What the Nazi movement was really about

[Politruk]

It was not really about the idea that dictatorship is better than democracy.

And, despite the name, it was not really about any kind of socialism.

And even its antisemitism and anti-Communism were incidental.

What it was really all about was, "Hooray for us! We're Germans! We're the best people in the world! The smartest, the bravest, the handsomest, the most culturally creative! We're so superior in both blood and culture that we have a right to do as we please to inferior foreigners!" It was about the most extreme form of nationalism conceivable.

See Nordicism.

So if you ever wonder why Trump's MAGA movement draws so many comparisons with Nazism -- it is because "America First!" -- however innocuous it might sound to you -- has disturbing associations and echoes to anyone with historical memory.

 

[Politruk]

Also because the America First Committee was an isolationist group trying to keep America out of WWII. It was a diverse coalition -- some members were simply pacifists -- but some were definite Nazi sympathizers.

 

[UltraChad]

And, despite the name, it was not really about any kind of socialism.

Yes it was. Simply read the person who framed and outlined the ideology.

And even its antisemitism and anti-Communism were incidental.

Nope and he wasn't even anti-communist, he was anti-Marxist, not the same.

Why do you lie so much??

 

[ll74]

Nazis were about populism, nationalism, power and killing Jews ...oh ...and idolizing Hitler. Since Hitler was an autocratic dictator, it benefited from and autocratic dictatorship.

 

[Hel_Books]

It was not really about the idea that dictatorship is better than democracy.

And, despite the name, it was not really about any kind of socialism.

And even its antisemitism and anti-Communism were incidental.

What it was really all about was, "Hooray for us! We're Germans! We're the best people in the world! The smartest, the bravest, the handsomest, the most culturally creative! We're so superior in both blood and culture that we have a right to do as we please to inferior foreigners!" It was about the most extreme form of nationalism conceivable.


See Nordicism.

So if you ever wonder why Trump's MAGA movement draws so many comparisons with Nazism -- it is because "America First!" -- however innocuous it might sound to you -- has disturbing associations and echoes to anyone with historical memory.

Makes you wonder, though. Suppose the Nazis had decided not to invade the USSR in 1941, but instead had negotiated a peace with the UK (the only ones standing against them, after France collapsed and the Vichy government was established and Stalin stabbed them in the back with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). Hitler could have sent his ambassador to the USA and had him tell Roosevelt (and the people of the USA) that there was no need for another catastrophic war like the world saw in 1914-1918, so help the UK and Nazi Germany to negotiate a peace treaty. Even if Roosevelt refused, Hitler could have just waited Churchill out. Without a UK-USA alliance, there would never have been any Normandy landings. Hitler could have just ignored the UK and allowed life to return to normal. The Third Reich would have remained the greatest power on the planet for, who knows? Maybe a thousand years?

 

[Politruk]

Nope and he wasn't even anti-communist, he was anti-Marxist, not the same.

Why do you lie so much??

You lie. Hitler never Communized German society, never flattened the socioeconomic pyramid. As George Orwell wrote in 1941:

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and – this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism – generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler's forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the ‘semi-apes’ as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

However horrible this system may seem to us, it works. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State.

 

[Politruk]

Makes you wonder, though. Suppose the Nazis had decided not to invade the USSR in 1941, but instead had negotiated a peace with the UK (the only ones standing against them, after France collapsed and the Vichy government was established and Stalin stabbed them in the back with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). Hitler could have sent his ambassador to the USA and had him tell Roosevelt (and the people of the USA) that there was no need for another catastrophic war like the world saw in 1914-1918, so help the UK and Nazi Germany to negotiate a peace treaty. Even if Roosevelt refused, Hitler could have just waited Churchill out. Without a UK-USA alliance, there would never have been any Normandy landings. Hitler could have just ignored the UK and allowed life to return to normal. The Third Reich would have remained the greatest power on the planet for, who knows? Maybe a thousand years?

Hitler could indeed have held onto his western conquests indefinitely if he had not invaded the USSR -- but that was never a possibility. The whole point of Hitler's public career was to conquer Russia, exterminate the Russians, and resettle the territory with Germans -- then Germany would be a continental power, on par with the United States. That is what Hitler meant by Lebensraum. Even getting rid of the Jews was secondary to that goal. See Greater Germanic Reich.

 

[Fuzzy1975]

You lie. Hitler never Communized German society, never flattened the socioeconomic pyramid. As George Orwell wrote in 1941:

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and – this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism – generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler's forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the ‘semi-apes’ as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery.

However horrible this system may seem to us, it works. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State.

There is really little sense in wasting time with bobo, a person who doesn't even understand the meaning of communism. He just parrots what he gets from Stormfront. An IQ range in double digits.

