this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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In this case it does.
I agree it was a disguise, but I should note that it also adopted a lot of such parties' members and activists.
In any case - evil usually doesn't call itself evil. The very idea that there's some new "great evil" waiting to come to the world is wrong. And there were and are a myriad of "small evils" before 1945, since 1945, now and forever, which some very stupid people consider not worthy of fighting because of looking for where the "great evil" will make its comeback. It won't.
If one can't fight those small evils around them, one definitely can't hope to be useful against something greater anyway.
Ideological descendants I know about are all minor parties. The big ones people accuse of that simply have no clear ideology, which means fascist stuff is very convenient to give them some color. But nothing more.
Yes, only that's not what I am answering. Just that the gesture's meaning is not definitively only Nazi.
That's the problem with online communities, everyone is trying to appear smart and mysterious by talking in hints and allegories and dog whistles and fuzzy unfinished thoughts, and also just pretending to catch and guess what others think from fundamentally insufficient amount of information.
Things should be more literal and ordered. Lucian's dialogues are good as an example of this, I don't know if that's how many people really discussed reality in his time, but if really so, then it was a healthier society.
In this case we're talking about Elmo displaying what is, in the context of his whole public presentation, clearly intended as a Nazi salute. So no, truthfully stating that other groups have used that salute too isn't the whole truth because it ignores the context of conversation.
Yeah, but that wasn't originally the conversation you tacked on to.
Sure, but why point that out, when it's not relevant to the conversation of Elmo being a Neo-Nazi? Maybe this helps to consider the optics of your comment:
Media: "Controversial" salute
Comment: Not controversial, just Nazi
You: Well, there are other meanings for the gesture
That sounds a whole lot like the apologism going around trying to paint Elmo as misunderstood.
That's communication in general. We use shorthands so we don't always have to elaborate, but a lot of things pick up different meanings in different contexts.
And in the specific context - because, again, the initial comment you responded to was specific to this specific display of this specific gesture - Elon has displayed a lot of Neo-Nazi behaviour. That doesn't mean he has to be a Neo-Nazi (you're right, see can't know for sure what he thinks) but that he's courting their favour (because we can see what he does). That makes it rather reasonable to assume that a known Neo-Nazi-courter producing something looking like an edgy teenager's imitation of Hitler's salute is indeed performing a Nazi salute.
No matter what else the gesture can mean, it's clear what this instance is intended to signal.
The original conversation can be continued in any way. Saying someone is diverting from it is just bullshit, sadly too common. People try to decide for others what the conversation is about and where it doesn't go, while everything is interconnected and it's not their place.
You've missed one little nuance, a Nazi salute (suppose we're clear that it's what the gesture meant) can be used to, #1, attract those sympathetic to Nazis in symbols, #2, insult those strongly against Nazis in symbols, #3, attract those against people from group #2, and one can go on. I think it's #3 much more than #1, and #1 and #3 are not the same.
That's what I had to say on the subject, but was in a bad condition to think and say it as clearly as now.