Elections in various countries

[Travis B.]

Whether David Guiraud for example are as bad as the far-right, I might consider but the intention, even when wrong, is to defend against genocide and be the "real" left-wing when the others are supposedly weaksauce or "traitors".

I'd say that a bit contradictory, because if your idea of fighting against genocide involves seeing the vast majority of people as irredeemably evil for being insufficiently opposed to genocide, then you would have a perfect ready-made justification and motivation to commit a genocide yourself if you should ever get the power to do so.

As for the "traitors" part, well, where do I even start? Accusations of "treason" are one of the favorite pastimes of dictators, wannabe dictators, and their supporters. So when I see people getting called "traitors", my first instinct is usually to side with them.

Viewing the vast majority as irredeemably evil for insufficiently opposed to genocide, while possibly feeling satisfying from a moralistic standpoint, is not how you keep the far right from winning. The thing is that most people aren't far left at the present, so if you write off everyone other than the present far left, rather than try to convince them of the rightness of one's position, you are dooming the left to defeat.

(Yes, I did say that I wanted those who voted for Trump to be crushed under the fascist boot, and that was precisely so they would personally learn the wrongness of what they voted for; if fascism only affects other people they probably won't learn.)

[Travis B.]

Somewhat belated:

Now on to something lighter:

Over on Mastodon, zompist boosted a post linking to this piece: https://kennethreitz.org/essays/2025-08 ... heir-young

If we want to talk about that piece, I'd say this thread would be the best place on the ZBB to do this.

I myself mostly agree with the piece, although I think it would have been better without the *shudder* Hayek quote.

But to be blunt, zompist, I'm positively surprised that you boosted a link to that piece. I had long suspected you of being at least partly in favor of the things the piece criticizes.

One thing that strikes me is that it treats, in the same breath, very different institutions: free software, activism, churches. What sort of conclusions could you draw from this? Except very broad ones that apply to any group of people?

Or, to put it another way, tech projects and free software are important; but maybe not that important in the great scheme of things.

Well, the specific software projects the author is talking about seem to have some political values, even if that's unusual among software projects in general. Churches often have the one or other kind of political values, too, especially among the various varieties of North American Protestantism.

As for tech projects not being that important in the larger scheme of things, I guess the author talks so much about them because that's where his own background is.

One thing to remember is that in the FLOSS world there is entryism by certain sorts of people ([cough]Coraline Ada Ehmke[cough]) to push such politicized views of FLOSS development in projects in which it did not exist previously, by injecting themselves into projects and insisting that they must have CoC's and/or denouncing people within the projects for things they said or did, even outside the project in question.

[MacAnDàil]

I can accept Nazi for NPD but certainly not for Ares Land.

Whether David Guiraud for example are as bad as the far-right, I might consider but the intention, even when wrong, is to defend against genocide and be the "real" left-wing when the others are supposedly weaksauce or "traitors".

I'd say that a bit contradictory, because if your idea of fighting against genocide involves seeing the vast majority of people as irredeemably evil for being insufficiently opposed to genocide, then you would have a perfect ready-made justification and motivation to commit a genocide yourself if you should ever get the power to do so.

As for the "traitors" part, well, where do I even start? Accusations of "treason" are one of the favorite pastimes of dictators, wannabe dictators, and their supporters. So when I see people getting called "traitors", my first instinct is usually to side with them.

OK, I disagree with the traitors part myself. However, what do you mean by the first part?

To be clear, those claiming others are traitors are some ordinary members about centre-left politicans like François Hollande and Raphaël Glucksmann.

[Raphael]

OK, I disagree with the traitors part myself. However, what do you mean by the first part?

Let's say you're really absolutely convinced that the vast majority of people, either in the world in general or in your own society, are irredeemably evil because they don't oppose genocide decidedly enough. And now suppose that at some point, you end up with real substantial power, the kind of power that enables you to kill people.

In that case, at that point, you have both a strong motivation, and, inside your own mind, a justification for going really hard after the vast majority of the people over whom you now have power. Which is exactly the kind of combination of factors that can easily lead to large-scale killings.

Still, I'd be careful with Hitler's name in a discussion like this, and it is definitely inappropriate to liken politicians that aren't even far rightists to Hitler. Faced with a choice between centrists and far rightists, I'd choose centrists, no question.

No disagreement on that. I was specifically responding to your opposition to calling the extreme right "Nazis". I was not, very much not, defending rotting bones' position.

