Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

" but because it was, arguably much worse, a constant, generations long grinding down of the spirit of an entire class of fellow human beings based on their skin colour through a system that used the constant, soul crushing threat of atrocity."

Yes and no, the evil in slavery is because is the big enabler: one you own something, nobody really stop you for pushing to the very ground because you can, my girlfriend said that I overused the computer and treat like a slave, that make me see how easy is to just overwork something because it just dosent register.

Im a atheist but if you want to said it, for a christian perpective slavery is a great tempter, it open your heart and mind to all class of sin because it rest your mind in being indolent about the plight of others.

"For instance, a common criticism of environmentalist movies and t.v. shows from the 90s was how they allegedly oversimplified complex issues by depicting the primary drivers of pollution and climate change as being indifferent or hostile towards the idea of eco-friendly business practices. "

If anything it remind me that a lot of people got fep u because eco friend show was about how evil MEN was.....and now people seen to care less about the envirioment than ever.

Again, I keep thinking you try to see reason beyond the evil itself.

People don't care about the environment because they don't want to think there's a problem and that's enough for 90% of the people to tune out right there.

I have actually met the coal, oil, factory, and strip mine barons in Appalachia.

They just don't care. Neither do their employees or the people around their employees.

They're mad at the shows for drawing attention to the issue, not that it demonized them...well, yes, it did demonize them—by showing the truth. Well, aside from mutant pig deformities and Greek Goddesses passing out rings.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 12th 2018 at 4:07:59 AM

Re: Nazis.

They never lost their impact because they never went away.

Just saying.

Im taking about the public, for me there was always this disconfort the carlessness was about ALL people, the pollution is not something much of a grey area in it: we are causing, we have trouble finding new solution and....we dont like see that way.

Oh, they absolutely lost their impact. When I was growing up WW 2 was still pretty fresh in people’s minds, my father and basically every adult male around had been there and done that. They cavalier attitude we’ve had towards Nazis, towards fascism or anything like that would have been unthinkable.

I think media is a big part of that, the exposure is what ultimately desensitizes us.

Edited by archonspeaks on Nov 12th 2018 at 4:15:04 AM

Of course a lot of stuff change between it: the cold war that made people lost the idea that US was all 100% good and can do shitty things, theyr wearniness facing religious extremism and messing up stuff in war of terror and finally the separation of culture now in 2010.

It was bound to happen anyway.

It seems like it's blaming the media when the Nazis have NOT been used as the horror they have been.

We get bullshit like "The Exception" which has a Nazi protagonist.

We could use more "Nazis are very very bad" stories nowadays.

Is more that Nazi were used a shortcut to evil rather to explaing WHY they were evil, 1d4chan sumuried best: the nazis are pretty much the orcs of real world, you can butcher and kill as many of you want, how you wanted without feeling guilty at all.

Compared the alt right that are not exactly nazis but nazi cheerleaders, hiding between their soft and pathetic exterior(which in some part is actually real) to not look treating.

Again, the Alt-Right wave Nazi flags in my area.

I could link you to pictures.

Honestly, I think if people remembered Nazis are vile and put them back into video games (Wolfenstein helped) and make it an automatic "this is bad" then maybe some of those fools drifting their way would come back.

I think THE FIRST ORDER will help in Star Wars as they're pure scum.

I do agree that it’s inportant to remember why the KKK and Nazis are either evil. It is also important to remember you don’t have to be a member of those groups to be bigoted.

The first order is not a good example because they are a paramilitar organization that is a carbon copy of the empire, and because they are even more goofy than the originals.

At some point you need to "respect" the enemy.

No, Charles. Because 'making the Nazis villains again' isn't going to change the Alt-Right's rhetoric or methods.

If it becomes politically expedient for them to put the Nazi flags back in the closet and go back to the crypto-fascist symbols they used before that aren't as prominently associated with the original Nazis as the swastika and the double Sig rune, then they will do that.

But that will be all they do. They won't change their rhetoric or methods, because in Wolfenstein and the like, you're not shooting rhetoric or methods, you're shooting symbols. You're shooting German-shouting caricatures wearing Stahlhelme and Swastikas who you know are ok to shoot because they wear those specific symbols, not because they're adherents for a genocidal ideology.

Again, it's not about "Make Nazis villains again." It's about making guys who won't rent land to black people into villains again. It's about making guys who persistently keep pressuring women into relationships they've already said no to into villains again. It's about making people who make antisemitic jokes and think that's just how you do into villains again.

People need to understand that smaller-scale crimes are bad before they can understand the scope of why the Nazis are horrible. The Nazis and the KKK were able to resurge in America because Americans forgot how to recognize evil. Hate festers in the heart of the nation because people think hateful actions are acceptable behavior.

Obscuring evil behind supernatural barriers for entry does not help that.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 12th 2018 at 8:11:48 AM

You guys have a weird sense the people aren't self-identifying as Nazis or acknowledging their white supremacy.

