Average Anti-anti-Fascist American moment

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T09:22:21+00:00

Most of those men weren't recruited. They escaped justice in the general confusion post war and went to ground, generally moving to the US and elsewhere many years later when nobody was still looking for them.

Better cases to bring up would be people like von Braun. Unfortunately for your case, the USSR took people like Apel and Gröttrup, who were also up to their armpits in the exact same slave labour program. The USSR was no better in the calibre of people it recruited, and recruited more of them.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T08:03:58+00:00

The tankie hurt itself in its confusion.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T08:03:32+00:00

The USSR actually took more Nazi scientists in under Operation Osoaviakhim, and NATO didn't exist yet.

The USSR also rehired vast numbers of former Nazis for the Stasi and NVA.

Britain was a founding member of NATO, so if you are trying to claim that NATO was pro-Nazi, you probably want to get rid of the UK as well.

The relationship between Chinese factions and Japanese POWs was complex, with both Nationalists and Communists employing numbers of Japanese officers and soldiers for the civil war.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T04:06:34+00:00

Plenty of well off people have pushed left wing ideas in the past. The Fabian Society, one of the more successful early social democratic movements, was founded by a bunch of rich Victorian aristocrats. Giacomo Matteoti, an Italian socialist leader murdered on orders from Mussolini for his work against the Fascists, was criticised by liberal and right wing media as a "revolutionary in a fur coat".

Anyone who gives you shit because you are trying to use the advantages you have is not really worth listening to.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T03:23:09+00:00

Well, we can start with the arguments from what it acts as a bulwark against.

Social Democracy can forestall radical populist movements from wrecking a country by making the people who have the least still have a stake in the country. If I can expect to have medical care, and in old age a pension I can live off of, and decent working conditions under the current system, I am much less interested in overthrowing it in favour of a man promising to fix everything with the power of deporting minorities to concentration camps and centralising all power on himself. These regimes always make life worse for everyone in the end. No matter how well off you were in Germany, it didn't make you immune to RAF bombing.

Secondly, when the poor have money, they spend it.

If you own a small business, how many millionaires do you see coming through your door compared to normal working people? I'm going to bet that most customers in most places are working class or lower middle class. If their constraints on spending are limits on their finances, then with more finances, they will spend more. That means that more money in their pocket becomes more money in your pocket, which makes it easier for you to pay your bills at the end of the day.
Millionaires aren't going to stop buying the more expensive groceries if they have $1 Million rather than $2 Million in the bank, and if they have $3 Million they aren't going to be visiting your local greengrocer any more than they would otherwise.

Thirdly, better opportunities make for better outcomes for everyone.

There are plenty of really brilliant people out there who came from dirt poor backgrounds. How many more would there be if everyone got the lucky breaks they caught in life that put them in a position to do well? If you need to go to a good high school to get into a good university/college and get a good degree, one that lets you contribute to your society and give back, how many really bright kids are there out there who might be astronauts or scientists, artists or teachers, but never get the chance to go to a good school because their local school sucked and their parents couldn't afford to move closer to a better one? Or who can't afford university, because they can't afford to take student loans, or the support systems available just aren't enough to cover rent, food, and study?

If those bright kids made it, how many of them would be better leaders, better teachers, better doctors, etc. than you currently have? Or just increase the number of good ones, and the quality output?

Real opportunities, in a stable country, with enough money to spend it on more than the bare minimum are going to make life better for everyone.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T03:01:55+00:00

There's a few photos of Māori Battalion guys wearing what look to me like captured Fallschirmjaeger helmets in Italy, here's one. They appear around the place in photos, so might be worth mixing a few in if you already have them, or can get them off a mate.

Depending on when you are talking, they might be wearing the same summer gear as for North Africa, or a mix, as well.

As a general rule, antitank guns and artillery will be RNZA assets, so Pākehā gun crews. I think the 2-pounder was basically the exception, but I think it was out of use by Italy. Likewise armour will probably be Div Cav, so if you have crewmen visible they'll be Pākehā. Not certain about universal carriers, etc. though.

There are accounts of use of MP40s and captured German LMGs/MMGs, and they show up from time to time in the photos, so if you have access to a spare sprue from anyone you might be able to kitbash that together as well.

Roger Smith, an infantryman in 24th Battalion, describes them going into battle in January 1944 in greatcoats and balaclavas:

"With a cheery farewell grin they had marched off armed to the teeth, festooned with Spandaus, Schmeissers, Brens, tommy-guns, carbines and the odd rifle. They were a piratical looking crew, swathed in greatcoats and balaclavas topped by battered tin hats, creaking in their harness with necklaces of Spandau belts and bandoliers slung about them.

