I still don’t see how that appologizes for or whitewashes anything they did and makes them look better. Or how their legitimacy plays into this (which is really just a legal concept used to suppress or generate opposition).
Sounds more like appologizing for everyone else than for the nazis themselves.
Though the main takeaway I got from the comment is that the words of the laws didn’t matter because no one stopped them when they went against them.
“Whitewashing” is a reductive, but convenient, term to describe a process that is more complex than most people think. To explain in more detail:
The most simple form of ‘whitewashing’ is just broad reputation laundering, that we’re all familiar with (“Ackchually they weren’t that bad!” brand holocaust denial, or justifications for future actions based on unfair treatment in the Treaty of Versailles etc.) but more commonly, and much less obviously, it’s used to single out a group of “bad apples” or similar that were responsible for the majority of the “bad”, and then exonerate (by lack of inclusion) those people who were not part of that “bad apple” group. Look at the initial comment for a more blatant example of this:
Some German officer was actually investigating these crimes (abuse of prisoners in the camps) until the Nazis dealt with him (can’t remember his name though).
They present this idea hand-in-hand with the idea that to a degree that is significant enough that it bears mentioning German officers weren’t okay with the holocaust! They were even investigating it, until they were silenced by those darn Nazis! (Conveniently we don’t know who this was so we can’t check into this). This ignores that any “german officer” would have had reams of proof of all kinds of the nazi’s crimes available to them in the form of SD reports, which were not in any way an uncommon resource (most officers would have had them delivered daily), so the “investigation” would barely have been necessary. But by having this hypothetical officer investigate it, the potential for exoneration of everyone that weren’t the “Bad Ones” is created.
This the same idea as I was talking about before - by presenting the Nazis as having taken over “illegitimately” it implies that there was a legitimate government that was opposed to them, an implicitly significant group, and thus leaves open the possibility that people were just part of that illegitimate takeover and weren’t really “Bad Guys”, the first country the Nazis conquored was Germany, after all!
… But they were a legitimate government. And claiming they weren’t needs to ignore things like the fact the nazis came to power in an overwhelming (44% of the vote!) democratic victory, and then maintained that huge public support (even higher, actually) right up until the end of the war. The average german knew about this, supported the nazis, and none of the horrifying shit they did was illegal under german law.
I don’t think the initial commenter did this intentionally, judging from their post history, but I do think that in their eagerness to contribute on a subject they very clearly are uncomfortable making strong assertions about, they wound up repeating Nazi propaganda.
I think the issue is with the interpretation rather than the message itself. They said a german officer, not german officers. There was German resistance to the Nazis. It was to varying amounts of activity and effectiveness as well as for varying motives, some admirable others less so. It wasn’t a majority of Germans, but to say they shouldn’t even be mentioned for fear that others might think that other Germans might have also been cool kinda feels more like you’re saying any resistance doesn’t matter if the initial government was formed via a legitimate method, because some large portion of the population supported it.
I think this is a risk of being too sensitive to various dog whistles. The whole point of them is to blend in so they sound or look like normal things but have a hidden meaning, which means normal things can also look like them, but doesn’t mean the normal thing now represents whatever the dog whistle is about. 4chan was already abusing that to troll the media with fake dog whistles (which then became real ones because they also fooled people who wanted to use them, but my point is that they were started in the first place to cause conflicts between people who agree when one inadvertently uses some dog whistle they aren’t aware of, like the a-ok hand sign being taken to mean white power).
I think the ones actually trying to dog-whistle will have other signs that they are pieces of shit.
“We should be more tolerant of dogwhistles” is a new one for me, damn. No, in this case “the Nazis even broke their own laws” was the point - which was false, and is in line with sentiments expressed in other common nazi propaganda.
We risk nothing by calling out and rejecting it. It doesn’t devalue resistance movements, there was no resistance movement mentioned, just some vague officer (who might even be real!) who was investigating something and was presented as a counterpoint to the lawlessness of the Nazis.
I’m not sure why we’re discussing sensitivity to dogwhistles? If I mentioned them, which I don’t see that Ive done, it was by accident - nothing here has been a dogwhistle. This is just plain misinformation, and as I’ve repeatedly said, I do not think it was done intentionally (so the poster’s previous behavior wouldn’t be an indication).
More like don’t assume anything that looks like a dog whistle actually is one. Which I think I was pretty clear about and no longer think you’re engaging in good faith.
You really weren’t, if that’s what your message was - you even used the 4chan example of how innocuous symbols can be co-opted by hate groups as dogwhistles. But if your reaction to several messages of patiently explaining myself to you is to declare I’m acting in bad faith after one mildly hyperbolic remark about your comment then there’s really nothing to be gained for me here.
Why were we even talking about dogwhistles, anyways? That hadn’t come up before, and really wasn’t at all relevant to the discussion. Nothing they said was a dogwhistle. I’m very confused where that came from.
When I wrote that reply, the comment I replied to only had that first sentence. But yeah, this is a waste of time. I brought up dogwhistles because I thought maybe that’s what you were getting at with calling this specific line of argument a defense of nazis because I still don’t see it and likely won’t.
