Well argued as usual. Just don’t get your hopes up that people will stop being deranged. By all means keep telling them why it’s important they do, just don’t get your hopes up and feel bad when they don’t listen. We need you healthy Helen!!!
1) Expressed outright support for Tommy Robinson, whose supporters regularly use Nazi salutes.
2) Expressed outright support for the AdF, whose supporters and politicians use Nazi phraseology.
3) Spoken in support of the January 6th insurrectionists, which included avowed neo-Nazis.
I loath the cry of "Nazi" or "fascist!" at everyone to the right of Ken Clarke, truly loath it. The UK Tory party is overwhelmingly made up of good, kind, decent people I happen to disagree with. As were the Republican party of Mitt Romney, GWB, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and even Mike Pence. But what we're seeing in the US now is something else, this is different. Red lines and norms don't seem to matter any more, only winning (or more importantly, your opponents losing).
Do I know Musk deliberately did a Nazi salute? No. Am I certain he didn't? Also, sadly, no. I can't be. I think he probably should be given the benefit of the doubt. Probably. But how can he really be so stupid, really be so spectacularly ignorant, to give his ongoing support to the aforementioned without knowing exactly who he's supporting? Like how?
I fear we're going to be giving the benefit of doubt until all doubt is extinguished, and we know for certain that drip by ignored drip we watched the US's shonky-at-best democracy sink without a trace.
Have a look at the final 'here' link. I've been addressing that. In fact, most of my notes have been about the dangers of Elon Musk for quite some time.
I agree with everything you said except for the part about him deserving the benefit of the doubt. Are we forgetting the times on X when Musk promoted or seconded anti-Semitic sentiments? Or the very fact that he has turned Twitter into a right-wing cesspool by re-platforming people who got tossed off for hate speech?
Helen speaks as if we haven't been spending the last year wondering, with good reason, "Why does Elon Musk increasingly sound like a Nazi apologist?" As if this is all coming out of the blue, rather than one more thing to throw on the pile of mounting evidence.
Does Musk get prejudged for growing up a rich kid in South Africa during Apartheid? I don't know—I seem to remember a time when nobody felt that to be worth mentioning, when Musk was actually quite well liked. So I think it's fair to say he was never assessed such a *prejudgment*. Is it fair as a post-judgement? Sure seems so.
I'm a longtime veteran of policing my own side and wagging my finger at progressives who throw around charges of racism and white supremacy with reckless abandon. But for the life of me I can't understand how anyone could see this as a symptom of any kind of "derangement". Even if I were inclined to defend Musk here, I'd be doing so along with an angry, irritated condemnation of the man for, at best, his utter carelessness and seemingly trying to make a fool out of those who support him and make excuses for him.
Because does it look like he actually gave Nazi salutes? Oh my God yes! In fact it looked even *more* like it when I watched the actual video, so no, you can't blame it on chopped-up memes. Seriously, watch it. It was not some soft, touching of the breast and followed by a natural extension of the arm like he was waving to everyone. It was nothing like the stills that Helen showed here. It was an abrupt, quick slicing motion of the arm from the breast to the air, with no wave of the hand at the end.
If I was actually going to intentionally make a Nazi salute, I honestly can't see how it would look any different.
Maybe it wasn't. But I can tell you which side looks more "deranged" for claiming it to be one way or the other, emphatically so.
It has just boggled my mind over the past few years how people keep immediately leaping to the "NAZI!" accusation.
There are a number of valid concerns about Trump, Elon, et al.; but would it not make more sense to examine those issues instead of just making up nonsense like this?
Agreed Helen with a big exception: Elon doesn't excel at anything technical. He is mediocre at best, and likely, just incompetent in technical matters.
He is not the founder of anything he currently owns, he brought every single company.
There are many examples where he tries to dazze the public with hollow techno babble, hust to be put in place for a competent engineer or programmer, sometimes like in the Twitter acquisition, by a software developer of his own company.
Yes, SpaceX and Tesla have some of the best engineering talent in the world, but they are all often tied to the tantrums and useless projects imposed by Elon.
Elon is a manipulative, narcissistic, and a rich business man, nothing else.
I often compare him to Henry Ford in that he harnessed an opportunity presented by a new technology while having personal shortcomings. Modern day "tech" success mostly centres around the personal credibility & accessibility to convince VC money to back a project and if picked correctly assures big $ because the internet is an inherently monopolistic market. The internet economy only needs 1-of-anything per sector.
