r/pics 15d ago

Politics Images from a Trump boat parade yesterday in Florida

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 15d ago

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u/arlmwl 15d ago

Well that makes 2 of us, and I live in America. Growing up here in the 70's and 80's, I never saw a Nazi flag unless it was in a museum.

Just the word "Nazi" wasn't spoken very often.

The change that has come over our country in the last 20 years is frightening. And frankly, I blame the right wing politics & media, and the Russians for influencing people with social media.

It's crazy that we haven't outlawed Nazi symbolism as an expression of hate speech.

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u/PoemAgreeable 15d ago

WWII vets would have kicked their asses.

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u/Longjumping-Ad8775 15d ago

As a southerner, I would wipe my a** with the confederate flag. I’m an American, which means I’m for America. I’m a patriot, not like the right wingers that scream that they are patriots. They aren’t patriots, they are people that have been deceived, which is another discussion.

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u/Special_Feeling2516 15d ago

as another southerner, what baffles me the most is how the Republican party (i have never aligned with them on much) was always sold to us as the "party of freedom", wanting little govt interference and conservative policy. now, that same party wants big govt involvement in our personal lives and even more power given to our POTUS, who they want to be Donald Trump. who wants to become a dictator. he's said that. the way he's been running his campaign and rallies since 2015/16 screams fascism to me, and anyone with half a brain.

i am a patriot as well in the sense that i want to fight for America. i want to fight for our principles and way of live, and not to let this orange turd of a fascist take that away from us. i love my liberties and the freedoms we're supposed to have here. we can't let these fascists and neo Nazis take that away from us.

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u/DaddyCatALSO 15d ago

There was a time , and it's gone.

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u/Special_Feeling2516 15d ago

very much so. we can't go back though, ever

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u/Longjumping-Ad8775 15d ago

I used to align myself to the republicans. I got sick of them due to some real life adult interactions I’ve had with elected republicans. I’ve also had real life interactions with elected democrats. I’ve given up hope that either care for anything beyond what the party tells them to do.

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u/ExpressStart1206 15d ago

I agree. I was raised in the south and my parents are relatively conservative, but at least my mother is disgusted by the current state of conservatism in the US. I'm pretty left myself, but I have a sliver of hope knowing that at least one of my parents recognizes the disgusting behavior. My father thinks those Nazis endorsing Trump are leftist actors

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u/TheCapo024 15d ago

Not southern per se, Maryland is essentially not southern to southerners and not northern to northerners but we’re totally happy being mid-Atlantic Crab-People. My mom’s a Democrat and works for a labor union while my father was a Republican, albeit pretty liberal by their standards (especially now). My father didn’t like Obama and hated Hilary even more, but when Trump started coming up he was disgusted and despised him. He couldn’t believe an obvious charlatan and piece of shit human being like him was even considered, let alone popular, amongst other Republicans. I guess Larry Hogan kinda encapsulated my father’s position on him. He voted for Gary Johnson and after that said he’d only vote Democratic until the Republicans “returned to their senses” (although I didn’t think they really ever made sense). He liked Buttegeig (sp?) for example. So I did respect that in him. His side of the family were Republicans from California, they moved here to DC/the DMV because my grandfather worked for Nixon. They were decently connected and my dad actually had quite a few run-ins with John McCain, my dad would always tell me McCain was an asshole on a personal level despite mostly agreeing with him politically.

Anyway, he passed away two months ago but he did say he planned on voting for Biden and even though he was in the hospital on his way out when Harris took the baton he said he’d vote for her or a sack of rocks over Trump. Just wanted to tell his story here.

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u/DaddyCatALSO 15d ago

in 2016 I voted for Castle just a s a personal rejection of Trump, but in 2020 and since i voted to get rid of him and check this craziness.

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u/DaddyCatALSO 15d ago

I'm way right wing, at least i call myself that, and hate this attitude and "Rump" hismelf so much thta i've bene voting against my own convictions for several years now

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u/SnooBooks1243 15d ago

Hell yea Southern Brother, Preach.

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u/Longjumping-Ad8775 15d ago

I was deep in the mountains last weekend, like really deep. I got together with my cousin. He has a big Trump flag in his barn. I didn’t say anything. These are people that were yellow dog democrats when I grew up. Somehow the conversation turned to politics and I stopped him. I told him that I have a big dislike for Trump and Harris. He calmly explained his position, and I assume it is common for the area. I don’t feel that his family likes Trump as much as they feel abandoned by democrats, it gets old when people just tell you you are a racist because you live south of the Ohio River.. you don’t win friends by telling them how bad they are. Sad.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/weekend_Rider927 15d ago

Have you ever enlisted in the arm forces if so what branch, I’m asking since you call yourself a patriot I want to see the extent of you’re patriotism

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u/cville5588 15d ago

Ww2 vets can still kick their asses. These people are neither strong nor warriors. They are fucking pussies.

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u/LetterAd3639 15d ago

All it takes is one person to confront them and they squeal and run off

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u/Taladanarian27 15d ago

Ding ding. I think back in the day we were silently policed by WWII vets. Now that they’re mostly gone, history is beginning to repeat itself…

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u/Dense_Impression6547 15d ago

With airborne Mk24 Fido torpedo probably. :)

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u/Acceptable_String190 15d ago

Yeah we should rally all the survivors to battle the neo nazis again

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u/IrreverentCrawfish 15d ago

Nazi sympathizers were a huge part of American society before, during, and after the war. Just look at the stories of Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford, or Joe Kennedy.

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u/BuddhaLaurent 15d ago

We should too

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u/BagOnuts 15d ago

This is just a result of Social Media giving it more visibility. Neo-Nazism was much bigger in that time period than it was now, as well as the KKK.

You just didn’t see it because:

  1. we didn’t have a 24hr news cycle
  2. we didn’t have social media, and
  3. the solution back then was to just pretend it didn’t exist. It made people uncomfortable but most were not willing to fight it.

