"Bethesda covers its arse in anticipation of a bunch of terminally online American teenagers who just learnt the word 'nazi' and would use it to describe a fuckin nun if it made them feel a bit morally superior for ten seconds"
I've heard plenty of people try to say WOLFENSTEIN glorifies nazis
I've had one idiot tell me ANY media that paints them as competent or successful is glorifying them. And setting anything in a world where they succeeded and progressed technologically instead of collapsing is basically saying Hitler's world view is valid.
I still don't know how to respond to that beyond "if you think the nazis were incompetent you don't know history, and if you think showing a future where fascism took hold is unrealistic I have some bad news for you"
It's fantasy, and specifically a fantasy in which you get to go on a massive killing spree against some of the worst people in history, how you can somehow pull "this game is making these guys look good" from that, I'm not sure.
It should be noted that a lot of their blunders later in the war can be traced back to Hitler (or one of his sycophants) getting involved and overruling far more experienced Generals, many of whom were not party members. It could also be argued that the economy they set up, while impressive given the state of Germany post-WWI, was an entirely unsustainable war economy that relied very heavily on slave labor. That’s not to say they were completely incompetent, but they did vastly overestimate their own abilities and made many mistakes as a result.
I’ve had one idiot tell me ANY media that paints them as competent or successful is glorifying them. And setting anything in a world where they succeeded and progressed technologically instead of collapsing is basically saying Hitler’s world view is valid.
And people still wonder why I pick so much on the wishful thinking fallacy... I mean, that's basically it, right? "Nazi are morally bad, I hate them, thus they must be incompetent". And if you correctly highlight that this is fucking stupid, you'll get some kid saying stuff like "I dun understand, why are you defending Nazi?".
........a whole shitload of things exist? Everything from microwave ovens, to nasa space rockets, to jet engines? Shit! If the nazis weren't so god damned evil they would have been pretty awesome.....but they aren't. You know, because of the whole evil facist racists thing.
But damn they knew how to invent stuff, and have stylish military uniforms while doing so.
Here's my problem with wolfenstein. The daat yichud or whatever was a little too close to the secret Jewish cabal that real life Hitler believed/claimed was working behind the scenes manipulating society for is own gains. I don't think the series is pro Nazi, I'd have to be stupid to believe that, but I feel this particular plot point was a little tone deaf in a historical context.
If they think that, they may have a problem with what they consider glorified. They may want to avoid recognizing parallels that are far more personal to them.
If they didn't have at least a few competent nazis, they wouldn't have been such a threat; WW2 would be over in a month. I'm sure there were even competent Talibans and North Koreans.
One of the biggest mind fuck novels I ever read was "The Iron Dream' by Norman Spinrad.
On one level it's a 'hero's journey' story about an exiled prince who returns to his homeland and defeats a bunch of evil mind controlling wizards. Lots of excitement and adventure and terrific battles.
The fucked up part is that it's the last novel Adolph Hitler wrote after migrating to America in 1921.
Hitler was a popular illustrator who eventually felt confident enough to start writing in English. He was a popular figure at conventions and had a huge fandom.
The Iron Dream is a metafictional 1972 alternate history novel by American author Norman Spinrad. The book has a nested narrative that tells a story within a story. On the surface, the novel presents a post-apocalyptic adventure tale entitled Lord of the Swastika, written by an alternate-history Adolf Hitler shortly before his death in 1953. In this timeline, Hitler emigrated from Germany to the United States in 1919 after the Great War, and used his modest artistic skills to become first a pulp science fiction illustrator and later a successful writer, telling lurid, purple-prosed, pro-fascism stories under a thin science fiction veneer. The nested narrative is followed by a faux scholarly analysis by a fictional literary critic, Homer Whipple, which is said to have been written in 1959.
The scariest thing about Nazis is that they're human and even pretty smart sometimes. To reiterate what others are saying: dehumanization leaves you in a blind spot for the humans around you who can silently undergo vast transformations from people you thought you loved into Nazis. They throw away their humanity yes, but they had to be human to throw it away. Dehumanization is also how the process of becoming a Nazi starts. Don't even mirror it in jest, try on radical empathy and face the truth: humans are horrifically complex. Nazis are unfortunately humans.
Nazis are incredibly mechanical honestly. They lose empathy and then others become mearly disposable objects. You might commit murder just like you would throw away a plastic bag. There is a totally absence of care which leads you to inflict terrible things to others.
I also doubt how many actual Nazis there are. It is often thrown around which leads it to lose the horrible meaning. I've seen people shout Nazis over much less deadly things. Don't confuse systematic mass murder with someone having a questionable character. They can be a terrible human but they haven't committed the level of crimes as mass murder of millions. The level of death and suffering caused by the holocaust is not a joke and certainty not something to use when your upset.
Sorry for the rant I just needed to get that off my chest. I'm not really addressing anyone in particular.