Talk:Nazism

The entry: "(Colloquial) Showing a bureaucratic nature, ugliness, etc." made by user 89.242.101.100 should be removed because it is nonsense and no dictionary supports such a definition. 1. An -ism is a noun corresponding to an ideology, so a definition item describing an adjective is rubbish. 2. It can't be used in a sentence and such usuage is completely unusual. 3. No dictionary supports a "nazism" adjective definition describing a bureaucracy. --71.187.105.219 21:06, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

I've fixed the part of speech. This is the sense used in e.g. "grammar Nazism". Equinox ◑ 21:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

The problem with the definition is the association of an authoritarian run ideology (whatever Fuhrer says, follow) to something completely different (bureaucracy, collaboration by departments). This definition should not be allowed to stand because: 1. no sources use it in this sense; 2. no dictionary supports such a definition. Also, "(something) Nazi" is the correct usuage and it is defined in other dictionaries as: "Derogatory term for a person who is fanatically dedicated to, or seeks to control, some activity, or practice.". While the term Nazism is never used in this sense. --71.187.105.219 21:34, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like you want to set up an RFV (request for verification), giving people the chance to find usage of this in books, Internet newsgroups, etc. to meet our WT:CFI guidelines. Don't just delete content because you personally haven't seen the usage. Equinox ◑ 21:40, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Request for verification

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Definition entry for Nazism (Noun): "(Colloquial) Showing a bureaucratic nature, ugliness, etc." (Adjective) Or "(colloquial) Any attitude or ideology that exhibits a bureaucratic nature, ugliness, etc." (Noun version). I find this usage to be nonsense and that it should be deleted. Reasoning found on Nazism talk page, but basically: Nazism is an authoritarian ideology led by a Fuhrer, there is no colloboration between departments in an organization and it is never used or defined this way. --71.187.105.219 22:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Added one newsgroup citation. We need two more; something from books would be nice. Equinox ◑ 22:15, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Needs a clean-up at the very least; bureaucratic seems intuitively wrong. Mglovesfun (talk) 22:17, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Goog "What are you? Some kind of Nazi?" - sense implied. - Amgine/^talk 02:08, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

And just for fun, nazi + bureaucracy, nazi + bureaucrat, nazism + bureaucracy. It appears a *lot* of people associate over-powerful bureaucracies with nazism. Dunno about the ugly part. - Amgine/^talk 02:14, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that we can rely on implication. That might be good for languages without a big corpus of writings. I have heard some collocations of "nazi" (grammar nazi, gyno-nazi come to mind), but can't recall any of "nazism". DCDuring TALK 02:59, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

How about any of the 3400+ hits at GB nazism + bureaucracy?

• States and collective action: the European experience By Pierre Birnbaum: "For Pollack, 'Under a totalitarian form of state capitalism the state is the power instrument of a new ruling group, which has resulted from the mergers of the most powerful vested interests, the top ranking personnel in industrial and business management, the higher strata of the state bureaucracy (including the military), and the leading figures of the victorious party's bureaucracy.' Pollack does, it is true, use the notion of totalitarianism in his analysis of Nazism..."
• Stalinism and Nazism: dictatorships in comparison By Ian Kershaw, Moshé Lewin: "And though various regimes (Mussolini, Franco, and post-war Eastern European Communist) have been termed totalitarian, the exemplary cases were Stalinism and Nazism. They were believed to share three characteristics. (1) A revolutionary idology... (2) A party... (3) A bureacracy—a single, centralised, hierarchical state maximised routinised top-down dictatorial control over society. Party and Bureaucracy together generated 'total' power."
• Good and evil after Auschwitz: ethical implications for today, Part 804 By Jack Bemporad, John Pawlikowski, Joseph Sievers: "The wrestling of Nazi bureaucrats with the question of who was finally a Jew is a classic example of the way in which Nazism, with ups and downs, tried to accommodate reality to its predetermined ethical framework."

- Amgine/^talk 05:55, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

These are all specific references to the Nazi regime in Germany—none of them uses the term in the sense defined above. 3400 hits has nothing to do with it if not even 3 of them support the definition. —Michael Z. 2009-09-01 10:32 z

However, the "some kind of Nazi" references were dismissed because they do not reference Naziism (although how that's possible is beyond me.) So, either a bureaucrat inherently implies bureaucracy, a Nazi inherently implies Naziism, or there is no way to relate that definition to its use and we are removing descriptive senses. Or perhaps I should explain it in small words (it's a literary reference, suggesting I'm frustrated by what appears to be obtuseness, or even overt bureaucracy): Naziism was characterized by its bureaucracy, thus any obstructionist or impersonal bureaucracy is perceived as Naziism or is pejoratively described as Naziism. (Often used ironically, for the slightest provocation, in part to indicate how Naziism has been demonized to excess.) - Amgine/^talk 03:40, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I won't argue that we're not a bunch of language nazis here.

Sure, arguably the phenomenon of Nazism is characterized by bureaucracy, among other things. Perhaps communism, democracy, and any other ideology espoused by any large governments has been too. This is an encyclopedic question—you're making a statement about the thing (concept).

In lexicography (dictionary-making), we are asking a different question. Does the term “Nazism” mean “exhibiting bureaucracy”. I'd say no. Grammar nazism is being a grammar nazi (3, in the colloquial sense of being authoritative). It is not directly connected to Nazism (1, the 1930s–40s German ideology). Certainly, historians' quotations which say the Nazis depended on their bureaucracy don't prove that people today use nazism to mean bureaucracy. —Michael Z. 2009-09-04 06:17 z

If Wiktionary contains solely current usage, that might be a relevant argument. But it does not. - Amgine/^talk 19:01, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

But Wiktionary does restrict itself to real usage, current or otherwise, and you've yet to show that anyone in the past used this word this way, either. I don't think it's reasonable to latch onto Michael's one word "today" and pretend that it invalidates his entire argument. —Ruakh_TALK 19:26, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdenting) Wait, what? the Nazi regime (like other totalitarian regimes) was characterized by its bureaucracy (three citations above.) That is, it is an inextricable element of the Nazi rule. The Nazi regime was the Nazi regime due to its adherence to Nazism. While it might be argued that Nazism might not always lead to a totalitarian government characterized by its bureaucracy, it is unalterably true that it did. Nazism did exhibit bureaucracy. Pejorative comparisons equating bureaucrats with Nazis are based solely on this fact.

On the other hand, I'm through with this topic. - Amgine/^talk 23:26, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

RFV failed, sense removed. (To the perplexed: quotations don't count for this RFV unless they use the term Nazism specifically, as opposed to just Nazi, and use it in the specified sense, as opposed to referring to actual Nazism. Put another way, we're a dictionary, not an encyclopedia, and we don't define a given word as having a given sense unless that specific word has that specific sense.) —Ruakh_TALK 19:14, 14 November 2009 (UTC)