It's cool to watch history

HAHAHSHAHAHAHSHSSSAAAAAAA!

The battle for the Stupid Vote is apparent everywhere but right here, the birthplace of the Idiot Klan, err, Clan!!!! Hell, even the Krauts can see Trump for what he is. And THEY know Fascism! Originally Posted by Yssup Rider

How many of them come over to help you with the salamander round up, Mr,. DOTY 3 Times ????

How many of them come over to help you with the salamander round up, Mr,. DOTY 3 Times ???? Originally Posted by Rey Lengua

The salamander crawled up Urinal Lips bum...


he did enjoy it...


.

The history you are watching could very well be the end of the republican party. If Trump wins, it is not unlikely that there will be a huge fractioning of the GOP. This would almost likely result in a golden-age for democrats because neither the superficial nature of trump nor the extreme conservatism of the modern republican is likely to pull many independent voters, and all they would be doing is splitting the republican votes.

I agree that what we are seeing is people bucking the establishment, this is also the case with the popularity of Sanders who, despite being a Senator, is widely viewed as an outsider, especially considering he is (was?) the longest serving independent in history. And this is probably a good thing in general, but I don't believe Trump winning the nomination would be good for the Republicans.

The history you are watching could very well be the end of the republican party. If Trump wins, it is not unlikely that there will be a huge fractioning of the GOP. This would almost likely result in a golden-age for democrats because neither the superficial nature of trump nor the extreme conservatism of the modern republican is likely to pull many independent voters, and all they would be doing is splitting the republican votes.

I agree that what we are seeing is people bucking the establishment, this is also the case with the popularity of Sanders who, despite being a Senator, is widely viewed as an outsider, especially considering he is (was?) the longest serving independent in history. And this is probably a good thing in general, but I don't believe Trump winning the nomination would be good for the Republicans. Originally Posted by eatfibo

We have been waiting to hear from you feminists...

We have been waiting to hear from you feminists... Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB

I fail to see how whether or not I am a feminist, nor how that video has anything to do with the discussion at hand. Please fill me in.

As I have already written, it is more likely that the democratic party will fracture into a democrat and socialist parties than the GOP breaks up. What is going on with the GOP is an evolving party. A very difficult evolvement. More like a butterfly from a catepillar than a died in the wool socialist deciding at the last minute that gay marriage is okay.

I give Trump a slightly better than even change of winning the nomination (right now and only right now). He will probably do things unconventional from here on out as far as VP noms, cabinet picks (whether he wins the election or not), and when he does win...a different style of management than we have ever seen in Washington. He is first and foremost a businessman. He is about doing things expediently and eliminating waste. Maybe just what we need as a country.

I fail to see how whether or not I am a feminist, nor how that video has anything to do with the discussion at hand. Please fill me in. Originally Posted by eatfibo

Trump is for real. It's refreshing that old school poiticians are getting their asses handed to them. He went after a POW, a POTUS and a Pope. Remarkable. About time.

POW, a POTUS and a Pope

See that? put a FEMINAZI in there too... any questions?


see your President come January


>

As I have already written, it is more likely that the democratic party will fracture into a democrat and socialist parties than the GOP breaks up. What is going on with the GOP is an evolving party. A very difficult evolvement. More like a butterfly from a catepillar than a died in the wool socialist deciding at the last minute that gay marriage is okay.

I give Trump a slightly better than even change of winning the nomination (right now and only right now). He will probably do things unconventional from here on out as far as VP noms, cabinet picks (whether he wins the election or not), and when he does win...a different style of management than we have ever seen in Washington. He is first and foremost a businessman. He is about doing things expediently and eliminating waste. Maybe just what we need as a country. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...litical-bully/

The history you are watching could very well be the end of the republican party. If Trump wins, it is not unlikely that there will be a huge fractioning of the GOP. This would almost likely result in a golden-age for democrats because neither the superficial nature of trump nor the extreme conservatism of the modern republican is likely to pull many independent voters, and all they would be doing is splitting the republican votes.

I agree that what we are seeing is people bucking the establishment, this is also the case with the popularity of Sanders who, despite being a Senator, is widely viewed as an outsider, especially considering he is (was?) the longest serving independent in history. And this is probably a good thing in general, but I don't believe Trump winning the nomination would be good for the Republicans. Originally Posted by eatfibo

Trump will not get the nomination, and the GOP will be destroyed. Eatfiber is correct. That's been Trump's plan all along, IMHO.

Meanwhile, Germans are calling out Trump for promoting fascism... #FoodForThought Originally Posted by Lena Duvall

OMG! An anti-Trump "float" in Germany!

I think HillariousNoMore has the voting block in Germany pretty well "sewn up"!

(Except the U.S. servicemembers and their families!)

As I have already written, it is more likely that the democratic party will fracture into a democrat and socialist parties than the GOP breaks up. What is going on with the GOP is an evolving party. A very difficult evolvement. More like a butterfly from a catepillar than a died in the wool socialist deciding at the last minute that gay marriage is okay.

I give Trump a slightly better than even change of winning the nomination (right now and only right now). He will probably do things unconventional from here on out as far as VP noms, cabinet picks (whether he wins the election or not), and when he does win...a different style of management than we have ever seen in Washington. He is first and foremost a businessman. He is about doing things expediently and eliminating waste. Maybe just what we need as a country. Originally Posted by JD Barleycorn

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!! !

He is first and foremost a snake oil salesman. But he will be the greatest jobs President God ever created, just ask China. He beats China all the time. All the time. Believe it.

Trump jobs.
http://www.informationweek.com/it-st...d/d-id/1035603

0zombies pay attention...

HITLER WAS A SOCIALIST ... just like y'all... LOLing 0zombies

Read and Learn 0zombies... http://jonjayray.tripod.com/hitler.html

you might find out a lot of things about yourselves? Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB

"Ozombies" Read and learn! There are 15 parts to this. I only posted 3.

Just kidding. We normal folk know there is always a counter balance to the whack jobs.
I did notice that ray is like iffy. If ray doesn't like it then it's leftist.
If iffy doesn't like it it's all Ozombies (leftist)

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part one "The context of Nazism"



This and subsequent posts is going to be a critique of This. It is good to know that the writer 'John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)' is NOT a historian and holds no credibility in the field. None of his work concerning the Nazis as socialists is peer reviewed but merely one of his many propaganda posts against everything he sees as Leftist. And he pretty much sees everything as Leftist that he doesn't personally like. (Or at least that's what i gather from his Dissecting leftism blog) If he hates it, It therfore has to be leftist.

degrees or not. Which as mentioned, are not in history but in psychology, and was at one time as his biography admits involved in: "psychological warfare" operations in Vietnam, That's what he tends to be doing here Folks. Anyway, I've decided to skip his little intro seeing as there is nothing of any paticular worth within it, so instead im going to jump straight into the segment titled "The context of Nazism" His writing shall be in Red, mine shall be in black

The context of Nazism

"True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt's: "Give back Alsace and Lorraine". For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?"

