A Disqualifying Passage: No, Nazis Were *Not* Socialists
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In any article talking about Nazism, there is one passage or a variation of it, that often comes up on the right. Writing at Big Journalism, Warner Todd Huston gives us today’s version of it:
remember the Nazis called themselves the National Socialist Party
Whenever somebody writes this, you should instantly stop reading what they wrote. Because whoever writes something like that has no clue. The Nazis weren’t socialists. They hated socialists. They hated anything to the left of, well, Nazism. When Hitler first assumed power he killed his political opponents – communists, leftists, and actual socialists. The “socialist” in the Nazi party was a name, and no more. It’s like saying that the “United Klans Of America” represents real America because “America” is in the name. It’s absurd. It’s the real world manifestation of Jonah Goldberg/Glenn Beck history mangling and people who use it are either being deceptive or (more likely) stupid enough to believe it.
No matter how you come to it, it’s wrong on about a million levels.
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North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
That is all…
According to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”, the book Hitler wrote, Socialism was a Jewish conspiracy and Socialists were no better than Jews. Considering what Hitler did to the Jews, it is not likely he would ever become a Socialist. Now, of course, facts are not important in today’s American debate. I mean, surely, someone in the corporate-owned press knows the truth regarding Hitler and Socialists…but setting the record straight would not serve Wall Street’s interests, so the record is never corrected. Either that, or our corporate-owned media personalities are the biggest group of idiots to have ever walked the planet.
It has long been “settled” that the proper classification of governments is functional , not ideological ( and , of course, what they profess or pretend to be is irrelevant ). Thus, the spectrum runs from authoritarian to totalitarian, conservative governments tending towards authoritarianism; liberal governments tending towards totalitarian.
This is why one is tempted to put communist governments and fascist governments at the same end of the spectrum. Insofar as the Nazis were seeking to install a government that controlled people’s lives (see Nazi culture: Intellectual, cultural, and social life in the Third Reich; Mosse, George L., Grosset & Dunlap, 1966 ), they were both totalitarian and socialistic.
It’s not their fault that the American Left abandoned classical liberalism in the late 60′s, and changed the Democratic Party into a “Nanny State” Party.
I will take Herr Schubert and Herr Kegler’s viewpoint(my deceased German relatives) over American right wingers. Hitler and the Nazi’s were conservatives in ideology and rule.
Thus, the spectrum runs from authoritarian to totalitarian, conservative governments tending towards authoritarianism; liberal governments tending towards totalitarian.
Um, no. Conservative governments tend toward totalitarian at the extreme, and are always authoritarian.
The Nazis were certainly capitalizing on the long-established popularity of Socialism, as did the Italian Fascists earlier.
But both sets of fascism abandoned the core concept of Marxian socialism — the class struggle within nations.
With their belief in the reified state as an actual body comprising different organs and tissues necessarily united under a single leadership, Mussolini’s innovative way of sucking up to and then taking power by targeting and beating socialists and leftists and his former allies as hired thugs for wealth and the right involved completely reversing the class struggle analysis.
His silly game was to suggest that (in the way that fascists tended to ridiculously mythologize concepts and metaphors as actually being real) the true class struggle was not between different economic classes within nations, much less an international struggle of the proletarian class in general versus the bourgeois class in general, but rather a struggle between “proletarian” nations (i.e., newer industrialized nations such as Italy and Germany) versus “bourgeois nations” (i.e., older industrialized and Empire states such as Britain & France).
It’s how Mussolini envisioned “Corporations” (meaning not so much “corporations” in our sense of private companies but the idea of unified “bodies” — from corpus, and hence the confusion by many reiterating an allegation that fascism = corporations + state) carrying out different functions, say, transport, or mining, led by appointed members of the fascist party leadership, by the military, by the owners of private corporations or their representatives, and by labor.
And, of course, as you would expect, no one listened to or gave a sh*t what the labor members thought or said, or they replaced them with fake leadership which said what the rest wanted to hear.
