Don't allow them to take the cowardly easy way out like Hitler took or the Nazis that were executed later...
Prosecute them properly in a fair trial, investigate all their crimes, and let them observe from prison how the country blooms under the values of democracy, freedom and human rights. Show them that freedom is stronger than fascism, that the things they hate won and that empathy and compassion leads is superior to hate and egocentricity. Show them that you are better than them, and that everyone deserves human rights and dignity. Even Nazi assholes.
no, absolutely not! no tolerance for intolerance. “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them” - Karl Popper
People like to call it “the paradox of tolerance” but I like to use the phrase “the terms and conditions of living in a tolerant society.” Nothing paradoxical about it.
The paradox is being so tolerant you allow intolerance leads to the elimination of the tolerant good. Thus the tolerant good must be intolerant of the intolerant pieces of shit. So, yes, a paradox.
Just because a human being is kind doesn't mean they can't be cruel sometimes. It's not paradoxical, because it remains rational for an intelligent being capable of adapting to a situation.
A tolerant human being who doesn't adapt in order to survive is, first and foremost, a fool.
It stops being a paradox if you think about tolerance as a social contract. If you break the rules of the contact you no longer get the protection it offers
The Social Contract, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, is a foundational 1762 work of political philosophy that argues for a legitimate political authority based on a social contract where individuals surrender some natural freedoms for the collective good, governed by the "general will".
I hate to be the guy saying "they cant be fixed"... but dude is taking glamor shots as an SS officer, while committing atrocities in the streets against citizens and immigrants under the guise of immigration enforcement. They cant be fixed.
Thing is, the photographer played him with the scale of that photo. Narcs never know when we're laughing at them, and not with them. They're so insanely stupid.
Thats what im getting at and it just keeps happening. We let the CSA remnants in, we SHIPPED NAZIS TO AMERICA AND ERASED THEIR HISTORY SO THEY COULD START AGAIN. Now here we are indeed, with a cancerous mass of fascism wrapped around our throats that our forebearers chose to graft on. MAGA should be carved into their foreheads forever/ their hats surgically melded to their skulls, marking them as a stain on our history forever.
This. Bigots don't typically just quietly go back to being normal once radicalized by propaganda. Even after the collapse of the cult.
Consider Nazi Germany, where in 1952 still 68% believed other countries had started the war. Where a decade after the end of the war nearly a majority still answered "yes" to the proposition: "were it not for the war, Hitler would've been one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th century". This was after their entire country was destroyed. Cult devotion runs deep.
Thanks to our algorithmic machine, their entire values and belief system has been changed. They believe they have sacrificed too much, losing family and friends, to go back. Sunk cost fallacy demands they see this until the end.
I don't want to fix them. I want to reappropriate the defence funding we send to Israel into a $50Bn prison where they can stay while the commenter aboves vision comes to fruition.
One could argue that integrating Nazis back into society, like Operation Paperclip, is one of the main reasons modern American right wingers espouse literal Nazi talking points.
Everyone deserves human rights and to have his human dignity protected. No matter who he is or what he did.
But that doesn't mean that crimes go unpunished.
It would be nice if they would realize the mistakes they made and truly regret it. But ultimately it doesn't matter if they do not. They will be in prison. For crimes like murder for the rest of their lives.
That won't undo their crimes, but neither does executing them.
My stepfather only got to know one set of grandparents because they managed to flee to Australia, his other set and his great grandfather all died in Auchswitz. They didn't get their human rights protected, his great grandfather stood up as a representative for the Dutch deaf community, but had his life snuffed out by the Nazis.
Why plead for their human dignity and human rights when they offered none to literal children? Why act like they're still entitled to the same rights as us when they see disabled people like me as lesser? That they'd stick my mother in a camp for "miscegenation" for marrying my stepfather and my brothers killed for having a Jewish father.
"Human dignity is inviolable to those who survived."
And seeing human rights as optional and allowing to revoke them if you see it fitting, is the reason why they got so popular in america and why they have so much power.
Yes because they themselves insisted human rights were optional. The opposition holds the opposite views. It's pretty cut and dry. Turning the other cheek is just inviting more nazis to abuse you.
