Ok, you know what, I'm tired of this.
Elon is a narcissistic man-child with too much influence. But he's not a Nazi, and I'm really sick of Americans throwing that word around without a modicum of thought.
Nazis are why my great-grandfather fled Poland at 17 after losing his brother and both parents. He evaded the Germans across Europe, joined the Polish government in exile in Scotland, and never returned. He married a Scottish woman while he had no fixed address in 1947, found some kind of peace working as a coal miner for 37 years in the worst conditions imaginable, and didn't see his sisters again for decades. He didn't even know if they were alive.
Millions were displaced like this, millions more had their family lines ended entirely. You trivialise that when you slap "Nazi" on every arsehole with a platform.
Money and power are not the same thing. You just make it true by believing it. The boss of IKEA's political opinions don't matter here in Sweden because he can't actually do anything (He’s an actual documented Nazi sympathiser btw). The institutions won't let him. If yours will, that's a problem with your institutions, not a reason to call someone a Nazi.
How much of your headspace is Musk renting? He does not matter as much as you think. And if he did, you'd be better off explaining why what he says is dangerous rather than screaming "Nazi" into the void.
Dismissing someone isn't the same as defeating them. You want bad ideas to not take root? Dispel them. Make the argument. Show why it's wrong. That changes minds, or at least puts enough out there that the ideas don't land with someone else (which is why the rise of the right is happening). Shouting "Nazi" and walking off doesn't make the problem go away. It just moves it somewhere you can't see it, and it'll come back for you, probably wearing a stupid red hat when it does.
Hitler didn’t jump straight to killing Jews. This is a Nazi before he gets into his stride.
Ok so make that case. What specifically is he doing, what mechanisms is he using, what does the trajectory look like? Because that’s an argument worth having and I’d probably agree with a lot of it. But “this is a Nazi before he gets into his stride” is still just the label doing the work instead of the argument. That’s my entire point.
I’ll grant you he’s a Nazi sympathiser, there’s enough evidence for that and its easy to lay it out. But that’s the argument you should be making, with specifics, not just calling him a Nazi and leaving it there. Because the specifics are what actually alarm people. The label just lets them dismiss you.
Wide reaching propaganda that advocates for a white ethnostate (this alone is enough), explicit displays of Nazism with the heil, financial support to white supremacist parties in the US and abroad.
See, this is what I’m asking for. You’re making an actual argument now and I don’t even disagree with most of it. The AfD support and the white solidarity stuff is indefensible. I’d call him a Nazi sympathiser based on the evidence. But that’s not what the original comment said. It said “he’s a Nazi and there’s nothing to debate.” There’s a world of difference between building the case you just built and just slapping the label on and shutting down the conversation. One of those persuades people. The other one lets them dismiss you.