Have a look at the quote immediately above and say who wrote it. It is a typical Hitler rant, is it not? Give it to 100 people who know Hitler's speeches and 100 would identify it as something said by Adolf. The fierce German nationalism and territorial ambition is unmistakeable. And if there is any doubt, have a look at another quote from the same author:

erm no. His misinterpretation is not nearly in reality as nationalistic as Ray's quote mining and inability to understand the philosophical language and type of argument used make it seem. First of all remember that at the time he is writing there was no German nation. In order for the people to be emancipated first a unified nation needs to be formed from the fractured and foreign controlled principalities and native self interested aristocracies. Wanting the formation of a nation, is not akin to Nazi nationalism. The Nazis put their nation above and beyond all others, clearly Engels doesn't do this. And in the Next sentence from the one he quotes Engels states:

"On the other hand, however, we are not worthy of the Alsatians so long as we cannot give them what they now have: a free public life in a great state. Without doubt, there will be another war between us and France, and then we shall see who is worthy of the left bank of the Rhine. Until then we can well leave the question to the development of our nationhood and of the world spirit, until then let us work for a clear, mutual understanding among the European nations and strive for the inner unity which is our prime need and the basis of our future freedom. So long as our Fatherland remains split we shall be politically null, and public life, developed constitutionalism, freedom of the press, and all else that we demand will be mere pious wishes always only half-fulfilled; so let us strive for this and not for the extirpation of the French!"

This is clearly not akin to Nazi expansionism or extreme nationalism, and actually argues against the sentence quoted by Ray. Again he is just quote mining and twisting what is a complicated philosophical style of argumentation.

And if there is any doubt, have a look at another quote from the same author:

This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.

That settles it, doesn't it? Who does not know of Hitler's glorification of military sacrifice and his aim to establish a "thousand-year Reich"?

It is concerning the Schelling view of god versus the Hegelian and the freedom and power of philosophical ideas. Let's take some time and put it in context and again, Ray's idiotic quote mining should become obvious to you all.

"If we once more review this doctrine in its entirety, in addition to what has already been said we obtain also the following results for the definition of the neo-Schellingian manner of thinking. The confusion of freedom and arbitrariness is in full flower. God is always conceived as acting in a humanly arbitrary fashion. This is indeed necessary so long as God is conceived as single, but it is not philosophical. Only that freedom is genuine which contains necessity, nay, which is only the truth, the reasonableness of necessity. Therefore Hegel’s God cannot now or ever be a single person, since everything arbitrary has been removed from Him. Therefore when he speaks of God, Schelling has to employ “free” thinking, for the necessary thinking of logical inference excludes any kind of divine person. The Hegelian dialectic, this mighty, never resting driving force of thought, is nothing but the consciousness of mankind in pure thinking, the consciousness of the universal, Hegel’s consciousness of God. Where, as with Hegel, everything produces itself, a divine personality is superfluous.

Furthermore, another contradiction is revealed in the division of philosophy. If the negative philosophy is without all reference to existence, “there is no logical necessity” that it should not also contain things which do not occur in the real world. Schelling admits this when he says of it that it is not concerned with the world, and that if the world agrees with its constructions, this is accidental. In this way, however, negative philosophy becomes quite empty and hollow, wandering around in the most arbitrary possibility and flinging its doors wide open to fantasy. On the other hand, however, if it contains only what is real in nature and spirit, it, of course, includes reality and the positive philosophy is superfluous. This is to be seen also from the other side. Nature and spirit are for Schelling all that is rational. God is not rational.. So here also it is shown that the infinite can only rationally exist in reality when it appears as finite, as nature and spirit, and that any other-worldly, extra-mundane existence of the infinite must be relegated to the realm of abstractions. That particular positive philosophy depends entirely on faith, as we have seen, and exists only for faith. If now a Jew or Mohammedan accepts Schelling’s premises in the negative science, he will necessarily also have to fashion for himself a Jewish or Mohammedan positive philosophy. Indeed, it will differ even for Catholicism and for the Anglican Church. All are equally justified, for “it is not dogma that matters, but fact”. And the so beloved “free” thinking allows everything to be construed as absolute. Particularly in Mohammedanism, the facts are far better construed than in Christianity.

So we have come to the end of Schelling’s philosophy and can only regret that such a man should have become so caught in the snares of faith and unfreedom. He was different when he was still young. Then there arose from the ferment of his brain forms as radiant as Pallas, of which many a one forged to the front also in later struggles; then freely and boldly he sailed into the open sea of thought to discover Atlantis, the absolute, whose image he had so often seen rising from the distant horizon of the sea like a dreamily shimmering fata morgana; then all the fire of youth broke from him in flames of enthusiasm; a prophet drunk with God, he foretold a new era; carried away by the spirit which came over him, he often did not know himself the meaning of his words. He tore wide open the doors to philosophising so that the breath of nature wafted freshly through the chambers of abstract thought and the warm rays of spring fell on the seed of the categories and awakened all slumbering forces. But the fire burnt itself out, the courage vanished, the fermenting new wine turned into sour vinegar before it could become clear wine. The old ship dancing joyfully through the waves turned back and entered the shallow haven of faith, ran it& keel so fast into the sand that it is still stuck there. There it lies, and nobody recognises in the old, frail wreck the old ship which went out with all sails spread and flags flying. The sails have long since rotted, the masts are broken, the waves pour in through the gaping planks, and every day the tides pile up more sand around the keel.

Let us turn away from this waste of time. There are finer things for us to contemplate. No one will want to show us this wreck and claim that it alone is a seaworthy vessel while in another port an entire fleet of proud frigates lies at anchor, ready to put out to the high seas. Our salvation, our future, lies elsewhere. Hegel is the man who opened up a new era of consciousness by completing the old. It is curious that just now he is being attacked from two sides, by his predecessor Schelling and by his youngest follower Feuerbach. When the latter charges Hegel with being stuck deeply in the old, he should consider that consciousness of the old is already precisely the new, that the old is relegated to history precisely when it has been brought completely into consciousness. So Hegel is indeed the new as old, the old as new. And so Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity is a necessary complement to the speculative teaching on religion founded by Hegel. This has reached its peak in Strauss, through its own history the dogma dissolves objectively in philosophical thought. At the same time Feuerbach reduces the religious categories to subjective human relations, and thereby does not by any means annul the results achieved by Strauss, but on the contrary puts them to the real test and in fact both come to the same result, that the secret of theology is anthropology.

A fresh morning has dawned, a world-historic morning, like the one in which the bright, free, Hellenic consciousness broke out of the dusk of the Orient. The sun has risen greeted with smiles by sacrificial fires on all the mountain peaks, the sun, whose coming was announced in ringing fanfares from every watch-tower, whose light mankind was anxiously awaiting. We are awakened from long slumber, the nightmare which oppressed us has fled, we rub our eyes and look around us in amazement. Everything has changed. The world that was so alien to us, nature whose hidden forces frightened us like ghosts, how familiar, how homely they now are! The world which appeared to us like a prison now shows itself in its true form, as a magnificent royal palace in which we all go in and out, poor and rich, high and low. Nature opens up before us and calls to us.. Do not flee from me, I am not depraved, I have not fallen away from the truth; come and see, it is your own inmost and truest essence which gives also to me the fullness of life and the beauty of youth! Heaven has come down to earth, its treasures lie scattered like stones on the road-side, whoever desires them has but to pick them up. All confusion, all fear, all division has vanished. The world is again a whole, independent and free; it has burst open the doors of its dank cloister, has thrown off its sackcloth and chosen the free, pure ether to dwell in. No longer does it have to justify itself to unreason, which could not. grasp it; its splendour and glory, its fullness and strength, its life is its justification. He was surely right who eighteen hundred years ago divined that the world, the cosmos, would one day push him aside, and bade his disciples renounce the world.

