Germany's neo-Nazi underground

[Warrenton]

Nazism always had some elements which we might consider peculiar to both. Hitler 'talked the socialist talk", but did not walk the walk except when it came to public works and widespread welfare. Ernst Rohm, on the other hand, was a thoroughgoing socialist…

This is correct as far as it goes, and in addition to Rohm, we could point to Gregor Strasser, who was even more on the fringe.

But were they right or left fringe?

The answer, and why I agree with Lemon’s view, lies in the nature of Nazism. While encompassing many streams, as any successful party is apt to do, Nazisim’s main current always sourced in militarism and especially in German racialism.

This is important, because while some Nazis may have advocated for social levelling among Germans, they never advocated social equality among humanity at large.

Non-Germans, especially Jews and Slavs, were always slated to be made unequal, slaves, dispossessed or dead. Europe was to be permanently subservient to the needs and desires of the “master race.”

So, while in some micro-economical ways Nazism may have had leftist tendencies, in its global aims, Nazism sought to impose an kind of imperialism that denied any concept of egalitarianism to the human family. In that regard, Nazism is “like” a right wing idea. I would agree readily if someone objects that that the demonic, race based “aristocracy” proposed by Nazism is “beyond” right wing, but it is certainly not left wing.

 

[ringil]

Web sources are perfectly fine to use for academic papers. I’m a university student.

Really? I graduated grad school in 01 and I thought it was pretty low-brow to cite a website in a paer. Has this changed? When I saw fellow students do this I was like “UUggghh.”

LemonandLime you cite the web in papers??? AAAHHH NO!! I know this isn’t related to the subject. I just had to post here. I never would have used an internet cite in a paper.

Perhaps the net has become established enough with time.

Still, for discussions here, and in most settings the net is totally fine. . . . because I sure as heck aint’ going to the library for CAF research.

 

[Warrenton]

If I recall right, I said the Nazis were right-wing socialists in post #57:

I am sorry. I was not taking issue with anyone in particular. In fact, when I wrote I was mainly commenting on Barrix and Raskolnikov’s back and forth, whihc seemed to pass Lemon and you by.

However, Lemon’s point seemed so plain to me, I took a few moments to surf the web for “left wing Nazi” info.

Boy, did I get an eye-opener. It seems there are skads of people out in cyberspace contending Hitler was a leftist, Glenn Beck among them.

That is what I had in mind when I commented on being surprised that so many apparently doubt Lemon’s characterization of Nazis as right wingers.

No worries, I’m listening to you!

 

[ringil]

Interesting that you would say the north was wrong for fighting over the south’s secession. As I mentioned, motivations varied from place to place. In my state (Mo) the population was mostly of southern extraction and almost nobody owned slaves. Mo wanted to just stay out of the war, and so declared. But the Union insisted on drafting Missourians to fight against other southerners, and invaded. The governor and legislature then passed articles of secession, the Confederacy admitted her, the Union denied that admission, ousted the state government, and poured in more troops from Illinois and guerillas from Kansas. The populace divided along more or less ethnic lines, (Lots of recent immigrants in St. Louis) guerilla war as well as conventional war erupted, and Mo had its own internal Civil War that was bloody beyond belief and lasted well after the war itself had ended. Of perhaps passing interest, for a time in the Battle of Vicksburg, the First Missouri (Union) faced the First Missouri (Confederate) and Mo is the only state that has both Union and Confederate monuments at Vicksburg. Though, from the Union standpoint, Mo had always been a “Union” state, she nevertheless underwent a Reconstruction that was as severe as that experienced by any southern state, and was more severe than most.

Yes, it was the most industrialized “southern” state after Virginia, the most productive in foodstuffs, and its position was strategically important. But Mo could have been left alone and been largely unaffected by the conflict, and, after the war, or a peaceful secession of the other southern states, would have been the same state she always was, and part of the U.S.

Missouri’s is not the only story of internal conflict over the war. It has been opined that, of all the states, the only ones which really wanted the war were Massachusetts and South Carolina, and there may be considerable truth to that.

