Friday 23 September 2011

 

Remember, Similar posters do not equal similar ideologies!



Thursday 22 September 2011

Two Steps from Hell - new album

TSFH's new album will be released officially on 1st October 2011. I cannot wait! :-)


 

Also does anyone know the violin style being played here?

Wednesday 14 September 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 15, "The Conservatives and Hitler" "Hitler's Magic Mix" (plus "nationalism" and "music")

The Conservatives and Hitler

And what about the conservatives of Hitler's day? Both in Germany and Britain he despised them and they despised him.
 
Indeed some Conservatives and Monarchists did despise Hitler and indeed it was the more outspoken ones that could be dispensed with, the ones who Hitler felt were threatening his leadership they that were the ones who were victims on Hitler's "Night of the Long knives" Hitler was aware that he could not act directly against the Vice Chancellor without offending the conservative elite. Instead he had his speechwriter [who was expediant to get rid of] shot instead. And Hitler as i've said already may not have been a conservative in the strictest sense but the Nazis certainly had some conservative backing (even the Kaiser in his last years supported Hitler) as their philosophies certainly overlapped (ideas of "Lebensraum" and "nationalism" and in the Kaiser's case "Antisemitism" for example). He was an Anti-conservative to the extent he was much more of an extreme rightist than what the conventional Centre-right conseratives were. Interesting to note that some reacted to Hitler's appointment like this:

"Hitler is reich chancellor! And What a cabinet!!! One such as we did not dare to dream of in July [1932]. Hitler, Hugenburg, seldte, Papen!!! A large part of my German hopes are attached to each. National Socialist drive, German national reason, the non-political Stahlhelm, and - not forgotten by us - Papen. It is so unimaginably wonderful ... What an achievement by Hindenburg!" - Louise Solmitz, A Conservative Schoolteacher from Hamburg; reacting to Hitler's appointment to the chancellorship on 30 january 1933. Quoted in Ian Kershaw, "Hitler" (abridged), p260.

As regards to nationalism, Ray notes in the next segment

"The great difference between Hitler's nationalism and Anglo-Saxon nationalism was, of course, that Hitler['s] was much more aggressive."
which is true but only because out of Geo-political circumstances. That's all there is of substance there.
 
Hitler's Magic Mix

Here i'll offer the last paragraph as it offers us the most succinct summary of this segment itself
 
In summary, Hitler saw from the outset (Bullock, 1964) that a combination of socialist and whole-hearted nationalist appeals could be emotionally successful among the masses, no matter what he personally believed. If the basic message of the Left was "We will look after you" and the message of the Right was "We are the greatest", then Hitler saw no reason why he could not offer both nostrums for sale. He did not trouble either himself or the masses with details of how such offers could be delivered.
 
And Bullock puts it like this:
 
"What Hitler meant by socialism can be illustrated by a speech he made on 28 July 1922. 'who ever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal than the welfare of his nation; whoever has understood our great national anthem, Deutschland, Deutschland Uber alles, to mean that nothing in the wide world surpasses in his eyes this Germany, people and land, land and people - that man is a socialist.'" - Bullock, "Adolf Hitler", p 75 -76.
 
So for Hitler, his 'Socialism' is nothing more than an extreme nationalism and elitism. That's not socialism! As matter of fact it is the opposite of socialism.

To make any sort of claim that the Nazis were socialist, especially because of the name they chose or the propaganda they espoused [Music included which is his next segment (which i shall skip simply because im making the point here)], is just a shallow and extremely simplistic talking point that would not stand up in any real history class. It makes the user of it look foolish in any educated person's eyes.

Tuesday 13 September 2011

Just a thought.

Stemming from the longer quote i gave from the "Red Fascism" article i cited here, in particular this,


"After the entry of the United States into World War II Americans focused on the differences between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia in order to help cement the wartime alliance among Russia, the United States, and Great Britain. It was popular to stress that indeed Russia and the United States were similar; both were anti-imperialist, and both had a revolutionary past. Collier's in 1943 could conclude that Russia was "evolving from a sort of Fascism ... toward something resembling our own and Great Britain's democracy.""



Who else finds it amusing in retrospect that the Russians were depicted by American propaganda for a short time as "freedom fighters" during the War just like the American soldiers were even though we all know otherwise?



