One of the qualities of an insane person is the inability to differentiate things that are different–to say that two things that are actually different are instead similar or identical.
Consequently, insane people (or at least, evil people) tend to take two things that are different and say they are the same. A classic example of this is the mis-use of words in the naming of organizations or the incorrect identification of two political movements with each other. It’s also used by various groups to claim that they are in fact another group.
For example, the word “Nazi” means “National Socialism.” The Nazis were maybe extreme nationalists (though I wouldn’t say a group that murders a huge part of its own nation is truly “nationalist”), but they were definitely as far from being socialists as you could get–they were fascists. They even used to be called the “German Workers Party,” another clear attempt to incorrectly identify themselves with the then-popular Marxist movements happening throughout the world.
Most of the people that I know would now acknowledge Nazi-ism as an insane philosophy, so this is a good example of how an insane group of people will confuse the issue by using words that make them sound like they are something else.
Similar examples exist in American history. The States’ Rights Democratic Party was the official name of the group that most people now know as the “Dixiecrats,” a group most famous for attempting to stop black people from voting in the South through methods that are now not only illegal, but which people of conscience would have considered to be immoral even then. And yet, here they are calling themselves “democrats,” a word based on the concept of democracy–a concept that is basically all about voting.
The “National States Rights Party” was supposedly about states’ rights–a valid concept of Constitutional Law as expressed in the Tenth Amendment. But really the National States Rights Party was led by a person who was also a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The only “rights” they cared about was the “right” to deny everybody other than white people their rights. It’s not even a party that supports anybody’s rights–it was explicitly about removing the rights of other people, a concept that is forbidden in almost all legal systems everywhere in the world. (That is, almost all legal systems, including the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, forbid using the concept of “rights” in order to destroy or deny the rights of others.) This isn’t reasonable, it’s evil. It’s insane. It’s also a lie–the name of the organization is not really what the organization does.
Even Communism ultimately became the opposite of what it claimed to be. Instead of being about empowering workers, communist countries became the most absolute dictatorships the world has ever seen.
One of the problems that human beings have when confronting this is that it’s very difficult to confront evil and insanity. People want to justify it. They want it to make sense when it doesn’t make sense. They don’t want to see evil or believe that it exists. So they say, “Well, I suppose those people really did just care about states’ rights and they all just went a little astray,” or something. But no, they were never about states’ rights, really. Not only weren’t they, but they did nearly-irreparable damage to the very concept of states’ rights by associating it with racism. They were harming “states’ rights,” not helping it.
Nowadays you see white supremacists use the term “alt-right” to describe themselves. But this is just evil, insane people hijacking the word “right” to mean “racism.” It doesn’t really matter to them which word they hijack. Remember that they already hijacked the word “socialism,” which is about as left as you can get. In fact, even “alternative right” could have meanings that don’t have to do with racism; it’s just been so confused by modern-day Nazis (and the media that loves to use them to sell papers and TV shows) that now the phrase means only “racist agenda.” Just more insanity from insane people.
In reality, racism isn’t political. It’s just evil, stupid, or insane.