There's no shame from the bigots.

Their racism is an advertising point these days.

But I admit my own experiences and environment may be prejudicing me.

That leads to the Alt-Right in Star Wars fandom which they're struggling to get rid of and have been since Disney's takeover.

Rooing For The E Mpire and all.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Nov 12th 2018 at 8:25:11 AM

I don't think it's just a problem with distance making Nazism harder to recognize in our own time. America wasn't really good about repudiating Nazism in its own time. Nuremberg was the exception, not the rule. Like, it goes beyond American business being inundated with prospective collaborators until collaboration became unpatriotic, or how we abandoned Jewish refugees, or had a native eugenics movement that looked at racial ideology with approval, pretty much every newspaper in America back then besides the typical socialist publications were looking on Nazi Germany with barely concealed excitement in a "He's making Germany great again!" sort of way. I've already gone into the postwar Clean Wehrmacht myth, but even during WWII, we had a habit of casting Wehrmacht soldiers as merely adversaries, rather than ideological enemies.

Our cultural memory of the Nazis was built on a flawed foundation because we've been brought up to see Nazi Germany and its society as something antithetical to American values, but that wasn't true. Capitalist America in the Thirties saw a lot to like in Hitler's society.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Nov 12th 2018 at 12:33:18 PM

For what it's worth, the new Wolfenstien games actually do point out why Nazism is evil (or so I've heard, I've yet to play them) and do go into depths explaining their ideology and why its' no good.

No, we are fully aware of that. What we're saying is that they get away with this because people don't think white supremacy is racist.

"Racism" is a dark and sinister bogeyman where You Must Be This Heinous To Ride, and even the KKK isn't considered evil enough to qualify for the label anymore. No human is.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Nov 12th 2018 at 11:45:15 AM

I don't think unknowing phrased it well, but what I think he's getting at is that while there is a lot to be said about fascists deserving ridicule and being rightfully portrayed as pathetic, you can kind of run into a problem. Having a funny villain, or a joke villain, is fine, but they can't all be like that. People want villains that they can take seriously and that are scary.

This isn't exactly that hard a balance to hit either. Del Toro already did it twice with Pan's Labyrinth and Shape of Water. Both Vidal and Strickland are very intimidating, but also empty and pathetic.

For all the nitpicks and complaints I have to the politics and philosophy of the Nasuverse, Nasu manages to accomplish this with Shinji Matou (mostly). I say mostly for a few spoilery reasons, but it isn't that difficult to make am antagonist that is shown to be pathetic and obviously deplorable.

Edited by Kakuzan on Nov 12th 2018 at 2:11:30 PM

To be fair, I would say an issue with bigotry in America is that it's actually almost too taboo. Because bigots are considered worthless scum, it discourages throwing around the label lightly. This leads to a Black-and-White Insanity wherein if you're not an outright Nazi sympathizer you're seen as not racist at all.

The issue is that not all forms of bigotry cross the moral event horizon. Some aspects of racism really are just Poking The Poodle. You shouldn't do them, but they don't make you subhuman trash either. However, it's still important for society to recognize that Poking The Poodle is bad.

But because racism is always crossing the moral event horizon, pointing out that something's "kind of racist" makes you look like an uptight, moralistic prick.

A good metaphor: Imagine if the only way to describe sub-optimal parenting was synonymous with very bad child abuse or neglect. This would make it very difficult to call out someone who merely feeds their child too much junk food because you're putting them into the same category as someone who deliberately starves their child for weeks and, by implication, giving them the same moral weight.

You have a point. There was a guy that allowed a freaking alt righter that constantly insulted our non whites members in our discord yet he left him until he started to do "actual harassing".

And of course, I got called a Knight Templar for saying that he was a loose admin.

@Protagonist: Eh, kind of? The Wolfenstein games aren't concerned with explaining why Nazis are bad. They assume you know that already. It does show you a lot of Nazis being bad (the first of the modern games properly opens with Nazi soldiers gunning down doctors and patients at a mental ward, a lot of letters have Nazis sniffing about how they need to interact with non-Aryans while cleansing them, and there's a concentration/work camp level), but it's not interested in examining their mentality or bringing up the details of their ideology, which I can see the point of. Nazis are not for debating, Nazis are for shooting.

It's weird. It does humanize the Nazis - you can find letters that are your standard 'Oh, Greta, when the war is over we will have a ranch house in Amerika' thing, and you fight KKK collaborators in the second game, briefly - but it still veers a little into the whole 'Naziism is a special kind of evil that Nazis do' thing. There is a moment where one of the Resistance fighters, who is Jimi Hendrix, points out that before the war, it was people like BJ who were "the Nazis" in the US, but it's not really explored much further than that.

Eh, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus draws a lot of parallels between American society and Nazis.

Which...duh.

But SHOCKED large parts of the audience.