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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
People do good things and bad things completely independent of being a member of the Nazi party. Look it up. The Nazi parti is still bad, and pushing people to do bad things. Some of those people would do bad things nonetheless, John Rabe did good thing despite it, but the influence of the Nazi party was incontestably a negative one.

The Nazi party was a single organisation. That meant it had a formal hierarchy and the means by which the senior members can enforce their will on the rest of the party. That's a massively different thing to Islam.

To expand on that, ISIS, like the Nazi party, is a force for evil. But of course, like the Nazis they are a single organisation. We can even extend that out to Wahhabism, but we're stretching the point, and we're still just talking about one regional interpretation of one faction of one sect of the whole faith.

See the difference?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power.

And then it took that state, and that "functional power," much of which was based on slave labor, and proceeded to shatter itself, and those states surrounding it, causing damage to such a degree that the ramifications are still clearly visible and felt to this day.

 Hordini wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power.

And then it took that state, and that "functional power," much of which was based on slave labor, and proceeded to shatter itself, and those states surrounding it, causing damage to such a degree that the ramifications are still clearly visible and felt to this day.

Now point me at a functional world power that hasn't. We in the United States love to think of Nazi Germany as 'evil' because we won the war and got to write the history books to keep our good-versus-evil narrative of WWII alive (also it's convenient shorthand for 'bad', which is short enough it shouldn't need a shorthand, but people are irrational that way), but history is littered with nations and regimes that started wars and killed more people for worse reasons than 'we need to get back at the French for a hundred and fifty years of screwing us over'.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power.

And then it took that state, and that "functional power," much of which was based on slave labor, and proceeded to shatter itself, and those states surrounding it, causing damage to such a degree that the ramifications are still clearly visible and felt to this day.

Now point me at a functional world power that hasn't. We in the United States love to think of Nazi Germany as 'evil' because we won the war and got to write the history books to keep our good-versus-evil narrative of WWII alive (also it's convenient shorthand for 'bad', which is short enough it shouldn't need a shorthand, but people are irrational that way), but history is littered with nations and regimes that started wars and killed more people for worse reasons than 'we need to get back at the French for a hundred and fifty years of screwing us over'.

Nazi Germany was evil, and very few regimes in history can match them in the level of destruction they caused. They sparked the most destructive war in history and committed industrialized genocide on a mass scale, and if you really think WWII was just about getting back at the French, you really need to do some more research on the matter.

In addition, the crap about history being written only by the victors isn't really true, at least not anymore. It might have been true in ancient times, when the victors would destroy all traces of enemy civilizations, burn their libraries, and salt their fields. But Germany and Austria are filled with books on the second world war, written from the German and Austrian perspective, and besides that, there is not even a single "victor" narrative. Russian histories of the war have their own perspective as well, and there was much that went on on the Eastern Front that the west was not even aware of until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Now point me at a functional world power that hasn't. We in the United States love to think of Nazi Germany as 'evil' because we won the war and got to write the history books to keep our good-versus-evil narrative of WWII alive (also it's convenient shorthand for 'bad', which is short enough it shouldn't need a shorthand, but people are irrational that way), but history is littered with nations and regimes that started wars and killed more people for worse reasons than 'we need to get back at the French for a hundred and fifty years of screwing us over'.

Most world powers end up doing something pretty nasty sooner or later. Most of them don't industrialise the extermination of political dissidents and ethnic minorities.

The Nazis really were extraordinarily, uniquely awful. Even if you compare to the other awful regimes of the time, which were themselves pretty remarkably terrible by world standards, Stalinist Russia and Imperialist Japan, the Nazis comfortably beat both regimes for the rate and extent of its atrocities.


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 Hordini wrote:
In addition, the crap about history being written only by the victors isn't really true, at least not anymore. It might have been true in ancient times, when the victors would destroy all traces of enemy civilizations, burn their libraries, and salt their fields. But Germany and Austria are filled with books on the second world war, written from the German and Austrian perspective, and besides that, there is not even a single "victor" narrative. Russian histories of the war have their own perspective as well, and there was much that went on on the Eastern Front that the west was not even aware of until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

True. And it's worth pointing out that if winning means you get to be seen as good then Stalinist Russia did something wrong, because they won the war and yet it's pretty close to universally believed that was a gakky, gakky regime.

