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Sage's avatar

I'm sorry you've been ill. The headache, weird dreams, sensitivity to light and back-pain all indicate you may have had an infection in your cerebrospinal fluid so it's a jolly good thing you recovered so quickly.

To me, this article and your article on incels speak to the sense of anomie among young men in particular, and perhaps especially young white men, although your incel article questioned that somewhat.

There is also a trend where young people (typically but not only men) choose to self-define online as paedophile. For some, this is a genuine (and often anguished) acknowledgment of their involuntary (and frequently unwanted) sexual attraction, but for others it isn't: it's chosen.

Thus one of the 'worst' terms a person can be called (similar to 'Nazi') is adopted deliberately as a self-assigned label, chosen as a way of the individual signalling their sense of separation from the larger group, a rejection, perhaps a self-loathing or a revelling in 'taboo'. Thank God, for some the self-identity may not manifest in actual behaviour other than forms of manga / anime.

It's an interesting multi-faceted phenomenon, and I see connections with both choosing to identify as 'despised' incels or 'hated' Nazis. So, to me, that's why your Nazis come across as politically very naive and ill-informed. It's because perhaps they're not actually particularly interested in politics or history per se but only in identifying with the stigmatised label. Hence they got cross and chucked you out when you pedantically expected them to know basic stuff!

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George's avatar

When I think of NAZI, I think of a socialist dictatorship with some economics borrowed the National Fascist Party and the totalitarian nature of the USSR. The USSR excelled in mass murder.

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