^=- up -=^

Godwin's Law: Gaiden

this is a minor one, and will likely be a short one. this is in the genre of "using twitter drama as a jumping off point to complain about something".

theres been a thing going around on left twitter. its a picture of a poster by some transphobic activists. the poster has a hitler quote on it, saying "'He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.' - Adolf Hitler". [^1]

[^1] https://archive.is/R6sPa

i now see leftists on my timeline, and chasten buttigieg (??? lol), unanimously claiming this is a self-report, and theyre calling themselves nazis. people who suggest theyre citing hitler unfavorably are bombarded with replies telling them to back to /pol/, and "you dont need to hand it to hitler".

but anyone who has ever interacted with a conservative before knows thats not whats happening here.

what theyre doing is claiming that leftists are following hitler's advice to control the youth. theyre citing him as bad and basically saying "sound familiar???"

and for their dipshit audience that isnt referring to their own indoctrination, it's referring to teachers "grooming" kids to be gay or whatever. anyone who saw mainstream conservatives referencing hitler and didnt immediately realize they were comparing him to leftists, which is one of the like 3 conservative arguments, just doesnt understand conservatives.

what theyre doing is them making the same point as liberals replying to conservatives lying about the election or whatever with the big lie hitler quote. theyre quoting hitler and saying its what their opponent is doing.

this is a massive theory of mind failure for thousands of leftists who fail to comprehend the majority of conservatives *also* think hitler was bad and think the left are nazis (or at least pretend for rhetoric). like idk what else to call it but a theory of mind failure that thousands of leftists saw a conservative write a hitler quote and couldnt even imagine he was being cited unfavorably bc its conservatives who are nazis, literally just no concept what their enemies actually believe.

conservatives always reference hitler in conversations about what the left is doing, and its never positive. they say the left is totalitarian for wanting to, uh, let gay people exist. they then godwins law it out to "theyre hitler." the amount of obama-hitler photoshops between 2008 and 2016 was incalculable.

large portions of the left have existed exclusively inside their own bubble for so long, where everyone believes (or realizes correctly?) that conservatives are nazis, that they completely fail to realize that people outside that bubble, much less conservatives themselves, dont agree.

calling conservatives nazis describes their mindset, and describes the consequences of what they believe, but they dont actually believe hitler and the nazis were good, thats a rhetorical point, a comparison. anyone who thought it was *literally* true needs to meet more people.

do right wingers that are proud nazis exist? yes, plenty. but conservatives as a whole are anti nazi (in the abstract) and think *you* are a nazi if you disagree with them. youre doing yourself a disservice if you cant perceive that these are disjoint sets of people. leftists dont have a monopopy on godwins law, as hard as we try to.

im all for strawmanning conservatives but i dont understand why we're trying to deceive ourselves like this lol