Spectacular, irrelevant, majestic Godwin.

 sebster wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Now point me at a functional world power that hasn't. We in the United States love to think of Nazi Germany as 'evil' because we won the war and got to write the history books to keep our good-versus-evil narrative of WWII alive (also it's convenient shorthand for 'bad', which is short enough it shouldn't need a shorthand, but people are irrational that way), but history is littered with nations and regimes that started wars and killed more people for worse reasons than 'we need to get back at the French for a hundred and fifty years of screwing us over'.

Most world powers end up doing something pretty nasty sooner or later. Most of them don't industrialise the extermination of political dissidents and ethnic minorities.

The Nazis really were extraordinarily, uniquely awful. Even if you compare to the other awful regimes of the time, which were themselves pretty remarkably terrible by world standards, Stalinist Russia and Imperialist Japan, the Nazis comfortably beat both regimes for the rate and extent of its atrocities.

Stalin conducted brutal purges of his government and society that's squashed Russia and left it a pawn of warmongering strongmen to this day. Mao instituted policies that led to famine and killed tens of millions of people through general idiocy. The US Air Force conducted systemic and militarily dubious campaigns against civilian targets while privately acknowledging that if the war went the other way they'd be the ones on the stand for war crimes while Roosevelt attempted a totalitarian coup through Congress at home and destroyed the Asian-American population on the west coast for no reason. Japan slaughtered Chinese and Korean civilians and attempted to wipe out their languages and cultures on an industrial scale.

And yet Nazi Germany gets singled out as the evil one in such august company? What makes them more evil than any other major power?

 sebster wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Et tu sebster?

To take up your analogy (and you guys really should stop with the crappy analogies), if the Bible said that abortion was a sin and that all abortionists should be killed, then yes Christianity would be responsible for people blowing up abortion clinics because their holy book tells them so, but no that little old lady who attends a small church in an outer suburb of Dallas would have no responsibility in it because she wouldn't be obeying that particular tenet of her faith.

How can something be the responsibility of a religion, but not the people who follow that religion? How can you blame a concept?

Because someone that follows a religion doesn't automatically does everything that that religion tells them to.

Even though Islam exhorts all Muslims to kill the infidels and the apostates, etc, individual Muslims are not responsible for any of those atrocities unless they actually practice them.

 Hordini wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power.

And then it took that state, and that "functional power," much of which was based on slave labor, and proceeded to shatter itself, and those states surrounding it, causing damage to such a degree that the ramifications are still clearly visible and felt to this day.

Now point me at a functional world power that hasn't. We in the United States love to think of Nazi Germany as 'evil' because we won the war and got to write the history books to keep our good-versus-evil narrative of WWII alive (also it's convenient shorthand for 'bad', which is short enough it shouldn't need a shorthand, but people are irrational that way), but history is littered with nations and regimes that started wars and killed more people for worse reasons than 'we need to get back at the French for a hundred and fifty years of screwing us over'.

Nazi Germany was evil, and very few regimes in history can match them in the level of destruction they caused. They sparked the most destructive war in history and committed industrialized genocide on a mass scale, and if you really think WWII was just about getting back at the French, you really need to do some more research on the matter.

In addition, the crap about history being written only by the victors isn't really true, at least not anymore. It might have been true in ancient times, when the victors would destroy all traces of enemy civilizations, burn their libraries, and salt their fields. But Germany and Austria are filled with books on the second world war, written from the German and Austrian perspective, and besides that, there is not even a single "victor" narrative. Russian histories of the war have their own perspective as well, and there was much that went on on the Eastern Front that the west was not even aware of until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Leopold II's activity in the Congo and the Holodomor were both genocidal campaigns approaching the Holocaust in size, I don't see them becoming synonyms for evil. Genghis Khan, Hong Xiuquan, Tamurlane, An Lushan, none of these get name-dropped in insult wars. 'Communist' isn't an insult at the level 'Nazi' is despite the fact that vastly more people were slaughtered on an industrial scale under Communist governments than ever under Nazi governments.

I'm not here claiming Nazi Germany was positive. Bringing it up as the root of all evil in hopes that it'd make blaming ideologies for the actions of their adherents more logical doesn't help no matter how many people the Nazis killed.

 sebster wrote:
How can something be the responsibility of a religion, but not the people who follow that religion? How can you blame a concept?