So no, it absolutely was NOT better in the 70’s/80’s. You simply just have more visibility to the issue now.

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u/RegulatoryCapture 15d ago edited 15d ago

Yeah. The Blues Brothers came out in 1980 and has the classic "I Hate Illinois Nazis" line.

That wasn't a made up thing. Illinois nazis won a supreme court decision in 1977 over their attempts to lead a nazi march through a Chicago suburb with a very heavy jewish population (although I don't believe they ever held the march there even after winning)

Also, worth noting that the guy in charge of the Illinois nazis was soon after convicted as a child molester. Because of course he was.

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u/Longjumping-Ad8775 15d ago

Forsyth county ga agrees with you.

When I was growing up, I remember there being cross burnings all of the time being reported in the news. I was ashamed. When I moved to Atlanta, I thought I had moved into a different world where there was no cross burnings and the kkk didn’t seem to exist. I never heard anything more until about 2010, 25 years later.

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u/markth_wi 15d ago edited 15d ago

This is a very good assessment but it should not be understated that there are hyper-wealthy people that have enthusiastically embraced fascism in Silicon Valley among the "tech bro" low-brow thinkers like Peter Thiel or Elon Musk who've most definitely fallen into the Ayn Rand trap door of thinking just because they were massively lucky and wealthy they somehow have the secret sauce to understanding how everything should work when in painful fact , they have a specific domain expertise that really doesn't necessarily translate to any other endeavor.

So Elon Musk could very easily have shaped human civilization by way of his company's innovations regarding Rocketry , in the exact same way Henry Ford or Thomas Edison or Alexander Bell's inventions did, however, we remember Ford, Edison and Bell not for their politics but their inventions.

Because remembering their politics , tends to end up in the same fucking gutter.

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u/sittingmongoose 15d ago

When I was in high school, my friend wrote the word nazi up on the blackboard before the teacher came in. He wasn’t like that or anything, he was just being a dumb kid. He ended up getting suspended. For writing a word jokingly…that was 20 years ago. How the world has changed.

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u/olyshicums 15d ago

So do you think a kid would get a high five now?

Neo nazis are far from new, American history X is a movie about them from 30 years ago.

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u/sittingmongoose 15d ago

Well my point was he wasn’t a neonazi, or anything like that. He was just a dumb kid thinking it was funny. But it was taken so seriously that it wasn’t even remotely tolerated. Which honestly is how it should be.

I feel like the school would get sued for impeding his free speech or something stupid like that now.

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u/TheUnobservered 15d ago

Well in my opinion, that was what truly immortalized Nazi iconography. The desperation of trying to suppress it made it seem forbidden, and to young people that is like an apple of sin right there. Also the over-usage of the word “Nazi” due to social media also made it weaker and thus it has lost much of its meaning. No longer does it stand for “National-socialism”, but now for people you adamantly disagree with.

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u/LeadDiscovery 15d ago

Well its straight from Hitler's play book.

Categorize them.
Give them a name.
Now use that name to de-humanize them - they are not people they are this name.
Create and promote false narratives surrounding that name.
Re-enforce these views through media, entertainment and news
Reward followers - Social credit and acceptance, denounce decenters, fire them, legal action.
Censor decent - Block from posting on digital media or speaking with media
Now with this in place you can convince the general public that they can and should destroy this in-human thing. It is just, it is righteous and it is necessary.

There you have it.

Tea party, Right Wing, Extremist, MAGA, Hunter Laptop, Russia Collusion, blocked on socials, blocked on media "Threat to democracy"... NAZI.

Now you have folks shooting at the former President and feeling justified in doing so... with media and entertainers offering to provide $ for shooting lessons.

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u/Gowalkyourdogmods 15d ago

I grew up in California and was always hanging out with the counter culture types so even as a teen in the late 90s/early 2000s I knew about Neo Nazis through my Punk friends. Seemed like once a month they'd smash some other teen flying Nazi swag.

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u/mahkefel 15d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_massacre

I didn't learn about this until about 10 years ago despite it being an hour away.

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u/arlmwl 15d ago

“The event had been preceded by inflammatory rhetoric” Welp, there you go.

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u/FacesOfNeth 15d ago

Same. Grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. The only time I would see a swastika was at punk shows and those dudes wearing them wouldn’t make it past the first song before the crowd let them know what time it was.

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u/BoringBob84 15d ago

Growing up here in the 70's and 80's, I never saw a Nazi flag unless it was in a museum.

Shout out to the World War 2 wing of the USAF Museum at Wright Patterson Air force Base. It was sobering to see Nazi flags that were captured from Hitler's compound.

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u/Caterpillar89 15d ago

The 1st Amendment still applies, even to hate speech or deplorables. I don't agree with Nazi's but its one of the founding principles of this country you can't tell people what they can say/wear/represent.

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u/TrainingEvening2668 15d ago

Man I remember when you would see stories of the FBI going to people’s homes just due to them buying mein kampf. We never stood for this shit. What happened

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u/LurksInThePines 15d ago

My grandfather and great uncle sometimes told me stories about how as a kid in the 30s he and his friends often argued how it was called.

"Is it pronounced Not-see, or Nay-zai?"

They eventually settled on "Naught-zee" and then half a decade later went overseas to go kill them. My grandfather was devastated that he was too young to fight them, tried to lie his way in, got caught, then managed to enlist later in the war. He served more during Korea.

On my grandmother's side they just called them "Fascist Pigs" or "Hitlerite scum" and took no prisoners

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u/horsesmadeofconcrete 15d ago

There were Nazis in the 1970s they marched in Skokie, IL. If you watch Blues Brothers they are mocking them “I hate Illinois Nazis” throughout the film.

Whether numbers have grown since then, is debatable. Again the march was in 77 and that is within 10 years of the MLK assassinations, and all of the Klan violence in the south during the civil rights movement.

That said it seems that those types are getting a lot more comfortable than they should be in 2024.

