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+--- Thread: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? (/showthread.php?tid=114438)
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - CaptainComatose - 04-13-2014
Oh.
Another Nazis-weren't-as-bad-as-the-evil-western-democracies-paint-them thread on the internet.
(04-13-2014, 10:47 AM)Red Wrote: When the Roman Empire was at its height it had millions of slaves and acted in a truly brutal way to those it conquered and defeated. A quarter of the world population lived and died under Julius Caesars rule. I know due to the timeframe between now and the Romans we have much less knowledge of their real way of life and operations but there are an astonishing amount of links between the Romans and Nazis.
We all know of the actions of the Nazis during 1939 to 1945 and as we'd expect 70 years on our opinions of it haven't changed at all. However the Romans were no better but 2000 years on it's a different story.
I don't know what school you went to, but I learned about all those things about romans in history lessons too, just like about the Nazis.
The fact that they appear to be so similar is linked to the fact that the Nazis actually copy-pasted a lot of ideas, symbolisms, aesthetics directly from the Roman empire. Or rather, they imitated Mussolini's Italian fascism, which did that.
The reason the crimes of the Nazis are more present in todays media/minds is because people alive today are more affected by them than the crimes of the romans, and so are today's politics. And the romans may have also committed crimes (some of them similar), but they also played a very important role in Europe's cultural development. The romans brought positive cultural developments to the regions they conquered, and the crimes they committed such as kill-cause-life-aint-worth-much-to-us was actually not something very unusual at the time, also with the people they conquered. Nazi Germany didn't bring any positive cultural developments. They reverted back to more primitive and brutal ways, wrapped in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-cultural ideology that was copied from 2000 years ago.
Romans and Nazis may have been similar in some ways (and different in others, for example the more race-oriented ideology of the Nazism while the romans saw it as a cultural thing). But for the romans it was a step forward from the current state of the world, while for the Nazis is was a huge step backwards.
(04-13-2014, 11:00 AM)Bloodl1ke Wrote: Don't forget that the victors write history. If Nazi Germany won the war they weren't going to be in such bad image. Or rather people who exposed them in such image would have been dealt with. You know, like USSR, which did nearly the same crimes, but never lost the war.
(04-13-2014, 02:37 PM)Reidft Wrote: Well in the current age, people see Naziism as the supreme evil, even though much worse things have happened in recent history (inb4 ban because german hosts). In American schools people are taught the bad stuff of WW2 almost every year, so if one thing from history that's gonna stick, it's probably gonna be that
This thread'll probably be locked soon
The communists had a far longer time of rule and a far larger sphere of influence. Also, ignoring whether they actually killed people or not, Communists and Nazis degraded the human spirit in the same way by forbidding free speech, while Nazi ideology additionally degraded human dignity by classifying people according to their "race".
History may to some extent be written by the victors (but only to a pretty small portion, actually, because people remember things no matter who wins, and they write them down), but that doesn't mean the way history is presented is wrong. It more importantly means that what we see today as "moral" and good or bad is decided by the victors. If the Nazis had won, calling someone a racist wouldn't be an insult. Genocide would be called "improving the gene pool" and "justice to nature". War and violence would be considered the natural way of human progress.
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - CaptainComatose - 04-13-2014
(04-13-2014, 03:41 PM)Ryummel Wrote: I'd place the yankees' double morality at the same level of atrocities made by nazi and soviets too. There's never been a 'better' side that hasn't endorsed a slaughter here or there or at the other corner of the world yet.
You, my friend, play too much computer.
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Reid - 04-13-2014
Hi Karlotta
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Rodent - 04-13-2014
Hey Karlotta. How's it going?
As for this thread, there's a frankly absurd list of regimes that can be drawn up which have committed crimes similar in nature, if not scope to the Nazi powers. It's just that Nazi Germany existed both fairly recently, and in the age of growing media power so there's a -lot- of media and information available on how it was. Also couple that with the fact that they did lose the war.
There's the Ottomans, The Mongol regimes, the Romans...the greeks, the aztecs, the Spanish reconquista and inquisition, the European genocide of American Indians, the Spanish massacre of the Aztecs. The list goes on. It's just a disgusting facet of human nature, which gets different faces from time to time.
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Eduard - 04-13-2014
(04-13-2014, 03:07 PM)Kaiwren Wrote: What's particularly offensive to me is the outright glorification of the Soviet Union, the second-most genocidal regime in history and the political entity with the second-most innocent blood on its hands. There're literally hundreds of websites glorifying and promoting the Soviet Union and its policies of genocide, cultural assimilation, and political repression, and the only folks I've ever seen remotely perturbed by this were Poles and internet ultra-libertarians.
As an east-european whose country has barely got rid of Communism in 1989, I fully agree with you.
Communism is just downright awful and I cannot see how can anyone promote or glorify it. Most certainly those who do are either dead beaten nationalists or people who have no actual idea what communism is but they just heard it promotes "equality" and that it stands against capitalism, nor do they have basic knowledge of history or politics.
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Zelot - 04-13-2014
One of the reason the atrocities of Nazi Germany are pointed to so much, in addition to some of the reasons mentioned already, is that they were so well documented. Whereas most regimes try to cover up and bury the details of such things, Nazi Germany made it a goal to document every bit of what was happening. We can look back on the atrocities of Nazi Germany and not really question what happen, because so many of the details were recorded and left as for us to document everything.
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Strichev - 04-13-2014
(04-13-2014, 04:10 PM)Ed- Wrote: As an east-european whose country has barely got rid of Communism in 1989, I fully agree with you.
Communism is just downright awful and I cannot see how can anyone promote or glorify it. Most certainly those who do are either dead beaten nationalists or people who have no actual idea what communism is but they just heard it promotes "equality" and that it stands against capitalism, nor do they have basic knowledge of history or politics.
Communism is just wonderful and I honestly cannot see how can anyone oppose or dismiss it.
Everyone who dismisses communism and aspires to smear it with the blood of many undoubtedly innocent people has no actual idea what communism is. They have only heard that it is "evil", suppresses individuality and causes poverty. Apart from that these individuals do not have any knowledge of history and politics apart from contemporary news from North Korea.
I hope that you're smart enough to understand the point of my post. Or will you just shout that I'm a fucking communist and should head to the nearest church to repent for my fiendishly deplorable nature?
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Ryummel - 04-13-2014
(04-13-2014, 04:02 PM)CaptainComatose Wrote:(04-13-2014, 03:41 PM)Ryummel Wrote: I'd place the yankees' double morality at the same level of atrocities made by nazi and soviets too. There's never been a 'better' side that hasn't endorsed a slaughter here or there or at the other corner of the world yet.
You, my friend, play too much computer.
And somebody displaying obsessive–compulsive disorder behaviour toward this place is telling me that my judgement is clouded, lol
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - CaptainComatose - 04-13-2014
(04-13-2014, 04:54 PM)Sokol Wrote: I hope that you're smart enough to understand the point of my post.
Are you talking about utopic theoretical and never achieved communism, or just being sarcastic?
RE: Roman Empire vs Nazi-(ism)? - Strichev - 04-13-2014
I'm attempting to show that you cannot depict the world in black-and white. There are no sharp lines in reality.
But yes, I had the never-achievable utopia in my mind while writing.