Why would you even care for finding someone/something to blame? And then pretend responsibility is exclusive?
As a matter of fact, one can simultaneously consider that the terrorists are responsible for the terrible things they do, but that those things are also a consequence of an ideology.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Can you take the Nazi party as an idea with no people involved and blame any action on the idea instead of the people involved? Does blame lie with the individual's decision or with the idea? Are individual members of the Nazi party absolved of responsibility because the party did the bad things? Can an idea do bad things with no people? Is the idea to blame for the actions of people who claim influence from the idea?

Why “instead”? Where do you people got this strange idea of exclusiveness?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power.

Are you arguing that the Nazi party had a good influence? Really? I will not even try to prove you wrong, I will just click on the yellow triangle of friendship if so.

 sebster wrote:
The Nazi party was a single organisation. That meant it had a formal hierarchy and the means by which the senior members can enforce their will on the rest of the party. That's a massively different thing to Islam.

Yeah, it was not a perfect analogy. It was not supposed to. It was just an example to show that people having an ideology and doing good things does not absolve the ideology, and that we should look at an ideology and judge it on what it preaches, rather than on the good people that did good despite having that ideology because they were good people.

PhantomViper wrote:
Islam exhorts all Muslims to kill the infidels and the apostates, etc,

I challenge you to back up this statement.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm not here claiming Nazi Germany was positive.

If you are not, you are doing a very good impersonation. Why contradict me when I said it had a bad influence by telling me how it did great things, then?
Just stop. If you want to convince us, other regimes were terrible, try to convince us other regimes were terrible, but stop acting like the Nazi party was a good thing.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Islam exhorts all Muslims to kill the infidels and the apostates, etc,

I challenge you to back up this statement.

That really isn't hard you know, the Quran alone has over 100 verses telling Muslims to go to war and kill infidels and apostates:

Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...
but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)"

Quran (4:89) - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks."

Those are just 2 examples.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Can you take the Nazi party as an idea with no people involved and blame any action on the idea instead of the people involved? Does blame lie with the individual's decision or with the idea? Are individual members of the Nazi party absolved of responsibility because the party did the bad things? Can an idea do bad things with no people? Is the idea to blame for the actions of people who claim influence from the idea?

Why “instead”? Where do you people got this strange idea of exclusiveness?

From the black-and-white this-is-true if-you-don't-agree-with-everything-I-say-you-must-support-massacring-all-the-Jews attitude you lot are taking, I guess.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power.

Are you arguing that the Nazi party had a good influence? Really? I will not even try to prove you wrong, I will just click on the yellow triangle of friendship if so.

I'm playing devil's advocate because I have a pathological hatred for black-and-white Hollywood history (America GOOOOOD, Germany BAAAAAD). I'm trying to take an objective view of history here; Nazi Germany was a poorly-run fascist regime that rose to power on dubiously-legal manoeuvering, maintained power through political violence, started an unnecessary war in an effort to keep power, got lots of people killed, and got replaced after their country was occupied. Did they improve the state of the German economy in the 1930s? Yes. Did they (however accidentally) create a number of technological breakthroughs during their war effort? Yes. Do I personally think this justifies killing millions of people? No. Were the Nazis, overall, a good thing for Germany? No.

After actually studying Nazi Germany and the Second World War I've found the Nazi government to be less the ROOT OF ALL EVIL and more sad and pathetic; they were incredibly badly organized, the state they built was incredibly inefficient and not sustainable in the long term, they ran perhaps the most amateurish wartime government possible, and most of their successes came through luck and accidents. In a room full of paranoid lunatics (Stalin), bumbling idiots (Mao), and extremists with good intentions and reprehensible tactics (Roosevelt) Hitler is a toddler who picked up a gun. He kills people, and it's tragic, but it's almost as much of an accident as it is actual malice and it's hard to call him the black-hearted mastermind popular history remembers.

If all this offends you so badly you feel the need to press the yellow triangle of friendship go right ahead.


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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm not here claiming Nazi Germany was positive.

If you are not, you are doing a very good impersonation. Why contradict me when I said it had a bad influence by telling me how it did great things, then?
Just stop. If you want to convince us, other regimes were terrible, try to convince us other regimes were terrible, but stop acting like the Nazi party was a good thing.

