Are the Nazi Party extreme far right or extreme far left?

First topic message reminder :

Simple question

Tommy Monk wrote:The jew haters are the Muslims and the Islamists lefties...


Hated jews just like the Nazis...


And the Nazis were allied with the Muslims of course... lest we forget...
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But ISIS are far-right.

http://www.barenakedislam.com/2015/04/28/islam-nazismand-the-conservative-party-in-denmark-has-declared-war-against-nazi-islam/

We could put it to a vote given how keen you are on the "voice of the people" - better than linking to idiot blogs surely?

Maybe you should address the points raised rather than dismissing the platform they are presented on...?

Tommy Monk wrote:Maybe you should address the points raised rather than dismissing the platform they are presented on...?

Aren't you keen now on the "voice of the people"?

Rudy Rummel wrote:This is a non-Marxist or anti-Marxist dictatorship that aims at near absolute economic control for the purpose of economic development and national power, all construed to benefit the people

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You article about three forms of socialism is from a quack RW blog that sets up its own definition of "socialism" by dictate, not reason.  https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/hitler-was-a-socialist/

Rommel's idea is to invent his own definition, and point to it, saying: I told you so!  The passage I have quoted from it is what he calls "the third form" of socialism...completely out of the imagination of Rommel.

After going through "democratic socialism" and "Marxist/Leninist" socialism, Rommel tries to characterize a third system of "absolute economic control for the purpose of economic development and national power."  There is no such form of socialism.  It is a red herring, preset to legitimize his argument.  What Rommel is describing is totalitarianism, thereby to call the kettle black.

By any definition of socialism, it must be derived from the people.  The originators of the idea were not interested in operationalization of the political system, but in the theory of origins and justification.  The idea is that labor >> property >> ownership and benefit.  Locke thought in terms of individual artisans and shopkeepers; Marx updated the idea to assembly-lines and mass production, pointing to the idea of not individuals, but the social group performing the labor, and thus being entitled to the benefit.

Point 25 of the Nazi Party Principles incorporates the masses in a kind of spiritual way, but it never permits the people to access the controls of power.  It is metaphysical.  It's a house of cards that falls precisely because there is no substance to the link between the people and power.  Rommel calls this a form of socialism, but he's really talking about pure totalitarianism.  Simply put, Nazism is not socialism as there is no control by the people.

Sounds like the eu again Quill... run by the unelected president and commissioners...


And may not be socialism as you like to define it as... but is on the left and is far left authoritarianism as seen in many other leftist regimes...

Tommy Monk wrote:Sounds like the eu again Quill... run by the unelected president and commissioners...

Maybe so, I take no stand on the EU itself.

Tommy Monk wrote:And may not be socialism as you like to define it as... but is on the left and is far left authoritarianism as seen in many other leftist regimes...

Unless you are inventing a language of your own, tommy, we define terms universally. Language is social, not individual.

The commonly accepted term "socialism" does not refer to authoritarian means, or totalitarian forms of government.  Socialism is simply an extension of democracy, having implications for labor, property and proprietary rights.

You can go off into your lonely world and invent terms if you so wish..I doubt it will affect anyone in this world.

The op wasn't asking if it was socialism... but whether it was far left or right...

I have shown that it is far left and nothing to do with right wing politics...


Nobody has been able to show any right wing ideals that are even remotely linked to nazism/fascism...


Right wing politics is the opposite of nazism/fascism...

The "voice of the people" does not agree - have respect.

The lefties on this site are not representative of the wider public...

Tommy Monk wrote:

The lefties on this site are not representative of the wider public...

And the likes of you are?

More so than you it would seem... zit...!


Do you have anything to show nazism/fascism was in any way in line with any right wing political ideals yet...?


Or is your presence here superfluous...?

Tommy Monk wrote:More so than you it would seem... zit...!


Do you have anything to show nazism/fascism was in any way in line with any right wing political ideals yet...?


Or is your presence here superfluous...?

Who is zit?

Tommy Monk wrote:More so than you it would seem... zit...!


Do you have anything to show nazism/fascism was in any way in line with any right wing political ideals yet...?


Or is your presence here superfluous...?

Published by the Tory dominated Home Affairs Committee 16 October 2016...

