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What is with the Internet? A thread that starts off as a rational NPR discussion of rising sea-levels and ends up with posts about the Nazis? Does every discussion thread on every forum ultimately end up about Nazis regardless of the subject matter if the thread lives too long?

Dan8267 says

Does every discussion thread on every forum ultimately end up about Nazis regardless of the subject matter if the thread lives too long?

You know where else it was that conversation tended to turn toward Hitler?

In NAZI Germany, that's where!

Bellingham Bill says

Not that the Germans aren't still generally like that, for all I know, having never lived there.

The point about Nazism not being atheist is an important one -- Nazis didn't want independent free-thinkers, they wanted groupthink and homogeneity, with Nazi ideology foremost in people's minds.

So they were more anti-Church than atheistic per se. Maybe similar to Soviet Russia and Communist China.

Hi BB, good points all. I think "Anti-Clerical" is a good description of the attitude of the Nazi party - and an attitude long shared. The Kulturkampf under Bismarck, the I-am-Barbarossa-come-again attitude (Lay Investiture), the Ghibellines/Guelph struggle, Luther's reason for gaining steam very quickly and his support among nobles: Basically, the concept of more German control, less Italian control over German Churches is a long standing trend in Germany. The NSDAP did try to push a Duetsche Christian church based on a muscular Aryan Jesus beset upon by vile Semites and decadent Romans; and support of that Church was in the NSDAP platform. The few neopagans - who were a significant minority before in the party - were placed in camps soon after the Nazis took power, probably to shut them up.

The Germans of course, are not this way anymore, and are generally thoroughly embarrassed by WW2 atrocities. I count myself a Germanophile.

Before the 1800s, if you asked other Europeans to describe the Germans, they'd probably say "They're poets, musicians and artists who like to sing and make pretty things." -- very different than how the Germans are perceived in the early 20th!

Dan8267 says

What is with the Internet? A thread that starts off as a rational NPR discussion of rising sea-levels and ends up with posts about the Nazis? Does every discussion thread on every forum ultimately end up about Nazis regardless of the subject matter if the thread lives too long?

Another confirmation of Goddard's Law, right here.

@Dan8267, Sorry, I tried to stay on target by offering Population Reduction as a means of arresting Environmental Catastrophe, but I just couldn't let Nazi baloney stand unchallenged.

I have to read the IPCC reports to verify this for myself, but the IPCC apparently says that even though western Antarctica is losing ice (which is what predicates this catastrophic sea level rise prediction), eastern Antarctica is gaining ice cover at a faster rate, due to the increased snowfall due to warmer temperatures. On net, Antarctica is making the sea level fall, because western loss is smaller than eastern gain.

This link is from a site which denies the AGW thesis, but the references it cites are IPCC publications, so they're not making the stuff up.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/28/ipcc-findings-dispute-abc-cbs-nbc-and-bbc-alarmist-and-flawed-antarctica-sea-level-rise-claims/