Nutty Nancy

Imaginos1892 wrote:I know, I know, you’re still struggling desperately to make up some definition of socialism which does not include that embarrassing National Socialist Workers Party from Germany — and still failing. Because, Socialism Good, Racism Bad, the Nazis were genocidal racists, therefore they couldn’t possibly be leftists or socialists. The fact that they were all three just bounces right off that perceptual filter.

It is somewhat funny to me that the most lasting impact Nazi propaganda and marketing has had was in the modern american right.

Were the Nazis socialist? No. Hitler himself defined national socialism as a "third way", between the left and right wing:

Today our left-wing politicians in particular are constantly insisting that their craven-hearted and obsequious foreign policy necessarily results from the disarmament of Germany, whereas the truth is that this is the policy of traitors [...] But the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms.

Now, the NSDAP party program did include nods towards socialist positions (or rather, positions that were socialist at the time), but that's not what ended up happening in practice. The main person who pushed for socialist policies was Gregor Strasser.... and he was booted out of the party shortly before it actually came into power; he was executed by SS and Gestapo forces during the night of the long knives in 1934.
After his removal, the socialist positions of the NSDAP party program were quietly dropped; in actual practice, the NSDAP regime was autocratic and corporatist.

In essence, the "socialist" positions of the NSDAP were marketing, designed to grab votes previously held by the SPD and KPD. That you fell for this and still think that it is, in some way, a valid way for you to dismiss or denigrate actual socialists, speaks more to your ignorance and lack of understanding of history and non-american politics than anything else.

Imaginos1892 wrote:Of course, it does require a certain degree of awareness in the reader; more, it would seem, than some readers can provide.

Yes it does, but I guess you have been spoon-fed right-wing propaganda so long you don't understand obvious sarcasm.

Joat42 wrote:So, socialism is fascism.. Got it..

Imaginos1892 wrote:I know, I know, you’re still struggling desperately to make up some definition of socialism which does not include that embarrassing National Socialist Workers Party from Germany — and still failing. Because, Socialism Good, Racism Bad, the Nazis were genocidal racists, therefore they couldn’t possibly be leftists or socialists. The fact that they were all three just bounces right off that perceptual filter.

Socialism and Nazis belong together as much as white power supremacists and right-wing conservatives... Hmm, isn't a large part of white power supremacist nazis too?

Funny that, I thought you said nazis where socialists? Perhaps it's just convenient for you to lump the nazis together with something on the political spectrum you don't agree with so you have an easy straw-man to wave around?

Imaginos1892 wrote:It’s not like leftists have ever committed mass murder, right?
(Uh, that was sarcasm, by the way.)

It's not like mass murder have never been committed by right-wingers, right?

Here's a hint for you: Fascism by it's very nature belong on the right side of the political spectrum, no matter what political affiliation they profess to. And AFAIK, most mass murders and genocides through history have been perpetrated by fascists in one form or another.

My opinion is that only simpletons or dishonest people argue that because Nazi's had "socialist" in their name they where "socialists" and because of that anything tangentially associated with it is bad.

Joat42 wrote:Fascism by it's very nature belong on the right side of the political spectrum, no matter what political affiliation they profess to. And AFAIK, most mass murders and genocides through history have been perpetrated by fascists in one form or another.

The Great Leap Forwards.
Perhaps one of the biggest mass-murders in history.
And to make matters worse, it was not committed through anger, hate or anything like that, but political ineptitude and a total misunderstanding of economics.
The later Cultural Revolution has less in the way of hard numbers, but was still classifiable a Mass Murder.

For Genocide, I direct you to Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot. Up to a quarter of the population was killed, either directly or through famine. This has been called "the purest genocide of the Cold War era". While there have been claims that the Khmer Rouge was fascist, said claims were instigated by the Communist Party of Vietnam (which hated the Khmer Rouge), so the accuracy of the claim is... doubtful.

Yea, the majority of actual Mass Killings are probably due to the Right Wing, but if you add up the number of victims, the Left are in the lead... Even that lunatic Hitler didn't manage to reach half the death toll of the Great leap Forwards and he was actively trying to kill entire minority groups.

Michael, I wouldn't use the term mass-murder for Mao's idiotic Great Leap Forward. It was the consequence of a "strong leader" who had too much faith in his own abilities, and that tend to kill people in one way or another regardless of what political leaning they have. I would argue that Mao's regime ticked most of the boxes for a fascist state, but I guess the end-result didn't really differ that much from mass-murder except the intent and how people died.

The Khmer Rouge on the other hand, they ran with Mao's idea of the Great Leap AND murdered people at a whim.

Both of the above professed to communism, but what they instituted was as near to fascism you can get, especially the Khmer Rouge which rule was considered to be a tropical fascism by many.

Joat42 wrote:Michael, I wouldn't use the term mass-murder for Mao's idiotic Great Leap Forward. It was the consequence of a "strong leader" who had too much faith in his own abilities, and that tend to kill people in one way or another regardless of what political leaning they have. I would argue that Mao's regime ticked most of the boxes for a fascist state, but I guess the end-result didn't really differ that much from mass-murder except the intent and how people died.

The Khmer Rouge on the other hand, they ran with Mao's idea of the Great Leap AND murdered people at a whim.

Both of the above professed to communism, but what they instituted was as near to fascism you can get, especially the Khmer Rouge which rule was considered to be a tropical fascism by many.

I think that authoritarianism combined with ideology or religion tends to be a dangerous mix regardless of the religion or the ideology, left or right. It tends to lead to less tolerance for ones fellow human beings and a wiilingness to insist on ones own way even if that happens at the expence of others.

Communism, capitalism, nationalism can all be absolutist systems. So can religion that stresses dogmatic correctness rather than care of the neighbor. With ideology its best to hold our belief systems as lightly as possible and with religion to constantly be vigilant to focus on the spirit of the teachings rather than purity of religious expression.

We all arrived at the place we are at somehow. Our journeys need to be respected. I think that in David's writings that is most eloquently in the Safehold series, both when it is positive and when it goes wrong.

Don

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