A representative YouGov poll carried out in May 2016 found that Labour voters were no more likely than voters from other parties to express antisemitic attitudes, with UKIP voters demonstrating the highest levels of antisemitism.

And...

A description of the offender was provided to CST in 58% of cases. Of these, 84% were male, 54% were white European, 20% were south Asian, 13% were black and 1% were described as South East Asian. Around a quarter of incidents were described as “politically motivated”, of which the majority were from far right sources

Tommy Monk wrote:The op wasn't asking if it was socialism... but whether it was far left or right...

But the argument is that 'socialism' is a part of the nombre Nazi. Other than that, you are left with the fact that Nazism was merely a totalitarian dictatorship.

Since authoritarianism is most commonly associated with RW organizations, you would lose that argument.

As far as the RW are concerned immigration is the only show in town - nothing else matters. Wealth of the nation and its population and workers rights are all shoved aside. As long as the migrants are curbed then that' solves our nations problems because it's all their fault that they were bonbed as we were only trying to help them.

When Brexit becomes a reality the French may just say get stuffed and you can no longer have your border in the North of france and instead have it on the South coast of England and you can deal with them because we ain't stopping them any more.

Ziz wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:

The lefties on this site are not representative of the wider public...

And the likes of you are?

Good points,  well made,  Ziz....

Countless election results across many western societies over the past century have shown that the extremist far right wing nutters, as exemplified by Tommy and Major on here, actually represent only around 5->>6% of the voting public...

IT IS easy for such fascist idealogues to throw up individual and populist, and largely undeniable, rhetorical statements such as "immigration levels should be regulated and potential migrants screened,", "we should respect our servicemen and women", or "murderers and rapists must be severely punished",  and the great majority of the population will agree with them..

However, as the claims of assorted right wing nutters become increasingly more outlandish, bizarre and idiotic  --  claiming that the great majority of crime in the USA is committed by "blacks", that "immigrants" are stealing jobs and public housing, that "tens of thousands of rapes" are being committed annually in certain parts of England by "Asian gangs", that all terrorists are Islamists, that Reagan was America's greatest POTUS, Thatcher was the greatest British PM, or Menzies the best Aussie PM, that Hitler and Mussolini were really "lefties" in disguise, or that Climate Change is actually a communistic plot to destroy the world's mining and oil corporations --  for some of the more common examples;

With each looney toon and moronic utterance, their supporters drift away until eventually over 90% of the greater majority of people have realised just what a vacuous and empty lot those extremists are. And at the same time, the far left of the political spectrum will find that they also only have around that 5->>6% level of support...        

Blah blah blah bullshit!!!


Stop crying!!!


We're getting our democracy back!!!


Something people fight and die to get... but you lilly livered lefties just want to give away!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:

Blah blah blah bullshit!!!

Stop crying!!!

We're getting our democracy back!!!

Something people fight and die to get... but you lilly livered lefties just want to give away!!!

As opposed to you sclerosis-livered, old white men, who want to impose your druthers on those who are OK with what they have.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Blah blah blah bullshit!!!


Stop crying!!!


We're getting our democracy back!!!


Something people fight and die to get... but you lilly livered lefties just want to give away!!!

I am picturing an old man shaking his fist in defiance.....No idea why.

WhoseYourWolfie wrote:

Ziz wrote:

And the likes of you are?

Good points,  well made,  Ziz....

Countless election results across many western societies over the past century have shown that the extremist far right wing nutters, as exemplified by Tommy and Major on here, actually represent only around 5->>6% of the voting public...

IT IS easy for such fascist idealogues to throw up individual and populist, and largely undeniable, rhetorical statements such as "immigration levels should be regulated and potential migrants screened,", "we should respect our servicemen and women", or "murderers and rapists must be severely punished",  and the great majority of the population will agree with them..

However, as the claims of assorted right wing nutters become increasingly more outlandish, bizarre and idiotic  --  claiming that the great majority of crime in the USA is committed by "blacks", that "immigrants" are stealing jobs and public housing, that "tens of thousands of rapes" are being committed annually in certain parts of England by "Asian gangs", that all terrorists are Islamists, that Reagan was America's greatest POTUS, Thatcher was the greatest British PM, or Menzies the best Aussie PM, that Hitler and Mussolini were really "lefties" in disguise, or that Climate Change is actually a communistic plot to destroy the world's mining and oil corporations --  for some of the more common examples;

With each looney toon and moronic utterance, their supporters drift away until eventually over 90% of the greater majority of people have realised just what a vacuous and empty lot those extremists are. And at the same time, the far left of the political spectrum will find that they also only have around that 5->>6% level of support...        

