In light of recent conservative b.s. about the political ideology of Nazism, I thought this bit from Wikipedia would be of interest.
To a lesser extent, the Sturmabteilung (SA), a Nazi paramilitary organization, remained somewhat autonomous within the party itself. The SA evolved out of the remnants of the Freikorps movement of the post-WWI years. The Freikorps were nationalistic organizations primarily composed of disaffected, disenchanted and angry German combat veterans who believed that their government had betrayed Germany and sold them out by surrendering and submitting to the humiliating terms of the Versailles Treaty. The Freikorps were in opposition to the new Weimar Republic. Ernst Röhm was commander of the Bavarian Freikorps and was given the nickname ‘The Machine Gun King of Bavaria’ because he was responsible for storing and issuing illegal machine guns to Freikorps units in Bavaria. He later became commander of the SA. During the 1920s and 1930s, the SA functioned as a private militia that Hitler used to intimidate rivals and disrupt the meetings of competing political parties, especially those of the Social Democrats and the Communists. Also known as the ‘brownshirts’ or ’stormtroopers’, the SA became notorious for their street battles with the Communists.[8] The violent confrontations between the two groups contributed to the destabilization of Germany’s inter-war experiment with democracy, the Weimar Republic.[9] In June 1932, one of the worst months of political violence, there were over 400 street battles, resulting in 82 deaths.[10] This very destabilization had been crucial in Hitler’s rise to power, however, not least because it convinced many Germans that once Hitler became chancellor, the endemic street violence would end.
I’ve been guilty of Nazi-based hyperbole versus the right too (and frankly I think they deserved it) but that aside the idea that Nazism was somehow liberalism is the sort of nonsense a phony like Rush Limbaugh traffics in. Limbaugh knows way too much to actually believe this, but he knows his lemming-like audience accepts his word as gospel (trust me, I’ve seen their emails and blog comments, nary an independent thought from that crowd).
Nazism was “National Socialism” in name only. Hitler was interested in raw power via brute force, he was concerned with consolidating power for himself via his party. It began in his own country and spread to his designs on the rest of the world. He didn’t care about anything that could remotely be called liberalism. His was an uber-authoritarian view of the world, the ultimate command and control structure.
Conservatives would really do themselves and our public discourse a great favor by even cracking open an elementary level history book on occasion instead of inflicting us with their verbal diarrhea.
That’s too long for me to read.
More simply, if Nazism was somehow aligned with the leftist end of the political spectrum why didn’t Hitler and Stalin join up and rule Europe forever? In fact, they were mortal enemies in no small part because Nazism and Communism were polar opposites in terms of overall ideology.
It’s such a moronic argument that you hardly know where to begin. Hitler was cursing bolshevism up until his final moments.
Sorry Jaim, but you need to crack open that history book Oliver keeps claiming he’s read. An even better idea, if you really want to educate yourselves (yes, you too, Oliver) on this topic, would be to visit the library to borrow and read Mein Kampf and then Google up the actual Nazi party platform.
The book and the platform are historical facts you cannot argue with them, which is probably part of the reason Oliver wants folks to read a compressed generalization instead of the actual articles. Gun control, socialized medicine, heavy regulation of industry and banking, and a highly centralized federal government are not right wing ideals, as Oliver repeatedly exclaims on this site.
Nazism and Communism are not polar opposites. Lenin and Stalin both spoke and wrote very highly of National Socialism (remember the German/Soviet Non-Aggression Pact?). You can also count hundreds of American Progressives of the era as fans of Hitler and Mussolini.
The only real difference between Socialism/Communism and Nazism/Fascism is the strong nationalism of the latter. Deuschland Uber Alles ring a bell?
The only real and documentable disagreement Hitler had with Socialists was that they did not “value” Germany above all else. They wanted to conjoin Germany into just another territory in a world of socialist states and he believed that this would lead to the suffering of German people.
Please guys, before you go and say that certain folks have no idea about historical facts, you might want to actually read a few of those facts for yourselves.
Well, that, and the complete rejection of the class conflict theory that was the very heart and soul of socialist and community theory — Mussolini, for example, argued that there was no true class conflict within societies but between “proletarian” and “bourgeois” nations. Thus the proletarian (later developing) Italy and Germany had to unite against the bourgeois (earlier developing) Britain and France, and the previously argued conflict between bourgeois and proletarian within society would be resolved by viewing society as a unified organism which required different tissues and organs.
And maybe a few other minor differences that seemed to matter to people and movement and leaders of the time, but, you know, pffft, Mussolini was once a Socialist and who cares if he later declared that he was entirely hostile and opposed to socialism, f*** that sort of subtlety and analysis sh*t because, hey, “National Socialism”, it’s in the name. Luzers. Reed a buk!
How to be a communist and fascist at the same time:
What F.A. Hayek saw, and what most all his contemporaries missed, was that every step away from the free market and toward government planning represented a compromise of human freedom generally and a step toward a form of dictatorship–and this is true in all times and places.
Nazism, he wrote, is not different in kind from Communism. Further, he showed that the very forms of government that England and America were supposedly fighting abroad were being enacted at home, if under a different guise. Further steps down this road, he said, can only end in the abolition of effective liberty for everyone.
Capitalism, he wrote, is the only system of economics compatible with human dignity, prosperity, and liberty.
http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-be-communist-and-fascist-at-same.html
Another thing that is not news now and was not news then — totalitarian systems are often quite similar, particularly from the point of view of their own citizens, even when their differences lead them to war against each other.
