Annotated 22-17
Being hated is the price one pays for knowing the truth. It’s also the price one pays for believing many falsehoods. And double-parking. And doing too many noticeable good deeds, and committing all the crimes. And playing the drums too loudly when your next-door neighbor is trying to write comics commentary, GREGORY [real name withheld]. Intelligent beings are good at hating each other, I think is the takeaway here.
Which leads me to a more serious anecdote. I reviewed this page in 2013 and noted the black icon in white circle on red field imagery. It was, er, familiar but struck me as not familiar enough to be too triggery. Hey, it’s not like Hitler registered a copyright! Heck, the United Farm Workers had an icon like that!
In 2017, I had moved from Charlottesville, where I was during most of 2013, but one of the Charlottesvillers I had befriended back then had to deal with avowed, self-identified Nazis on the streets of his home. He had a heart attack a week later and passed early this year.
Would I still sign off on this imagery today? Mmm, probably in certain contexts. But I’d regard it as a bit less of a harmless relic.
Yeah, being German the imagery there struck me as a little weird (especially since there are Neonazi organisations that use a similar logo, with the triskele on it). That said, the weird part, for me, was less that I was offended by it and more that the cultists struck me as pretty much entirely different than the Nazi ideology. As in, the Nazis were all about tight control and clinical precision, while the cultists are very anarchistic in their behavior. They do, of course, end up killing a lot of people, but they don’t really do it out of racial prejudice either, they’re pretty equal in their murder. Nothing about them strikes me as Nazi-like, so the symbolism struck me as a bit odd.
That’s incorrect.
The nazis were, and are, all about corruption.
The leaders are in it for personal gain, and all their toadies are just hoping for scraps from the table.
Exactly like the GOP or the Tories or what have you.
Hmm… not quite. German Nazis did keep friggin books on many of their violent excesses. They had a strict hierarchy. It was pretty much absolute orders and strict discipline regarding everyone above one’s station, and despotic rule over everyone below. Undisciplined chaotic violence was totally fine, as long as it hit the designated target group, and nobody who had power over you. It was, essentially, unbounded rage on one side and a strict hierarchical system on the other, which may have been used as much for windowdressing as for actual organizing, but it was definitely different from the Countless Limbs, who have no issue killing just about anyone, whenever, regardless of any association, imagined or real, of their victim with any particular target group/ideology or whatever. I mean, they’re slaughtering each other for fun!
Another angle: Try to imagine the “bothers” marching in formation. Not gonna happen.
Yeah sorry friend but you’ve fallen prey to what is essentially WW2 era propaganda that has long since been discredited by actual historiography. The Nazis certainly PRESENTED themselves as a clinically precise, tightly ordered machine. And the Allies actually assisted in developing that imagery because it was useful for demonstrating the severity of the threat and for driving up enlistment/investment in the cause.
But the reality is that the Nazi regime was a den of backstabbing, corruption, and incompetence under the hood. Officials constantly throwing one another under the bus to get a leg up, misrepresenting figures to avoid taking the blame, the capitalist class stiffing the Nazis on tanks to a hilarious degree. The list goes on and on and on. The well oiled Nazi machine is a myth and always has been.
The Nazi’s were masters of Public Image. So many of their philosophies were concerned with appearances it didn’t actually matter what was underneath them, ironic from a group obsessed with blood purity. At the same time Hitler was preaching about the sins of prostitution against humanity, he was running rape camps for his soldiers. The power of their Image was so great, they bought it too (not unlike our cult friends here) and so did the world.
The aesthetic of the Nazi’s was all about projecting that cold, efficient, calculating, and powerful presence, but they were far more guilty of excess than the people they decried (HOW MANY GOLD EAGLES DO WE NEED, I THINK ANOTHER ONE HERE) and all that crisp uniformity and slick presentation hid the fact that this well ‘oiled machine’ was kind of flying itself and no one was really in control. It would have been even scarier if they had been. Like, imagine if all the shit we now know was going on behind the scenes, hadn’t happened, and those venal monsters had actually been as competent as the image they projected (which given the damage they did, while also constantly infighting and screwing each other over, they could have been.With several being shown to be good at their jobs, but either caught up in, or destroyed by the infighting) the Nazi’s might have had a chance. I think we’re lucky they were so corrupt and ideologically bankrupt. The last thing you want is a group like that that has momentum, presence, ability, and conviction. Those kinds of people can get a lot done good or bad.
I never really saw the connection. It’s a three armed swastika and slightly wavy. Moreover, the cultists are equal opportunity mass murderers.
To be clear, the symbol is a triskelion, not a swastika. And a rather basic, unstylized one, at that.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion
What connects the imagery is the fact of near geometric resemblance and essentially identical coloration. The fact the symbolism is oppressive is partly due to the historical resemblance this combination bears to that particular regime of oppression. And both groups using their respective imagery are mass murderers, regardless of their particular philosophy – so it’s not an improvement to aim for omnicide over genocide, and certainly doesn’t lessen the similarity significantly.
