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Checking the edit history, Supreme Interceptor also added another example relating to the video, referring to it as Political Correctness Gone Mad but being very vague about what exactly was wrong with it.

^^ Definitely problematic and cut-worthy to me.

^ That entry was placed under Overshadowed by Controversy, and I'm not sure it qualifies. While it may be their most divisive video, that sort of hive-poking seems to have been the point of the video. Can it really be "overshadowed" if ruffling feathers was the entire point?

Also, looking over Tropers.Supreme Interceptor's edit history, they seem to have rather subtle "anti-SJW" tendency to their editing style. For example, making substantial edits on OvershadowedByControversy.Real Life regarding Vic Mignogia's sexual misconduct allegations (basically, his edits raise the argument that the people condemning him are just as bad) and also making edits about Australia censorship policy (complete with another Pot Hole to Political Correctness Gone Mad).

There's a few other edits like this, as well.

Actually, I think it is relevant to the video.

So, the video is arguing that WWII shooters which have multiplayer should not include Germans as one of the sides for players to play, because it's "normalizing Nazis" ...except that the German Army were not Nazis. Members of the luftwaffe and wehrmacht were not allowed to join any political parties - Nazi or otherwise - because it was felt that it would hinder their ability to serve the country without bias. So having players play as the German side in mutliplayer is absolutely NOT "playing as the Nazis." And claiming otherwise is absolutely Critical Research Failure.

The example could probably stand to be more neutrally written, but it is a legitimate example.

I would also ask why it's so heinous to let players play as a German soldier, but it's totally fine for other shooters to have you play as jihadist terrorists or Soviets, both of which have committed many heinous crimes on par with the worst acts of the Nazis.

^ ROCEJ.

I say cut the example entirely. It's dangerously apologetic to the Nazis with or without context.

And I would say that history is what it is, and facts are what they are, regardless of who you think they're apologetic to, or who you think is worth being apologietic to.

But I've already accepted that that's not a fight that can be won, so do what you want.

Kill it.

A nazi is a nazi even if they like to take a different name.

They might not have been members of the Nazi party, but modern usage of the word doesn't require you to be an actual party member to be a Nazi.

Now, if it had said "member of the Nazi party," that might have been a different deal...

"So having players play as the German side in mutliplayer is absolutely NOT "playing as the Nazis." And claiming otherwise is absolutely Critical Research Failure."

The thing about CRF is that it's not just "this work makes a factual error". That's Not a Trope and never should have been because it only invites complaining. CRF is "this work makes a factual error so blatant that everyone in the audience knows it's an error". A good example of this from the main page is a commercial where the power to a house is cut, turning off someone's cellphone, even though everyone knows they have batteries and can operate without being plugged in just fine.

With this example, on the other hand, I don't think everyone knows that members of the German army during WWII were not allowed to join the Nazi Party. I didn't know that, and I don't think most people know that either.

Nuke the example. ROCEJ comes into play here.

And I suppose, to be entirely fair, there are also advertisers to worry about.

The entire argument of "not all Nazis were Germans" is anyway off topic.

In my opinion, it could be mentioned (though not under CRF, perhaps as Unfortunate Implications) the argument of "not all Germans were Nazis": that some commenters accused of invoking the trope All Germans Are Nazis ignoring that the German army was made of many conscripts and wasn't an entire horde of Nazi fanatics. Also, some commenters affirmed that the author is glossing over atrocities committed by the Allies just because they didn't happen during WW2 (for example colonialism).

Personally an entry put this way wouldn't be a ROCEJ: it's but an objective statement of what that video is criticised for, disregarding what we as tropers believe of the subject.

It's semantics. Kinda like how Neo-Nazis aren't members of the Nazi party, but they're still Nazis. They support the Nazi cause.

The myth of the Clean Wehrmacht is a myth, after all.

^ Yes, that is true too. There is a myth of "Clean Wehrmacht". But the point isn't that commenters are angry at a video about atrocities committed by common soldiers; they're criticising a video that is accused of falling in the polar opposite: to consider Wehrmacht as an omogenous army of Nazi adherents and fanatics, ignoring that most soldiers were conscripts who had few choice, all while ignoring atrocities committed by other armies. And that the video is accused of doing that is objective, regardless of our opinion on the matter.

