The Hill posted the most click-baitiest Tweet of the day.
ALMOST DOUBLE DIGITS!!! OH MY GOD, THE NAZIS ARE EVERYWHERE!!!
The headline of the article is a little more honest, but just a little. Survey: 9 percent call neo-Nazi views acceptable.
The poll The Hill refers to was done by ABC News and the Washington Post.
The actual question that the got 9% answer was No. 7.
Do you yourself think it’s acceptable or unacceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views? Do you feel that way strongly, or somewhat?
Roughly 9% of Americans believe racist shit. The Hill would have you believe this is the end of the world.
According to the Huffington Post the number of Americans who believe in conspiracies about the following subjects are:
- The 9/11 attacks: 54.3 percent agree or strongly agree
- The JFK assassination: 49.6 percent
- Alien encounters: 42.6 percent
- Global warming: 42.1 percent
- Plans for a one-world government: 32.9 percent
- Obama’s birth certificate: 30.2 percent
- The origin of the AIDS virus: 30.1 percent
- The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia: 27.8 percent
- The moon landing: 24.2 percent
You read that right, more than half of all Americans believe in some sort of 9/11 conspiracy theory.
When Democrats were asked the question “How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” 50.8% of them said it was “somewhat or very likely.”
It seems like when it comes to the worst terrorist attack in American history, more than half of Democrats believe horrible, stupid shit.
According to another poll, 14% of Americans believe that the moon landing was faked. So 5% more Americans, or 16 million people, believe that Neil Armstrong took his step in a sound stage than believe it is acceptable to hold Nazi views.
More than one quarter of Americans believe in astrology and Democrats outpace Republicans when it comes to believing in hokey bullshit.
Since the implication is that only white people hold white supremacist views, let’s look at a racist belief floating around the African-American community. Nearly 50% of black Americans believe that AIDS was made in a lab, and 12% believe that it was spread by the CIA to destroy the black community. Likewise, 14% including Maxine Waters believe that the CIA created crack cocaine to kill black people.
Hell, the best data I can find is that roughly 10% of Americans engage in some cross-dressing.
The Hill can try to convince American to shit their pants in the horror that President Donald J Trump is causing America to become a neo-Nazi state.
However, you are more likely to find a Democrat man in a bra and panties who believes that George Bush planted bombs in the Twin Towers, vaccines cause autism, and NASA never landed on the moon because he would feel it in his spiritual energy if they did; than you are to find a Republican that supports neo-Nazi beliefs.
I’m probably wrong… but here goes.
The way way I read the question isn’t the way their headline or write up make it sound.
“Do you yourself think it’s acceptable or unacceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views? ”
The libertarian side of me takes that to mean do I care if others hold that/those views, and I don’t. I don’t give two sh#ts what someone else believes. About nazis, religion, or even the one eyed one horned flying purple people eater.
Now if they had asked if I Myself *endorsed* those ideas/beliefs then of course I don’t. But is it okay that someone else does? Yep. As long as they aren’t trying to force me, or anyone else, to believe that way, then knock yourselves out. I’ll sit over here laughing at your ass.
That’s the first thing that crossed my mind as well when I read that question.
The word “acceptable,” is, as Joe points out, “problematic.”
What’s more, it was intended to be.
Figures lie and liars figure.
With the state of the American education system and the way this question is worded I would not be surprised if at least 5% of the polled people were confused as to whether they were agreeing that it was unacceptable to support white supremacy order that they were disagreeing with the views of white supremacy.
“Acceptable” is also an incredibly weaselly way of wording the question. I don’t like to play the identity politics game, but I’m going to indulge in it for just a second here: I am a bisexual Jewish man, whose great-grandfather had the luck to emigrate from Poland only a few months ahead of the German invasion… everyone else in his family died either at the hands of the Nazis or the Soviets.
“Do [I] think it’s acceptable or unacceptable to hold neo-Nazi or white supremacist views?”
Yes. I do think it is acceptable for people in a free society to hold whatever views they want. I fully support the freedom of my fellow Americans to hold whatever views they want. Because I’m far more worried about the state having the power to punish “thoughtcrime” than I am about a few idiots clinging to a racist worldview.
Precisely. For The Hill to translate the question as asked into the headline they used is an amazingly blatant lie. It’s just barely possible they are too stupid to understand what they did, but I rather doubt that.