Even so, whether there’s a connection or not isn’t just a matter of narrative similarity, it’s also a matter of if the imagery in the context of its use rings familiar to you or not. In the current era, it should be familiar to most, so there’s a clear connection – it’s just perhaps not an intentional, indistinguishable parallel.
The whole colour scheme of the tent is orangy-red, so you had to work from that.
The best way to make a noticable badge against that background is a light(er) area with a dark(er) image or vice versa.
And the symbol of the eye with 3 arms was used when we first see brother Tom. This is just a more stylized version. It also fits nicely with the eyed-themed stele.
So there’s only so many ways you could go with the imagery already established.
So it felt no less weird to me than seeing the swastika when I visited a Hindu temple.
Eh, same with certain facial hair. Do you see Hitler or Chaplin? I personally see Ron Mael.
Orange? Or Trump?
Also reminds me a little of one backpage picture on a magazine. Had a black man in white doctor’s coat, with slogan “Which did you see first?”
People are of course free to think that just because something is something, the other thing must be the same thing, ‘cose it looked/feeled/sounded/tasted/smelled/made our vestibular or proprioception systems react like that other something.
But basically being offended/horrified/shocked/disgusted because of something in other thing, even if it is actually used to convey the same idea as the first something, let alone if it has nothing to do with the first something, is just silly.
Yeah, hating the nazis is pretty legit. They did a lot of bad things, and some good, lets be honest, medical knowledge did take notes, but the price paid was horrendous, but just having gutreaction to seeing something resembling a swastika is just like people having gutreactions to say black skincolour, someone’s religion, not having a cool moustache, etc.
But yeah. At the end of the day, people are free to hate anything they want for any reason they like, just as long as it doesn’t hamper their ability to work with each other.
A wise woman once said: We do not need to see eye to eye to stand shoulder to shoulder. :D
Making a distinction is necessary when the distinction to be made is of significance.
It’s unnecessary when it’s merely a matter of tradition, habit, or coincidence, but it still happens.
To give an example: a person might make a distinction between a manta ray and a stingray. To do so because of their size is insignificant; they’re sea creatures, and their size does not have any bearing on how you should react to seeing them.
On the other hand, making that distinction because one can readily kill you out of reflex to your proximity is a significant distinction to make. You should definitely react to one with more caution than the other. There is no moral ambiguity in thi, and certainly no logical ambiguity.
It is with caution – a healthy amount of it – that we should view extremists; not hate. It is with reflexive conditioning that we view all radicals with similar caution, but unlike extremists, not all radicals are malign – they are concerned with fundamental ideas, but extremists are concerned with dangerous and overly hostile fundamental ideas.
Hate does not make significant distinctions, and that is the danger of it. Caution, on the other hand, does – and has nothing to do with taking offense.
Typos fixed: this, overtly.
To be even more clear: offense and hate are gut reactions; caution is a reasoned reaction.
This makes caution inherently more forgiveable, barring any of the three impulses being clarified further by context.
It is not wisdom to be uncautious; it is an absence of concern for your own protection. It is naive. It is suicidal.
Extremely well said. :D
Meh, I found the whole break down of the Cultist to be very ‘generic evil bad guy.’ They are still creepy and effective bad guy, don’t get me wrong but the who ‘death for death sake?’ Actual death/dooms day cults are ether motivated by a belief in being rewarded in the afterlife of some kind or some sort of divine retribution. Tom’s whole schtick boils down to ‘because we are eeeevvviiilll!’
I found them interesting. I feel like the core motivator is less “because we’re evil” and more “because evil or good, we’ll all go to the void. So we might as well enjoy ourselves!”. Some are after fame, some glory, some riches, but they’re all there because nothing matters so why not. It’s nihilist as hell, and doesn’t strike me as internally inconsistent.
I wrote a death cult that was based around the idea that suffering was wrong, and all life/existence lead to suffering, therefore the only moral response was the annihilation of all life. I mean they were completely nuts, but they really didn’t see it as evil, just necessary. To further things, they even believed an after life was not ideal as it extended the suffering of some to eternal levels, and left others sitting for eternity who would likely be exposed to suffering later (given the underlying nature of reality) so they didn’t just want death, they wanted annihilation (hence spheres of annihilation, which were their inspiration).
These guys seem to know in some part that they are part of a constructed reality, and that their lives are without meaning. That all life is without meaning, so they hold life as no sacred thing. Morality means nothing to them, there is no evil and good as far as they are concerned, those are false paradigms. They think their view is beyond them. In a way I think they think their action is the only way to fight back against the absurd rules of their reality, and so they are rebelling against the construct of their universe. I don’t think that’s evil for evils sake, though it is a direct fuck you to god.
I find it fascinating that on a page where comparing and contrasting cultural pieces we get a symbol that we end up comparing and treating with a cultural piece
“Oh, okay.”
“Makes sense when he puts it like that.”
“Yeah. Welp, let’s get back to the buffet table before the cocktail wieners run out.”