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ryathal@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks agoYes you can be a good president without being a good person. I wouldn’t call Clinton a good person, but he was a good president. LBJ would also be a good candidate for bad person l, but good president.
This one really depends on what you did and why. FDR generally gets a pass on Japanese concentration camps, Lincoln also subverted the constitution in some ways. Eisenhower using nationalized troops to integrate southern schools was an abuse of power, but the result was deemed worth it.
There were a small handful of good Nazis, but that’s not really the issue at hand. Calling modern politicians Nazis is intellectually lazy and counterproductive to achieving anything.
spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
I’ll concede the first 2 points, but I’ll argue the 3rd.
Ok, what moniker would you use for fascists that want to deport/kill minorities and put them into camps? Authoritarians who pander to the common people and tell them about all the socialist policies they plan to enact during the election, then immediately give up the lie and say they are just going to do authoritarian things and start rounding up minorities and persecuting sexual minorities? Fascist works, but it doesn’t really fully encompass what they’re about.
If only there was a shorthand moniker for authoritarians who run on nationalism and socialism together… Like, some kind of National Socialism. Though, these ones are also “Christians”, so they can be the National Christians. We could abbreviate it Nat-C too.
ryathal@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
There’s baggage with Nazi that doesn’t really apply and it hurts the argument. The Holocaust is the big one, there’s nothing remotely on the same level happening, lots of regimes have rounded up a particular minority, but systemic extermination is extremely rare. Maga also seems more isolationist than expansionist.
There are strong parallels that can be drawn, but at there’s also contradictions. It doesn’t help that Nazi has routinely been used as a placeholder for super evil and go to for exaggeration. By using Nazi you allow your criticism to be dismissed as hyperbole. Until Trump invades Poland with Russia, it’s probably best to use a different term.