• whaleross@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    This is also the rationale to people defending Nazis because “it’s just their opinions”.

    No, it is not “just opinions” when you want to terrorise and murder other people simply for having been born. It is not “just opinions” that you want to abolish democracy for a totalitarian police state. It is not “just opinions” that you manifest that you are working towards this society. It is not “just opinions” that you express this in public in order to make other people live in fear for your “opinions” to become reality.

    It is violence. And violent aggression is justified to be met with violent defence.

    Punch a nazi today, kids. Every day is punch a nazi day.

    Edit: Sorry, I went wild and somewhat unrelated. I didn’t intend to diminish the topic of womens rights. Every day is of course also a punch a sexist day, regardless their other opinions.

  • menas@lemmy.wtf
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    5 hours ago

    Bourgeoisie has depicted fasciscts as vilains, evil and monstruous. Now when people discovered that nazis are just humans, their are surprised. Spoiler: people could act nice, honest, and even involve in charity, and still aim to enslave or mass kill others.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      3 minutes ago

      It depends also who you are. That person in the comic saying he’s nice is a guy and not the of the group of people(women) that are so aggressively disrespected. How would he know?

      It also falls into the “decorum” sphere. Someone who isn’t yelling while they’re throwing your rights in the garbage is not nice. Someone opening the gas chamber door for you is not nice. Surface level means nothing and it has always meant nothing but it takes a lot of energy for the vast majority of people to be thinking deeper than that all the time so they fall back on easy, high-level observations.

      Now, I won’t say someone can’t be turned around. Many are pretty far gone, though, and it’s not their victims’ job to be nice and supportive to their oppressors. So yes, they might just be humans but the warning given above needs to be more of a “he’s kinda a misogynist right now but I’ve been working on him and he’s getting better. Let me know if you’re uncomfortable at any point though and I’ll take care of it.”

    • It hadn’t occurred to me before, but sometime about a year ago I ran into a group of guys who are passionate about nature: talking about preserving woods, how majestic deer could be standing in the mist in the early morning, how much they liked a particular species of bird because of it’s call, expressing concern about civilization’s impact on the health and well-being about animals.

      They were all hunters. I honestly believe they really did respect and admire the animals they were hunting; they didn’t want them to suffer, they weren’t out specifically to cause pain. I still struggle with the dichotomy, but I have no doubt they saw themselves as animal lovers. I think there are probably trophy hunters who are just in it for the ego, but I believe a lot of hunters are in it to get out in the woods, away from civilization, and on their way, commune with nature.

      Don’t get me wrong: there are other ways of achieving that without hunting, and there are malicious, hurtful, broken people. It’s probably more common that what we’d attribute to petty meanness is simply a different set of ethics - and, no, I’m not saying all ethics are equally good or right or valid. But the people who hold them can be - as you say - perfectly polite, nice, kind, thoughtful people. They just hold unjustifiable opinions about some things.

      • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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        17 minutes ago

        You just dug up an old memory. When I was in high school, there was a girl who came from a hunting family. I remember one day she came up to me and started telling me the same things you said about “loving nature,” along with rambling about how her dad makes her kill just “one deer” each year, like it’s a token goal she’s obligated to fulfill. She kept apologizing to me for it. Okay, random, right?

        Nah, not random at all. I’ve been vegan since I was 14. I never said anything about her hobbies - sure, I don’t agree with hunting for sport, but I would’ve preferred to avoid the topic entirely than to hear anything about it. She felt compelled, of her own accord, to not only initiate the conversation, but to make it basically a confessional - like she felt guilty and was looking toward me for some kind of forgiveness.

        It’s an aspect of veganism that doesn’t get talked about in public much - not only are we made the target of tons of random hate, but we’re also made into a sounding board for meat-eaters, hunters, etc. who are experiencing cognitive dissonance. Like we’re some kind of liason between humans and other animals, or like winning our approval will make a guilty meat-eater feel better. I don’t know.

        • Interesting. I guess if you feel guilty about it, but not enough to change your behaviors, seeking absolution from someone who’s more ethically pure would be a natural reaction. It’s the basis for absolution in the Catholic church, and in begging forgiveness in prayer even in branches of Christianity that don’t have human confessors. I think it’s very human.

          In your friend’s case, it doesn’t sound like she was a willing participant, and that sucks.

    • scratchee@feddit.uk
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      3 hours ago

      The problem is you need to depict their actions as evil and monstrous, or fascism might appear to be a reasonable solution. Isolating the evil of fascism from the ordinary people pushing for it is subtle and complicated. Especially when some fascists really do cross the line into evil behaviour.

      Basically humans are often bad at sharing subtle messages widely. Regardless of how much nuance you add to begin with, the message will always devolve for most people into either “hitler evil” or “hitler wasn’t that bad, he was nice to animals”, so given the options, most people prefer to lean into the evil side and avoid normalising fascism, with the inevitable consequence that it appears you have to start wearing skulls and torturing people in order to be a fascist and people forget that for the vast majority of everyday fascists it was “just politics” right up until they lost the war and had to start rethinking things.

