It?s Sweepstime For Hitler, But Winter for Truth (The CBS Hitler Miniseries IS a Bush-Hate Lie)

The New York Observer ^ | May 12, 2003 | Ron Rosenbaum

[FierceDraka]

Nobody is going to watch this piece of crap, anyway. CBS sucks, and everybody knows it.

[risk]

Great notes about Hitler's will to disarm his victims.

[Who is John Galt?]

"Why, this completely overrides the constitution!" an outraged Hindenburg supposedly tells Hitler.
"These are troubled times, sir," Hitler supposedly replies. "The constitution cannot anticipate them...”

Hitler is shown in the temporary Reichstag, again using "terrorism" to justify gutting the German constitution...

Utter nonsense. Herr Hitler was acting completely in compliance with the specific written terms of the Weimar constitution. As Leonard Peikoff noted in The Ominous Parallels:

“...Article 48 [of the Weimar constitution]... was invoked by the German government in 1930 to justify the establishment of a Presidential dictatorship. ‘If public order and security are seriously disturbed or endangered...,’ the article says, without further definition, the President ‘may take all necessary steps... he may suspend for the time being, either wholly or in part, the fundamental rights’ recognized elsewhere.

“The Founding Fathers of the United States accepted the concept of inalienable rights. The public power, they said in essence, shall make no law abridging the freedom of the individual. The Founding Fathers of the Weimar Republic rejected this approach...”

Under the terms of the Constitution of the United States, the president may not even suspend the writ of habeas corpus, let alone “’the fundamental rights’ recognized elsewhere...“ The Germans who composed and ratified the Weimar constitution were fools - they trusted their government to do 'the right thing.' Our Founding Fathers were not, and did not...

;>)

[Susannah]

Maybe the living descendents of Hitler will sue CBS for aligning their ancester with Bush. (/sarcasm

[risk]

I, _________, do swear, as I shall answer to God at the great day
of Judgement, I have not, nor shall have in my possession any gun,
sword, pistol or arm whatsoever, and never to use tartan plaid, or
any part of the Highland Garb; and if I do so may I be cursed in
my undertakings, family and property, -- may I be killed in battle
as a coward, and lie without burial in a strange land, far from
the graves of my forefathers and kindred; may all this come across
me if I break my oath." --1746 Tartan Oath (after Battle of Culloden)

[Happy2BMe]

Needless to say - that particular Tartan Oath was neith inspired by God nor was it ever followed.

[kiwiexpat]

Hitler was not a socialist, and certainly was not left-wing. He never advocated nationalizing the means of production, distribution and exchange; German capitalism remained unfettered during the Third Reich. Moreover, the communists and socialists were his most ardent opponents. If you really think that Hitler was a socialist, I suggest rthat you read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or at least a good bio about Hitler. National socialism was socialism in name only. It was fascism in which capitalism was free to operate.

[ClearCase_guy]

Not a chance. There's socialism, there's communism, and there's Marxism. One can differentiate between them, certainly. One can find all sorts of varieties within them too. But they are all on the Left side of the spectrum.

It's just crazy to identify something as Right-wing Socialism. The people who do that are trying to defend left-wing politics by saying "Hitler? He's a right-wing socialist -- he has more in common with, say George W. Bush. My man Joe Stalin is cool -- he's a left-wing socialist, you know."

[risk]

Again, naive responses. You're both denying the existence of fascism as a distinct political movement from communism, and the historical fact that Nazis were on the right and the communists they outlawed were on the left. Would you also deny that in Russia today, communists are on the right within that political system?

But at this point, I question your motives. Do you fear the Clintonian attempt to associate nazism on the right in this country? Or do you want to deny that in a darker future, there couldn't be a fascist movement within the centrist right wing here?

Be careful sir, for to forget history is to open yourself up to repeat it.

[ClearCase_guy]

National Socialism.
German Worker's Party.
Government oversight for all means of production (not ownership, but complete control).
No respect for individuals
No respect for private property.
The State was everything.
Strict gun control
Vegetarianism
State control of railroads
State construction of highways
State control of automobile production (Volkswagon means "People's Car")
Mussolini had a long history as a socialist in Italy. He was pro-war when other socialists were not, so he became a different kind of socialist: a fascist.

These things sound like descriptions of the Right-wing to you???

[ClearCase_guy]

If you've ever gotten close to the Socialist Workers Party in present day America you will certainly have noticed the internal dissension within left-wing groups.

Maoists hate the socialists. Stalinists hate the Trotskyites. Marxists hate the anarchists. Anarchists hate everyone.

The left never gets along with the left. Hitler persecuted other socialists. He persecuted communists. He persecuted trade unionists.

Stalin did the same.

