A Little Secret About the Nazis (They were left-wing socialists like the modern left of today)

They were left-wing socialists. Yes, the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany, otherwise known as the Nazi Party, was indeed socialist, and it had a lot in common with the modern left. Hitler preached class warfare, agitating the working class to resist ``exploitation'' by capitalists -- particularly Jewish capitalists, of course. Their program called for the nationalization of education, health care, transportation, and other major industries. They instituted and vigorously enforced a strict gun control regimen. They encouraged pornography, illegitimacy, and abortion, and they denounced Christians as right-wing fanatics. Yet a popular myth persists that the Nazis themselves were right-wing extremists. This insidious lie biases the entire political landscape, and the time has come to expose it.

Nazism was inspired by Italian Fascism, an invention of hardline Communist Benito Mussolini. During World War I, Mussolini recognized that conventional socialism wasn't working. He saw that nationalism exerted a stronger pull on the working class than proletarian brotherhood. He also saw that the ferocious opposition of large corporations made socialist revolution difficult. So in 1919, Mussolini came up with an alternative strategy. He called it Fascism. Mussolini described his new movement as a ``Third Way'' between capitalism and communism. As under communism, the state would exercise dictatorial control over the economy. But as under capitalism, the corporations would be left in private hands.

Hitler followed the same game plan. He openly acknowledged that the Nazi party was ``socialist'' and that its enemies were the ``bourgeoisie'' and the ``plutocrats'' (the rich). Like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler eliminated trade unions, and replaced them with his own state-run labor organizations. Like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler hunted down and exterminated rival leftist factions (such as the Communists). Like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler waged unrelenting war against small business.

Hitler regarded capitalism as an evil scheme of the Jews and said so in speech after speech. Karl Marx believed likewise. In his essay, ``On the Jewish Question,'' Marx theorized that eliminating Judaism would strike a crippling blow to capitalist exploitation. Hitler put Marx's theory to work in the death camps.

The Nazis are widely known as nationalists, but that label is often used to obscure the fact that they were also socialists. Some question whether Hitler himself actually believed in socialism, but that is no more relevant than whether Stalin was a true believer. The fact is that neither could have come to power without at least posing as a socialist. And the constant emphasis on the fact that the Nazis were nationalists, with barely an acknowledgment that they were socialists, is as absurd as labeling the Soviets ``internationalists'' and ignoring the fact that they were socialists (they called themselves the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). Yet many who regard ``national'' socialism as the scourge of humanity consider ``international'' socialism a benign or even superior form of government.

According to a popular misconception, the Nazis must have been on the political right because they persecuted communists and fought a war with the communists in Russia. This specious logic has gone largely unchallenged because it serves as useful propaganda for the left, which needs ``right-wing'' atrocities to divert attention from the horrific communist atrocities of the past century. Hence, communist atrocities have received much less publicity than Nazi war crimes, even though they were greater in magnitude by any objective measure.

R. J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii documents in his book Death by Government that the two most murderous regimes of the past century were both communist: communists in the Soviet Union murdered 62 million of their own citizens, and Chinese communists killed 35 million Chinese citizens. The Nazi socialists come in third, having murdered 21 million Jews, Slavs, Serbs, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians and others. Additional purges occurred in smaller communist hellholes such as Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Ethiopia, and Cuba, of course. Communism does more than imprison and impoverish nations: it kills wholesale. And so did ``national socialism'' during the Nazi reign of terror.

But the history of the past century has been grossly distorted by the predominantly left-wing media and academic elite. The Nazis have been universally condemned -- as they obviously should be -- but they have also been repositioned clear across the political spectrum and propped up as false representatives of the far right -- even though Hitler railed frantically against capitalism in his infamous demagogic speeches. At the same time, heinous crimes of larger magnitude by communist regimes have been ignored or downplayed, and the general public is largely unaware of them. Hence, communism is still widely regarded as a fundamentally good idea that has just not yet been properly ``implemented.'' Santayana said, ``Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.'' God help us if we forget the horrors of communism and get the historical lessons of Nazism backwards.

The Nazis also had something else in common with the modern left: an obsessive preoccupation with race. Hitler and his Nazis considered races other than their own inferior, of course. Modern ``liberals,'' who vociferously oppose the elimination of racial quotas, seem to agree. They apparently believe that non-white minorities (excluding Asians, of course) are inferior and unable to compete in the free market without favoritism mandated by the government. Whereas Hitler was hostile to those racial minorities, however, modern white ``liberals'' condescend benevolently. Hitler's blatant and virulent form of racism was eradicated relatively quickly and very forcefully, but the more subtle and insidious racism of the modern left has yet to be universally recognized and condemned.

The media often focuses its microscope on modern neo-nazi lunatics, but the actual scope of the menace is relatively miniscule, with perhaps a few thousand neo-nazis at most in the United States (mostly ``twenty-something'' know-nothings). The number of communists and communist sympathizers in the United States dwarfs that figure, of course -- even among tenured professors! And while the threat of neo-nazi terrorism is indeed serious, the chance of neo-nazis gaining any kind of legitimate political power anywhere is virtually zero. That is why the ACLU can safely use them to advertise its supposed commitment to free speech. Neo-nazi rallies incite violence, but they do not persuade bystanders to join their cause! If they did, the ACLU would have nothing to do with them.

