It’s one thing to have differing views, but I’ve seen enough attempted reddit migrations to be relieved that the popular communities in the fediverse so far haven’t been about crazy racist stuff or other extreme right bullshit.
I am also glad that I’m getting away from reddit’s general political shitposting, which was more left leaning. You couldn’t have any proper discourse on there, and even I with my generally more left leaning views recognized that.
You’re aligning yourself with nazis while engaging in sophistry to pretend that neither you nor they are nazis.
All these wild mental gymnastics to explain how it’s not like that, or the farcical posturing of academic exactitude and “nuanced understanding” - those are the exact same shit as nazis sending in the quiet well-spoken guy to break the ice and get a foot in the door.
You’re doing triple overtime to figure out ways to argue compassion for cryptofascists and nazi sympathizers, while going even further out of your way to avoid having the faintest shred of empathy for people who simply want nothing to do with any of that bullshit.
You can call them whatever you want. You don’t get to demand that we call them what you want us to. You don’t get to demand that we ignore your choice to align yourself with them, to defend them, and to try and make their views sound more palatable and more reasonable than their end goals.
I completely understand that you absolutely refuse to get it and will continue to avoid getting it forevermore - but I’m going to say it for the rest of the room anyways.
Those guys are the “ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS”.
They just understand that pretending that they’re not is the only way to get through the door of spaces dominated by the reasonable mainstream they’d like to sell their ideology to. They know that the reasonable mainstream wants nothing to do with “ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS” so the “ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS” dress up as the people you’re currently defending and trying to make this conversation about. And anyone in that group that you’re trying to defend the nazis by pointing towards, any single person among them who doesn’t want to stand with nazis - changes where they stand so that they’re not with the nazis anymore. You’re staying still while trying to defend that decision.
The “ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS” don’t dress up in SS Uniforms and ‘heil’ each other in the comments sections - they pretend to be reasonable mainstream people and in order to present their views and their talking points wrapped in rhetoric that masks its nazi roots. They want to win over the mainstream, they want to convince people they’re “on to” something, they want to exploit our willingness to engage in discourse to sell their views and advance their ideology. They are not here to engage in debate - the debate is merely a vehicle towards seizing power and then acting out an ideology of violence and hatred.
I’m not ‘playing semantics’ - I’m not even engaging with yours.
We are not going to split hairs and massage academic definitions until “ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS” aren’t actually nazis anymore. Either you’re a useful idiot and not qualified to try and talk down on folks about the intricate semantics of “nazi” - or you’re actually on their side.
You accusing them of being a Nazi was inevitable it seems. You don’t even realize the irony.