Author Topic: National Socialists were socialists  (Read 4187 times)

Zea_mays

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Re: National Socialists were socialists
« Reply #30 on: February 10, 2022, 01:25:29 am »
Our enemies also help with our research. Far-right WNs who reject Neo-Nazism frequently outline how National Socialism does not resemble their far-right and pro-Western views at all. Both WNs and mainstream conservatives like to make comparisons between National Socialists and Communists/liberals/leftists in general in an attempt to smear leftism as bad. Sometimes False Left useful idiots will write articles compiling quotes about National Socialists' views on anti-capitalism and Socialism, just to reject it using the circular logic that they don't follow Communist definitions of anti-capitalism and Socialism, and therefore that is somehow proof the National Socialists were insincere. (LOL, thanks for helping us compile quotes.)

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This quote is posted on the wacko-rightist propaganda site Conservapedia. I haven't found the original newspaper article, but the book it quotes from is from a mainstream historian, so presumably it is accurate.
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Hitler himself echoed basically the same theme. In an article published in 1930 for the UK Daily Express, Hitler stated:
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'Socialist' I define from the word 'social; meaning in the main ‘social equity’. A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, of efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community.
Frank McDonough. (2003, 2nd ed. 2012). Hitler and the Rise of the Nazi Party. Page 120.
https://books.google.com/books?id=rE7JAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA120

(Conservapedia also claims Socialism with Chinese Characteristics is a form of National Socialism, nice!)


Simple Alt-Right propaganda emphasizing the pro-labor and social policies of NS Germany. They even make the obvious connection of how the present-day SJW complaints about "the 1%" are the same as the NS complaints about the Jewish elite. (Since, you know, National Socialists called themselves social justice advocates.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20210301052410/https://louderwithcrowder.com/myth-busted-actually-yes-hitler-was-a-socialist-liberal/

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Rightist-libertarian/non-Alt-Right article which cites how influential mainstream conservative/libertarian economist F.A. Hayek believed National Socialists were genuinely Socialist.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211006060429/https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f

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Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 – 23 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British economist, and philosopher who is best known for his defence of classical liberalism.[1] Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for their work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.[2] His account of how changing prices communicate information that helps individuals coordinate their plans is widely regarded as an important achievement in economics, leading to his prize.[3][4][5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek

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However uncomfortable to opinion shapers, alternative views of the Third Reich exist and were written by the finest minds of their time. Opinions of the period perhaps carry more weight because they are unburdened by the aftermath of the uniquely heinous Nazi crimes. ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by FA Hayek is one such tract. Published in 1944 it remains a classic for young people on the political right discovering their intellectual roots. A sort of academic ‘1984,’ it warns of socialism’s tendency toward planned states and totalitarianism.

But one aspect of the book can shock the conscience. Hayek describes Nazism as a “genuine socialist movement” and thus left wing by modern American standards. Indeed, the Austrian-born Hayek wrote the book from his essay ‘Nazi-Socialism’ that countered prevailing opinion at the London School of Economics where he taught. British elites regarded Nazism as a virulent capitalist reaction against enlightened socialism — a view that persists today.

The shock comes from academic and cultural orthodoxy on National Socialism. From the moment they enter the political fray, young right-wingers are told ‘you own the Nazis.’ At best, the left concedes it owns communism.
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The left believes the opposite. These people are distrustful of the excesses and inequality capitalism produces. ... They believe it is the government’s responsibility to solve social problems.
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By these definitions the Nazis were firmly on the left. National Socialism was a collectivist authoritarian movement run by “social justice warriors.”
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As Hayek wrote in 1933, the year the Nazis took power:
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It is more than probable that the real meaning of the German revolution is that the long dreaded expansion of communism into the heart of Europe has taken place but is not recognized because the fundamental similarity of methods and ideas is hidden by the difference in phraseology and the privileged groups.
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Nazism and socialism competed with the Enlightenment-based individualism of Locke, Smith, Montesquieu, and others who profoundly influenced the American founding and define the modern American right at its best.
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Hitler’s first “National Workers Party” meeting while still an Army corporal featured the speech “How and by What Means is Capitalism to be Eliminated?”