Time for some "Um, actually".

Actually the main thesis of the video is that WWII games should not treat Allies and Axis as functionally interchangeable, for example by assigning Pv P players to "the Nazis" randomly (i.e. without choosing them actively).

It was the Weimar Republic which barred members of the military from membership in political parties. These laws were no longer enforced after 1933. According to Wikipedia, "[a]mong higher-ranking officers, 29.2% were NSDAP members by 1941."

Also, I feel stupid for saying this, but the NSDAP was the only political party in Germany after July 1933. It was a one-party system. But it's nice they cared about the ability of the soldiery to "serve the country without bias". We wouldn't want a biased Wehrmacht.

They explicitly mention terrorists as analogous cases of factions that should not be treated as interchangeable by multiplayer games (here).

This example of "Critical Research Failure" is entirely based on bad-faith nitpicking.

I think that's enough consensus to axe the example.

Next question: do we need to bring Supreme Interceptor here for a chat?

Not our decision. Trying to discuss suspensions gets pretty close to popcorn posting, to the point where people are asked to stop mini-modding.

Would be useful to hear if they have something to say anyway. Doesn't mean necessarily advocating for their ban.

^^ I think in this context, they mean bring in Supreme to the ATT for a chat, not to Edit Banned.

It's the phrasing that the moderators use, and every editor has the right (and should be) regularly checking ATT anyway. We cannot "bring in", only "invite".

Sorry about potential mini-modding. I'm just concerned that if we have, like, a closet Nazi running about the wiki, that would cause problems. I'll PM him here to explain himself.

^ Even if that's the case, we can just privately report them to moderation.

Bloody hell, this was not what I expected to wake up to today. Good lord, I think I might have ignored the situation back because of my mistrust of Extra Credits and me thinking "Okay, it's just another error that Extra Credits made", probably because I was still reeling back from their controversial videos back then. I kinda feel bad now that I wasn't there to stop the apologia when I didn't know it existed back then.

^ No worries. All of us agreed to axe the example anyway.

Time for some "Um, actually".

Well, if you want...

That the wehrmacht and luftwaffe were not allowed to join political parties is a pretty well known fact. When we say that "higher ranking officers" were joining the party... yes, and by "higher ranking officers" we mean mostly the SS who never had that restriction, and people who were of a high enough level in the government to be given special permission. And even if you were right... 29%? That's your big "proving me wrong" thing? So your entire argument boils down to the fact that you're only mostly wrong? (Even though you're actually entirely wrong.)

As for the "myth of the clean Wehrmacht" ...that entire argument is basically just "I don't want this to be true, so it's not."

The one point I'll give you is that I'll admit I didn't actually watch the video. I went by the description and some of the comments.

Now, to make it clear, I'm NOT trying to defend the Nazis. What I hate is historical revisionism. There are real lessons that we needed to learn from World War II, but we didn't because the only lesson people managed to learn was "Nazis are mean" and now we're repeating all those same mistakes that led to the Nazis the first time, thinking we're doing the opposite. ...and you know, maybe this fact should also be a lesson for us to learn, but it won't be either.

Now, like I said, I accepted a long time ago that this isn't a battle that can be won. The hatred of Nazis as some sort of unique evil in history is something that has been hard-ground into our heads by media and culture since we were all born, and it's not something any amount of logic is going to overcome. Even if I convinced people to keep the example now, it'd be brought up again in a week, then another week after that, and after that, every time some new person saw it and got triggered.

So I'm not going to fight the example being removed, especially since I admit I didn't actually watch the video, so hey, maybe you're right about it being a bad example.

But do not try to "um, actually" me on this.

...

I think everyone is ignoring something glaringly obvious here.

Critical Research Failure is about things everyone should know about. Things that would take a five-second Google search at most to learn about. This entire stupid debate is just proving the example doesn't count, not because of inaccuracy (though it may be inaccurate), but because obviously there's enough confusion surrounding the subject that there's no way in hell this is a Critical Research Failure.

^ And that I will also agree with.

I say we either agree to end this debate before it spirals into even more sensitive irrelevant discourse or we call a mod to lock the thread.

