"if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide"

This is the pacifists dilemma though. There were numerous attempts to sway hitler from his course. Neville Chamberlain famously celebrating the Munich Agreement. At the end of the day, you can't peacefully stop someone if they are intent on causing violence.

I don't think you can really go down this road, either. It's a fun thought experiment, but it requires knowledge you only have once it's too late. You can't talk to the one kid who will grow up to be adolf hitler. There's very likely one out there now that we can't stop because we don't know them.

"At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities."

The pacifist's dilemma and this combined, to me, put this in a morally ambiguous place. If you accept that you can't stop someone bent on violence, and nazis arrive announcing that they are, then is it better for a little violence, visited upon those who pursue violent ends? Or is it better that we wait and see the violence occur before we react to it?

On further introspection, i think both of our positions exist in a similar ambiguity - you need to know who to speak to before you know who to speak to, and i need to know who to correctively punch before i know who to correctively punch. Yours might be better for short term, worse for long term. Mine might be worse for short term, better for long term.

In truth, i probably lean more towards agreeing with you, but i'm trying to point out that even though we think "be civil" is the best option, it doesn't have any divine right to be the best option. The best option (we would probably agree) is the one that causes the least overall harm, and we don't *know* what that is, and never can. I think it's important we reconsider accepted wisdom like that. (which is really why i decided to argue it..in honesty, i probably feel the same as you; disapprove but not loudly. My main problem with the position i'm taking is - how do you *stop* the nazi punchers once the nazis are suitably punched? And when do i become the nazi?)

@transmorpher
"leaving yourself and your loved ones open to the same treatment next time someone disagrees with one of your views."

I made it very clear in earlier comments that i'm only ok with someone being punched if they are openly calling for genocide and death to people. I'm ok with you ripping that argument apart (because i think it can be.. i'm leaving myself open on purpose), but that isn't what you've done. I don't accept there's an equivalence between my harmless beliefs and a genocidal maniac's.

"I referred to the modern nazi who supports them"

Fair enough.

"It's not just a belief, it's a desire to exterminate, alienate and persecute an ethnic group. "
Agreed. That desire should not be considered an acceptable point of view. But there's a big gap between saying expressing a desire and carrying out an action.

"This implies that you think being 'nicer to Hitler' (i.e. not solved it with violence) would have gotten rid of them yet you contradict this later on."
No, I don't believe that. Hitler was in power, he had an army and he was already committing genocide. At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities.

But yes, ultimately, if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide, wouldn't that have been a better solution?

There are absolutely times when violence is the best course of action, but it ALWAYS represents a failure to resolve differences.

"I'm just saying if a nazi happens to get punched, on balance, it's probably ok."

I'm certainly not going to shed any tears over it and being completely honest, part of me relishes it. But intellectually, I know it's a) not a sustainable solution and b) it's a juvenile response.

"It's a bit like trying to 'defeat' religion. If you stamped out any sign of all religions in the world, all the imagery and documents and let's say memories too. Before long, religions would form because the human brain is drawn to those ideologies"

Completely agree. Put enough humans together and they form tribes and ascribe bad things to "the others". What saves us is the ability to learn from past mistakes as a civilisation, and even then we're REALLY slow learners.

But we have made progress.
Going from right to left, I would bet that even most Nazis think women should be able to vote; the vast majority of conservatives view racism as abhorrent (at least, consciously) and "Middle America" has mostly come around to gay rights.

"Defeated" might be the wrong word here. I want Nazism to become as laughable a philosophy as flat earthers. Espousing it should be met with the same response as someone who claims thunder is the gods playing football.

" TL;DR sorry for the wall of text, ignore me"

Don't apologise... it's an interesting discussion.

Your next Sci-Fi-Horror Franchise. Just saying.

Your video, Night of the Living Dead - Horrors of Copyright, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

i think you guys are missing the point of this video.this video was not produced for YOU.

this is a dog whistle video for those who identify as "right" leaning politically,and may be on the fence in regards to the alt-right.they may adhere to more conservative and traditional values but find the alt-right a tad to extreme,a tad too racist and neo-fascist.

and they most likely already find "leftists" and "liberals" offensive to their political sensibilities.

and here we have a video showing "lefties" perpetrating violence on innocent,rightwing by-standers..you know..their peeps.

so you watch with indignation and disbelief,while the rightwingers watches in horror and fear.this video is meant to do just that:instill fear and prompt a person to action and to view this action as righteous self-defense.

this is identity politics,pure and simple.

and now we have TWO extremists groups growing,and BOTH are convinced of their righteous convictions that THEY have a RIGHT..no..a DUTY..to perpetrate violence in the name of their ideology.

well,it is not EVERYBODY..

yeah..no shit sherlock.we get that.
not everyone is a neo-fascist,racist,super white nationalist.

nor are they all communists and black bloc anarchists.

but it IS those two groups who have adopted extremist ideologies that in their little pea brains have given them the moral authority to fuck some people up.

and THIS fucking video is a goddamn recruitment video for the neo-fascists!

communists and black bloc anarchists on my left..
racist neo fascists on my right..
here i am...
stuck in the middle...

