Re: The term 'Nazi'

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Re: The term 'Nazi'

#1 Talon Karrde

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 01:13 PM

Would it be just as offensive to call someone an Aztec?

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#2 The Journalist

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 01:45 PM

Where's the connection? And no.

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#3 Blackdog

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 02:08 PM

You're such an Aztec, Kardde.

Now ask yourself "am I offended?"

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#4 Talon Karrde

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 02:26 PM

I'm offended that you didn't spell my name right. Otherwise, no.

The connection is that someone posted a nazi image in my other topic, "What the hell?". I was just wondering why everyone considers the term 'Nazi' to be that offensive although the Nazis definitely were not the only people to commit atrocities. The scale of the Nazis may be larger, but the ideology is not more offensive than that of some other peoples.

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#5 Myriad

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 02:39 PM

The reason no one gets offended if you call them an Aztec is the same reason no one gets offended if you call them a German. 'Nazi' refers to the Nazi party, not an entire population.

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#6 Zortrium

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 03:14 PM

GD continually posted "Nazi" many times for no apparent reason, called everyone (including himself) a Nazi, and generally made a nusiance of himself.

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#7 dude3

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 04:41 PM

Aztec is a race. Nazi is a political ideology. No connection.

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#8 Pufer

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Posted 02 June 2003 - 11:26 PM

There is a certain street gang here in Albuquerque whose members refer to each other as "Aztecas," meaning it as a term of endearment (of sorts, kind of like African-Americans refering to each other as "brothas"). So I would have to say that "Aztec" would probably be a kind of compliment amongst the hispanic populace of North America.
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#9 Sundered Angel

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Posted 03 June 2003 - 05:40 AM

That's strange. Didn't the Spanish nearly obliterate the Aztecs?

Though I suppose it's in line with white Australians claiming Aboriginal culture as their own.

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#10 Talon Karrde

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Posted 03 June 2003 - 09:19 AM

Yes, but the Aztecs were fairly vicious as well. I didn't make the difference between the organisation and the people because the Aztec's religion unified them AFAIK. Prove me wrong, please. Posted Image

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True, true. But still, of all the ways to end the world, cosmic flatulence has got to be the least dignified. -Servack

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#11 Mag Steelglass

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Posted 03 June 2003 - 10:43 AM

"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

I don't know whose quote that is, but I saw it on one wall of a hallway at my school that also had quotes of other people (including one of Hitler talking about evil and homeland security, which was a surprise to see) and political cartoons.

At any rate, I feel that it has relevance here. The United States was at one point at war with the Nazis, so we know exactly where Germany is and also have had our near-ancestors experiencing anti-Nazi propaganda and such, as well as the atrocities commited by Nazi Germany being only about sixty years ago.

We have not been at war with the Aztecs. I cannot tell you where the Aztec empire was beyond "somewhere in central/south america," and I don't know when exactly the Spanish wiped them out beyond "sometime a long time ago when the continent was first being explored by the Europeans." I was unaware of them commiting big atrocities, as well.

So, because the internet (and the world) is dominated by the United States, and Americans are hopelessly ignorant of things such as Aztecs but are only quite ignorant about things such as Nazis, we come across "Nazi" being a rather offensive term and "Aztec" not.

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#12 Pufer

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Posted 03 June 2003 - 04:34 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Sundered Angel:
That's strange. Didn't the Spanish nearly obliterate the Aztecs?

Yes they did, but as most hispanics (and by hispanics I mean mexicans, there are very few spaniards here in NM) draw their lineage from various indiginous peoples of Mexico and Central America (certainly more than from the Spanish conquistadores), it is really more of a cultural pride thing. To use your analogy, an American son of an Aborigine and a white Australian claiming Aborginal descendance as his own (which I take as valid, although it can be contested).
-Pufer

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#13 Sundered Angel

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Posted 04 June 2003 - 05:35 AM

I suspected it might be something of the case. So Mexicans (and South Americans in general) are "hispanic" mostly by language, rather than descent?

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#14 Pufer

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Posted 04 June 2003 - 05:09 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Sundered Angel:
I suspected it might be something of the case. So Mexicans (and South Americans in general) are "hispanic" mostly by language, rather than descent?

