The Increasingly Inconvenient Number of Nazis
Without the slightest hint of irony, I am beginning to miss the days when the left called everyone on the right a Nazi and was usually wrong. The accusation was almost always lazy, insulting, and routinely aimed at people whose supposedly fascist ambitions amounted to wanting a more secure border. Simply put, the word was weaponized to scare dissenters away from honest debate. What I did not expect was to watch so many on the right begin reciting the rhetoric we had spent years explaining bore no resemblance to our beliefs, with some proceeding all the way to open admiration for Hitler. It is an unpleasant experience to spend years defending people against a slander and then discover that a growing number have adopted it as a political identity. At first, I thought they were trolling, borrowing Nazi language for the pleasure of watching people recoil. I’m less sure now. Apparently, some accusations become aspirational if repeated often enough.
One of our country’s most important freedoms is that of free speech.
Agree with this essay? Disagree? Join the debate by writing to DailyClout HERE.