Monday 12 September 2011

"basically National Socialism and Marxism are NOT the same." (draft)

Those that have been actively following my youtube channel as of late know that i've made a good use of an excellent article from the peer reviewed literature titled "Red Fascism: The merger of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia in the american image of totalitarianism". It's from The American Historical review, vol 75, no4 (apr., 1970) and is written by les K. Adler and Thomas G. Paterson. It makes the point that, much like today with Beck and friends, a number of comparisons between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were attempted, often by propagandists before, during and even well into the Cold war. These comparsions were very silly and very superficial and deliberately so. Marshall D. Shulman is quoted in the aforementioned article for admitting the comparisons made were "often misleading ....".
 
This is one quote from the article that i have used in two of my videos now:
 
"Americans both before and after the second world war casualy and deliberately articulated distorted similarities between nazi and communist ideologies, german and soviet foreign policies, authoritarian controls and trade practices, and Hitler and Stalin. This popular analogy was a potent and pervasive notion that significantly shaped American of world events in the cold war. Once russia was designated the "enemy" by american leaders, americans transferred their hatred of Hitler's germany to Stalin's russia with considerable ease and persuasion."



But to give you a better feel of the article in case you cannot acsess it yourself, i shall present two more quotations, The first is quite poignant with Glenn Beck in mind, the latter effectively describing what American propaganda was doing during the war itself.
 
"Yet it is nevertheless true that, because the outward appearances of the two systems seemed to be more similar to each other than either seemed to be to any previous political system in the world, the real differences between fascist and Communist systems have been obscured. It was, in essence, easier for Americans to recognize their similarities than their differences, and though the intensity and scope of the analogy have varied greatly since the 1930's, the characteristic of similarity has remained constant in the American perception of totalitarian systems. Ignoring the widely diverse origins, ideologies, goals, and practices of totalitarian regimes, Americans have tended to focus only on the seemingly similar methods employed by such regimes and to assume that these methods are the basic immutable characteristics of totalitarianism anywhere."


[...]
 
"Russia's unprovoked attack on Finland in 1939 aroused American indignation; it was, in fact, clear that both Germany and Russia were aggressors in Europe. War relief crusades for the Finns gained an ecstatic national response. Robert Sherwood responded with his well-received drama, There Shall Be No Night, condemning the German and Soviet aggressive conspiracy against world democracy. Frederick Hazlitt Brennan invented the phrase "Commu-Nazi" in a five-part story in early 1940 called "Let Me Call You Comrade." Thus, on the eve of World War II, many Americans linked fascist and Communist ideologies as denials of human freedom and tolerance, saw Germany and Russia as international aggressors, and pictured Hitler and Stalin as evil comrades. Shortly after the sudden German invasion of Russia in June 1941, the Wall Street Journal indicated its ambivalent position on the outcome of the new war: "The American people know that the principal difference between Mr. Hitler and Mr. Stalin is the size of their respective mustaches."Former Ambassador to Russia William C. Bullitt saw the contest as one between "Satan and Lucifer." Some American isolationists denounced the power politics of both Germany and Russia and adopted a plague-on-both-your-houses attitude. Yet after the invasion President Roosevelt, against ardent opposition, promised and extended to Russia lend-lease aid. The opinion of most interventionists was that, though Russia was evil, it at least was not an immediate threat to the United States; Germany, on the other hand, was both evil and threatening. After the entry of the United States into World War II Americans focused on the differences between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia in order to help cement the wartime alliance among Russia, the United States, and Great Britain. It was popular to stress that indeed Russia and the United States were similar; both were anti-imperialist, and both had a revolutionary past. Collier's in 1943 could conclude that Russia was "evolving from a sort of Fascism ... toward something resembling our own and Great Britain's democracy." But the stress on differences was a temporary facade a reaction to Soviet war efforts rather than a reappraisal, and the Nazi-Communist analogy appeared publicly again as Soviet-American tensions increased near the close of the war."
 
Here's one example of an American outlet conjuring up "distorted similarities". Hitler was named "Man of the Year" in 1938 by Time Magazine. Within the article they wrote of him, they had this to say....
 