And man, the dearest child of nature, a free man after the long battles of youth, returning to his mother after the long estrangement, protecting her against all the phantoms of enemies slain in battle, has overcome also the separation from himself, the division in his own breast. After an inconceivably long age of wrestling and striving, the bright day of self-consciousness has risen for him. Free and strong he stands there, confident in himself and proud, for he has fought the battle of battles, he has overcome himself and pressed the crown of freedom on his head. Everything has become revealed to him and nothing had the strength to shut itself up against him. Only now does true life open to him. What formerly he strove towards in obscure presentiment, he now

attains with complete, free will. What seemed to lie outside him, in the hazy distance, he now finds in himself as his own flesh and blood. He does not care that he has bought it dearly, with his heart’s best blood, for the crown was worth the blood; the long time of wooing is not lost to him, for the noble, splendid bride whom he leads into the chamber has only become the clearer to him for it; the jewel, the holy thing he has found after long searching was worth many a fruitless quest. And this crown, this bride, this holy thing is the self-consciousness of mankind, the new Grail round whose throne the nations gather in exultation and which makes kings of all who submit to it, so that all splendour and might, all dominion and power, all the beauty and fullness of this world lie at their feet and must yield themselves up for their glorification. This is our calling ... "

So the poor quote mining propaganda falls totally flat, the quote isn't about establishing a thousand year Reich but about the power and beauty of philosophical thought and it uses highly metaphorical language to do so. But I guess by this stupid method Jesus ends up also being a Nazi who was also trying have a 1000 yr Reich then too huh? But I wouldn't expect Ray to understand a philosophical text even if he did happen to read one.

Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. -Revelation 20:6

The idea that he got it from the Bible or from a religious source, seems more credibile to me than Ray's idea.

But neither quote is in fact from Hitler. Both quotes were written by Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx's co-author


Because he's so intent on silly quotemines, shall we play his game with Glenn Beck?


And out of the quotemines comes the "Genetic fallacy", Just because the X comes before the Y, does not mean X caused Y. Ray has done nothing to demonstrate that Hitler got his ideas off Engels and Marx, only to make false connections by quote mining. As has already been demonstrated.

But the most spectacular aspect of Nazism was surely its antisemitism. And that had a grounding in Marx himself. The following passage is from Marx but it could just as well have been from Hitler:

"Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time.... We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development -- to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed -- has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry".

Oh dear, just by looking at how Marx's work on the Jewish question was quote mined and then misinterpreted it will take some work to untwist it. But Here's what Stanford has to say

"In this text Marx begins to make clear the distance between himself and his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation — essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties — and human emancipation. Marx's reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings. Therefore liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility — for Marx, the fact — that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. So insisting on a regime of rights encourages us to view each other in ways which undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the idea of non-alienated labour, which we will explore below" -
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#2.1

So the language Marx is using is a metaphor and his intent was not to put those qualities upon particularly Judaism. But rather to say that the special privileges and restrictions put upon Jews [and remember that at the time the Jews were living in Ghettos and were restricted in economic activity to lending, (Christianity forbade usury), and other economic activities that were well known at the time and he only needed to describe as hucksterism] being released will not in itself free the Jews because they will still be a separate entity within Christian society. His intent is to impugn all religion as destructive not just Judaism. It goes toward his later notion of the base and superstructure. As long as there is a base of separation, in this case though religion, it will be reflected somehow in the superstructure and hence no true emancipation can result.

"Those critics, who see this as a foretaste of 'Mein Kampf', overlook one, essential point: in spite of the clumsy phraseology and crude stereotyping, the essay was actually written as a defense of the Jews. It was a retort to Bruno Bauer, who had argued that Jews should not be granted full civic rights and freedoms unless they were baptised as Christians" - Francis Wheen. "Karl Marx", p56.

Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, regards application of the term "anti-Semitism" to Marx as an anachronism—because when Marx wrote On the Jewish Question, virtually all major philosophers expressed anti-Semitic tendencies, but the word "anti-Semitism" had not yet been coined, let alone developed a racial component, and little awareness existed of the depths of European prejudice against Jews. "Marx thus simply expressed the commonplace thinking of his era." See his book The Politics of Hope. pp. 98–108.

Note that Marx wanted to "emancipate" (free) mankind from Jewry ("Judentum" in Marx's original German), just as Hitler did and that the title of Marx's essay in German was "Zur Judenfrage", which -- while not necessarily derogatory in itself -- is nonetheless exactly the same expression ("Jewish question") that Hitler used in his famous phrase "Endloesung der Judenfrage" ("Final solution of the Jewish question"). And when Marx speaks of the end of Jewry by saying that Jewish identity must necessarily "dissolve" itself, the word he uses in German is "aufloesen", which is a close relative of Hitler's word "Endloesung" ("final solution"). So all the most condemned features of Nazism can be traced back to Marx and Engels, right down to the language used.

Is he arguing that similar words that are in totally different contexts prove similar ideologies? What a joke and a fine example of Superficial logic. But lets use it anyways shall we? Let's see, Glenn Beck likes to attribute things to "divine providence", Hitler likes to attribute things to "divine providence". OMG It's the very same phrase, I guess That must mean they have similar ideologies and/or the same attitude towards God, Right? Only in Ray's superficial world.....

The thinking of Hitler, Marx and Engels differed mainly in emphasis rather than in content.

Except it did differ in content!! Marx and Engels were for example "For Poland". Hitler was "Against Poland" How obvious does that need to be.

All three were second-rate German intellectuals of their times

Marx for one spoke many languages and did his doctorate work on the works of the ancient Greeks by reading them in the original Greek, although, i would say it is my belief at current Marx in terms of economics has been debunked and discredited. Hitler only absorbed some of what interested him. This comparison of intelect is ridiculous.

Anybody who doubts that practically all Hitler's ideas were also to be found in Marx & Engels should spend a little time reading the quotations from Marx & Engels archived here

More quotemines, which i will come to later in a seperate post

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part two, "Brown Bolsheviks" and "Iconography"

Brown Bolsheviks

not really, The Nazis were not as Cohesive in their ideology as Ray would like to assume. The Nazis did indeed have a left wing of their Party, Comprised of indivudials like Goebbels, Along with the Likes of Ernst Rohm (Both were influenced by Gregor Strasser). Unfortunately for Ray, Hitler himself did not belong to this aspect of the Party, He actively tried to suppress it.

First, he called a conference in the City of Bamberg on 14th feb 1926 to instill the Führerprinzip onto aspects of the party he felt were dissenting, And that included, guess who? That's Right, Goebbels, Rohm and strasser, Goebbels submitted To Hitler, although he felt dissapointed in the process, He wrote in his diaries that after the meeting "I feel devastated," "What sort of Hitler? A reactionary?" "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That’s the terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away."

He's not quoting Hitler. And sorry but you cannot use Goebbels to prove Hitler personally was Left Wing. Hitler belongs on the opposite side of the Party.

Though one part was revealing.

"He (Goebbels) recalled how we had clobbered the Berlin Communists and the Socialists into submission, to the tune of the "Horst Wessel" marching song, on their old home ground."

Moving on.

Marxism was class-based and Nazism was nationally based but otherwise they were very similar. That's what people said and thought at the time and that explains what they did and how they did it.

Nope, Nazism as a fascist system, empowered the capitalist elite. It was against the idea of liberal democracy, of egalitarianism and wished for the rule of the elite and those traditional elites remained where they were doing business for profit

"While Hitler's attitude towards liberalism was one of contempt, towards Marxism he showed an implacable hostility Ignoring the profound differences between Communism and Social Democracy in practice and the bitter hostility between the rival working class parties, he saw in their common ideology the embodiment of all that he detested. mass democracy and a leveling egalitarianism as opposed to the authoritarian state and the rule of an elite; equality and friendship among peoples as opposed to racial inequality and the domination of the strong; class solidarity versus national unity; internationalism versus nationalism." - Sir Alan Bullock, "Hitler: A study in tyranny", p228-9.

Iconography.