To call this nonsense “socialism” — well, you can do whatever you want, but no one at the time who cared about what terms meant made that mistake, and neither did Fascists themselves.
It’s true that totalitarian movements shared a lot in common, and a lot of differences and conflicts between various states described in ideological terms could more accurately be reduced to a form of nationalist competition.
But Nazis and Fascists weren’t Socialists or Communists, even if many of them did originate working together.
It’s why right wingers don’t describe David Horowitz as a Communist or Maoist or black radical, even though Horowitz began his ego-masturbation attempting to lead the New Left and join in exciting Black Panther activities in order to push himself as a revolutionary leader.
So if you want to say that anyone who began in a leftist movement is therefore leftist, you might as well stack Horowitz and all sorts of other former leftists-turned hawk neo-Khans as revolutionary socialists as well, and chalk up the recent Iraq war and occupation as the culmination of several decade’s worth of right wing moles who were truly socialist revolutionaries.
In fairness, though, the people making these arguments care not the slightest shit whether or not these arguments in any degree make sense or are ‘true’ and reflect sane measures of empirical reality — just like totalitarian revolutionaries of all stripes believe, what matters is not what is true but what advances the [counter] revolution. That’s all.
No worry. Whenever I encounter such a line about the Nazis, I just answer with
“You know, most Republicans and Conservatives come from “red” states, and red is the color of Communists.”
Now that’s the kind of argument that Frank can understand!
“ANDREW BREITBART’S SITE IS ALWAYS RIGHT. HITLER WAS SEEN ON MANY OCCASIONS WEARING A CHE SHIRT.”-Matt Drudge
An assertion of history-mangling would sound stronger if it included examples. Otherwise its just name-calling.
Regarding socialism v. fascism v. communism, it mostly seems like semantics. Bottom line is bigger gov’t v. smaller, and more regulation v. less. With both camps calling each other fools. I wish I knew how to change your mind, but oh yeah . . . it is your mind, and only you can change it.
Gee, Wilbur ! Seems to me like you don’t have anything to contribute to this thread.
Umm, Mike , I guess what you’re saying is that conservative governments may be either authoritarian or totalitarian, but that liberal governments tend to be … neither ? How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient!
So you are, umm, utterly, famously and tremendously wrong.
If any of you political philosophers could find one piece of evidence to refute what I have said, I would be ever so grateful, mkay?
So sick of this nonsense. Not a single actual historian thinks it has a shred of merit. Just a brick in the right-wing alternate universe.
It’s pretty much ‘Lincoln was a republican!’ in a different era.
quod erat demonstrandum
One can’t refute nonsense.
Talk to me about which side, liberals or conservatives, are totalitarian:
http://www.texasobserver.org/dateline/he-who-casts-the-first-stone
Not a single actual historian thinks it has a shred of merit.
I’m surprised you didn’t say “reputable”, so if I found one, you could say “They’re not reputable.” But, let me give you a chance: Find a reputable historian, who says that the “Nazism is a form of socialism has NO merit”.
Ivy : Of course you can. If it’s not true, surely some expert somewhere has argued that it is not so, or some authority somewhere has argued that its opposite IS true.
Wilbur: So now you have nothing to say, but in Latin. You will soon run out of Berlitz Phrase books, and you might have to generate original thought. I hope your hair doesn’t catch fire.
If people don’t argue with you after you say that, it’s because they know you’re a bit of a dolt on the subject, biggerbox.
The colors have been reversed before in the US with regard to the two parties; and outside the US in other long-established democracies, blue represents right-wing and conservative parties, and red represents left-wing and socialist parties.*
You might want to rethink that particular retort. Many times when people don’t give you a response, it’s not because they’re the ones who are stupid.
Only on an American thread would anyone even remotely connected to reality argue that the Nazis were “socialist” – they were (and whenever they rear their pointed little heads today – they are) corporate, racist, sexist, fascist, authoritarian and totalitarian.
And – those traits are their more endearing ones.
