The Left Learned Wrong Lessons from Nazism

The only way to understand what is happening to America in our time -- and for that matter, in Europe since World War II -- is to understand the left.

And one way to understand the left -- and its enormous appeal to many decent people -- is to understand what it learned from World War II and the Nazi experience. The lessons people draw from history go a long way toward explaining how they view the world and how they behave.

Unfortunately, virtually everything the left learned from the unique evil known as Nazism has been wrong.

The first lesson was that the right is evil, not merely wrong. Because Nazism has been successfully labelled "right-wing," virtually every right-wing position and leader has been either cynically or sincerely characterized by the left as a danger to civilization. That is why the right is so often labelled fascist and compared to Nazis. Vast numbers of people in the West truly believe that if the right prevails, fascism will follow.

Of course, Nazism was not right-wing -- certainly not in American terms. How could it be? Right-wing means less government, not more. Nor was it left-wing, even though "Nazism" was an abbreviation for National Socialism.

Nazism was sui generis. It was radical racism combined with totalitarianism; and racism as a doctrine is neither right nor left.

We have no contemporary movement of any major significance that is Nazi-like. The closest thing we have is Islamist hatred of non-Muslims -- but even that is mostly religion- rather than race-based.

The association of Nazism with right-wing is one reason many Jews loathe the right. In the Jewish psyche, to fight the right is to fight incipient Nazism.

The second lesson the left learned is directly related to the first. If the right is so evil that, if allowed to prevail, Nazism will follow, then surely the left must be beautiful and noble. And that, of course, is how the left sees itself -- as inherently beautiful and noble. After all, how can the opposite of Nazism be anything but noble?

The third erroneous lesson is a deep fear and loathing of nationalism. Since the Nazis committed their crimes in the name of nationalism (race-based nationalism, to be precise), nationalism must be curbed. That explains much of the left's contempt for Americans who wave the flag -- indeed, the left has rendered the term "flag-wavers" a pejorative term.

How else to explain the fact that on American national holidays one finds so many more flags displayed in conservative areas than in liberal ones? The trauma of World War I had already killed nationalism in much of Europe. And World War II did that for the left in America.

The left regards any assertion of American national identity -- not merely flag-waving -- as chauvinism bordering on fascism. When the left charges Americans who fear the dilution of American national identity that could follow citizenship for tens of millions of illegal immigrants with "xenophobia," and "racism," it is not only a cynical attempt to cultivate Latino votes for the Democratic Party. It is also a sincere belief that conservative concerns about American national identity are reminiscent of chauvinist bigotry.

The most obvious example of left-wing opposition to American nationalism is its cultivation of "multiculturalism" as a replacement for American national identity. For the left, American citizens are no longer Americans first and foremost; we are African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanic- or Latino-Americans, Native-Americans, etc. The left celebrates what precedes the hyphen far more than the "American" that follows it. As a result, America no longer instills traditional American values and an American identity on either those born here or in its immigrants, which is the reason for the right's concern over illegal immigration, not bigotry and xenophobia.

A fourth lesson the left learned from Nazism has been that no judging of cultures is permissible. Because the Nazis deemed Jews and others as inferior, we are no longer allowed to judge other cultures. In the post-World War II world of the left, all cultures are equal. To say that the contemporary Islamic world, or that black inner city culture, has serious moral problems that these cultures need to address is to be labelled dangerously racist -- again reminiscent, for the left, of the Nazis who declared other groups (inherently) defective. For the left, the only cultures one may judge adversely are white American and religious Jewish and Christian.

Fifth and finally, the left has affirmed pacifism as an ideal. One would think that the most obvious moral and rational lesson to be learned from the Nazi experience is the need to fight evil. After all, if decent nations were not as militarily strong as they were, and were not as prepared as they were to use that might, the Nazis would not have been defeated, and many millions more "non-Aryans" would have been enslaved and murdered. But the left, including, sad to say, Germany, did not draw that lesson. Instead of learning to fight evil, the left has learned that fighting is evil -- and it has taught this to two generations of Americans.

To amend Santayana's famous dictum, it is those who learn the wrong lessons from history who are condemned to repeat it.

>Interesting, you have to slam me as espousing revisionist history instead of actually making a point.

That is my point- Nazis=leftist is revisionism. It’s a transparent attempt to shake the mud off our boots. How many neo-nazis, WAR, Aryan Nation/Brotherhood, KKK, and their fellow travelers do you suppose vote Democrat when they vote? You want contradiction? How about anarchists- you know hippies, black bloc, Ayn Rand objectivists... You ready to call objectivists leftists?

>Nobody has ever denied that the Nazis slaughtered jews.

Haw! Better dip back into your David Irving bookshelf. Not too many Democrat voters in that demographic either.

>>This is pretty similar to the communists in the U.S.S.R. slaughtering kulaks, etc in their period. You pick a scape goat and use them as a disposable tool for generating terror and deflecting blame.

Yep, a dictatorship is exactly that and their various flavors differ only in their level of stupidity. History tells us that Hitler was stupider than Stalin.

>>I find it interesting that a party which avows clearly in their platform and stated objectives all the platitudes of the Left, is somehow not leftist.

Hell, Mussolini was an out and out Marxist and communist newspaper editor, then comuno-anarchist and then fascist. There’s your pedigree paradigm example. The left does not like this example, much like the right does not like the example of Hitler being a cancer on conservatism, particularly aristocratic conservatism. Trying to paint Hitler as a leftist is ludicrous and the larger attempt will create a laughing stock. Next you’ll have some carbon futures you’d like to sell me.

>>The whole justification for Nazis being right wing is that they opposed communists (and other softer socialist leftists). It doesn’t, however, happen to be valid.