I still don’t see how that appologizes for or whitewashes anything they did and makes them look better. Or how their legitimacy plays into this (which is really just a legal concept used to suppress or generate opposition).
Sounds more like appologizing for everyone else than for the nazis themselves.
Though the main takeaway I got from the comment is that the words of the laws didn’t matter because no one stopped them when they went against them.
“Whitewashing” is a reductive, but convenient, term to describe a process that is more complex than most people think. To explain in more detail:
The most simple form of ‘whitewashing’ is just broad reputation laundering, that we’re all familiar with (“Ackchually they weren’t that bad!” brand holocaust denial, or justifications for future actions based on unfair treatment in the Treaty of Versailles etc.) but more commonly, and much less obviously, it’s used to single out a group of “bad apples” or similar that were responsible for the majority of the “bad”, and then exonerate (by lack of inclusion) those people who were not part of that “bad apple” group. Look at the initial comment for a more blatant example of this:
They present this idea hand-in-hand with the idea that to a degree that is significant enough that it bears mentioning German officers weren’t okay with the holocaust! They were even investigating it, until they were silenced by those darn Nazis! (Conveniently we don’t know who this was so we can’t check into this). This ignores that any “german officer” would have had reams of proof of all kinds of the nazi’s crimes available to them in the form of SD reports, which were not in any way an uncommon resource (most officers would have had them delivered daily), so the “investigation” would barely have been necessary. But by having this hypothetical officer investigate it, the potential for exoneration of everyone that weren’t the “Bad Ones” is created.
This the same idea as I was talking about before - by presenting the Nazis as having taken over “illegitimately” it implies that there was a legitimate government that was opposed to them, an implicitly significant group, and thus leaves open the possibility that people were just part of that illegitimate takeover and weren’t really “Bad Guys”, the first country the Nazis conquored was Germany, after all!
… But they were a legitimate government. And claiming they weren’t needs to ignore things like the fact the nazis came to power in an overwhelming (44% of the vote!) democratic victory, and then maintained that huge public support (even higher, actually) right up until the end of the war. The average german knew about this, supported the nazis, and none of the horrifying shit they did was illegal under german law.
I don’t think the initial commenter did this intentionally, judging from their post history, but I do think that in their eagerness to contribute on a subject they very clearly are uncomfortable making strong assertions about, they wound up repeating Nazi propaganda.
I think the issue is with the interpretation rather than the message itself. They said a german officer, not german officers. There was German resistance to the Nazis. It was to varying amounts of activity and effectiveness as well as for varying motives, some admirable others less so. It wasn’t a majority of Germans, but to say they shouldn’t even be mentioned for fear that others might think that other Germans might have also been cool kinda feels more like you’re saying any resistance doesn’t matter if the initial government was formed via a legitimate method, because some large portion of the population supported it.
I think this is a risk of being too sensitive to various dog whistles. The whole point of them is to blend in so they sound or look like normal things but have a hidden meaning, which means normal things can also look like them, but doesn’t mean the normal thing now represents whatever the dog whistle is about. 4chan was already abusing that to troll the media with fake dog whistles (which then became real ones because they also fooled people who wanted to use them, but my point is that they were started in the first place to cause conflicts between people who agree when one inadvertently uses some dog whistle they aren’t aware of, like the a-ok hand sign being taken to mean white power).
I think the ones actually trying to dog-whistle will have other signs that they are pieces of shit.
(Sorry, lemmy is having a moment)
“We should be more tolerant of dogwhistles” is a new one for me, damn. No, in this case “the Nazis even broke their own laws” was the point - which was false, and is in line with sentiments expressed in other common nazi propaganda.
We risk nothing by calling out and rejecting it. It doesn’t devalue resistance movements, there was no resistance movement mentioned, just some vague officer (who might even be real!) who was investigating something and was presented as a counterpoint to the lawlessness of the Nazis.
I’m not sure why we’re discussing sensitivity to dogwhistles? If I mentioned them, which I don’t see that Ive done, it was by accident - nothing here has been a dogwhistle. This is just plain misinformation, and as I’ve repeatedly said, I do not think it was done intentionally (so the poster’s previous behavior wouldn’t be an indication).
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More like don’t assume anything that looks like a dog whistle actually is one. Which I think I was pretty clear about and no longer think you’re engaging in good faith.
You really weren’t, if that’s what your message was - you even used the 4chan example of how innocuous symbols can be co-opted by hate groups as dogwhistles. But if your reaction to several messages of patiently explaining myself to you is to declare I’m acting in bad faith after one mildly hyperbolic remark about your comment then there’s really nothing to be gained for me here.
Why were we even talking about dogwhistles, anyways? That hadn’t come up before, and really wasn’t at all relevant to the discussion. Nothing they said was a dogwhistle. I’m very confused where that came from.
When I wrote that reply, the comment I replied to only had that first sentence. But yeah, this is a waste of time. I brought up dogwhistles because I thought maybe that’s what you were getting at with calling this specific line of argument a defense of nazis because I still don’t see it and likely won’t.
Ah yeah sorry, lemmy decided to post the 2nd half as a reply for some reason (that was the “moment”).
No, there was no dogwhistling, just reputation laundering. I’m sorry, I don’t know of a way to explain this more clearly to you.
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