The Nazi charter published a year later and coauthored by Hitler is socialist in almost every aspect. It calls for “equality of rights for the German people.” The subjugation of the individual to the state; breaking of “rent slavery,”; “confiscation of war profits,”; the nationalization of industry; profit sharing in heavy industry; large scale social security; the “communalization of the great warehouses and there being leased at low costs to small firms”; the “free expropriation of [privately owned] land for the purpose of public utility”; the abolition of “materialistic” Roman Law; the nationalization of education; the nationalization of the army; the nationalization of healthcare for the mother and child; state regulation of the press; and strong central power in the Reich.
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These attitudes shouldn’t be surprising given the socialist thinkers that provided the theoretical basis for Nazism abhorred English “commercialism” and “comfort.” As Hayek described, “From 1914 onward there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hardworking laborer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold.”
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As late as 1941 with the war in bloom [Hitler] stated “basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same” in a speech published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
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Nazi propaganda minister and resident intellectual Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary the Nazis would install “real socialism” after Russia’s defeat in the East. And Hitler favorite Albert Speer, the Nazi armaments minister whose memoir became an international bestseller, wrote Hitler viewed Stalin as a kindred spirit, ensuring his POW son received good treatment, and even talked of keeping Stalin in power in a puppet government after Germany’s eventual triumph. His views on Churchill and Roosevelt were decidedly less kind.

And at the bitter end, as Bolshevik shells exploded just above him, when he had no more reason to lie or obfuscate, whom did Hitler blame for his downfall? Not the communists whose cunning and determination had ultimately ruined his plans, but the evil ‘Jewish capitalistic system.’
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The Nazis and communists not only struggled for street-war supremacy but also recruits. And these recruits were easily turned because both sides were fighting for the same men. Hayek recalls
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the relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was generally known in Germany, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. Many a University teacher during the 1930s has seen English or American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain they hated Western liberal civilization. . . . To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common and whom they could not hope to convince is the liberal of the old type.
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George Orwell remarked, “Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a socialist state.” Max Eastman an old friend of Vladimir Lenin described Stalin’s brand of communism as “super fascist.” British writer FA Voight after several years on the continent concluded “Marxism has led to Fascism and National Socialism because in all essentials it is Fascism and National Socialism.”
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Hitler described the bourgeoisie as “worthless for any noble human endeavor, capable of any error of judgment, failure of nerve and moral corruption.” In 1931 as the Nazis gained power in elections, Goebbels wrote an editorial warning about these newcomer so-called “Septemberlings,’ the bourgeoisie intellectuals who thought they could wrest the party from what they considered the “demagogue” old guard.
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The more vehemently the left, particularly academics, argue their dissociation with the Nazis the more they protest “too much.” Indeed, the failure here is as much one of academic prejudice as any willful wish to avoid truth.
https://web.archive.org/web/20211006060429/https://paulhjossey.medium.com/the-nazis-were-leftists-deal-with-it-b7f12cc53b6f


Some commentary on Frederick Augustus Voigt. He was a rightist champion of Western Civilization, and saw Western Civilization to be gravely threatened by National Socialism.
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He came to regard both Fascism/Nazism and Communism as pseudo-religious ideologies that seriously threatened the essentially Christian civilization of Europe, and could only be opposed if the Western democracies committed to defend that civilization.

After World War II he became a leading exponent of what George Orwell termed “neo-toryism”, regarding the maintenance of British imperial power as an invaluable bulwark against Communism and as being indispensable to the creation and continuation of international peace and political stability.
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The central thesis of Unto Caesar is that Communism and National Socialism were “revolutionary secular religions arising from the arrogant endeavour of man to transform religious promises directly into worldly reality” (Markus Huttner). Voigt argues that such 'secular religions' pose a threat to the fundamentals of European civilization by seeking to “render to Caesar what is God's” and can only be defeated if the western democracies, particularly Britain, stand up and actively defend Christianity and Civilization against the totalitarian onslaught.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Augustus_Voigt

A. James Gregor seemed to have a similar thesis about Marxist Socialism, National Socialism, and Fascism being "revolutionary secular religions" (e.g. his book Totalitarianism and Political Religion: An Intellectual History, (2012).