I kind of wonder if you have anything to say about the points I made in my long post above, though.

I can accept Nazi for NPD but certainly not for Ares Land.

No disagreement. Again, I was specifically responding to WeepingElf's opposition to calling the extreme right "Nazis". I was not, very much not, defending rotting bones' position.

[Travis B.]

In the present tense I would limit the use of "Nazi" to refer to the most extreme of the extreme right who continue the original Nazis in spirit, people like the Atomwaffen Division. I would not call the likes of the Rassemblement national, the Reform UK Party, and even the American MAGAts, as odious as they are, "Nazis".

[alice]

Nor does it help to dilute the sense of the word in expressions such as "spelling Nazis".

This is where some well-reasoned and sensible words from zompist would be useful; whaddya say?

[bradrn]

In the present tense I would limit the use of "Nazi" to refer to the most extreme of the extreme right who continue the original Nazis in spirit, people like the Atomwaffen Division. I would not call the likes of the Rassemblement national, the Reform UK Party, and even the American MAGAts, as odious as they are, "Nazis".

This is basically my approach too. At least some of those groups are certainly fascist in ideology, but not Nazi (again a good example of this is Modi).

[Travis B.]

In the present tense I would limit the use of "Nazi" to refer to the most extreme of the extreme right who continue the original Nazis in spirit, people like the Atomwaffen Division. I would not call the likes of the Rassemblement national, the Reform UK Party, and even the American MAGAts, as odious as they are, "Nazis".

This is basically my approach too. At least some of those groups are certainly fascist in ideology, but not Nazi (again a good example of this is Modi).

I personally am far more open to calling people 'fascists' than calling them 'Nazis'.

[WeepingElf]

For similar reasons, I avoid calling today's far rightists "Nazis". That relativizes the atrocities of the actual Nazis, which are unparalleled in history.

Disagree. Completely.

First of all, the atrocities of the Nazis weren't completely unparalleled. If you count the entire history of European colonialism as one big event, then that event was worse than the crimes of the Nazis. If you split it into a lot of smaller events, some of them are still serious competitors with Nazism in terms of sheer horribleness. Before that, there was the founding and expansion of the Mongolian Empire, which involved atrocities of an incredibly massive scale, too, and was, not coincidentally, apparently admired by Hitler himself.

European colonialism of course was a gargantuan era of genocide and oppression, and caused many more victims than the Nazi Reich. But the Nazis committed their atrocities in just twelve years, most of them in the second half of that period, while colonialism lasted several centuries.

Second, even if you assume that the crimes of the Nazis were unparalleled, why would that be any reason to be less harsh when talking about people who admire those crimes and would love to repeat them? If someone thinks Hitler was great, and we need someone like that again, then refusing to call that person a Nazi is, frankly, Verharmlosung.

If someone proudly calls themselves a Nazi, why would you refuse to call them a Nazi?

If they call themselves a Nazi, it is of course legitimate to call them a Nazi, sure. If they say they'd do the same kind of atrocities again, calling them Nazi is appropriate, too. But most far-rightists today don't do that. Rather, they play down the atrocities of the Nazis, such as Alexander Gauland of the AfD calling them "a bird shit on the face of German history". Some American far-rightists proudly confirm that they are far-rightists - and go on claiming that Hitler actually was a leftist.

If someone, like many far right types today, takes a stance of, "Well, technically, you can't prove that I'm a Nazi, na na, na na na, nudge nudge, wink wink", then why on Earth would you refuse to call them a Nazi? In that case, you're arguably doing their bidding by refusing to call them a Nazi.

If someone gleefully posts gas chamber memes on social media, why would you refuse to call them a Nazi?

I would not! But I would not call far-rightists who don't do anything like that Nazis.

Because these people haven't killed many millions of people yet? Well, many of them are still quite young, and likely to have a lot of time left in their lives. Besides, by that standard, the Nazis of 1932 wouldn't really have been Nazis either, because at that point, they hadn't committed unparalleled or near-unparalleled atrocities yet either. By your standard, Hitler himself, on the day before he became Chancellor, wasn't yet a Nazi.

Hitler of course was a Nazi before 1933! This is not what I was trying to say. If someone adheres to the Nazi ideology, they are a Nazi, no doubt. But not all far-rightists adhere to the Nazi ideology, or at least they deny accusations of adhering to it. That doesn't mean that far-rightists who don't publicly adhere to the Nazi ideology were harmless or redeemable, of course. But most far-rightists are more like Mussolini than Hitler. Bad enough, but not really the same, even if the difference between Hitler and Mussolini was more in degree than in kind.