It's funny that I argue for democracy and the return of democracy and sovereignty to the UK... and dog breath calls me a far right wing nutter!!!


This is the same sort of thing that lefties have done in misrepresenting Nazis/fascism as far right...

Original Quill wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:The op wasn't asking if it was socialism... but whether it was far left or right...

But the argument is that 'socialism' is a part of the nombre Nazi.  Other than that, you are left with the fact that Nazism was merely a totalitarian dictatorship.  

Since authoritarianism is most commonly associated with RW organizations, you would lose that argument.

Socialism was a big part of the Nazi regime... they had a health care system and the poor and homeless were given food and shelter and jobs...


It was just a different kind of socialism than the one you think is the only kind to exist...


It was nationalist or state socialism...


And if you look at historical/current authoritarian regimes from round the world... they are of the left!!!


Maybe you can try to give some examples if all these right/far right govts you talk of...?

Quill and eddie...


I am younger than both of you!!!

Tommy Monk wrote:Quill and eddie...


I am younger than both of you!!!

Yes I know, I can tell, it's just that you sound like an angry old man.

I'm only slightly younger than you eddie... if you really are the age showing under your avi that is...

Tommy Monk wrote:
I'm only slightly younger than you eddie... if you really are the age showing under your avi that is...

I think you're slightly green, if I'm honest. And that's has nothing to do with age.

Tommy Monk wrote:Socialism was a big part of the Nazi regime... they had a health care system and the poor and homeless were given food and shelter and jobs...

Yes, unfortunately they never lived up to it.  The health care and shelter were what we called Kamps.  Nazism didn't have much use for anyone whom the state couldn't use.  The sick and disabled were given a one-way trip to the ovens.

US Holocaust Museum wrote:Wartime, Adolf Hitler suggested, "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill." Many Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a "master race." The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as "useless" to society, a threat to Aryan genetic purity, and, ultimately, unworthy of life. At the beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.

The "euthanasia" program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

Because the Nazis concern was one-way, they had no care or concern for anyone not useful to the state.  Hardly the kind of benevolence that socialism intends.

Tommy Monk wrote:It was just a different kind of socialism than the one you think is the only kind to exist...

It was nationalist or state socialism...

And it was one-way...not much of an economic theory, really. It was simple realpolitik and war, not much else.

Tommy Monk wrote:And if you look at historical/current authoritarian regimes from round the world... they are of the left!!!

Maybe you can try to give some examples if all these right/far right govts you talk of...?

I don't know...you're on a roll, tommy.  Why don't you begin by defining your own concept of 'left' and 'right'.  I've given you the historical meaning of the terms.

The reason I ask is I think we are going to find you have in mind a tautology.  That is, you will begin with a regime, and proceed to arbitrarily define it as 'left', and then say, I told you so, it's left...ish   That's what you've just done with Nazism.

Original Quill wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:Socialism was a big part of the Nazi regime... they had a health care system and the poor and homeless were given food and shelter and jobs...

Yes, unfortunately they never lived up to it.  The health care and shelter were what we called Kamps.  Nazism didn't have much use for anyone whom the state couldn't use.  The sick and disabled were given a one-way trip to the ovens.

US Holocaust Museum wrote:Wartime, Adolf Hitler suggested, "was the best time for the elimination of the incurably ill." Many Germans did not want to be reminded of individuals who did not measure up to their concept of a "master race." The physically and mentally handicapped were viewed as "useless" to society, a threat to Aryan genetic purity, and, ultimately, unworthy of life. At the beginning of World War II, individuals who were mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or mentally ill were targeted for murder in what the Nazis called the "T-4," or "euthanasia," program.

The "euthanasia" program required the cooperation of many German doctors, who reviewed the medical files of patients in institutions to determine which handicapped or mentally ill individuals should be killed. The doctors also supervised the actual killings. Doomed patients were transferred to six institutions in Germany and Austria, where they were killed in specially constructed gas chambers. Handicapped infants and small children were also killed by injection with a deadly dose of drugs or by starvation. The bodies of the victims were burned in large ovens called crematoria.

