Hacker News Reader

Comment by ed25519FUUU | Hacker News Reader

I’ve seen this a few times on the net and it’s weird quote to me, because the nazis did incrementally come after more groups; Jews, gay, Gypsies, disabled, etc.

Is my takeaway that it didn’t happen or something else?

View on HN

>I’ve seen this a few times on the net and it’s weird quote to me, because the nazis did incrementally come after more groups; Jews, gay, Gypsies, disabled, etc.

>Is my takeaway that it didn’t happen or something else?

It's supposed to be a shibboleth

You don't get the joke? Ok. The poem by Martin Niemoller is often used by far-right apologists to draw a false equivalence between themselves and their opponents, implying that anyone who would fight right-wing extremism is just as much of an evil as the Nazis, doing so under false pretenses, and will simply by virtue of their opposition act as the Nazis themselves did.

And yet, in reality, the people who want to "come after" Jews, gays, gypsies, etc are those extremists, not the people opposing them. The slope is in reality only slippery in one direction.

Assuming there's only two directions in your example. Do you really think the slope is only slippery on the right side?

Only one side intends for it to be slippery, yes, and it isn't the side that doesn't like nazis.

Because, you see, we've already been through this and fighting nazis and fascists and racists the first time hasn't led to the dystopian nightmare anyone is warning about now.

One of the benefits of having only one eye, you only see one side! :)

"At first they came for the people that wanted everyone to have health care, then they came for the people who wanted LGBT people to be treated fairly"...

You don't think a similar thing could be written about Communist Russia from 1918 to 1920, say? Do you think that didn't happen? Or do you think they and the Nazis were the same side?

They were extremists - I'm with you there - but more than one side has had extremists.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com