Basically, but its more of a racial kind of thing (mainly because a Colombian looks a lot like a Brasilian, they speak different languages, yet are both still refered to as hispanics). The term "hispanic" (more of a modern day term anyway) refers to anybody who has moderately light, brown skin, and (basically), well, looks like a hispanic. The advent of its wide use was at the beginning of the 20th century, when most white Americans called all lightish brown skinned individuals "Mexicans" not caring whether or not they in fact were Mexicans or not. Eventually other nationalities got pissed, and rather than having to figure out what nacionality a person was, all persons looking like they came from somewhere in Latin America were grouped under the generic "hispanic" by the predominantly white population of America (at the time). Recently there has been a shift in places like California to calling hispanics "Latinos," but here in NM the hispanic populace (for the most part) prefers to be called the hispanic populace. Persons from Spain are refered to as Spaniards or Castillians (at least down here in the Southwest).
-Pufer

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#15 dude3

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Posted 04 June 2003 - 05:11 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Sundered Angel:
I suspected it might be something of the case. So Mexicans (and South Americans in general) are "hispanic" mostly by language, rather than descent?

They are mostly a mix between Spanish and native tribes. So they are hispanic as a result of the Spanish lineage. I think.

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#16 Lord Commander Anic

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Posted 04 June 2003 - 07:10 PM

What singled out the Nazis from other groups loony or otherwise was the sheer scale and cold blooded industrialised manner with which they set out to murder entire populations, and their prosecution of a war of anihilation against those they decided to move against. All wars before WW2 had been primarily about conquest, political or actual. The Nazis were seriously nasty people. This is I think why the term can cause so much offense whan it is used as a label.

I wouldn't consider "Aztec" to be offensive...

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#17 Sundered Angel

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Posted 05 June 2003 - 06:10 AM

On an interesting tangent, the Maori/Polynesian population of New Zealand identifies primarily with African-American culture. Rap and "homies" and that sort of thing. Considering how vastly different the backgrounds of the two races, it's interesting that they choose to emulate that culture.

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#18 Danny

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Posted 06 June 2003 - 08:05 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Mag Steelglass:
We have not been at war with the Aztecs.

But, but... the Halls of Montezuma!

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#19 pistgavin

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Posted 06 June 2003 - 08:17 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Sundered Angel:

Though I suppose it's in line with white Australians claiming Aboriginal culture as their own.

But Australians have no culture to bring anyone else's culture into. You're one of the youngest countries in the world, Australians have only been around for 400 years, and the entire place started as a prison camp. Not exactly great history book stuff, is it?

--gav

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#20 Talon Karrde

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Posted 07 June 2003 - 09:44 AM

So you don't count mass-executions of tens of thousands of prisoners to be offensive? I'd still consider the term 'Aztec' bad, although I agree with your reasoning that the term 'Nazi' would be more offensive.

Quote

Originally posted by Lord Commander Anic:
<schnipp>

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#21 Lord Commander Anic

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Posted 07 June 2003 - 09:54 AM

Quote

Originally posted by Talon Karrde:
So you don't count mass-executions of tens of thousands of prisoners to be offensive? I'd still consider the term 'Aztec' bad, although I agree with your reasoning that the term 'Nazi' would be more offensive.

Hmmm, of course mass executions are offensive but my reasoning goes something like this, Most cultures have some good in them. There weren't any good Nazis! Also, in the 20th Century humans should be able to behave in a more civilised manner than to be murdering others on such a scale as the Nazis did. Something about education and accumulated wisdom and all that....

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#22 Sundered Angel

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Posted 08 June 2003 - 06:19 AM

Quote

Originally posted by pistgavin:
But Australians have no culture to bring anyone else's culture into. You're one of the youngest countries in the world, Australians have only been around for 400 years, and the entire place started as a prison camp. Not exactly great history book stuff, is it?

--gav

Oh, I'm not sure. There's that whole Ned Kelly mythos, the ol' Aussie battler, etc... all predominantly white. It's only recently that people have been trying to steal culture off the old Aborigines.

But then, what do I care? I'm a Kiwi.

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#23 TheRedeemer

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Posted 08 June 2003 - 03:50 PM

Quote

Originally posted by Lord Commander Anic:
There weren't any good Nazis!

Wrong.
Oscar Shindler.

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#24 Mag Steelglass

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Posted 08 June 2003 - 04:35 PM

Folks should be careful about generalizations like that, and also look at point of view. I'm sure there was a fairly large number of what we would consider to be "good Nazis" that either got overlooked or went along with what the others were doing because they didn't want to dissapear in the middle of the night. And there's also the bit that many Nazis thought Nazism (sp?) was a really good thing, so you can't really ignore point of view.

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#25 Azeroth

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Posted 08 June 2003 - 08:33 PM

Ever read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut? It's about WWII and the POW's in it.
It does a very nice job of demonstrating various sides of Nazism and viewpoints you can take on it.
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