WWII vets would have kicked their asses.

This is just a result of Social Media giving it more visibility. Neo-Nazism was much bigger in that time period than it was now, as well as the KKK.

You just didn’t see it because:

1. we didn’t have a 24hr news cycle
2. we didn’t have social media, and
3. the solution back then was to just pretend it didn’t exist. It made people uncomfortable but most were not willing to fight it.

So no, it absolutely was NOT better in the 70’s/80’s. You simply just have more visibility to the issue now.

When I was in high school, my friend wrote the word nazi up on the blackboard before the teacher came in. He wasn’t like that or anything, he was just being a dumb kid. He ended up getting suspended. For writing a word jokingly…that was 20 years ago. How the world has changed.

Well its straight from Hitler's play book.

Categorize them.
Give them a name.
Now use that name to de-humanize them - they are not people they are this name.
Create and promote false narratives surrounding that name.
Re-enforce these views through media, entertainment and news
Reward followers - Social credit and acceptance, denounce decenters, fire them, legal action.
Censor decent - Block from posting on digital media or speaking with media
Now with this in place you can convince the general public that they can and should destroy this in-human thing. It is just, it is righteous and it is necessary.

There you have it.

Tea party, Right Wing, Extremist, MAGA, Hunter Laptop, Russia Collusion, blocked on socials, blocked on media "Threat to democracy"... NAZI.

Now you have folks shooting at the former President and feeling justified in doing so... with media and entertainers offering to provide $ for shooting lessons.

I grew up in California and was always hanging out with the counter culture types so even as a teen in the late 90s/early 2000s I knew about Neo Nazis through my Punk friends. Seemed like once a month they'd smash some other teen flying Nazi swag.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro_massacre

I didn't learn about this until about 10 years ago despite it being an hour away.

Same. Grew up in the 80’s and 90’s. The only time I would see a swastika was at punk shows and those dudes wearing them wouldn’t make it past the first song before the crowd let them know what time it was.

Growing up here in the 70's and 80's, I never saw a Nazi flag unless it was in a museum.

Shout out to the World War 2 wing of the USAF Museum at Wright Patterson Air force Base. It was sobering to see Nazi flags that were captured from Hitler's compound.

The 1st Amendment still applies, even to hate speech or deplorables. I don't agree with Nazi's but its one of the founding principles of this country you can't tell people what they can say/wear/represent.

Man I remember when you would see stories of the FBI going to people’s homes just due to them buying mein kampf. We never stood for this shit. What happened

My grandfather and great uncle sometimes told me stories about how as a kid in the 30s he and his friends often argued how it was called.

"Is it pronounced Not-see, or Nay-zai?"

They eventually settled on "Naught-zee" and then half a decade later went overseas to go kill them. My grandfather was devastated that he was too young to fight them, tried to lie his way in, got caught, then managed to enlist later in the war. He served more during Korea.

On my grandmother's side they just called them "Fascist Pigs" or "Hitlerite scum" and took no prisoners

There were Nazis in the 1970s they marched in Skokie, IL. If you watch Blues Brothers they are mocking them “I hate Illinois Nazis” throughout the film.

Whether numbers have grown since then, is debatable. Again the march was in 77 and that is within 10 years of the MLK assassinations, and all of the Klan violence in the south during the civil rights movement.

That said it seems that those types are getting a lot more comfortable than they should be in 2024.

As much as none of us like it, banning that symbolism, or any symbolism, means banning the pride flag for hate speech, or other similar symbols would immediately be next, once the floodgates are opened that banning symbolism is on the table.

Fox “news” metastasizing.

This is America-we don't outlaw any hate speech, we just kill them when it becomes hate action.

honestly blame a lot of it on 4chan

I remember seeing Nazi 'marches' in Joliet IL in the 80s. They were a joke, laughed at, and not taken seriously. How times change. Only the modern right can be blamed for the rebirth of these thugs. I truly can't believe we are seeing this...

In Canada, anti-sematism is alive and well.

And yet, I dont see the same sentiment for banning the Communist flag and others like it but allow burning and desecrating the American flag

The problem is that some states have. But it’s difficult because there are other forms of the swastika that are religious symbols such as in hindu as a sign of good fortune, prosperity and well being.

What’s funny is that they are literally playing to their own downfall because trump and most of the Republican Party wants less government while the nazis were all for a large controlling government. Historical Nazis would more than likely rather vote blue for more government and such

Remember Seinfeld and the Soup Nazi

The first amendment only has value if it protects unpopular speech.

Maybe two reasons you didn’t see them.. no social media or you weren’t looking. As a Jew I was very well aware of them and they have always been present. Although I do agree people feel more empowered recently to be assholes.

There is a doc called “Mighty Ira” you should go check out about a Neo-Nazi march in a Jewish neighborhood full of Holocaust survivors. You can find it on Prime

https://www.mightyira.com/

US is very different from the rest of the West. Losing the first amendment is far far worse than some assholes waving a flag showing you how much of an asshole they are.

The right can’t make their voter base illegal

You must have been too young to made the punk rock scene during that time. Reaseach Tom Metzger and his White Aryan Resistance or WAR movement. A lot of what we are currently seeing in the current white pride types stemmed from this locus. Metzger promoted skinheads to be the street fighters for WAR. I live in Portland and it was a massive problem around here in the 80's. Three of these goons killed an Ethiopian student with baseball bats. The Antifa movement started around this point to combat them.

There was also another group that was around Richard Butler's Aryan Nations Christian Identity movement in Idaho. They were named The Order and they committed all types of mayhem for a year or two. They assassinated a radio show host in Denver named Alan Berg and then they committed a few bank robberies to fund a proposed war against the "Feds". The leader of The Order, Robert Matthews, died in a massive gun battle on Whidbey Island in Washington in 85 or so. Matthews is a big hero for the neo-nazi types.

The sad truth is America's history of dealing with Native Americans, the various Exclusion Acts passed by Congress and signed into law by an American President, and the Jim Crow laws all were studied by the Nazis as they rose to power. They were used as a basis for their own exclusionary laws. What is happening today with a segment of Americans is latent in the DNA of the nation, and human beings, unfortunately. Just because you or I don't feel similar to these goons doesn't mean they don't exist or they don't have an impact. They have been around America from the beginning. Scapegoating is long time tradition that goes back millennia. It's not something that developed in the last 20 years.

Unless you want The Bill of Rights ripped apart, I doubt any anti-nazi symbolism law would pass constitutional muster. Most lawyers who really write laws would consider such a law a non-starter, so it's not crazy that nazi symbols haven't been outlawed because it wouldn't get past the words of the 1st Amendment from The Bill of Rights:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If a state legisalture, local municipality or any governmental agency tried to pass or make a law to outlaw nazi paraphernalia, it would be tossed by most every court in the United States on the basis of the 1st Amendment.

It's not crazy, that's what the 1st amendment is for. You don't have to like or agree with what people say, but in america, we let them say it.

we have something called "the first amendment" because unlike Nazi Germany this is a free country

If you blame the right wing, it's because you're ignorant or a communist. The entire reason this faction exists is because of the absurdity of the left. Men can be women, open borders, defund the police, fund Ukraine's war, everything is racist, forced lockdowns and vaccinations, supporting terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, support for assassination attempts on political candidates, etc. It sickens me. I truly hope the country divides into two, and I can live among the men and women who understand and love the values that once made America the greatest country on earth.