FDS – “Thus, the spectrum runs from authoritarian to totalitarian, conservative governments tending towards authoritarianism; liberal governments tending towards totalitarian.”
There’s never been a real liberal government but the world’s had many many authoritarian conservative governments.
You might want to rethink that particular retort. Many times when people don’t give you a response, it’s not because they’re the ones who are stupid.
Dennis speaks from experience.
If far left is totalitarian (but “for the masses”), and far right is totalitarian (but “for the oligarchs”), maybe far centrist is the place where “small government” exists?
Here’s some evidence (which I can’t help noticing none of you has provided)
Didn’t Marx describe Communism as an anarchic state and not a totalitarian one?
Frank DiSalle: Thus, the spectrum runs from authoritarian to totalitarian
Authoritarianism: “a form of government characterized by an emphasis on the authority of state in a republic or union”
Totalitarian: “A type of government that has total control over all aspects of its citizen’s lives.”
Quite the spectrum you’ve got there, Frank. Runs all the way from red to orange. Seems you’ve got a rather narrow view of the world.
The socio-economic policies of the Nazi government, as they pertained to the Aryan people, were socialist. The use of government policy to reduce inflation, eliminate unemployment, and influence the cost of production to benefit the people.
Uh? Evidence? From the Mises Institute? Really? Really? I’ll be back later to tear this entire article apart assuming someone else beats me to it (Quaker, I’m looking at you).
Uh? Evidence? From the Mises Institute? Really? Really? I’ll be back later to tear this entire article apart assuming someone else doesn’t beat me to it (Quaker, I’m looking at you).
Oops, thought I corrected that before it went through. Okay, off to work for me, I’ll be back later.
If the standard of “socialist” simply means nothing more than the shallow declaration that “the government” controls something, this now includes monarchies, so, if a monarchy controls private industry, it’s somehow “socialist” for the shallowtards.
Umm, Mike , I guess what you’re saying is that conservative governments may be either authoritarian or totalitarian, but that liberal governments tend to be … neither ? How conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient!
So you are, umm, utterly, famously and tremendously wrong.
No, you illiterate moron. I’m saying that conservative governments are always authoritarian and may become totalitarian. I said nothing and implied nothing about liberal governments.
“Didn’t Marx describe Communism as an anarchic state and not a totalitarian one?”
He advocated the creation of a totalitarian state (the “dictatorship of the proletariat”) as a preliminary phase that would result in socialism and then Communism, where (in theory) the government would wither away and you would have a sort of utopian society where people would freely agree to contribute according to their own abilities and receive whatever they needed.
The anarchists sought to create a society without government, where individuals would freely enter into contracts with one another instead of having laws imposed by the state.
You can say that Marx’ vision of the final stage of Communism has some similarities with the anarchists’ ideal society, but there are many important differences. Anarchists sought to abolish government as a first step, not as an eventual goal. Anarchists also rejected any totalitarian phase.
Marx hated actual “anarchists”, and anarchists in the early Soviet Union cooperated with the Communists in the fight against the White Army but then Lenin and Trotsky turned on them and destroyed them.
The use of government power for social purposes does not make it socialist. Again, monarchies or any other type of state could do this as well.
Can we reinstate Godwin? Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase?
Okay, how about Franco? Was Franco a ‘leftist’?
I still remember a graffito from my university days – someone had scrawled ‘HITLER WAS RIGHT’, and below, in another hand, was ‘well, he sure as hell wasn’t LEFT’.
And no, Frank, I’m not attempting to debate you, any more than I tried to debate one of my clients from my VA days (twenty four years providng health care to disabled veterans). He _knew_ that the agents breaking into his apartment while he slept, and torturing him with electric shocks to his feet, were from the Government – and knew that I knew, as well, but was prohibited from admitting it. Other than that, he thought I was an okay guy.
The Nazis and other fascists were basically willing to say anything that would help them gain power. Their ideology was not necessarily consistent, and changed over time. You can find statements by fascist leaders that appear to be in support of the working class, but once in power their actions were almost always in favor of business and the rich, and unions and the labor movement were either crushed or rendered powerless.