*related=https://videosift.com/video/ANTIFA-is-a-major-gift-to-the-right

I wouldn't rule out the possibility of photorealistic / realistic-behaving games as he describes and which actually work, but I don't know how many current genres / game styles would really "feel right" if presented that way. I don't think I'd want to play an especially violent game that looked fully real, while cartoony or otherwise clearly non-real I'm totally down with. Sports might be interesting, but doesn't really seem a necessary improvement. Survival horror would seem to be a good fit - a fully realistic-feeling presentation of something like Silent Hill or Amnesia has a certain sick appeal. Perhaps particularly in VR. Ideally in The Void.

Yeah. More than once I think. It was a long ass time ago, but I remember the end involves you leaving the mansion, amid happy-ish music and a bright sunny day, and being picked up by your driver who ends up being this undead skeleton dude or something.

The game I'm really enjoying right now is Prey (2017). OMG so good. I saw some let's plays of it and initially it felt underwhelming, but the game is so immersive and non-linear, with a great story and evolving game world... It's not so much a horror game, but it has tension and some jump-scares here and there. I feel like it's got some gameplay similarities to Alone in the Dark 1, oddly enough, despite being completely and entirely different.

"Dead"? Not so sure. They have brain matter in those arms. I imagine an unimaginable horror for said creature...in the prolonged throwes of its demise.

(been feeling grim lately)

It's hard for me to know why Putin is doing what he's doing. When he moved on Crimea, was he doing it because of the advance of European influence closer to Russia's borders? He's short on good allies unlike 'the west', so can he let people chip away at his comfort zone? Or is he a crazed imperialist?

I don't know. Why don't I know?

Because my government have shown themselves over the years to be a bunch of twats who will literally tell bare faced lies, whilst smiling, and when confronted with the horrors of what they've done they throw their heads back and laugh like a fucking sea lion swallowing a fish whole. And that's what they've done to their OWN PEOPLE. To other countries countries we declare war and send in the multinationals to rape their resources. I consider the invasion of Iraq equally dodgy as the invasion of Crimea. So my moral compass for what's ok and not ok no longer has a baseline.

On the other side, a bunch of people who used to know how the world worked back in 1970 probably thought propaganda was the best way to whip up some nationalistic pride and resentment toward the reds, but in 2017 the majority of young people don't trust a single word they say. So these 70 year old media mogul billionaires can't even tell a believable truth anymore - even if Putin's tanks were half way down my street i'd have to clap eyes on them before i could be sure.

Plus Russia's leadership is Putin himself, he's the spearhead, and he's very cunning. Our leadership is spread across a set of democratically elected people, half of which are both incompetent and self interested, while half of those remaining are merely one or the other. It's easier for one person to look competent and assured. Someone like Merkel has to share the associated incompetency of whatever the German equivalent of her 'cabinet' is.

*related=https://videosift.com/video/Horror-Musical-Instrument-The-Apprehension-Engine

Horror Musical Instrument - The Apprehension Engine has been added as a related post - related requested by CrushBug.

Feel free to watch it all the way through, no horror, happy ending.

Ian Welsh reminds us of a quote by Mark Twain:

There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’, if we could but remember and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty and heartbreak? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief terror that we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror – that unspeakable bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

I can imagine this in a horror film. Someone walking down a dark alley. They hear a buzz and turn their head. Nothing. Continue walking, another buzz, this time closer. They look up. Nothing. Turn the corner and and this flying lawnmower comes down the street at 30MPH flipping around like a mechanized butterfly knife!!

Thanks for the link, Eric. That's comforting.

And I'm very glad his monster of a mother was prosecuted.

I'm always reminded of my oldest boy when he was about 2 and we were in the 1.5-foot-deep tiny kiddie pool standing right next to him. He seemingly bent down to touch the drain by his feet, but as his face went into the water he just left it there and didn't move. There was no jumping or waving or losing control; in fact, he was still standing up on his feet, just in a bending-over position with his face in the water and his arms not moving.

I guess his body immediately went into some kind of paralysis when he was probably still breathing in as he stuck his face in the water.

I'll never forget that horror.