There are some slight details you may wish to consider : Hitler was supported by many ( maybe most ) conservative industrialists Hitler saw to it that his first targets after the Jews were the Communists and Socialists When the Nazis were still a minor party their allies in politics were Right-wing parties As I said, the Berliners were actually semi-Socialist. In that era no party could hope to win much of anything unless its leadership espoused at least something of Marx. Think of the Progressive era in America in the first years of the 20th century, but NOT because TR was a Marxist, which he was not, he hated Marx, but what we would call Leftist ideas were very much in vogue in that era. Everyone was at least partly Progressive. In 1912 the Progressive Democrats defeated TR's Progressive Party and the actual Socialist Party won its largest % in all its history, in the 5% range, over a million votes. The anything but hard core conservatives of what survived of the Republican Party did the worst for a major party in all of American history. This is simply to discuss a political climate. This sort of thing happens now and then. Everybody needs to get with the program. Those who don't , lose big. There was a political climate in Germany in the 1920s in which if you weren't at least Marxist about some things, you had little chance at electoral success. Hitler understood this, he was hardly a dummy. After all, the monarchy had been discredited, and in Europe the Right was generally associated with royalty. To regain respectability a change was in order and a good way to do that was to borrow Marxist ideas, not all of them, obviously, but enough to look good. And enough to attract some % of labor votes. That was a time when labor was the clear voting majority. The Berliners actually believed in some Marxist ideas. But whatever else you call Hitler no way was he a Marxist, to believe that would be a stretch that not even Plastic Man could accomplish. Each basic political philosophy has it characteristic extreme. What, pray tell, is the extreme of Conservatism ? There is no extreme ? Uh huh, sure, Conservatives are all good and all pure and they have no extreme. Yep, how did I miss it ? Silly me. Of course, conservatism is perfect. I should have realized that before now. As for Marx and internationalism, you make a valid point that, in practice, internationalism may not work out all that well. But in their rhetoric and at least somewhat in practice, the Communists were as internationalist as anyone gets in the real world. This is pretty basic stuff. It wasn't until WWII that Stalin finally saw the weakness of internationalism for what it was, and all of a sudden everything was defense of Mother Russia. But until then everything was "working men of the world unite." After WWII the Communists attempted to revive internationalism yet the magic was gone, the philosophy had a fatal flaw that everyone could easily see for themselves. Still, even then, the rhetoric was made use of. It wasn't just the Communists. The Democratic Socialists were also internationalists, indeed, internationalism persisted among them longer than among Communists. The Right is nationalist almost by definition. Anyway, politics is always in flux. Then FDR Democrats, at least for the first several years, were balance-the-budget fiscal conservatives. Roosevelt was very skeptical of Keynes well into his second term. By the time WWII ended all that had changed, obviously, but the policies of the 1933 - 1937 years had been real. So it was with Communism, too. And with the Nazis and every other movement in human history. No idea what you heard listening to short wave radio. But the Left of the 1950s or 1960s was already not the Left of the 1920s or 1930s. Billy ============================================== message dated 1/13/2011 8:49:39 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes: They may be internationalist on paper, but with all of the parades honoring their national armies and military hardware it does seem that they are quite nationalist in practice. As a shortwave listener of old, I can tell you with great confidence that even their propaganda was highly nationalistic.
But everything I heard with my own ears is INVALID. OK. So Hitler's socialists weren't socialists? Amazing. All of these black and white "always" "100%" gee there's no gray here, much less any other color. Josef Stalin was the first to put Hitler on the right and he did it to create a totally socialist political spectrum, trying to leave no room for any non-socialist politics. Nice propaganda points. Not much else. David "I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote."--P. J. O'Rourke On 1/13/2011 2:35 AM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: Words and Politics : When is a "Socialist" actually a Socialist ? When is a "democracy" actually a democracy ? Here we go again. If you --anyone-- has Marx in mind then there is no such animal as a Nationalist who is also a Socialist. Marxism, by definition , and repeated ad nauseum in all kinds of Communist writings, is avowedly and vehemently Internationalist. That's point # 1. Point # 2 is that what a group calls itself, or a state, may have just about nothing to do with reality. I seriously doubt that when you think back to the Cold War that you regard all the "people's democracies" of eastern Europe as democracies at all. Point # 3 is that the structural / fundamental difference between R and L concerns property. Either L or R can be authoritarian OR democratic. Maybe you are not exactly keen about Sweden or Norway but Socialist or not, they were always democratic. And while you think well of Capitalism you've got to admit that there can be dictatorships which feature private enterprise --just about every country in Latin America at one time or another in the past, for instance. But the Left always is public property centered, and the right is always private property centered. Always, 100% of the time. Krupp was never taken over by the Nazi state , nor was any other corporation. Quite the opposite, at least while it lasted, German corporations did quite well in the Third Reich. Labor Unions, on the contrary , were sham unions, basically house