I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be trump himself…
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I think some of these comments echo my initial concerns.
I believe assumptions are dangerous. They can serve very easily to further mariginalise, radicalise and alienate people from their valid detractors.
I abhor racism and fascism in all forms. I am a Voluntaryist in philosophy. I am anti authoritarian in every fibre of my neuronal tangle.
I am troubled with the term nazi being used in the original context. I fear it may even be a little offensive to those that suffered under that regime.
I also have a little trouble with the right wind extremist label. I think we need to reserve our most extreme language for the most extreme cases.
The language of these issues is something of cultural interest and worry to me at present.
No assumptions need to made. People wear those hats (or armbands, or party pins, etc.) to signal their political affiliation … with a right-wing populist movement.
[ETA: this is an example of a later edit adding new information, clarifying a point, etc.]
Well, have a cookie (unless you’re an Objectivist or Libertarian style Voluntaryist, because scratch the surface and you’ll find social Darwinist authoritarianism right underneath). But being anti-authoritarian means nothing if you’re not willing to acknowledge authoritarianism even when it’s shoved in your face.
What original context? Ruben’s cartoon doesn’t use the term or show the swastika. My own initial response comparing the Nazi armband to the MAGA hat (deleted when your comment was flagged away) was about how the two articles of clothing were both used to signal the wearers’ political affiliation. My comment was as follows:
You mean the kind of history resources that describe Germans in the early 1930s saying “Wow, since when was someone who wore a stupid armband a right-wing extremist?”
What does that have to do with anything? If your comments get flagged here it will be for engaging in apologism on behalf of bigots.
To be clear, from Ernst Rohm to Philip Johnson to Milo Yiannopoulos, history has shown that there have been all too many LGB people willing to make common cause with or excuses for those fascists who would destroy their less privileged brothers and sisters. Sadly, some trans people might do this as well today.
Both the MAGA hat and the swastika armband happen to be symbols of right-wing extremism, but I made it clear that the MAGA hat wearers’ ideology is distinct from Nazism. @papasan’s cartoon points out the similarities between the Confederates, the Nazis, and the MAGgAts without drawing direct equivalences between their ideologies.
In the context of American history since 1945, this movement is a right-wing extremist one: openly hostile to the institutions of liberal democracy, strongman-worshipping, anti-intellectual, picking on scapegoats, and emboldening racists.
Your concern is noted. It won’t keep the U.S. from sliding into right-wing extremism, but I’m sure it will be a comfort when thugs yelling “MAGA” treat you like they did Jussie Smollett or Heather Heyer.
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It’s all of the above, and then some (see also C. Browning’s “Ordinary Men”). Mayer sometimes gets neglected in these conversations, so thanks for bringing him up. Here’s a recent review that revisits his book:
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Thank you for your considered response. I’m exploring ideas and am very open to be educated at all junctures.
I’m glad you exist and write; if course.
Like I said I’m probably quite naive; and thank for for the cookie! 
Ps. I couldn’t find the option to edit ones post on the mobile site, is that possible?
There should be a pencil button underneath your posts. Press that to edit. Note that the convention here on BB is to be explicit about substantive edits (as opposed to copy editing, correcting grammar) once someone has responded to you. Usually that’s done by putting the edit in square brackets with the note ETA (“edited to add”). I’ll put an example in my preceding comment to you. Stealth edits substantially changing a comment’s thrust, especially after someone has responded, are frowned upon here.
Also, you can reply directly to a specific comment by pressing the Reply button in it (or by highlighting a specific bit you want to respond to, which will bring up a Quote button, as I did above). No need to keep scrolling to the top.
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I’m so glad I clicked through to the excerpt. I’m going to read that… ugh things like this resonate in such a spooky way. Diversions on diversions…
" The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting . It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your ‘little men,’ your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had."
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Indeed. More from the review of the Mayer book I posted above:
With evident fatigue, the baker reported, “One had no time to think. There was so much going on.” His account was similar to that of one of Mayer’s colleagues, a German philologist in the country at the time, who emphasized the devastatingly incremental nature of the descent into tyranny and said that “we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.” The philologist pointed to a regime bent on diverting its people through endless dramas (often involving real or imagined enemies), and “the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise.” In his account, “each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’” that people could no more see it “developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
This is why we can’t waste time assuming the best about people who wear symbols of right-wing extremism.
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I assume you’re referring to this?
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Indeed. MAGA hats are not some innocuous fashion thing that’s been taken over by assholes, like trilby hats or Doc Martens boots with particular color of laces; the hat exists only to make the statement “I’m with Donald Trump, I support his policies!”
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We are.
If you’re not scared out of your gourd right now, you’re not paying attention.
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Or… it could be the same old story of ‘OPP’: Other People’s Problems.
“It’s not happening to me or the people I care about so it’s not a problem that concerns me.”
People who think like that seem to expect their privilege to protect them, kinda like ‘plot armor’ in movies & books.
The problem with such wishful thinking/denial (aside from the inherent lack of empathy) is that evil and corruption are a relentless disease that exist only to spread and destroy whatever they touch.
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tfw when i hear my various students talking about current events and they ask for my opinion. you might but many others wouldn’t believe how hard it is for me to speak in a normal conversational tone and not run off screaming as if my hair were on fire.
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I can totally imagine.
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