Posted on 10/03/2003 11:06:53 AM PDT by pogo101
According to a Jewish magazine, a young Arnold Schwarzenegger helped to disrupt a march of Neo-Nazis in his Austrian homeland.
As the magazine "NU" reported in its September issue, the 17-year-old Schwarzenegger helped anti-fascists heckle a demonstration of Neonazis.
The budding bodybuilder, along with other athletes, protested against the right-wingers in the city of Graz, 80-year-old Alfred Gerstl told the magazine. Gerstl, previously an active supporter of conservatives in Austria, feels he knows Schwarzenegger based on characteristic statements from that time, when Schwarzenegger was a friend of Gerstl’s son Karl.
[risk]: I'm so sick of reading this lie here on FR.
The Merriam-Webster definition of 'right-wing' is: "the rightist division of a group or party". Similarly, 'left-wing' is defined as: "the leftist division of a group (as a political party)".
However, the political leanings of 'right-wing' early twentieth century European political parties do not correspond to the terms 'Left' and 'Right' in American politics. The Nazis might have been 'right wing' in German politics but they were/are decidedly to the 'Left' of most Americans. If the Nazis were to appear as a political party in today's America, they would be most at home with the left wing of the Democrat Party.
The nationalization of corporations and 'communalization' of large department stores
The expropriation of property without compensation
The suppression of newspapers that are 'damaging to the national welfare'
The abolition of interest on land mortgages and in income derived from interest payments
Know any Americans on the 'Right' that support these positions? Much of the Nazi philosphy also placed the good of the state above that of the individual.
Now let's look at John Toland's book Adolph Hitler.
On his own, Goebbels joined the Reds in a wildcat strike of Berlin transport workers asking for a pfennig or so an hour increase in pay. It was not the first time the two parties, with many goals in common, had fought together; and for the next few wet, raw days the Communists and the National Socialists ate communally on the picket line. Side by side they pelted rocks at strikebreakers, tore up streetcar tracks, and built barracades.
Many goals in common indeed. Goebbels is on record acknowledging that the Nazis were socialists. If it quacks like a duck, ...
Nazis, Imperial Japanese nationalists, and Italian fascists were as against marxism as anyone here on FR is.
I take it you are arguing that since these nationalistic parties were against international Marxism that they were therefore on the 'Right'. The political spectrum has more than two dimensions and more flavors than a quark. Nazism and communism are two parts of the socialist spectrum, both to the left of the mainstream American politics.
From the web site, Never Blame The Left, comes the following:
There is abundant evidence, what is more, that the Nazi leaders believed they were socialists and that anti-Nazi socialists often accepted that claim. In Mein Kampf (1926) Hitler accepted that National Socialism was a derivative of Marxism. The point was more bluntly made in private conversations. ``The whole of National Socialism is based on Marx,'' he told Hermann Rauschning. Rauschning later reported the remark in Hitler Speaks (1939), but by that time the world was at war and too busy to pay much attention to it. Goebbels too thought himself a socialist. Five days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, he confided in his diary that ``real socialism'' would be established in that country after a Nazi victory, in place of Bolshevism and Czarism.
Nationalism? Racism? Encouragement of private industrialism? These you hold out as proofs that the Nazis were on the 'Right'?
Nationalism? Heck, many early socialists did not want to be a part of an international socialist regime. On an absolute scale their positions were still basically socialist, regardless of whether a local party controlled it or some international organization. (Hint: Socialism is on the 'Left'.)
Racism? Where is it written that racists are only on the 'Right'? I can see someone on the left trying to argue this, but it doesn't wash.
Encouraging private industrialism? Hitler was in favor of nationalizing corporations but later discovered he could achieve the same ends through strict government control. Nazism was not what I would call pro-capitalist or for decisions by industry free of government control.
While the Nazis are on the so-called 'right' side of European socialist parties, their views and policies place them on the left side of the American political spectrum. If nothing else, it speaks volumes about how lucky we are not to be cursed with European political beliefs.
If you can refute the points of my previous post (Hitler's socialist positions in the Twenty-Five Points, the party's relationship to Marx, Goebbels acknowledging that Nazis were socialists), please do so. If these things are a 'dead horse' like you claim, then you don't have to worry about the dead horse that just ran three rings around you.
"NSDAP" was/is far right by definition. I believe that the term "right" is coming somehow from that era, whereby strong nationalistic views, superior race, extremely financial conservatism (investing back in the infrastructure, avoid exporting funds to foreign Banks etc., look out for the well been of your fellow country folks, unconditional government support-read "Mein Kampf").
Remember "Deutchland, Deutchland ueberalles" motto?-Germany, Germany overanybody (...it almost sound like Busta-MEChA motto as well).
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