unions, or neutered unions. That is typical of the Right, not the Left, although this is not quite as clear cut as the issue of property. On the Left there is such a thing as "streets and sewers socialism," the modus operandi of the Wisconsin wing of the SPUSA for a long time , in the past. Call it public works socialism if you prefer, that is, putting public property at the center of their politics. That sort of emphasis was also typical of the USSR, albeit under a dictator. One thing to admit, the Berlin wing of the Nazi Party was, for a while, pro-labor and at least semi-Socialist. But that was never true in Vienna in Hitler's crowd and the Beliners did not prevail. Goebbels, a Berliner, was seduced by Hitler and became his perfect sycophant and the Strassers didn't do too well, one brother killed and the other escaping into exile in Canada. That ended any vestige of Leftism among Nazis except for their retention of the word "Socialist." By the theory of absolute meaning of words, BTW, mind telling me why hard core fundamentalists refuse to consider Mormons as Christians ? After all, they use the word of themselves. Or is it the fact that words may mask reality or mislead people ? There are, to put it this way, con artists in politics not only in sales. The Nazis were as far Right as it is possible to get, just as the Soviet Communists under Stalin or the Chinese communists under Mao were as far Left as possible. Which brings up point # 4. There are extremes to all political systems. An extremist of the Libertarian persuasion is an Anarchist. An extremist of the democratic persuasion is a tyrant who uses mob rule to govern. And so on and so forth for all systems. We are all susceptible to the dangers of the extremes of any political philosophy we favor. This will remain true as long as "original sin" remains true. Which we need to always be wary of, to escape another sin, identified by Aristotle as hubris. My humble opinion for today Billy ============================================================ message dated 1/12/2011 9:15:56 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) writes: Hitler to me is a confirmation, not a contradiction of him being on the left. National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, Nazi for short) doesn't sound that conservative or "right" to me. Unless you want to tell me that ALL Socialist Workers Parties are on the right. :-) David "I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote."--P. J. O'Rourke On 1/12/2011 9:54 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: How can anyone figure out that guy ? He is a lunatic. To say the least, he is inconsistent in what / who he admires. Atlas Shrugs ran a series of short articles that claim he is a Lefty. After all, Marx is one of his idols. Trouble is, so is Hitler. You can find Libertarian ideas also, but just as easily you can find authoritarian ideas. Sounds to me like -just a wild guess-- Ernie lives in California. My sister also lives in the Peoples Republic. When she was visiting a month ago she said a few choice things about the Tea Party consisting of folks with guns, the idea being that the movement is a militia in everything but name. Wonder where she got that idea. I'm 100% certain that it has nothing at all to do with the fact that all the media she has access to is located in the Bay Area and that her friends in San Francisco are, like the city, 3/4ths Leftist Democrats Anyway, now I know, from direct experience, what was clear enough to me many months ago, that the Tea Party consists of little old ladies with attitude, older gentlemen tired of being pushed around by elitists, and an assortment of various and many others who are best described as the kind of folks who you would meet in a local neighborhood corner cafe almost anywhere in the USA except big cities and university enclaves. Average people but with a fire lit under their chairs who are motivated to do something real in their communities. For their troubles the Left demonizes them as a " threat." One word that comes to mind which is far more accurate, is that they are "populists." OK, to be technical, maybe "neo-Populists" might be more clinically descriptive, we are long past the era of farmers with pitchforks, but that is the tradition. Which is OK with me. No-one can accuse them of apathy. Billy ======================================================== message dated 1/12/2011 7:26:21 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) writes: No one has any evidence of that at all. In fact, he had previously met the congresswoman back in 2007 and had a file in his house on her. He didn't need to be incited, he was doing a good enough job of "inciting" all by himself. David "I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote."--P. J. O'Rourke On 1/12/2011 8:52 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar wrote: Has anyone found *any* evidence that he was at all aware of and/or influenced by Tea Party rhetoric? I assume not, but nobody on either side seems to have even asked that question... -- Ernie P. On Jan 11, 2011, at 9:55 PM, David R. Block wrote: _http://www.investors.com/image/RAMclr-011211-murdereribd-f.jpg.cms_ (http://www.investors.com/image/RAMclr-011211-murdereribd-f.jpg.cms) <moz-screenshot.png> -- "I don't understand why the same newspaper commentators who bemoan the terrible education given to poor people are always so eager to have those poor people get out and vote."--P. J. O'Rourke -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) > Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community _<[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community _<[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community _<[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community _<[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community _<[email protected]>_ (mailto:[email protected]) Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: _http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism_ (http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism) Radical Centrism website and blog: _http://RadicalCentrism.org_ (http://radicalcentrism.org/) -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