"The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some have been confiscated outright, on others what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Increasing Governmental control and interference in business is deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."
 The trouble with this quote? While Certainly Gov't spending was major factor during re-armament, something conservatives then and now love, but the Nazis did NOT collectivize agriculture. The Nazis actually passed laws that ensured that farms would remain in private hands and not be broken up into too many untenable pieces that were unviable, upon inheritance. That does not constitute collectivization of the land in Nazi Germany. The large estates and small farms were protected, the Nazi party and Hitler opposed the exportation referendum of 25/26. So when they had a chance to act in a real socialist manner they consistently failed to do so.

"The Nazis lowered the taxes imposed on most business: "The government...eased the capital position of private business. Agriculture [and particularly the large land holders, the 'agrobusiness'] was given a tax relief and a reduction of the burden of debt, while industry gained subsidies and tax relief for new investment and employment." - RJ Overy "War and Economy in the Third Reich", p55.

"The combination of domestic demand, an end to foreign competition, rising prices and relatively static wages created a context in which it was not hard to make healthy profits. Indeed, be 1934 the bonuses being paid to the boards of some firms were so spectacular that they were causing acute embarrassment to Hitler's government." - Adam Tooze, "The Wages of Destruction", p108.

"Though it is important to justice to the shift in power relations between the state and business that undoubtedly occurred in the early 1930s, we must be careful to avoid falling into the trap of viewing German business as a passive object in the regimes new system of regulation. [...] profits were rising rapidly after 1933 and this opened attractive future prospects for German corporate management." - Tooze, "Ibid", p114.

The other thing to note about Time was it's editor-in-chief of Time after 1929, Henry Luce, who was also one of the magazine's founders maintained a position as an member of the Republican Party and held anti-communist sentiments which ended up being permeated through his publications. As we can see that paticular piece of propaganda falls flat on its face.
 
But i want to suggest an idea of my own. The British too were indulging in such activities as "casualy and deliberately articulated distorted similarities between nazi and communist ideologies, german and soviet foreign policies, authoritarian controls and trade practices, and Hitler and Stalin". I certainly think i have at least one piece of evidence for this courtesy of a piece titled "Herr Hitler’s Speech of February 24," from the "Bulletin of International News (published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs), vol. 18, March 8, 1941, p. 269". It has Hitler quoted simply as saying "basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same."
 
But lo and behold, we have that speech of Hitler right in front of us.

It was a customary speech on the foundation of the party in the festival hall of the Munich Hofbräuhaus. And surprise surprise there is nothing even remotely resembeling the phrase given by the Bulletin of International News. The common revolution he is speaking of is Italy's not Russia's. Furthermore even when he states that "It is today no longer possible to build up a state on a capitalistic basis." he makes it clear that he is only referring to international capital, his policy really only differs because it is a nationalist capitalist one "Therefore we will not establish our economic policy to suit the conceptions or desires of bankers in New York or London". If you want a more detailed analysis of the speech, see Max Domarus' four volume work "Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations (p2372 - 2376)".

Now why was that quote in the bulletin? Well there was this little thing we British like to call the "Blitz" which was still ongoing, and there was alot of Anti-german propaganda being circulated at the time for the obvious reason that they were the ones bombing our cities. The "quote" the bulletin gave is just a piece of wartime propaganda and nothing more. I cannot see at present another source that would verify that Hitler really did say it. so im tempted to say the bulletin fabricated the quote in order to make the Germans even more "scary" and adding it to the images of "Scary Communism"

Tuesday 9 August 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 14, "A Democratic leftist?", "post election manoeuvres" and "Hitler's socialist deeds"

A democratic Leftist! 


Well a half-hearted democratic Rightist, so again Ray misses the point. His appointment was legal and democratic but at the same time arguably the biggest mistake made in the Weimar Republic. Prior to "the legal chancellor marching irresistibly into the legal dictator" Hitler did promise he would "destroy democracy with the weapons of democracy". In Mein Kampf he actually labelled social democracy as being a "pestilential whore" as you have already seen. Yes he did use left wing methods in order to deliever the masses to the right, but that is part and parcel of his appeal to the widest spectrum possible.


Only one paragraph here is worthy of note:
 
The fact that Hitler appealed to the German voter as basically a rather extreme social democrat is also shown by the fact that the German Social Democrats (orthodox democratic Leftists who controlled the unions as well as a large Reichstag deputation) at all times refused appeals from the German Communist party for co-operation against the Nazis. They evidently felt more affinity with Hitler than with the Communists. Hitler's eventual setting up of a one-party State and his adoption of a "four year plan", however, showed who had most affinity with the Communists. Hitler was more extreme than the Social Democrats foresaw.


