P01135809 Echoes Hitler: Migrants "Poisoning the Blood of Our Country"

[Dill]

(10-05-2023, 09:23 PM)hollodero Wrote: It was a widely overused accusation. But that weird people use it to bully cops etc. does not mean that the accusation now lost all its meaning in any case. There are still cases of actual Nazi language around, after all.
Yes, but this is not about Trump or anyone being opposed to immigration. It's about him using Nazi phrases while doing so. Quite literal Nazi phrases. Btw. it might be another coincidence (it would still be horrible language, imho), or he gets ideas from the wrong kind of people.
Sure. A Nazi regime in the strictest sense will never materialize as such again, so every comparison will fail at some point; but certain elements can. Tropes like the language used. Pointing to rhetorical duplicates does not necessarily mean the ones using the Nazi language are themselves to be seen as actual Nazis now. But these tropes can still be seen as typical for rising anti-democratic, populist authoritarian forces, or fascists if you will. Many of whom used and use certain pages from the Nazi playbook, especially language-wise.
I don't know if it makes any sense to make Nazi-China comparisons, that's a completely different culture with a completely different history and I can not quite comment on their rhetoric. But they certainly fall under the authoritarian category and that is debated plenty. Sweet Baerbock called Xi a dictator recently and imho that shoe fits well enough.

Lot of good points here. I just want to expand on a couple.

1. Yes, overused. But there are at least two ways of applying the Nazi label. 1) to whom-/whatever you don't like (the "soup Nazi" on Seinfeld). or 2) to statements, policies and actions which actually do parallel Nazi statements, policies and actions because they proceed from parallel grounds. What was bad about the "poisoning the blood" phrase when Nazis used it was they were creating an organic metaphor of the state as racial body being infected by a grouping of its own citizens to dehumanize them and make "cleansing" more acceptable. Jews were also described as scum, bacilli, fungus and cockroaches and the like. This sort of language is not limited to Nazis though. E.g., Hutu spoke of Tutsi that way in Rwanda. Some of your neighbors, e.g. Jobbik, speak that way of Roma now. The issue is less the Nazi connection but THAT the "blood poisoning" metaphor was used at all. And as you note in your next post, by someone with history of making similar sentiments and a desire to inflect actual policy with them.

2. Second bolded, yes, though I prefer the terms "authoritarian" and "autocratic," and have argued against using "fascism" as a general term for such. As I've mentioned before, there is now considerable scholarship on authoritarianism--personalities, governments, policies, etc. At a time when liberal democracies appear to be in retreat and US democracy is under threat, it should seem valuable (at least to those wishing to preserve democracy) to know what authoritarianism looks like so one can red flag it when it appears. That may not be possible where people cannot distinguish between accusation and social-scientific analysis--or don't want to. Where people can so distinguish, then Dino's article is not just people saying another bad thing about Trump, but an insight into how he frames social/political problems. But we all went over this ground on the Afghanistan thread two years ago. The pro- and anti-social science camps have not changed. 

3. Regarding the Nazi-China comparison, again, that's just the kind of imprecision that results when people cannot distinguish between authoritarianism in general and distinct subsets like Nazism. It's like calling anyone who follows any professional sport a basketball fan. 

There is a possibly useful North Korean comparison to Nazism here, though, because the current North Korean Regime does represent itself in its propaganda as a "clean race" fighting off foreign pollution and the like. It also operates on a Fuehrerprinzip and China does not. The turn away from internationalism to ethnic purity is potentially there for China, but so far as I know it has not gone down that road yet. NK also seems to aestheticize politics, which was a trait of European fascisms. I suppose all political parties do to some degree, but NK's total control over media presentation may be the difference in their case.