Agreed. Every time I see comments such as Syl's [edit: I meant e.pierce] above, it just points to the tribal nature of much of this. This says to me something like 'my enemies are being dumb and I want them to continue to be dumb,' rather than wanting those with whom you disagree to spend some time learning and maybe, just maybe, we can also do the same and then we can perhaps, together, figure out the truth.
Again, as Orwell pointed out after barely escaping an assassination attempt by communists during the Spanish Civil War, leftists are always stabbing each other in the back. Pathological extremism becomes entrenched via stabbing critics and reformers in the back. Helen is just one example of such stabbing.
I’m just pointing out that without destroying the pathology, the disease will continue to spread.
Liberals have an inherent bias against doing the necessary dirty work.
There is a bunch of other crucial stuff such as dealing with the evolutionary psychology of humans in adapting to punctuated, dynamic equilibrium in social systems. TechnoEconomic disruption drives social disintegration and that results in pathological personalities, social parasites, being able to exploit increasing chaos. See Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke.
The historical pattern is that deep paradigm shifts EVENTUALLY lead to such social parasitism being regulated, after structural change to institutions and economic patterns.
Consciousness raising is necessary but not sufficient.
Not sure its a real thing but this case is evidence for it, as it seems that real nazi's have also jumped to the conclusion that Musk’s gesture means he is one of them.
"On the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, a user posted an image of Musk striking the pose under text reading, "Heil Hitler.""
It doesn’t matter, brainwashed leftards aren’t capable of abandoning their attachment to toxic thinking. The exceptions prove the rule, in the rare case of someone on the left EXITING THE VAMPIRE CASTLE , the Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority (Taleb) insures that they will get stabbed in the back. As many of your articles make clear.
Leftards are a gangrenous social cancer that needs to be hacked off to save the patient.
as a person who grew up around, and was very much part of, this 'leftard' world, all I can say is that they have similarly dismissive things about the right, and have for decades. That attitude isn't helping.
Here's an example. I personally believe that the concept of god is so obviously incorrect that I have, in the past, thought of all Christians, Muslims, etc as actually just stupid people, and had very rude things to say about them. Never made good conversations with religious people. How would any Christian ever consider that maybe their belief might be wrong by talking about them that way? They would just dig in deeper. You calling them 'leftards' and them calling you something like 'NAZI' simply won't do anything except have each side dig in deeper. It simply won't resolve anything.
You miss the point. There is nothing to resolve. Their mental dysfunction is rooted in their DNA, not the exploitation of their pathological genetic personality type by propagandists and ideological tribalists. See Nassim Taleb’s Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority.
I’ve been around something like 1,000 leftards for over 50 years, the crazies and extremists aren’t hard to separate from the herd. They are the ones that stab the reformers like Helen in the back, or those that stand by silently when the stabbing are taking place.
You could begin to change because you don’t have the genes for full blown leftist extremism, sadism, sociopathy, neuroticism, authoritarianism, criminality, etc. (presumably)
Even if you are correct here, you are still engaging with hyperbolic and extremist ways of expressing your point. So even if you were right, your just being off-putting. How do you expect the herd to, you know, hear?
Also, I don't think that this kind of (probably metaphorical?) genetic essentialism you espouse here is true. I'm somewhat familiar with Taleb, though I haven't read that book, but am not convinced by your thesis. And your aggressiveness aren't swaying me to take you any more seriously.
I've trained myself to ignore the aggressive extreme dogmatists in my comments now. It's not them we have any hope of reaching, but people who might be leaning towards a narrative unrooted in reality or authoritarian ism but are not yet fully embedded and can still have a worthwhile, civil, reasoned conversation.
I was going to suggest that since you are remarkably sane and civil, you should come check out the neighborhood over at Blocked and Reported too. Of course you’re already subscribed! Carry on 😂
ShaunPhilly, you are a classic example of someone that can’t stop projecting your mental dysfunction. You prove my point about the impossibility of leftards actually changing and abandoning their toxic mental patterns. You are a data point.
Both TDS and MDS are rooted in numerous clear examples of the opposition being deranged. And yes, those terms then end up getting used more cavalierly by some supporters than is justified. But...TDS and MDS are legitimate. Multiple "respectable" media sources ran with the Nazi symbolism. What other explanation is there beyond MDS?
When it is, you can give examples of it. The same way you can for white supremacist beliefs. This is why I said 'spurious accusations' used for any criticism & linked one.
