Never Blame the Left (Were the Nazis Left or Right?)

National Review Via http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/genocide.html ^ | Dec., 1995 | George Watson

[Dr. Frank fan]

As I understand if, the Bolsheviks were impatient and wanted a worldwide workers state implemented by bloody revolution. And the Mensheviks wanted to do it by gradual subversion. Thus the split. It would seem the mensheviks were wiser in this regard.

But which of the two groups was Not Socialist? Remember: you pointed out that Hitler railed against "communists". I assume that by doing so you meant to indicate that Hitler couldn't be socialist, because after all, how could a socialist oppose other socialists?

So that's why I ask again: How could the mensheviks and bolsheviks oppose each other if they were both socialist? Or: if they weren't both socialist, which group wasn't?

(Answer: They were both socialists, just different flavors. Just because someone opposes this or that socialist group doesn't mean they are Not Socialist. Same applies to Hitler. That's all I was saying....) Best,

[KC_Conspirator]

I think it does in a sense. However, I always find that these little anarchists (goth look, blue hair, etc..) always tend to start shouting about class warfare or something else on the left, so they really are not anarchists.

[Ditto]

Because, as I said, those designations are arbitrary and pretty much worthless.

They sure seem to be the coin of the relm in political discourse. How does some worthless piece of s**t American skinhead neo-Nazi get associated by the mainstream media with the American conservative movement? How does the American left regularly throw the Nazi word at their opponents and get away with it?

My answer is because it has been accepted by the dreaded 'conventional wisdom' that the Nazis were right wing and although I can't prove it, I think this is a definition of Nazis that did not exist until sometime after WWII. Before then, it was understood that they were a leftist movement.

[Ditto]

Well if Commies & Nazis are on the left end of the spectrum because they are both for govt. control, does that make anarchists, who believe in no Govt at all right wing?

Yes.

Think of the pH scale --- acid and base. If we are talking about a logical spectrum of political systems and if the far left is total state control, than logically the far right must be the total absence of state control, or anarchy.

Where is the logic of putting highly similar forms of government at the opposite ends of the spectrum? The differences between the Nazis and the Commies were minor. Politically, economically and socially, they were very much the same. They both belong on the left side of the spectrum.

[KC_Conspirator]

That may be about right for the spectrum. I would put socialists somewhere in the lineup as well, but I am not sure where to rank them. Probably to the right of Nazi's.

What is so strange is that some people are so far right or left that they hit you from the other side.

[No Left Turn]

The Nazis were socialist. Their policies were socialist. On the spectrum, the farther left you go, the more totalitarian the view of government gets. The farther right you go, the more you move towards anarchy. Pure Libertarians are extreme right, in that they view that there should be just enough government to stave off foriegn enemies and chaos.

[lavaroise]

Whatever its platform was initially, Hitler and Ernst Rohm had perverted the political party to their own ends, and those ends were not Lenin, Marx and Engles.

So the Nazies were nice people before Hitler???? Apparently Hitler admired Marx and Engles well enough and the Nazies admired Hitler well enough. As for Lenin, he was not a prophetic ideologue like Marx, he was a political doer, a demagogue.

And the left today embraces the ideals of the Nazies in multicultural ways. After all affirmative action is a racial preference, feminism is about gender preferences of virtual genocidal intent, and gay rights are about sexual preferences.

So yes, socialism and Nazism are very close if not identical.

[lavaroise]

Socialism is genocidal with racial and other anthropomorphic preferences, and that is the point of the article. Actualy the left is worse because it is a multicultural form of Nazism.

Between abortion advocacy, gay sex preference advocacy, affirmative action racial advocacy, feminist gender preference advocacy or even PETA, the NAZIES' RACIAL PREFERENCES ARE PALLING IN COMPARISON TO TODAY'S DEMOCRATS.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

I am willing to bet that you do NOT get a coherent response to your post.

[thucydides]

Whew, this thread is testimony to the confusion in terminology brought about by propaganda. Your comment is quite right about Franco (and Salazar). Unlike the Spanish Republicans, who were completely taken over by Stalin, Franco kept his distance from Hitler and Mussolini, though he did accept aid from them. Where else was he to get it? But Franco kept Hitler away from Gibraltar, and he not only saved all the jews in Spain, he got the Spanish jews elsewhere in Europe back from Hitler. Anyone who calls Franco a fascist is a fool: there is no similarity whatsoever between Mussolini's system and Franco. The label came from Bolshevik propaganda, when in the late 1930s Stalin decided that any opposition was to be called by that name. The right has always stood for ideas of rule by the best (sometimes monarchy or constitutional monarch), respect for religion, and completely rejects the idea of overturning society on some egalitarian basis. So one can see that Hitler and Mussolini were not of the right. Ironically, Franco was originally a Republican, as were most army men of his time. It was only when the radical left in the legislature began murdering members of the opposition that he and the army intervened. It is a little known fact that his return to Spain (from Morocco and the Canaries) was financed by the jewish community of Spanish Morocco.

[lavaroise]

I don't think we can put things on a fabricated spectrum like this. For example there is no such thing as an in between capitalism and socialism. THere are various ways to balance powers and allocate powers in a nation, and those allocations should be done properly depending on the situation.

Indeed, the founders did not fight independence for the ideal of the constitution, because they did not have the constitution to defend. When attacked and invaded this nation cannot use its constitutional guidelines just as it did when it fought for independence.

THere is indeed nothing worse than legislating a war, it's a formula for losing the war. In addition elections nowadays are not about getting competent people in power, they are about electing demagogues, a usage of Democracy that is illegal since demagogues look to restrain rights of some for the benefit of others - something illegal whether done by an enemy invading or a demagogue doing it thanks to popularity. Then the nation should also support capitalism but not the demagogic capitalism that sells itself out like a whore to the first demagogue. And the poor should not violate the rights of the rich either. And a president and the nation should have the right to develop their own character and rights, whether religious or not.