[risk]

As I've said, it's political science 101 that in a political spectrum, the extremes "wrap." The left appears to mimic the right; this does not make them the same, nor does it prove that they are similar in their origins. Just because they will ultimately kill you does not mean it's for the same reason. And it doesn't mean that you can always recognize the threat they pose using the same metrics. I apologize, though. I should have said that you wanted to obliterate the distinction between national socialism and "pinko" socialism. Don't let the names fool you.

By the way, there was plenty of private property in Hitler's Germany. You want to simplify, simplify, simplify politics in order to make it easier to fight evil. This is not always possible! Evil comes in many flavors, and it's not possible to "swing to the right to avoid it." The "right" means communism in Russia today!

I think I understand your point in all of this, though: equivocation is nonsense. Neutralize the threat to liberty no matter what its color. But don't think there isn't a potential threat on the right in this country just because today it has the moral high ground.

[ClearCase_guy]

We'll have to agree to disagree.

But I do suggest you look into General Semantics. "The map is not the territory." People like to say that political extremes "wrap" and that the extreme left and the extreme right start to overlap, or look alike. This is not reality. This is a convenient way that people have of thinking about complex things. It might be useful -- I don't say it's completely wrong. But you must grasp the fact that it is a mode of thought that is contructed by people. It's not "real".

The map is not the territory. Picturing politics as a wrapping spectrum so that National Socialists end up on the right-wing (away from the other socialists) is to impose a pretty picture on reality. But it doesn't make it a true representation of reality.

I'm done.

[kiwiexpat]

Much of what you describe can exist on the extremes of the the left and right. For example, capitalism flourishes in nondemocratic authoritarian states that are profoundly anti-socialist. Such states do not respect individual rights. The Nazis did have respect for private property in a number of cases. Study the history of corporations in Germany during the Third Reich. The US currently has a nationalized railroad system, and last time I checked, the state funded the development of the US Interstate system. Does that make the US socialist?

The Third Reich did not completely control the main means of production until the war. The US also had extraordinary oversight over the means of production during the war. For example,one could not buy a new American made automobile from the main US automobile manufacturers between 1942 and 1945 because the US government directed them to switch production to churning out tanks, etc. to support the war effort. That does not make the US socialist. Nazi Germany was fascist - capitalism was tolerated and even promoted, democracy was squashed, and individual rights were denied.

[Ciexyz]

Puke alert.

[risk]

he US currently has a nationalized railroad system, and last time I checked, the state funded the development of the US Interstate system. Does that make the US socialist?

I'll weigh in here. The answer is unequivocally yes!

[risk]

We'll have to agree to disagree.

Yes. I can tell you've had this argument many times. You'll continue to have it as long as you try to equate socialists with Nazis. They're not the same in anyone's political science but yours. There's fun and maybe even profit to be made in debating that point, but it remains an oversimplification of something much too serious for that.

Socialism can make you feel like a slave to the government, and it's a slippery slope toward communism, but it's not fascsism. If it were, we'd have deathcamps in America today, and you wouldn't be posting this argument with me, you'd be either running the local brownshirt squad or working as a slave laborer.

[kiwiexpat]

Using your criteria, China is capitalist because it has private firms. The US is a liberal (small l) democracy in which private enterprise capitalism dominates. Like virtually every other capitalist country, the US occasionally uses "socialist" policies to address political concerns, equity issues, and market failures. That does not make it socialist. But I agree with your position on the distinctions between fascism and communism.

[risk]

Using your criteria, China is capitalist because it has private firms.

True. That wouldn't have been my point, but I don't disagree with such a conclusion, assuming other evidence in terms of China's recent efforts to stimulate a market economy. I would have said that there were elements of capitalism emerging in China; in any political environment there will be shades of gray.

For a fascinating argument that China is turning fascist, please see this article by Michael Ledeen called "From Communism to Fascism?" reposted here on FR by Elle Bee.

Just because China is turning toward a free market does not mean that it will be "free" in the sense that people can start any sort of business they like, for example a site like FR. Moreover, the influx of capital into China may actually fuel their ability to produce higher quality military hardware and acquire greater political and intelligence influence aborad.

Because China is fundamentally totalitarian in nature, and because its leaders are not committed to the spread of democracy, we can count any sort of strengthening of their economic system using the principals of Adam Smith to be a disadvantage to our brand of American liberty.

Evil can come in many flavors.

[ladyinred]

I find it hard to believe that the socialist lefties think Hitler was evil at all. Perhaps that is for public consumption since it appears the "docudrama" ( read, fiction) will make some excuses for his behavior. He was indeed a Socialist like they are afterall, and they all have excuses for their own failings, and never accept responsibility for them.

President Bush is a man who has the courage of his convictions. He does what he thinks is right for this country, and the majority of Americans agree with him. Far from being an extremist, He is just doing what he took an oath to do, defend this country. God Bless him for it! Up yours CBS!