this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Bourgeoisie has depicted fasciscts as vilains, evil and monstruous. Now when people discovered that nazis are just humans, their are surprised. Spoiler: people could act nice, honest, and even involve in charity, and still aim to enslave or mass kill others.
It depends also who you are. That person in the comic saying he’s nice is a guy and not the of the group of people(women) that are so aggressively disrespected. How would he know?
It also falls into the “decorum” sphere. Someone who isn’t yelling while they’re throwing your rights in the garbage is not nice. Someone opening the gas chamber door for you is not nice. Surface level means nothing and it has always meant nothing but it takes a lot of energy for the vast majority of people to be thinking deeper than that all the time so they fall back on easy, high-level observations.
Now, I won’t say someone can’t be turned around. Many are pretty far gone, though, and it’s not their victims’ job to be nice and supportive to their oppressors. So yes, they might just be humans but the warning given above needs to be more of a “he’s kinda a misogynist right now but I’ve been working on him and he’s getting better. Let me know if you’re uncomfortable at any point though and I’ll take care of it.”
It hadn't occurred to me before, but sometime about a year ago I ran into a group of guys who are passionate about nature: talking about preserving woods, how majestic deer could be standing in the mist in the early morning, how much they liked a particular species of bird because of it's call, expressing concern about civilization's impact on the health and well-being about animals.
They were all hunters. I honestly believe they really did respect and admire the animals they were hunting; they didn't want them to suffer, they weren't out specifically to cause pain. I still struggle with the dichotomy, but I have no doubt they saw themselves as animal lovers. I think there are probably trophy hunters who are just in it for the ego, but I believe a lot of hunters are in it to get out in the woods, away from civilization, and on their way, commune with nature.
Don't get me wrong: there are other ways of achieving that without hunting, and there are malicious, hurtful, broken people. It's probably more common that what we'd attribute to petty meanness is simply a different set of ethics - and, no, I'm not saying all ethics are equally good or right or valid. But the people who hold them can be - as you say - perfectly polite, nice, kind, thoughtful people. They just hold unjustifiable opinions about some things.
This is an interesting parallel, but I feel like I missed some key part of it.
In the US, at least, we historically killed off a lot of deer’s natural predators - mostly wolves - and as a result, the deer population can get out of control, causing serious problems to the ecosystem. Hunters help to remedy that. The relatively small violences that they perform on an individual basis add up to improving the overall ecosystem.
That isn’t the same as being a bigot, or a sexist, or a fascist… and I don’t know why anyone would assume that a person holds those views because they’re mean and petty. They hold those views for a variety of reasons - sometimes because they’re a child or barely an adult and that’s just what they learned, and they either don’t know any better or haven’t cared enough to think it through; sometimes because they’ve been conditioned to think that way; sometimes because they’re sociopaths who recognize that it’s easier to oppress that particular group.
It doesn’t really matter what their reason is. Either way, they’re a worse person because of it, and often they’re overall a bad person, regardless of the rest of their views, actions, and contributions.
Being a hunter, by contrast, is neutral leaning positive.
It makes sense that a rational person who loves being in nature, who loves animals, who wants their local ecosystem to be successful, would as a result want to help out in some small way, even if that means they have to kill an animal to do so. It doesn’t make sense that a rational person who loves all people, who wants their local communities to be successful, would as a result want to oppress and harm the people in already marginalized groups.
I don’t think equating being bigoted with holding unjustifiable opinions does it justice. The way we use the word opinion generally applies to things that are trivial or unimportant, that don’t ultimately matter, e.g., likes and dislikes. Being a bigot is a viewpoint; it shapes you. For many bigots, their entire perspective is warped and wrong. And there’s a common misunderstanding that you can’t argue with someone’s opinions; because it’s just how they “feel.” But being a bigot, whether you’re sexist, racist, transphobic, queerphobic, homophobic, biphobic, etc., is a belief, and it’s one that, in most cases, the bigot chooses (consciously or not) to keep believing.
If an adult with functioning cognitive abilities refuses to question their bigoted beliefs, then they’ve made a choice to be a bigot.
You just dug up an old memory. When I was in high school, there was a girl who came from a hunting family. I remember one day she came up to me and started telling me the same things you said about "loving nature," along with rambling about how her dad makes her kill just "one deer" each year, like it's a token goal she's obligated to fulfill. She kept apologizing to me for it. Okay, random, right?
Nah, not random at all. I've been vegan since I was 14. I never said anything about her hobbies - sure, I don't agree with hunting for sport, but I would've preferred to avoid the topic entirely than to hear anything about it. She felt compelled, of her own accord, to not only initiate the conversation, but to make it basically a confessional - like she felt guilty and was looking toward me for some kind of forgiveness.
It's an aspect of veganism that doesn't get talked about in public much - not only are we made the target of tons of random hate, but we're also made into a sounding board for meat-eaters, hunters, etc. who are experiencing cognitive dissonance. Like we're some kind of liason between humans and other animals, or like winning our approval will make a guilty meat-eater feel better. I don't know.
Interesting. I guess if you feel guilty about it, but not enough to change your behaviors, seeking absolution from someone who's more ethically pure would be a natural reaction. It's the basis for absolution in the Catholic church, and in begging forgiveness in prayer even in branches of Christianity that don't have human confessors. I think it's very human.
In your friend's case, it doesn't sound like she was a willing participant, and that sucks.
The problem is you need to depict their actions as evil and monstrous, or fascism might appear to be a reasonable solution. Isolating the evil of fascism from the ordinary people pushing for it is subtle and complicated. Especially when some fascists really do cross the line into evil behaviour.
Basically humans are often bad at sharing subtle messages widely. Regardless of how much nuance you add to begin with, the message will always devolve for most people into either “hitler evil” or “hitler wasn’t that bad, he was nice to animals”, so given the options, most people prefer to lean into the evil side and avoid normalising fascism, with the inevitable consequence that it appears you have to start wearing skulls and torturing people in order to be a fascist and people forget that for the vast majority of everyday fascists it was “just politics” right up until they lost the war and had to start rethinking things.
I offer no solutions, but I don’t think you can blame just the bourgeoisie, but rather the human condition in general, us vs them, and the difficulty in sharing detailed concepts to a wide audience. There will always be “bad guys” who are so bad that we can’t possibly become them. I do think we’ve gotten better at telling stories with complex evil, but the flip side is that seems to just reduce people’s resolve to act. Almost like the 2 options built into our brains are “us vs them, kill the evils ones” and “meh, corruption is inevitable, just ignore it”.
I'm no priest, I blame no one; I point causes. In an unequal system (capitalism), there is not the same responsibility depending of our power on the mean of production. The representation that picture fascism of the unions or anti-racist collectives exists, but are marginal. Mass media like in Hollywood, mainstream comics or how History is presented on TV has way more impact. I'm not saying that the bourgeoisie is more or less fascists than other classes. I'm saying that in letting their in command, we let their point view and biaises shape our representations. No judgement their, just description.
We could go further, and say the most someone is close to the ruling class, the less someone will met contradictions.