Editing Nazi (section)

==Neo-Nazis==
Despite everything there are still some people out there which subscribe to the Nazi worldview, or at least something which has a lot of it in it's DNA. Yes, there is often some differences between these guys and the Nazi Party of old as well as differences between groups but this is only to be expected. There is no overarching body attempting to enforce a party discipline among Neo-Nazi groups and many people apply it to their context with local leaders putting their own spin on things.

Why do people end up here? Well there were some Nazis which did not give up on the cause even after the Third Reich went down and these guys were still an issue in Germany even after Nazism was formally banned (see the Socialist Reich Party in 1949-52, German Reich Party in 50-66 and a few more "no we are totally not Nazis even though Hitler had some good ideas..." far-right german parties). There are also a few people which by their own are pushed towards Nazism, often with similar fears. The McCarthy era Red Scare produced a number of American Neo-Nazis as a byproduct. Even so, most get led into established groups.

One source of recruits for neo-Nazis has been the edgelords who get off offending society and can't tell the difference between yelling "Fart Butt!" at a school assembly and "Sieg Heil!" at a Jewish Wedding. In and of itself, this does not mean one is actually a Nazi, but legit Nazis can hide among these jerks and try to funnel people towards their ranks. Usually they find success with people in that category who are dealing with a lot of emotional issues and have some fears about life or whatever and exploit those to lead them step by step into radicalization, along with a careful spoon-feeding of ideology. The other main source is blue-collar local Europeans who feel that they have been cheated out of a prosperous life by extensive post-war ''Gastarbeiter'' migration to Europe, especially their children who ended up being bullied by said migrants' children and ended up being drawn in to the brotherhood such Neo-Nazi organisations can sometimes offer.

To outline one path people have taken into neo-Nazism, it starts with things like "the Allies were not pure saints"<sup>1</sup> or "those uniforms were cool". Points which are, in and of themselves, not wrong. But in this specific context, they can be used as a stepping stone to other, dodgier talking points ("victor's history", "you're not getting the whole story"), especially those that make the Nazis look better ("Rommel and Manstein were the best generals of the war", "1 Tiger beats 5 Shermans") and the Allies look worse ("Russians only won through human waves", "the Dresden bombings were needlessly cruel"). If they find someone who can accept these claims, other less savoury points and active white-washing ("the cruelty of the Treaty of Versailles") can be added to the mix. Add in some "jokes" which get more and more hateful, then rinse and repeat until your new recruit is wearing a swastika armband and screaming at people about the "Jewish conspiracy". Of course, not everyone will fall for it, and even if someone buys into the first few arguments, there is a difference between uncritically accepting some Wehraboo talking points and going full Goebbels. But some get drawn deeper and deeper into the morass until they end up unironically believing the whole steaming Nazi load. The fact that as people go deeper down the rabbit hole they end up alienating themselves from friends and family more and more aids the process, since they're left with only other neo-Nazis to hang out with.

<small><sup>1</sup> ''Definitely true, even leaving aside Stalin. See the [[Wikipedia:Bengal famine of 1943|Bengal Famine of 1943]], the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study for stuff done by the UK and US. Allied soldiers also weren't above shooting unarmed prisoners. Even so, these pale in comparison to the atrocities committed by the Nazis or those they had planned.''</small>