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.

Great discussion of a very important subject. It's a good article, but I don't buy everything in it. Asclepius is correct that the claim that Marx's On The Jewish Question inspired the death camps does not stand up to scrutiny. I have read a fair amount of historical sources about the Nazis, and I have some trouble with this assertion of Poe's:

They encouraged pornography, illegitimacy, and abortion, and they denounced Christians as right-wing fanatics.

OK, they denounced Christians as right-wing dupes and fanatics all right, and they clashed with Christians over euthanasia (part of the Nazi agenda that leftists are pushing hard today), but I'm unaware of them "encouraging pornograhy, illegitimacy, and abortion". Can anyone enlighten me on this?

They encouraged pornography, illegitimacy, and abortion, and they denounced Christians as right-wing fanatics.

One may disagree with certain policies dealing with race, such as affirmative action, promoted by liberals. However, one can hardly equate affirmative action with the Final Solution.

One can, however, equate the liberal idea of justice with the Nazi court system. Even in civil cases, German courts at the time judged guilt and assigned the degree of punishment based on 1.Race 2. Class 3. Gender.

All liberals add to that mix is sexual orientation.

Left and Right are an illusion.

The true living political spectrum is "command and control" on one side and anarchy on the other side.

Liberty and Freedom are just to one side of anarchy - definitely closer than most of us are comfortable with.

The struggle of control-freaks vs. those who would rule themselves is recorded throughout history.

Of course one needs a viable internal "moral code" to survive in Liberty. "Bad" people need to be ruled or...our old friend chaos arrives.

If the mainstream media won't tell the truth the newest force which is the internet conservative news sites will and when more people get logged on the more people will wake up

The principle of the First Amendment is that we are entitled to our own opinions--and to publish those opinions on our own dime. The principle of "journalistic ethics" is that journalism on the high-speed printing press is too powerful to fall into the wrong hands, that it must be not someone's opinioon but objective. Sounds woonderful--we're entitled to the truth, so it claims--but the corrolary is that we are not entitled to publish because we might be wrong.

Thus the ethic of "objectivity" is directly at odds with the First Amendment. The distinction was somewhat academic before the advent of the FCC--but the FCC exists to censor out all but the few licensed broadcasters, and in principle to censor them (in that their licenses expire and require renewal "in the public interest" as judged by the FCC. The FCC created the broadcast bands by defining them and thereby defining the receiver characteristics which would pick up broadcasts.

The Internet breaks out of the mold of few-to-many defined by the FCC's licensing relatively few, relatively high-power stations instead of many, many low-powered ones. The Internet essentially gives all aspiring publishers a level playing field, and elitists have no great advantage. Like talk radio, the Internet is well suited to conservative commentary.

Sorry, but I don't believe that. Marx wrote that passage without the knowledge of what was to come. He could have easily been in support of a violent period of despotism against the bourgeousie. But that's a far cry from saying he would have supported the mass starvations, deportations, executions, and system of paranoia and terror that resulted. What came about terrorized the people he was trying to help.

Who knows how many people died because of that very passage and others like it.

A.J. Armitage (reply #73) is correct on the French Revolution origins of the right/left political axis: literally from the different sides of the isle of the assembly. Nevertheless, fascist and socialist have come to describe opposing politics, and we cannot here change this, the cries of Hayek, Vazsonyi and others, aside.

We are better off pointing to the distinctions in order to conclude upon the similarities, rather than the other way around which will be rejected off-hand. The similarities have been well described here. Some distinctions:

- Nazism/fascism maintains private property;
- Nazism/fascism is nationalism whereas socialism / communism pretends [emphasis important here] to be borderless;
- Socialism/communism is a means whereas Nazism/fascism is an end.

We unfairly discredit our detractors and get no where with them if we ignore these distinctions. Rather than saying they are one in the same, I prefer to get the left itchy on its similarities to fascism by pointing to those aspects of the modern left which are more fascist than communist. It's easy for the left to deny being communists; they're not, no matter how much they are, for they haven't the power to be. However, they have undeniably approached the fascist state: nationalism.

The nationalist wants a public/private partnership. This is best expressed in Latin American dictatorships where business is an adjunct of government, just as it was under Hitler in Nazi Germany (Mercedes-Benz was a prime example). The Americans approached this earlier, in fact, during the progressive era, when Teddy Roosevelt's "New Nationalism" had the country headed towards a government-business partnership that would have yielded permanent monopoly status to the likes of Standard Oil and U.S. Steel.

Socialism/communism wanted the same thing but with public ownership. The progressives/nazis/nationalists allowed for private ownership, but under government guidance. We are far closer to nationalism than communism.

You obviously have not read Marx's essay. Karl Marx completely bought into the stereotype of the greedy, heartless Jew money-lender -- the very personification of the "vampiric forces of dead capital sucking the life blood of the workers" which featured in his life's work. Actually, Marx was an habitual debtor, and his ramshackle philosophy is a pretentious, pseudo-scientific amalgam of Hegelian mysticism and displaced personal resentment. Paul Johnson's Intellectuals includes an amusingly sardonic psychological portrait of the old fraud.

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