What’s great about this, and Stephen Fry is brilliant, is not that he’s absolving Musk, or that he’s criticizing Tesla, but that it is an argument likely leading to Elon Musk protesting,

‘No, my cars are good enough that I can be a Nazi!’

    • vga ( vga@sopuli.xyz ) Banned
      11·
      2 years ago

      That’s just ignoring history. There are plenty of good reasons to hate the Nazis without needing to do that.

      In the similar way, it’s not necessary to dismiss Soviet Union’s early modernization successes in order to blame them for their crimes against humanity.

        • vga ( vga@sopuli.xyz ) Banned
          3·
          2 years ago

          Honestly, this shit needs to stop. Acknowledging that some fascists have been good at something at some point does not detract in any way from being anti-fascist.

          If you claim that fascist are dumb, stupid and can achieve nothing, what do you think the masses will think about your message when the fascists turn out to be competent? They will wonder what other things you are wrong about.

          So I say to you: stop being a fascist enabler.

            • vga ( vga@sopuli.xyz ) Banned
              1·
              2 years ago

              I seem to have struck a nerve. I wonder why this bothers you so much?

              Well first of all, xkcd.com/386. And also: because I don’t like fascism or promoting the spread of fascism.

              Obviously that’s not the image they present to population of the regions they take. But you knew what I was claiming they are incompetent at.

              There’s a saying that reading history may help prevent repeating the mistakes of history. You should try some of that.

              To reiterate: the reason to be anti-fascist has absolutely nothing to do with how good they are at doing things and I don’t see any good reasons to hide this fact.

    • Melatonin ( Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) OP
      3·
      2 years ago

      A small country took on the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD (TWICE) and very nearly won. The second time with a lunatic at the helm.

      What does it take to impress you? To what would you assign their disturbing success?

      • Count Regal Inkwell ( VinesNFluff@pawb.social ) 
        10·
        2 years ago

        Incredible. Literally everything you just said was wrong.

        Germany wasn’t “a small country”. They were an industrialised, highly productive and heavily armed global power. They were slightly battered by post ww1 humiliation regulations pressed on them by the winners (because they ALSO lost that one!). But the instant they told the Allies to eat shit and started using what they had, any claim to “smallness” went out the window.

        And they didn’t “almost win”. They got their asses kicked.

        Every single thing the Nazis wanted to achieve, they failed hard. They wanted to prove the genetic superiority of the German people in the Olympics, instead they were soundly beat. They wanted to expand their territory, they got as far as fucking Poland and France and then stalled for years until a double whammy of Americans and Russians basically curb-stomped them, with the last few years of the Reich consisting of lots of propaganda coping hard about how their soon to come wonder weapons would turn the tide, which never happened because said wonder weapons were stupid ideas that only succeeded at getting more Nazis killed when they failed in testing. They wanted to stop the spread of communism, instead half their country became Soviet domain.

        And then their “strongman” leader blasted his own brains out rather than face the fact that he was a loser in every way one can be a loser.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost ( eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
        10·
        2 years ago

        Nazis took on world in one war, and lost.

        “WE ARE THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD! THE PUREST OF THE PURE! STRONGEST OF THE STRONG!”

        [Fights one (1) war]

        “Guess we’ll shoot ourselves in a bunker and lose in a big lopsided defeat.”

      • Sonori ( sonori@beehaw.org ) 
        5·
        2 years ago

        Do Japan and Italy just not count as part of the world? I mean Japan took over half of Asia and the Pasific while Italy took the Mediterranean countries. Germany took over part of northern Europe and helped a bit of North Africa.

        • Melatonin ( Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) OP
          2·
          2 years ago

          I was arguing that there was a terrible war, and the enemy was dangerous and capable. Many of our and other country’s soldiers died to destroy them, and it wasn’t easy.

          They weren’t “Colonel Klink” from “Hogan’s Heroes”, they were efficient at killing, rounding up and killing millions while fighting on a number of fronts.

          My grandfather fought in World war I, and my uncles fought in World war II. From what I heard the Germans were not incompetent bumbling idiots. They were a very competent and difficult enemy.

          I don’t know what history everybody’s been reading, but there sure as heck are some major changes to history interpretation that have taken place in the last 40-50 years. Probably peer-to-peer instruction, rather than accounts from those who endured it

          • Unruffled [they/them] ( Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
            5·
            2 years ago

            Ok fair enough, I accept the explanation you provided. Folks are taking issue with the following comment in particular.

            What does it take to impress you? To what would you assign their disturbing success?

            In isolation, this sounds a little too close to admiration for the Nazis, which is why we got some reports about it. It seems to me it’s just unfortunate phrasing, because together with the explanation you just provided, it sounds like a reasonable take for you not to want to paint them like some hapless foe that was easily defeated, because that discounts the difficulties faced by those who fought the bastards.

  • comfy ( comfy@lemmy.ml ) 
    57·
    2 years ago

    Headlines are being headlines, I get it, but Fry was repeating a joke:

    “I heard a very good joke yesterday,” the QI host, 67, told Stig Abell on Times Radio on Thursday.

    “Someone said, ‘Musk is not a Nazi… Nazis made really good cars,’” he went on, before bursting out laughing.

  • Rookwood ( Rookwood@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
    31·
    2 years ago

    Not apologizing and then immediately giving a speech to AfD about not being ashamed of “cultural purity” beg to differ. Either way, him being an actual Nazi is irrelevant. There are 2 options:

    1. He is an actual Nazi and believes in the ideology, which makes him a fucking Nazi. It should be noted that his grandfather was an extremely anti-semitic politician who moved to South Africa because he admired Apartheid…

    2. He did it as a troll. In which case, at a POTUS inauguration he decided to behave like a teenage boy as the richest man in the world and make light of something that saw 6 million Jews slaughtered and remains as a threat to the security of Jews around the world to this day. Which makes him a colossal piece of shit.

  • kanata ( kanata@lemmy.ca ) English
    2·
    2 years ago

    Hes a great friend of Israel. If any thing, hes anti-woke, the salute is more of an anti-woke salute than its a nazi-salute. The group most upset about it are the left and friends.