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skeptical_lurker comments on Open Thread Feb 29 - March 6, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: Elo 28 February 2016 10:11PM

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Comment author: skeptical_lurker 13 March 2016 07:53:27PM 0 points [-]

Try the entire wikipedia page on them! Take these bits for instance:

Scholars and media have described it as neo-Nazi[4][13][14] and fascist,[5][15][16] though the group rejects these labels.[17] Members have expressed admiration of the former Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas of the 4th of August Regime (1936–1941).[18] They have also made use of Nazi symbolism, and have praised figures of Nazi Germany in the past.[19][20][21] According to academic sources, the group is racist and xenophobic,[22][23] while the party's leader has openly identified it as nationalist and racist.[24]

On 23 July 2012, Artemis Matthaiopoulos, a member of Golden Dawn, was elected as MP for the town of Serres. The website left.gr (associated with Syriza), reported that Matthaiopoulos was the frontman of the Nazi punk band "Pogrom" and pointed to the band's song "Auschwitz" with antisemitic lyrics such as "fuck Anne Frank" and "Juden raus" ("Jews out").[142][143]

Now, I'm not endorsing the other factions, some of whom may well be Stalinists or terrorists. It is possible for there to be extremists on both the left and the right.

I know that 'Nazi' may be overused, but you surely must see that in this specific instance, that is what the Golden Dawn are.

Unless the entire wikipedia page and the sources are all fraudulent...

Comment author: Torchlight_Crimson 13 March 2016 11:57:15PM *  4 points [-]

Scholars and media have described it as neo-Nazi[4][13][14] and fascist,[5][15][16]

Well, everyone to the right of Stalin has been described as neo-Nazi by scholars.

though the group rejects these labels.[17]

I guess there goes your "explicitly endorse Nazism" claim.

I know that 'Nazi' may be overused, but you surely must see that in this specific instance, that is what the Golden Dawn are.

Weren't people saying the same thing about the National Front ~20 years ago?

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 14 March 2016 07:42:27AM 0 points [-]

I guess there goes your "explicitly endorse Nazism" claim.

I said if "significant members explicitly endorse Nazism", and in this case it seems at least one elected official does, even if the group doesn't.

Weren't people saying the same thing about the National Front ~20 years ago?

Perhaps. I'm not an expert on the history of European politics.

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 02:51:24PM *  1 point [-]

at least one elected official does

That one -- the frontman of the Nazi punk band "Pogrom" -- right? So you're willing to stick a label onto a whole political party because someone from a punk band said controversial things and generally trolled the public?

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 14 March 2016 05:46:56PM -1 points [-]

Normally, no, I wouldn't take a punk band's politics seriously, but when the frontman of a Nazi punk band gets elected, that's different.

Plus, he's not the only one:

As depicted in a picture taken on 14 September 2012, Panagiotis Iliopoulos, another Golden Dawn MP, has a tattoo reading the Nazi greeting Sieg Heil.[139]

I mean, obviously a random member of a party's views do not represent the party, but when they are leaders or get elected, thats different.

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 06:10:20PM 0 points [-]

when they are leaders or get elected, thats different.

When they get elected, that's evidence about the voters, not about the party.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 14 March 2016 07:17:52PM -1 points [-]

But the party approved their candidacy.

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 07:28:31PM *  0 points [-]

The party admitted them as a member, and given that, why wouldn't it approve their candidacy? Especially since I don't think there was much of an in-party contest in this case. It's not like the primaries for POTUS elections.

Comment author: gjm 14 March 2016 02:32:14PM 0 points [-]

explicitly endorse Nazism

There's an ambiguity here. Suppose the official position of the Social Party for German National Workers is as follows:

  • Germany needs to be a great power once more, and can only become so by military expansion, so that it can fulfil its destiny by ruling all Europe with a fist of iron.
  • Jews and Communists are responsible for most of the nation's ills and must be destroyed.
  • The Aryan race is superior to all others and must be favoured and kept pure.
  • Traditional views on sex and gender must be preserved for fear of moral degeneracy.
  • To achieve all these things, it is necessary for the nation's security forces to be able to know and control what everyone says and does.

... and suppose the SPGNW loudly proclaims "We have no sympathy with fascism or Nazism". The SPGNW explicitly endorses a big pile of key Nazi ideas, but it doesn't explicitly endorse the word "Nazism". What then? Personally I'd be happy saying that they explicitly endorse Nazism and are just lying about it.

I don't know enough about the Golden Dawn for my opinions on whether they're doing something similar to be worth much. But it's certainly possible a priori that they might be.

(Adopting this flag really doesn't seem like something a party fully committed to not endorsing Nazism would do. The resemblance isn't exactly subtle.)