And now for something that is very rarely mentioned indeed: Have a guess about where the iconography below comes from:



As you may be able to guess from the Cyrillic writing accompanying it, it was a Soviet Swastika -- used by the Red Army in its early days. It was worn as a shoulder patch by some Soviet troops.

Looks very convincing doesn't it? Only to the foolish it does. Read what it says around the Swastika. The Red Army was formed Feb. 23, 1918. The text in Russian details the description of the patch and who it is designed for: Red Army soldiers and commanding officers of the Kalmyk troops. The Kalmyks are a small pastoral ethnic group in southern Russia, with their own autonomous region west of the Caspian Sea. They are of Mongolian origin and they are Buddhists. I believe that paticular swastika, which is a common Buddhist symbol is just that, It's Buddhist, and has nothing to do with socialism per-se. In the text, the swastika is called "LYUNGTN". Here's my translation:

THE ORDER
to the troops of the South-Eastern Front

No. 213

The city of Saratov, November 3, 1919

There be approved a distinctive arm-badge for the Kalmyk units, in accord with the draft and the description enclosed.

It is ordered to give the right of bearing the arm-badge to all the officers and Red Army men of the present and being organized Kalmyk units, in accord with the instructions of the order No. 116 given by the Republic Revolutionary Council of War this year.

Front Commander Shorin

Revolutionary War Councillor Trifonov

Acting Commander of the General Staff Pugachev

(For the Front Staff)


DESCRIPTION

A rhombus measuring 15 by 11 centimeters is made of red cloth. There are a five-pointed star in its upper corner and a garland in the center. There is a "LYUNGTN" with the legend "R. S. F. S. R." in the center of the garland. The diameter of the star is 15 mm, that of the garland is 6 cm, the dimensions of "LYUNGTN" are 27 mm, those of a letter are 6 mm.

The arm-badge for the officers and administrators is embroidered in gold and silver, while for Red Army men it is stencilled.

The star, "LYUNGTN" and the ribbon of the garland are embroidered in gold (yellow paint for Red Army men), the garland itself and the legend are embroidered in silver (white paint for Red Army men).

My speculation, although im not an expert on the Kalmyk peoples is that this "LYUNGTN" (the kalmyk swastika) is somehow related to the "Lungta" ie "the Wind Horse" (an allegory for the human soul in the shamanistic traditions of Central Asia. In Tibetan Buddhism. note the swastikas around the outside)

So the "soviet swastika" so called as far as i see it is clearly Buddhist.

The Swastika too was a socialist symbol long before Hitler became influential. Prewar socialists (including some American socialists) used it on the grounds that it has two arms representing two entwined letters "S" (for "Socialist"). So even Hitler's symbolism was Leftist.

Maybe those american socialists really did do that. But it doesn't matter as the Swastika was also used by the Right too and that's where hitler most likely picked it up. Like those who supported the 12-19 March 1920 Kapp/Lüttwitz Putsch.

"Those who fought for Kapp and Lüttwitz were obvious future supporters of the fledgling Nazi Party. Ironically, the Erhardt Brigade, one of Lüttwitz’s main fighting force, put a sign on their helmets to identify who they were: the swastika." - WW1-propaganda-cards.com

Armoured car with swastika in the Potsdamer Straße, 1920. Also, the Swastika was used by Freikorp groups, like this one.



So as we can see, it was also a right wing emblem that pre-dated the Nazis

In German, not only the word "Socialism" (Sozialismus) but also the word "Victory" (Sieg) begins with an "S". So he said that the two letters "S" in the hooked-cross (swastika) also stood for the victory of Aryan man and the victory of the idea that the "worker" was a creative force: Nationalism plus socialism again, in other words.

No evidence for this at all, The only SS one can find stood for "Schutzstaffel", Not "Sieg Sozialismus" or whatever, But even if it did stand for what Ray tries to proport, Hitler had a different conception of socialism as we shall see, One that wasn't really socialism at all.

"The Swastika - origanally a Sanskrit word meaning "all is all" - long the symbol of the Teutonic Knights, had been used by Lanz von Liebenfels, the Thule Society and a number of FreeKorps units." - John Toland, "Adolf Hitler", p105.

Again, the Swastika's usage on the Right is too well known and documented.


And by Hitler's time, antisemitism in particular, as well as racism in general, already had a long history on the Left. August Bebel was the founder of Germany's Social Democratic party (mainstream Leftists) and his best-known saying is that antisemitism is der Sozialismus des bloeden Mannes (usually translated as "the socialism of fools") -- which implicitly recognized the antisemitism then prevalent on the Left. And Lenin himself alluded to the same phenomenon in saying that "it is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people" but "the capitalists of all countries."

So Ray's evidence is someone calling antisemitism "socialism of the fools"? It is not a complement or an endorsement. Here let's just make a fool of Ray by showing the Lenin quote in context.

"It is not the Jews who are the enemies of the working people. The enemies of the workers are the capitalists of all countries. Among the Jews there are working people, and they form the majority. They are our brothers, who, like us, are oppressed by capital; they are our comrades in the struggle for socialism." - Lenin

And here's what the International socialist review has to say about the other quote. (whether this is reliable, I'll let you decide.)

"Unlike Herzl, socialists defended Jews who faced persecution. Socialists also combated anti-Jewish racism as a poison to the workers movement. In this period, Auguste Bebel, a leader of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), denounced anti-Semitism as "the socialism of fools" [notice the real use of the phrase here] for diverting workers from their true enemy, the ruling class, onto Jewish scapegoats. Karl Kautsky, another German SPD leader, argued that the differentiation of the Jewish population into classes meant that the condition of the Jews would be bound up inextricably with the overall working-class movement. Connecting the fight against anti-Semitism to the fight for workers' power became the Marxist approach to fighting anti-Semitism. Because socialists stressed the need to fight anti-Semitism in the countries where most Jews lived, the socialist movement recruited Jews in large numbers.

Many Jews played active roles as founders, leaders and activists in the socialist parties in Europe. Count Witte, the Tsar's finance minister, once complained to Herzl that Jews "comprise about 50 percent of the membership of the revolutionary parties," while constituting only 5 percent of the Russian Empire's population. One such party that earned Witte's hatred was the General Jewish Workers League, known as the Jewish Bund. The Bund, launched in 1897--the same year as Herzl's Zionist Congress--became Russia's first mass socialist organization. It bitterly opposed the Zionists' calls for a Jewish state. Over the course of the next decade, the Bund grew among Jewish workers, swelling to 40,000 members in Russia during the 1905 Russian Revolution. In the revolutionary period, Jewish socialists--both in the Bund and in the other socialist parties--assumed leadership of the working-class and communal organizations in Jewish communities" - Lance Selfa, "ISR Issue 4, Spring 1998"

Of course there were plenty of leftists who were rather Anti-semitic, but this is also the case for the Rightists too, The pogroms, the protocols of the learned elders of Zion, Henry Ford etc.

It should be borne in mind, however, that antisemitism was pervasive in Europe of the 19th and early 20th century. Many conservatives were antisemitic too. Leftists were merely the most enthusistic practitioners of it.

Sorry, Rightists were merely the most enthusistic practitioners of it. The Non Marxist, aristocratic, reactionary and very conservative White Army for example, Used the "protocols of the learned elders of Zion" as justification to murder 150’000 Jews in 2 years Leaving many more Starving in and around Kiev between 1918-1920. It was only later on in the 2nd half of the 20th century that leftists would pick up more heavily the mantle of antisemitism.

We have seen how virulent it was in Marx

As we have seen, he was expressing the commonplace thinking of his time.