Because the Nazis concern was one-way, they had no care or concern for anyone not useful to the state.  Hardly the kind of benevolence that socialism intends.

Different type of socialism Quill... thats why nationalist/state socialism was far left...


The lefties are all in favour of abortion/abortion of disabled/people having choice of self euthanasia if sick/Ill etc...


A step further left would be the authoritarian enforcement of it...


And don't forget the leftist communist China one child policy where forced abortions have happened to women pregnant with 2nd child...




Still waiting for you to name these right/far right govts who exhibit the same nazi/fascist ideals...!?

Tommy Monk wrote:Different type of socialism Quill... thats why nationalist/state socialism was far left...

So is capitalism, as long as you're being permissive with definitions.  It assumes a market, which is social in form....you can't have a market with only one individual.  Any economic/political system is socialist, by your inclusive standards, because it involves a collectivity.

" 'When I use a word' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' "
Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson); Through the Looking Glass   1872.


Typical far-RW fascist forked tongue behaviour,  as Tommy continually endeavours to rewrite the English language, world History, and Scientific principles and theories, to try and further his twisted agendas..        

Original Quill wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:Different type of socialism Quill... thats why nationalist/state socialism was far left...

So is capitalism, as long as you're being permissive with definitions.  It assumes a market, which is social in form....you can't have a market with only one individual.  Any economic/political system is socialist, by your inclusive standards, because it involves a collectivity.

So now you are trying to say capitalism is socialism!!!???





I'll just leave that hanging out there for a while...





I thought we had already established that nazism/fascism wasn't capitalism because the authorities controlled all business and means of production... as well as wages and prices!!!


And one more little thing... did you know that Mussolini introduced the welfare system to fascist Italy...!?





How very far right of him...!

Tommy Monk wrote:So now you are trying to say capitalism is socialism!!!???

Well, by your own standards, isn’t it?  You use the loosest definition of socialism, and as I’ve pointed out, that standard makes capitalism a socialist doctrine.

Tommy Monk wrote:I thought we had already established that nazism/fascism wasn't capitalism because the authorities controlled all business and means of production... as well as wages and prices!!!

Tommy, we haven’t even established what left and right are.  You have invented your own definition of socialism, to be any form of state ownership, to wit: totalitarianism.  There is an interesting argument to be made that capitalism is the military-industrial state, and that therefore capitalism >> "inverted totalitarianism" (see, Wolin, Sheldon, "Inverted Totalitarianism")…but not socialism.  Any definition of socialism demands a link back to the proprietorship of the social entity, the people.

I think your slippery thinking arises from your failure to distinguish between economic theory and political institutions.  To merely say that the products of social labor belong to the society is not to make any political proposition.  It is just a principle of economic justice: if labor >> ownership, and labor = social, then social labor >> social ownership.

Now, you can build any kind of state institution you want around this equation, as long as it doesn’t violate the principle of economic justice.   You may have a libertarian, minimal state, or you may have a totalitarian state…as long as it is recognized that proprietorship is social.  If you want to merge proprietorship with the state, then the state must respect the ownership = social part of the equation or it loses its socialist identify.  

Where Nazism departs with socialism is where the state assumes ownership, and simply leaves society out of the equation.  That is a totalitarian state, and it can subsume a capitalist—and, arguably, it has in the military-industrial state—or a socialist economic system because it simply ignores any principle of economic justice.  Ergo: Nazism implies neither a socialist nor a capitalist system, as it simply is not an economic principle.  It’s, well…totalitarian.

Waffle...

Tommy Monk wrote:

Waffle...

Complete incomprehension!

It's akin to teaching quantum physics to yoghurt.

Listen... I've put multiple points as to what is left wing... and as to how nazism/fascism fits completely in that political grouping along with socialism/communism etc...


Nobody has yet come up with anything of any substance to dispute any of this or of any right wing ideals that were displayed by nazism/fascism...



I've even told you idiots how Mussolini was a communist member and how it was him who introduced the welfare system to fascist Italy!!!


What more do you need???

Tommy Monk wrote:Listen... I've put multiple points as to what is left wing... and as to how nazism/fascism fits completely in that political grouping along with socialism/communism etc...


Nobody has yet come up with anything of any substance to dispute any of this or of any right wing ideals that were displayed by nazism/fascism...

