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Notes -
What is "really a Nazi"? The German NSDAP party (1920-1945) has been defunct for generations. It's physically impossible to be a real Nazi then. And yet people keep using that word without irony and demanding to be taken as if they are speaking seriously.
I, personally, continue to be confused and angered by other's dialog around this fetishezed word. How it's used is clearly propaganda and point blank logical fallacy usage. The equivocation fallacy, I believe. X thing holds the mental symbolic resonance of [evil] thing we all hate. People want Y thing to be hated too, so they use the title of X and expect transference of associations, even though Y is objectively different than X in all the ways that made X probable to be associated with the mental color [evil]. Namly Y is not a militarized authoritarian party in the 1940s running Auschwitz and making massacre graves on the Eastern Front. What I don't get is why people, you included, seem to believe their own propaganda. This shit ain't real. "Nazis" are no longer real. Is there confusion on this?
What there is, and has been before, during, and after Germany 1920-1945 is the an ultra "right-wing" mentality and disposition. Some of these people do in fact engage in LARPy antinomian symbology and acts associated with the past NSDAP party (e.g. swastikas, salutes, black sun) - intentionally because they are so taboo most likely, because there's limited good ultra-right art/iconography to draw on, as well as admiration for the high point of the German ultra-right at its apex when it was winning. People love a winner and tend to rally behind one. But the ultra right mentality would exist if God deleted Germany from all time. People are their own thing. Again, is there confusion on this?
“Really a Nazi” here refers to genuinely held beliefs. “Not really a Nazi” means that Azov are only acting like they’re holding Nazi beliefs (whatever those are), but actually that’s only performative - on the inside they’re perfectly race blind liberals who think just like the modal westerner. I.e they’re LARPing as Nazis, like one would LARP as a wizard without actually believing oneself to be a wizard.
None of this is dependent on there still being “real” Nazis or not, since you’re using the word “real” to mean something completely different. I’m talking about what’s going on inside their head, not their party membership.
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