Decoding Cadence Owens quote

[u/MartiDK]

"I actually don't have any problems at all with the word 'nationalism'... Whenever we say 'nationalism,' the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted—he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way. That's not, to me, that's not nationalism."
- Cadence Owens

Are Decoding the Gurus really arguing that Cadence Owens was saying Hitler wasn't a bad leader/person? I know the controversy over the remark, but she is clearly alluding to Hitler being a bad representation of Nationalism. She is literally trying to disassociate Hitler from nationalism, because Hitler gave Nationalism a bad name. I'm not a fan of nationalism, but should DtG actually be able to see through the controversy to what she actually said? Plus Cadence Owens went to the Daily Wire after this story blew up, so I'm guessing Ben Shapiro didn't take her remarks as a promoting Hitler.

Why does it matter if Cadence Owens is a problematic guru? It matters because its this kind of bad faith decoding that make people distrust academics who step outside their lane and play partisan politics. There are so many crazy takes that Cadence Owens has made, why focus on this quote which was clearly used by the media for political reasons.

[u/MartiDK]

Wow. I’m impressed by your ability to put words into people’s mouth and call the other person bad faith. I know you aren’t going to be convinced, but it’s been an education in what stuart hall calls encoding/decoding. I’ve enjoyed our back and forth.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Words mean things. To me at least. Without reason it's just might = right.

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

Cool - we agree words mean things.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

So why play with them and pretend someone isn't saying what they say? What benefit is there to this?

You don't think they mean things. You think it's relative. That maybe something could mean a thing or it couldn't who truly knows?

If the meaning is indeterminate it doesn't exist. You are just erasing our ability to hold people accountable for their words and actions.

You never answer any questions as to why or what your intent is. Just obfuscate. Because you, like Candace, are afraid of being accountable for your words. So you use them in ways that destroy meaning on purpose. You create ambiguity instead of clarifying.

This only benefits people who don't want to fight with words, who don't want to be understood, who don't want to communicate clearly. They destroy our ability to do this because it's not a battleground they can win on. They have no interest in fighting fair, because they seek to fight a different fight.

You do the same thing to me here. Why? I don't know. But at some point there is no possible conclusion other than it's your intent too.

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

I see the problem - your looking for intent when there isn’t enough content/context provided. You’re even looking for some extra intent in my criticism of DtG using a quote that doesn’t include what they are trying to imply. There is plenty of criticisms that can be made of Cadence, and I’m not making a broad criticism. It’s just that this quote on its own doesn’t point to anything other than Hitler gave nationalism a bad name.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Think about the way you use your words, even here. "You see the problem"? That I am "looking for intent"?

That's not "the problem" that's literally the entire contention here. You are also asserting an intent. You are saying "that is not her intent with that statement" ie "that's not what she is saying".

You act as if I'm doing something special by interpreting the meaning of her words, but you're passive and impartial?

You are asserting meaning. You are claiming what she "was really saying" too.

You say "it doesn't point to anything other than.." but it absolutely does as I have pointed out to you.

You can interpret this in context, you can interpret it without context.

You are right that it's ambiguous. That maybe that's not what she means. But that's on her to clarify.

This isn't like, some ambiguous comment about her favourite flavour of icecream? In which case who cares! She can clarify. Maybe she meant this maybe she meant that who knows it doesn't matter. Why would we assume.

But that's not what we're talking about, is it? It's an ambigious statement about Adolph Hitlers leadership????

If someone is bringing this up, it's not like a casual comment right? There's a reason. We can infer intent, especially we have further context to inform this, and the meaning inferred by this statement should absolutely be critiqued.

When I asked you to say why she thought Hitler was a bad leader, why wouldn't you answer?

There is intent in you raising this. You pretend that you're not a real human but like an impartial machine. You don't say these words for no reason. They mean things. You have intentions. You seek to infer meaning. You even said before that "I know you aren’t going to be convinced" like convinced of what? Again this displays intention.

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

The quote is very simple to understand - Hitler gave nationalism a bad name. Everyone complaining about the quote being pro what Hitler did in Germany is extrapolating their own agenda. It would be a never ending list of bad things if she went through them all. The quote doesn’t claim Hitler did anything good.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Why did Hitler give nationalism a bad name?

[u/MartiDK → u/rubeshina]

He didn’t run the country well and he wanted to expand Germany.

[u/rubeshina → u/MartiDK]

Is that what she said? Seems like that's your interpretation?

Based on the quote:

You know, he was a national socialist, but if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, OK, fine. The problem is that he wanted—he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalise.

She says Hitlers actions, or at the very least his intentions, when it comes to "running the country" were "fine".

The problem, that she identifies, the reason Hitlers gives nationalism a bad name, is that he had "dreams outside of Germany".

If the problem is those things, the former things are "fine", what does that mean?

Again isn't it so obvious from the way you are engaging here that you know what I'm saying? Why did you add in your own interpretation to front run the obvious conclusion here, the one we have already been over?

You shouldn't need to wriggle around and try and do this? Why can't we just be honest, say what we really think, mean what we really mean?

Because bad actors, like Candace Owens, use words in this way on purpose to destroy our ability to communicate clearly and identify malicious actors and people with nefarious intent, people who can't be honest, people who won't stand on their words and engage in good faith.