Could you personally forgive someone who had a neo-Nazi “phase” as an adult? Assuming they’re trying to make amends for their past behavior/beliefs
Yes
No
So apparently this is actually the “I ❤️ Sucking Nazi Dick” website
Antifascist Jew here to say, maybe we have different understandings of what “trying to make amends” means, but if someone is actively, substantively educating themselves and participating/contributing to the healing the communities they once terrorized, then yeah I can absolutely forgive them. Who am I to fucking undermine someone’s deradicalization?
In Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis, she tells the story of Amy Biehl, a Fulbright scholar and anti-Apartheid activist who, in 1993, was dragged from her car and stabbed to death by an antiwhite mob in South Africa. In 1997, Biehl’s parents petitioned for the attackers’ amnesty at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Two of the attackers later met with the Biehls to express their deep sorrow and remorse. The Biehls asked the men to join the Amy Biehl Foundation, where they became leaders of their community. They later traveled with the Biehls to give talks together on reconciliation and restorative justice.
You cannot force someone to grow, but if they are growing, you must grant them the room to do so.
the irony bid bag nazi puncher t4tvampireisms being a rabid hamasnik
“I could never forgive having a Nazi phase” says person currently having a Nazi phase.
So, I want to talk about this post.
Firstly, I see a lot of people equivocating about the word choice in the comments. “Well I couldn’t FORGIVE them but I wouldn’t hate them” “Forgive is a REALLY strong word” and “If it’s the person themselves calling it a "phase” that is a red flag" are the main things I see.
I think those people are missing the forest for the trees in a desire to not engage with the actual question being asked here.
The next category of people I see are those demanding more “details” or more “context” – “Is this person ACTUALLY trying to make amends?” “How old is "adult”?“ "Well if they were a former friend, then…” “Idk it really depends on so many factors…”
Again, these folks are refusing to actually engage with the question being asked here:
Can you forgive people who do serious wrong, who change, and try to do better?
Leaving one of these hate groups is not only difficult, it is often dangerous, isolating, and lonely.
These hate groups are usually high-control groups, meaning that they cut people off from outside friendships and relationships and replace every interaction with the group. So if you leave, you have zero friends, zero support.
Now, neither I nor this poll is saying that you personally have to forgive every neonazi, MAGA-head, Qanon cultist, etc. you meet online. It’s just asking if you ever, under any circumstances, would do so.
What is a better world: where people stay in hate groups, or get out of those hate groups and become allies? Because once they’re out, it’s not like it’s impossible to get back in. The nazis will gladly take them back if they want to return.
And if you feel that people who do things like this don’t deserve friendships afterwards, don’t deserve a life with human connection, and deserve to live alone and friendless for the rest of their life… How are they supposed to actually do good in the world isolated like that?
“Well you can’t expect everyone to forgive them!”
I’m not. The polls is asking if YOU would.
“Well, other people might forgive, but not ME!”
If not you, then who?
If you treat people who have put in the work to escape fascist indoctrination as if they are members of “the fallen,” demons who, upon having turned the path of goodness, are now damned forever to hell, cursed to endless darkness, and can never return to the light -> you’re not progressive.
You might like to think you’re progressive, but your moral framework is completely indistinguishable from the moral framework of a conservative evangelical christian zealot.
You don’t actually believe in progress.
Progress is change for the better. To be progressive, you have to believe the world can change for the better. To believe the world can change for the better, you have to believe that people can change for the better.
Could you personally forgive someone who had a neo-Nazi “phase” as an adult? Assuming they’re trying to make amends for their past behavior/beliefs
amhrancas 