The Left have not learned their lesson. Stop going after stupid, unprovable, things and start to stand against the things that matter, the things which are drawing the US towards authoritarian government.
You’re assuming the people saying this don’t know that what they’re saying is bullshit. They do. Just NPCs trying their best to become relevant political actors.
Does anyone remember the "Obama Terrorist fist bump"? Conservatives hardly have any ground to stand on making fun of liberal stupidity on this. Both sides now live in the world of truthiness where something doesn't need to literally be true, it just has to represent a deeper truth (according to them).
I'll be among those at the front of the line who complain about leftists labeling as "fascism" every mainstream conservative idea (hardly a new phenomenon), and I support the idea of aspiring to look at as many things as possible from a charitable starting point. But at the same time, I can hardly fault anyone for seeing Elon's demonstration and interpreting it as Nazi symbolism.
It wasn't just that Elon's arm was in the air (as memes have shown, every politician everywhere has been photographed with his or her arm in the air in a way that, removed of context, could be interpreted negatively). Rather, for me it was the motion with which is arm got into that position - he appeared in video to have thrown it into the air with an aggressive snap, a movement that in itself was more evocative of unfortunate history than the angle in which is ended. Add in some of Elon's previous statements and behaviours, and - if we're going to be as charitable to the hoi polloi as I suggest we should be to Elon - it should not be a stretch to understand *why* people reached a critical conclusion. Some, maybe many, of the people who reached (or quickly expressed) that conclusion are certainly "deranged" in a political sense, but I'm not sure that it follows that anyone whose historically reasonable sensitivity to Naziism was triggered, and speak of that publicly, are deranged.
I'm personally certainly open to the argument that Elon's gesture was, in fact, an unfortunate expression of his exuberance and his somewhat atypical personality. If that is the case, though, one might reasonably expect a thoughtful acknowledgement of that on his part. It wouldn't take much - a brief tweet of clarification perhaps. But as far as I know, that hasn't happened. Perhaps this is because of the effects of polarisation, or perhaps it's because the gesture wasn't entirely benign. Or maybe just because, even though he didn't intend for it to look like a Sieg heil, he's enjoying the outrage.
But don't be surprised when reasonable people are shocked what *appears* to be Nazi symbolism; be more concerned about a time when people are *not* shocked by such a thing.
I say this as someone who is not affiliated with either party, the progressive left has lost their collective minds and the Democratic apparatus is desperate to climb back into the power seat. As for republicans, they have every right to give the dems s#it but they'd fair better in the end if they didn't rub the opposition's nose in it
I’m just not seeing how it’s deranged or hyperbolic to be alarmed when a guy who supports the AfD does a Nazi-looking salute. And I say that as someone who thinks the left is both those things most of the time.
At what point does nationalism/nativism become white supremacy and then Nazism? I find the label "far right" to be facile because in the political spectrum of Germany nationalist values have been so taboo for so long maybe they can't conceive of any right that isn't "far"?
If you really want to assess Musk's nazi-ness what are his attitudes to Jews & Israel?
My understanding is that the AfD never purged their extremist elements like LePen did in France or the Sweden Democrats. Rather, former leaders have left the party citing that it has been taken over by its most extreme elements.
Thank you for taking the time to answer - whatever weight of accusations against these parties the lever mainstream politicians could pull to end their ascendancy has been there all along: concede to the population's demands for less immigration and refocus on working class economic welfare. Too much to ask apparently. But why, why is that so difficult?
Well argued as usual. Just don’t get your hopes up that people will stop being deranged. By all means keep telling them why it’s important they do, just don’t get your hopes up and feel bad when they don’t listen. We need you healthy Helen!!!
Thanks for once again being a voice of reason, Helen. 😮💨
Musk has very recently:
1) Expressed outright support for Tommy Robinson, whose supporters regularly use Nazi salutes.
2) Expressed outright support for the AdF, whose supporters and politicians use Nazi phraseology.
3) Spoken in support of the January 6th insurrectionists, which included avowed neo-Nazis.
I loath the cry of "Nazi" or "fascist!" at everyone to the right of Ken Clarke, truly loath it. The UK Tory party is overwhelmingly made up of good, kind, decent people I happen to disagree with. As were the Republican party of Mitt Romney, GWB, John McCain, Dick Cheney, and even Mike Pence. But what we're seeing in the US now is something else, this is different. Red lines and norms don't seem to matter any more, only winning (or more importantly, your opponents losing).
