Germany's neo-Nazi underground

[LemonAndLime]

Interesting… My hard copy Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary doesn’t say anything about fascism being right-wing or left-wing in it’s definition… pg 422

Fascism 1: A political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition. 2: A tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.

Are you sure about your source?

The fact that a dictionary doesn’t mention whether or not its right or left wing doesn’t mean that my definition is wrong.

I’ll repost my evidence again.

Fascism is often considered right-wing due to its social conservatism and authoritarian means of opposing egalitarianism.[43] [44] Robert Stackleberg places fascism — including Nazism, which he says is “a radical variant of fascism” — on the right, explaining that "the more a person deems absolute equality among all people to be a desirable condition, the further left he or she will be on the ideological spectrum. The more a person considers inequality to be unavoidable or even desirable, the further to the right he or she will be.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Position_in_the_political_spectrum

Fascism ˈfæʃɪzəm]
n (sometimes capital)

1. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any ideology or movement inspired by Italian Fascism, such as German National Socialism; any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism
2. (Government, Politics & Diplomacy) any ideology, movement, programme, tendency, etc., that may be characterized as right-wing, chauvinist, authoritarian, etc.
3. prejudice in relation to the subject specified body fascism

thefreedictionary.com/fascism

fas·cism/ˈfaSHizəm/
Noun:

An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
(in general use) Extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practice.

google.co.uk/search?q=definition+of+facism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GBfficial&client=firefox-a

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

GREAT! Now define “right wing”, because I really have no clue what that means…in objective terms.

 

[LemonAndLime]

GREAT! Now define “right wing”, because I really have no clue what that means…in objective terms.

Okay.

“In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition.[1][2][3][4][5] To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is detrimental to society.[6] The terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution, referring to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the right supported preserving the institutions of the Ancien Régime (the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church).[7][8][9][10] Use of the term “Right” became more prominent after the second restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 with the Ultra-royalists.[11] Right-wing politics is a more loosely defined term than left-wing politics, because it largely developed as a response to its leftist counterpart.[12] Historically, the right-wing was mostly made up of traditionalist conservatives and reactionaries, but it now includes liberal conservatives, classical liberals and Christian democrats[13] as well as some nationalists.[10]”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Okay.

“In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition.[1][2][3][4][5] To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is detrimental to society.[6] The terms Right and Left were coined during the French Revolution, referring to seating arrangements in parliament; those who sat on the right supported preserving the institutions of the Ancien Régime (the monarchy, the aristocracy and the established church).[7][8][9][10] Use of the term “Right” became more prominent after the second restoration of the French monarchy in 1815 with the Ultra-royalists.[11] Right-wing politics is a more loosely defined term than left-wing politics, because it largely developed as a response to its leftist counterpart.[12] Historically, the right-wing was mostly made up of traditionalist conservatives and reactionaries, but it now includes liberal conservatives, classical liberals and Christian democrats[13] as well as some nationalists.[10]”

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics

THe Right Wing also consists of libertarians (classical liberals).

No wonder why Wikipedia is considered a poor source of information when stating claim. Pretty much anyone who is not a dyed in the wool Marxist is considered a “right winger”.

 

[Darryl1958]

Yup THATS why liberals hate Sarah Palin. It certainly has nothing to with her far right fiscal policies or her lack of qualification to be President of the United States.

We hate her because we wish her autistic child had been aborted! What an intelligent and informed statement!

Different leftists hate for different reasons. It is not the reasons for the hate, but that hate itself that defines the left.
Some for sure hated her for the gall of not aborting.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Slavery would have been difficult to maintain pretty shortly after the Civil War, had the war never occurred. British looms were soon thereafter filled with cheap Egyptian cotton, which made the Southern cotton worth a great deal less than it was before the Civil War. It became a “poverty crop” for the rest of the 19th Century, had to be subsidized with WWI to induce people to grow it for the war effort, and has been heavily subsidized ever since. Slavery was, first and foremost, an economic thing, and very expensive. It could only be justified economically if the value of the crop was very high. Physically capable slaves were very expensive and had to be reasonably maintained. The cost was then roughly equivalent to a very expensive tractor today. You wouldn’t weaken or kill your slave any more than a farmer today would put sugar in the gas tank of his tractor or run it off a cliff. Immigrant labor, on the other hand, was cheap. You didn’t have to buy the immigrant, and if his wage was barely sufficient to support life, well, so what? You could just hire another one if that one went down on you.

