German Luftwaffe over the Polish Air Force. To justify the invasion, the actual Nazis claimed the Polish were the bad guys, and they were defending the poor helpless Germans suffering in evil Poland. Well, then I guess invasion is okay. I guess, Mr. Call the other side Nazis, you can do and say whatever you want because the other side is terrible down to its core.
I turned off the podcast. Done, finito, Elvis and I have left the building. If you can’t make your argument without calling the other side Nazis, you can’t make your argument. Think about it: could you make a good argument against killing millions of people without name-calling? Maybe it would go something like this, killing millions of people because of their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation is terrible. I think most people would agree with you. So, why do the Nazis arrive? In the podcast, the name-caller seemed to be losing ground. When you are losing ground, play the Nazi card?
A note on modern Nazis: 32 guys in Michigan and their girlfriends and wives may call themselves Nazis, but they aren’t the government. The Nazis were. If you want a real military unit inspired by the Nazis, you have to go to Ukraine (Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion attempts rebranding) Sorry Democrats and Republicans, the Russian invasion is bad, but that doesn’t make everything Ukrainian good. You don’t think the Russians are blasting their PR/News departments daily about the Nazi threat in Ukraine? (U.S. note: Anti-Semitic people who attack synagogues are hateful cowards, but they are not either of the majority political parties in the U.S. nor is their behavior condoned by the majority of the population, unlike the Nazi party activities in Germany)
Does that threat sound familiar? The other side is bad, so we have to go in? Claiming the opposing side is evil isn’t a Nazi tactic; it is an everybody who wants to go to war tactic. You may be on the left calling Republicans Nazis, but they aren’t. Remember, Democrats love invading countries/supporting proxy wars as much as Republicans; they just say it’s terrible while they vote yes to fund every new and continuing war (The Squad nowhere to be seen as Ukraine package sails through)
And, if you think the average Republican voter and politician is on board for collecting Jews, gays, communists, trans people, etc. and shipping them by the millions to gas chambers outside Columbus, Ohio, and in every U.S. territory and country where we have a military presence like the Nazis did, you need help. Don’t get me wrong, our government can be horrible, but it’s an American horrible, not a Nazi horrible. Sad fact: Hitler learned from the U.S. treatment of American Indians and thought reservations for Jewish people might be the way to go. He also saw the world ignore the Armenian genocide and figured if the Ottoman Empire could get away with it, Germany could do the same with his. Each country and empire gets to be terrible in its own unique way.
Some Nazi name-callers are fear-mongering. Sure, using emotion in arguments is a necessary strategy. A good argument has to have an emotional pull to succeed, but why would anyone choose fear as that emotion? Fear shuts down the thinking process. Why do those who label the other side Nazis want to shut down our thinking processes? Now, if you want to pause and say, don’t some Republican politicians use fear of immigrants, think Trump’s rapist comment, you can. I’m not a Republican, and it would still be a valid criticism if I were. Using fear is bullshit for both parties. This essay is sticking with the Nazi trope, so note that the use of fear is a tool used by political parties of all stripes, and they all suck when they do that.
Back to shutting down the thinking process: when we are afraid, we freeze, fight, or flee. We do not deliberate, explore or seek to understand. I used to put up with my liberal friends saying “Fuck Trump” and saying how awful all Republicans are, but besides being exhausting, it didn’t serve anyone. It didn’t even help them, at least not in the long run. All their ideas were above reproach; all conservative views were hateful. I used to tune in to conservative radio once in a while to see how the other side thought, and I’d tune out as soon as they got into the all-liberals-hate-America and everything-they-think-or-say-was stupid. It, too, was exhausting and didn’t serve anyone except in the ratings.
All the previous examples show that so many “arguments” are actually monologues or sermons where you are supposed to nod your head and agree. If you listen to someone argue their point, and they call the other side Nazis, they want you to stop thinking. Stop thinking and join them in their righteous battle against monsters. Now, they may have a righteous cause (they do in their mind, for sure), but that doesn’t mean they have a righteous argument or a righteous plan to make things better. There’s a good chance their ideas have 1,001 unintended harmful consequences because they are unwilling to listen to criticism.
Brief shout-out for books: reading intelligent and honest authors is an excellent antidote to people trapped in their ideals. For example, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt and Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell are good ones and gave me a much better view of the benefits, drawbacks, and reasoning of conservative and liberal ideology.
Fear was not why this podcast participant brought up the Nazis. The worst Nazi name-callers are the dismissive ones, like that guy. In his mind, why wouldn’t he be? The other side is Nazis! (okay, I can’t read minds, but you and I can tell when someone’s tone is dismissive/arrogant). These name-callers are the worst because dehumanizing the other side is, well, something the Nazis were good at. Strange or sad that people who call other people Nazis often have so much in common with Nazis?