"This is a risible misreading of Marx's essay. Marx was a Jew. He never advocated liquidating the Jews. And Marx never linked Jews to capital because it Marx's era they weren't linked; they were linked to usury, not capitalist commodity production. In Marx's era most of Europe's Jews were poor and confined to ghettos; they lived in the margins. The "Jewish question"--and many authors of the era addressed the so-called "Jewish question"--was how would the newly founded nation states of Europe integrate the Jews into political life? Assimilation would buy the Jews equality, but it might also mean extinction for the Jews as a unique people. Etc., etc.

I am no Marxist. And I have no intention of defending Marx. But we do ourselves no service as conservatives when we get our facts wrong or misrepresent our adversaries."

There is nothing about Marx to defend. Hitler was not bright enough to come up with his plan to play "god" without the foundation laid by those of the mind of Marx. I have no clue what Marx being Jewish has to do with his writings and ideology. Each person is accountable for their own deeds and Marx has much to answer for, as each individual that follows his creed.

Honesty which is what you are seeking need cover all acts and people and stop this one up-man-ship of not placing responsiblity because of ones race, religion, or gender.

I’m glad that this article is making clear that the Nazis and Commies, contrary to popular belief, actually ARE part of the same coin, or political spectrum, in this case (heck, Sartre during that time was a member of the Nazi Party in all but name, and even implied he thought Nazi-controlled France was more liberating than Liberated France, and this was the guy who alongside Simone de Beauvoir was hailed as a war hero and part of the French Resistance). And I might as well add in that just because Hitler persecuted Communists doesn’t mean he himself wasn’t a Communist. Remember, Stalin managed to persecute several of his fellow communists, including arranging for the assassination of Leon Trotsky (who if you ask me more than deserved that icepick for just how much of a sick man he was), and would anyone doubt that he was a communist because of it? Heck no! In fact, Stalin even planned to orchestrate his OWN extermination of Jews, the Doctor’s Plot. Obviously, that got canned after his death and Khrushchev had enough wisdom in his otherwise similarly mad mind to not go through with it.

That being said... I’m more concerned about how the French Revolution’s ties to both the Nazis and the Communists are even LESS stated than the ties between Nazism and Communism, so I really think we need to have more focus on that area. Most people would think that the French Revolution is no different than the American Revolution, and that it was the best thing since sliced bread (I can verify this from my own personal experience in school). Think of it like saying the Nazis were right-wing, only in THIS particular case, it’s painted in a positive light rather than a negative light. Yet, it was the French Revolution that acted as the progenitor of the Communists, and by extension, the Nazis. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their correspondences, and even speeches in the former’s case, made it VERY clear that he wanted to reenact the year 1793 once they took the helm, and in a threatening letter to the king of Prussia at the time, he even implied he wanted to make his reenactment of the year 1793 to be even MORE bloody than the original version (note, the year 1793 was a reference to Robespierre’s infamous Reign of Terror). And if you’ve read Demonic by Ann Coulter, you’d also realize that even BEFORE the Reign of Terror, there were several horrific acts conducted by the French Revolutionaries. Granted, people like Christopher A. Ferrara may argue that America’s founding WAS like the French Revolution, and not in a good way, and he has made a LOT of convincing arguments on that front, but still...

Anyways, sorry if this was a late post, but long and the short is, I agree, though it does need its improvements.

Anarchy, no govt. ;P
Actually, anarchy's just as much of the left-wing as Nazism and Communism are, so it's not even the extreme right wing. Remember, Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault, Bill Ayers, and Jean-Paul Sartre were anarchists especially during the sixties and seventies, even advocating for absolute freedom of the individual and overthrow of the government, and they were also very much members of the left-wing, not even being close to right-wing at all. Heck, even Karl Marx promised the dissolution of government in the Communist Manifesto, so I'd be very careful about claiming the extreme right wing as anarchists if I were you. If anything, the extreme right wing would better qualify as theocrats.

At the time of the French Revolution, the Estates General was called. The Royalist supporters sat on the Right half of the hall, and the proponants of the new ideologies sat on the Left side of the hall. Ever since that time, revolutionary ideologues have lambasted all opposition as "from the Right" and alligned with old interests, corrupt monarchy, and old power. Yeah, I never bought that explanation on the origin of the terms of "right" and "left", because, technically, depending on where they are sitting, "left" and "right" are randomly placed and opposites. For example, the king would have the right be left and the left be right if he sat, say, near the door. It's literally meaningless since it's not fixed. I heard another story, though, one that, at least to me, made far more sense: I heard that the origin of the terms left and right had their connections to the Book of Revelations, specifically those on Jesus's right were turned into sheep and those on Jesus's left were turned into Goats, and the former were saved while the latter were damned. I know it was in a book named by this guy named Daniel, he was apparently a mystic who supported Woodrow Wilson.

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