      I offer no solutions, but I don’t think you can blame just the bourgeoisie, but rather the human condition in general, us vs them, and the difficulty in sharing detailed concepts to a wide audience. There will always be “bad guys” who are so bad that we can’t possibly become them. I do think we’ve gotten better at telling stories with complex evil, but the flip side is that seems to just reduce people’s resolve to act. Almost like the 2 options built into our brains are “us vs them, kill the evils ones” and “meh, corruption is inevitable, just ignore it”.

  • Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 hours ago

    The guy excusing it is almost just as problematic. Just because you can act polite doesnt mean youre nice, but espousing these views isnt even polite. Having to pretend to get along with people like this at work is soul draining.

    • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      That’s the joke and it’s good you picked up on it.

      People need to face the consequences of their beliefs within the circle of their loved ones. If that fails, the next social circle upwards like their friends. But right now it feels like even that has failed and now people are okay with letting awful beliefs fester in their neighbors because it’s “politics”. That’s not okay, as this comic relies on.

  • Shortstack@reddthat.com
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    8 hours ago

    This comic illustrates my internal struggle to get along with my trump bootlicker coworkers.

    I have to schmooze a little bit to keep the working relationship running, but I feel disgusted every single day when the little hints of what they stand for peek out.

    • ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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      5 minutes ago

      i had a coworker who simped for trump and musk. we are not even from the us.

      oh he also bragged he and part of his family estranged some close gay relative of his that really needed a lot of help from them once.

      very in favor of the war on drugs, hated weed and stuff, but did some dangerous pharmaceuticals he acquired somehow.

      had the grindset mentality that i can see could potentially bring him to collapse, on a place that already overworked its employees.

      barely slept and used said meds to work harder. theres probably more.

      he was nice though. said his pleases and thank yous, had his coworkers back. he was relied upon because he knew his shit, but it probably cost a piece of himself.

      i dont understand these people at all or why we normalized this… strangeness? i can’t explain the surrealism. believe it or not that was tame for that workplace.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      7 hours ago

      Try seemingly open-minded questions about what they think. Gently introducing questioning will avoiding confrontation can work to shake their beliefs. It can be satisfying to see them become more nuanced as they try to explain.

        • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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          7 hours ago

          Just gently question those: oh, why do you think this? What do you think of those people who have another opinion? Keep pulling on whatever they give.

          • ILoveUnions@lemmy.world
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            2 hours ago

            No. That’s a poor way to do it. They have very clear ideas on why things are like they are, and for the basis of their racism… they’re wrong ideas, but they’re extremely clear. Arguing without the understanding that they have alternatives facts is wrong

  • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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    5 hours ago

    That men should be given a wife by the state

    Ok so while I joke about this subtext in the whole thing - if they actually want that, how the fuck do they expect that to work?

    Historically the closest thing to “being given a wife” was a dowry, which in my mind is a stupid term made up for a family selling their daughter.

    • SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz
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      5 hours ago

      I imagine something akin to a draft or arranged marriages. You’re not married, you’re not married, congrats you’re now married.

      • peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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        5 hours ago

        And that just freaking blows my mind. I’ll admit I’m a tall blue eyed WASP male, with some success in my career, so based on their definition of outward appearances dictating good genes, I’d fall into that category of eligible bachelor that Nazi Germany had.

        But I fail to see how the wife I would get assigned would be guaranteed to be desirable. For all I know, the state would select a petite 22 year old, blonde hair blue eyed white girl but from bumbfuck middle of nowhere Kentucky who is dumber than rocks and I always have to do everything for her that isn’t cooking or baby making. That’s a fuckload of stupid, Id have nothing in common with her, we’d probably both be lonely as fuck since we’re 12 years apart.

        To me, it sounds like their eugenics movement has nothing to do with a master race, and more so with a bunch of men that lack self-awareness and desire an animated sex doll.

  • MightyCuriosity@sh.itjust.works
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    8 hours ago

    I like this as a thought experiment: Lemmy, at what point does someone stop being nice? And is there a difference between acting or being nice?

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      1 hour ago

      You can believe really stupid shit, but still be a nice person, so that question probably has a grey zone that would be hard to qualify, withe several “dealbreakers” in there. Like, you can’t be a nice person if you want to own slaves.

    • Trex202@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      Raymond is probably “nice” to the fellow white dude, polite and not physically aggressive.

      Raymond is not nice to society.

      • Mac@mander.xyz
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        8 hours ago

        Could even be nice to the marginalized they know and deem “one of the good ones” but still vote violence against them and be racist pieces of shit.

        I know people in this exact scenario, in fact.

        • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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          1 hour ago

          Of the people I’ve encountered this is the more realistic portrayal of a racist. Granted, I’m white so have a hard time detecting when other whites are racist, but when they are it’s always in the more subtle ways of upholding and defending toxic hierarchies.