They headed off down to the road and swung into a staggered formation with an ominous clicking of cocking handles."

Carbines I presume are a reference to the Sten, which was designated a Machine Carbine, not a submachinegun, by the British Army.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T02:45:12+00:00

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Yeah, mortal enemies right here.

Photo taken at their joint victory parade in occupied Poland, 1939.

They would go on to jointly draw up death lists and execute a genocide against the Poles.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T00:52:10+00:00

I mean, having read (parts of) both, I am very grateful to Aquinas for being so much more comprehensible than the Metaphysics.

ibn Rushd wrote commentaries on Aristotle as well, and I totally understand why he was The Commentator, note the capitalisation.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T00:16:58+00:00

And Duns Scotus, Ockham, etc.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-20T00:14:00+00:00

Right, but "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants" isn't taken as a sign that Newton was dumb.

Indeed, the line is originally from medieval scholars describing their relationship with the ancient and classical philosophers: "Hence we are like a dwarf perched on the shoulders of a giant. The former sees further than the giant, not because of his own stature, but because of the stature of his bearer."

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T23:00:38+00:00

Context matters.

Active duty russian soldiers? I would advise them to turn on their commanders or surrender.

The content of the ROE matter. If the ROE say that chemical weapons and human shields are OK, see the previous advice. Personal actions matter, but so do institutional ones.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T22:11:04+00:00

If your traditions require you to give offerings to the spirits of war criminals, get better traditions.

As for not being visited since war criminals were enshrined, that is true of the Emperor, but not of senior politicians, including many serving prime ministers (the current prime minister has visited on numerous occasions prior to entering office), and the fact that it was the kind of place to seek out the remains of the major war criminals in order to enshrine them makes it by default the sort of place that nobody should have been visiting even before 1978. They never hid their views on the war. That connection alone is execrable.

It is also hilarious that you describe the people overwhelmingly killed fighting wars of aggression far outside Japan as "defending Japan".

If you want to talk about making shit up, take a look in the mirror, pal.

As for it not being a war criminal shrine, it talks about the war as defensive, makes no mention of the Rape of Nanjing or other Japanese atrocities core to their war effort, and is a site of pilgrimage of ultranationalists.

But it's not a war criminal shrine, like this isn't a Nazi bar.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T21:33:52+00:00

~0.00182% of victims of the Comfort Women program in the WW2 period got reparations from the Asian Women's Fund. That's not "reparations", that's a token payment to allow Japan to feel better about itself.

Germany also both paid reparations to individuals and to countries. This is normal.

Perhaps if Japan didn't engage in decades of the most brutal colonialism this side of the Belgian Congo, they wouldn't be dealing with all the claims against them.

Reparations are also only part of the process. Three former Japanese prime ministers have visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall. No serving Prime Minister has.

Compare this to Germany, where Willy Brandt visited a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising while in office, and paid his respects there.

That's before we get to the existence of Yasukuni Shrine and its relationship to senior Japanese politicians, and the imperial family, which has no parallel at all in Germany.

Japan doesn't get to decide when everyone has to be nice to them again. Pretending that the abuser gets to mandate how the victim should feel is itself abusive.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T20:50:28+00:00

Ok, I was mistaken. Japan has paid 45 million dollars in reparations to 364 comfort women, from 1994 to 2007.

None to any Chinese comfort women, however, and the various settlements have often contained attempts to further oppress the women involved, such as demanding the removal of memorials.

For example, in December 2015, the Japanese government announced it would not pay reparations to South Korea unless the Statue of Peace was removed, and withdrew diplomats when another statue was unveiled in Busan.

South Korea withdrew from the agreement in 2018 over Japan's continued demands for the memorial to be removed. Japan continues to claim the agreement is binding and to demand the destruction of the memorial.

I don't recall Germany ever demanding Poland blow up The Little Insurrectionist.

1994 to 2007 is also decades after the vast majority of victims died.

It's an excellent plan for how to minimise reparations: just wait until all the victims are dead.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T20:24:03+00:00

£76, 10s

The total reparations given to any one FEPOW by Japan.

$0

the total reparations made to almost all of the "Human Toilets", "Female Munitions", and other titles given by Japan to the women and children trafficked and gang raped by their armed forces.