That’s not to say the Civil War was even principally about slavery, and I know there are those who would argue otherwise, and in my opinion it varied from state to state anyway. But that argument doesn’t have a lot to do with neo-Nazis and I’m not trying to restart it here, just to talk about the economics of it.

But still, the Irishman, starved on sweat shop wages could, with great effort and a moderate amount of luck, still head west, fight Indians and get his hands on a bit of land somewhere or other. Black slaves couldn’t do that, and even after emancipation, few (but some) were able to do it.

A word on the relative values of labor. My Italian great-grandfather could find no work other than in the deep mines in Kansas when he came here. It was murderous work. Blacks were, at the time and place, on a much higher socioeconomic plane than were Italian immigrants, and none would work in those mines…not an identical situation to the one we have now with illegal immigrants, but close.

Granted, my great-grandfather was eventually (by exercising extreme, virtual starvation thrift) able to save enough money to put a down payment on a farm. Other than the disability of being Catholic and having a heavy accent and foreign name, then, his social station in life leapfrogged that of blacks. Economically, not so, as there were a number of prosperous freeholding black farmers in Kansas at the time, and he had no economic advantage over them, (wheat is wheat, no matter who grows it) but was at least on more or less the same plane.

Ridge, when I see your posts I always know I’m getting sincerity and honesty. Thank you sir.

I condemn slavery, and just as much condemn the civil war from taking place. The south was wrong for fighting for slavery but the north was just as wrong for fighting over the south’s secession. The north should have let the south secede and then worked with the south to help them transition from slave states to industrial states and possibly bring the union back together later on down the road.

 

[Sonic]

The fact that a dictionary doesn’t mention whether or not its right or left wing doesn’t mean that my definition is wrong.

I’ll repost my evidence again.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#Position_in_the_political_spectrum

thefreedictionary.com/fascism

google.co.uk/search?q=definition+of+facism&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-GBfficial&client=firefox-a

So far, you’ve based your evidence on unreliable web sources (Wikipedia can be too easily edited to even be considered a reliable source). If that’s not good enough for a university paper, it’s not good enough to convince me. I’ll go with my hard copy citations from actual books.

Btw, using Wikipedia will get you an immediate failing grade at a good University. Lucky for you this is the internet.

 

[LemonAndLime]

So far, you’ve based your evidence on unreliable web sources (Wikipedia can be too easily edited to even considered a reliable source). If that’s not good enough for a university paper, it’s not good enough to convince me. I’ll go with my hard copy citations from actual books.

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

Btw, using Wikipedia will get you an immediate failing grade at a good University. Lucky for you this is the internet.

Not an immediate fail grade. But simple definitions of what a word means is something you’re unlikely to go wrong with.

And ok, you stick with your one dictionary definition, about which you seem to think that if it doesn’t mention where it is on the political spectrum, it isn’t on the right.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ridge, when I see your posts I always know I’m getting sincerity and honesty. Thank you sir.

I condemn slavery, and just as much condemn the civil war from taking place. The south was wrong for fighting for slavery but the north was just as wrong for fighting over the south’s secession. The north should have let the south secede and then worked with the south to help them transition from slave states to industrial states and possibly bring the union back together later on down the road.

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.

 

[Warrenton]

And ok, you stick with your one dictionary definition, about which you seem to think that if it doesn’t mention where it is on the political spectrum, it isn’t on the right.

You and I almost never agree, but here you are certainly correct.

It is hard to believe that anyone really doubts the Nazis were a right wing party.

The earliest redefinition of right/left I know of appeared in Bishop Fulton Sheen’s work in the 1950s, in which he recast Stalinism as rightist. This is important, because Sheen did not attempt to recast Hitler as a leftist.