I would say that much of MO. is culturally southern. It seems to have always been this way. I’m not a Missourian and so am likely pretty ignorant on the matter though. I would imagine that different areas of the state would differ.

 

[Darryl1958]

This is correct as far as it goes, and in addition to Rohm, we could point to Gregor Strasser, who was even more on the fringe.

But were they right or left fringe?

The answer, and why I agree with Lemon’s view, lies in the nature of Nazism. While encompassing many streams, as any successful party is apt to do, Nazisim’s main current always sourced in militarism and especially in German racialism.

This is important, because while some Nazis may have advocated for social levelling among Germans, they never advocated social equality among humanity at large.

Non-Germans, especially Jews and Slavs, were always slated to be made unequal, slaves, dispossessed or dead. Europe was to be permanently subservient to the needs and desires of the “master race.”

So, while in some micro-economical ways Nazism may have had leftist tendencies, in its global aims, Nazism sought to impose an kind of imperialism that denied any concept of egalitarianism to the human family. In that regard, Nazism is “like” a right wing idea. I would agree readily if someone objects that that the demonic, race based “aristocracy” proposed by Nazism is “beyond” right wing, but it is certainly not left wing.

Whereas fascism makes *race *into a scapegoat, Marxist socialism makes class into the scapegoat. Both are proper subjects for eradication, according to the system. Ironically, the two came together in their scapegoating of the capitalist banker in the person of the Jew. There were indications of this at OWS for the most recent example.

For the German Nazi, it was the master race, the blonde lion who would rise again once he rids himself of the parasistism of Jewry, and the Jewish banks, as was to be the destiny of the superior race. For the Marxist socialist, the parasite was the bourgoise that was feeding off of the proletariat, who would likewise rise up to create their own workers paradise once the bourgoise is likewise destroyed.

Neither system has any use for the status quo; both were revolutionary movements seeking to impose a new world order, and both appealing to the populist base of the mob in order to fulfill their ends. Both believe in the State, and the will of the individual succumbing his will to the greater will of the State.

For American conservatism, with its great believe in individualism, with its core believe expressed in the motto, “the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen”, the main points of contention that there are with Marxist socialism are present in Nazism too. Whether corportations are run according to the dictates of the State, or whether the corporations are fully swallowed up by the state, makes very little difference to the American conservative.

Because the American left does not share the same believe in the rights of the private citizen, but instead believes very much in empowering governments into having more control and more say in the lives of the individual, from regulating wealth and speech according to what the People— which is the State— deems appropriate, the only real opposition that they have to fascism focuses on these questions of race.

Only to the extent that Nazism embraces race and nationalism is it opposed by the left, who are seeking out ever larger government, international and global in scope, just like fascists do.

Nevertheless, the American conservative does not define itself through racial divisions, but contrarily through adherence to the traditional American value of e pluribus unum, which is a distinctly anti-racist value. To the extent then that the left insists that fascism is to the right— and by fascism they do not mean corporatist, powerful government, but they mean racism— this is misnomer in terms of what virtually any American conservative, or modern western conservative movement believes in.

When a conservative says that Nazism is a leftist doctrine, they say so in terms of the big government agenda that the modern left shares both with fascist and socialists states.
When a leftist says that Nazism is a right wing doctrine, they say so in terms of its racism, which conservatives of the modern right have long rejected anyway.

Indeed, the racist mindset has never been a left or right phenomena, but is more of a derivative of European culture and ethnocentrism, and the faulty science of social Darwinism that arose in Europe in the nineteenth century that justified the preexisting ethnocentric practices. It defined our societies and was a blight on american values until recently, and both the left and the right share the historic blame for having embraced it.

Indeed, with their Identity Politics, in which the White Conservative Male has now become the new scapegoat for the lefist OWS crowd, modern leftism has in many ways become a warped mirror image of fascism as it has traditionally defined itself. Very possibly the rise of a German neo-Nazi underground is related to the rise of this scapegoating of the modern left.

