Hitler was a socialist

johnjayray.tripod.com ^ | John J. Ray

[Renfield]

~~~~~snip~~~~

There is surely no doubt that the man Feser describes sounds very much like a mainstream Leftist by current standards. But who is the man concerned? It is a historically accurate description of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was not only a socialist in his own day but he would even be a mainstream socialist in MOST ways today. Feser does not mention Hitler's antisemitism above, of course, but that too seems once again to have become mainstream among the Western-world Left in the early years of the 21st century. See here for more on that.

One way in which Hitler was unlike modern American Leftist political leaders, however, is that he was to a considerable extent a genuine man of culture. The photo below shows him in white tie and tails attending the Wagner opera festival at Bayreuth in 1939. There is no doubt of his real devotion to opera -- and indeed to classical music generally. Any claim that a devotion to high culture is especially virtuous does therefore tend to be undermined by Hitler's example -- if that is not too ad hominem.

~~~~snip~~~~

[goldstategop]

Theoretically, Marxism exalted in collective leadership. But it defaulted to the rule of a single dictator simply because a leadership of equals is impossible. Hitler's one innovation was to do away with that nonsense and declare himself indispensable. There is more than a ring of truth to Nazis' declaration: "Hitler is our program." No one in the Soviet Union could be that honest about Stalin since the Marxist tradition had no place for it. But it is striking the extent to which the Third Reich and the Soviet Union both worshiped their rulers, through a cult of personality, as living demi-gods.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Sherman Logan]

Excellent points. I agree.

[alecqss]

Exactly.

[paltz]

What did Hitler think about Chritianity?...a collection of quotes

[paltz]

SEE!...Hitler on ice!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgM3_bVb79k

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I invented the a game, which never caught on, "Is It Hitler or Is It Gephardt?", along the lines of "Is It Al Gore or Is It the Unibomber?".

You could take a quote from Gephardt or Mein Kampf, swap "working families" for "the German people", "the rich" for "the Jews", "Democrat" for "Nazi" and they were almost indistinguishable.

I suppose the difference was Hitler believed about half of what he said.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Operationally, one distopian tyranny is pretty much indistinguishable from another. Actually, Stalin was worse than Hitler, by almost any objective standard.

[Freee-dame]

Socialist want a collective society of relative equals

...where "all the animals are equal, but some are more equal than others"?

[RussP]

Hey, that sounds like fun. Have you done it with politicians who are still around? If so, I’d like to see the results (and link to it if you have it on the Web).

I’ve always thought it would be very enlightening to see those wild-eyed Hitler speeches translated into English. But I’ll bet the Left wouldn’t dare do it, because it might expose the fact that Hitler has a lot more in common them then he does with any conservative.

By the way, check out my little article on Nazi Leftism:

http://russp.us/nazis.htm

[alecqss]

1) They really are - both before and after any “arguing” about socialism;
2) Whatever your definitions are, they can not depend on existence of rivalry. The fact, for example, that sunni and shia are at each other throats does not mean that one of them is not muslim.

[Caipirabob]

I so wanted to see "part II" of that movie! LOL!

[Sherman Logan]

But we have a generally agreed definition of Muslim.

There is no such generally agreed definition of socialism, at least not that I’ve seen proposed on this thread.

Since you insist they “really are,” you should have no difficulty defining what socialism is and is not.

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

You could take a quote from Gephardt or Mein Kampf, swap "working families" for "the German people", "the rich" for "the Jews", "Democrat" for "Nazi" and they were almost indistinguishable.

Dick Gephardt would look pretty snappy in an SS uniform...

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The fact, for example, that sunni and shia are at each other throats does not mean that one of them is not muslim.

Yep. Sunni and Shia are about as different as the SA and the SS... and they all hate the Jews equally...

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

When the "Hitler Quotes", purportedly from Mein Kampf, appeared in the Dartmouth Review, they struck me as off key, not Hitlerian at all. In those days before the internet, I went to the library and borrowed the Oxford edition, which had scholarly annotations and an index.

Even with the index, I could not locate those quotes and no one has ever cited chapter and verse, so I am still skeptical about their provenance.

What did strike me about MK was the mewling, adolescent, self pitying, simplicistic tone. I lost any respect for the German body politic after that. That the German people could be in thrall to such drivel belies any pretense to sophistication or worldliness.

[ChessExpert]

This is an excellent article. It’s long and I just finished it. It was well worth the effort.

It cannot be doubted that Hitler was a important figure. He still is important as a symbol of evil. But those who value truth should want to understand the real Hitler. A true understanding of Nazism and how it fits into ideological spectrums is most illuminating. The title claim that "Hitler was a socialist" is amply supported in this article.

[ChessExpert]

communist = International socialist = Russian socialist empire
Nazi = National socialist = German socialist empire

In effect, we are told that the Russian socialist empire is at the other end of the ideological spectrum from the German socialist empire. This really does not make sense. One way this has been popularized is to present a horseshoe continuum that has the “far right” very close to the “far left.” It is the only horseshoe continuum I am aware of. Let’s try the idea elsewhere. The basketball player was so tall, he was almost a midget. The temperature in the core of the sun is so high, it approaches absolute zero. Obviously, horseshoe continuums make no sense either. Many Americans have been indoctrinated with nonsense. By contrast, this article is well researched, is consistent with writings by such people as Hayek, Mises, and Sowell, and it makes sense.

[Wuli]

You (and I) are correct, in the location of Russian Bolsheviks (and their descendants) along with the “international” Commintern they led as close cousins with the Nazis, on the “left”, on the political spectrum.

That truth is founded in the outline of the type of state they sought to form - socialist, the desire to provide a ruling dictatorial class to guide that state - one party with a political monopoly, and their willingness to project those two elements combined - a socialist state via dictatorship, beyond their national boundaries, by combinations of military force and subversion of “democratic” and other “political” processes. All attributes of the core of the application of Marxist theology to “political struggle” and Marxist political monopoly.

There is a distinction though, which is not lost on the history of the two would-be socialist empires.

Hitler tainted, and possibly doomed the eventual “international” success of the ambitions of his German socialists - due to the international unacceptability of his German-Aryan racism and his “final solution” expression of antisemitism.

But, as a European Marxist/socialist he and his party were not unique among socialists and “Communists” in their basic antisemitism and in the application of antisemitism to the continued political, economic and social marginalization of the “the Jew” throughout the Soviet Union, the Soviet “empire” and where ever the most fraternal friends of the Bolshviks dominated in the ranks of the left in either eastern or western Europe.

One would have expected majorities of socialist and communist Jews to have been embraced by - and themselves embraced - a Europe freed of the Nazis; but in fact the creme of their ranks (socialist and communist European Jews) often joined those who preferred an uncertain future in a struggling Jewish homeland. As late as the 1980s the U.S. still required major diplomatic initiatives to seek the release of Jews from their political imprisonment in the Soviet Union, to obtain their religious freedom.

My point is that one of the main problems that the German socialist dictators - the Nazis - had in seeking to export their political agenda - a problem all their cousins on the left now lift up as part of those “bad Nazis” - was their antisemitism and yet, on the left (irrespective of differences in its application), it was not unique to the Nazis alone. It continues today among the left, where ever self-practicing Marxists are found.