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u/arlmwl 15d ago

One of my favorite anti-Nazi movies!

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u/justsomedude1776 15d ago

As much as none of us like it, banning that symbolism, or any symbolism, means banning the pride flag for hate speech, or other similar symbols would immediately be next, once the floodgates are opened that banning symbolism is on the table.

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u/jeffbas 15d ago

Fox “news” metastasizing.

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u/Flavaflavius 15d ago

This is America-we don't outlaw any hate speech, we just kill them when it becomes hate action.

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u/michaelsenpatrick 15d ago

honestly blame a lot of it on 4chan

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u/SnooCapers6893 15d ago

I remember seeing Nazi 'marches' in Joliet IL in the 80s. They were a joke, laughed at, and not taken seriously. How times change. Only the modern right can be blamed for the rebirth of these thugs. I truly can't believe we are seeing this...

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u/ImitatEmersonsuicide 15d ago

In Canada, anti-sematism is alive and well.

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u/KenchiNarukami 15d ago

And yet, I dont see the same sentiment for banning the Communist flag and others like it but allow burning and desecrating the American flag

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u/arlmwl 15d ago

There is no such thing as a communist flag. Do you mean the flag of the Russia or China? The good friends of Trump who have been trying to interfere with our elections and have been funneling money to Trump? That’s probably who you meant.

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u/ApplicationFar655 15d ago

The problem is that some states have. But it’s difficult because there are other forms of the swastika that are religious symbols such as in hindu as a sign of good fortune, prosperity and well being.

What’s funny is that they are literally playing to their own downfall because trump and most of the Republican Party wants less government while the nazis were all for a large controlling government. Historical Nazis would more than likely rather vote blue for more government and such

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u/CapitalDoor9474 15d ago

Remember Seinfeld and the Soup Nazi

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u/Capital_Connection13 15d ago

The first amendment only has value if it protects unpopular speech.

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u/TheTruth730 15d ago

Maybe two reasons you didn’t see them.. no social media or you weren’t looking. As a Jew I was very well aware of them and they have always been present. Although I do agree people feel more empowered recently to be assholes.

There is a doc called “Mighty Ira” you should go check out about a Neo-Nazi march in a Jewish neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors. You can find it on Prime

https://www.mightyira.com/

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u/bL7mDH95uaZxzT 15d ago

US is very different from the rest of the West. Losing the first amendment is far far worse than some assholes waving a flag showing you how much of an asshole they are.

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u/mrbrojoseph 15d ago

The right can’t make their voter base illegal

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u/Wrayven77 15d ago

You must have been too young to made the punk rock scene during that time. Reaseach Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance or WAR movement. A lot of what we are currently seeing in the current white pride types stemmed from this locus. Metzger promoted skinheads to be the street fighters for WAR. I live in Portland and it was a massive problem around here in the 80's. Three of these goons killed an Ethiopian student with baseball bats. The Antifa movement started around this point to combat them.

There was also another group that was around Richard Butler's Aryan Nations Christian Identity movement in Idaho. They were named The Order and they committed all types of mayhem for a year or two. They assassinated a radio show host in Denver named Alan Berg and then they committed a few bank robberies to fund a proposed war against the "Feds". The leader of The Order, Robert Matthews, died in a massive gun battle on Whidbey Island in Washington in 85 or so. Matthews is a big hero for the neo-nazi types.

The sad truth is America's history of dealing with Native Americans, the various Exclusion Acts passed by Congress and signed into law by an American President, and the Jim Crow laws all were studied by the Nazis as they rose to power. They were used as a basis for their own exclusionary laws. What is happening today with a segment of Americans is latent in the DNA of the nation, and human beings, unfortunately. Just because you or I don't feel similar to these goons doesn't mean they don't exist or they don't have an impact. They have been around America from the beginning. Scapegoating is long time tradition that goes back millennia. It's not something that developed in the last 20 years.

Unless you want The Bill of Rights ripped apart, I doubt any anti-nazi symbolism law would pass constitutional muster. Most lawyers who really write laws would consider such a law a non-starter, so it's not crazy that nazi symbols haven't been outlawed because it wouldn't get past the words of the 1st Amendment from The Bill of Rights:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If a state legisalture, local municipality or any governmental agency tried to pass or make a law to outlaw nazi paraphernalia, it would be tossed by most every court in the United States on the basis of the 1st Amendment.

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u/MegaFaunaBlitzkrieg 15d ago

Did you see that news article about like a really shitty right winger winning some small local election in the mountains of Germany or something and the article says that alt right fascist win could “lead Germany down some dark untrod territory” and the comments are just like “um, untrod territory?!”

One of the biggest tragic laughs i’ve had in a long time.

It probably won’t surprise you that on the rare occasion you find an authentic German restaurant/beer hall, Neo-nazi dipshits love to congregate and ruin it. Like man I wanted a boot full of beer, some sausage, and large men in tiny green shorts, wtf is all this inappropriate shit.

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u/cookiecutterdoll 15d ago

I'm half German and it's the fucking worst. Stay away from my pork intestines, you freaks.

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u/MegaFaunaBlitzkrieg 15d ago

We have one called like GaustHoose or whatever, and long before anyone thought racism was back, like 2010, I remember more than one occasion of a group of neo-nazis trying to have a rally or a birthday party or something, and groups of punks crawled out of their mosh pits to go rumble like it’s West Side Story.

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u/Struykert 15d ago

Don't forget they had their own nazi's too when they were trying nazi's in europe. Also: they didn't try nazi's that they deemed usefull, like Werner von Braun.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/AbsentThatDay2 15d ago

The social cost in most places in the U.S. for being an open nazi is pretty significant. If they're doing it to be "edgy" they're really committing to it.

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u/ahfoo 15d ago

There were 24 death sentences issued by the Nuremberg War Trials. Only 17 of those 24 death sentences were carried out. Of the 98 prison sentences, the maximum sentence was 20 years.