 

[bbarrick8383]

I would say that much of MO. is culturally southern. It seems to have always been this way. I’m not a Missourian and so am likely pretty ignorant on the matter though. I would imagine that different areas of the state would differ.

Someone once told me several years ago, as I was traveling through MO that the northern half was liberal and the southern half was conservative. I’m assuming that, much like Oklahoma the southern half being conservative does not mean they are Republican. They are blue dog democrats who tend to vote for Republican candidates.

 

[LemonAndLime]

Really? I graduated grad school in 01 and I thought it was pretty low-brow to cite a website in a paer. Has this changed? When I saw fellow students do this I was like “UUggghh.”

LemonandLime you cite the web in papers??? AAAHHH NO!! I know this isn’t related to the subject. I just had to post here. I never would have used an internet cite in a paper.

Perhaps the net has become established enough with time.

Still, for discussions here, and in most settings the net is totally fine. . . . because I sure as heck aint’ going to the library for CAF research.

A lot of journals are online now, so citing a journal by using its web address is acceptable instead of the traditional method of referencing them. My course was biology-based, so referencing websites for health charities such as Diabetes UK and British Heart Foundation were acceptable.

 

[ringil]

A lot of journals are online now, so citing a journal by using its web address is acceptable instead of the traditional method of referencing them. My course was biology-based, so referencing websites for health charities such as Diabetes UK and British Heart Foundation were acceptable.

Our APA format didn’t call for websites to be used in the reference if they were only search engines for full articles, only the article itself.

You are in Europe I would magine you don’t use the APA format, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the APA has changed a little bit since I had to use the darn thing.

My wife is a scientist. I’ll ask her about this. It’s actually interesting how the net is emerging in as a tool in the research process.

 

[kelvinf]

A lot of journals are online now, so citing a journal by using its web address is acceptable instead of the traditional method of referencing them. My course was biology-based, so referencing websites for health charities such as Diabetes UK and British Heart Foundation were acceptable.

It might be acceptable on CAF but not in academics. The APA style specifies how (online) journals should be cited.

 

[estesbob]

It might be acceptable on CAF but not in academics. The APA style specifies how (online) journals should be cited.

When I was in college quoting from magazines or Readers Digest was a big no no.

 

[kelvinf]

When I was in college quoting from magazines or Readers Digest was a big no no.

An academic journal is not a magazine, but rather a collection of research papers.

 

[LemonAndLime]

It might be acceptable on CAF but not in academics. The APA style specifies how (online) journals should be cited.

I’m a university student, and it is acceptable at university. In fact we have assignments in which all of our sources have to be web-based.

If you disagree with me, then you should contact all universitys in the UK and inform them that the rules have changed.

 

[Kaninchen]

There are an awful lot of things to bear in mind when talking about the Reich. One of which was, of course, that it didn’t actually last very long, especially when one remembers that, from 1941, it entered into the era of Total War - the main reason why the Hitler Regime managed to annihilate less than the Stalin Regime was that it was defeated, had it won then, after ‘Bye, bye Jews’, it would have been ‘Bye, bye Slavs.’

In many ways it was a weak dictatorship, driven by political expediency, which lived in fear of its own people - Hitler rarely spent much time in what had been ‘Red Berlin’ (to be demolished and replaced, after a successful war, by a new capital on the site, ‘Germania’, other cities were to be reduced in size)- after all, nationalist and, particularly, NSDAP analysis of defeat in 1918 was a civilian ‘stab in the back’. That was one major reason for the Bread and Circuses aspect of the regime, it wasn’t ‘Guns or Butter’, it was ‘Guns and Butter’ with cheap holidays and the promise of a Volkswagen (People’s Car), if you saved a bit. It helped, of course, when you could finance a lot of your activities by confiscating the property and labour of your enemies.