Finally, if nothing else was or is like the mid-20th century Nazis, then we can't really draw any lessons from remembering their history, because any lessons we could draw couldn't possibly apply to anyone else. The statement "Nazis are very bad, and we should fight them as much as we can" becomes almost meaningless if you, at the same time, assert that no one alive today under the age of 90 could possibly be a Nazi.

It's all a bit as if you would come up with very convincing reasons why a specific person who keeps churning out pamphlets, columns, and blog posts with titles like Why Conservatism Is The Only Political Position That Makes Sense shouldn't be called a "conservative".

This is not what I was meaning to say at all! Some far-right movements are old wine in new skins, and Nazis in disguise. But as usual, it is necessary to differentiate rather than tar everything and everyone with the same big brush. By failing to differentiate, one makes oneself more susceptible to counter-arguments.

If you have got the impression that I am accepting far-right thinking as long as it is "not Nazism", I can assure you that you are dead wrong. I object to all flavours of far-right politics, including those who make a point of being "not Nazis". But as I said, I'd be careful with calling all far-rightists "Nazis".

[Travis B.]

I am with WeepingElf here. That said, there have been genocides committed by people other than the Nazis which are comparable in terms of the time taken to kill an equivalent portion of the target population, such as the Cambodian genocide, the Armenian genocide, etc., which must not be forgotten.

[zompist]

Because these people haven't killed many millions of people yet? Well, many of them are still quite young, and likely to have a lot of time left in their lives. Besides, by that standard, the Nazis of 1932 wouldn't really have been Nazis either, because at that point, they hadn't committed unparalleled or near-unparalleled atrocities yet either. By your standard, Hitler himself, on the day before he became Chancellor, wasn't yet a Nazi.

Finally, if nothing else was or is like the mid-20th century Nazis, then we can't really draw any lessons from remembering their history, because any lessons we could draw couldn't possibly apply to anyone else. The statement "Nazis are very bad, and we should fight them as much as we can" becomes almost meaningless if you, at the same time, assert that no one alive today under the age of 90 could possibly be a Nazi.

I agree with Raphael here. I think there's a history behind making "Nazis" unique— but things change and the reasons are no longer valid.

For maybe forty years, the far right was dead or pitifully small. Painting Naziism as uniquely bad helped keep them that way— mainstream conservatives didn't want to get near them. Plus, people thought that the world had improved and there was a consensus that, y'know, industrial-scale mass murder was bad.

In those years people who called the center-right or even the center "Nazis" or even "fascists" were generally extremists of another type, dedicated to a different form of authoritarianism, so these terms seemed like ridiculous hyberbole.

No longer. We have real fascists around again, some of them in power in the US, Hungary, India, and Russia, among other places. Now the problem is normalizing or whitewashing powerful people who want to destroy democracy and kill the people they oppose.

I'd also note, genocide is sadly not a unique property of the Nazis. That's been hard to maintain since the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, but it was also practiced by Stalin, by Burma, by Sudan, by the Turks, and by various colonial states. Making distinctions is a good political idea in general, but once the genocides start, it becomes rather foolish to declare that one genocide was really really bad.

Just a few days ago a. Fox News host was publicly calling for the murder of the homeless, and for a few days after Kirk's murder the right-wing silo was full of declarations of "civil war"— until it came out that the shooter was one of them. It's not even news anymore when Israeli cabinet members call for killing all the Palestinians. The trail of dead civilians found when Russia retreated from the region north of Kiev, to say nothing of the steady murder of Putin's opponents, should leave no doubt about the nature of that regime. Modi rode to power on a program of demonizing and attacking Muslims.

It is way, way past the point where there are honest doubts about whether these regimes are fascist. But it's also important to know that fascist regimes start small. They test the waters, they get people used to little oppressions so the big ones become more possible. Hitler didn't begin the Holocaust in 1932. He began by making dissent illegal— something that's already happening here.

[Travis B.]