 

[Politruk]

There is really little sense in wasting time with bobo, a person who doesn't even understand the meaning of communism. He just parrots what he gets from Stormfront. An IQ range in double digits.

Who is this "bobo" or "BB" or "bot," whom everyone is always citing as a byword for stupidity-and-dishonesty-even-by-PB-RW-standards?

 

[UltraChad]

You lie. Hitler never Communized German society, never flattened the socioeconomic pyramid.

He didn't MARX German society....you keep conflating "flattened the socioeconomic pyramid" with Marxism, that is NOT the only perspective.

You myopic fuckin' twat.

 

[UltraChad]

There is really little sense in wasting time with bobo, a person who doesn't even understand the meaning of communism. He just parrots what he gets from Stormfront. An IQ range in double digits.

Oh look another MORON who thinks Marxism is the only socialism.

What a fuck tard.

 

[UltraChad]

Nazis were about populism, nationalism, power and killing Jews

But why?? Quick lefties....DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO IGNORE AND NEVER ANSWER THAT QUESTION!!

 

[ll74]

But why?? Quick lefties....DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO IGNORE AND NEVER ANSWER THAT QUESTION!!

I'm sure your answer is very binary and singular.minded.

 

[Politruk]

He didn't MARX German society....you keep conflating "flattened the socioeconomic pyramid" with Marxism, that is NOT the only perspective.

No, I equate flattening the socioeconomic pyramid with socialism. There are non-Marxist form of socialism -- but Nazism is not one of them, as Orwell could clearly see. And there is no form of Marxism that does not involve flattening the pyramid.

I think I see what your problem is: You are conflating socialism with statism. But there are non-socialist form of statism, and Nazism is one of them.

 

[Politruk]

But why?? Quick lefties....DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO IGNORE AND NEVER ANSWER THAT QUESTION!!

Well, why the Jews is a long story. There is a long tradition in Europe of Judenhaas, "Jew-hate" -- but that was a religious prejudice that a Jew could escape by converting. In the 19th Century a new thing emerged, for which its proponents coined the name "antisemitism" -- the idea that Jews are evil exploiters by their hereditary nature. Therefore, a converted Jew or any of his descendants is still the natural enemy of all gentiles. The Nazis embraced the most extreme version of that.

Nazi nationalism dovetailed with their antisemitism. This is hard for us mongrel Americans to grasp, but, to the Nazis, "race" and "nation" were more or less equivalent. German Jews were not really German, French Jews were not really French, they were everywhere a separate race-nation. And they had a natural propensity towards Communism no less than towards capitalism -- see cultural Marxism, and scroll to the bottom of the page.

 

[UltraChad]

I'm sure your answer is very binary and singular.minded.

So you don't know and aren't about to hear anything that doesn't support you world view. How very Democrat of you.

 

[UltraChad]

Well, why the Jews is a long story. There is a long tradition in Europe of Judenhaas, "Jew-hate" -- but that was a religious prejudice that a Jew could escape by converting. In the 19th Century a new thing emerged, for which its proponents coined the name "antisemitism" -- the idea that Jews are evil exploiters by their hereditary nature. Therefore, a converted Jew or any of his descendants is still the natural enemy of all gentiles. The Nazis embraced the most extreme version of that.

Nazi nationalism dovetailed with their antisemitism. This is hard for us mongrel Americans to grasp, but, to the Nazis, "race" and "nation" were more or less equivalent. German Jews were not really German, French Jews were not really French, they were everywhere a separate race-nation. And they had a natural propensity towards Communism no less than towards capitalism -- see cultural Marxism, and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Yea dance around it....do everything to avoid his actual ideological positions and why it's called national socialism. Though you did get close to it with race and nation relation.

How does the national socialist reach the equity that all socialist desire? Hint: It's NOT Marxism....

 

[ll74]

So you don't know and aren't about to hear anything that doesn't support you world view. How very Democrat of you.

Yes, I get that you believe that.

 

[Politruk]

As for why the Nazis were populists -- well, they were populist and elitist simultaneously. See this review of Fascism: A History, by Roger Eatwell:

The proposition that the meaning of life is the exercise of the will leads to two kinds of conclusions. The most obvious, and the most popular, is the cult of cruelty. Naturally, the street-fighters who normally figure in the public activities of successful fascist parties are rarely well-read in the literature of philosophical nihilism. Nevertheless, even the nihilist violence of the German SA and the Italian "squadristi" chimes with high theory. Fascism promotes ruthlessness for the same reason that it promotes conspiracy theories: for a fascist, nothing is going to happen unless some will makes it happen. One suspects this consideration is also a factor in the usual fascist suspicion of free markets.

