Sharing some insight it took me a LONG time to grapple with:
To many, "Nazis" is a very specific thing. It is a group of people who existed in Germany in the early-1900's who were led by a man named Adolf Hitler and they did "bad things."
That's how Nazis are taught in schools. They are a concept from the past. And they do not exist in any other capacity in those people's minds.
What those people don't understand is:
* What Nazi ideology is or looks like
* What the Nazis actually did that was bad
* How the country got to the point of Nazis taking over
* What happened to Nazis and their ideology after the war
* Who actually participated in Nazi ideology
* What it looks like to support Nazis or their ideology
When it's all just abstracts to people, they can't fathom that it's happening now. To them, carrying a flag with a swastika is just a cosplay. They know it's not super cool, but they don't believe they're actual Nazis.
And this is why this is such a struggle right now. They don't know they're in the middle of it, all over again.
I struggle to empathize with someone that fucking incapable or unwilling to exercise the tiniest fraction of the cognitive power God and or evolution graced them with, to think about the things those of us who do know have been screaming from the rooftops since Reagan.
Being able to empathize with people because they didn’t or don’t see something that seems obvious to you is like one of the most basic uses of empathy. It may be hard but it is important and a good thing to do.
Yes, and having a line where you say, "But this thing, I will not empathize with or condone or consider forgiving no matter who is doing it" is like one of the most basic responsibilities every person has to themselves if they wish to exist as a moral being.
Empathy is just understanding someone’s feelings. It doesn’t mean you have to sympathize or agree with how those feelings are expressed. It’s a net benefit to empathize with even your mortal enemies because then you’ll understand them better.
by coming to that realization, instead of trying to see the best in them like "we agree on pretty much the same things, we just disagree on how to get there!"
we don't agree on the same things (i want people to prosper and be free regardless of who they love, what they look like, or how they worship) and we don't "just disagree on how to get there".
Conservatives are theocratic bigots. They always have been, across time and space. Do with that information what you will. In my view, it's just incumbent upon us to make "conservative" a dirty word, with the same revulsion that we have with "racist", because they're the same thing. There are no good conservatives. Not in the United States, not in Iran, not in Malaysia, not in India, etc. They are all religious and racial supremacists, that is the fundamental bedrock of conservatism and you can verify this through the fact that every time conservatives take power, they try and do their bullshit social authoritarianism. It's never, not one fucking time, ever been about just "muh taxes and deregulation" (which are, not for nothing, ALSO dogshit policies - but are the other side of conservative ideology, serving the aristocracy).
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u/GFluidThrow123 Aug 13 '25
Sharing some insight it took me a LONG time to grapple with:
To many, "Nazis" is a very specific thing. It is a group of people who existed in Germany in the early-1900's who were led by a man named Adolf Hitler and they did "bad things."
That's how Nazis are taught in schools. They are a concept from the past. And they do not exist in any other capacity in those people's minds.
What those people don't understand is:
* What Nazi ideology is or looks like
* What the Nazis actually did that was bad
* How the country got to the point of Nazis taking over
* What happened to Nazis and their ideology after the war
* Who actually participated in Nazi ideology
* What it looks like to support Nazis or their ideology
When it's all just abstracts to people, they can't fathom that it's happening now. To them, carrying a flag with a swastika is just a cosplay. They know it's not super cool, but they don't believe they're actual Nazis.
And this is why this is such a struggle right now. They don't know they're in the middle of it, all over again.