tastykake:

A PROBLEM, THOUGH, with the “hitler was in fact human, which does not preclude him from ALSO having been literally 100% bad and evil” stuff that i was talking about the other day, in relation to the Punching Nazis Discourse, is that this sometimes leads to ppl going “AND ISN’T THAT THE SCARIEST PART OF ALL, THAT ANY OF US COULD BE A HITLER!!!!!!” and like—

i mean, ok, yes. the fact that we are all capable of doing terrible things is pretty scary, sure, but i also think u have to examine where you’re situated in relation to this stuff when u make comments like that—by which i mean, if u ask me, the scariest thing about hitler is arguably, oh, idk, the fact that if he’d had his way more thoroughly, neither i nor literally anyone i’m related to would exist? like, that’s what i find scary, personally, lmao, but that’s just me.

(and also: i think there’s a tendency sometimes to use “hitler” and “nazi” as a stand-in for simply “the literal most evil a person can be”—which, fair! not unreasonable! but also, hitler in particular and nazis in general are NOT just the embodiment of standard issue evil as a vague concept; rather, they’re the embodiment of evil in combination with some specific violent and oppressive and powerful ideologies, and those of us on the other end of those ideologies are like—i mean, i’m not saying i couldn’t ever become EVIL, bcs i could, bcs i am a human and thus fallible! but i’m pretty damn fucking 8000% confident i could never become a nazi.)

anyhow, point is, i think the ability to look at hitler or at nazism and say “the scariest part of this is that it reminds me of my own human capacity for evil,” rather than “the scariest part of this is the fact that these people would literally murder every person like me in the entire world, if they could, and the world historically has never been all that invested in stopping them” speaks to a sort of privilege that needs to be thought about a little bit more, when engaging in these discussions. the ability to have that distance is a privilege—the ability to look at this stuff and draw broad theoretical conclusions about Man’s Inhumanity 2 Man or w/e rather than just like, feel incoherent visceral rage and/or blind paralyzing terror. basically, tldr, everyone should punch nazis, but also bear in mind as u do that if you aren’t descended from ppl who were the literal targets of nazis, ur relationship to nazism is necessarily going to be different from that of those of us who are, i guess, is my point.