XPost: alt.politics.usa.congress, alt.politics.trump, sac.politics
XPost: alt.politics.republicans, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.socialism.democratic
From: athinker@gopfags.net

[But what about Hitler supporting lefty things like Gay Marriage,
immigration, equality for non-whites and non-Christians and Pacifism?
What about all those Neo Nazis, KKK and white supremacists who protested
with ANTIFA all those times? ]


Given that Nazism is traditionally held to be an extreme right-wing
ideology, the party’s conspicuous use of the term “socialist” — which
refers to a political system normally plotted on the far-left end of the ideological spectrum — has long been a source of confusion, not to mention heated debate among partisans seeking to distance themselves from the
genocidal taint of Nazi Germany.

The debate has heated up to the point of critical mass in recent years,
thanks to the rise of nationalist political movements reacting in part to stagnant economic conditions and the perceived threat of globalism, and
also in part to a flood of immigrants and foreign refugees pouring into
Europe and the United States because of war and economic crises abroad.

A subset of these groups, identified as ethno-nationalists, hold racially- tinged views ranging from nativism (the belief that the interests of native-born people must be defended against encroachment by immigrants) to full-on, hate-mongering white supremacy. Some of the latter openly align themselves with historical Nazism, to the point of waving swastikas,
spouting anti-Semitic rhetoric, and imitating the tactics of Adolf Hitler.

Add to this mix the ascendancy of President Donald Trump, who won the 2016 election in part by courting a nativist, anti-immigrant constituency, and
whose reticent condemnation of white nationalist protesters who held a
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that erupted in fatal violence in August 2017 drew howls of criticism from all but his most loyal supporters, and
the urgency of sorting out these political associations begins to make
sense.

The Nazi Problem

Nobody, least of all the millions of rank-and-file right-leaning Americans
who voted for Donald Trump, wants to be lumped in with Nazis. It’s a fact, however, that Nazi-friendly organizations, Nazi symbols, and Nazi gestures
were in evidence at the disastrous Charlottesville event, whose unfortunate title was not “Unite the Left,” but “Unite the Right.”

Although the terms “left” and “right” as used in American politics can be somewhat less than perspicuous, they are helpful in delineating the basic ideological divide between liberalism/progressivism (as embodied mainly by
the Democratic Party) on one side (“the left”), and
conservatism/traditionalism (as embodied mainly by the Republican Party) on
the other (“the right”). Seen as a spectrum or continuum of ideologies, socialism/communism traditionally falls on the far left end of this scale, nationalism/fascism on the far right.

[...]

However, the assumption that because the word “socialist” appeared in the party’s name and socialist words and ideas popped up in the writings and speeches of top Nazis then the Nazis must have been actual socialists is
naive and ahistorical. What the evidence shows, on the contrary, is that
Nazi Party leaders paid mere lip service to socialist ideals on the way to achieving their one true goal: raw, totalitarian power.

Richard J. Evans: ‘It Would Be Wrong to See Nazism as a Form of, or an Outgrowth From, Socialism’

[...]

In his 2010 book Hitler: A Biography, British historian Ian Kershaw wrote
that despite putting the interests of the state above those of capitalism,
he did so for reasons of nationalism and was never a true socialist by any common definition of the term:

[Hitler] was wholly ignorant of any formal understanding of the principles
of economics. For him, as he stated to the industrialists, economics was of secondary importance, entirely subordinated to politics. His crude social- Darwinism dictated his approach to the economy, as it did his entire
political “world-view.” Since struggle among nations would be decisive for future survival, Germany’s economy had to be subordinated to the
preparation, then carrying out, of this struggle. This meant that liberal
ideas of economic competition had to be replaced by the subjection of the economy to the dictates of the national interest. Similarly, any
“socialist” ideas in the Nazi programme had to follow the same dictates.
Hitler was never a socialist. But although he upheld private property, individual entrepreneurship, and economic competition, and disapproved of
trade unions and workers’ interference in the freedom of owners and
managers to run their concerns, the state, not the market, would determine
the shape of economic development. Capitalism was, therefore, left in
place. But in operation it was turned into an adjunct of the state.
For members of the Nazi Party, in fact, defending socialism on its own
terms was a risky activity which could result in ejection from the party,
or worse. Of party leader and dissenter Otto Strasser (whose similarly-
minded brother, Gregor, would ultimately be assassinated by the Nazis),
William Shirer writes:

Unfortunately for him, he had taken seriously not only the word “socialist”
but the word “workers” in the party’s official name of National Socialist German Workers’ Party. He had supported certain strikes of the socialist
trade unions and demanded that the party come out for nationalization of industry. This of course was heresy to Hitler, who accused Otto Strasser of professing the cardinal sins of “democracy and liberalism.” On May 21 and
22, 1930, the Fuehrer had a showdown with his rebellious subordinate and demanded complete submission. When Otto refused, he was booted out of the party.
The plain truth, writes Historian Richard J. Evans in The Coming of the
Third Reich, was that Hitler and his party saw socialism, communism, and leftism generally as inimical to everything they hoped to achieve:

[...]

What Nazism Stood For

The National Socialists completely ignored socialism’s primary aim
(replacing the existing class-based society with an egalitarian one in
which workers owned the means of production) and substituted their own topsy-turvy agenda, Evans writes, “replacing class with race, and the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of the leader”:

The “National Socialists” wanted to unite the two political camps of left
and right into which, they argued, the Jews had manipulated the German
nation. The basis for this was to be the idea of race. This was light years removed from the class-based ideology of socialism. Nazism was in some ways
an extreme counter-ideology to socialism, borrowing much of its rhetoric in
the process, from its self-image as a movement rather than a party, to its much-vaunted contempt for bourgeois convention and conservative timidity. German historian and National Socialism expert Joachim Fest characterizes
this repurposing of socialist rhetoric as an act of “prestidigitation”:

This ideology took a leftist label chiefly for tactical reasons. It
demanded, within the party and within the state, a powerful system of rule
that would exercise unchallenged leadership over the “great mass of the anonymous.” And whatever premises the party may have started with, by 1930 Hitler’s party was “socialist” only to take advantage of the emotional
value of the word, and a “workers’ party” in order to lure the most
energetic social force. As with Hitler’s protestations of belief in
tradition, in conservative values, or in Christianity, the socialist
slogans were merely movable ideological props to serve as camouflage and confuse the enemy.
The proof was in the pudding. Not long after acquiring the reins of power,
the Nazis banned the Social Democratic Party and sent its leaders and other leftists identified as threats to the National Socialist program to concentration camps. According to the Holocaust Encyclopedia:

In the months after Hitler took power, SA and Gestapo agents went from door
to door looking for Hitler’s enemies. They arrested Socialists, Communists, trade union leaders, and others who had spoken out against the Nazi party;
some were murdered. By the summer of 1933, the Nazi party was the only
legal political party in Germany. Nearly all organized opposition to the
regime had been eliminated. Democracy was dead in Germany.
Despite continuing certain Weimar-era social welfare programs, the Nazis proceeded to restrict their availability to “racially worthy” (non-Jewish) beneficiaries. In terms of labor, worker strikes were outlawed. Trade
unions were replaced by the party-controlled German Labor Front, primarily tasked with increasing productivity, not protecting workers. In lieu of the socialist ideal of an egalitarian, worker-run state, the National
Socialists erected a party-run police state whose governing structure was anti-democratic, rigidly hierarchical, and militaristic in nature. As to
the redistribution of wealth, the socialist ideal “From each according to
his ability, to each according to his need” was rejected in favor of a
credo more on the order of “Take everything that belongs to non-Aryans and
keep it for the master race.”

Above all, the Nazis were German white nationalists. What they stood for
was the ascendancy of the “Aryan” race and the German nation, by any means necessary. Despite co-opting the name, some of the rhetoric, and even some
of the precepts of socialism, Hitler and party did so with utter cynicism,
and with vastly different goals. The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies
in the face of historical reality.

--

Rightists are spineless and obedient, void of critical thinking and reason

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)