Calling someone a Nazi is talking away their humanity, making them a monster. It’s like the Nuremberg Trials - these are the trials of the worst of the worst Nazis. Determining this was straightforward: it's okay if the Allies did it, like bombing civilians. If only the Nazis did it, like round up and kill millions, it’s bad/illegal. This is an oversimplification, for sure, but the baddies were punished. Well, not the rocket scientists and other smart people we wanted. Operation Paperclip made sure they were smuggled out to the U.S. This may seem like I’m losing focus, but I’m not. Part of the U.S. Army was searching for, catching, and hanging Nazis, while another part of the U.S. Army was hiding, protecting, and smuggling Nazis into the U.S (German scientists brought to U.S.). You see, fighting bad guys doesn’t mean everything you do is good.
One purpose of calling someone a Nazi is to make them look bad and for the name-caller to look or feel good. Unless dealing with actual Nazis, the name-caller does not look good and lives in a shadow if they are feeling good about it, a dark, dark shadow. Dehumanizing the other is the basis of most of the evils humans experience. Here is a radical thought: you can get into a fight with good people. More radical: you should get into a fight with good people. Most radical: if you can’t see the good in the people you are fighting, you’re one of the bad guys (or gals).
You can get into a fight with good people. Let’s take the easy topic of abortion. At the extreme viewpoints, either women have become sexual chattel for all men for all time, or millions of embryos will now grow up in loving, financially stable homes with two parents, go to church, and become wonderful citizens of a God-blessed country. If these extremes are correct, one side is right and the other disgusting and should be defeated at all costs. Most people are in-between, but they do lean. Now, here's one thing almost all Americans believe, ending a pregnancy at nine months for non-health reasons isn’t right (that’s why they rarely happen). On one side, they may lean pro-choice because they have seen the struggle when girls and women have unplanned pregnancies and want to help. They believe society needs to mind its business before that time. If they lean the other way, it may be because they see what a fetus can become and think the 9-month mark is a little, okay, a lot, too late.
Both sides have valid reasons, and both look at the situation differently (women’s rights vs. rights of the unborn). Painting either side as pure evil with evil intentions is calling each other Nazis without using the term Nazi. I’m no expert on this, and I’m sure I will catch hell from both sides, but I’d like to know how either side plans to live with their fellow Americans (now Nazis) as this unfolds? Will they teach their children that those other Americans are evil and need to be marginalized? Will they base their tactics on the idea that they are right and anyone who opposed them is evil/Nazi? Does anyone else see this as troubling?
Instead, we should get into a fight with good people. Say you have strong reasons to support a woman’s right to choose and feel called to do so. Great. Go for it. Say you have strong reasons to support those cells that will divide their way all the way to an air-breathing human and feel called to do so. Great. Go for it. Now, to both of these people: are you a good person? If so, that means someone on the other side needs to fight/argue/don’t-get-hung-up-on-vocabulary-here with you, a good person. Now, you may be arrogant enough to believe that only you are a good person, but I doubt that type of person has read this far. So, how are you going to fight this good person? Labeling them as evil is not a real option if you are the good person you think you are. Now, say the other person sucks, is manipulative, and at least evil adjacent; other people are watching the fight. If you do sink to their level, what’s the difference between you and them? This leads to…
If you can’t see the good in the people you are fighting; you’re one of the bad guys (or gals). I will make an obvious but rarely acknowledged statement in the social discourse sphere: we’re all messy. Maybe not in the cleaning department, but we all have areas in our lives where we are hypocrites; we all sometimes admonish people and children to do as we say and not as we do. We are all operating on a system of beliefs and habits that got us this far and are loathe to change them, and we want other people to like us, so to hide our flaws, we often project them on others. Seriously, whenever I heard a Republican Senator or Congressman talk about what was wrong with gay marriage, I wondered how long it would be before I heard that he’s caught soliciting gay sex in some bathroom somewhere. Fact check: The greatest threats to heterosexual marriages will always be…poor communication and cheating heterosexuals. (20 Republican Politicians brought down by big day sex scandals). We also lie to protect our reputation. Who was surprised when we found out that Bill Clinton did, not did not, have sexual relations with that woman? If you want to be political, fine, but please don’t be a politician. They are the only group that gets to lie in advertisements legally (Why politicians can lie). Think of the politician on the other side you hate the most. Do you have him or her in your mind? Good, that’s you when you paint the other side as evil. Not cool; not cool at all.
I am not going to name the podcast or the name-caller. He doesn’t deserve the publicity, and I’m willing to bet you have your own examples. It is not a rare phenomenon. In some ways, we do not seem to have grown up. We are still acting like kids on the playground calling each other names, but we aren’t kids anymore. We’re the adults and teach the young how to behave. Not only do we have that obligation, whether we like it or not, but social media has increased the reach of our behavior beyond our community, state, and even country.
I am your pick-your-battles type, and I’m not going to waste my time arguing with adults acting like children. Sometimes, it’s time to leave. I recommend you do the same. Who knows, if enough of these name-callers get time-outs, they may go back and learn how to make their case without dehumanizing anyone who disagrees. Perhaps they even see that their argument needs work or aren’t as good as they pretend to be. It’s worth a shot.