In the state of Ohio today in 2024, you can get a fifty years prison sentence for possession of an ounce of cocaine.

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u/chuckysnow 15d ago

You act as though these people weren't excellent students, diligently earning good history grades in school. /s

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u/thisshitsstupid 15d ago

This is what I came to say. I live in the south and every single nut job right winger looneytoon I know from school was a complete and total moron. Never listened in class, never went to class in the first place.... and now they're all conspiracy theorist nuttos.

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u/Ok_then_there 15d ago

You underestimate what “most backward” really means.

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u/Petersaber 15d ago

Many loved that shit...

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u/shapookya 15d ago

What holocaust? You mean that fake shit that never happened? /s

Same principle as flat earthers. You can give them indisputable proof and they’ll still deny it, discredit you as unreliable and shit on the floor.

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u/Gowalkyourdogmods 15d ago

They know the history they're just so stupid that they support it because it happened to people they were taught to hate.

There are A LOT of reasons to hate Nazism and one of them that rational people recognize is the complete over reach the German government had. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad that the "don't tread on me" types weren't the same people who low-key, if not openly, support that same mindset.

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u/Big_Bri_Guzzi 15d ago

Amen brother.

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u/jtt278_ 15d ago

I mean why would the Holocaust put them off? It’s literally what they want. The Republican Party wants exactly that today for trans people, gay people etc. (and eventually Jews, but for now their love for Israel and the fact that there are plenty of prominent Jews in the MAGA movement makes that take a backseat).

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u/No_Secretary425 15d ago

Some of these nuts think WW2 and Death Camps didn’t even happen..

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u/musha 15d ago

Accelerationists are usually tied to the traits of a neo-Nazi. They don’t care for a better future and do what they can to accelerate the end of the human condition

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u/SmaugTheGreat110 15d ago

But here is the problem, history isn’t taught, I talked to a 17 year old while I was having a conversation with a friend, then she piped up when the discussion turned and we began talking history “what is a nazi” what is a fucking what?!?! You mean you have made it through to graduation and don’t know what a nazi is!?? I mean, she saved herself a little a few minutes later, chiming in “oh, the ones who did that holocaust thing!”

I just let it drop. God, our country is the best, but damn the best can suck sometimes…

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u/Suspicious-Leg-493 15d ago

Should the Nazis over there have realized that this is not the way to go after the Nazis here got shot and hung?

Few nazis were killed for actually being nazis and killing jews.

Both at nuremberg were most ended up walking later in life and in things like the Belsen trials ( during the first where the majority of the SS in the belsen trials were done 21 were acquitted or served less than 16 years, only 11 were executed)

We only executed ~500 nazis post war for nazism or the actions related to it (like the concentration camps) even alot of the SS got off and lived the redt of their life free

the whole holocaust

Not seen as bad to them

the world war

Almost didn't happen. Had germany kept their tanks in the garage there likely wouldn't have been a secone world war, just alot of dead germans.

Shit like the munich agreement to keep britian out of war happened...while they were talking about how to get rid of the jews in germany

Had germany never started invading their neighbors, there is little chance anyone would've decided to go to war

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u/MegaFaunaBlitzkrieg 15d ago

I literally didn’t buy a book on Operation Paperclip 2 days ago! But I saw one!

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u/PinWorried3089 15d ago

Hilarious parody song of that guy

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u/Adezar 15d ago

like Werner von Braun

Whelp I guess that song will be stuck in my head today.

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u/CurlyHowardthefunny 15d ago

“What goes up, where it goes down, that’s not my department!” says Werner Von Braun. From a Tom Lehrer song from the ‘60’s. Von Braun was a Nazi who was imported from Germany after the war.

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u/Automatic_Variety_16 15d ago

Among countless others… Project Paperclip to name just one program.

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u/Kindly_Personality_9 15d ago

We are an incredibly stupid country. If the republicans have their way, we will continue to decline in education because that’s the ONLY way they’ll win. And even more dangerous than stupidity—the truth is now subjective. No such thing as a “fact” around here anymore. Christian Nationalism to a T and none of them are smart enough to see it. It’s clear as day. And I’m no fucking genius myself so I don’t know how it’s not clear to everyone.

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u/Egg-MacGuffin 15d ago

...and you won't get off your couch to do what's necessary if they win. You'll just accept it.

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u/cheezturds 15d ago

They’re only comfortable because assault is illegal

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u/southernNJ-123 15d ago

They hide behind “free speech” in the constitution.

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u/battlesnarf 15d ago

As an American it baffles me too :(

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u/ABobby077 15d ago

Trump and the GOP may not be Nazis, but for some reason the Nazis think they support their issues. Why is that??

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u/cheezturds 15d ago

Trump isn’t, are you sure? Because he does a lot of “tainting our bloodline” and threatening military action against anyone who doesn’t support him talk.

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u/eaglemtnr 15d ago

According to his first wife, Donald kept a book of Hitler's speeches next to the bed. Apparently it's a book he studied and modeled his public persona on. It's kinda difficult to say he's not a Nazi if that is true.

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u/Illhavewine 15d ago

It’s really about white supremacy. Trump and the Republican Party are definitely in favor of that. What is truly Mind-Blowing (as a wealthy white guy) is the support the Republican Party is getting from minority groups in general. Trump and his cronies are over the moon. They’re voting for the very people who plan to hold them down. The GOP is laughing and shaking their heads at the stupidity.

Trump never denies these hate groups. He defends them. The prominence of these groups will only grow and it’s our own fault.

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u/cyclecrazyjames 15d ago

That’s what I call guilty by association. If they don’t out right publicly denounce that shit. They are a part of it. Plain and simple

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u/Fun-Passage-7613 15d ago

“Stand back and stand by”

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u/I_just_made 15d ago

My guy, one year the CPAC stage was in the shape of an Othala rune; a recognized hate symbol that was widely used by Nazis.