Of course you can also have weird things like Communist China declaring that Capitalists would now be part of the Communist Party and leading the world in advancing authoritarian capitalism, so weird mixes do happen.
“remember the German/Soviet Non-Aggression Pact?”
Yeah, it was something both sides knew was bullshit. Hitler and Stalin both wanted some extra time to build up their war-machines, and of course Germany broke the thing eventually.
Beyond that, Hitler’s rise to power was based on both anti-Jew propaganda as well as anti-bolshevik, anti-Communist propaganda.
“totalitarian systems are often quite similar”
Agreed, and Stalin and Hitler were both horrible people who ruled over horrible regimes. But their motivating political ideologies came from different ends of the political spectrum.
To put it more bluntly, Jonah Goldberg is a complete idiot whose book was never taken seriously by any real historian.
According to conservatives, FDR pushed socialism. So, why didn’t Hitler just hook up with FDR? BTW, did you know Hitler attacked the New Deal?
I’ve found the best way to characterize Nazism as a combination of the worst elements of both the Left and the Right. And arguments that boil down to “you’re more of a Nazi!” “No, YOU are!” just make everyone look like assholes.
As well as cheapening the incredibly heinous nature of true Nazism.
Plus, every now and then it’s fun to remind people of some of the legacies of Nazism. Volkswagen, for one. The Autobahn. And the most disturbing one of all: most of our medical understanding of the effects of cold on the human body are from the inhuman experiments the Nazis conducted on concentration camp prisoners. Many people who have survived hypothermia owe their lives to the Nazi monster doctors and their anonymous victims.
J.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2009/08/rush-limbaugh-has-his-fascism-all.html
Plenty more at that site.
Have fun learnin’ about stuff, wingnutz!
They’re both bad!
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200908100012
Equivalence!!
I will type slowly so the dingbats can keep up.
Fascists/nazis supported capital and opposed labor.
Fascists/nazis were supported by capital and opposed by labor.
Communists/socialists supported labor and opposed capital.
Communist/socialists were supported by labor and opposed by capital.
The rich (see Henry Ford) poured money into the Nazi/Fascist coffers to fight the communist/socialists. You really cannot get farther apart than that.
The communists and the nazis were however both authoritarian, just like the modern republican party.
$$communist \cap nazi \subset republican$$
Oh God, not bloody Hayek again.
Hayek was fundamentally no different from Karl Marx. He didn’t use statistics and data and experimentation (i.e, the scientific method) to actually evaluate the validity of his hypotheses, he merely argued from assertion and anecdote and, after many many pages of elaborate sophistry, voila!, ended at the conclusion he wanted in the first place.
He argues for a magical theoretical capitalism which has never and can never exist in the real world, because people of little economic means will never have the same access to information, control of resources, etc. with which to forge their way as the industrialist magnate does. The only way the herd can achieve anything close to comparable levels of agency is by banding together and acting in their collective best interest. And as soon as that happens, all the free market fairies shout “UNION! UNCLEAN!”, and insist that the mass of the citizenry be abandoned to the tender mercies of a tooth and claw “free market” which is nothing of the kind, and instead another tool to keep them in their place and consuming.
“verbal diarrhea” = logorrhea. great word!
Capitalism, he wrote, is the only system of economics compatible with human dignity, prosperity, and liberty.
Capitalism, by itself, is like a runaway freight train. You still need someone to steer it.
I love the way Freedom to you guys consists only of freedom of money, not people.
and Stalin and Hitler were both horrible people who ruled over horrible regimes. But their motivating political ideologies came from different ends of the political spectrum.
And have nothing to do with what is going on today!
In one way (the smartest) of small government conservatives are correct:
Nazism and Communism were both excellent vehicles for the malignant narcissist. The internal checks and balances were so weak and ineffective that the clever psychopath with brilliant political skills, but no real ‘ideological compass’, could do very well there.
But some say that many corporations are in a similar situation – somebody who doesn’t give a rip about the company can use politics to hack their way to the top of the ladder to jump off with their golden parachute while the entire structure collapses behind them. The internal checks and balances against this sort of thing are weak.
Small government conservatives do not seem to have an answer for this.
IMO, when government is weak, the centers of power and control will simply go elsewhere and use government as its useful tool.
Fascism and Nazism’s latent function was to save capitalism when it was teetering on the edge of self destruction. Nothing like law and order when the capitalist world was crumbling before their very eyes. Also, nothing like a scapegoat or two to blame everything on.
Plus what elspi said.
Also worth mentioning that while German companies were enlisted in the war effort, they did so to make healthy private profits up until the end. No such thing happened with the state-owned factories of the USSR.
Hitler and the Night of the Long Knives:
http://www.shoaheducation.com/knives.html
“Hitler saw the older Roehm as too socialist, too ‘reactionary’ and too focused on a 2nd Revolution which Hitler deemed unnecessary. While the two men worked for years for similar objectives, by the end neither thought the other would coexist with their objectives, so both the envisioned 2nd Workers Revolution and the Blood Purge became very comprehensible.”
I really hate to admit it, but Jay Tea actually had a sane point made here. And one’s emphasis on the similarities or differences between totalitarian communism and fascism / Nazism depends on what sorts of questions one was interested in asking.
This was one not a point that independent thinkers missed at the time.
“Gun control, socialized medicine, heavy regulation of industry and banking, and a highly centralized federal government are not right wing ideals … .”
No fucking kidding.
And how many Russians died fighting the Nazi regime? Does 20,000,000 ring a bell you stodge.
“The only real and documentable disagreement Hitler had with Socialists was that they did not “value” Germany above all else.”
Just a minor point, eh? Fuck.