Yeah, I'm done.

^ Thanks for wasting our time!

^ You're not helping. I find it ironic that somebody asking to bring in the problematic troper was berated as inviting unproductive posting, while actual unproductive posting is continuing because we got off topic from the problematic troper.

Anyway... what about the stuff that Nubian said, about the original troper having a possible agenda?

^ I'm calling them here myself.

I've put a notice on this troper.

Great. It now seems that I've gotten branded as a "Nazi apologist" and a "racist" just because I've pointed out that not all soldiers who fought in WWII for the Nazis were ethnically German or even Nazis.

What's next? I'm gonna get accused of being a "white supremacist" solely because I'm to the right of Josef Stalin?

Yeah, I actually have to agree with you, at least about the factual part. No idea about how valid it is as an example, however.

Well, Dan in the video strawmans the whole "not all soldiers fighting for the Nazis were Germans or even Nazis" argument by resort to a shitty "looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck" counter-argument... that falls apart if you're well aware of the fact that everyone on both sides (Allies and Axis) enlisted auxiliaries or conscripts in their forces.

And Nazi Germany was no different whatsoever.

I think saying "not every soldier in the Nazi army was a Nazi" is kind of silly. Maybe they didn't all align with the ideology (since enlisting in the army was mandatory for healthy men, I believe), but for the purpose of war, they were soldiers fighting for the Nazis. And as others have said, the Nazi Party was the only party in Germany at the time, and the one the army represented. Calling them "Nazi soldiers" is not some ridiculous misunderstanding of WWII.

As for the stuff about them not all being German, that's more understandable, but how many multicultural Nazi armies are there in the media to begin with? And if this is commentary on how video games depict Nazis, why is it the video that's getting these criticisms instead of the video games that depict the Nazis as Germans?

(Of course, I don't really have full context on the video, so correct me if I'm wrong, because the entry sucks at explaining how any of this connects to the specific video.)

EDIT: Ninja'd, I appreciate the context but the entry should probably say that. Plus, again, even if you're not a Nazi, if you're fighting in the Nazi army, you're still part of the Nazi cause, intentions be damned.

Oh, sure. And let’s conveniently ignore the fact that some (not all) of those conscripts/auxiliaries were pressed into under the threat of their lives. I mean, most of them probably didn’t ask, want or need to fight for some genocidal maniac who tried to commit genocides against Jews or anyone who wasn’t of Germanic descent in the name of his utopian pipe dream of “Aryan supremacy”, which was built on nothing but pseudoscientific horse shit.

And as for my criticism towards the “Stop Normalising Nazis” video is justified, is very straightforward and simple: making a video about playing as Nazis in WWII-era shooters will make you into a literal Nazi is stupid and pointless. Nazism is one of, if not the most demonised political ideologies on the planet because everyone and their mum know just how vile the stuff Nazis did.

Hell, I can’t even name a single fictional work that portrays Nazism or its adherents in a positive light. I mean, if you, as a writer, really want your audience to know that your villains are downright evil, make them stand-ins for the Nazis. Including but not limited to the Galactic Empire, the Daleks, the Helghast, Party INGSOC, the Umbrella Corporation, the Mobile Infantry, Skynet, the Red Ribbon Army and tons of other fictional villains I can't name.

What more proof do you moral busybodies want, which proves I’m not a “Nazi apologist”?!?!

Cool, doesn't make the Critical Research Failure entry any more valid, though, because you haven't given any explanation as to why the video contradicts any common knowledge about Nazis being drafted. I think most people understand that humans are complex and that Hitler liked dogs or whatever, doesn't mean they didn't fight for the fucking Nazis. I guarantee you that the descendants of Holocaust vitims don't give a shit that some of the people who captured their ancestors to imprison or kill them were reluctantly capturing them. We got a trope for this argument, BTW.

In fact, your explanation and your strange grudge against how many works depict the Nazis as bad makes the entry read less like a reasonable criticism, and more like an excuse to complain that somebody has the audacity to remind the world that Nazis are indeed bad.

To those of you who haven't watched the video linked in the first post, it's only 6 minutes long, so watching it for research won't take long at all.

v That video is 33 minutes long.