There had been policies that were shared with socialists - the break-up of the great Industrial Trusts (like the later notorious IG Farben) was one, for example, the, supposed ‘Jewish Capital’ (that was the obverse of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’) that was driving people like the artisans and small-shopkeepers into the ground. These policies were mainly dropped and it was firms such as IG Farben that profited so immensely from their relationship with that great supplier of free labour, the SS, in places like Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Reich policy was a mish-mash of practicalities, slights of hand, confusion and contradiction but it was driven by a vision. Interestingly, when parts of the vision of the future agricultural Empire as far as the Urals became available (Wartheland, formed by driving the Poles out), German farmers from the Reich were very, very unenthusiastic about the place - most of the Germans moved there were from isolated pockets of Germans living all over Eastern Europe the ‘Volksdeutsch’).

 

[Warrenton]

. The Pacific was not so far into the future, and no doubt the Spanish South would be an excellent source, just as it is now an excellent source for a semi-permanent underclass for American business.

Southern slavery would not have been extended to Mexico. Mexico was Christian, and the basis for negro slavery was that the people were pagan, and not civilized.

 

[Warrenton]

Reich policy was a mish-mash of practicalities, slights of hand, confusion and contradiction but it was driven by a vision.

This post is a great synopsis of the Reich.

 

[Warrenton]

For American conservatism, with its great believe in individualism, with its core believe expressed in the motto, “the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen”, the main points of contention that there are with Marxist socialism are present in Nazism too. Whether corportations are run according to the dictates of the State, or whether the corporations are fully swallowed up by the state, makes very little difference to the American conservative.

Because the American left does not share the same believe in the rights of the private citizen, but instead believes very much in empowering governments into having more control and more say in the lives of the individual, from regulating wealth and speech according to what the People— which is the State— deems appropriate, the only real opposition that they have to fascism focuses on these questions of race.

I am acquainted with the method of analysis you employ. As I understand it, your “right-left” scale depends on the degree to which a party supports individual liberty. Please correct me if I misunderstand.

I prefer the older interpretation of the scale, which juxtaposes aristocratic ideals with democratic ones.

This is clearly how it began, as I believe, Lemon pointed out when she referenced the Estates General in late 18th Century France.

The dispute, of course, is far older, and goes back to ancient Greece in the contentions between the aristocrats and the democrats.

Tyrants, then and now, stood as something of a “synthesis” (to borrow Hegel’s phrase) between the two. On one hand, tyrants always make some kind of popular appeal. On the other hand, tyrants do suggest a permanent distinction between the ruler and the ruled. In the ancient world, no less than today, the proof can be seen in the pudding: aristocrats usually can strilke a bargain with a tyrant, and democrats seldom can. For this reason, tryrants usually fall on the right of the political spectrum.

While I do not want to dismiss your definition of right/left out of hand, I prefer the older method. “Individual rights” is a harder concept to get agreement on than aristocracy. The Soviets denied that they suppressed rights: what we call rights, they called abuses, and contended that the abuses perpetuated a class based aristocracy. Their goal, in theory, was to replace this aristocracy with a classless democracy.

The older framework seems to me to have the benefit of longer usage, which aids the comparison of what different generations have understood to be right and left sides of the political spectrum.

 

[kelvinf]

I’m a university student, and it is acceptable at university. In fact we have assignments in which all of our sources have to be web-based.

If you disagree with me, then you should contact all universitys in the UK and inform them that the rules have changed.

You are saying two things and we should treat them separately.

1. That web-based content can be cited in an academic paper: Yes, web sites hosting articles with known authors, publishing date etc can be reference for sure but not sites like wikipedia hosting articles without authors.
2. That using a web address suffices to be considered a citation. No! Your teacher or professor might tolerate a URL but a URL is not a citation and can’t be tolerated within a research paper irrespective of the country.

There are many citation systems. There is an Oxford and other UK-based systems.

On CAF or at the university, it might suffice to reference just the URL of a site for simplicity sake. But proper citation must include the author, title of the article, date of publication etc.

If you publish a research paper referencing just the web address, what happens when someone reading your paper 10 years later tries to visit the site that is no longer online? That’s why there are norms to cite web sites. (E.g. proper web citation must include the date when the site was last accessed.)