I am aware on no source contemporary to the 1920s-1940s that described the Nazis or Hitler as leftists.

All of the writing of the time describes the show down between Hitler and Stalin as a war between right and left.

If Hitler was a leftist, he would not have written, in Mein Kampf, that “Jewry alone is the key to the comprehension of the inner, the real intention of Social Democracy.”

This is a short quote, but true to form, Hitler elaborates in detail for several hundred pages in his manifesto.

Mein Kampf is ultra nationalist, totally anti communist, totally anti semitic. There are some collective ideas in there, but they are subordinated to the overarching ideal of German racialism, which was to be implemented in a new imperialism.

If that is leftist, then left and right have no meaning.

 

[Sonic]

You and I almost never agree, but here you are certainly correct.

It is hard to believe that anyone really doubts the Nazis were a right wing party.

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

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8666996&postcount=57

Just to be on the record here. I only asked LemonAndLime about her source. Interesting how the discussions devolve here isn’t it? It’s almost like nobody is listening to each other.

 

[LemonAndLime]

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

forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=8666996&postcount=57

Just to be on the record here. I only asked LemonAndLime about her source. Interesting how the discussions devolve here isn’t it? It’s almost like nobody is listening to each other.

You can’t have a ring-wing socialist. To be a socialist you are, by definition, left-wing.

 

[Sonic]

You can’t have a ring-wing socialist. To be a socialist you are, by definition, left-wing.

Silly question… why can’t you have a “right-wing” or constrained socialist?

 

[LemonAndLime]

Silly question… why can’t you have a “right-wing” or constrained socialist?

Because socialism is left of centre, while facism is right of centre. Right-wing politics and socialism contradict themselves by nature.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I am aware on no source contemporary to the 1920s-1940s that described the Nazis or Hitler as leftists.

All of the writing of the time describes the show down between Hitler and Stalin as a war between right and left.

If Hitler was a leftist, he would not have written, in Mein Kampf, that “Jewry alone is the key to the comprehension of the inner, the real intention of Social Democracy.”

This is a short quote, but true to form, Hitler elaborates in detail for several hundred pages in his manifesto.

Mein Kampf is ultra nationalist, totally anti communist, totally anti semitic. There are some collective ideas in there, but they are subordinated to the overarching ideal of German racialism, which was to be implemented in a new imperialism.

If that is leftist, then left and right have no meaning.

Racism and imperialism are neither specifically “left wing” or “right wing”. Both leftist and rightist governments have engaged in both, sometimes on large scales.

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 and, had he prevailed over Hitler the Nazi government would have been very left wing by anybody’s reasonable definition. It was actually a very near thing, as Rohm had more thugs under his command than Hitler did for a time. Hitler was rightly afraid of Rohm’s burgeoning power and, just prior to the “Night of the Long Knives”, Rohm (foolishly) boasted that if Hitler persisted in cozying up to the industrialists, he, Rohm, would take over. But Hitler preempted it, and the rest is history.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Because socialism is left of centre, while facism is right of centre. Right-wing politics and socialism contradict themselves by nature.

Both true socialism and true fascism are underpinned by coercion and compulsion, and in that way, the two are one and the same. Both are corporatist and centralist, and in that way, they are the same. They are alike in being elitist. In their extremes, both are alike in murderousness.

Their differences are minor.

 

[Sonic]

Because socialism is left of centre, while facism is right of centre. Right-wing politics and socialism contradict themselves by nature.

If constrained socialism doesn’t have to be fascist, then I fail to see how facism is right of center.

I need an actual example of how facism is right of center. Can you give one?

 

[bbarrick8383]

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.

I was referring to, what it seems to me based on what I’ve read, the primary motivations of Lincoln and the southern leaders. I understand there were more motivations than there were states amongst the people who were actually doing the fighting at the time…am I right?

BTW, interesting story…wow, there is so much that never get’s told in history.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Both true socialism and true fascism are underpinned by coercion and compulsion, and in that way, the two are one and the same. Both are corporatist and centralist, and in that way, they are the same. They are alike in being elitist. In their extremes, both are alike in murderousness.