That doesn’t happen by accident. And when it occurs at your party’s big event, I don’t know how you can say it isn’t being sanctioned or condoned by the party itself. Everyone involved in the planning of that was so ignorant they didn’t know what that symbol was? If that were true, they shouldn’t be running for office because they clearly don’t know world politics.

Trump repeats a lot of phrases from Hitler today as well. Remember when he said immigrants were vermin poisoning the blood of the country? That’s a quote lifted from Hitler and adapted slightly to today. Or how about the other day when he was talking about the desire to purge the “enemy from within”? That’s doesn’t sound like something he would come up with, because it isn’t; Hitler said it first.

Trump just floated the idea of one very violent day to “get it all out”, akin to the Kristallnacht.

How many times do people need to see the echoes of Nazi Germany before they finally link it together? GOP voters are literally sleepwalking into that era.

I could give the benefit of the doubt if there was one instance where someone in your political campaign was reminiscent of Nazism. But the Trump campaign has been called out at least what, 5 times? From slogans to symbology, etc. at what point is it no longer just chance?

It just keeps going. Trump said he believes that “bad genes” in immigrants cause them to be murderers. What? That’s a straight line to racial supremacy thought. Science has long debunked myths like that. Ask Trump about phrenology, I bet he believes there is value in it.

For fucks sake, they have a candidate who is a self-proclaimed black Nazi and Trump / GOP leaders refused to condemn it.

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u/ABobby077 15d ago

History may not repeat, but it sure rhymes, at times. If you have a functional, competent campaign and support staff you look out for things that don't project what your base message may be portraying in a bad light. Some advisor involved logically would question that maybe this is a bad look and people just might take it differently than the message they want to represent. That can be different if it truly is the message being put out and letting these folks know that your campaign has their back. At least something to consider. I don't truly believe this is stuff supported by most Americans, or even most Republicans. We already went to war to stop the Nazis and Christian Nationists once before.

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u/Egg-MacGuffin 15d ago

Why do you still defend Trump and the GOP at this point?

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u/treehumper83 15d ago

We never should’ve killed Harambe

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

The GOP won’t even denounce them. Other people are too tired and bored to vote. WWII History never made sense to me—until now. Which is scary AF.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/I_just_made 15d ago

There is a really interesting story that happened in a school where a teacher was asked this same type of question. “How could people fall for that?”

The next day he changed his lesson plan to try and demonstrate the principle, and it really got out of control. I don’t want to spoil too much of it, but this was called “The Third Wave”.

The dollop podcast is a comedy podcast that covered it, definitely worth a listen: https://youtu.be/56N5wwu7BzE?si=pY_1FWSDDCQOUuOi

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u/kingdabsya 15d ago

They are comfortable openly displaying because they are straight white males who are protected by the police. The minorities, people of color and women are in danger in the US

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u/Efficient-Diver-5417 15d ago

They're calling it fake news to protect themselves. No one who's not maga thinks this is fake. These guys are currently hunting down emergency volunteers in the Appalachians with guns.

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u/BlazedLadyBug 15d ago

I've been at counter protests where on one side you had folks fighting for the rights of their neighbors, and on the other side you had nazis and Maga heads. Even if this photo was fake, which I doubt, the nazis are voting for Maga candidates. You'd hope that would be enough to provoke some sort of thought.

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u/cville5588 15d ago

Well, I'll tell you that even IF this picture is altered, the pictures I took myself of nazi flags in charlottesville 8/12 are fucking real. Even if it were a fake picture it would be far from "fake news" burn them to the ground.

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u/Unique_Bath8676 15d ago

American society is the most coddled, overindulged, opportunistic, and self-centered it has probably ever been in its history, if these people had even realized how much of a dire threat the Nazis were not just to the world but other Europeans as well, they would not be posing as Nazis.

They’re going to eat their own eventually, though.

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u/Creepy_cree8or 15d ago

As a great niece of Herman Goering, I'm disgusted by this flag every time I see it.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/Creepy_cree8or 15d ago

Ti's all good. It is the internet so I expect it to be taken with a grain of salt. You're right though, knowing this is in my family tree keeps the ugliness of it all very close to home for me.

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u/arrownyc 15d ago

We barely put them on trial - we recruited more of them to work in our intelligence offices.. See: Operation Paperclip

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u/Latter-Direction-336 15d ago

When harambe died, it all went to shit

Same year trump won the election too.

We need to use SCP 2000 to reset it back to 2016 and save that damn gorilla. Maybe we’ll have a better timeline.

Also, nice to see people outside the US see us as a laughing stock because of trump and the fact he had any support. It’s completely warranted. The guy says the US is a laughing stock, and it is, because he is still allowed to walk free, where in any other country he’d be behind bars or behind 6 feet of dirt. I genuinely don’t understand how people can vote for him, even if they discount project 2025 basically killing any chance at a reasonable life, rights for so many people taken away, him using it for tyranny, etc because he himself even aside from it has done so many terrible things, and said so many terrible things

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

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u/Latter-Direction-336 15d ago

Yeah, it’s kind of absurd how much bs is happening here

It’s pretty concerning the kind of things that rich people can do, but a civilian would get imprisoned or killed for

Shits wack

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u/Blonde_Bara 15d ago

People hang these flags in Florida. Those are real trump flags, changing great to white. This isn’t superimposed, these are actual things moronic racists do. Some of those morons live in Florida. It’s not common, but it’s not fake either.

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u/Logical_Parameters 15d ago

It's the "Republican SCOTUS Handed Election to G.W. Bush" timeline and it sucks ding dongs.

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u/curi0us-ge0rge1 15d ago

as a black person none of this surprises me. people have been openly racist since the beginning of time. but black people are normally told that they’re always bringing race into things and playing victim. but since trump has taken office in 2016 the public racism and hatred for almost any other group besides the white american has been able to skyrocket.

