• grean@lemmy.ml
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    2 hours ago

    Assuming you mean as description of a contemporary person, in casual sense.

    A nazi is someone consciously inspired by Nazi Germany, typically by using its symbolism or alluding to it, holding some ideas specific to the period but not necessarily all. A fascist is someone that supports a specific model of government and policies derived from ideology called fascism.

  • BellaDonna
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    9 hours ago

    I feel like each answer here is wrong and right.

    Literally, Nazi was a shortened version of National Socialist, and was the anglicized name for the German party that Adolf Hitler rose to power in.

    In the vernacular, Nazi is a somewhat catch all to describe various fractions and identified ideologies which the broad usage I think hurts discourse.

    Some people mean in this general way, any racist, or ethnostate advocate could be considered a Nazi, as could any racist or fascist group.

    I’m not for any of it, but the fluidity of usage ends up feeling like hyperbole when someone is not a literal Nazi, or doesn’t even share Nazi values and beliefs.

    When describing our enemies, I think static definition matters, because inaccuracies can be an attack surface to dismantle arguments.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    14 hours ago

    Nazi refers to the German Nazi party, while “fascist” refers to broad reactionary movements usually found in decaying Capitalist countries as a safeguard against rising Socialist or Communist sympathies among the Working Class, with its own unique set of aspects like ethno-centrism, xenophobia, intense millitarization, etc.

  • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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    16 hours ago

    If you read Mein Kampf it’s really focused on “the Jews”.

    Nazism was about anti-semitism first and foremost. They had a paranoid delusion that all Jews have an inborn desire to subvert the nobler Aryan civilisation.

    There were non-anti-semitic fascists too like Eoin O’Duffy