In your own words: Where do you people get this strange idea of exclusiveness? Is it so impossible to believe that good things could have come out of a bad government?


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PhantomViper wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Islam exhorts all Muslims to kill the infidels and the apostates, etc,

I challenge you to back up this statement.

That really isn't hard you know, the Quran alone has over 100 verses telling Muslims to go to war and kill infidels and apostates:

Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief or unrest] is worse than killing...
but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)"

Quran (4:89) - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks."

Those are just 2 examples.

I'm not sure where you got 'disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah' or any reference to infidels out of 2:191-193, it'd be much easier to make an argument that that passage is about resisting unjust governments than it is about killing infidels in every translation I can find. And 4:89 is followed by 4:90: "Except for those who take refuge with a people between yourselves and whom is a treaty or those who come to you, their hearts strained at [the prospect of] fighting you or fighting their own people. And if Allah had willed, He could have given them power over you, and they would have fought you. So if they remove themselves from you and do not fight you and offer you peace, then Allah has not made for you a cause [for fighting] against them."

 AnomanderRake wrote:

I'm not sure where you got 'disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah' or any reference to infidels out of 2:191-193, it'd be much easier to make an argument that that passage is about resisting unjust governments than it is about killing infidels in every translation I can find. And 4:89 is followed by 4:90: "Except for those who take refuge with a people between yourselves and whom is a treaty or those who come to you, their hearts strained at [the prospect of] fighting you or fighting their own people. And if Allah had willed, He could have given them power over you, and they would have fought you. So if they remove themselves from you and do not fight you and offer you peace, then Allah has not made for you a cause [for fighting] against them."

I'm not sure how you can interpret 'disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah' to mean anything other than infidels, considering that that is the exact meaning of infidels = one who has no religious beliefs, in this particular case Atheists and Polytheists. And that passage specifically tell Muslims to "KILL them wherever you find them" that to you is resisting an unjust government? You can bend over backwards as much as you like but its a pretty simple verse to interpret.

And what does 4:90 has to do with anything? "Kill and enslave all apostates except those that take refuge with people with whom you have a treaty": wow, that sure makes it much nicer then!

Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Fight with all non-Muslims unless they are Christians and Jews who submit and pay you.

Yeah, its clearly a religion of peace.

And more gems:

Quran (9:111) - "Allah hath purchased of the believers their persons and their goods; for theirs (in return) is the garden (of Paradise): they fight in His cause, and slay and are slain: a promise binding on Him in truth, through the Law, the Gospel, and the Quran: and who is more faithful to his covenant than Allah? then rejoice in the bargain which ye have concluded: that is the achievement supreme."

Quran (17:16) - "And when We wish to destroy a town, We send Our commandment to the people of it who lead easy lives, but they transgress therein; thus the word proves true against it, so We destroy it with utter destruction."

Quran (33:60-62) - "If the hypocrites, and those in whose hearts is a disease, and the alarmists in the city do not cease, We verily shall urge thee on against them, then they will be your neighbors in it but a little while. Accursed, they will be seized wherever found and slain with a (fierce) slaughter."

Quran (47:3-4) - "Those who disbelieve follow falsehood, while those who believe follow the truth from their Lord... So, when you meet (in fight Jihad in Allah's Cause), those who disbelieve smite at their necks till when you have killed and wounded many of them, then bind a bond firmly (on them, i.e. take them as captives)... If it had been Allah's Will, He Himself could certainly have punished them (without you). But (He lets you fight), in order to test you, some with others. But those who are killed in the Way of Allah, He will never let their deeds be lost."

I can go on and start quoting the Hadiths as well if you want.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
From the black-and-white this-is-true if-you-don't-agree-with-everything-I-say-you-must-support-massacring-all-the-Jews attitude you lot are taking, I guess.

Me lot?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm playing devil's advocate because I have a pathological hatred for black-and-white Hollywood history (America GOOOOOD, Germany BAAAAAD).

What about if that was actually black-and-gray history? America (and allies) some bad, Germany (and Japan) even worse?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Were the Nazis, overall, a good thing for Germany? No.

Then why contradict me when I say basically the same thing?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
He kills people, and it's tragic, but it's almost as much of an accident as it is actual malice

The industrialized extermination of Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and so on was an accident? It was planned and it was entirely purposeful and it completely qualifies as evil.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
In your own words: Where do you people get this strange idea of exclusiveness? Is it so impossible to believe that good things could have come out of a bad government?