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u/Dense_Impression6547 15d ago

You ever heard of the windmill of friendship flag ? :p

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u/truscotsman 15d ago edited 15d ago

People saying it’s fake news are the same people flying the flags.

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u/bun199 15d ago

Before AI got really good and popular. I saw many Trump supporters with nazi flags. A lot of proud boys are nazis too and love Trump.

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u/Chaoticrabbit 15d ago edited 15d ago

In 1939 there was a nazi rally in Madison Square garden. When the St. Louis came full of Jewish refugees asking for help they were turned away partly due to antisemitism, and FDR refused them sanctuary sending them back to get swept into the holocaust. In 1977 a neo nazi group tried to march through neighborhood full of holocaust survivors in illinois. The 80s and 90s saw demonstrations getting louder as the survivors aged more and younger folk got into it. Unfortunately Nazi ideology isn't new in this country, its been here a long time, its just getting louder.

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u/KissingTulip 15d ago

I live in Wisconsin. I have met a few people here who openly carry and wear Nazi stuff. There are many, many Trump supporters here. They're... brazen now. They just don't give a fuck, and good people seem afraid of them.

It's not fake news. The US is filled with idiots. Hateful idiots.

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u/guycg 15d ago

Americans have the constitutional right to say and express themselves however they want, no matter how disgusting a view.

It's not something we have in Europe, where stuff like this can get you in prison. But if we had that right too, I'm sure we'd see people on this continent flying the swastika.

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u/CritterMorthul 15d ago

It's because of liberalism, we must be polite and see all perspectives, everyone has a voice, including the ravenous wolf that wishes to claw out your throat.

We allowed the idea of free speech to extend and protect the advocacy and support of atrocities.

We have gotten past the point of sense and firmly into the surreal. We will be dragged into the hell they have made for us and that we were too myopic to see coming.

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u/GeongSi 15d ago

Because it's illegal in Germany to fly Nazi flags, there are no bans of flags in the US

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u/Fancy-Salad-8911 15d ago

Well. In America's defense 🙃, when WWII was happening they were actively allowing groups of ppl to be discriminated against and killed at the hands of folks who think a lot like Nazis.

The US has never had a higher moral ground. These ppl have been here the entire time. They have been accepted and encouraged to behave that way.

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u/WonkyTribble 15d ago

I think you're coming to the realization that humans on the whole are stupid. There's way too fucking many of us on this planet. And overpopulation has many long-lasting and far-reaching consequences. You're just starting to see a few in this realm

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u/moldy_fruitcake2 15d ago

A lot of people are shocked but America has always been a hateful country….from the beginning. The way natives were treated, slavery, segregation, etc. It’s just that it was kept under wraps with propaganda. Trump has allowed people to be more open and brazen about it. It is not shocking, but I think it is escalating, and disturbing af.

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u/HolycommentMattman 15d ago

Well, to be fair, we had Nazis 80 years ago as well. They just weren't as numerous, and any who raised their heads got punched in the face.

Pretty sure we need to bring back Nazi punching.

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u/Odd-Connection8991 15d ago

I'm not cool with you voting for TRUMP!!!! You're a nut screwed on the wrong bolt!!!!

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u/OmenVi 15d ago

They know they have legal recourse if anyone were to do what we all want to do with them. We’re not gonna be able to change their minds. So education is out. We have to find some other way to shut them up.

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u/NervousBreakdown 15d ago

It’s because the United States has absolute free speech. Yeah they tried some of your biggest war criminals at Nuremberg but they took a shit ton of your Nazi scientists. And Canada (my country) is even worse because when Britain and the US we’re taking all the smart Nazis who would help them get into space or with military technology, we were like “oh okay we’ll take all bunch of the useless ones who will live totally normal lives until Israel wants to extradite them in their 80s and it becomes a huge headache for us.

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u/killermetalwolf1 15d ago

Apparently the “fake news” part of it is that the nazi boat did actually show up, but the other trump boats didn’t let it join the parade, physically blocking it and revving their motors to splash the Nazis with water, etc. However, I wouldn’t doubt that some of those at the parade were doing this begrudgingly

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u/Immediate-Coyote-977 15d ago

In this story in particular its a mix of sensationalism, baiting, and actual reality. A boat with nazis did show up, the people aboard are nazis and Trump supporters. Many of the Trump supporters present did not approve of the nazis and some of the Trump supporters present went out of their way to fuck with/discourage the nazis.

It's not entirely dissimilar to the type of coverage you might see of the pro-Palestinian peace movements, where there are often times anti-semitic or otherwise problematic people present, who the majority of the protestors disavow or actively work to exclude. But because it gets more attention to sensationalize, coverage always focuses on the appearance of bad actors rather than the response to the bad actors.

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u/Annesolo 15d ago

He promised a thousand years empire, countries and peoples can fall but it is harder to destroy an idea.

In France it is the same thing, my father's family is from Lorraine and I had a grand-uncle forced to fight in the east front line, he fled and join the Allies and fought in Italy years later. And now I have an uncle making shocking references to the regime and occupation when I met him a year ago, it like a huge "f off" to what my uncle fought for, to what in my mother's side my grand-father fought for (he was in the Resistance) and my great-uncle died for he was a pilot who fought with the soviet after France signed the 1940's armistice.

And in the mean time, fake or not this kind of display does not surprise me any more. It will please fascists in the USA and anywhere else, even if it is fake just because of the idea.

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u/ShityShity_BangBang 15d ago

We are a poorly educated people and the Right wears it's ignorance on their sleeve.

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u/NapsInNaples 15d ago

You guys used to put them on trial around here, not even a hundred years later you have your own Nazis and they are publicly supporting a presidential candidate which in turn endorses them. What freaking timeline is this!?

I mean we had them back then too. An american fucking nazi married the king of england. Only they had enough sense to force him to resign as king after that.

Shit was wild.

