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I think that there are solid reasons why democracies have developed cultural antibodies against Nazi aesthetics.
Now, I get not leaving everything which has ever been used by Nazis barren. For example, there are only so many two-letter acronyms, not using SS for something useful seems a bit of a waste, so I am fine with you Americans abbreviating social security thus. Likewise, just because some Neonazis like 18 and 88, even the Germans will not go all tetraphobic (yes, I know) on these numbers.
On the other hand, if someone were to say that we should reclaim "Heil Hitler", because after all, what made the Nazis bad was not their greetings but their genocides, I would reply that this is a terrible idea. It would be like saying that glowing cigarette butts -- unlike wildfires -- are generally not dangerous to humans, and thus we can throw them away without a care.
Of course, Musk's salute is a lot more ambiguous than "Sieg Heil", but in general I think that the gesture should better stay in the cordon sanitaire for a few more centuries.
My theory is that Musk did this deliberately to troll people. I disapprove.
(Also, I re-read SSCs parable of talents from 2015 recently. Scott mentions Musk no less than nine times, as an example of someone who is clearly gifted and doing good on a scale most of us could never hope to do. With a decade of hindsight, this reads somewhat bizarre -- sure, Musk did some great stuff, like making electric cars cool and establishing reuseable first stages, but he also did quite a few things which do not seem worth emulating.)
To better generate political accusations against political opponents while deflecting accusations of behavioral comparisons on aesthetic dis-similarity are certainly solid reasons, but they are not good reasons.
It certainly doesn't have much to do with protecting the rights and liberties of the individual, hence why the antibodies are about aesthetics and not practices such as government attitudes towards political-opposition speech (including use of organized political violence and ostracism to intimidate bystanders into non-resistance), political structure dynamics (incredibly strong governmental influence on private commercial actors to leverage nominally independent entities as tools of the state), social engineering at the race-composition level.
Moreover, it is and was particularly important that the cultural antibodies be against Nazi aesthetics, as opposed to the aesthetics of anyone who shared in Nazi-behavior, because during the Cold War when those antibodies were developed antibodies against behavior-aesthetics instead of Nazi-aesthetics would have implicated a not-inconsiderable portion of the Soviet-sympathizing socialist-leaning classes, who were significant influences in the cultural-antibody process and many of which whom still keep their Communist-derived aesthetics.
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Germany is not a democracy and not a free society.
Rather than treating the German authoritarian far left hate speech police that persecutes its only genuine patriots as an example for rest of the world to follow, it is an example of the idiocy of anti nazi obsession and how that looks to behave as an occupation goverment. Which is because part of the reason this has happened in Germany has been the influence of some of the people who got influence after ww2. Especially the frankfurt school types. This kind of hysteria is what let to these types arguing in favor of giving German children to pedophiles because else it would lead to a new holocaust, and fascism. And succeeding.
Now, make no mistake I would rather especially other countries are lead neither by traitors who oppress their own patriots, right wing and people in general, nor by extreme nationalists invading other countries. I don't think that your approach succeeds in only stopping the later.
The anti nazi inquisitor fanatics throughout the world have proven incapable of stopping only extreme elements of nationalism and not leading to an anti-native, state that oppresses its own natio. This has been part and parcel of their anti nazi crusade. So I would select in favor of not allowing them to play inquisitors any more. It is actually a good idea to loosen up with the hysterics 80 years after world war 2.
If we need more authoritarianism, perhaps we need an inquisition towards the antifa inquisitors who went way over the top and while they think they are fighting the ghost of Hitler, they are actually oppressing their own people.
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Don't people refer to the Secret Service as the SS, at least in contexts where the referent is clear?
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Then good thing ϟecureϟignals is bringing it back and putting it to use.
I doubt SecureSignals with his "the Nazis didn't do it and the Jews deserved it anyway" rhetoric minds at all when people call him SS.
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