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| Image courtesy of www.youtube.com |
Dankula doesn't deserve this to happen to him. I personally think there is some humour that is certainly worth criticising, and I think you can be criticised for all types of humour and everyone is free to say whether something is too much, however this is way too far. Dankula simply wanted to make his girlfriend's dog as heinous to contrast his girlfriend's perception of her dog, and there are people that are saying he deserves to be locked away for it. I however, don't think he should and I'll explain why.
Now I personally think that people who have committed hate speech in the past are indeed horrible people, those who un-ironically believe that all Jewish people should be gassed or wiped out, they should be the ones in prison. Dankula doesn't hold these hateful views at all, and he is being punished for a joke, and to me not only is this worrying because people shouldn't be punished for a joke no matter how egregious it is and this may set a precedent, I do think those who are calling for his sentence are holding a very backward view. I don't claim to know everything, but I think this could be quite eye opening for a lot of you.
As you can see in my header photo, I have a picture of PewDiePie who also went through his own Nazi joke controversy back in the day, and whilst I know a few people who don't like him, I still stand by him. It all began spiralling out of control from him when he made a video using the Fiverr website, which if you don't know is a site where you pay I believe it's £5, or $5, basically five of some currency and the person you commission will do anything that they say they'll do for the money.
This can range between getting someone to do your Maths homework, playing a video game with someone, and finally making a comedic video with personal input. My personal favourite things to result from Fiverr include Big Man Tyrone's videos such as 'I sexually identify as an Attack Tyronecopter.' and 'Jamal Says "Every 60 Seconds In Africa, A Minute Passes".' which are both incredibly funny to me. Long story short, you can find a service on there for a small sum, and PewDiePie made a now deleted funny video using the Fiverr site.
For the most part, he has his requests rejected since he asks for are very inappropriate and immature, but what really got a lot of gears grinding was when he asked two Indian guys called the Fiverr Funny Guys to make a video for him. He wanted to see how far he could make certain people go, so with the Funny Guys saying they'll hold up a sign saying whatever the person paying wanted coupled with some laughing and slapstick humour before saying out loud whatever they were asked. PewDiePie decided to try and make the sign say the most horrible thing he could think of, which was "Death to all Jews" along with the guys then saying to subscribe to a YouTuber who has been known in the past to be actually racist and hateful, I won't say that YouTuber's name because he is a sack of shit.
PewDiePie was expecting his request to be rejected since he was pushing these boundaries, but much to his surprise the Funny Guys actually fulfilled his request and if you can find a reupload of it on YouTube, PewDiePie's reaction is amazing! But this did not go down well, media outlets such as Wall Street Journal deliberately took a lot of PewDiePie clips out of context to make him look like an actual Nazi. Such as a video of him watching Hitler in an SS outfit, which was to make fun of the recent YouTube Heroes programme which told people to take down videos without any sort of regulation, and another such example is when PewDiePie is pointing at a screen, it was claimed to have been a Nazi salute.
I still stand by PewDiePie, even if I did not like the guy (Which I do), all the information points in his favour and it was all really just a smear campaign on the most well known guy on YouTube, so that advertisers would jump ship from YouTube to typical media sites, which mainly did happen. I know if I was a bigger scale blogger, I'd be branded as a Nazi sympathiser and have a lot of my words taken out of context and I could not defend myself because the media holds way too much influence. That's a story for another day!
Around the time of the Charlottesville protests (Remember? The one in which Donald Trump said there were good people among actual bigots? But will call anyone who takes a knee or call for gun control 'unpatriotic' and 'sons of bitches'?), PewDiePie made a video saying he wouldn't be making any more Nazi jokes because he was horrified at the realisation of how alive Nazism still is to this day. It is unfortunately very much real and alive, and people who sincerely believe in it will continue to live hateful lives, but I do think that one of the reasons we have allowed Nazism to remain strong is that every time it is joked about, we are told we shouldn't do it as it's offensive to the victims of the Holocaust.
You can have your opinions about comments in relation to Nazis saying "Gas the Jews" or "Death to all Jews", I would personally always take context into consideration like with PewDiePie and Dankula's situations, though you can't always rely on it. However I never perceived those jokes as mocking Jewish people and the undeniable tragedy that continues to plague Europe and the world, but more mocking the Nazis.
Here's the thing with Nazi's and indeed anybody, I personally feel if you joke about something long enough then nobody takes it seriously. I of course take the holocaust extremely seriously, I hope nothing like it ever happens again but with the prominence of Nazis still to this day, the last thing I want to do is satisfy their thirst for fear, and we do that if we give them the power that we desperately don't want them to have then they have won.
Nobody wants to mock victims, at least nobody with common sense wants to do so. But like with that kid at school who threatened to burn the place down, we would laugh it off and really undermine the will of that kid, but if we had started to clearly fear this kid, we would be giving them that power and influence. That's how I see it with not only Nazis, but other groups who rely on fear mongering and dividing us as species, if we reduce their bigoted views to nothing more than something to laugh at, they are not being taken seriously.
Imagine how undermining that would be to someone who is convinced in their head that they are superior to someone because they are white, 'pure blood' all that bollocks, to be told how they feel and see is laughable is the most demoralising thing. Because they're either unrelenting in their conviction, or brainwashed to the point of no return.
Ever seen how not seriously we take Flat Earthers? "THE EARTH IS FLAT! THERE IS SO MUCH EVIDENCE!", lol kay. The same with those people who believe that 9/11 was an inside job, and as scary governments can be, that sort of sentence is thrown around by memers all the time. They reduce these mentalities to nothing more than something that can be laughed at, not taking seriously, but we for some reason actually rewards Nazis with the fear they want us to have. That's why I choose to laugh at them.
In the end, it's all a choice really. I've learned over the years that you can be freely critical and offended by people's humour, my personal feelings regarding where humour crosses a line is when it's at someone else's expense. Unless that someone else is a disgusting pile of shit, and that's what Nazis are. But you may very well have a different line than me and I'll respect that, but don't tell me I'm a bad person because I find Nazis mentalities laughable, because they are disgusting humans and don't deserve any more acknowledgment or validation.
This past year has been a defining one for humanity, America had a bigot elected as President and it really has shown how alive Nazism is in the world, and we are giving them validation! We are punishing people for mocking this mentality, throwing them in the same basket as actual Nazis and it's just sad. Hey I'll probably end up being called a Nazi because of this, but I know fine well where I stand. I just hope you lot see where I am coming from.
That's where I'll end this. I hope this has at least been somewhat eye opening to all of you. For the record if it wasn't somehow clear enough already, Nazis are disgusting, fuck Nazis and fuck Nazi sympathisers. Thank you for reading.
Luca, out.
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