When you are living history, you don’t know that ww2 is around the corner. I think the observations of the similarities between the brown shirts and violent protesters is correct. I don’t know if a better historical parallel. Look what happened to Aaron Danielson.
Brown shirts engaged in antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil in the same way these Antifa types do.
They terrorized businesses the same way these BLM types have been doing.
I do not understand the perspective of people who don’t have a regexp that fires on this- I want to be wrong, but I can’t stop seeing problems.
I don't understand how these parallels can be so easily dismissed. Is it because you don’t expect it to end in a Holocaust?
At least from my perspective this has been an ongoing problem for many years now and I would refer you to Godwin's law.
There is this weird sort of mystique about Hitler and the Nazi Party that keep people entranced that it was "pure evil" rather than a decade-plus political process taking place in a very unique time of history with many other actors in play. You can't use any sort of "slippery slope" argument because of course those don't exist. The fact that you can trace elements of both WW-I and WW-II to at least the mid-1800s in terms of holistic world upheaval doesn't even get mentioned. There doesn't seem to be many students of history these days.
Instead what we get is almost fantasy horror and when you try to make serious political arguments they are just dismissed. I mean, it can't happen here because unicorns don't exist either. I also find it troubling that many people have no appreciation for Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao in light of the millions lives that were destroyed after WW-II. Some very horrific acts occurred in the 20th century and debating rather than dismissing these issues seems like not only a good idea, but probably essential if peace and humanity are truly desired.
> Do you reject the idea that there no parallels to the black bloc and the brown shirts behavior?
Yes. It's very clear that organised violence in the US is overwhelmingly from the far right. Anyone denying this either isn't paying attention or is being dishonest.
"In analyzing fatalities from terrorist attacks, religious terrorism has killed the largest number of individuals—3,086 people—primarily due to the attacks on September 11, 2001, which caused 2,977 deaths.10 The magnitude of this death toll fundamentally shaped U.S. counterterrorism policy over the past two decades. In comparison, right-wing terrorist attacks caused 335 deaths, left-wing attacks caused 22 deaths, and ethnonationalist terrorists caused 5 deaths."[1]
According to a 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office [1] "of the 85 violent extremist incidents that resulted in death since September 12, 2001, right-wing violent extremist groups were responsible for 62 (73 percent) while radical Islamist violent extremists were responsible for 23 (27 percent). The total number of fatalities is about the same for far right-wing violent extremists and radical Islamist violent extremists over the approximately 15-year period (106 and 119, respectively). However, 41 percent of the deaths attributable to radical Islamist violent extremists occurred in a single event—an attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida in 2016."
In 2018, most ideologically motivated murders in the United States of America were linked to right-wing extremism [2].
As of 2020, right-wing terrorism accounted for the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the US[3] and has killed more people in the continental United States since the September 11 attacks than Islamic terrorism [4].
You said it yourself. The political content of protests matters. Why not parallel with the Hong Kong protestors?
The brownshirts were paramilitaries operating in the open, in defense of the existing power structure. More in parallel to the KKK. After the ascent of Hitler, the police were explicitly forbidden from interfering with the assaults and murders.
I wrote this in response to your previous post, which was flagged:
I don't think this rioting, violence, and general unrest should be compared to the Brown Shirts. Groups engaging in "antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil" are not uncommon in history. An analogy to the Nazis in the 30s seems out of place because, as you say, of everything that the Nazis did after the 30s.
If you want to talk to about ideologues, people for whom the ends justify the means, people who are willing to engage in violence and destruction for ideological goals, then you can make a comparison here. You can put the Brown Shirts in this category, you can put current rioters in this category, you can put a large number of historical groups in this category, and I think this categorization is fair. (Note that sometimes this violence may even be justified).
But why pick the Nazis in particular for your comparison? Comparing this group or that group to the Nazis is almost always rhetorical trick precisely because of the Holocaust. Why not pick some other group in history that used violence to pursue its ideological goals but didn't boil over into a genocide? The answer is that, if you picked another group, the rhetorical power of the comparison would be lost. But it would be a more honest comparison.
> you would think they would cynically propose a soft spoken figurehead who says inspirational things
Oh, but they did, just not from their own ranks.
Think about that. Who, among the entire political spectrum in the US, promises to the America's middle class and end to hostilities, a sense of harmony, and a partial absolution of the white guilt?
Hint: it's not one person but rather a team of two.
> Since BLM is an org with such “expertise” in what white people think, you would think they would cynically propose a soft spoken figurehead who says inspirational things. Instead, we get adversarial confrontation on the “fact” that all white people are racist and only white and white adjacent people can be racist. This is idiotic marketing strategy. You’d think they would avoid antagonizing their customer if they were serious about positive change.
Wow. You really are a racist. Or at least an authoritarian on some level.
You want people of color to convince you - a task of which is not theirs to fulfill - that they should have basic social rights in the US. You then refuse to be convinced because they aren't 'being nice' about it?
How on earth is fighting for social and civil rights a task of political suppression? BLM represents a bloc that has been disincentivised from voting from the founding of America until 2020.
Something screams authoritarian, and it certainly isn't protesting.
MLK is being used disingenuously by the right[1]. He was treated very similar to BLM during his activism and his death was openly celebrated by some political figures on the right. BLM has very consciously decided to foster a leaderless movement to prevent the vilification tactics used by right wing media to discredit movements (see AOC, Hillary, Kaepernick, etc..)[2]
The downvotes should be sufficient, but I think you are misinformed if you think the modern right’s perspective is the same as the 60’s right.
I don’t know anything about the perceived violence of MLK- but three quotes are in my brain on him:
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”
His legacy is his ideas- not the lens through which they were perceived. He had success because his ideas were compassionate and strong. A YouTube video that tries to slap a narrative on how he was perceived then to justify your current bigotry is irrelevant compared to the quality of his ideas.
I think I approach agreeing with you that it’s bad to make these analogies- but I don’t know of alternatives that clearly communicate the perceived potential for conflict.
Thanks for helping me understand your perspective.
When you are living history, you don’t know that ww2 is around the corner. I think the observations of the similarities between the brown shirts and violent protesters is correct. I don’t know if a better historical parallel. Look what happened to Aaron Danielson.
Brown shirts engaged in antagonism and murder towards people they perceived as evil in the same way these Antifa types do.
They terrorized businesses the same way these BLM types have been doing.
I do not understand the perspective of people who don’t have a regexp that fires on this- I want to be wrong, but I can’t stop seeing problems.
I don't understand how these parallels can be so easily dismissed. Is it because you don’t expect it to end in a Holocaust?