That’s what you’re complaining about? You guys are fucking lucky that people aren’t just walking up to you and shooting you in the head. They aren’t human.

  • PoastRotato@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Fuck ICE, but stop saying they aren’t human. For one thing, their cruelty and depravity should stand as a reminder of what the worst of humanity is capable of. But more than that, dehumanization of one’s enemy is the first step toward radicalism. How else do you think they came to have their own terrible views?

    They weren’t born like this. They were made this way.

    • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      I agree. The complacent myth that the Nazis were subhuman monsters and not people like us is part of what got us this resurgence of fascism. We need to admit that the worst people are more like us than we’re comfortable with.

      • saimen@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        “It wasn’t Hitler or Himmler who deported me, beat me, and shot my family. It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor, who were given a uniform and then believed they were the master race.”

        • Karl Stojka, Auschwitz survivor
      • Zombie@feddit.uk
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        3 days ago

        I sometimes fear that
        people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress
        worn by grotesques and monsters

        as played out in endless re-runs of the Nazis.

        Fascism arrives as your friend.
        It will restore your honour,
        make you feel proud,
        protect your house,
        give you a job,
        clean up the neighbourhood,
        remind you of how great you once were,
        clear out the venal and the corrupt,
        remove anything you feel is unlike you…

        It doesn’t walk in saying,
        “Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.”

        • Michael Rosen

        https://michaelrosenblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/fascism-i-sometimes-fear.html?m=1

        • Vupware@lemmy.zip
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          3 days ago

          If it wasn’t for that click noice meme, I wouldn’t have clicked this. I wouldn’t have read all of this man’s thoughts.

          To think he’s been blogging this whole time is unreal.

    • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I don’t approve of that kind of rhetoric as a general rule, but conflating calling someone inhuman for their cruel actions with calling someone inhuman for their perceived racial inferiority is incredibly disingenuous.

      • PoastRotato@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Is it though? One seems more morally justifiable on the surface, but both have the same end result of reducing someone to subhuman status. And that reasoning is almost exclusively used to justify treating people like subhumans.

        I’m just saying, we can fight and denounce ICE without adopting their rhetoric and dehumanizing ideals.

        • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Treating someone as subhuman is a wholly separate action from calling someone’s actions inhuman. They are not mutually exclusive. I just simply can’t agree that calling someone inhuman for their oppressive actions towards another human being is anywhere near the same level as calling someone inhuman for simply existing. I won’t do either, but I’m not going to judge someone for doing the former, only the latter.

          • PoastRotato@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            Treating someone as subhuman is a wholly separate action from calling someone’s actions inhuman.

            Yes, but one definitely leads to the other. The rhetoric informs the action; if one hears something enough times, they may eventually begin to believe it’s true.

            I just simply can’t agree that calling someone inhuman for their oppressive actions towards another human being is anywhere near the same level as calling someone inhuman for simply existing.

            Fair enough, we seem to agree on the larger issue here so I won’t force the argument. But perhaps you can at least agree that calling those oppressive actions inhuman is directly denying the fact that humans are perfectly capable of such great evils. Which, evidently, they are.

            • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works
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              2 days ago

              One CAN lead to the other, its not a foregone conclusion though. I think more often than not calling heinous actions inhuman is more a coping mechanism than anything, because you’d have to be a braindead moron to literally believe there aren’t humans behind those atrocities.

    • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Well this begs the question of whether or not radical actions are required at a certain point and where that point actually is. Surely complacency only gets more necks stepped on.

      • PoastRotato@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I’m not suggesting complacency; quite the opposite in fact. Rage against tyranny and do everything you can to push the fascists out of power. But never forget that you could have been one of them, had your circumstances been different. And never let yourself become their mirror image, because rhetoric like “they aren’t human” is exactly how you get there.

      • PoastRotato@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        People don’t stop being people just because they’re terrible. That just makes them terrible people. Never forget that the capacity for evil lives in all of us.

        Furthermore, the only real purpose of claiming someone has “lost their humanity” is as a justification for treating them as less than human. Which is precisely why you and I despise them in the first place.

    • Taldan@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      They weren’t born like this. They were made this way.

      And they can be made normal again

      Something I struggle with is the fact most murderous Nazis went on to live normal, productive lives

      Nuremberg Trials only prosecuted a relatively small number of top ranking Nazis. Many who weren’t prosecuted were fervent supporters that killed for the party. Then after the war they went on to reintegrate with society

      They lived as bakers, teachers, etc., as law-abiding citizens

      It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact people could spend a decade willing to commit atrocities. Willing to murder someone simply for their religion/ethnicity. Then they just soend the next couple decades baking bread like a normal person

      I’m not saying anything is right or wrong with how that was handled. Just something I’ve been thinking about

      • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Can they, though? How many of them actually changed, and how many simply went into hiding?

        One of the biggest issues that led us to this point was the tolerance of the racist uncle, the antisemitic grandfather just because “he’s from a different time” or whatever. Many of these people never changed, we just started accepting it when it was couched in the right social rules.

        It’s well known that Trump grew up around former Nazis and active white supremacists. His family’s culture growing up was steeped in it.

        One of the things about cults is that followers fall into a sunk cost fallacy that means that the longer they’ve been a member and the deeper in they are, the harder they are to get out until there’s a line beyond which it becomes basically impossible. Because to admit they were wrong is to admit that their beliefs were wrong, that their actions weren’t justified, and that they’re not the good person that they think they are.

    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 days ago

      I am merely doing unto them what they have been doing unto us. The saying is “do unto others as you would have done unto you.” I’m merely doing that, but from reverse.

      dehumanization of one’s enemy is the first step toward radicalism.

      Systematically exterminating the cockroaches that is ICE and Republicans might be how we get out of this pit.

      • Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 days ago

        I see, so you actually want them to dehumanize you? So you’re supporting what ICE is doing?

        Because the saying is, with emphasis, “do onto others as you would have them do onto you”, i.e. in plain English, “treat others as you would like to be treated yourself”. So if you dehumanize them, that means you must like being dehumanized yourself (at least as long as you apply the saying).

        I think the saying that fits you more is “eye for an eye”, just don’t read what popularly comes after.

        • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOP
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          2 days ago

          so you actually want them to dehumanize you?

          I’m merely doing unto them as they requested through their actions. Not doing so would be disrespectful and might cause ICE to shoot you got not complying with officer directives.

      • Taldan@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I am merely doing unto them what they have been doing unto us

        That’s exactly the type of things I hear from ICE and their supporters

        Treating the other side as inhuman is a necessity for commutting atrocities

        • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 day ago

          Treating the other side as inhuman is a necessity for commutting atrocities

          Fundamentalists are the historical perpetrators of all atrocities: the crusades, witch hunts, slavery, Nazi shit. Maybe it’s time to do unto them what they have done unto us.