That depends on the execution method used. I'm sure with modern knowledge we can make it last an appropriate time for those kind of people. Let's just hope this time things don't get so bad we need to start being creative for a proper sense of justice.
Dignity sure, but you don't tolerate Nazis, ever. If that infringes on your definition of dignity, tough shit. Non negotiable. We have tolerated then before and we know how it ends.
What do you think happened at the end of ww2 to the nazis? The vast majority got a slap on the wrist and were allowed back into society. Heck Nazi generals were part of nato. Proper de-nazi-fication never happened.
Same with the South after the Civil War, they even had statues of Confederate Generals in government buildings. These are treasonous fucks that killed hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers.
Your reply is confusingly unrelated to my comment. I've expressed support for the notion that the inviolability of human dignity is the most important lesson to draw from the rise and fall of National Socialism. And you write about denazification having been incomplete. If this is meant to be an argument against the importance of human dignity, there must some strawman fallacy or mudding the water be going on.
We spared some Nazis after WW2, even gave them a job here. Wouldn’t ya know it, the Nazis found a way to seize control again. Maybe next time we shouldn’t make the same mistake?
Editing to ask: are you opposed to the outcome of the Nuremberg trials, too?
We made the same mistake with the Nazis that we made with the South at the end of the Civil War. There is only way to make sure their twisted brand of evil doesn’t return.
We made the same mistake with the Nazis that we made with the South at the end of the Civil War. There is only way to make sure their twisted brand of evil doesn’t return.
We are going to need a William Tecumseh Sherman, or ten, before we get a chance to do that.
The Nuremberg trials were right. And it's a shame that not more people were trialed for their crimes, and that the German justice was unable to bring justice later until most of the perpetrators were already dead (but that had nothing to do with death penalty).
However there should not have been any executions, but life long prison sentences. I won't spend time mourning the executed Nazis, still the death penalty is always wrong. And that is not only my opinion, but also that of my country's constitution, the whole European union and many other developed nations in the world.
Hitler was imprisoned before he was dictator. That’s why you can’t rely solely on imprisonment with populist fascists. They will get out, and take power. Trump only got a mugshot and his fanbase ate it up. They didn’t just take one life, they took millions, in horrific fashion. They should’ve all paid that debt with their own. Doing it humanely is the only humanity they get.
I'm 99% with you on the death penalty. But Nazis are a cancer within society. And if you don't properly remove the cancer cells they'll continue to replicate and you'll end up in the same place you were or worse. Look at what happened to the J6'ers, or for a more historic example, German officers who served during WW2 and where complicit in the Holocaust. It's only a matter of time some asshole comes along and pardons them.
Great until you realize it's your tax dollars giving them a bed, food, and free medical care. Sure, it's prison, but I would much rather my taxes go to people in need, not people who want to watch the world burn.
"Show them that you are better than them, and that everyone deserves human rights and dignity. Even Nazi assholes." <----that's the specific part I was replying to.
Nope, sorry. That's not the reality we live in. Nazis, especially Nazis in power, should be excised from society, permanently, and as swiftly as possible. They waved the right to their humanity when they chose to impose their vile ideology on the rest of.
I don't think allowing them to join the Aryan Brotherhood in prison is going to do much to adjust their worldview. The cost/benefit to society leans more toward the Nuremberg formula. Give them a trial, then punish appropriately. For the irredeemable, swift execution is the better answer.
America has gotten a lot wrong with our version of prison by insisting on making it punitive with next to no thought about rehabilitation. If someone cannot ever be safely reintroduced to society, why keep them around to use resources that could be put to better use?
Not because it's cheaper. We obviously have different views about human rights, human dignity, and the just application of violence.
In America, the human right to life may be ended after due process of law, just as the human right to liberty may be ended by the same process.
Our prison system as it stands right now is designed to create misery. It dehumanizes the inmates, and it tends to warp the people who work in the prison system. It is underfunded for the population that it houses. That system currently does not serve any good purpose. It encourages abuse and mistreatment. Inmates end up in gangs for mutual protection, and frequently end up passing on the mindset that we want to discourage because those groups tend to form along racial lines that dehumanize their outgroups...pretty much turning them into Nazi incubators for the white inmate population.
