Posted on 12/09/2014 12:49:51 PM PST by Kaslin
Is Obama a socialist?
If you’re asking whether he’s a big-spending interventionist, the answer is yes.
But if you’re asking whether the President believes in government ownership of the means of production (which is the defining issue in the socialist economic platform), the answer is no (though the White House surely won’t like how Thomas Sowell describes Obama’s ideology).
But I generally don’t care about these word fights. Big government is bad because it hurts people and relies on coercion, and that’s true whether we’re talking about socialism, communism, Nazism, corporatism, or other forms of statism.
But I do care for historical accuracy and honesty.
Writing for the U.K.-based Telegraph, Dan Hannan of the European Parliamentexplains that the German National Socialists of the Hitler era were….well, socialists.
Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk. So total is the cultural victory of the modern Left that the merely to recount this fact is jarring.
Anti-capitalist propaganda from the Nazis
Not that today’s leftists should be surprised. Unless, of course, they’re historically illiterate. After all, the Nazi political vehicle was the National Socialist German Workers Party.
Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said. Hitler…boasted, adding that “the whole of National Socialism” was “based on Marx”. Marx’s error, Hitler believed, had been to foster class war instead of national unity – to set workers against industrialists instead of conscripting both groups into a corporatist order. His aim, he told his economic adviser, Otto Wagener, was to “convert the German Volk to socialism without simply killing off the old individualists” – by which he meant the bankers and factory owners who could, he thought, serve socialism better by generating revenue for the state. …authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.
In other words, Soviet-style socialism and Nazi-style socialism were both evil forms of statism, but one attracted people by fomenting class envy and the other sought recruits by demonizing non-Aryans.
Hannan hastens to add that he doesn’t think that modern self-proclaimed socialists are closet Nazis, but he does object to leftists who try to put National Socialists on the right side of the political spectrum.
The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. …What is it based on, this connection? Little beyond a jejune sense that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists are nasty. When written down like that, the notion sounds idiotic, but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls “Right-wing”: the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods; the Iranian revolutionaries, who…seized industries and destroyed the middle class; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pined for Stalinism. The “Nazis-were-far-Right” shtick is a symptom of the wider notion that “Right-wing” is a synonym for “baddie”.
Citing the comprehensive work of Jonah Goldberg, Hannan’s column then makes a key point about government coercion.
Authoritarianism – or, to give it a less loaded name, the belief that state compulsion is justified in pursuit of a higher goal, such as scientific progress or greater equality – was traditionally a characteristic of the social democrats as much as of the revolutionaries. Jonah Goldberg has chronicled the phenomenon at length in his magnum opus, Liberal Fascism. Lots of people take offence at his title, evidently without reading the book since, in the first few pages, Jonah reveals that the phrase is not his own. He is quoting that impeccable progressive H.G. Wells who, in 1932, told the Young Liberals that they must become “liberal fascists” and “enlightened Nazis”.
To be fair, this doesn’t mean Wells was a horrible person, at least in the sense of embracing Hitlerism. In the early 1930s, the fascist policies of Mussolini and Hitler were simply about government intervention. At that point, few people recognized that racism and anti-Semitism were part of the fascist program.
I’m much more likely to be critical of people whomake excuses for communism still today. Do they really want to romanticize an ideology that killed tens of millions of innocent people?!?
And it’s disgusting that people wear Che Guevara t-shirts when he was a brutal enforcer of Cuba’s totalitarian regime.
P.S. On a lighter note, here’s the “bread-ish” difference between socialism and capitalism.
P.P.S. Regarding European socialism, we have great (although technically inaccurate) cartoons from Glenn Foden and
That’s actually a great retort, if you ever have the opportunity to discuss anything with an Obama defender.
Start out referring to him as a socialist,
and of course, the defender will declare he’s not a socialist.
Say, “You’re right. Considering his policies, he more fits the mold of a fascist. Thanks for pointing that out.”
He believes more in government CONTROL of everything. Somehow that is supposed to be better.
From the Bible and its oral tradition, Jews constantly hear God expressing this refrain to humanity:
I have created most of you with almost limitless yearnings and desires, but I have placed you in a world with apparently limited resources. It may seem that there is not enough for everyone. However, if you follow my rules of ongoing and constant cooperation, there will be more than enough for everyone. Should you decide to try it on your own, you will condemn yourself to a constant struggle for survival. I have set up the world in mysterious and counterintuitive ways. You are going to have to be generous and giving to one another. You are going to have to cooperate with one another, and you are going to have to understand that interpersonal economic interaction through Ethical Capitalism is good and pleases Me, while many of the other attempts to solve the problem of extracting a living from the world without voluntary cooperation are not only evil, but I have arranged for them ultimately to fail.
The fascist has the best of both worlds.
He has control over the means of production and distribution,
and he has the facade of private ownership to blame for the inevitable failures of his control.
“But if you’re asking whether the President believes in government ownership of the means of production (which is the defining issue in the socialist economic platform), the answer is no.”
Discrediting the whole article. No sense in reading any further.
That's your opinion and you're entitled to it
I have often described our government as moving towards fascism.
Any degree of socialism is, by nature, dependent on some degree of tyranny.
“Making the right campaign contributions are becoming as important to a company as research and development.” “
If you don’t want a county code enforcement guy fining your construction project it’s important at the local level as well. My county has a line item in the budget, $550,000 revenue from code enforcement.
No, socialism has nothing to do with the notion that “all men are created equal” whatsoever. So Nazism has everything to do with socialism.
Government control of private property for the “good”of the state is fascism, and we have plenty of that. That’s exactly what Hitler did. It’s time for states to begin flexing their muscles in order to destroy the federal fascist bureaucracy infesting their territories.
Specifically, he's an Afro-Centric Fascist.
His vision for America (or AmeriKKKa, as DemoKKKrats spell it) isn't Sweden. It's Zimbabwe.
(not sarcasm - just reality)
ping
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