DeHuMaNiZinG nAziS iS BaD

I'm not saying nazis should be treated gently. I appreciate the importance and cost of struggles, and do believe in the therapeutic values of a punch in a nazi's faith (realizing how much people hate your nazi ideology may help you get connected to reality). But, this being said, i am strongly against dehumanizing nazis as it's not helping them become anything else, and it's not helping us develop an actual opposition to nazism as an ideology/praxis.

Demonization/dehumanization is what the liberal western establishment has been doing to the fascists ever since WWII and where has it lead us? It leads to a superficial (mis)understanding of nazism/fascism where it's not evident why so many millions of people have suddenly become crazy and started slaughtering their neighbors. It does not account for racist propaganda and the "manufacture of consent", authoritarian tendencies and centralized State apparatus, ordinary political repression ("first they came for...").

In the aftermath of WWII, dehumanization is the process that enabled to chop a few heads (Nuremberg trials) and then consider the matter resolved, without any concern for:

• putting on trial the industrials who supported Hitler (the trial was supposed to happen but never took place, as outlined in the Fascism Inc. documentary)
• the long history of racial hierarchies and cultural supremacy in Europe long before the nazis rose to power, and long after they were defeated: Hitler did not invent concentration camps, political repression or racial hierarchies, and he's certainly not the last to have done that in Europe

On a timeline that's closer to me as a live being, demonizing the Front National here in France has not helped to defeat it. Why? Because while the Front National has (over decades) become slightly more moderate in its discourse, the entire political apparatus from left (PCF) to right (UMP/LR) has shifted to a profoundly racist and securitarian agenda which was justified (in their claims) by the idea that if "immigration" and "security" themes are the monopoly of the Front National, then surely the Front National will rise to power. So by both dehumanizing fascists while at the same time (re)building their own brand of french fascism, they have in essence bolstered fascism and racist discourse in a way that most people (myself included) twenty years ago would have not thought possible.

Fascism, like any structure of oppression, has many facets, some of which traverse all of us. Fascism is a direct by-product and the logical conclusion of capitalism. Pointing the finger at specific manifestations of fascism without looking at the whole picture is feel-goodism to sleep at night, but fails to address the power structures and political/economic incentives driving the rise of fascist discourse in all veins of society.

Fuck fascism. Fuck France. Fuck NATO. Vive la Commune!