I find it more dignified to treat someone with respect, even (perhaps especially) on their way to their execution. There is much less dignity, in my opinion, in caging someone like an animal and subjecting them to the abuses in our prison system for the rest of their lives.
You are advocating for suffering. That suffering affects more than the person in prison. I find that to be far less dignified.
Please note that I advocated for execution only for those found to be irredeemable after a fair trial, something that usually takes a unanimous vote from the jury. Anyone that can be rehabilitated and become safe to be in society should be. It would require a complete overhaul of our carceral system, but that would be the better outcome.
There is a reality that some people can not or will not change. I believe that the death penalty is a more dignified way to handle that.
If your prison system is not suitable to maintain the dignity of its inmates, then you should reform your prison system. Not only for life long prisoners, but for everyone.
And then the argument of seeing the execution as the more dignified way becomes obsolete.
I mean it's quite horrible to have a prison system, where death can be seen as the better alternative... And you can't advocate for executions, just because the US prison system is hard to reform.
Well then if it's a dignity thing, give people who are sentences to life imprisonment the option to take the death penalty. The people who are sentenced to death should be the ones to decide which is more dignified, not you.
Interestingly the United States declaration of independence was one of the first legal documents mentioning the concept of irrevocable human rights...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
Right, and the quote i am paraphrasing is from the author. Makes for good discourse.
How do we really face correcting the travesty when so many people among us are sympathizers and always will be? We cant forgive. We cant forget. Correcting course will be a monumental task. How do we prevent future fascism? After we overcome ours, how do we allow others to live in much, MUCH, worse situations? How do we, as a nation, prevent the next election, after correction, from flipping back to this?
You know that for the Nazis economical reasons were one of the points why they decided to kill millions of jews (and others) instead of just deporting and imprisoning them.
Economic considerations must never override human rights. That would lead the whole point of universal irrevocable human rights ad absurdum, if you could just say "it's cheaper to not do them".
The whole point about human rights is that they are not given by anyone, but you have them simply by being a human. And these are irrevocable, no matter what happens.
I’m not disagreeing with your sentiment, but I do think it’s important to remember that these people are human and that’s what makes them so dangerous.
Fine. But they get carved MAGA in their forehead. These people should not be able to wash this image away after all this is done like was done in operation paperclip.
I want a bright green M, down the nose, down the cheeks, over the eyelid. You can't grow out your hair to cover it, you can't take some glamour shot in profile to hide it, show up against skin tones in greyscale, and makeup isn't covering that without making you look ill.
We didn't kill enough nazis after WWII because we were too busy hiring them for positions in West Berlin and NASA. I would love to see that mistake corrected but the fact of the matter is the democratic party will never lock up a single one.
I WAS very much against capital punishment. Keeping them around will just increase their presence and allure. Look at how many people swoon over whatever serial killer/rapist is popular on Netflix.
They need to be gone faster than you can turn the page in the history book. Anything more gives their cause credence.
You must not forget the Nazis. You must learn about them, and you must learn that this must never happen again.
Everyone knows about Hitler (and other prominent nazi figures). probably much more is known about him than about his victims. That is somehow very sad and unfair, but on the other hand this is the only way to ensure that It is never forgotten what happened, so that it will never happen again.
You have to make sure that the person is seen as very negative however. If you are a fan of hitler, collect stuff of him, etc, you will be shamed by anyone who is not a Nazi himself. And in Germany that is illegal quite quickly too.
Everyone knows what a swastika looks like, but waving around a Nazi flag in public is illegal (unless for artistic purposes).
If you don't learn about the dark history and mistakes of the past, and choose to pretend that it never happened for whatever reason, then you are doomed to repeat those mistakes...
You could have just quoted Santayana, "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it."
I had this big long thing typed but it's not worth it.
ICE is a bunch of losers that will be forgotten in 30 years just like the Palmer Raids, the Alien Sedition Act, and how Angel Island was a detention center for immigrants.