The Four year plan only stepped in where the existing companies would not. It was concerned with re-armament and there have been other capitalist countries that have used the same method to build up selected sectors, South Korea being probably the most prominent. Nazi planning had nothing to with bettering the overall state of the people as the, at least professed goals were in the USSR [though in reality the USSR plans were really related to the overseeing of the economy], but just to build up the military. Just because there is an outward superficial appearance does not mean there is any real similarity. Again property and profits remained private in Nazi Germany. The Four Year Plan was just a Right Wing Military building program that did a lot to enrich the large private corporations along the way.

(Another thing as well, I've been told in private the whitlam era in Australia is seen as one of great social change, secondly Ray's link with nationalism is bullshit and the historical record does not reflect the "evidence" he presented. Whitlam presided over a government which introduced free uni, universal healthcare etc and was dismissed by the "governor general" at the request of the unelected opposition who set up the method for dismissal by using the constitutional rules to their advantage and breaking with tradition. [Tip o' the hat to my friend Franks])


Hitler's Post-election Manoeuvres.

Apparantly Hitler's consolidating of his power can be compared to "The post-war Liberal Democratic (conservative) government of Japan" and "Mintoff and Mifsud-Bonnici" on the left So really what is admitted here is that consolidation of power via some not so democratic means, can be found on both the left and the right, so this is meaningless.

Hitler's Socialist Deeds.

When in power Hitler also implemented a quite socialist programme. Like F.D. Roosevelt, he provided employment by a much expanded programme of public works (including roadworks) and his Kraft durch Freude ("power through joy") movement was notable for such benefits as providing workers with subsidized holidays at a standard that only the rich could formerly afford.

The truth of the matter is not as clear cut as that:
 
"Many of the policies, including 'work creation' projects, control of forigen exchange, government intervention in banking and agricultural protection, were the products of the Weimar period and were not uniquely Nazi policies at all. The German economy had always enjoyed a higher degree of state involvement than the more liberal western economies." - Richard Overy, "The Nazi economic recovery, 1932-1938", p10.

So all Hitler did was implement policies of the Weimar republic out of political expediency, Programmes like the "strength through joy" were little more than a propaganda carrot in effect, Nothing more. And as Richard Evans will tell you, in reality Nazi ideology opposed the welfare state and in fact cut back on it. And as to Poland, what Ray wont tell you is that after the second World War, Communist Poland nationalized all enterprises with over 50 employees without compensation. These are the rules, not the exceptions and to suggest that this was the case in Nazi germany too is to be very superficial indeed. And Mises, well all he does is comment on the Dirigisme capitalism the Nazis had and calls it "socialism", unfortunately for him as i've already demonstrated Japan also practices dirigisme economics, in fact as do alot of the "Tiger economies" in the east like Singapore, So sorry there is still no socialism in Nazi Germany regardless of what his poor, biased hack sources says.

Friday 5 August 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 13, "So how did Hitler gain so much influence"

So how did Hitler gain so much influence?


I will submit the radically simple thesis that Hitler's appeal to Germans was much as the name of his political party would suggest -- a heady brew of rather extreme Leftism (socialism) combined with equally extreme nationalism -- with Hitler's obsession with the Jews being a relatively minor aspect of Nazism's popular appeal, as Dietrich (1988) shows.

That point on it's own, actually is a valid one if one remembers that the socialistic elements of his propaganda, was just propaganda to win over the masses and nothing more.


"like all demagouges, Hitler appealed to the masses. Unlike other demagouges who sought to carry out Left policies, Hitler dominated the masses by leftwing methods in order to deliver them to the Right. This is why the Right let him in." - AJP Taylor, "The origins of the second world war", p23.
Now here's a radically simple way to look at the politics of the 20's and 30's. The divisions at the time did not concern traditional party-political or left/right boundries like in the way they may do in the USA today, but rather the division was between those who wanted to look forward, those who wanted a more organised and efficient world in which things like unemployment and perhaps other percieved social ills could be banished via this means. Versus those who wanted to look back, often with a sense of nostalgia, those who wanted to take the nation-state back to a "more golden time" in order to solve the said percieved social ills of the day, the ones who were stuck with some old ideas. And touted solutions to the supposed social ills such as Eugenics to get rid of those Society didn't need, or those who wanted a more efficent state very much darted across traditional party-political or left/right boundries. To show you what i mean, George Bernard Shaw was an admirer of dictators on the grounds that he felt "they got things done" right?. well here then is an interesting quote by conservative peer "Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry. [Lord Londonderry for short]" 