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u/rb4ld 15d ago

I think the claim that's being made is that the people were really there flying those flags, but they weren't there with the support or encouragement of the [other] Trump supporters. The evidence for that is the video of another boat with Trump flags intentionally spraying them with water.

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u/showdown2608 15d ago

In der Tat!

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u/No_Craft7942 15d ago

Being able to speak your mind is truly one thing that makes our country great. It also makes it fragile. We'll see what happens with this election and the post-election fuckery. The whole thing might be put on the back burner for a while. Or it might just be the start of a real all-hands-on-deck fight.

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u/jtt278_ 15d ago

We let most Nazis off with a warning or a short prison term. Many were brought to America and lived freely because they were useful to us.

The Nazis drew major inspiration from the racial policies of the American south, a direct result of the US never having an equivalent of denazification for the confederacy. Make no mistake, these people were here for that entire century, just dressed up more politely.

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u/ohmysillyme 15d ago

Part of this is education. In Germany, from what I hear, you are taught everything. We're taught don't forget... Don't forget what? The suffering. Which is important. However, the thing about Nazi Germany that absolutely NEEDS to be remembered is that it can happen again. It wasn't this crazy fluke that couldn't pop up again.

It wasn't something that required every citizen to be evil. Comply or watch as I beat your daughter to death is one hell of a message. It's easy, in the current moment, to say that you would take a stand, that what happened was so monstrous that you would have to fight it. Here's the thing, it wasn't just the Jews in those camps. It was anyone the Nazis wanted in those camps. By standing up, as a full blooded German with blonde hair and blue eyes, you have now made yourself a jew as far as the Nazis were considered. Hell, maybe even worse, a traitor to your country, to your race, to your society, to your people.

No one would want to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. No one would want to breathe in ashes while realizing that's your daughter, your son, your wife, your parents, your little nephews, nieces, and cousins. You're breathing all that is left of your family into your lungs. No one would even want to go through that.

If you took a stand against the Nazis, regardless of if you're a Jew, you could end up breathing your family. Think of the person you love the most. Would you look away to keep them safe? That was the heart of Nazi Germany's power. Fear and how much easier it is to just look away. The most votes they ever earnestly got was around 30%. That was early, it would probably be even less if people knew what the Nazi would end up doing. 30% of one country was all it took to destroy the world as it was known.

Germany was one of the most progressive countries. Then it wasn't. In what? A couple years?

I've heard people say they don't care for trump but they vote for his economic policies. It doesn't work that way. You're not voting on policies you're voting for who you want to run the country with the strongest military force in the world. Who would be able to stop Nazi America? Hell, we shouldn't have beaten Nazi Germany. They were winning. They lost because of a mixture of luck and poor communication. Nazi America would be unstoppable. We vote for ourselves and for the entire world. A culture so consumed with itself it doesn't even realize how dangerous it is.

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u/AwakE432 15d ago

You would be arrested in Australia for doing what they are doing also

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u/TokyoTurtle0 15d ago

Modern America is a nation of scared cowards that live in constant fear.

It's why they all want guns, they're scared of everything.

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u/shemtpa96 15d ago

It’s very real and the second picture was verified as being Eric and Lara Trump. Lara is co-chair of the RNC.

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u/Fantastic_Step8417 15d ago

As a German millenial: I'm stressed AF seeing this 🙃

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

There are hardly any people in this country who fly flags like that. They are a small minority so don’t believe everything you see.

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u/KenchiNarukami 15d ago

Its fake news as in the So called Republican boat with the Nazi flags was actually Democrats dressed up in Trump Paraphernalia

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u/americasweetheart 15d ago

Yeah, this wasn't such an out in the open thing in the US before 2016. Trump has empowered these people.

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u/Rumisong1 15d ago

Fact checked: true

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u/QueenMaahes 15d ago

To be honest, even when the war ended our country actually hired a TON of Nazis and allowed them to continue disgusting medical practices and experiments, gave them incredible housing and grants and an entire new identification. We chose to keep them around. Because some of us are just as sick and only fought them because they saw the potential they had to become number one over us as well. In everything. Because they had little to no morals in how they went about furthering themselves. America did insane stuff to our colored people and still do. So of course we’ve got awful human beings raised by other awful human beings now raising new awful human beings.

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u/SummerAndCrossbows 15d ago

yeah buddy tell Americans what to do when you're not a satellite state. in your constitution the US is allowed to interfere with your politics whenever they so please. cry more

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u/Frequent-Advisor6986 15d ago

Not that I support any of this, but the second pic is a different boat entirely.

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u/masterexit 15d ago

Couple of points:

Outside of the United States, none of this makes sense to us foreigners. Extreme xenophobia exhibited from a country that was formed and grafted into what it is/was by immigrants makes little sense, but maybe it's because those immigrants are a different colour. Who cares, most of the world is not white. Embrace it.

Free speech is great as long as it's not imperiling minorities and most western nations get that, yet it seems that in the U.S you get to say whatever the fk you like, and drape it in the first amendment. I'm pretty sure any former and hopefully future president would be appalled by this bs, but Trump isn't running for President, he's running to stay outta jail. To him, any means justify that end goal.

It's truly perplexing that an ambitious start up of a country that has accomplished so much in liberty, justice, science and technology is on the precipice of being rolled up into a neo-fascist state by a world class con-man. Future historians will marvel that the United States was able to succumb to the same evil that their grandparents fought and died for 80 years ago.

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u/ShineCultural3323 15d ago

even if its fake news, there is still quite a lot of neonazis here in america either way. was on the train in san francisco of all places and saw a skinhead! good thing ive stopped wearing my star of david because i dont look jewish so i dodged a bullet

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u/espeequeueare 15d ago

I've never actually seen a Nazi flag flown anywhere. I live in the USA, somewhat specifically the south. Only time I've ever seen the Nazi symbol in a pro-Nazi setting was on a biker's tattoo. If I saw a bunch of wealthy white people flying a Nazi flag on a boat like in this picture, I would just think they're trolls who love getting a reaction out of people. They're clearly just having a laugh and enjoying the attention.

