so here’s an attempt at a more coherent way of stating why the Nazi flag is so abhorrent
It seems like some lonely bitter shut-in on the Internet referred to feminists as Nazis. Obviously this deserves all the scorn and derision in the world, because comparing a social movement whose members you disagree with to genocidal tyrants is absolutely ridiculous.
However. Whipping up a Nazi-themed flag and expressing pride in being compared to the Nazis? It’s an appropriation of mass murder to make a joke about some incoherent loser on the Internet. This makes it seem like the Nazis were some old Internet in-joke ready to be mined for comedic gold.
I can’t believe this needs to be said - but Nazis are not actually some funny pop-culture reference ready-made for fun pretend flags. Millions of Jews and Roma were rounded up and slaughtered based on ascribed aspects of their ethnic identity, and the rest of the world actively trapped them by denying them refugee status. I’ve been to a big event in honour of a relative, and there were a hundred people from my side of his family and five from the other side of his family - because every member of his paternal grandparents’ extended families was killed in the Holocaust. And this is a situation that basically everyone I’ve met of European or northern Mediterranean Jewish descent has experienced. That’s what you’re mocking, here.
Moreover, joking about genocide normalizes it - it makes it seem like something that happens over and over in history, and it’s not such a big deal, and look we’re going to be appropriate the symbols of these mass murderers to be witty and satirical. That is not fucking okay! Normalizing genocide means that when we see it happening again there’s less urgency to respond, and less openness to rescuing refugees. Joking about it over and over makes society care about it less.
Does this sound reasonable? Because I’m seeing a whole lot of posts defending the flag right now, and I find that absolutely fucking appalling.