Do I know Musk deliberately did a Nazi salute? No. Am I certain he didn't? Also, sadly, no. I can't be. I think he probably should be given the benefit of the doubt. Probably. But how can he really be so stupid, really be so spectacularly ignorant, to give his ongoing support to the aforementioned without knowing exactly who he's supporting? Like how?
I fear we're going to be giving the benefit of doubt until all doubt is extinguished, and we know for certain that drip by ignored drip we watched the US's shonky-at-best democracy sink without a trace.
Have a look at the final 'here' link. I've been addressing that. In fact, most of my notes have been about the dangers of Elon Musk for quite some time.
Nope, sorry, I did a 'this' list. Anyway, it's this one.
https://substack.com/@helenpluckrose/note/c-86492418?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1nm3qt
I agree with everything you said except for the part about him deserving the benefit of the doubt. Are we forgetting the times on X when Musk promoted or seconded anti-Semitic sentiments? Or the very fact that he has turned Twitter into a right-wing cesspool by re-platforming people who got tossed off for hate speech?
Helen speaks as if we haven't been spending the last year wondering, with good reason, "Why does Elon Musk increasingly sound like a Nazi apologist?" As if this is all coming out of the blue, rather than one more thing to throw on the pile of mounting evidence.
Does Musk get prejudged for growing up a rich kid in South Africa during Apartheid? I don't know—I seem to remember a time when nobody felt that to be worth mentioning, when Musk was actually quite well liked. So I think it's fair to say he was never assessed such a *prejudgment*. Is it fair as a post-judgement? Sure seems so.
I'm a longtime veteran of policing my own side and wagging my finger at progressives who throw around charges of racism and white supremacy with reckless abandon. But for the life of me I can't understand how anyone could see this as a symptom of any kind of "derangement". Even if I were inclined to defend Musk here, I'd be doing so along with an angry, irritated condemnation of the man for, at best, his utter carelessness and seemingly trying to make a fool out of those who support him and make excuses for him.
Because does it look like he actually gave Nazi salutes? Oh my God yes! In fact it looked even *more* like it when I watched the actual video, so no, you can't blame it on chopped-up memes. Seriously, watch it. It was not some soft, touching of the breast and followed by a natural extension of the arm like he was waving to everyone. It was nothing like the stills that Helen showed here. It was an abrupt, quick slicing motion of the arm from the breast to the air, with no wave of the hand at the end.
If I was actually going to intentionally make a Nazi salute, I honestly can't see how it would look any different.
Maybe it wasn't. But I can tell you which side looks more "deranged" for claiming it to be one way or the other, emphatically so.
It has just boggled my mind over the past few years how people keep immediately leaping to the "NAZI!" accusation.
There are a number of valid concerns about Trump, Elon, et al.; but would it not make more sense to examine those issues instead of just making up nonsense like this?
Indeed it would, Esme. I am sure we cannot be in the minority for thinking this way. I hope to God we are not.
Agreed Helen with a big exception: Elon doesn't excel at anything technical. He is mediocre at best, and likely, just incompetent in technical matters.
He is not the founder of anything he currently owns, he brought every single company.
There are many examples where he tries to dazze the public with hollow techno babble, hust to be put in place for a competent engineer or programmer, sometimes like in the Twitter acquisition, by a software developer of his own company.
Yes, SpaceX and Tesla have some of the best engineering talent in the world, but they are all often tied to the tantrums and useless projects imposed by Elon.
Elon is a manipulative, narcissistic, and a rich business man, nothing else.
I often compare him to Henry Ford in that he harnessed an opportunity presented by a new technology while having personal shortcomings. Modern day "tech" success mostly centres around the personal credibility & accessibility to convince VC money to back a project and if picked correctly assures big $ because the internet is an inherently monopolistic market. The internet economy only needs 1-of-anything per sector.
*dazzle
*by a competent
Helen thank you for your thoughtful, measured, reasoned piece.
You want the mentally dysfunctional, infantile woke-left to stop having tantrums and begin to think rationally??? lolololol
Yes, don't you? If not, why not?
Agreed. Every time I see comments such as Syl's [edit: I meant e.pierce] above, it just points to the tribal nature of much of this. This says to me something like 'my enemies are being dumb and I want them to continue to be dumb,' rather than wanting those with whom you disagree to spend some time learning and maybe, just maybe, we can also do the same and then we can perhaps, together, figure out the truth.
