Posted on 08/18/2003 9:27:28 AM PDT by bedolido
Until Herschel's discovery of Uranus in 1781, it was considered a matter of certainty that there were six planets. But the fact that everyone knew this to be true did not make it so. In like manner, college students and other insufferable connoisseurs of all human wisdom "know" that the historical Nazi Party epitomizes the extreme right-wing.
It is informative to first note an academic definition of communism: "A social, political and economic system characterized by the revolutionary struggle to create a society which has an absence of classes, and the common ownership of the means of production and subsistence and centralized governmental control over the economy."
And yet, the definition of its supposed opposite, by the same academic source, is rather different. "Nazism: The ideology and policies of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Worker's Party from 1921 to 1945." Isn't it a strange sort of opposite that claims to be a socialist worker's party, as opposed to, well, a socialist worker's party?
Consider 13 of the most relevant points from the Nazi Party's 25-point program of 1920, its Munich manifesto:
7. We demand that the State shall make it its first duty to promote the industry and livelihood of the citizens of the State.
10. The activities of the individual must not clash with the interests of the whole, but must proceed within the framework of the community and must be for the general good.
11. Abolition of incomes unearned by work. Breaking of the thraldom of interest.
13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been amalgamated.
14. We demand that there shall be profit sharing in the great industries.
15. We demand a generous development of provision for old age.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our national requirements, the passing of a law for the confiscation without compensation of land for communal purposes, the abolition of interest on land mortgages, and prohibition of all speculation in land.
18. We demand ruthless war upon all those whose activities are injurious to the common interest.
20. The schools must aim at teaching the pupil to understand the idea of the State. We demand the education of specially gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State.
21. The State must apply itself to raising the standard of health in the nation ...
23. We demand legal warfare against conscious political lies and their dissemination in the press. In order to facilitate the creation of a German national press…. It must be forbidden to publish newspapers which are damaging to the national welfare.
24. We demand liberty for all religious denominations in the State, so far as they are not a danger to it. The Party ... does not bind itself in the matter of creed to any particular confession.
25. That all the foregoing requirements may be realized we demand the creation of a strong central national authority; unconditional authority of the central legislative body over the entire Reich and its organizations in general;
These supposedly right-wing extremists were calling for national health care, social security, state-run schools, communal land development and centralized government control. They were determined advocates of gun control. And if they did not believe it took a village to raise a child, they were certainly enthusiastic about public youth programs. And then there were the complaints about vast conspiracies in the private press. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
While some argue that the National Socialists became "conservative" as a result of their rapprochement with the great German industrialists following the final defeat of the Strasser wing of the party in late 1932, this conveniently skates over the fact that a) the 12 years concerned represents half of the Nazi Party's lifetime, and, b) Many elements of the avowedly socialist 1920 program were retained after 1933 when the National Socialists took power. Once in power, Vladimir Lenin, too, made capitalistic compromises with his New Economic Program, but this somehow never caused him to be defined as a man of the Right.
The National Socialists were not as radically left as the Soviet Communists, nor are most American Democrats as far left as were the National Socialists. But an examination of their ideological cores reveals the undeniable philosophical kinship between these three parties of the Left.
Perhaps the Democratic Party should consider a new battle cry should their most famous face decide to enter the presidential race in 2004. Sieg Hillary!
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Vox Day is a novelist and Christian libertarian. He is a member of the SFWA, Mensa and the Southern Baptist Convention. He has been down with Madden since 1992.
"I love-Hillary-Tree-Note"
Makes perfect sense to me.
NOT
The differentiation between Soviet communist socialism and nazi fascist socialism, the left and the right in the lingo of the liberals, likely occurred when Hitler double-crossed Joe stalin and turned his forces on Russia.
Hi Eva, I don't follow you here, so please explain. You won't be surprised to hear that I see this the other way 'round. The Patriot Act and its follow-ons are good examples, to me, of ceding individual freedoms to government and loosening the ties that have bound the government down in applying due process towards its individual citizens. Though supported by politicians of both parties, there is great unease, even consternation, among every Democrat I know about the Act. I might comment likewise that the conservative libertarian view of freedom bounded only by its not infringing the rights of others finds strong support in Democratic ranks, where people view the many such personally-controlling laws as the Texas sodomy statute not as legitimate acts of legislatures but as unconstitutional infringements of individual liberty, privacy and the individual's right to the equal application of the laws.
I interpret this passage as claiming that the Jewish identity is a nation without borders, that their failure to assimilate into the various countries of their residence has created a nation within a nation whose loyalty is not to the German state. -Eva
No, sorry, I wasn't clear. Hitler isn't claiming any right-wing connection in this quote nor anywhere else in that speech. He did make comments belittling left, right and center, a couple of which I will quote below.
I agree entirely with your interpretation of the quoted passage.
Here is a little more from the Hitler speech:
...the Left is forced more and more to turn to Bolshevism. In Bolshevism they see today the sole, the last possibility of preserving the present state of affairs. ...
"So the Left neither can nor will help. On the contrary, their first lie compels them constantly to resort to new lies. There remains then the Right. And this party of the Right meant well, but it cannot do what it would because up to the present time it has failed to recognize a whole series of elementary principles.
"In the first place the Right still fails to recognize the danger. ... They have never yet understood that it is not necessary to be an enemy of the Jew for him to drag you one day on the Russian model to the scaffold.
And the Right has further completely forgotten that democracy is fundamentally no German: it is Jewish. It has completely forgotten that this Jewish democracy with its majority decisions has always been without exception only a means towards the destruction of any existing Aryan leadership.
"And finally it has been forgotten that the condition which must precede every act is the will and the courage to speak the truth - and that we do not see today either in the Right or in the Left.
Here I think Hitler continues to distance himself from the Left, Bolsheviks, soon to becom Stalinists, but now leans toward a re-invented Right.
"There are only two possibilities in Germany; do not imagine that the people will forever go with the middle party, the party of compromises; one day it will turn to those who have most consistently foretold the coming ruin and have sought to dissociate themselves from it. And that party is either the Left: and then God help us! for it will lead us to complete destruction - to Bolshevism, or else it is a party of the Right which at the last, when the people is in utter despair, when it has lost all its spirit and has no longer any faith in anything, is determined for its part ruthlessly to seize the reins of power...
Finally, Hitler betrays even at this early date where he is going, here:
"That the so-called enlightened absolutism of a Frederick the Great was possible depended solely on the fact that, though this man could undoubtedly have decided 'arbitrarily' the destiny - for good or ill - of his so-called 'subject,' he did not do so, but made his decisions influenced and supported by one thought alone, the welfare of his Prussian people. it was this fact only that led the people to tolerate willingly, nay joyfully, the dictatorship of the great king.
Amen. Have you ever taken a look at this? The Political Compass
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