The other conclusion to which an ontology of the will leads is the transformation of politics into art. Whole societies become instruments for the expression of the will of elites, or often of a single great individual. In fascist theory, this is all that politics ever was, no matter what purportedly disinterested purposes the ruling elites of the past believed they served. The difference that Nietzsche made was that this reality could become conscious.

Fascism is not quite coincident with the great man theory of history. Since human beings are social animals, the will is to some extent a social phenomenon. Thus, reality is an intersubjective construct, a fable that people make up amongst themselves. The construct is not entirely arbitrary. Most fascists have also posited a strong racial or biological element conditioning the way that leaders and their peoples behave. Still, even in highly racialized forms of fascism, the leader stands to the people as the will stands to the individual. Politics, then, is not an arbitrary art, but an art whereby the leader makes the unconscious will of the people explicit.

The myths used to organize the elites were not necessarily those provided for the masses. The Nazi leadership in particular cultivated a sort of occultism (though if figures like Julius Evola are any indication, this enthusiasm was not absent from Italy, either). The people, however, were pushed with more conventional forms of nationalist xenophobia and pulled with quite prosaic promises of economic improvement and social welfare (promises on which both regimes could in large measure deliver). This difference of integrative principles was consistent with the fascist notion of society as an organic entity. Organism implies differentiation, so it was only proper that elites and masses be organized through different means.

 

[UltraChad]

Yes, I get that you believe that.

All evidence points that direction.

No reason to believe otherwise.

 

[ll74]

No reason to believe otherwise.

That's what I just said.

 

[UltraChad]

As for why the Nazis were populists

Populism isn't a bad thing, certainly not in a democracy where populism ALWAYS wins.

Nationalism is also not a bad thing.

 

[RobDownSouth]

But why?? Quick lefties....DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO IGNORE AND NEVER ANSWER THAT QUESTION!!

Not a big student of history, are ya Chudwick? Jew want me to spell it out for you?

The previously invincible Imperial German Army got their asses kicked and were forced into an absolutely horrible armistice in 1918. The psyche of the German people was shattered. The oligarchs of industry needed a scapegoat, and sent out former corporal Adolf Hitler to field-test the demonization of various minorities. They were hoping to blame communists, but the wily Hitler quickly discovered that the country really tested well when he brought up "the Jews".

German identity rationalized their defeat with what became known as the "stabbed in the back mythos". The stab-in-the-back myth retconned the Imperial German Army did not lose World War I on the battlefield, but was instead betrayed by certain citizens on the home front – especially those dirty filthy Jews.

The "stabbed in the back" mythos has been extensively used to explain away military losses since then. Most recently, a purported "Korean-American REMF infantry soldier" using the callsign "BoBo" explained America's poor showing in the Middle East (Murican asses regularly kicked by an underpowered group of ragtag Afghanis) by invoking the "stabbed in the back" excuse. "We woulda coulda shoulda won but politicians in Washington made us abide by pesky "rules of engagement" and "Geneva Conventions" and all that bullshit."

"BoBo" later sustained serious injuries when a number of plastic fleschettes penetrated his buttocks and caused extensive brain damage (Yeah, I dunno, that sounded sus to be too) which he also blamed on rules of engagement.

Trump's new Secretary of Defense, alcoholic Pete Hegseth, has vowed to "never again" abide by the rules of warfare.

 

[Politruk]

Populism isn't a bad thing, certainly not in a democracy where populism ALWAYS wins.

There is also such thing as left-populism, but the Nazis had nothing to do with that.

Nationalism is also not a bad thing.

It is a very bad thing based on its track record. E.g., when the Austro-Hungarian Empire broke up, none of its non-German nations was better off independent, quite the reverse.

Nazi nationalism derived from the Volkisch movement:

The Völkisch movement (German: Völkische Bewegung [ˌfœlkɪʃə bəˈveːɡʊŋ], English: Folkist movement, also called Völkism) was a German ethnic nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through the dissolution of the German Reich in 1945, with remnants in the Federal Republic of Germany afterwards. Erected on the idea of "blood and soil", inspired by the one-body-metaphor (Volkskörper, "ethnic body"; literally "body of the people"), and by the idea of naturally grown communities in unity, it was characterized by organicism, racialism, populism, agrarianism, romantic nationalism and – as a consequence of a growing exclusive and ethnic connotation – by antisemitism from the 1900s onward.[1][2] Völkisch nationalists generally considered the Jews to be an "alien people" who belonged to a different Volk ("race" or "folk") from the Germans.[3]

 

[Politruk]

How does the national socialist reach the equity that all socialist desire?

He doesn't. His goals have nothing to do with that. See post #6.