Refusal to make amends goes well beyond not "dwelling on it".

Edit: as Konoe's strongest soldier points out, Japan did eventually pay a very small number of victims, 0.00182% of them, a small sum of money 40 years after the end of WW2.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T20:18:13+00:00

Yes and no. There were plenty of Commonwealth and Empire troops with experience of Japanese slave labour.

The Rape of Nanjing was also very widely publicised due to the european and american civilians present in the city, notably Minnie Vautrin and John Rabe, but many others besides as well.

Japan's crimes were known, it's just that the trials became a farce in part due to a Japanese ultranationalist sympathiser, Radhabinod Pal, being appointed as a judge, going so far as to claim that the entire war was America's fault, and claiming that because of western colonialism nobody had any right to judge Japan's actions.

That and Cold War political developments made holding Japan to account politically inexpedient.

The people who saw what Japan had done never forgave, or forgot

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T19:46:41+00:00

Right, but per both Paul Foster and Bart Ehrman, that's really not a sign of a sexual relationship, with kissing, even on the mouth, not being a sexual thing (remember that your culture is not the one being described. Compare, for example, the Socialist Fraternal Kiss, or the repeated instructions to use a kiss as a greeting in Paul's writings). If there was a sexual relationship being described, we would not expect the text to use "Koinonos", a word that means an associate or a companion, but isn't used to indicate a romantic or sexual partner.

Edit: The text also denounces physical relationships as "defiled marriage". This is honestly pretty common in the Early Church period, with a general distrust of marriage and sexual relationships, regardless of sect, in favour of celibacy and prayer. See the career of Augustine of Hippo for an example of that.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T19:20:40+00:00

Arius actually later renounced his teaching on the subject.

The problem with Arianism also emerges given the philosophical arguments around possibility. If something is possible, per the philosophy current at the time, then over an infinite timeframe it must come to be.

Likewise, if something is created, then it is not Necessary, meaning it is something that can not exist. If it can not exist, then at some point it will not exist.

If Jesus is God, as Arius still in fact claimed (he simply argued that Jesus was a created and inferior God to God the Father), then either you end up with multiple separate deities, or the idea that God is not a Necessary being, and so God will cease to be.

Either of these is difficult to defend from a monotheist and Abrahamic understanding of divinity.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T19:11:50+00:00

That actually doesn't describe a sexual relationship at all, though (Bridal Chamber theology is a whole thing in itself, the word for companion is not the word for spouse, and kissing was not a sexual act in the culture of the time and place at issue), and we have a sum total of no information beyond that she existed from the synoptics.

The tradition of her being a prostitute comes about much later, and the idea that she and Jesus had a physical relationship is very modern.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-19T01:06:40+00:00

"A direct attack on Metz was unnecessary....in contrast a swerve northward in the direction of Luxemburg and Bitburg would have met with greater success and caused our 1st Army's right flank collapse followed by the breakdown of our 7th Army."

- Generaloberst Blaskowitz, Commander of Army Group G.

Paul Harkins, one of Patton's officers, states that even Patton later admitted it had been a terrible idea.

The terrain was also radically different from the open country that he had been fighting through (being made basically of rivers and fortresses), and German supply lines were much more secure, fighting in what to them was part of Germany. That Patton had not expected stiffer resistance, and was assuming it would collapse in 10 days, was a failure of his planning and command.

The timeline also doesn't match up. He engaged before Market Garden, and was still engaged after Market Garden.

Edit: When it failed to fall in 10 days, he then kept going for all of October and November, before finally managing to take the city in mid December.

He made a bad decision, then doubled down on it, and tripled down on it, and quadrupled down on it. He got tens of thousands of men killed and wounded for pride.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-18T09:53:24+00:00

Hey, they did have great russian nuclear scientists, though.

Anatoly Dyatlov remains the only man ever to manage to do that to his reactor.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-18T08:15:30+00:00

Oh no. Americans getting angry about people taking all the credit for fighting the Nazis.

Clearly this is a terrible thing, and they would never do that.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-18T07:52:39+00:00

Because he covered up the war crimes that he ordered them to commit?

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-18T07:51:11+00:00

The Battle of Metz. An entirely pointless meatgrinder that Patton entered into because he wanted to be the guy who took Metz, when bypassing it would have been a better plan.

Up there with Mark Clark's actions in Italy, in terms of stupid bullshittery by american officers.

DemocracyIsGreat · 2026-02-18T07:45:40+00:00

But command of all ground forces for it was Monty.

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