It's all about a just balance depending on the circumstances. All the other -isms, including constitutionalism, are about supporting demagogues representing the living at the expense of victims who cannot vote nor say anything because they are dead. They inherently do not represent justice and are all forms of humanism that support violent arms struggle to impose a view. Indeed, since they support each their particular political capital of a living sector of society, all those -isms are inherently tempted to murder in order to gain political capital within their own particular living sector they support.

However, socialism and its Nazi and communist variants are by far the worst of the -isms and the most advocate of rights abrogation including genocide and class racism and classicide struggles. Why? Because unlike capitalism which implies paying the bank that takes the monetary risk (which makes sense to pay whoever takes the risk), the socialists want the worker who takes the risks for the state by working to also pay the state its respects. Ironicaly, socialism pretends to support the worker, but in fact keeps him enslaved in worse condition than when under capitalism. Indeed, not only does the worker takes the risks for the state, but the state does not pay the worker and even asks the worker to pay. It does not give him the freedom he deserves in exchange for risks he took. RIDICULOUS anyone would get into the economic death spiral of socialism, but there are so many who fall into it. Many there is a God indeed punishing the idiots who fall for it after all.

[TopQuark]

I would agree with you, except for the fact that you are wrong. From Marxists.org:

"In any social movement there is a vanguard and a mass. On one side, the vanguard, are groups of people who are more resolute and committed, better organized and able to take a leading role in the struggle, and on the other side, the mass, are larger numbers of people who participate in the struggle or are involved simply by their social position, but are less committed or well-placed in relation to the struggle, and will participate only in the decisive moments, which in fact change history. "

I would be delighted to concede, but a website is not a reputable source for me. If you point to me in the works of Marx, (or Engels), Lenin, or Trotsky, where anything but the proletariat has been identified as the vanguard of the socialist revolution, I will agree.

Here is the dictionary entry for "vanguard:"

van•guard (vngärd)
n.

1. The foremost position in an army or fleet advancing into battle.
2. 1. The foremost or leading position in a trend or movement.
   2. Those occupying a foremost position.

---

[Middle English vandgard, from avaunt garde, from Old French  : avaunt, before (from Latin abante. See advance) + garde, guard (from garder, to guard. See guard).]

I am not arguing linguistics, however. The issue of the vanguard of the socialist revolution, which included more than the seizure of power, central in that doctrine. Purges where often motivated as "purifications" of the vanguard. It is not a small detail, thus.

[a_federalist]

Comments? Is our 'conventional wisdom' about what is left and right wrong? Do we need to correct the political map?

No. Most so called rightists have known this all along. The author sounds like a liberal who is just now seeing the light.
The author speaks of socialism/communism in the past tense. It is alive and well.
He also talks of socialism/communism purely in political terms. Until people realize that communism is a RELIGION they will never understand why it is so hard to defeat.
As for hitler being a socialist in the true sense of what socialism/communism stands for he wasn't.
He was a nationalist first and foremost which didn't fit in with the true communist agenda which was/is no borders, no countries, no seperate identities. Eliminate capitalism and the bourgeois.

There were many apologists for the evils of communism in Russia. They knew what was happening but truly believed it was for the good. All of the writers, the theorists, of communism advocated killing a majority of the population to allow the birth of their communist heaven on earth. Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky all believed in those means of achieving that end. The writer Tkachev read by Stalin, Lenin etc. said "the majority of the population must be exterminated" to achieve the communist dream.
Bakunin and Nechaev espoused the ideals of "universal destruction." These beliefs are what caused the deaths of so many millions in the soviet union. It was intentional.

[TopQuark]

Hugh: Notice that the radical Islamics such as Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban all are virulently opposed to capitalism.

TQ: I have never heard this stated before. Could you please point me to the source?

Hugh: You can do your own research, thank you, but let me start you with this excerpt...

Hugh, this is not about research: this is about the claim you had previously made. It is a standard practice of discourse to ask for the sources in support of a claim made by a fellow discussant. No need to be defensive; you may be sure I was not attacking you in any way.

As for the quotations you give in the previous post, they give no support to your claim that Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban all opposed to capitalism --- virulently or otherwise. The quoted words express his hatred not of a system but of a nation --- the United States of America. There is nothing in them that relates to property rights. Nor is there even the word “capitalism” in them.

Further, with all the restrictions placed by the Taliban on the general population, there have been no reports of confiscations of property or significant changes in property right. Which is why I was surprised to hear from you that they were allegedly anti-capitalist. They hate us not because of our system of property rights. You appear to have made an over-reaching attribution there.

Silly me, ignore the Marxists and what they themselves put out…

Contrary to what the present-day system of education has suggested to you, there is such thing as the past. Moreover, the past does not stand for “yesterday,” as ABC News --- another reputable source of scholarly knowledge that you cite --- makes you believe. Marxism was not bourn yesterday. Although the current breed of Marxists may be a legitimate subject of analysis, to refer to a website of some Starbucks intellectual as representing Marxism is insufficient.

Know thy enemy.

… and instead listen to TopQuark! No, Hugh, no need to listen to me at all.

In fact, Marxism does not invoke even the slightest curiousity in me. Your post suggested, however, that you were genuinely interested. Having read a number of works by Marx and quite a few volumes by Lenin, in their original, I thought I would share with you some thoughts on the topic of your interest. Since, as you suggest, this is unnecessary, I will not be writing to you again.

Regards, TQ.