I haven't seen anything of that sort from you.  Can you prove it?

Tommy Monk wrote:I've even told you idiots how Mussolini was a communist member and how it was him who introduced the welfare system to fascist Italy!!!

What more do you need???

So, Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat.  Just state your case and support it.  We don't need a trivia questions.

Waffle...

1. Read the posts I've made on this thread.


2. Read the posts I've made on this thread.

Tommy Monk wrote:

1. Read the posts I've made on this thread.


2. Read the posts I've made on this thread.

You've got nothing but hot air, tommy.

No... I've posted up loads of stuff that proves nazism/fascism was left wing... nobody else has provided anything that supports the claim otherwise!!!

Everything you think you know is ass-backwards and wrong

Well, if you’re one of those benighted Deniers! who still thinks Nazism and socialism are not no way no how related, it is.

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.
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.

Hannan spices it up with some particularly damning quotes from Hitler himself. Bottom line: anyone who denies the Nazis were dedicated socialists is either historically illiterate or lying to cover up an incontrovertible fact that they fear could harm them politically. And I’ll also violate what appears to be an emerging consensus among some of my more-polite confreres out there, including Hannan–namely, that we must bend over backwards not to give too much offense to Leftists on this issue–and go ahead and say it: there is little meaningful distinction to be made between Progressivism and fascism. They are in fact closely related, and descended from the same political and ideological impulse. And to say that fascism is somehow “right wing” in either origin, practice, or effect is nothing more than a brazen lie.

To be absolutely clear, I don’t believe that modern Leftists have subliminal Nazi leanings, or that their loathing of Hitler is in any way feigned. That’s not my argument. What I want to do, by holding up the mirror, is to take on the equally false idea that there is an ideological continuum between free-marketers and fascists.
The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. You hear it, not only when spotty students yell “fascist” at Tories, but when pundits talk of revolutionary anti-capitalist parties, such as the BNP and Golden Dawn, as “far Right”.
What is it based on, this connection? Little beyond a jejune sense that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists are nasty. When written down like that, the notion sounds idiotic, but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls “Right-wing”: the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods; the Iranian revolutionaries, who abolished the monarchy, seized industries and destroyed the middle class; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pined for Stalinism. The “Nazis-were-far-Right” shtick is a symptom of the wider notion that “Right-wing” is a synonym for “baddie”.
One of my constituents once complained to the Beeb about a report on the repression of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, in which the government was labelled Right-wing. The governing party, he pointed out, was a member of the Socialist International and, again, the give-away was in its name: Institutional Revolutionary Party. The BBC’s response was priceless. Yes, it accepted that the party was socialist, “but what our correspondent was trying to get across was that it is authoritarian”.
In fact, authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.

Lots more–lots–at the link (below, for a change of pace), which well establishes once and for all the unbreakable linkage in the authoritarian Statist chain between Progressivism and fascism. The association between socialist tyranny and some imaginary Right is nothing more than a deception all too successfully ginned up by Progressivists desperate to hide the truth about themselves and (especially) their antecedents.
As I said before, it’s down to either ignorance or dishonesty; neither is worthy of “civility” or respect, as far as I’m concerned, all the more so when you consider that they’ve used this outrageous lie not just to smear and sabotage their opponents, but to advance an agenda that is best understood not as well-meaning or misguided, but as thoroughly evil. It can all be summarized by paraphrasing a line in the hilarious movie Throw Momma From The Train: The Left lies. Always.
Read. It. All. Like Jonah G’s seminal book, it provides whole bandoleers of powerful ammunition against any Leftards attempting to perpetuate a particularly vicious fraud you may run across.
Oh, and since I mentioned the quote from TMFTT (which of course is: “A writer writes–always,” in case you haven’t seen it), here’s a list of highly amusing quotes on writing. My favorite of all, though, and the one that has influenced me most over the years (ahem), remains: “I just sit at the typewriter and curse a bit.”

