Comic Strips

Double punch sexist nazis

This is also the rationale to people defending Nazis because "it's just their opinions".

I find that it is mostly Americans who do this sort of thing because of exaltation of free speech. I don't wish it would happen to the US, but it is primarily because they haven't had much experience with inciting hatred that led to genocide. Other parts of the world have had this experience so they have restrictions.

Don't get me wrong, I love free speech as much as the next guy, but as seeing how unbridled speech led to genocide in many cases, I used to be absolutist and now I am on the fence. I think free speech is something that will be perpetually debated. I was told the social contract could define what is acceptable speech and what isn't; but society at times is not a great arbiter of many things.

Try seemingly open-minded questions about what they think. Gently introducing questioning will avoiding confrontation can work to shake their beliefs. It can be satisfying to see them become more nuanced as they try to explain.

So I’m going to share something agent_nycto said once, because it works very well on people like this:

I don't think you should be quiet, it makes them feel like everyone is agreeing with them and makes everyone miserable. Time to introduce you to my favorite game to play with conservatives, Politics Judo!

So you hear them rant about a thing. Some dumbass talking point. Let's use gun control. It's pretty easy to know in advance what the talking points are since they never shut up and parrot the same problem and solution over and over. "Shouldn't take guns, it's a mental problem not a gun problem".

Things are basically boiled down to a problem and a solution. A lot of people try to convince people that the problem isn't what people think it is, and that's hard to do. Even if they are just misinformed, it feels like trying to dismiss their fears.

So what you do is you agree with the problem, then use lefty talking points as the solution.

"Oh yeah, gun violence is pretty bad! And I love the Constitution, we shouldn't mess with that!" (Use small words and also throw in some patriotism, makes them feel like you're on their side. You want to sound like a right wing media con artist) "so instead of taking guns away, we should instead start having more, free, mental health care in this country. Since it's a mental health problem and these people are crazy, that is the solution that makes the most sense!" (Don't try to get them to agree to your solution, just state it as the obvious one)

It becomes weaponized cognitive dissonance. Their brains fry because you said the things you should to agree with them, flagged yourself as an ally, but then said the thing they were told is the bad and shouldn't want.

If they try to argue with your solution, rinse and repeat to a different talking point. "Oh yeah it might cost more, and we shouldn't have to pay more for it, so we should get the rich people who are screwing average hard working Americans over by not paying taxes to do that. We should shut down tax loopholes and increase funding to the IRS so they can go after them instead of the little guy"

Always sound like you're agreeing with them, but giving solutions that they disagree with that seem to be off topic but are related.

Either they will get flustered and stop, or they will slip up and say something racist or sexist or something, and then you can have HR bust them. Document it and also see if you're in a single party consent state.

Tips fedora

M'property

It depends also who you are. That person in the comic saying he’s nice is a guy and not the of the group of people(women) that are so aggressively disrespected. How would he know?

It also falls into the “decorum” sphere. Someone who isn’t yelling while they’re throwing your rights in the garbage is not nice. Someone opening the gas chamber door for you is not nice. Surface level means nothing and it has always meant nothing but it takes a lot of energy for the vast majority of people to be thinking deeper than that all the time so they fall back on easy, high-level observations.

Now, I won’t say someone can’t be turned around. Many are pretty far gone, though, and it’s not their victims’ job to be nice and supportive to their oppressors. So yes, they might just be humans but the warning given above needs to be more of a “he’s kinda a misogynist right now but I’ve been working on him and he’s getting better. Let me know if you’re uncomfortable at any point though and I’ll take care of it.”

The problem is you need to depict their actions as evil and monstrous, or fascism might appear to be a reasonable solution. Isolating the evil of fascism from the ordinary people pushing for it is subtle and complicated. Especially when some fascists really do cross the line into evil behaviour.

Basically humans are often bad at sharing subtle messages widely. Regardless of how much nuance you add to begin with, the message will always devolve for most people into either “hitler evil” or “hitler wasn’t that bad, he was nice to animals”, so given the options, most people prefer to lean into the evil side and avoid normalising fascism, with the inevitable consequence that it appears you have to start wearing skulls and torturing people in order to be a fascist and people forget that for the vast majority of everyday fascists it was “just politics” right up until they lost the war and had to start rethinking things.

I offer no solutions, but I don’t think you can blame just the bourgeoisie, but rather the human condition in general, us vs them, and the difficulty in sharing detailed concepts to a wide audience. There will always be “bad guys” who are so bad that we can’t possibly become them. I do think we’ve gotten better at telling stories with complex evil, but the flip side is that seems to just reduce people’s resolve to act. Almost like the 2 options built into our brains are “us vs them, kill the evils ones” and “meh, corruption is inevitable, just ignore it”.

It hadn't occurred to me before, but sometime about a year ago I ran into a group of guys who are passionate about nature: talking about preserving woods, how majestic deer could be standing in the mist in the early morning, how much they liked a particular species of bird because of it's call, expressing concern about civilization's impact on the health and well-being about animals.

They were all hunters. I honestly believe they really did respect and admire the animals they were hunting; they didn't want them to suffer, they weren't out specifically to cause pain. I still struggle with the dichotomy, but I have no doubt they saw themselves as animal lovers. I think there are probably trophy hunters who are just in it for the ego, but I believe a lot of hunters are in it to get out in the woods, away from civilization, and on their way, commune with nature.

Don't get me wrong: there are other ways of achieving that without hunting, and there are malicious, hurtful, broken people. It's probably more common that what we'd attribute to petty meanness is simply a different set of ethics - and, no, I'm not saying all ethics are equally good or right or valid. But the people who hold them can be - as you say - perfectly polite, nice, kind, thoughtful people. They just hold unjustifiable opinions about some things.

Raymond is probably "nice" to the fellow white dude, polite and not physically aggressive.

Raymond is not nice to society.

It’s like when people romanticise the old London gangsters and say they were polite and always looked after their mother. That still doesn’t make up for a lifetime of criminal intimidation, physical assault and murder.

If someone’s polite but just waiting for a local chapter of blackshirts to form they’re not nice people.

Imo nice and kind are separate qualities, mutually exclusive. Raymond is unkind towards women, but he may have a nice demeanor. Lots of evil people can be nice around others in chit chat, but cruel in their actions and beliefs.

This is an interesting question. Given a sufficiently functional environment "Raymond" may be functionally harmless as its impossible to for him to have anything crazy he wants. In a functional enough one he wont even admit the crazy shit he believes because it would see him excluded and possibly fired.

Do we then consider him eccentric instead of a POS? Is a sex murder a "nice" if he's behind bars and we only talk to him about normal stuff and forget that he would gladly rape and murder you without the bars?

At some point we need to understand that someone who would take away your rights and potentially kill you if you didn't roll over and accept his dominion isn't "nice" just because he exists in an environment where he isn't in a position to work his will.

That's the joke and it's good you picked up on it.

People need to face the consequences of their beliefs within the circle of their loved ones. If that fails, the next social circle upwards like their friends. But right now it feels like even that has failed and now people are okay with letting awful beliefs fester in their neighbors because it's "politics". That's not okay, as this comic relies on.

I imagine something akin to a draft or arranged marriages. You're not married, you're not married, congrats you're now married.

Well, two wives just seems excessive