Antisemitism among conservatives, by contrast, was usually not seen by them as a major concern. British Conservatives made the outspokenly Jewish Benjamin Disraeli their Prime Minister in the 19th century and the man who actually declared war on Hitler -- Neville Chamberlain -- himself had antisemitic views.

Nice little strawman there, The tradition of Anti-semitism in the UK and indeed Ireland, for historical reasons was before the 20th century somewhat milder than some of it's European counterparts. Jews who had converted to the Church of England, and Benjamin Disraeli is such an example, were not subject to the sort of disabilities that European Jews had to endure.

And Leftism is notoriously prone to "splits" so there were no doubt some Leftists who disavowed antisemitism on principled grounds. Lenin clearly criticized antisemitism on strategic grounds: It distracted from his class-war objectives. So were there also disinterested objections from Leftists? Such objectors are rather hard to find. The opposition to the persecution of the unfortunate Captain Alfred Dreyfus (who was Jewish) by Emile Zola in France is sometimes quoted but Zola was primarily an advocate of French naturalism, which was a form of physical determinism -- rather at odds with the usual Leftist view of man as a "blank slate". And the man who published Zola's famous challenge to the persecution of Dreyfus was Georges Clemenceau, who is these days most famous for his remark: "If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30 he has no head"

Yes some of the socialists took an neutral attitude as they saw it as a fight between "Bourgeoisie factions", but other socialists (and Zola is one of them whether Ray likes it or not), also supported Dreyfus. And lest we forget, that it was the Rightists that falsely put him on trial in the first place and used the anti-Semitic angle. Ray doesn't tell you that. Also, Leftists are not split on the end goal, But on the means to get there.

But, however you cut it, Hitler's antisemitism was of a piece with his Leftism, not a sign of "Rightism".

What a fine example of an unsupported conclusion!

One more bit of iconography that may serve to reinforce that point:

Of course these posters look similar, But im going to throw a little spanner in the works:


Hmmmm Lets see, Both the russian and american posters have a slogan on the Bottom, Both have army advancing above the slogan, Above the Smoke/fog of war? We see the Leader, Pointing the way, Both are draped in Flags, and Both have Planes in the Orangey/Yellowish Background. Graphicly, Both are the same. Does that prove anything? No. And Stalin is not performing a Roman salute, The thumb is definitely away from the fingers and the Fingers appear to be seperate from each other (Although with the fingers, it's hard to tell). Stalin is just striking a pose in a poster. It's just superficial crap like; "Stalin had a blue painted bathroom and so did Hirohito... OMG Stalin was Japanese", and just as silly.

Of course we can find many Nazi posters that look like soviet ones, But we can also Find many american and allied posters that look like Nazi and Soviet ones, Does this prove the americans and allies had similar ideologies to either the nazis or soviets? NO.
Here are just a few examples of "similar posters".



Also, on a complete sidenote, seeing as the Red army piece "Pa dolinam i pa vsgorjam" sounds just like the White army piece "To the Glory of the Fatherland [aka "The Tsarist Army Marches"]", Does this prove the reds [communists] and the whites [Tsarists] had "similar ideologies" too? Of course not!!

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part three, "Labor Unions" and "A Modern Leftist"

Labor unions

Who said this? A representative of the 21st century U.S. Democratic party, maybe?

"As things stand today, the trade unions in my opinion cannot be dispensed with. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions of the nation's economic life. Their significance lies not only in the social and political field, but even more in the general field of national politics. A people whose broad masses, through a sound trade-union movement, obtain the satisfaction of their living requirements and at the same time an education, will be tremendously strengthened in its power of resistance in the struggle for existence".

could well be any Leftist speaker of the present time but it is in fact a small excerpt from chapter 12 of Mein Kampf, wherein Hitler goes to great lengths to stress the importance of unions. The association between unions and Leftism is of course historic and, as a Leftist, Hitler made great efforts to enlist unions as supporters of his party.

And in the same chapter, he makes clear that his concept of the Union is not to really represent the Workers but:

"The National Socialist Trades Union is not an instrument for class warfare, but a representative organ of the various occupations and callings."

in other words, to represent the capitalist interests, and by doing that, the state too. To Hitler the unions were only useful if they served their purpose in his racist nationalism.

"It must do this for a further reason, namely because a real National Socialist education for the employer as well as for the employee, in the spirit of a mutual co-operation within the common framework of the national community, cannot be secured by theoretical instruction, appeals and exhortations, but through the struggles of daily life." - Mein Kampf, Vol 2- Ch 12.

Now which side of the political spectrum favours the struggles of daily life again? Of course, taking Ray's quote on face value, appealing to the Unions is also something David Cameron did also [in his own way], My Favourite quote from the Daily Telegraph [a conservative leaning broadsheet remember] article just linked

"The strategy is seen as important to the Conservatives who are trying to appeal to voters across the social spectrum." - Daily Telegraph, 15th aug 2008.

Appealing to voters across the social spectrum is exactly what Hitler did! But does this make Cameron a leftist/Nazi now because he too tried to appeal to Unions? Only in Ray's superficial world....

Hitler made great efforts to enlist unions as supporters of his party.

Yes, But Ray doesn't want to tell you why. Shoaheducation.com on the otherhand, Does!

"Labor was courted, although they did not know that one of Hitler's first acts would be to take over the Labor Unions, whom he knew to be one of the few groups who could organize active support against the Nazi agenda." - Shoaheducation.com

A modern Leftist

Erm no!

The place that one takes on the political spectrum is, as i have stated elsewhere determined by the position that one takes on the ownership of the means of production and the distribution of property and wealth in general. It is a political economy position. That is the general academic position, and it has nothing to do with government interference or control and has not changed. There is no such concept as there being a 'modern left' that is different in conception to a 'non-modern or past Left.

So with that in mind, Lets have a look at a few points at Rays Bizarre little source:

He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators

Really? Who? Oh he doesn't tell us, Its a statement without evidence. But According to studies, (according to Penn and Teller's Bullshit). Between 20-50% of Catholic priests, May be Gay. This of course, says nothing about the Pope's political stance, or the political stance of the priests in question does it?

and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business

Adolf Hitler was a Left wing libertarian? LOL!!!

some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual

Are his so-called "Scholars" Fundamentalist Christians by ay chance? Well, if i google Hitler was Gay, This is The First result.

Despite what the article says, this "Historian" has discredited himself with this book.

"But the biggest problem with Machtan's book (which has been translated by John Brownjohn) isn't the reliability of his sources but his mode of argumentation. He accepts what fits his thesis and rejects what doesn't. One feels, at times, that one is reading an internal F.B.I. report from the J. Edgar Hoover era rather than an evenhanded work of scholarship in which the author is ready to be led by the facts. To interpret evidence his way, Machtan employs innuendo and insinuation" - New York Times Book Review (12/16/01)

In other words, Poor scholarship leads one to bad conclusions.

he enacted tough gun control laws

I'll deal with this later.

He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market.

Haha, NO!!! Hitler himself may not have been a conservative, but the Nazis certainly had conservative backing. as their interests certainly overlapped. While there are other factors involved such as his extreme nationalism, and the subservience of the social structure to an economic and social elite, the political economy question is the main determiner. And this alone puts the Nazis squarely on the Right, for they, despite their early talk which was only propaganda, did have a capitalist economy, as we shall see that was geared to support and give more power to the wealthy. Also Hitler told alot of lies in his propaganda, as we shall see.

As for that "Third Way".