Just read about citation on the Internet. Professors will normally recommend a particular system to their students. A lecturer might accept a link to a site but a link is not equivalent to a citation.

 

[Warrenton]

I’m a university student…

I thought you were a nurse?

I also noticed that your “religion” line now reads “lapsed” Catholic.

Your banner, however, says you were baptised Easter 2011.

This is a joke, hopefully?

Otherwise, it would be a bit like applying for British citizenship just to move to Kenya to be an expat!

 

[Sonic]

Whereas fascism makes *race *into a scapegoat, Marxist socialism makes class into the scapegoat. Both are proper subjects for eradication, according to the system. Ironically, the two came together in their scapegoating of the capitalist banker in the person of the Jew. There were indications of this at OWS for the most recent example.

For the German Nazi, it was the master race, the blonde lion who would rise again once he rids himself of the parasistism of Jewry, and the Jewish banks, as was to be the destiny of the superior race. For the Marxist socialist, the parasite was the bourgoise that was feeding off of the proletariat, who would likewise rise up to create their own workers paradise once the bourgoise is likewise destroyed.

Neither system has any use for the status quo; both were revolutionary movements seeking to impose a new world order, and both appealing to the populist base of the mob in order to fulfill their ends. Both believe in the State, and the will of the individual succumbing his will to the greater will of the State.

For American conservatism, with its great believe in individualism, with its core believe expressed in the motto, “the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen”, the main points of contention that there are with Marxist socialism are present in Nazism too. Whether corportations are run according to the dictates of the State, or whether the corporations are fully swallowed up by the state, makes very little difference to the American conservative.

Because the American left does not share the same believe in the rights of the private citizen, but instead believes very much in empowering governments into having more control and more say in the lives of the individual, from regulating wealth and speech according to what the People— which is the State— deems appropriate, the only real opposition that they have to fascism focuses on these questions of race.

Only to the extent that Nazism embraces race and nationalism is it opposed by the left, who are seeking out ever larger government, international and global in scope, just like fascists do.

Nevertheless, the American conservative does not define itself through racial divisions, but contrarily through adherence to the traditional American value of e pluribus unum, which is a distinctly anti-racist value. To the extent then that the left insists that fascism is to the right— and by fascism they do not mean corporatist, powerful government, but they mean racism— this is misnomer in terms of what virtually any American conservative, or modern western conservative movement believes in.

When a conservative says that Nazism is a leftist doctrine, they say so in terms of the big government agenda that the modern left shares both with fascist and socialists states.
When a leftist says that Nazism is a right wing doctrine, they say so in terms of its racism, which conservatives of the modern right have long rejected anyway.

Indeed, the racist mindset has never been a left or right phenomena, but is more of a derivative of European culture and ethnocentrism, and the faulty science of social Darwinism that arose in Europe in the nineteenth century that justified the preexisting ethnocentric practices. It defined our societies and was a blight on american values until recently, and both the left and the right share the historic blame for having embraced it.

Indeed, with their Identity Politics, in which the White Conservative Male has now become the new scapegoat for the lefist OWS crowd, modern leftism has in many ways become a warped mirror image of fascism as it has traditionally defined itself. Very possibly the rise of a German neo-Nazi underground is related to the rise of this scapegoating of the modern left.

I came to a similar conclusion using Sowell’s model. According to him, proponents of the socialist vision tend to interpret all political, social, revolutionary struggle as socialist in nature. They may even see the American Revolution, the Constitution, and the Founding Fathers as socialist. According to Sowell, many highly educated people do.

The typical American Conservative is viewed as a bit of a dinosaur since his thinking is almost pre-socialist (or non-conformist). Essentially, it doesn’t play by the rules. It views things outside the pale. That’s the strength of Sowell’s interpretation. It thinks outside the box and looks at a broader picture that those who interpret the world through social vision don’t always see.

 

[Darryl1958]

I am acquainted with the method of analysis you employ. As I understand it, your “right-left” scale depends on the degree to which a party supports individual liberty. Please correct me if I misunderstand.