          I’m sure there are plenty of people who will outwardly rant and rave, but I feel like those people lack the social power to be a real threat (though their lack the self control might make them a more immediate physical threat) .

      • ILoveUnions@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        I know people like this. They’re “nic”. But what that means is they put everyone they know into “one of the good ones” box. So they’re polite to all people they know, basically… It’s interesting and horrifying to see tbh

        • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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          1 hour ago

          With enough self reflection, that can turn around into changing their opinion at a systemic level. Sometimes all it takes is few comments from someone they trust, and some time to process.

        • angrystego@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          I kniw that probably you didn’t mean it that way, but it sounds as though you’re excusing Raymond.

        • OrteilGenou@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Nothing new here, who doesn’t know someone who is very pleasant on the surface and a complete sociopath underneath?

    • NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone
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      6 hours ago

      It’s like when people romanticise the old London gangsters and say they were polite and always looked after their mother. That still doesn’t make up for a lifetime of criminal intimidation, physical assault and murder.

      If someone’s polite but just waiting for a local chapter of blackshirts to form they’re not nice people.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      This is an interesting question. Given a sufficiently functional environment “Raymond” may be functionally harmless as its impossible to for him to have anything crazy he wants. In a functional enough one he wont even admit the crazy shit he believes because it would see him excluded and possibly fired.

      Do we then consider him eccentric instead of a POS? Is a sex murder a “nice” if he’s behind bars and we only talk to him about normal stuff and forget that he would gladly rape and murder you without the bars?

      At some point we need to understand that someone who would take away your rights and potentially kill you if you didn’t roll over and accept his dominion isn’t “nice” just because he exists in an environment where he isn’t in a position to work his will.

      • MightyCuriosity@sh.itjust.works
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        5 hours ago

        Good point. There’s plenty of examples (fictional or not) where ‘nice’ people were driven to ‘not nice’ things and vice versa. The fact we need laws indicate that maybe mostly people are maybe not nice? Since if we’d be considerate we wouldn’t need those laws (in general)? It seems most people seem to think ‘being nice’ is doing things the majority of people deem as a good thing to do.

    • Liberteez@lemm.ee
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      7 hours ago

      Imo nice and kind are separate qualities, mutually exclusive. Raymond is unkind towards women, but he may have a nice demeanor. Lots of evil people can be nice around others in chit chat, but cruel in their actions and beliefs.

      • seralth@lemmy.world
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        6 hours ago

        This is the entire concept of the gentlemen thief. Being polite, nice and honest in way stops someone from being an awful, terrible person who would gladly steal everything you own and leave you for dead.

        People seem to struggle massively with the idea that others can be complex and multifaceted. Everyone whos “nice” must be good or everyone whos “mean” must be evil. Relly is just fundamentally flawed.

        Everytime i see a comment saying they are confused over this it makes me feel like people just fundamentally do not understand the concepts of nuance or really other humans in general.

  • justlemmyin@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Whenever anyone says someone is nice, I internally translate it as them saying, someone is polite. Still a douche but a polite douche.

  • boonhet@lemm.ee
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    7 hours ago

    I also don’t think that men should be given a wife by the state though…

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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          6 hours ago

          Ok, how about we do it like I used to play the sims in 2000.

          Every house has 5 workers, and 3 stay at home people. One of the stay at home people is a cook mostly. Won’t burn the house down. And can then practice other skills. While people are at work.

          The second stay at home person is similar, but instead of cooking, this person is a handyman.

          The third stay at home person is actually a rotating spot. Why? Because this person just stays home all day every day and increases their skills. All the skills. Then when thats done, they go back into the work force, and we pull another person OUT of the workforce to enter that 3rd slot.

          Eventually all 6 of the non-permanent stay at homers will have a full set of skills.

          And the two stay at home people will cook, and maintain the house, while socializing. This ensures the house has family friends. Because you know your boss won’t give you a raise until you have 4 family friends.

          And the 6 workers will all have high paying jobs. Which means they can afford a maid, and a gardener.

          • boonhet@lemm.ee
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            5 hours ago

            I’m a software engineer, I think I can be one of the 5 workers straight off the bat. Let’s find 6 more people and we can have this eightsome working!

        • boonhet@lemm.ee
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          5 hours ago

          My friend’s wife said they need to get “a bitch”. Someone who does the tradwife things while both of them can do things they enjoy in life.

          This was of course said in a joking tone, they’re both very progressive people, and generally share the workload at home. Gender of said bitch wasn’t specified either. Just saying this before anyone thinks my friends are horrible people lol

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      1 hour ago

      Nice is like acquaintance level shit. The bare minimum of manners required to interact with people in the daily.

  • A_norny_mousse@feddit.org
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    7 hours ago

    I have to admit one of my former coworkers was like that. Not the overt misogyny (that’s just objectively disgusting) but anti-vax & trumpist, yet he was a nice guy. Very confusing for me.