Posted on 12/20/2006 12:56:00 PM PST by jdm
A GERMAN school bus driver could face jail time for giving the stiff-armed Hitler salute to pupils as they boarded each day.
Police said they also found compact discs with neo-Nazi rock music on board the bus in the southern town of Vilshofen and were investigating whether the 39-year-old driver had played them for the adolescents.
Teachers had reported the driver to police, accusing him of giving far-right CDs to the children.
The suspect admitted during questioning to regularly giving the Nazi salute to the pupils over the course of several weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
"Far-right CDs"?
Is there anything we don't get blamed for?
"Right Wing" doesn't mean the same thing in The U.S. and Europe. In Europe, it means Fascist. In America, it means not celebrating kwanzaa.
Nazis despised conservatives with a bitter passion.
Yet most conservatives go along with the characterization of Nazism as a "right" phenomenon. Why they do so is beyond me.
Hitler was a left-wing socialist and leader of the Nazi Party (National Socialist Workers Party of Germany), and had a lot in common with the modern left. Hitler preached class warfare, agitating the working class to resist "exploitation" by capitalists -- particularly Jewish capitalists, of course. Their program called for the nationalization of education, health care, transportation, and other major industries. They instituted and vigorously enforced a strict gun control regimen. They encouraged pornography, illegitimacy, and abortion, and they denounced Christians as right-wing fanatics.
There's no word whether "Springtime For Hitler" was part of his playlist.
I wonder if neo-nazism is gaining more traction in Germany recently.... Didn't a member or the NPD and a state politico sing Hitler's praises not too long ago?
Not really. Hitler wanted to be all things to all people. To the working masses he wanted to be "socialist" but never attempted to nationalize the big industries. Business was told what to produce but the captains of industry were allowed to keep their wealth.
Members of the SA and SS were allowed to carry firearms, but no one else was. Also, "Aryan" mothers were forbidden to abort "Aryan" children, but Jewish and other "undesirable" mothers were forced to abort.
I know that in the early '90s, in the years right after the wall came down, it was gathering some momentum among the former east germans...not sure if or how that trend continued.
As a revolutionary force (to an extent, using the existing channels of power as the catalyst for their revolution), Nazis were bound to hate conservatives, that is, people who resisted change.
Nazism is most probably called right-wing because of its ultra-patriotism, and using the idea of the state and the nation as the highest level of moral judgment. That is, if it helps the state, it is good. Leftism extols other principles as the moral force--usually class justice. that's the defintion I look to, and it works for me.
Leftism and rightism are hard to pin down because some treat it as an economic spectrum, and others as a political spectrum. They are not ideal terms but it's really not that big of a deal.
I don't understand why so many on here are up in arms over calling Nazis right-wing. What, there's no such thing as a bad right-winger?
2banana had this same discussion in another thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1755814/posts
should read: "2banana and I"
Well, at least he didn't say "Merry Christmas".
2banana is correct in saying that the Nazis weren't "Right-wing" like the American Right-wing, but they weren't really "Left-wing" either. To the best of my knowledge, the regime that proceeded Hitler's was little different than many modern European regimes: socialized medicine, education, transporation and gun control. In some respects Hitler changed little.
I agree that way too many people let this mis-characterization to stand. The problems between communists and fascists lies more in nationalism vs internationalism and some specific ideas pertaining to the constructs of the "means of production" with one having the State ownership of it and the other allowing a limited corporative structure to exist, but both are "left" in their view of the superiority of the government or State.
The Nazis were not patriots. They were racialists.
Patriots love their native land - the Nazis were happy to sacrifice their native land in order to achieve their racial goals.
And idealization of the state is a leftist principle, not a rightist principle.
The idealization of the state was the invention of the Jacobins - the first modern leftist movement.
For rightists such abstract concepts as state, class and race are useless.
God, family and homeland are rightist organizing principles.
PARTLY because right-wing is defined differently in Europe.
Mostly because of media bias and overall stupidity.
what is a homeland?
Even there it breaks down.
The European definition of rightism generally means the primacy of "throne and altar" - an authoritarian state characterized by hereditary monarchy and a single established church.
Nazism advocated a totalitarian state characterized by dictatorship and a single established party.
As did Communism.
Both are a point-by-point assault on European-style conservatism.
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