For what it's worth, Three Arrows (an actual German with insight into German history) made a video about this subject. Ultimately, his conclusion basically came down to "Even if every German soldier wasn't literally a card-carrying Nat Soc, that's a tiny hair to split and ultimately doesn't matter".

Also, whether or not Nazis are portrayed as VillainsByDefault in modern media is of no consequence, because modern Nazi sympathizers and other fascists will simply move the goalposts and deny that they are actually Nazis or fascists. It's a pretty common tactic for modern supremacists to denounce supremacy while still parroting their every cause.

The problem I have with the whole A Nazi By Any Other Name trope is that it’s done to death at this point and overexposed the Nazis. The Nazis have been a dead horse for half a century as they’ve gotten out as madmen, their “scientific theories” have been rendered bunk, and everyone knows that Hitler was a sociopath. There’s no way in hell they’re ever coming back in today’s political climate.

...This is still completely irrelevant to whether or not the example is a Critical Research Failure.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how this isn't agenda-based editing and apologia anymore.

I honestly don’t give a shit anymore about Critical Research Failure this or Critical Research Failure that and even if I get banned. I want off of this damn site and I’m done trying to explain myself to a bunch of over sensitive leftists who can’t read between the damn lines.

Asking for a lock. Probably need a new thread or something to discuss how to properly handle the example. It's become way too much about the user(and the moderation can handle that either way).

Why does it seem that Rallybot 2 only ever posts to defend and/or whitewash right-wing users and comments?

^ I've seen him make posts completely unrelated to right-wing users.

Anyway, this thread has been derailed enough. Let's wait for the mods to lock it.

I'll bring it back to the example to try and resolve it.

The fact it led to this much debate means it's probably not Critical Research Failure. CRF requires the example to be so obviously false that anybody could recognize it as a mistake. If the video outright says, "Nobody fought for the Nazis during WWII unless they supported the ideology" and outright refuses the notion of a draft, then that might count but needs to be rewritten. If it's just somebody interpreting the claim that "fighting for the Nazis helps their ideology regardless of intention" to be the above, then that's really not the same. If it's just claiming that the premise of the video, that Nazis shouldn't be playable in video games, is objectively false, that's based in opinion and thus can't count here.

^ That basically hits the nail on the head. Just because something is wrong doesn't mean it's CRF.

Also, when the fuck did I defend or whitewash anything here? What I said was (paraphrasing to be more specific) "the original editor's claim that not everyone fighting for the Nazis in WWII was German and/or actually supported the Nazis is factually true." The latter depends on the specific definition of "support," but I do not include those who were forced to fight for them at gunpoint. If you want to debate that, it's best to go elsewhere.

EDIT: Actually, no, I said I was done and not going to let myself get baited into starting again.

OK, that's enough. Johnny, please don't derail ATT threads into being about their participants. Thanks. Supreme Interceptor wanted to leave, so I have obliged them - aside from agenda-driven editing there is also some natter, shoddy Example Indentation, This Troper and grammar issues.

Regarding the edits in question, I am automatically suspicious of claims that the German military weren't Nazis given the Clean Wehrmacht myth. Even if any formulation of the claim were strictly true - and nobody here has given proof - the arguments that it wouldn't count as Critical Research Failure as it's too non-obvious are compelling. Keep it off.

How about next time, we just make these reports private. Public threads like these tend to invite discourse and derail into meaningless conversations and arguments anyway.

EDIT: Double post.

Problem with that is, often tropers like this have to have their edit history looked at, and possibly reverted if there's signs of vandalism or agenda-based editing. Case in point, as I mentioned above, lots of Supreme Interceptor's editing history is very, very subtle in bolstering "anti-SJW" viewpoints, such as "both-siding" Vic Mignognia's assault allegations. Sometimes you need the troper body to weigh in on them and/or start mass cleanup.

This report doesn't need to be private, especially if the issue is an example that might need to be deleted. There might be something we need to discuss and link back to to dissuade edit wars. We should just be mature enough not to derail the conversation.

A private report can be useful, for sometimes ban evasion problems, but when it comes to examples, it's best not to do so.

It doesn't sound like a proper example of CRF to me either. If I'm reading the issue right(It's a pretty long ATT).

How about this discussion continues here.