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 14 March 2016 06:00:11PM *  1 point [-]

Personally I'd be happy saying that they explicitly endorse Nazism and are just lying about it.

I could argue over the semantics of 'explicitly' but basically they are Nazis whether they all admit it or not.

Traditional views on sex and gender must be preserved for fear of moral degeneracy.

I don't think they actually beleived this. Perhaps traditional views on sex and gender must be preserved to maintain the Aryan birthrate, but that's a little different - if premarital sex leads to lots of Aryan babies, I doubt they would object.

Interestingly, the leader of the SA was gay.

To achieve all these things, it is necessary for the nation's security forces to be able to know and control what everyone says and does.

Of course, modern day Germany does censor the internet for anti-migrant comments...

Comment author: gjm 14 March 2016 06:28:47PM 0 points [-]

I don't think they actually believed this.

It's not clear to me what they actually believed. They may have been inconsistent.

modern-day Germany does censor the internet

Pretty much all governments, ancient and modern, left and right, intrude more into their citizens' affairs than I'd like. But the Nazis seem to have been quite a lot worse in that respect than today's German government.

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 02:52:06PM 1 point [-]

fully committed to not endorsing Nazism

LOL

Comment author: gjm 14 March 2016 04:51:40PM 0 points [-]

I'm not sure whether you're laughing at or with me. If the former, good; I was hoping to amuse. If the latter, perhaps consider explaining what I wrote that you find laughable?

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 05:33:37PM 1 point [-]

At :-P

I find the idea of being fully committed to NOT endorsing something to be laughable.

Are you fully committed to not endorsing, say, Genghis Khan? Can you prove it? X-D

Comment author: gjm 14 March 2016 05:48:46PM 0 points [-]

OK, so let me do something that never works :-) and explain the joke, such as it was.

Of course there is not really such a thing as being fully committed to not endorsing something; it's not the kind of thing it makes sense to be committed to. So describing someone or something as "not fully committed to endorsing X" has to be an instance of meiosis (understatement for rhetorical effect); and so it is. What I am actually suggesting is that the Golden Dawn looks like a basically-fascist party that's nostalgic for the good old days of Nazi Germany, and that no one adopts a flag like that without the deliberate intention to evoke the Nazi flag, and that what GD is actually interested in is endorsing Nazism with plausible deniability. But -- being a dry-witted English sort of chap -- I chose to express that by understating it to pretty much the greatest extent possible. It was intended to be just very slightly amusing, at least to sympathetic readers.

As I already remarked, explaining jokes never works. (Especially, I think, this sort of joke.) And I've just spent at least 30x longer explaining what I wrote as I did writing it. Oh well, never mind.

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 06:19:49PM 1 point [-]

That joke would have worked better if we were not discussing whether a contemporary political movement is actually Nazi and if demands to be fully committed to not endorsing white male cis hetero partriarchy (add more words to taste) did not actually pop up outside of Monty Python sketches.

Getting back to the subject at hand, do you suggest that the Golden Dawn is actually "nostalgic for the good old days of Nazi Germany"? That strikes me as not very likely, not to mention that those good old days were very few before they became terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.

Comment author: skeptical_lurker 16 March 2016 08:14:56AM 0 points [-]

I think maybe "Adopting this flag really doesn't seem like something a party fully committed to not endorsing Nazism would do" is British understatement for "Adopting this flag is tacitly endorsing Nazism".

Comment author: gjm 14 March 2016 06:50:32PM 0 points [-]

That joke would have worked better if [...]

Your opinion is noted.

do you suggest that the Golden Dawn is actually "nostalgic for the good old days of Nazi Germany"?

Literally? Quite likely not. Keen to reproduce most of the salient features of those days if they get into power? Yeah, probably. (And I'll hazard a guess that if asked many of them would say: well, yes, Hitler did some terrible things, but at least he tried to make Germany great through purity and strength. Perhaps with a side-order of Holocaust denial.)

Comment author: Lumifer 14 March 2016 02:48:26PM -1 points [-]

I know that 'Nazi' may be overused, but you surely must see that in this specific instance, that is what the Golden Dawn are.

You did mention "using words precisely" at some point. If you still wish to do that, the word "Nazi" is a very specific word -- it refers to things associated with the National Socialist German Workers' Party. I am pretty sure members of Golden Dawn are not members of NSDAP as well.

A better word for you might be "fascist". It is more general -- there certainly were more fascists than nazis -- and describes a particular type of ideology (which originated in Italy, by the way).

The word "neo-nazi", in contemporary parlance, doesn't mean much beyond "I don't like these people".

Note that it's perfectly possible to be racist, xenophobic, nationalist, and anti-semitic and still not be a Nazi or a fascist.

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