Again, as Orwell pointed out after barely escaping an assassination attempt by communists during the Spanish Civil War, leftists are always stabbing each other in the back. Pathological extremism becomes entrenched via stabbing critics and reformers in the back. Helen is just one example of such stabbing.
I’m just pointing out that without destroying the pathology, the disease will continue to spread.
Liberals have an inherent bias against doing the necessary dirty work.
There is a bunch of other crucial stuff such as dealing with the evolutionary psychology of humans in adapting to punctuated, dynamic equilibrium in social systems. TechnoEconomic disruption drives social disintegration and that results in pathological personalities, social parasites, being able to exploit increasing chaos. See Iain McGilchrist and John Vervaeke.
The historical pattern is that deep paradigm shifts EVENTUALLY lead to such social parasitism being regulated, after structural change to institutions and economic patterns.
Consciousness raising is necessary but not sufficient.
I’m arguing against pathological tribalism. Not sure why you jumped to a stupid conclusion.
Syl? Your comment appears to have landed in the wrong sub thread.
no, just a brain fart. I intended to reply to you and for some reason I said the wrong handle.
I like your comment, ShaunPhilly. Have you heard of horseshoe theory?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
Not sure its a real thing but this case is evidence for it, as it seems that real nazi's have also jumped to the conclusion that Musk’s gesture means he is one of them.
"On the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront, a user posted an image of Musk striking the pose under text reading, "Heil Hitler.""
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/musk-salute-at-trump-rally-celebrated-by-extremists-online/news-story/4c4744a97f7e59bf872d2a79780d5c0b
It doesn’t matter, brainwashed leftards aren’t capable of abandoning their attachment to toxic thinking. The exceptions prove the rule, in the rare case of someone on the left EXITING THE VAMPIRE CASTLE , the Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority (Taleb) insures that they will get stabbed in the back. As many of your articles make clear.
Leftards are a gangrenous social cancer that needs to be hacked off to save the patient.
But you don’t need to do that, others will.
as a person who grew up around, and was very much part of, this 'leftard' world, all I can say is that they have similarly dismissive things about the right, and have for decades. That attitude isn't helping.
Here's an example. I personally believe that the concept of god is so obviously incorrect that I have, in the past, thought of all Christians, Muslims, etc as actually just stupid people, and had very rude things to say about them. Never made good conversations with religious people. How would any Christian ever consider that maybe their belief might be wrong by talking about them that way? They would just dig in deeper. You calling them 'leftards' and them calling you something like 'NAZI' simply won't do anything except have each side dig in deeper. It simply won't resolve anything.
You miss the point. There is nothing to resolve. Their mental dysfunction is rooted in their DNA, not the exploitation of their pathological genetic personality type by propagandists and ideological tribalists. See Nassim Taleb’s Dictatorship Of The Intolerant Minority.
I’ve been around something like 1,000 leftards for over 50 years, the crazies and extremists aren’t hard to separate from the herd. They are the ones that stab the reformers like Helen in the back, or those that stand by silently when the stabbing are taking place.
You could begin to change because you don’t have the genes for full blown leftist extremism, sadism, sociopathy, neuroticism, authoritarianism, criminality, etc. (presumably)
and you missed mine.
Even if you are correct here, you are still engaging with hyperbolic and extremist ways of expressing your point. So even if you were right, your just being off-putting. How do you expect the herd to, you know, hear?
Also, I don't think that this kind of (probably metaphorical?) genetic essentialism you espouse here is true. I'm somewhat familiar with Taleb, though I haven't read that book, but am not convinced by your thesis. And your aggressiveness aren't swaying me to take you any more seriously.
I've trained myself to ignore the aggressive extreme dogmatists in my comments now. It's not them we have any hope of reaching, but people who might be leaning towards a narrative unrooted in reality or authoritarian ism but are not yet fully embedded and can still have a worthwhile, civil, reasoned conversation.
I was going to suggest that since you are remarkably sane and civil, you should come check out the neighborhood over at Blocked and Reported too. Of course you’re already subscribed! Carry on 😂
ShaunPhilly, you are a classic example of someone that can’t stop projecting your mental dysfunction. You prove my point about the impossibility of leftards actually changing and abandoning their toxic mental patterns. You are a data point.
I didn’t miss your point, I’m just saying that it is irrelevant, weak and won’t actually change anything. Your scientific illiteracy is noted.