Mussolini at first tried to combine extreme nationalism with socialism, got nowhere politically, and then switched to supporting landowners and businessmen by helping them crush Italy’s then-strong labor unions.
Before taking power, Hitler advocated pro-labor and pro-business economic policies at different times, gaining support from both Germany’s working class and its upper and middle classes. Once in power, Hitler marginalized German labor, and targeted Jewish and foreign-owned businesses while protecting the interests of German businessmen who were loyal to him and his movement.
El Cid, only an idiot uses insults like “shallowtards” to try to make an arguement. If you can’t construct an arguement without childest insults, maybe you shouldn’t have dropped out of the third grade.
When a government takes the taxes it levies unevenly and distributes the benefits of these taxes evenly (ie. a person making $20,000 pays less taxes than someone making $45,000 but they both benefit equally from the services paid for with those taxes) – just like the Nazi government did – then it is acting in a Socialist fashion.
I know that we on the left like the ideas of Socialism and like to associate ourselves with it so we get offended when people equate it with the Nazis. That doesn’t mean that a great deal of their socio-economic policies weren’t socialist. When they redistributed the wealth of the people to benefit the financially less fortunate, it was a socialist move.
And Frank, it hasn’t escaped any of our notices that in all your snide and trenchant replies you have totally ignored the substantive posting of El Cid up above, which pretty much nails your odious defecations on this topic to the wall and leaves them bleeding.
Mises is, of course, trivially correct that there are some points of contact between Hitler’s “national socialism” and other forms of “socialism”. Those superficial similarities are enough for one-stroke thinkers and those whose only interest in not the truth but finding a rhetorical cudgel with which to pummel their political adversaries, but they won’t suffice for anyone seriously interested in the topic. “National socialism” was, in fact, socialism turned inside out. The usurpation of socialist rhetoric and the perversion of socialist demand-economic principles in service to a philosophy that was fundamentally neither conservative (in the original sense of the term) nor liberal but reactionary, exclusionary, elitist and racist, not to mention bloodthirsty, belligerent, vindictive and unscrupulous.
Mises has, as usual, created one of his selective abstractions which is as phony and divorced from the real operations of human societies as an Austrian Kristkindlkarussell is from the Kentucky Derby. What he neglects to mention is that in the allegedly anti-capitalist nightmare of Nazi Germany, after all the central oversight and the price controls, the profits of the resulting economy were not distributed to the dispossessed in the Warsaw ghettoes but to the pockets of a fat layer of Aryan capitalists who were the regime’s chief supporters and beneficiaries. It wasn’t for nothing that Hitler considered Marxism more of a mortal threat to his system than the decadent west.
To anyone looking at it with even a modicum of objectivity the relatively timid socioeconomic proposals coming out of the Obama adminstration would be the last thing to strike one as similar to Naziism. Far more redolent of the goosestep would be the reactionary, nativist victimhood rhetoric of the teabag movement whose leaders have convinced millions that the white male is the single most disenfranchised individual in the country, that with 10% unemployment, a growing income gap, millions uninsured and living at poverty wages in the wealthiest country on earth, the most serious threat to the commonwealth is a miniscule tax increase on those making over a quarter million, and that the scary different-looking, possibly-foreign radical socialist in the Whitehouse wants to take their socialist handout (medicare) and give it to someone else. Meanwhile the fat mostly-Aryan capitalists of the health industry, the oil industry and the speculation industry sit back in their Italian ostrich-leather recliners and chuckle with satisfaction.
No, Frank, the political spectrum does not run from authoritarian to totalitarian, it runs from liberal republicanism on the one end to authoritarian/totalitarian on the other, and the only significant distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian is that the former are our S.O.B.’s and the latter are someone else’s. The folks with the most in common with the Nazis today are the ones that give the high-five to torture, government surveillance, militarism, sanctimonioius and hypocritical moralism, and demonization of outsiders. In other words, look in the mirror. Were you a German born in the teens or 20′s you would have made an excellent stormtrooper.