I don't consider calling people 'fascists' is whitewashing. There are fascists, real live fascists, in power in the US, Israel, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, etc. and seeking power in France, the UK, Germany, etc. The thing is, though, Nazism is a specific fascist ideology out of many, distinct from MAGA, Hindutva, Likud's version of Zionism, etc. and I do not think it is useful to muddy the waters by simply calling all of the above 'Nazis'. That only opens the door for people to point out how they are not identical to the Nazis. Calling people 'fascists' is far more useful and accurate as an umbrella term, even if it may not have as much rhetorical venom to it. And just because someone is not a 'Nazi' does not mean that they are not capable of genocide, as there have been many instances throughout history of génocidaires who did not believe in Nazism as an ideology per se.

[Raphael]

Thank you, zompist.

I'd also note, genocide is sadly not a unique property of the Nazis. That's been hard to maintain since the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, but it was also practiced by Stalin, by Burma, by Sudan, by the Turks, and by various colonial states. Making distinctions is a good political idea in general, but once the genocides start, it becomes rather foolish to declare that one genocide was really really bad.

That reminds me, I'm not even sure whether any kind of political ideology is absolutely necessary to get a genocide. It only looks like that to us because we're used to the way things work in the 20th and 21st century. But the biggest genocides of the time before Columbus were probably those committed by Genghis Khan and his successors, and they didn't seem to have much of an ideology beyond "We want to take a lot of loot". And while Transatlantic Slavery was, of course, based on a particularly vicious form of racist ideology, the people behind earlier forms of slavery apparently didn't bother much with ideological justifications. They just assumed, as a matter of course, that enslaving people was the way of the world, that you did it if you could, and if it happened to you, well, that was just too bad.

[zompist]

I don't consider calling people 'fascists' is whitewashing. There are fascists, real live fascists, in power in the US, Israel, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, etc. and seeking power in France, the UK, Germany, etc. The thing is, though, Nazism is a specific fascist ideology out of many, distinct from MAGA, Hindutva, Likud's version of Zionism, etc. and I do not think it is useful to muddy the waters by simply calling all of the above 'Nazis'. That only opens the door for people to point out how they are not identical to the Nazis. Calling people 'fascists' is far more useful and accurate as an umbrella term, even if it may not have as much rhetorical venom to it.

I don't see the point to this— there was very little daylight between Mussolini and Hitler. (Fascism may seem like a more neutral term, but it's Mussolini's invention.)

Stuff the Republicans have been doing lately:
-- building concentration camps
-- making it illegal to promote liberal views
-- demonizing and hassling trans people and other sexual minorities
-- sending armed thugs to kidnap law-abiding people off the streets and into detention
-- getting businesses to bow down before the Leader's wishes
-- keeping performers from making fun of the Party

This is literal Nazi shit. Every one of these things are things the Nazis did under Adolf Hitler. Why do we need to hide this fact? This is like insisting something is not a genocide if it does not use Zyklon B in particular.

Now, we don't need to take every Nazi action as a prediction of the Republicans (much less other fascists). That is not how history works. If the Republicans are following a playbook, it's much more Putin or Orbán than Hitler in particular. We don't win a prize if we fall under authoritarian fascism but pedantically note that, though it follows Naziism in general and particular ways, it's not really Naziism.

[zompist]

But the biggest genocides of the time before Columbus were probably those committed by Genghis Khan and his successors, and they didn't seem to have much of an ideology beyond "We want to take a lot of loot".

One quibble here. The Mongols were famously vindictive toward cities that had resisted them. That is extremely common in history. I'm reading a history of Rome right now; recall what they did to Carthage and Corinth. (Basically: raze them and sell the survivors into slavery.) Or Jerusalem, a few centuries later. Alexander's capture of Tyre was just as brutal.

The irony of the Mongols is that they produced decades of peace and cultural exchange in Eurasia for a hundred years. It's no coincidence that Marco Polo was able to visit China during their rule: it was the first time in a millennium that the journey across the continent was safe.

Now that Timur fellow though, he was a bastard.

[Travis B.]

I don't consider calling people 'fascists' is whitewashing. There are fascists, real live fascists, in power in the US, Israel, Hungary, India, Russia, Turkey, etc. and seeking power in France, the UK, Germany, etc. The thing is, though, Nazism is a specific fascist ideology out of many, distinct from MAGA, Hindutva, Likud's version of Zionism, etc. and I do not think it is useful to muddy the waters by simply calling all of the above 'Nazis'. That only opens the door for people to point out how they are not identical to the Nazis. Calling people 'fascists' is far more useful and accurate as an umbrella term, even if it may not have as much rhetorical venom to it.

I don't see the point to this— there was very little daylight between Mussolini and Hitler. (Fascism may seem like a more neutral term, but it's Mussolini's invention.)

