Well he’s pretty much dead wrong. Nazisim was a left wing movement through and through. The scapegoat of the moment might well have been based on race (which it really wasn’t since other semitic people were not considered untermensch, see the alliance with various arabs), but that was nothing close to the core of what the party was about and how it operated. To even vaguely give the Left a pass on this is moronic. The Left today uses tactics which are part and parcel of that used by the Nazis without a hint of shame. Hell, before the war started Hitler was a progressive hero.
Perhaps he’s trying to be diplomatic, but tossing the truth out in that interest is hokum.
Perhaps he needs to look further back to understand that Nazis and Communists are two sides of the same coin.
Nazism developed from many threads, including German militarism and 19th century anti-Semitism, a major dread of Bolshevism (which they saw as a more or less Jewish phenomenon), the political/economic loss of WWI before a complete defeat in the field (which Nazis blamed on leftists/communists), the very real efforts of the USSR-directed communist Internationale to spread revolution; the Great Depression and economic consequences of the peace, etc. Operationally, much of the Nazi program was lifted from Stalin: concentration camps (modelled on the GULAG); mass propaganda; suppression of national groups; internal colonization and Russification; State capitalism; massive public works projects; large para-military and secret police forces; locus of power in a single Party rather than the government; genocide; militarism; expansionism; pervasive police supervision of society; brutal suppression of internal political enemies; etc. Somehow our contemporary lefties omit all that.
I believe he is trying to be diplomatic, that does no one good
>>Well he’s pretty much dead wrong. Nazisim was a left wing movement through and through.
Yah, right. And 6 million Jews died of cholera. This is revisionist sanitizing claptrap. Needless to say, your assertion explains why capitalists massively funded fascism in Germany and elsewhere and why fascist thugs beat the crap out of leftists since time began. Apparently you didn’t live through the ‘60’s or under the tin horn right wing dictators we supported around the world. Read Anthony Sutton’s “Wall St. and the Rise of Hitler” for starters and Carrol Quigley’s “Tragedy and Hope” for finishers.
Conservatives absolutely must begin to understand the dynamic of why capitalism intrinsically evolves towards MONOPOLISM, i.e., “too big to fail”. That is exactly what happens when you gobble up the competition. Apparently capitalists, just like marxists, DON’T LIKE COMPETITION, which is the only thing that keeps them honest. Why there isn’t an ANTI-MONOPOLIST faction within conservatism is beyond me.
Conservatives trying to erect a barrier between themselves and the far right is a disingenuous attempt at spin doctoring their history that demonstrates the same level of intellectual rigor as we find behind “global warming”.