Nazis are people, too.
I’m a Holocaust narrative denier.
If you were to tally up all the NPC deaths in video game history, the #1 demographic would be zombies, #2 would be Nazis, and #3 would be Nazi zombies.
While I don’t doubt the documented scope and brutality of the Holocaust, I do reject the narrative that, as modern white supremacists mockingly put it, “and then one day, for no reason at all, people voted Hitler into power.”
The logic underpinning the so-called “paradox of tolerance” is that the Nazis dehumanized the Jews arbitrarily, and for that reason we can safely dehumanize Nazis, since they voluntarily choose to be inhuman.
My narrative critique was confirmed by my 2022 conversation with Holocaust historian Richard Steigmann-Gall: there appears to be no canonical systemic understanding of why the Nazis exterminated European Jews. And yes, “systemic” in this case means “victim blaming,” a concept which tends to thwart empathetic analysis.
In light of our insistence that World War II was a holy war where good triumphed over evil, conservatives are correct that “Nazi” is a dehumanizing slur. By definition, Nazis, rapists, murderers, and child molesters all harm others for no reason at all.
Well, I don’t buy that. I want to know what the Jews were wearing.
Charlie Kirk was a fascist.
We do know what Charlie Kirk was wearing: a white T-shirt with “FREEDOM” printed in bold black letters.
As with the phrase “all lives matter,” the context of extreme partisanship causes the apparent agreeableness of “FREEDOM” to read as ominous instead. Freedom from what? Freedom to do what?
As an ally of Trump, who tried to overthrow our democracy in 2020, Kirk probably does not share my definition of “freedom.” In fact, his support of Trump along with the emotional appeal to a self-evidential definition of “freedom” paradoxically turns the word into a fascist slogan.
If you’re a Trump supporter thinking my logic is upside-down, it’s because the Republican drift towards fascism is not a distortion of conservative values, but a distortion of factual reality. This is typical of all authoritarian regimes, but when you are disoriented yourself, it’s impossible to perceive.
If Democrats really did steal the 2020 election, if Haitian immigrants really are eating dogs and cats, if Elon Musk really didn’t do a Nazi salute behind the presidential seal, if Jimmy Kimmel really did tell a lie about a heinous crime on FCC-governed airwaves—if all of the right’s distortions were actually true, then MAGA would indeed be the party of freedom.
But they’re all lies, and so MAGA is the party of fascism.
To Trump supporters, this will sound like a wicked case of TDS, but I want you to understand why outsiders dismiss your technically defensible hairsplitting around race, religion, nationalism, and Trump himself: what makes you a fascist is the factually delusional world you inhabit, not the values you apply to that delusion.
The paradox of intolerance.
When people justify murder, they tend to make handwavy, emotional appeals to common sense—probably because murder is definitionally unjustified.
I’ll state this with crystal clear logic: you are not justified in killing someone for their beliefs, even if they believe you should be killed.
Wishing other people were dead is a normal part of being human.
So you can stop compiling lists of the most offensive things Charlie Kirk ever said—even if he wanted to round up all the trans people and Jews and put them in death camps, he didn’t deserve to die.
Killing people for their fascistic beliefs is itself fascistic. Cheering on others who commit political violence is fascistic. Using whataboutism to justify your own fascism is fascistic.
A tolerant society must distinguish between speech and actions, and our existing speech laws already do a great job of that. No murder is needed.
And what are progressives wearing?
Just before the 2024 election, I wrote this piece:
But I have a few things to add.
Why are they doing this to us?
Why are nice, everyday (I think this means “white”) Americans supporting a fascistic takeover?
People really like being in groups, and that’s even without anyone getting shot. As the country deteriorates into a blood-soaked arena for violent hate mobs, it’s difficult to remain outside both political cults.
Note that “cultist” as a pejorative implies willful participation, but in reality, cultists (probably including you) are trapped.