Oh, and though like much in Italian you can’t really say it without the accompanying hand gestures, here’s something I found in my Berlitz: veni qua, ti facci’ un culu così.
Mike, I’m going to ignore your insult, because I am a grown-up, and it’s time the grown-ups took this thread — and maybe even this blog — back from the children.
I’m saying that conservative governments are always authoritarian and may become totalitarian.
So, where does that leave liberal governments?
Hmmm?
Robert, shoot up a flare when I have your permission to respond. BTW, “twenty four years providing health care to disabled veterans” does not provide you with insight, education, knowledge, or super powers. If that were the case, what does it mean if spent the last 40 years, being a disabled veteran?
Comparing me to someone who is psychotic is neither entertaining nor probative.
Is there anyone here who knows what they’re talking about, besides me?
All yours, MOH.
I was not aware of the rabidly neo-Confederate, Civil War revisionist Mises Institute until tonight.
Nice friends you keep, Frank.
I’ll simply quote the inimitable words of Hanna and Barbera’s tomcat character, Snagglepuss: “I hate those Mises to pieces!”
Is there anyone here who knows what they’re talking about, besides me?
Frank, you place governments on a spectrum from authoritarian to totalitarian. You clearly have no fucking clue what you’re talking about. So piss off.
Oh holy moley, MOH! Frank is quoting (favorably!) a guy who calls Abraham Lincoln a “mass murderer and military dictator.”
Mighty nice friends you keep, Frank.
First, I don’t give a damn how you think online blog debates should follow high school debate club standards. This is a blog, not a scholarly journal, and if you want to be the twit that tries to suggest that using mean words means you’ve lost the argument, then go straight to hell. Or confine yourself to newspaper letters sections.
You idiots can scream all you like that any government ownership or control of economic transactions must be called socialism.
It isn’t.
No matter how many times you repeat it, or scream it, or pout tears into tissues that other people aren’t using nice words. I don’t give a damn if you get all huffy over my using insulting terms.
The fact is that over and over and over a bunch of fools and nimrods try to insist such sillinesses that if, say, a royalist monarchy exerts control over private economic activities, then it’s “socialism”, because you and your buddies and your philosophical allies insist that any such thing is called socialism.
Well, that simply isn’t historically true. It isn’t. Government control over something does not make it “socialist,” and I do not care in the slightest how many times propertarians insist that it does.
I can insist that any beauty pageant is the Miss Universe pageant, but it doesn’t make it true.
Your points do not in any way address the points I made, and, in addition, are quite substantively wrong.
First, there were indeed quite strong currents of continuity in fascist rhetoric. Fascists at the time recognized this, and used these differences to distinguish themselves from both socialists and communists. Foreign governments recognized these differences — i.e., Western powers frequently mobilized ex-fascist forces in order to fight Communist influences, and this isn’t because intelligence agencies were confused and had failed to read enough von Mises.
You can be “pro-worker” and issue “pro-worker” statements and be a fascist, an anarchist, a monarchist, a Communist, a right-wing property obsessive libertarian, or a Scientologist.
What matters is the substance of what you say, what sort of analysis you make, what you are proposing to be the proper structures of power. The Italian fascists and the Nazi movement really did have a great degree of ideological coherence, although, yes, in the real world there are all sorts of people who emerge as leaders and some of them are nuts or idiots and have no idea what they’re saying, and movements try out all sorts of spin and propaganda and see what sticks.
The nature and ideology of a regime or movement may or may not change living conditions for individuals on the ground. Lord knows that all sorts of Latin American poor and peasants have seen radically different governments and movements appear and disappear and come into power and fall out of power yet what they experience themselves from these various governments doesn’t seem to change based on the ideology of the regime.
It’s not some sort of historical accident that the owners of industry frequently choose to support fascist forces and movements and governments when the alternative seems to be a socialist or communist movement — certainly toward the early portions of the 20th century, those capitalists would have experienced a very different treatment and dispensation of their properties based on the type of regime which came into power.