Hey, if you had answered me saying “but the influence of the Nazi party was incontestably a negative one.” by “Indeed, it had a terrible influence overall, even though the war effort allowed for some technological breakthrough (the only actual good things you mentioned about the Nazis), I would not have denied it. I have answered you “Yes, but this is excessively tiny compared to all the bad stuff (something you yourself agreed to) and more related to war than to nazism specifically”. But that is not what you said. What you actually said, though, was “I put it to you that the Nazi party took a failed state in the throes of collapse and turned it into a functional world power. ”


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I think I found a picture of AnomanderRake on the internet. This explains a lot about why he is so keen on defending the Nazis :

Seriously, give up defending nazism. Expose the Allies faults and wrongdoing all you want, I will support you on this, but stop defending nazism.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

A typical fitness gym has all of those things. You can get on a workout program. The people that work there can be considered clergy, a "holy place" might as well be a place that people of a specific group congregate if it has no divine relevance, and there are teachings that will help you achieve fitness. Is fitness religion?

No, the people that work at the gym cannot be considered clergyman, you have to actually fulfil a set of conditions to be considered as member of a clergy.
No, a holy place is not just a place where a specific group of people congregate and divine relevance isn't necessarily linked to the existence of a godhead.
And finally, no, scripture are not just teachings.

What is the difference between a philosophy and a religion in your opinion?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Islam exhorts all Muslims to kill the infidels and the apostates, etc,

I challenge you to back up this statement.

I think he has a certain charter mixed up in his post

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Now point me at a functional world power that hasn't. We in the United States love to think of Nazi Germany as 'evil' because we won the war and got to write the history books to keep our good-versus-evil narrative of WWII alive (also it's convenient shorthand for 'bad', which is short enough it shouldn't need a shorthand, but people are irrational that way), but history is littered with nations and regimes that started wars and killed more people for worse reasons than 'we need to get back at the French for a hundred and fifty years of screwing us over'.

Most world powers end up doing something pretty nasty sooner or later. Most of them don't industrialise the extermination of political dissidents and ethnic minorities.

The Nazis really were extraordinarily, uniquely awful. Even if you compare to the other awful regimes of the time, which were themselves pretty remarkably terrible by world standards, Stalinist Russia and Imperialist Japan, the Nazis comfortably beat both regimes for the rate and extent of its atrocities.

Stalin conducted brutal purges of his government and society that's squashed Russia and left it a pawn of warmongering strongmen to this day. Mao instituted policies that led to famine and killed tens of millions of people through general idiocy. The US Air Force conducted systemic and militarily dubious campaigns against civilian targets while privately acknowledging that if the war went the other way they'd be the ones on the stand for war crimes while Roosevelt attempted a totalitarian coup through Congress at home and destroyed the Asian-American population on the west coast for no reason. Japan slaughtered Chinese and Korean civilians and attempted to wipe out their languages and cultures on an industrial scale.

And yet Nazi Germany gets singled out as the evil one in such august company? What makes them more evil than any other major power?

Ah, no. The temporary internment of Americans of Japanese descent was both immoral and unconstitutional but it by no means "destroyed them." They survived, remained citizens and even fought in the war. The US would not have been on trial for war crimes because we didn't commit any war crimes. Bombing industrial centers and cities had been established as a legitimate legal convention of total war for decades prior to the onset of hostilities in WWII.

That's not germane to the terrorist attack in Tunis but your hyperbole was a little too extreme for me to overlook.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
'Buddhism' is about as much a religion as 'Christianity'. There are any number of different subsects with different ideas and different rules, there are certainly common aspects but it's not a monolithic single entity.


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 Xenomancers wrote:

Buddhism is not a religion though - so really - there are no religions of peace. Therefore all religion = bad. Just my take.

Religion is religion, it is not good, it is not bad, it is nothing.

So you're saying Germans used nazism as an excuse to kill people?

 Xenomancers wrote:

What is the difference between a philosophy and a religion in your opinion?

Sorry, only saw your post just now.

In my opinion, a philosophy of life relates to the more earthly aspects of the human condition while a religion is more concerned with the supernatural aspects.