Both MAGA and progressives like to brag about how they'll welcome you with open arms. Once you’re in, however, those arms clamp shut, and participation in the dogma becomes increasingly compulsory. (I say “increasingly” because cults, like forming black holes, always exist in a state of irreversible collapse.)
So while everyone technically “has a choice,” my observation is that almost no one is comfortable with being an outsider to two psychotic hate mobs. It’s materially, physically, and mentally safer to just join one of them.
In fact, you don’t even have to do anything to join. In Eugene, where I live, progressives regularly attempt to bring me into the fold by blurting out in-group narratives so confidently that I have to break social norms to avoid the appearance of getting sucked in.
What we’re wearing, fellow progressives, is the same smug, apparently-self-evident “FREEDOM” shirt that Kirk died in, except maybe ours says “DIVERSITY.”
But it doesn’t matter what it says, does it? Because Trump supporters know that “DIVERSITY,” blue hair, and rainbows are the coded hate symbols of an anti-white, anti-male, anti-Christian cult.
Martyrdom is a politically correct way to celebrate bloodlust. It usually starts with religion, but it's pretty universal no matter the nature of the cult. They turn inward because they have to disregard the importance of even their own lives in order to justify the fight for an imaginary future. The greatest gift a cult member can give the collective is that of pretext.
Very well done diagnosis, but am I the only one tired of hearing diagnoses? What is the treatment? Is the condition terminal?
As somebody whose personality is pretty much mostly incompatible with conservatism/MAGA, I look to what I can do to make the progressive side, that I more closely relate to, less of a cult, but I don’t see many pathways to this end, if I’m being honest.
I was watching a podcast clip of two very progressive video game commentators discussing the game Bioshock Infinite. A game about a dystopian splinter society of rabidly jingoistic, Christian nationalists, racist xenophobes. The game’s reputation is different in different circles. When it first came out the core progressive and kinda snobby games media lauded it for its mature themes. It was in the beginning of the era of video games “growing up.” Retrospectively, many now view the game much more negatively. They view its tackling of racism and also multiverses as very amateur and dumb.
All of this background to setup the white progressive video game podcaster making a comment about how Bioshock Infinite, when it came out, “appealed to a very particular kind of young white guy” who smugly patted himself on the back for enjoying a game that critiqued racists, even if it was done very unskillfully and stupidly by today’s standards, or even by more intelligent progressive standards of the time.
This comment, while I find it to be somewhat defensible, because the game genuinely has very little interesting to say about racists and racist societies, emotionally speaking, I can’t shake the feeling of vitriol towards white people emanating from this kind of comment. This combination of self hatred, and/or distinguishing yourself as “one of the good ones” among white progressives. Even an obviously progressive game like Bioshock infinite, must now be attacked by white progressives. And you must be an amateur, young, white, male anti-racist to think the game was ever profound or smart. You simply are not woke enough, unironically, to have ever enjoyed it.
How does one ever go about changing this kind of progressive discourse? This kind of anti-white/male disposition is like an instinct or reflex to progressives. It’s unquestionably accepted on every layer. Everywhere you go culturally where progressives exist, you are going to put down white males. There is nothing white males can do to be just human. At best, you can just momentarily display how intelligently keyed in you are to how shitty white men are. They’re either shitty stupid racists, or shitty stupid anti-racists.
Writing about this just now has made me think about how little emotional vulnerability there is allowed in these kinds of discussions. You’re only allowed to intellectualize, be smug, or be condescendingly angry towards people beneath you on the progressive stack. And as white males the only people lower than you on the progressive stack, are right wing white people as the lowest, or dumber progressive white people. The dumb right wing people are often too easy of targets, so most of the virtual and disdain is directed at lesser progressive white men.
Honestly, the hierarchy makes more sense the more I think about it. If you are the kind of white male progressive who focuses entirely their hatred on right wing Christian white males, you are only one step above them. But if you instead direct most of your ire on white male progressives who are shittier than you at being progressive and smart, you are an extra layer separated from the bottom.
I’m increasingly blackpilled on the ability for improvement here.