Distinction without a difference update! Jonah weighs in:

This feels like old times. Across the pond at the Telegraph, Tim Stanley and Daniel Hannan are having a friendly disagreement on the question of whether the Nazis were in fact socialists. I don’t usually wade into these arguments anymore, but I’ve been writing a lot on related themes over the last few weeks and I couldn’t resist.
Not surprisingly, I come down on Hannan’s side. I could write a whole book about why I agree with Dan, except I already did. So I’ll be more succinct.
Stanley makes some fine points here and there, but I don’t think they add up to anything like corroboration of his thesis. The chief problem with his argument is that he’s taking doctrinaire or otherwise convenient definitions of socialism and applying them selectively to Nazism.

He is at that. And there’s a reason for it. In sum:

Stanley says that politics came before economics in the Nazi state. That’s true. But where is that not true? Certainly not in America or the U.K. Which is why conservatives, libertarians, and other champions of free-market economics must constantly put pressure on politicians to fend off the natural human tendency to fight innovation as a threat to the status quo and the powers that be. Across the West there’s a tendency among bureaucrats, politicians, academics, and other members of the New Class to convince the people to hand over the major decisions of their lives to the “experts.” These experts aren’t all in the government, but they all collude with government to convince people that the experts have all the answers and that the people need to hand the reins over to them. They will tell us what to eat, what to drive, what to think. It’s an approach that puts politics before economics. Because it is an attempt to politicize peoples’ lives. Or as Hitler put it, “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”

Bottom line: even if socialists aren’t necessarily Nazis, the Nazis were most certainly socialists; there really isn’t a lot of room for argument. Well, not honest argument, anyway. But expecting Leftists to argue honestly and in good faith is a mug’s game from the git-go.

Sorry, Leftards, but the jig is up.

The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. You hear it, not only when spotty students yell “fascist” at Tories, but when pundits talk of revolutionary anti-capitalist parties, such as the BNP and Golden Dawn, as “far Right”.

What is it based on, this connection? Little beyond a jejune sense that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists are nasty. When written down like that, the notion sounds idiotic, but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls “Right-wing”: the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods; the Iranian revolutionaries, who abolished the monarchy, seized industries and destroyed the middle class; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pined for Stalinism. The “Nazis-were-far-Right” shtick is a symptom of the wider notion that “Right-wing” is a synonym for “baddie”.

One of my constituents once complained to the Beeb about a report on the repression of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, in which the government was labelled Right-wing. The governing party, he pointed out, was a member of the Socialist International and, again, the give-away was in its name: Institutional Revolutionary Party. The BBC’s response was priceless. Yes, it accepted that the party was socialist, “but what our correspondent was trying to get across was that it is authoritarian”.

In fact, authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.

Mods, is attribution not required on this site - and therefore leaving it open to charges of breach of copyright?

Tommy Monk wrote:


Everything you think you know is ass-backwards and wrong

Well, if you’re one of those benighted Deniers! who still thinks Nazism and socialism are not no way no how related, it is.

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.
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.

Hannan spices it up with some particularly damning quotes from Hitler himself. Bottom line: anyone who denies the Nazis were dedicated socialists is either historically illiterate or lying to cover up an incontrovertible fact that they fear could harm them politically. And I’ll also violate what appears to be an emerging consensus among some of my more-polite confreres out there, including Hannan–namely, that we must bend over backwards not to give too much offense to Leftists on this issue–and go ahead and say it: there is little meaningful distinction to be made between Progressivism and fascism. They are in fact closely related, and descended from the same political and ideological impulse. And to say that fascism is somehow “right wing” in either origin, practice, or effect is nothing more than a brazen lie.

To be absolutely clear, I don’t believe that modern Leftists have subliminal Nazi leanings, or that their loathing of Hitler is in any way feigned. That’s not my argument. What I want to do, by holding up the mirror, is to take on the equally false idea that there is an ideological continuum between free-marketers and fascists.
The idea that Nazism is a more extreme form of conservatism has insinuated its way into popular culture. You hear it, not only when spotty students yell “fascist” at Tories, but when pundits talk of revolutionary anti-capitalist parties, such as the BNP and Golden Dawn, as “far Right”.
What is it based on, this connection? Little beyond a jejune sense that Left-wing means compassionate and Right-wing means nasty and fascists are nasty. When written down like that, the notion sounds idiotic, but think of the groups around the world that the BBC, for example, calls “Right-wing”: the Taliban, who want communal ownership of goods; the Iranian revolutionaries, who abolished the monarchy, seized industries and destroyed the middle class; Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who pined for Stalinism. The “Nazis-were-far-Right” shtick is a symptom of the wider notion that “Right-wing” is a synonym for “baddie”.
One of my constituents once complained to the Beeb about a report on the repression of Mexico’s indigenous peoples, in which the government was labelled Right-wing. The governing party, he pointed out, was a member of the Socialist International and, again, the give-away was in its name: Institutional Revolutionary Party. The BBC’s response was priceless. Yes, it accepted that the party was socialist, “but what our correspondent was trying to get across was that it is authoritarian”.
In fact, authoritarianism was the common feature of socialists of both National and Leninist varieties, who rushed to stick each other in prison camps or before firing squads. Each faction loathed the other as heretical, but both scorned free-market individualists as beyond redemption. Their battle was all the fiercer, as Hayek pointed out in 1944, because it was a battle between brothers.