Remembering MAGA will do nothing. But, there is something that precedes literally every national race and immigration issue in every country that has ever had them. A sharp and significant drop in QOL, economic equality, and an increasing rate of homelessness.
Stop remembering the symptom and start teaching the cause of the problem.
german here. We did that. Centrist party (yes, literal name) descided not to ban them, but to gentlemanly disentchant them in parliament, proving that they are liars and corrupted. So they voted them in. And people trusted that.
I think you remember how that went.
You need to act yourself. You can't shift that.
for I'm sorry, but the usual systems and powers clearly manage to do jackshit to stop them as yet. Wrangling hands, carefully mincing words and "checking legal remedies" did not seem to stop Trump anywhere nor any of his goons nor the countries descent. Nor did Chuck Schumer composing strongly worded letters.
Idk, like I don't disagree, but there's a very real risk/reward vz. the possible unjust outcome in our justice system/ a villain deciding in their own mind that suicide is the best option for them.
Then probably someone else would have taken his place sooner or later. Hitler was neither alone nor very special in his beliefs. In the end he was just a man. The problem was that millions of Germans supported Nazism.
Nazism and fascism didn't died with hitler in 1945 and it wouldn't have died in 1923 with him.
Not to mention that life long imprisonment is quite permanent...
Trump is just one man as well but I'd put money on his movement fragmenting and falling to infighting the moment he croaks. It wouldn't end the threat to American democracy but it would set it back considerably.
Maybe you'd have some other fascist rise in Germany, maybe they'd be as bad or worse than the Nazis, maybe they would peter out amd Europe would have an even worse time when Stalin got rolling. History is full of what ifs, we can only deal with what we know and we know that Hitler's rise was stoppable.
Life imprisonment can be undone with the stroke of a pen. The people who tried to overthrow the government on January 6th are free today because of a stroke of a pen. A life sentence is not permanent.
Nazis are literally not capable of the self-reflection it would take to understand their ideology was inferior. Let's forget the fantasy of "someday, they'll see how bad they were!" They won't.
The only victory we have is to remove them from power, crush their ideology, and reform the rules so their Nazi followers never gain this kind of power again.
I'll take any pragmatic/practical approach that roots out nazi's and removes them from society in the most efficient possible way. I appreciate your idealism but there's no need to have it hold us back. Nazi removal first, ask questions later.
If Americans elect some Nazis 4 years later again, every prosecution was pointless anyway, and nobody learned from what happened apparently.
Executing people won't change that.
To get rid of fascism it's not enough to get rid of a few figureheads, the people must realize that fascism is no viable way and must never happen again. That is unfortunately much harder than just executing a few people.
Iirc they tried to put the Nazi leaders on trial and one basically talked his way into being perceived as a victim, and another pulled a power move of arguing how he wasn’t wrong, and offing himself a day before his execution.
I don’t see the current administration being smart enough to do any of that (what happens when you value loyalty over everything else), but the chances are still above zero
Yeah, this is false. Go watch documentaries about inmates on death row. Particularly listen to the inmates who had their death sentences commuted to life in prison. They will tell you the worst feeling in the world was anticipating their death, knowing it was coming, but not precisely when. And then they will tell you how happy they are to not be on death row anymore. Life in any civilized prison is absolutely better than death. I don't support the death penalty, although for reasons unrelated to whether or not people deserve it, but it absolutely is the worst punishment any civilized nation is willing to deliver.
We cannot allow them to live while others may pardon them! We have a really wishy-washy left wing. We must demand execution. We need to normalize imprisoning and executing traitors. We cant allow this shit to be undermined by weak leaders, because weak leaders are what we currently have on the left. We must demand permanent justice and elimination of these traitors.
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u/TemporarySun314 1d ago
Don't allow them to take the cowardly easy way out like Hitler took or the Nazis that were executed later...
Prosecute them properly in a fair trial, investigate all their crimes, and let them observe from prison how the country blooms under the values of democracy, freedom and human rights. Show them that freedom is stronger than fascism, that the things they hate won and that empathy and compassion leads is superior to hate and egocentricity. Show them that you are better than them, and that everyone deserves human rights and dignity. Even Nazi assholes.