“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
“He probably did it as a joke.”
Actual excuse I’ve heard from multiple people.
I thought the point of a joke was to be funny? What is funny about memeing a Nazi salute?
People are goddamn morons.
They’re lying. The joke is on you.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
I have asked a similar question many times in the past when people excuse such things as jokes:
What is the effective difference between doing a Nazi salute like that “as a joke” and just doing one?
Same thing I ask when people claim they are being racist as a joke.
Plausible deniability. Pushing a boundary instead of breaking a taboo.
That is not an effective difference, that’s an excuse.
I’ve also heard the excuse “he’s autistic”
An excuse is all it is
I mean he did. It was a shitty ass hole joke. He just wanted to piss the woke people off it definitely worked.
Woke is now defined as being appalled by Nazis? I thought that was just common sense.
He just wanted to piss off anyone who he thinks is his enemy. Is what I meant by woke.
You mean like the antisemitism he spewed like a day ago?
What?
Oh, you didn’t see that? Go do a search. Musk is a fascist and saying otherwise is just running interference.
Are you mistaking my comment for someone else? When did I ever defend him or say anything good about him.
Saying it was a joke to piss woke people off is defending, deflecting and otherwise making excuses for the fascist.
Probably should just drop the term altogether then. It basically implies that being a moron is somehow virtuous.
Can you explain how people being upset about credible threats of terrorism is funny?
I didn’t say it was funny.
Sure 👌