Lots more–lots–at the link (below, for a change of pace), which well establishes once and for all the unbreakable linkage in the authoritarian Statist chain between Progressivism and fascism. The association between socialist tyranny and some imaginary Right is nothing more than a deception all too successfully ginned up by Progressivists desperate to hide the truth about themselves and (especially) their antecedents.
As I said before, it’s down to either ignorance or dishonesty; neither is worthy of “civility” or respect, as far as I’m concerned, all the more so when you consider that they’ve used this outrageous lie not just to smear and sabotage their opponents, but to advance an agenda that is best understood not as well-meaning or misguided, but as thoroughly evil. It can all be summarized by paraphrasing a line in the hilarious movie Throw Momma From The Train: The Left lies. Always.
Read. It. All. Like Jonah G’s seminal book, it provides whole bandoleers of powerful ammunition against any Leftards attempting to perpetuate a particularly vicious fraud you may run across.
Oh, and since I mentioned the quote from TMFTT (which of course is: “A writer writes–always,” in case you haven’t seen it), here’s a list of highly amusing quotes on writing. My favorite of all, though, and the one that has influenced me most over the years (ahem), remains: “I just sit at the typewriter and curse a bit.”

Distinction without a difference update! Jonah weighs in:

This feels like old times. Across the pond at the Telegraph, Tim Stanley and Daniel Hannan are having a friendly disagreement on the question of whether the Nazis were in fact socialists. I don’t usually wade into these arguments anymore, but I’ve been writing a lot on related themes over the last few weeks and I couldn’t resist.
Not surprisingly, I come down on Hannan’s side. I could write a whole book about why I agree with Dan, except I already did. So I’ll be more succinct.
Stanley makes some fine points here and there, but I don’t think they add up to anything like corroboration of his thesis. The chief problem with his argument is that he’s taking doctrinaire or otherwise convenient definitions of socialism and applying them selectively to Nazism.

He is at that. And there’s a reason for it. In sum:

Stanley says that politics came before economics in the Nazi state. That’s true. But where is that not true? Certainly not in America or the U.K. Which is why conservatives, libertarians, and other champions of free-market economics must constantly put pressure on politicians to fend off the natural human tendency to fight innovation as a threat to the status quo and the powers that be. Across the West there’s a tendency among bureaucrats, politicians, academics, and other members of the New Class to convince the people to hand over the major decisions of their lives to the “experts.” These experts aren’t all in the government, but they all collude with government to convince people that the experts have all the answers and that the people need to hand the reins over to them. They will tell us what to eat, what to drive, what to think. It’s an approach that puts politics before economics. Because it is an attempt to politicize peoples’ lives. Or as Hitler put it, “Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”

Bottom line: even if socialists aren’t necessarily Nazis, the Nazis were most certainly socialists; there really isn’t a lot of room for argument. Well, not honest argument, anyway. But expecting Leftists to argue honestly and in good faith is a mug’s game from the git-go.

Sorry, Leftards, but the jig is up.

I have posted this before... and the link...


But just for zit who can't argue the points so attacks the lack of link instead...


http://coldfury.com/2014/02/

Probably best to include the attribution even when you're spamming - never a good idea falling foul of the law.

Reposting something I posted 6 months ago is hardly spamming zit...

Now... anything to say about the points raised...?

Thought not...

Tommy Monk wrote:Reposting something I posted 6 months ago is hardly spamming zit...

Now... anything to say about the points raised...?

Thought not...

Regardless - be advised that attribution is required whenever you post work which is not your own.