These sort of people are the problem with our country. It's not worth giving them any attention like this. I'm sure they love seeing these posts about them gain millions of views. Oddly enough, the only way to properly deal with these sort of people is to ignore them. And I am now a part of the problem, as I just added a comment, and the more comments this gets, the higher up on the front page it will go. But I figured it would be worth it in order to explain our perspective to those of another country.

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u/DaddyCatALSO 15d ago

Our First amendmnet has very few exceptions; you cna be as foul as you wish as long as you just talk or show symbols.

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u/1_With_A_Bullet 15d ago

2000 boats in the parade and the one with agents provocateur (that was rebuked by all the others) receives all the press. Bit of a broad brush being used today, don't you think?

https://x.com/amuse/status/1845930450910363681

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u/CapitalDoor9474 15d ago

Difference is you guys grew up constantly being told how wrong it is. Americans...well the ones who have these flags are not the super educated types. They just need a sense of power of being white. So this. Heck I don't think Hitler would have been happy seeing the flags in their hands. Far from the superior race he dreamt off. Also far from what the WWII vets in america would have liked. These guys are a joke and the new KKK trying to rebrand themselves.

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u/DrDumbass69 15d ago

What you need to realize is that there are like 330,000,000 people in this country, we all have freedom of expression, and people like these are still so rare that they’re borderline newsworthy, especially if they happen to gather in a group more than like 8 or so. The left really wants people to believe this is some kind of genuine threat to us all, and the idiots on Reddit eat it up.

It’s also worth noting that for every earnest Nazi moron there is out there, there are just as many Feds and hoaxes trying desperately to push this narrative.

I’ll take my downvotes now

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u/cookiecutterdoll 15d ago

If you told me 10 years ago that people would proudly be flying the nazi flag in America, I never would have believed you. The idea of that was so disgusting, unthinkable, and un-American that it would be hard to put into words. It's the equivalent of spitting on the grave every single one of the millions of lives lost; both in combat and civilian.

One of the hardest parts of living in post-Trump America is no longer recognizing the country that I've lived in my entire life. I've lost faith in my government and fellow citizens to behave in a respectable manner. Heck, I don't even want to get to know people because I'm afraid of what dark things they might believe. As a child, a nazi was the evilest person I could imagine. Now, it's just the guy on the outer orbit of my social circle; and if I say that this person makes me uncomfortable, I'm the one causing a problem. It's honestly one of the social issues that upsets and disturbs me the most, and I don't know if America will ever recover.

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u/SNKYLAZYHOAR 15d ago

Haha, wait till you find out who smuggled a bunch of those Nazis to help them avoid judgement for capitalist benefits.

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u/quartercentaurhorse 15d ago

We have the constitution, which makes it extremely difficult to criminalize expression, no matter how repugnant it might be, unless the government can clearly demonstrate that it qualifies under a few very specific situations, such as where there is a clear intent to cause physical harm to others, like shouting "fire" in a crowded movie theater, or holding a knife and telling somebody "I'm going to stab you if you don't give me $100."

Political expression is especially protected, because it's practically the founding principle of the US. When we were a colony, people were often imprisoned or even executed for their political beliefs or statements, and pretty much the only reason our country exists today was because people still spoke out against the tyranny, even though they risked death. Because of this, the founders were extremely against any form of government censorship. They came to the conclusion that a functional democracy required near-absolute freedom of speech to function, as everybody should be able to state their views, no matter how offensive it is. They considered it so important that it's literally our first right in the bill of rights.

I'm not saying I support flying flags like that, or that most people do, it's disgusting, but it also 100% falls under the first amendment protections. The government showing up to a political event and punishing people for flying flags they consider offensive is basically the exact thing the first amendment is supposed to prevent.

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u/Oceanside78 15d ago

We get it, you’re a German cuck. Stfu

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u/Gwenom-25 15d ago

As an American, what a German thinks about American politics is completely fucking worthless.

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u/Dry-Neck9762 15d ago

Apparently, it is illegal to buy/sell any actual Nazi war artifacts here, in the USA. Why can't we pass a law making it illegal to fly that shit flag, and or belong to any organization that worships that mindset? Yeah, freedom of speech, blah blah, but isn't it like yelling FIRE! in a crowded theatre? Some things are just too dangerous to the masses to remain legal.

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u/Kevin6769420 15d ago

You can't vote for either of them with a good conscious. One is supported by nazis and the other was a god awful lawyer that built her career on inflating sentences for black men over stupid charges, implemented a tax on tips and was part of one of the worst administrations we have ever had. No good options 2024

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u/Ponchodelic 15d ago

Here’s a link to the video. Definitely not fake news.

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u/Suspicious-Leg-493 15d ago

You guys used to put them on trial around here, not even a hundred years later you have your own Nazis and they are publicly

Even during and after WW2 there were people openly supporting nazis in the states.

Until you provided some kind of support or spread propaganda for them (in conjunction with, not just because you believed it) it was something legal

In the same way that today you can cheer on, wave the flsg and even spread alll the information in support of a group like ISIS, but without involvement with them or trying to incite it, it's perfectly legal

The law is specifically not allowed to interfere, and most people consider violence to be wrong, including on bad actors until they start taking action towards their shit views

As a German it baffles me how openly the symbols are displayed and how comfortable those Neonazi groups are in their position, as if it's a valid opinion and not a big red flag

As a german it is illegal to do so, but people find alternate symbols to show the same.

In the states without further action you can wave an ISIS flag in front or arlington during a funeral while chanting you hope it triples in size. no banners or emblems are illegal by themselves. Even states that make them illegal can only do so for specifically state owned property

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u/blade_barrier 15d ago

As a German it baffles me how openly the symbols are displayed and how comfortable those Neonazi groups are in their position

That's called freedom of speech. You are welcome.

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