[anal_reactor]

There will be a time when people putting svastikas will be considered brave heroes. And then it'll be banned again. And then it'll resurface again. Turns out, "things that are obviously morally right" radically chances over time and across cultures.

[poly2it]

> a time

... and a duality within the present forms of society in which either expression is interesting enough or leads up to a significant event such that we will remember it in the future. No time has been one-sided as in the way you put it.

[komali2]

Just out of curiosity, what makes you think that everyone thought Naziism was morally right at its peak?

[HeinzStuckeIt]

Several other European countries imitated German fascism in the 1930s (e.g. Hungary, Romania, Slovakia). This is well known in Eastern Europe because that brief period has cast long shadows to this day. Even in relatively faraway South America, Germany and Italy inspired several political movements.

Sure, not everyone thought Naziism was good, because you can’t find any political philosophy in human history that everyone has the same opinion about. But it was still seen as a model by millions of people outside Germany until Germany started obviously losing the war.

[wredcoll]

Some people like naziism.

Those people were wrong.

This isn't some kind of "oh morality is relative and somethings are cultural", it's just objectively wrong, regardless of who or how many people claim to like it.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

> Some people like naziism. Those people were wrong.

In your individual opinion. In mine, too, and hopefully everyone else’s here. But the OP was clearly talking about what views are presented as “morally right” by normative social forces, and those clearly differ across time and place, often as political power waxes and wanes.

[komali2]

No but that's my point, the nazis had to march entire classes of people to death camps at gun point to be considered "normative," and even then there was a resistance movement not only in every occupied country but also Germany itself. The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.

And even now we see that the normalization of naziism is apparently impossible - I was incredibly cynical about the American right wing happily embracing naziism, but I guess I was partially wrong: there's a schism this week over popular American right wing media figures platforming the nazi Nick Fuentes.

[anal_reactor]

> The reality is a minority of people were willing to use extraordinary violence and propaganda to present their viewpoint as "normal," but I don't agree that that made it "normal" even for the times.

Before modernity, extraordinary violence and propaganda were, well, ordinary. Hitler just made that work on industrial scale, but the underlying moral ideas weren't anything new. During antiquity, people didn't mind slaughtering entire cities. Even more modern history is full shit like that, look up Mongol invasions.

BTW don't you think that it's a little awkward that in modern times "pirates", which were people that'd literally kill seamen for profit, are considered a fun Halloween theme for children? I can imagine that in 500 years Nazi costumes will be similarly normalized.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

By the time the "death camps" started, Nazism’s takeover of Germany’s society was complete; peer pressure was now doing the work that initially thugs had to do. Yes, there was a resistance because there will always be people who disagree with whomever is in power, but those people where acting against the norm. Only with Germany losing the war were they rehabilitated in the eyes of Germany society at large, and initially with some grudging resistance here and there.

This is why posting about how “Nazism is objectively immoral, m’kay?" misses the point and can be counterproductive. The whole reason that fascism is a continual spectre is that, it turns out, by appealing to people’s base instincts and cracking heads, a malevolent political form can completely sidestep morality and institute the society it wants to see.