Their differences are minor.

 

[Darryl1958]

Slavery would have been difficult to maintain pretty shortly after the Civil War, had the war never occurred. British looms were soon thereafter filled with cheap Egyptian cotton, which made the Southern cotton worth a great deal less than it was before the Civil War. It became a “poverty crop” for the rest of the 19th Century, had to be subsidized with WWI to induce people to grow it for the war effort, and has been heavily subsidized ever since. Slavery was, first and foremost, an economic thing, and very expensive. It could only be justified economically if the value of the crop was very high. Physically capable slaves were very expensive and had to be reasonably maintained. The cost was then roughly equivalent to a very expensive tractor today. You wouldn’t weaken or kill your slave any more than a farmer today would put sugar in the gas tank of his tractor or run it off a cliff. Immigrant labor, on the other hand, was cheap. You didn’t have to buy the immigrant, and if his wage was barely sufficient to support life, well, so what? You could just hire another one if that one went down on you.

That’s not to say the Civil War was even principally about slavery, and I know there are those who would argue otherwise, and in my opinion it varied from state to state anyway. But that argument doesn’t have a lot to do with neo-Nazis and I’m not trying to restart it here, just to talk about the economics of it.

But still, the Irishman, starved on sweat shop wages could, with great effort and a moderate amount of luck, still head west, fight Indians and get his hands on a bit of land somewhere or other. Black slaves couldn’t do that, and even after emancipation, few (but some) were able to do it.

A word on the relative values of labor. My Italian great-grandfather could find no work other than in the deep mines in Kansas when he came here. It was murderous work. Blacks were, at the time and place, on a much higher socioeconomic plane than were Italian immigrants, and none would work in those mines…not an identical situation to the one we have now with illegal immigrants, but close.

Granted, my great-grandfather was eventually (by exercising extreme, virtual starvation thrift) able to save enough money to put a down payment on a farm. Other than the disability of being Catholic and having a heavy accent and foreign name, then, his social station in life leapfrogged that of blacks. Economically, not so, as there were a number of prosperous freeholding black farmers in Kansas at the time, and he had no economic advantage over them, (wheat is wheat, no matter who grows it) but was at least on more or less the same plane.

It is hard to say what may have happened if the war never occurred and the south was allowed to secede over the issue. There was still the question of a half a continent to be conquested, and no doubt a south invigorated by being unopposed, and essentially winning as a result, would have very much been the frontrunners, as winners most often are. As it is, the south was much more effective in spreading their culture and their own form of religion over the western frontier than the North was anyway.
New lands, and new sources of slaves may well have brought the cost down, even if the High Seas had already effectively shut down the African Atlanitic trade. 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.

No doubt, like serdom in Europe, low cost immigrants were an attractive economic alternative, but then again, there is no intrinsic reason why an extension of plantation culture into the west rather than the grueling freedom of homesteading would not have worked.

Hard to say too,what would have happened to the slaves, in the absense of a war which in effect declared them fully human. Breeding programs may well have been geared toward providing a more submissive brand of comfort slave rather than the hale and hearty breed that was so useful before the Industrial Revolution took hold. Or, like the Nazi eugenics programs, and modern day abortion mills, just as likely the slave herds would have been culled as they became expendable, and got in the way.

It could not have helped be a different world though, if this Civil war had not taken place, if America was not around to take on the rise of Nazism, for instance. Really, would the Nazis had even appeared so bad to a half-nation that had already accepted the concept of genetic superiority and genetic inferiority according to race, which had already accepted the concept of racial slavery?

And that I would contend is the difference between your grandfather, and a slave race. It is not that the Italian immigrant had an easier life, not that they were not used, not that they were not despised by many according to ethnicity and religion too. But the toil they did, they did for themselves. It was their choosing to eke out a better life in a harsh, and yet promising land. Like the sons of serfs, the sons of slaves could dream their own dreams too. But chattel slaves could not even dream.

But slavery is as old as mankind. Ours is the only age where it has even been considered an evil. That new morality was forged in the blood of the civil war. That is what made it real.