"More recently others have tried to define fascism as the "Third Way", in the sense that it borrowed ideas from both capitalism and socialism. The basic philosophy behind the "Third Way" incorrectly labels any regulations or government controls over businesses as "socialism"; essentially it's just a restatement of syndicalism. Such nonsense should be rejected whole heartily. It again represents an attempt to distance the right from their support of Hitler in the 1930s and ignores that the basis of the German economy under Hitler was a capitalist system where the means of production remained in private hands. Further, following the logic of the "Third Way," one would have to label all capitalistic systems as "Third Way," for throughout history there has never been a pure capitalistic system. A pure capitalist economy is so inherently and fatally flawed that it's never even been tried. But that is to be expected for any system that awards the winner with all the eggs." - John Hawkins and Glen Yeadon, "The Nazi Hydra"

And....

"even if they did steer the 'Third Way' they claimed to, they were certainly not immunized from the normal [capitalist] economic cycle... Perhaps the last word should be left to Gramsci, who said that fascist economic policy aimed to nationalize losses, but not profits..." - The Routledge companion to fascism and the Far Right, p147.

Sorry but this is not socialism, This is capitalism. using the state for PRIVATE profit.

So even if one were to accept the so called "third way", all it represents is a sort of dirigisme capitalism, something that is quite common in the capitalist world. Nazi Germany was actually more capitalist than some of the modern states that are held out as examples of capitalist success. Such as Hong Kong, where all the land is owned by the gov't!! or South Korea that was built on a planned economy.

There is surely no doubt that the man Feser describes sounds very much like a mainstream Leftist by current standards. But who is the man concerned? It is a historically accurate description of Adolf Hitler. Hitler was not only a socialist in his own day but he would even be a mainstream socialist in MOST ways today. Feser does not mention Hitler's antisemitism above, of course, but that too seems once again to have become mainstream among the Western-world Left in the early years of the 21st century.

There we have it, Ray's idiocy, for all to see, It is NOT an accurate description of Adolf Hitler, which is why he appears so "leftist" in the piece. For some real scholarship, let's read some Ian Kershaw...

"Hitler's Style, as the industrialists expected ... was entirely different from that of his predecessors in the Chancellor's office. His views on the economy were also unconventional. He was wholly ignorant of any formal understanding of economics . For Him, as he stated to the industrialists, economics was of secondary importance, entirely subordinated to politics. His Crude Social Darwinism dictated his approach to the economy, as it did his entire political ''world-view''. Since struggle among nations would be decisive for future survival, Germany's economy had to be subordinated to the preparation, then carrying out of this struggle. That meant that liberal ideas of economic competition had to be replaced by the subjection of the economy to the dictates of the national interest. Similarly, any "socialist" ideas in the nazi programme had to follow the same dictates. Hitler was never a socialist .But although he upheld private property, indivudial entrepeneurship, and economic competition, and dissaproved of trade unions and workers' inteference in the freedom of owners and managers to run their concerns, The State, not the market would determine the shape of economic development. Capitalism was therfore Left in place. But in operation it was turned into an adjunct of the state." -Kershaw. Hitler (abridged) p269-270.

Which offers us a much more fair and balanced view of the economy than Ludwig Von Mises ever does, You know These quotes are taken into consideration when modern Historians write their Books. Mises and his ilk such as Hayek only work from the a priori position that markets can do no bad and are always right. Mises is as much a propagandist hack as Glenn Beck is. Nobody takes him seriously, apart from Beck's "free-market" Libertarians. And Dirigisme capitalism is still capitalism. Period!

Simply put, the Nazis didn't use 'Bolshevik' tactics as whatever that vague statement is meant to mean, Hitler campaigned in the state elections and sought out and got some help of the large capitalists and other Right Wing types (See Adam Tooze). One could draw the same comparisons between many societies he makes, from Bismarck's Right-Wing with its privileges of its ruling elite through the skewed weighing of the vote to the secret police in the Right-Wing and vehemently anti communist Japan. He just lists thing that were common of many states at the time and says this is proof that Germany and socialism were uniquely similar. But none of those things are uniquely similar or exclusive. It is again its nothing more than trying to say: Hitler's bathroom was painted blue... Churchill's bathroom was painted blue... OMG Churchill was a Nazi!

And let us look at the words of someone who was actually in Germany in the 1930s and who thus saw Nazism close up. He said:

"If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed."

So who said that? It was the famous historian, Eric Hobsbawm (original surname: Obstbaum), who became a Communist instead and who later became known as perhaps Britain's most resolute Communist. Hobsbawn clearly saw only slight differences between Communism and Nazism at that time.

No, Hobsbawn is merely commenting on the power of nationalism. it's Just really meaningless and just as a creationist would do, ie take something entirely out of context and just poor quote mines. The left recognized the Nazis as Right wing straight off, which is why they had the least support from the workers.

And as this summary of a book (by Richard Overy) comparing Hitler and Stalin says:

But the resemblances are inescapable. Both tyrannies relied on a desperate ideology of do-or-die confrontation. Both were obsessed by battle imagery: 'The dictatorships were military metaphors, founded to fight political war.' And despite the rhetoric about a fate-struggle between socialism and capitalism, the two economic systems converged strongly. Stalin's Russia permitted a substantial private sector, while Nazi Germany became rapidly dominated by state direction and state-owned industries.

In a brilliant passage, Overy compares the experience of two economic defectors. Steel magnate Fritz Thyssen fled to Switzerland because he believed that Nazi planning was 'Bolshevising' Germany. Factory manager Victor Kravchenko defected in 1943 because he found that class privilege and the exploitation of labour in Stalinist society were no better than the worst excesses of capitalism.

As Overy says, much that the two men did was pointless. Why camps? Prisons would have held all their dangerous opponents Who really needed slave labour, until the war? What did that colossal surplus of cruelty and terror achieve for the regimes? 'Violence was... regarded as redemptive, saving society from imaginary enemies.'

Just superficial crap all this passage does is pick aspects of totalitarianism, which has nothing to do with socialism itself, and can appear on either side, and compares that and not the political economy. Not much of a surprise as the book itself is just a comparison of two totalitarian regimes. And what's that about Private enterprise? Despite This paper saying "Private enterprise in the Soviet Union is as old as the socialist regime itself." Private property and private profits have no ideological basis in Communism, It most certainly does in Nazism. That's the key difference between the two systems economicaly. Althouh getting Ray to Name the private companies in the soviet union would be fun. Some small Kiosks were allowed from time to time, But that wasn't the means of production and therefore not part of the socialist order, and neither are backyard gardens, small private plots etc. Nazism by ideology is still right wing, Soviet union by ideology is still left wing.


And Thyssen's real motives become clear when we see that he did not take any action against Hitler or leave Germany until right after the war started. It was not the 'interference' as he so loudly and falsely claimed later but the foresight to see that Germany couldn't possibly win the war that Hitler was leading the country in to that made him jump ship. Thyssen's hypocrisy can be seen clearly.

"Like many other's he [Krupp] did not at first see Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor on 30, January 1933 as much more than the creation of yet another short lived Weimar government. ... Under pressure from Thyssen and other supporters of the new regime, he was forced to agree to the 'co-ordination' of the Reich Association." - Richard Evans, "The Third Reich in Power", p374.

So here we have the very same Thyssen that was later to so dishonestly cry about interference, not only accepting that interference, but urging it upon his fellow capitalist. No matter what Thyssen later claimed, it was only when he saw he disastrous war coming that he left.


And let us listen to Hitler himself on the matter:

"There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will."

Another quote

"Of what importance is all that, if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that is unessential; our socialism goes far deeper. It establishes a relationship of the individual to the State, the national community. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings."

