The Nazi problem, a Stoic take
What should we do when faced with advocacy of Nazifascism?
Surprisingly, contemporary society seems to have a Nazi problem. I say surprisingly because you would think that, after World War II and the Holocaust, we would be done with that particular pernicious ideology. But, apparently, we are not.
From time to time, over the past several decades, both Germany and Italy have seen the occasional resurgence of overtly Nazifascist movements, sometimes in the form of violent protests enacted by misguided young people, at other times in the guise of thinly veined attempts to reconstitute the Fascist party, as was the case for the Movimento Sociale Italiano in Italy.
The United States has not been immune from the danger either. Nazism is popular enough in certain quarters of the hinterland that in the movie The Blues Brothers (1980) Jake and Elwood have some fun running a bunch of Illinois Nazi into a river.
More seriously, presumably we all remember the incident that took place in Charlottesville (VA) back in 2017, where one person was killed and 35 others injured at a rally held by White Supremacists. Not to mention, of course, the hideous history of the Ku Klux Klan, a quintessentially American fascist organization that has been responsible for hate crimes since the 1860s…