Stuff the Republicans have been doing lately:
-- building concentration camps
-- making it illegal to promote liberal views
-- demonizing and hassling trans people and other sexual minorities
-- sending armed thugs to kidnap law-abiding people off the streets and into detention
-- getting businesses to bow down before the Leader's wishes
-- keeping performers from making fun of the Party

This is literal Nazi shit. Every one of these things are things the Nazis did under Adolf Hitler. Why do we need to hide this fact? This is like insisting something is not a genocide if it does not use Zyklon B in particular.

Now, we don't need to take every Nazi action as a prediction of the Republicans (much less other fascists). That is not how history works. If the Republicans are following a playbook, it's much more Putin or Orbán than Hitler in particular. We don't win a prize if we fall under authoritarian fascism but pedantically note that, though it follows Naziism in general and particular ways, it's not really Naziism.

The key thing is that these sorts of things are by no means unique to the Nazis ─ what was unique to the Nazis was their level of industrialization of genocide. Many authoritarians have done similar things to what the Republicans are doing now, and as you say, what the Republicans are doing now has more in common with Putin or Orbán than Hitler. Trump has been doing his part in helping incite genocide with his cheerleading of what Israel is doing in Gaza, but Trump himself is not a génocidaire at least yet. And if Trump is a Nazi, so are many other authoritarians, which dilutes the significance of the term.

Edit: Fixed two typos.

[Richard W]

The key thing is that these sorts of things are by no means unique to the Nazis ─ what was unique to the Nazis was their level of industrialization of genocide. May authoritarians have done similar things to what the Republicans are doing now, and as you say, what the Republicans are doing now has more in common with Putin or Orbán than Hitler. Trump has been doing his part in helping incite genocide with his cheerleading of what Israel is going in Gaza, but Trump himself is not a génocidaire at least yet. And if Trump is a Nazi, so are many other authoritarians, which dilutes the significance of the term.

I largely agree with Travis B.

The salient features of the Nazis seem to me to be their racism (or whatever - 'tribalism' seems too narrow), integrity, socialist leanings and illiberality. The socialist leanings included their ultimately believing that things belonged to the German people, not to individuals and not to non-Germans. Their integrity led to them seeing genocide as reasonably following from their other goals, but was tempered by a feeling that some other peoples could be a bit 'German' . Integrity is not always good.

An important distinction in these ideologies is the concept of 'us'.

[Travis B.]

The key thing is that these sorts of things are by no means unique to the Nazis ─ what was unique to the Nazis was their level of industrialization of genocide. May authoritarians have done similar things to what the Republicans are doing now, and as you say, what the Republicans are doing now has more in common with Putin or Orbán than Hitler. Trump has been doing his part in helping incite genocide with his cheerleading of what Israel is going in Gaza, but Trump himself is not a génocidaire at least yet. And if Trump is a Nazi, so are many other authoritarians, which dilutes the significance of the term.

I largely agree with Travis B.

The salient features of the Nazis seem to me to be their racism (or whatever - 'tribalism' seems too narrow), integrity, socialist leanings and illiberality. The socialist leanings included their ultimately believing that things belonged to the German people, not to individuals and not to non-Germans. Their integrity led to them seeing genocide as reasonably following from their other goals, but was tempered by a feeling that some other peoples could be a bit 'German' . Integrity is not always good.

An important distinction in these ideologies is the concept of 'us'.

I strongly disagree with the idea that the Hitlerite Nazis were "socialist", even though the Strasserites may have had vaguely "socialist" leanings.

[WeepingElf]

It's a battle of words. Synonyms. which are never perfect synonyms, are always useful for adding nuances to the meaning expressed. And we have the words Nazis, fascists and far rightists here, which IMHO can be used to differentiate here. I prefer the term far rightists, the most generic of the three, for the kind of far rightists we are currently worried about, such as Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, the RN in France, the AfD in Germany etc. It doesn't really matter that much whether these are actual Nazis or not (I do see some differences in ideology), they are surely very evil and must be stopped - no matter what we call them.

[Richard W]

I strongly disagree with the idea that the Hitlerite Nazis were "socialist", even though the Strasserites may have had vaguely "socialist" leanings.

The Strength through Joy organisation comes under this category, and the Hitler Youth seems to have been physically beneficial. By some accounts, business owners seemed not to have reaped the obvious advantages of the suppression of the independent unions, beyond the suppression of disruptive activities, such as strikes.