First off, I did not argue here, nor anywhere else that I can recall, that Nazis don't exist in the fandom. Just that they are a tiny minority that is not deserving of the attention they are being given.
Secondly, how he as a German associates the word is not the problem. The problem is that he did not articulate what he meant by it so all we can do is speculate. It is not a clear message to say, "This event is not going to welcome X but I'm not going to spend time saying what X is and isn't." That's a recipe for misunderstandings.
Third, the ribbons were donated, not from Cheetah and not everyone who was wearing them was Cheetah. So even if he associates the word as you say, that doesn't mean that everyone else is using it the same way. The evidence suggests that they are not. I've seen people say that telling a racist joke is enough to make someone a Nazifur. I've seen others say that Nazifur just refers to people who promote discrimination due to race, religion, sexuality, gender etc. Even then, that's very different to what a Nazi is.
Even looking back to WWII, many of those that fought the Nazis believed in racial, sexual and other forms of discrimination. None of that is diagnostic of being a Nazi. Plenty of that occurs from groups that, in modern times, were or are very much anti-Nazi. These simple labels do not capture the diversity and messiness that politics actually entails.
As an example, most of those calling people Nazis are activist leftists. I think you'll find that often overlaps with people that support Palestine. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's good to remember that Palestine and many Arab countries are often fiercely anti-Semitic and extreme anti-Semitism was the most dramatic form of hatred propagated by the Nazis, to the point of trying to exterminate them along with gays, gypsies and others. What is then strange is that that anti-Semitism is seeping back into the left now. There was a pride parade in the US where gay Jews were asked to leave and stop displaying their cultural heritage. This is why it messy. You've got discrimination between groups that were both discriminated against.
The other problem is that, as discrimination in general is not specific to Nazism, is that the term Nazi is being diluted as the meaning expands. When I asked an Austrian colleague of mine what she thought about the situation in the US a year or two ago, she said that people in the US just don't understand what the Nazis actually were. That might have a grain of truth to it. Trump's separation of families at the border was terrible but to call it genocide and use it as an example of how his administration is similar to Nazism... There is no comparison at all. If you think that is even slightly similar to Nazism then you have no idea what the Nazis were actually doing. That comparison is completely out of touch and incredibly disrespectful to those that were victims of the Nazis.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
First off, I did not argue here, nor anywhere else that I can recall, that Nazis don't exist in the fandom. Just that they are a tiny minority that is not deserving of the attention they are being given.
Secondly, how he as a German associates the word is not the problem. The problem is that he did not articulate what he meant by it so all we can do is speculate. It is not a clear message to say, "This event is not going to welcome X but I'm not going to spend time saying what X is and isn't." That's a recipe for misunderstandings.
Third, the ribbons were donated, not from Cheetah and not everyone who was wearing them was Cheetah. So even if he associates the word as you say, that doesn't mean that everyone else is using it the same way. The evidence suggests that they are not. I've seen people say that telling a racist joke is enough to make someone a Nazifur. I've seen others say that Nazifur just refers to people who promote discrimination due to race, religion, sexuality, gender etc. Even then, that's very different to what a Nazi is.
Even looking back to WWII, many of those that fought the Nazis believed in racial, sexual and other forms of discrimination. None of that is diagnostic of being a Nazi. Plenty of that occurs from groups that, in modern times, were or are very much anti-Nazi. These simple labels do not capture the diversity and messiness that politics actually entails.
As an example, most of those calling people Nazis are activist leftists. I think you'll find that often overlaps with people that support Palestine. There's nothing wrong with that. But it's good to remember that Palestine and many Arab countries are often fiercely anti-Semitic and extreme anti-Semitism was the most dramatic form of hatred propagated by the Nazis, to the point of trying to exterminate them along with gays, gypsies and others. What is then strange is that that anti-Semitism is seeping back into the left now. There was a pride parade in the US where gay Jews were asked to leave and stop displaying their cultural heritage. This is why it messy. You've got discrimination between groups that were both discriminated against.
The other problem is that, as discrimination in general is not specific to Nazism, is that the term Nazi is being diluted as the meaning expands. When I asked an Austrian colleague of mine what she thought about the situation in the US a year or two ago, she said that people in the US just don't understand what the Nazis actually were. That might have a grain of truth to it. Trump's separation of families at the border was terrible but to call it genocide and use it as an example of how his administration is similar to Nazism... There is no comparison at all. If you think that is even slightly similar to Nazism then you have no idea what the Nazis were actually doing. That comparison is completely out of touch and incredibly disrespectful to those that were victims of the Nazis.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~