(Both quotes above are from Hermann Rauschning in Hitler Speaks, London, T. Butterworth, 1940, also called The Voice of Destruction. See e.g. here.


Because what he records is so inconvenient, many contemporary historians dismiss Rauschning's 1940 book as inaccurate, even though it is perfectly in accord with everything else we now know about Hitler. But no-one disputes that Rauschning was a prominent Nazi for a time. He was however basically a conservative so eventually became disillusioned with the brutalities of Nazism and went into opposition to it. Rauschning's book was in fact prophetic, which certainly tends to indicate that he knew what he was talking about.)



the part about "Because what he records is so inconvenient..." is a strawman. I dismiss Rauschning for a very simple reason: because his supposed conversations with Hitler, and those subsequent quotations Ray Gave, have been proven to be totaly fake, It is Not because what the quotes say are "inconvenient"

And this blowhard goes up to part 15.

Tuesday, 9 August 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 14, "A Democratic leftist?", "post election manoeuvres" and "Hitler's socialist deeds"



A democratic Leftist!　


Well a half-hearted democratic Rightist, so again Ray misses the point. His appointment was legal and democratic but at the same time arguably the biggest mistake made in the Weimar Republic. Prior to "the legal chancellor marching irresistibly into the legal dictator" Hitler did promise he would "destroy democracy with the weapons of democracy". In Mein Kampf he actually labelled social democracy as being a "pestilential whore" as you have already seen. Yes he did use left wing methods in order to deliever the masses to the right, but that is part and parcel of his appeal to the widest spectrum possible.


Only one paragraph here is worthy of note:
　
The fact that Hitler appealed to the German voter as basically a rather extreme social democrat is also shown by the fact that the German Social Democrats (orthodox democratic Leftists who controlled the unions as well as a large Reichstag deputation) at all times refused appeals from the German Communist party for co-operation against the Nazis. They evidently felt more affinity with Hitler than with the Communists. Hitler's eventual setting up of a one-party State and his adoption of a "four year plan", however, showed who had most affinity with the Communists. Hitler was more extreme than the Social Democrats foresaw.


The Four year plan only stepped in where the existing companies would not. It was concerned with re-armament and there have been other capitalist countries that have used the same method to build up selected sectors, South Korea being probably the most prominent. Nazi planning had nothing to with bettering the overall state of the people as the, at least professed goals were in the USSR [though in reality the USSR plans were really related to the overseeing of the economy], but just to build up the military. Just because there is an outward superficial appearance does not mean there is any real similarity. Again property and profits remained private in Nazi Germany. The Four Year Plan was just a Right Wing Military building program that did a lot to enrich the large private corporations along the way.

(Another thing as well, I've been told in private the whitlam era in Australia is seen as one of great social change, secondly Ray's link with nationalism is bullshit and the historical record does not reflect the "evidence" he presented. Whitlam presided over a government which introduced free uni, universal healthcare etc and was dismissed by the "governor general" at the request of the unelected opposition who set up the method for dismissal by using the constitutional rules to their advantage and breaking with tradition. [Tip o' the hat to my friend Franks])


Hitler's Post-election Manoeuvres.

Apparantly Hitler's consolidating of his power can be compared to "The post-war Liberal Democratic (conservative) government of Japan" and "Mintoff and Mifsud-Bonnici" on the left So really what is admitted here is that consolidation of power via some not so democratic means, can be found on both the left and the right, so this is meaningless.

Hitler's Socialist Deeds.

When in power Hitler also implemented a quite socialist programme. Like F.D. Roosevelt, he provided employment by a much expanded programme of public works (including roadworks) and his Kraft durch Freude ("power through joy") movement was notable for such benefits as providing workers with subsidized holidays at a standard that only the rich could formerly afford.

The truth of the matter is not as clear cut as that:

"Many of the policies, including 'work creation' projects, control of forigen exchange, government intervention in banking and agricultural protection, were the products of the Weimar period and were not uniquely Nazi policies at all. The German economy had always enjoyed a higher degree of state involvement than the more liberal western economies." - Richard Overy, "The Nazi economic recovery, 1932-1938", p10.

So all Hitler did was implement policies of the Weimar republic out of political expediency, Programmes like the "strength through joy" were little more than a propaganda carrot in effect, Nothing more. And as Richard Evans will tell you, in reality Nazi ideology opposed the welfare state and in fact cut back on it. And as to Poland, what Ray wont tell you is that after the second World War, Communist Poland nationalized all enterprises with over 50 employees without compensation. These are the rules, not the exceptions and to suggest that this was the case in Nazi germany too is to be very superficial indeed. And Mises, well all he does is comment on the Dirigisme capitalism the Nazis had and calls it "socialism", unfortunately for him as i've already demonstrated Japan also practices dirigisme economics, in fact as do alot of the "Tiger economies" in the east like Singapore, So sorry there is still no socialism in Nazi Germany regardless of what his poor, biased hack sources says.

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Friday, 5 August 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 13, "So how did Hitler gain so much influence"



So how did Hitler gain so much influence?


I will submit the radically simple thesis that Hitler's appeal to Germans was much as the name of his political party would suggest -- a heady brew of rather extreme Leftism (socialism) combined with equally extreme nationalism -- with Hitler's obsession with the Jews being a relatively minor aspect of Nazism's popular appeal, as Dietrich (1988) shows.

That point on it's own, actually is a valid one if one remembers that the socialistic elements of his propaganda, was just propaganda to win over the masses and nothing more.

"like all demagouges, Hitler appealed to the masses. Unlike other demagouges who sought to carry out Left policies, Hitler dominated the masses by leftwing methods in order to deliver them to the Right. This is why the Right let him in." - AJP Taylor, "The origins of the second world war", p23.

Now here's a radically simple way to look at the politics of the 20's and 30's. The divisions at the time did not concern traditional party-political or left/right boundries like in the way they may do in the USA today, but rather the division was between those who wanted to look forward, those who wanted a more organised and efficient world in which things like unemployment and perhaps other percieved social ills could be banished via this means. Versus those who wanted to look back, often with a sense of nostalgia, those who wanted to take the nation-state back to a "more golden time" in order to solve the said percieved social ills of the day, the ones who were stuck with some old ideas. And touted solutions to the supposed social ills such as Eugenics to get rid of those Society didn't need, or those who wanted a more efficent state very much darted across traditional party-political or left/right boundries. To show you what i mean, George Bernard Shaw was an admirer of dictators on the grounds that he felt "they got things done" right?. well here then is an interesting quote by conservative peer "Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry. [Lord Londonderry for short]"

"Whatever the regime, if it creates efficient organisation, I feel a certain amount of admiration for it, and that is why I respect Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin [However, i wouldn't] like to live under those regimes myself."

In this way we can see the whole "progressive" thing he spouts in this segment into a better context and it can help explain why Hitler ended up with both left and right wing admirers, from G.B Shaw to Henry Ford. It being the way he presented himself.

So his "Ein Volk" dogma in effect very cleverly substituted the usual leftist dogma with "All GERMANS are equal" -- and also, of course, superior to non-Germans.

Haha no, that is not what his Ein Volk dogma entailed. Although he makes it clear in Mein Kampf that some races are better than others, but also that some individuals are superior to others WITHIN THE SAME RACE.

"It would be absurd to appraise a man's worth by the race to which he belongs and at the same time to make war against the Marxist principle, that all men are equal, without being determined to pursue our own principle to its ultimate consequences. If we admit the significance of blood, that is to say, if we recognize the race as the fundamental element on which all life is based, we shall have to apply to the individual the logical consequences of this principle. In general I must estimate the worth of nations differently, on the basis of the different races from which they spring, and I must also differentiate in estimating the worth of the individual within his own race. The principle, that one people is not the same as another, applies also to the individual members of a national community. No one brain, for instance, is equal to another; because the constituent elements belonging to the same blood vary in a thousand subtle details, though they are fundamentally of the same quality." - Mein Kampf, Vol 2, Chapter 4.

