(10-12-2023, 06:29 PM)Mike M (the other one) Wrote: Obviously when applying a Nazi analogy are you are not Applauding it, it's used as a derogatory manner towards someone to paint them to be the same as Hitler.
Everyone is a mix and match of something, the styles have been around for ages, but just because 1 or 2 things is similar doesn't mean their entire perspective is.
Well no, not "obviously."
Though first I should mention that I have never used the term in this forum to describe any US citizens, and certainly not, as SSF maintains, to "stifle and blunt dissent."
But I have in a number of posts maintained that knowledge of scholarship about authoritarianism, authoritarian politicians and politics, is something that should be generally disseminated. E.g., I think it should be incorporated into junior-senior level high school courses and some required college courses. That's not about "applauding" Nazi analogies, but teaching people how to recognize authoritarian politics/politicians when they arise. In such courses, Hitler would certainly be painted as Hitler, but Nazism would hardly be the only form of authoritarianism studied. Students would learn what authoritarian politics/politicians have in common; then that knowledge could be applicable in the future, in the event US politics took an authoritarian turn.
If teachers in such courses described Victor Orban or Vladimir Putin or Saddam Hussein as authoritarian, they wouldn't just be "painting" them as such. And because the knowledge, like knowledge of how government works, would be for future application, it wouldn't be directed towards someone specific in a "derogatory manner" to "paint them as Hitler." That would be background knowledge for the student-as-voter to use in future elections, judging candidates and policies as yet unknown.
Also, we are not speaking of "1 or 2" things but a range of behaviors, usually interconnected: hostility to free press, dismissing counselors who speak truth in favor of counselors who tell the leader what he wants to hear, publicly demeaning subordinates, belligerent foreign policy, a penchant for violent or draconian solutions to domestic problems, corrosion or rejection of democracy and rule of law (not the same as law and order), cult of personality, and misogyny. Those are general characteristics; they don't become "fascism" without more specific behaviors, like the militarization of government, the
Fuehrerprinzip, and a totalitarian ideology which glorifies death in service of the leader and state and promises to regenerate a diseased society. And they don't become Nazism or Nazi-like until they start advocating racial/ethnic foundation to statehood and citizenship. E.g., Orban in Hungary checks a lot of these boxes, including the last one, but I wouldn't call him a Nazi given the absence of features like a full on
Fuehrerprinzip and his concern for spreading his doctrine of "illiberal democracy" to other nations and ethnic groups, like the US. If someone took issue with that, and did analogize him to Nazis, I would call that an attempt at description/classification, not "applauding" the analogy. Authoritarianism takes different forms in different societies under different conditions, with no one leader usually exhibiting all these traits. Mussolini's misogyny was quite different from Hitlers. Kim checks many more of these boxes than Xi does. But the point is to have the boxes and learn how to check them. That includes not calling every form of government regulation "authoritarian" just because people don't like it.
Students equipped with some such knowledge at a basic level would also be better able to assess US foreign policy, to recognize threats and better tell whom should be our friends and whom our enemies, as well to judge which politicians might be or become threats to democracy.
![[Image: 4CV0TeR.png]](https://i.imgur.com/4CV0TeR.png)
