Posted on 02/25/2014 3:44:02 PM PST by cripplecreek
On 16 June 1941, as Hitler readied his forces for Operation Barbarossa, Josef Goebbels looked forward to the new order that the Nazis would impose on a conquered Russia. There would be no come-back, he wrote, for capitalists nor priests nor Tsars. Rather, in the place of debased, Jewish Bolshevism, the Wehrmacht would deliver “der echte Sozialismus”: real socialism.
Goebbels never doubted that he was a socialist. He understood Nazism to be a better and more plausible form of socialism than that propagated by Lenin. Instead of spreading itself across different nations, it would operate within the unit of the Volk.
So total is the cultural victory of the modern Left that the merely to recount this fact is jarring. But few at the time would have found it especially contentious. As George Watson put it in The Lost Literature of Socialism:
It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too.
The clue is in the name. Subsequent generations of Leftists have tried to explain away the awkward nomenclature of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as either a cynical PR stunt or an embarrassing coincidence. In fact, the name meant what it said.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
You have taken the bait to heart - dished out by the US socialist left which more closely identifies itself with the Communist movement. Ever since Hitler betrayed the Communists by invading Russia, the US left has hated the NAZIs and sought to identify their enemies in the US as NAZIs or ‘right wingers’.
You, as a proud Conservative, are neither ‘right’ nor ‘left wing.’ Rather, you stand for conserving the principles this country was founded on, as well as Christian morality, etc.
Labeling yourself as a ‘right wing’ Conservative is to fall for the semantic trap laid by the left - words mean things and to fall for the trap is to muddle your message - as the left wishes.
Interesting chart.
"Right wing" came out of France not Germany, so it is ill fitting anyway; but the fact is conservatives were no friends of the nazi party.
Yup.
The right v. left paradigm just does not apply to American conservatism, which tries to conserve an ideology quite differnt that either of the groupings in the French Revolution from which the terms are derived.
The American Left, OTOH, is just a branch of the European Left.
It should be noted that while Nazism is at root a socialist and leftist ideology, it also incorporated a great deal from the European Right. What it has almost nothing in common with is today’s American conservatism.
The origins of ‘left’ and ‘right’ are based on the events of the French Revolution. When the Estates General was convened in 1789, the radicals and ‘progressives’ sat on the left hand side of the chamber, the conservatives (who literally wanted to conserve France’s traditional institutions, including Christianity) sat on the right.
Conservatism can therefore accurately be described as ‘right-wing’. There was nothing conservative about the Nazis. They were radicals who loathed Christianity and the old order and sought to tear it down and rebuild society in their own image, embracing such ‘progressive’ policies such as eugenics.
Exactly. Plus Hitler was a vegetarian, an anti-smoker and anti-gun rights for citizens. Those are FAR from American right wing viewpoints.
A former co-worker of mine who is very liberal, when I reminded him what Nazi meant he did indeed become incandescent. Liberals hate the truth and what I found is they do everything to berate YOU or try to change the subject but refuse to face facts.
He is being too diplomatic, especially since the proper socialist term for rank and file liberals is “useful idiot”.
Nazi’s ARE “right wing.” The “LEFT” wing are international statist socialists. The right wing are statist collectivists who believe in “private property” but with its use under the purview and direction of the state. Two wings of the same commitment to state direction and control. They are “big government” but are “conservative” in the sense that they are very big on state patriotism, state programs to inculcate moral virtues, strong military with a strong military presence in other countries. “Patriotism” comes to mean loyalty to the state and government, rather than the general culture and values of same. It is big on flag waving, sacrifice for the government, unity in the name of the state, collective awareness and such like.
These are the elements of the “right wing” of statist socialism.
There are many who call themselves “conservatives” who are simply fascist statists. They are usually the ones apoplectic about the dangers of the libertarians. The founding fathers would have tarred and feathered many freepers who imagine they uphold the values of the founders.
But yes, of course Nazis were socialists.
Socialism = Evil? That’s what I gather from reading threads such as this. In fact, prior to WWII socialists believed in what we and other welfare states have become since then, and maybe even less, that is in providing some social services to the workers. I mean, socialists never at the time believed in feeding and housing non-working leisure classes.
It's even more complicated when you attempt such comparisons across time. You can find similarities between early 20th century progressives, fascists, and Leninists or between New Dealers, Nazis and Stalinists, but that's because they were living at the same time, faced the same historical experiences, and were exposed to the same ideas.
They believed or accepted things that people don't believe or accept today, but that was because we've had different experiences and drew conclusions based on what's happened since our grandparents and great-grandparents formed their own political ideas.
But there also were real differences between these groups. Nazis or fascists and Communists were fighting and killing each other. They disagreed about nationalism versus internationalism (pretty much), and that was the defining right-left fissure at the time (for the people who liked to define things like that). Those fights on the streets or on the Eastern Front were a very good reason why people came to put Nazis and Communists at opposite ends of the political spectrum.
There was also a sharp divide between those who believed in limits to government and democratic elections and those who championed totalitarianism. And there were conservatives at the time who shared the thinking that some want to define as exclusively leftist. You could find anti-progressives or FDR-haters who were as unpalatable to present-day political tastes as those they opposed.
Analyses like Jonah Goldberg's are useful defensively in pointing out that it's not a case of conservatives and Nazis or fascists all being varieties of the same thing, but when one uses them offensively to make liberals or progressives, Communists, and Nazis all variants of one common ideology it really doesn't work well either.
I'd say, recognize that the left-right scale only works in relative terms and it's not going to create a situation where everybody good and decent is on one side with oneself and all the monsters are on the other side. "Right-wing" didn't always and everywhere mean liberty-loving any more than "left-wing" meant pacifist, multicultural, and omni-tolerant.
BTTT (Now featured on Hot Air as of 12/7/14)
10 months later. LOL
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