Example https://lemm.ee/post/54155328/17905549 and https://lemm.ee/post/55188600
I have witnessed multiple people do this, and it never feels like it’s done in good faith. They assert that “Only Elon Musk knows what his intentions are, and unless he explicitly states what his intentions were, you cannot speak for his intentions”. They say that the accusation that he is a Nazi is slander for this reason.
I’m wondering what the name of this kind of tactic is. They’ll say “You cannot speak for another person’s intentions” while sometimes also saying “What was perceived did not match his intentions” and “The Romans also did that salute”. In the process they will also state several times that they are not defending Nazis and that they hate Nazis.
Nazy sympathizers.
Victim of Lead Poisoning
Wait actually, Philly has a lot of lead poisoning but most Philadelphians aren’t nazis.
So just nazis then. There is zero excuse.
gaslighting. it’s just gaslighting
Gaslighting with the overpowering stench of Nazi
I’ve had a coworker argue that he’s not a nazi, despite doing all the nazi shit and saying all the nazi stuff, because he does it only for the money.
If he didn’t want to be labeled a Nazi maaaaybe he shouldn’t have made a Nazi salute twice during a speech in front of a crowd full of press and broadcast live on national tv.
Stupid games, stupid prizes. He gets everything that’s coming to him.
The extra nail in the coffin is that he didn’t apologize or show concern at all. He deflected with a bullshit comment about it being a roman salute even though that’s nonsense. Any sensible person in his shoes would have immediately said fuck nazis, that was dumb, I fucked up, not what I meant etc.
Then he goes and speaks at an AfD rally and says germany should move on from its embarrassing past or some nonsense. So if there weren’t already 5 nails in the coffin, he just filled it with c4 and blew it up.
It’s called nazism. People who defend nazis are almost certainly nazis themselves. People who claim the nazi salute was used by Romans are wrong or lying, and also probably nazis; the earliest known record of the salute in a Roman context was created a millennium after the end of the Roman empire.
Edit: It’s probably worth noting that Hitler was likely a fan of the Roman empire. Nazi Germany was known as the “third reich” where the first was the the Holy Roman Empire and the second was the German Empire. It’s likely they appropriated the gesture thinking it was a legitimate Roman salute.
What’s it called when they defend Nazis, but then say something such as “I’m not defending Nazis, Nazis can all be shot”?
Still a nazi. You can say you hate tall people and want them all to be shot, that won’t stop you being tall. Same thing.
If I stick my arm out in front of me and it looks like a Nazi salute, but I tell you that I only did it because I’m autistic and don’t understand social norms even though I run a multinational corporation, meet with world leaders, and have a ton of nationalist and racist content on my social media, am I a Nazi?
To actually answer your question, it’s called plausible deniability. This exact question has actually been asked here before in recent weeks, was that also you?
I’d call it “implausible deniability”, everyone knows what it was, but people can weasel around and deny it and pretend it meant something / nothing / whatever instead of actually doing something useful.
Even if Musk came out and said it wasn’t a nazi salute I’d have a hard time believing it after he unbanned nazis on twitter, pushed their rhetoric, cozied up to right wing parties… and his face looked more like he was ripping his heart out than giving it to someone. “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
The best way to burn off bad faith is to ask them to affirm their standard: “so you think it’s dishonest to intuit intention when you have no proof”? and if they’re stupid enough to claim they believe that, hit them with something like:
“What do you mean video games have a woke agenda? You can’t know the intentions of game designers”. “How do you know that the media is biased against Trump”? “You can’t read their minds”.
EDIT: My point is that debate should cut straight to a question of values, not argument. Talking about values (which cannot be disputed or proven with “facts and logic”), divides good and bad faith like a lightsabre.
I agree that a standard should be applied outside of one particular context, but it seems a lot like Whataboutism if we start bringing up unrelated contexts without directly addressing the topic at hand.
Getting stuck in wedge issues that their propaganda is currently targeting doesn’t usually make a difference, in my experience. The person you replied to made a point I find useful which is to get people to talk about the values they have beneath their positions. Often people can be led to contradict themselves if we ask enough curious, open-ended questions about what motivated their opinions.
The majority of people hold fairly progressive views on most issues, but are taught to be real mad about things that don’t effect them. They’ll try to argue about those things the whole time, and I don’t think it’s worth taking the bait.
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bad deontology
The comeback is easy: Intent doesn’t matter, actions do.
Intent could matter, if they addressed their actions after the fact. Acknowledging that it looks bad and affirming your position to the contrary is the minimum. He has not done that.
Basic psychology.
Anyone who has already decided that they like Elon (or MAGA) do not want to believe that they are the bad guy. So they will reach for even the worst of arguments to make themselves believe they aren’t the bad guy.
Remember: Nazis themselves refuse to believe the Holocaust happened. Same same really. No one wants to think of themselves as the bad guy.
