Quote:
Originally Posted by Cowboy89
You can pretty much dismiss any post when they try to compare a Canadian conservative politician to Nazism, fascism etc, and blanket liken them to a US Republican President / Presidential Candidate. It's an old trope as old as time itself and is an emotional, factless appeal to anti-Americanism. In the 2000s it was attacking Harper for his 'Bush-style' tactics. It's a lazy association to slander without doing any work to talk about anything concrete or factual. All it tells you is that a poster is clearly deeply partisan or anti-conservative and offers nothing of value.
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What if, instead of blanket likening and broad comparisons to Nazism, people point out the use of neo-fascist rhetoric and rhetoric similar to Trump? You know, like what was actually done, and is actually accurate?
What value should we judge someone to have on offer if they have a notebook of words that immediately make them shut down intellectually and completely ignore what is
actually being said vs what they want to argue against having been said?
Probably zero, right?
We can probably all agree that PP isn’t actually a fascist (yet) and that his election will (likely) not signal Canada’s descent into fascism… while also being intellectual and well-read enough to recognize fascist rhetoric and his use of it.
The idea that you’re not allowed to recognize fascist rhetoric is broadly idiotic. Hitler and Trump both used similar playbooks to
get to power and appeal to the population. That doesn’t mean Trump = Hitler. Pointing out that PP is borrowing from the same playbook does not mean that PP = Trump = Hitler, either. PP doesn’t need to start an insurrection or get a concentration camp rolling for people to be able to point out fascist rhetoric.
This is all quite funny anyway, considering one of the people complaining about comparing fascist rhetoric to fascist rhetoric just a few weeks ago let a comment comparing protests on college campuses to the rise of Nazism go unchecked. But I guess trivializing something horrible is only bad when it’s someone you disagree with.