Is so valid. If Hitler was so ding dong leftist, why didn’t he become a communist, I mean apart from that little anti-semitic doctrine. At no point did he offer a foundational critique of capital accumulation or the Prussian aristocracy or religion or the class system or mass production as a job destroyer, or mouth any of the leftist dogma about peace, love, understanding, tolerance, brotherhood, or the oppression of the working classes by anything other than Jews.

>>Yes, some capitalists did line up with the Nazis (as did much of the Left, as I mentioned and you ignored)

The left lined up as you say for one reason- Stalin told them to in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin pact. He even handed Hitler the German comintern as a gesture of “good will”. As it was, a huge number of commies left the CP for the Trotskyites after the pact. Your characterization “some capitalists” goes easy on the facts. Anthony Sutton, “Wall St. and the Rise of Hitler”.

but that was clearly because of the opposition to Communism.

Yes. And their opposition to safe working conditions, the ending of child labor, company store robbery, the 12hour workday, the 5 day work week, forced speedups, equal pay for women, vacations... It could be argued that capitalism well into the 20th century actually did give the marxists a reason for existing.

>>The other thing which complicates matters is that the concepts of ‘right’ and ‘left’ with respect to politics is very different in Europe. While it is true that industrialists in Germany backed up behind the Nazis, they came out of it being mere lackeys of the party.

True, but everyone was a lackey of the party eventually. You don’t “game” a dictatorship for long, it’s a seriously dangerous business. But the long view shows that capitalists would rather become a lackey of “the party” than than offer their workers humane working conditions. I mean this is what the entire political backdrop to the industrial age is all about. But I’ll even grant you that most capitalists were not cruel hearted plantation overseers at root. But they allowed themselves to become infected with the arrogant, elitist, xenophobic psychopathology of the aristocracy. It is this aristocratic mind set that should properly be the enemy of conservatism, but it isn’t. Until it is, conservatives are going to be perceived as closet Nazis by all the other people in the world.

>>They also did it out of a choice between lesser evils. I’m not going to excuse them, but I can recognize their lack of good options.

Our globalist corporations happily colluded with a rather nasty array of right wing dictators because they were “anti-communist”. The fact that our best minds couldn’t come up with an alternative foreign policy has condemned conservatism to a dark place unless it can do what Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin et al set as our task- the destruction of Monarchy and it’s aristocratic support apparat. We really dropped the ball on this, and not recognizing conservatism’s implicit and unholy alliance with aristocracy, will kill us.

>>Your understanding of capitalism is fairly minimal. Monopolies generally don’t prosper without government intervention.

Absolutely not true. Capitalism corrupts government almost as a physical law. Capitalism attempts at every turn to circumvent, short circuit and sabotage the rules of fair competition. Lobbying, vote buying, junkets, bribery, extortion, blackmail, price fixing, crying “too big to fail”, pork barrel legislation, all have their point of origination in enterprise whose directors are coping with slimmer profits, new technology, poor management, aging business models, and a lack of ethics.

>>They fall because of their own issues and market pressures. There’s plenty of studies on this subject.

Monopolies fail because the psychological dynamic of desperation and uninspired directorship that lead to the attempt at creating a monopoly in the first place, is a destructive psychological dynamic based on short term thinking. Competition driven by better ideas, a well managed and productive work force and long term thinking, is a constructive dynamic.

>>Of course I do find the comment ‘you didn’t live through the 60s’ as being particularly amusing. Does this imply that the U.S. was fascist in the 60s? Was Goldwater a fascist? Was Nixon a Fascist?

Well, maybe one day there will be a proper study of the 60’s comparing the ratio of long haired hippies who beat up rednecks compared to the ratio of rednecks who beat up long haired hippies. Since I lived through that period, I don’t need any intuition whatsoever to give you a functional analysis of that statistic.

>>(I’m hoping you consider these questions rhetorical, if not I’m left wondering the color of the sky in your world). How are the 60s relevant at all?

We’re looking at historic conservative methodology in creating a world view and where does that world view lead them when under pressure. All I’m saying is that conservatives, finding themselves at the losing end of a number of contemporary sociometrics, might want to consider an upgrade in smarts.

>>Since you’re convinced that the far right and conservatives have some sort of link, why don’t you explain it? I mean it must be self evident (heck with all those caps, it must be).

That would require a lecture on fight/flight response and its psychological analogs. You can try to define conservative away from the hard right and perhaps towards libertarian and I’d support you. But that would be a specialist definition, one that is not in general use for some pretty massive and chronic historic reasons. Funny how so few members of the “party of Lincoln” marched as an activist for the end of Jim Crow laws and attitudes. So we handed the entire racism issue to northern Democrats and are now living with the result.

>>I mean sure the U.S. conservative wants a minimal government, just like the ‘far right’. Oh wait, that’s not true. The American conservative is dedicated to the rule of law, just like the ‘far right’, oh wait, that’s not true either. We conservatives like crony capitalism. Hmm, nope don’t like that either. Ok, I think I finally found one, we don’t like communism. Well the ‘far right’ doesn’t either but for a different reason. The ‘far right’ doesn’t like it because it’s a rival not an opposite.

You have your work cut out for you getting that definition out into the larger public consciousness. I’d like to see it happen, but in the minds of most people conservatism has historically equated to right wing dictatorships, militarism, racism, 3rd World raw materials exploitation, labor abuses, strong arm tactics, coercion, intimidation, organized crime, nostalgia, unimaginitiveness, hard headedness, intolerance, etc. Perhaps that’s unfair to the true conservative, but I’m pretty sure that that overarching understanding is not hegemonous because the world has been hypnotized by an evil wizard.

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