Can I make a suggestion without getting burned at the stake?

While we all ride the mock the Nazis train, which is fun and probably one of the better ways to handle it outside of actually doing something and going out there and counter-protesting (which would be significantly more useful than tweeting, but thats not practical for a lot of people so its understandable), there is one thing we really should remember.

I'm reminded of this when I see rich 1%ers, mocking these admittedly stupid, racist people for never having experienced "real oppression". I wonder if those particular ivory tower people realize just how much resentment saying things like that causes and how easy a boogieman they're making themselves out to be. They're becoming useful idiots for extremist media to point to. Look at these "liberal elite" daring to tell us working class people what to do, look at how condescending they are and how virtuous they are able to be with incredibly easy lives and more money than you'll ever see in 100 lifetimes. They are, in many cases, doing more harm than good.

There's a movie I got a lot out of called Imperium, which is about an agent who infiltrates a group of Neo-Nazis and how insidious the ideology is. There's one particular quote that stuck with me, coming as the story wraps up

Angela Zamparo: "Because when it comes down to it, there really is only one essential ingredient to fascism."
Nate Foster: "It's victimhood."

What that means is, extremism doesn't just come from nowhere. Extremism is insidious and develops over time, slowly, it spreads like a cancer. The root of it, is often in real, sincere, honest problems that the person is facing. Their perception is slowly twisted by the extremism and the ideology into blaming those problems on minority groups. These people do see themselves as victims. They do have real problems and those problems aren't suddenly imaginary just because somebody else might be suffering worse problems. That's the fallacy of relative privation and telling someone their problems don't matter is the quickest possible way towards getting them to never listen to you again.

In the recent UK election, Labour, the center-left party took a significant number of new seats. Quite a few of those seats and votes, actually came from former supporters of a far-right party called the British National Party. Whats going on? How can these right wing, zealously anti-immigrant people suddenly swing to the left and vote Labour? The answer was simpler than it looked. Many of those people were the victims of economic and social inequality. When they voted for the BNP, they saw those real problems in their lives and blamed them on immigrants. When they voted Labour, those same problems were there, but they'd realized, maybe its not immigrants, maybe those are just an easy boogieman, fed to me by dishonest media and malicious, manipulative con-men and ideologues. Maybe the problem is actual economic inequality, the widening divide of social and economic class, the increasingly draconian policies of the conservative government, strangling social services, hacking things like the NHS to pieces to try and sell it off for parts. The corruption of rampant, unchecked capitalism. Maybe that's the source of some of their problems.

When you say these people have never experienced real oppression, remember they don't see it that way. They have real problems. Everyone does. Even the most privileged and richest among us. Having an "easier" life is a very relative idea and its hard to see wider than your own experiences. Don't dismiss these problems. Don't claim these people have perfect lives. Don't claim they've never experienced hardship. They absolutely have. Their twisted ideology grew from real problems. They were manipulated and at the end of the day, you're going to have to live with those people because they have every right to live in this country. When all is said and done, they will still be here, you can't get rid of them so... ask yourselves, how are we going to live together in future? Is it by forever branding those people as evil? Or is it by deprogramming what is for all intents and purposes, a cult? Only by recognising the root cause of the disease can the disease be treated.

So have fun at the expense of Nazis on twitter, that's fine. Just remember that they're people and they have real problems and they're going to be around for a long time and I think you'd rather they not be Nazis anymore, right?

A few years ago I had a quote I liked that I realized was actually pretty stupid. "Tell yourself in the morning, is my life as bad as a Darfur war orphan? If not, STFU". Turns out that's dumb and everyone has problems and none of them are unimportant ones. If we all thought like this, none of us would ever be allowed to complain about a problem ever again because no, no your life isnt as bad as a Darfur war orphan, any of you.

I look forward to being misrepresented fairly soon as somebody who "defends Nazis". The internet is anything if not completely predictable in that regard. Can add that to the pile if inevitable "hypocrisy" jibes, which is the go-to thought-terminating-cliche and fallacy of people who have no real counterargument. Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate an argument, this isn't preschool debate team, its not a game, there are no teams, no points and no prizes.