Both TDS and MDS are rooted in numerous clear examples of the opposition being deranged. And yes, those terms then end up getting used more cavalierly by some supporters than is justified. But...TDS and MDS are legitimate. Multiple "respectable" media sources ran with the Nazi symbolism. What other explanation is there beyond MDS?
When it is, you can give examples of it. The same way you can for white supremacist beliefs. This is why I said 'spurious accusations' used for any criticism & linked one.
The Left have not learned their lesson. Stop going after stupid, unprovable, things and start to stand against the things that matter, the things which are drawing the US towards authoritarian government.
Eminently sensible from one of the brightest internet voices.
You’re assuming the people saying this don’t know that what they’re saying is bullshit. They do. Just NPCs trying their best to become relevant political actors.
Does anyone remember the "Obama Terrorist fist bump"? Conservatives hardly have any ground to stand on making fun of liberal stupidity on this. Both sides now live in the world of truthiness where something doesn't need to literally be true, it just has to represent a deeper truth (according to them).
I'll be among those at the front of the line who complain about leftists labeling as "fascism" every mainstream conservative idea (hardly a new phenomenon), and I support the idea of aspiring to look at as many things as possible from a charitable starting point. But at the same time, I can hardly fault anyone for seeing Elon's demonstration and interpreting it as Nazi symbolism.
It wasn't just that Elon's arm was in the air (as memes have shown, every politician everywhere has been photographed with his or her arm in the air in a way that, removed of context, could be interpreted negatively). Rather, for me it was the motion with which is arm got into that position - he appeared in video to have thrown it into the air with an aggressive snap, a movement that in itself was more evocative of unfortunate history than the angle in which is ended. Add in some of Elon's previous statements and behaviours, and - if we're going to be as charitable to the hoi polloi as I suggest we should be to Elon - it should not be a stretch to understand *why* people reached a critical conclusion. Some, maybe many, of the people who reached (or quickly expressed) that conclusion are certainly "deranged" in a political sense, but I'm not sure that it follows that anyone whose historically reasonable sensitivity to Naziism was triggered, and speak of that publicly, are deranged.
I'm personally certainly open to the argument that Elon's gesture was, in fact, an unfortunate expression of his exuberance and his somewhat atypical personality. If that is the case, though, one might reasonably expect a thoughtful acknowledgement of that on his part. It wouldn't take much - a brief tweet of clarification perhaps. But as far as I know, that hasn't happened. Perhaps this is because of the effects of polarisation, or perhaps it's because the gesture wasn't entirely benign. Or maybe just because, even though he didn't intend for it to look like a Sieg heil, he's enjoying the outrage.
But don't be surprised when reasonable people are shocked what *appears* to be Nazi symbolism; be more concerned about a time when people are *not* shocked by such a thing.
I say this as someone who is not affiliated with either party, the progressive left has lost their collective minds and the Democratic apparatus is desperate to climb back into the power seat. As for republicans, they have every right to give the dems s#it but they'd fair better in the end if they didn't rub the opposition's nose in it
I would have agreed with you a few weeks ago Helen. But since he started heavily backing the AfD in Germany, I don’t know what to think.
That's a good solid thing to criticise him on that won't undermine credibility. This is what I am asking people to do. e.g.,
https://substack.com/@helenpluckrose/note/c-86492418?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=1nm3qt
I’m just not seeing how it’s deranged or hyperbolic to be alarmed when a guy who supports the AfD does a Nazi-looking salute. And I say that as someone who thinks the left is both those things most of the time.
At what point does nationalism/nativism become white supremacy and then Nazism? I find the label "far right" to be facile because in the political spectrum of Germany nationalist values have been so taboo for so long maybe they can't conceive of any right that isn't "far"?
If you really want to assess Musk's nazi-ness what are his attitudes to Jews & Israel?
My understanding is that the AfD never purged their extremist elements like LePen did in France or the Sweden Democrats. Rather, former leaders have left the party citing that it has been taken over by its most extreme elements.
Thank you for taking the time to answer - whatever weight of accusations against these parties the lever mainstream politicians could pull to end their ascendancy has been there all along: concede to the population's demands for less immigration and refocus on working class economic welfare. Too much to ask apparently. But why, why is that so difficult?
what about just plain old jew-haters? we don’t have to guess what they mean.
oh? they’re brown jew-haters, so they’re ok. we only hate white jew-haters.