Mussolini, for example, worked very, very diligently to distinguish his movement from the rivals he hated in his former Socialist movement. He wrote and spoke quite a lot about why the Socialists’ vision was inherently wrong, and how Fascists were different. These differences were then reflected in the state he established, as I mentioned earlier.
And this really, really mattered when he began kissing the asses of industry owners and enlisting their support for his movement of thugs to attack labor movements and socialists and in later leading a march on the government with much backing by capital. It mattered.
Any number of people could have been talking to these capitalists or to Mussolini and declaring that there really was no difference, that government involvement in the private economy is really all the same, etc., etc., and they would have been wrong in any way in which the listener would have cared.
Is there anyone here who knows what they’re talking about, besides me?
No, Frank, you don’t know what you’re talking about. As with evolution, global warming, the economy, etc., you’ve found a narrative that conforms to your prejudices and subsequently turned your brain off. That may feel like knowing what you’re talking about but it really isn’t.
Frank DiSalle: Is there anyone here who knows what they’re talking about, besides me?
Once again, I don’t think you can find real support for your base claim. I.e., that you know what you’re talking about.
Pedantic Cartoon Reference Man here, Quaker. It was Mr. Jinks who hated ‘meeces’ (Pixie and Dixie specifically).
Here’s a question: Where would you place Pres Obama’s ideology (paying particular attention to his attempt to pass Obamacare)?
I know this is gonna be fun…
Oh, and : you’ve found a narrative that conforms to your prejudices and subsequently turned your brain off
Which one of you has not done the same ?
Where would you place Pres Obama’s ideology (paying particular attention to his attempt to pass Obamacare)?
Stalinist mass murderer?
Right you are! Mr. Jinks!!
“Where would you place Pres Obama’s ideology (paying particular attention to his attempt to pass Obamacare)?”
On the intelligent side of the political spectrum.
I would say fafaroo’s answer totally disproves Bacon’s answer.
Frank DiS: Which one of you has not done the same ?
So your response to accusations that you’ve turned your brain off is “Yeah, well haven’t you guys?”?
Frank DiSalle: Here’s a question: Where would you place Pres Obama’s ideology (paying particular attention to his attempt to pass Obamacare)?
Clarify first what you mean by the pejorative “Obamacare”.
I use “prejorative” because I’ve not seen the term “Obamacare” used except as a shorthand by someone who is opposed to the plan (or by someone responding to them).
I ask for clarification because I’ve seen the term used most frequently in conjunction with descriptions of the plan that have nothing to do with reality. (“Death panels” “socialism”, etc.)
Frank,
The short answer to your last question basically is no.
Here’s a question: Where would you place Pres Obama’s ideology (paying particular attention to his attempt to pass Obamacare)?
Slightly to the right of FDR and slightly to the left of Clinton.
Trouble with the kid is that he’s so busy trying to make everyone get a long that it’s hard to know precisely where he stands. Of course making it easy for us to pigeonhole him is not his chief responsibility.
Oh, and : you’ve found a narrative that conforms to your prejudices and subsequently turned your brain off
Which one of you has not done the same ?
I’ve done it in the past, I’m sure, but I’m not doing it on this issue.
Pedantic Alt-Rock References to Cartoons Man here. It was Mojo Nixon who sang, “To all Ed Meeses, I hate you to pieces!” It was in the ditty, “I’m Gonna Dig Up Howlin’ Wolf”.
AO, did you check out Frank’s link to the von Mises Institute? They sound like a crowd you could hang with.
And liberals think Fascism is a right leaning political stance. Both are wrong, Fascism (Nazism) was a blend of each. It used right wing symbolisms, such as ultra patriotism and espoused statism (large central government). Hitler used the “Final Solution” against Communists as well as Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals and the mentally/physically handicapped, under the guise of his brand of eugenics. Basically, fascism was used as a political tool, ground in propaganda and food for “starving” masses, for a minority (opinions) to take control over Germany, Italy and Spain.