[vixen99]

And anyone recalling the film 2001 will know what signals they'll be picking up ...

(for those who haven't seen it, 'they' receive images dating from the 1930s or thereabouts with a certain someone making what is today, an unacceptable (for most of us one hopes) salute)

[pavel_lishin]

I believe you're thinking of Contact, not 2001.

[qubex]

God, thought just occurred to me... imagine if we received that (re)transmission in this political climate... <shudder>

[dogma1138]

The same thing will happen that happened in the movie? A bunch of idiots with "hitler is alive in space" signs on the streets.

What exactly would happen? You really think that the events in Charlottesville were because of Hitler? the KKK predates the Nazi party by over half a century. Eugenics was considered a progressive theory in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Anyone who simply defines the protestors as Nazis is either intentionally pushing a hyperbole or is negligently oversimplifying the situation.

[qubex]

Firstly, I am not an American so while the Charlottesville clashes might be the most proximate case of ’alt-right’ ’protest’/parading/provoking it is (sadly) far from unique. Reactionary, nationalistic, and populistic sentiment seems to be coming to the fore pretty much everywhere in the Western sphere.

Secondly, I tend to agree that the term ’Nazis’ is... inaccurate. Deserved, earned, maybe even desired by the paraders themselves but fundamentally inaccurate. They synthesise their ideology down to a kernel of intolerance and racism and reach the conclusion that they are the natural successor in an unbroken line of descent from the ’cool’ Nazis, and thus they claim and are accorded the mantle. However national socialist ideology was far more complex, and the Nazi party's structure far more evolved, than these little folks have.

[pcardoso]

It was Contact, not 2001.