Now as to welfare?
　
...the loyalty of Germans to Hitler cannot have been primarily economic. Hitler's socialist provisions for ordinary Germans were important but primarily functioned as evidence to them of how much Hitler cared for his Volk. It was primarily emotional satisfaction that Hitler gave to Germans.
　
Strangely enough this would be another valid point, if it didn't miss the point of why Hitler enacted certain programmes in the first place. ultimately Nazi ideology did not favour a Welfare state and indeed as documented by Richard Evans in his book "The Third Reich in power" they ended up cutting back on welfare. The programes that the Nazis did enact were merely something in order to win over the masses

"Faced with ten million people in receipt of welfare assistance at the height of the Depression, however, it would have been political suicide for the Nazis to have written off the mass of the unemployed and destitute as not worth helping." - Evans, "The Third Reich in power", p484

So their programmes were politically driven -- politically necessary -- not ideologically driven. And given the motives of why the Nazis enacted some programmes, is it any little surprise that the Nazis were returned back with "love"?

Moving on...

horrible and massive though the Nazi crimes were, they were anything but unique. For a start, government by tyranny is, if anything, normal in human history. And both antisemitism and eugenic theories were normal in prewar Europe. Further back in history, even Martin Luther wrote a most vicious and well-known attack on the Jews.

First of all, if govt by tyranny is normal how can it be inherently leftist? Secondly, Well we finally get him to acknowledge both antisemitism and eugenic theories were normal in prewar Europe, but it's a terribly weak admission as i have demonstrated that both existed on the left AND on the right. Of course he'll never admit that it was.

As to Luther, see here for how his ideas helped influence Nazi ones! though of course, Hitler's Anti-semitism was bound up with German Nationalism too.

"A line of anti-Semitic descent from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler is easy to draw. Both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by a demonologized universe inhabited by Jews. 'Know, Christian,' wrote Luther, 'that next to the devil thou hast no enemy more cruel, more venomous and violent than a true Jew .' Hitler himself, in that early dialogue with Dietrich Eckhart, asserted that the later Luther - that is, the violently anti-Semitic Luther - was the genuine Luther. Luther's protective authority was invoked by the Nazis when they came to power, and his anti-Semitic writings enjoyed a revival of popularity. To be sure, the similarities of Luther's anti-Jewish exhortations with modern racial anti-Semitism and even with Hitler's racial policies are not merely coincidental. They all derive from a common historic tradition of Jew-hatred, whose provenance can be traced back to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus. But modern German anti-Semitism had more recent roots than Luther and grew out of a different soil - not that German anti-Semitism was new; it drew part of its sustenance from Christian anti-Semitism, whose foundation had been laid by the Catholic Church and upon which Luther built. It was equally a product of German nationalism. Modern German anti-Semitism was the bastard child of the union of Christian anti-Semitism with German nationalism." - Lucy Dawidowicz, "The war against the jews", p23.

and Nazi theories of German racial superiority differed from then-customary British beliefs in British racial superiority mainly in that the British views were implemented with typical conservative moderation whereas the Nazi views were implemented with typical Leftist fanaticism and brutality

Er no, the fact that Hitler managed to carry out what some of the more millitant conservatives before him could only dream of doing is testament to his Rightism, not any leftism

And another aspect of Hitler's "normality" is that, as he came closer to power, he did reject the outright nationalization of industry as too Marxist. As long as the State could enforce its policies on industry, Hitler considered it wisest to leave the nominal ownership and day to day running of industry in the hands of those who had already shown themselves as capable of running and controlling it. This policy is broadly similar to the once much acclaimed Swedish model of socialism in more recent times so it is amusing that it has often been this policy which has underpinned the common claim that Hitler was Rightist. What is Leftist in Sweden was apparently Rightist in Hitler! There are of course many differences between postwar Sweden and Hitler's Germany but the point remains that Hitler's perfectly reasonable skepticism about the virtues of nationalizing all industry is far from sufficient to disqualify him as a Leftist.

Differences? The post war Swedish model,was built on Free unions bargaining on wages, not preparing for a full out war via militaristic planning programs as was the case in Nazi Germany. It is not in anyway leftist to propare for imperial war.The Swedish model was a peacuful way to create jobs and rise wages to keep up aggregate demand in depression and implement modest democracy at workplace etc. Not build a military for the purposes of imperialistic wars and putting people in horror camps. So no, Post war Sweden saw a political economy partially geared towards the betterment of the lower classes through democratic means. A centre-left political economy. Nazi germany was none of that and all the evidence therfore still points to it having an extreme Right wing political economy. So all we see from Ray here is just superficial nonsense.


Now as to hegel, what exactly was this "conservative liberal's" stance on Christianity?

"Hegel is a Christian, but not an orthodox one by the Nicene Creed. He denies the precedence of the Father, from whom the Son and the Spirit proceed. He denies that lordship is the meaning of divinity, so that Christ manifests divinity only as the risen Lord. The true definition of divinity is Spirit. But Hegel is not an ancient Gnostic like Marcion or Valentinus. He does not denigrate the body as the kingdom of the devil. He affirms the incarnation and construes natures as the logos made flesh, as spirit, i.e., the infinite Christ. He is a modern, Joachimite Gnostic: world history is the story of the logos making itself flesh in the rational state and human rights... [Hegelian philosophy] is still Christian even if not orthodox. To be a heretic one must after all first be a Christian" - Clark Butler in "New Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion" ed by David Kolb, p139-141.

So more meaningless nonsense by Ray, as to his document, well it's been refuted by richard steigmann-gall's book "The Holy reich", and given the arguments in there, if one wishes to make the argument that Hitler was a socialist, than one has to accept that he was a Christian. Period!

Trump will not get the nomination, and the GOP will be destroyed. Eatfiber is correct. That's been Trump's plan all along, IMHO. Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

That may or may not happen.
What happens for sure is we get another "lesser of 2 evils" election where we have to vote against a candidate instead of voting for one.

So more meaningless nonsense by Ray, as to his document, well it's been refuted by richard steigmann-gall's book "The Holy reich", and given the arguments in there, if one wishes to make the argument that Hitler was a socialist, than one has to accept that he was a Christian. Period! Originally Posted by Munchmasterman

“After all, that’s exactly why we call ourselves National Socialists! We want to start by implementing socialism in our nation among our Volk! It is not until the individual nations are socialist that they can address themselves to international socialism,” Adolph Hitler.

“I have learned a great deal from Marxism, as I do not hesitate to admit,” Adolph Hitler.

“The date was 16th June 1941, five days before Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, and [Joseph] Goebbles in the privacy of his diary exulted in a victory over Bolshevism that he believed would quickly follow. There would be no restoration of the Tsars, he remarked to himself, after Russia had been conquered … But Jewish Bolshevism would be uprooted in Russia and ‘true socialism’ planted in its place” (p 83, George Watson's Lost Literature of Socialism).

BTW, Masterdickmucnher, Hitler, et al, actively persecuted Christian churches. Furthermore, it's a well known fact that Hitler and Speer fantasized about the future of the Titrd Reich and drew up massive city plans for renovating several German cities, especially Berlin, and none of those plans concede a single, solitary inch for a single, solitary "Christian church" in any public spaces.

According to Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi leader of the German youth corps that would later be known as the Hitler Youth, ''the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement'' (NYT)