Left and right by definition are relative terms. They must always be defined against each other, and take into account the way that the respective sides define themselves.
In the modern American experience, this is how the terms have become defined, especially since the 1960’s and 1970’s and the Identity politics that have emerged since that time.

I prefer the older interpretation of the scale, which juxtaposes aristocratic ideals with democratic ones.

This is the historic context from which the terms arose. As it is, many who are of the elite classes today in America, the new elites, the new ‘aristocrats’ if you will, consisting of people like Bill Gates, the university professors of academia, Hollywood, trial lawyers and the like; they mainly self-define themselves as members of the left. Along with the poor now often defined along the lines of Identity politics and race, this is the leftist base.

Conservatives Americans of the right generally do not come from these new elites, but come from the middle class consisting of entrepreneurs and free enterprise businessmen, and the wealthy businessmen too of course.

The nineteenth century of Lords and the Estates vs democratic revolutionary forces does not really define the current North American reality—nor likely the European reality either.
To continue with such definitions into the modern age does not really describe the current reality, nor does it account for the way that bother the members of the left or right define themselves.

Since this is a political forum of current affairs, and not one geared to discussing history, I prefer to keep the terms relative to today, even if this is not descriptive of the history of the terms.

This is clearly how it began, as I believe, Lemon pointed out when she referenced the Estates General in late 18th Century France.

I am not sure, but I don’t think that the Estates of clergy and aristocrats are all that relevant to the political situation as it has evolved in France either. Of course, the Europeans here, so obviously of superior knowledge when it comes to these things, may well see things differently.

The dispute, of course, is far older, and goes back to ancient Greece in the contentions between the aristocrats and the democrats.

Sure. Greek thoughts have been synthesized into both Christianity and into Europe, especially after the Renaissance. This is good to know and good to remember. This is the roots of our civilization.

Tyrants, then and now, stood as something of a “synthesis” (to borrow Hegel’s phrase) between the two. On one hand, tyrants always make some kind of popular appeal. On the other hand, tyrants do suggest a permanent distinction between the ruler and the ruled. In the ancient world, no less than today, the proof can be seen in the pudding: aristocrats usually can strilke a bargain with a tyrant, and democrats seldom can. For this reason, tryrants usually fall on the right of the political spectrum.

In a world defined by tyrants on the left from Lenin and Stalin to Mao and Pol Pot, in a world in which the revolutionaries of yesterday such as Che Guevera and Castro invariably become the tyrants of tomorrow, in a world in which a military demagogue of the left such as Hugo Chavez is a merely typical face of a tyrant. I would dispute that todays tyrants actually do fall on the right of the spectrum. Bismark changed the whole picture by appealing to the populism of the people to continue his hold on power.
And the brutality of Stalin understood well enough that murder was just as effective at obtaining the resources of the elites as actually bothering to strike any kind of bargain.

While I do not want to dismiss your definition of right/left out of hand, I prefer the older method. “Individual rights” is a harder concept to get agreement on than aristocracy. The Soviets denied that they suppressed rights: what we call rights, they called abuses, and contended that the abuses perpetuated a class based aristocracy. Their goal, in theory, was to replace this aristocracy with a classless democracy.

Yes. Marx, following Hegel, and the Soviets building a system on that philosophy, indeed did crush all individual rights.
Human nature is such that a workers paradise is something of a dream. So far, only one Christ capable of handling power in such a way has been born.Stalin is the more logical result of such a system.

The American revolution on the other hand, constitutionalized individual rights and freedoms and being our endowment from God himself, that no man-made government can take away.
It is a very different point of view, and has revolutionized and changed the whole nature of the political world in which we find ourselves.

The older framework seems to me to have the benefit of longer usage, which aids the comparison of what different generations have understood to be right and left sides of the political spectrum.

That’s fine. But we in most of the West are all democrats now, even the Counts and the Lords and the Bishops of the Estates of yesterday. That phase of our history has been decided. That reality has been deposed. It is interesting as a historical footnote, but for anyone to actually sincerely describe the American right of today in such terms would be quaintly absurd.