"Whatever the regime, if it creates efficient organisation, I feel a certain amount of admiration for it, and that is why I respect Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin [However, i wouldn't] like to live under those regimes myself."
In this way we can see the whole "progressive" thing he spouts in this segment into a better context and it can help explain why Hitler ended up with both left and right wing admirers, from G.B Shaw to Henry Ford. It being the way he presented himself.

So his "Ein Volk" dogma in effect very cleverly substituted the usual leftist dogma with "All GERMANS are equal" -- and also, of course, superior to non-Germans.


Haha no, that is not what his Ein Volk dogma entailed. Although he makes it clear in Mein Kampf that some races are better than others, but also that some individuals are superior to others WITHIN THE SAME RACE. 

"It would be absurd to appraise a man's worth by the race to which he belongs and at the same time to make war against the Marxist principle, that all men are equal, without being determined to pursue our own principle to its ultimate consequences. If we admit the significance of blood, that is to say, if we recognize the race as the fundamental element on which all life is based, we shall have to apply to the individual the logical consequences of this principle. In general I must estimate the worth of nations differently, on the basis of the different races from which they spring, and I must also differentiate in estimating the worth of the individual within his own race. The principle, that one people is not the same as another, applies also to the individual members of a national community. No one brain, for instance, is equal to another; because the constituent elements belonging to the same blood vary in a thousand subtle details, though they are fundamentally of the same quality." - Mein Kampf, Vol 2, Chapter 4.
Now as to welfare?
 
...the loyalty of Germans to Hitler cannot have been primarily economic. Hitler's socialist provisions for ordinary Germans were important but primarily functioned as evidence to them of how much Hitler cared for his Volk. It was primarily emotional satisfaction that Hitler gave to Germans.
 
Strangely enough this would be another valid point, if it didn't miss the point of why Hitler enacted certain programmes in the first place. ultimately Nazi ideology did not favour a Welfare state and indeed as documented by Richard Evans in his book "The Third Reich in power" they ended up cutting back on welfare. The programes that the Nazis did enact were merely something in order to win over the masses

"Faced with ten million people in receipt of welfare assistance at the height of the Depression, however, it would have been political suicide for the Nazis to have written off the mass of the unemployed and destitute as not worth helping." - Evans, "The Third Reich in power", p484

So their programmes were politically driven -- politically necessary -- not ideologically driven. And given the motives of why the Nazis enacted some programmes, is it any little surprise that the Nazis were returned back with "love"?

Moving on...

horrible and massive though the Nazi crimes were, they were anything but unique. For a start, government by tyranny is, if anything, normal in human history. And both antisemitism and eugenic theories were normal in prewar Europe. Further back in history, even Martin Luther wrote a most vicious and well-known attack on the Jews.

First of all, if govt by tyranny is normal how can it be inherently leftist? Secondly, Well we finally get him to acknowledge both antisemitism and eugenic theories were normal in prewar Europe, but it's a terribly weak admission as i have demonstrated that both existed on the left AND on the  right. Of course he'll never admit that it was.

As to Luther, see here for how his ideas helped influence Nazi ones! though of course, Hitler's Anti-semitism was bound up with German Nationalism too.

"A line of anti-Semitic descent from Martin Luther to Adolf Hitler is easy to draw. Both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by a demonologized universe inhabited by Jews. 'Know, Christian,' wrote Luther, 'that next to the devil thou hast no enemy more cruel, more venomous and violent than a true Jew .' Hitler himself, in that early dialogue with Dietrich Eckhart, asserted that the later Luther - that is, the violently anti-Semitic Luther - was the genuine Luther. Luther's protective authority was invoked by the Nazis when they came to power, and his anti-Semitic writings enjoyed a revival of popularity. To be sure, the similarities of Luther's anti-Jewish exhortations with modern racial anti-Semitism and even with Hitler's racial policies are not merely coincidental. They all derive from a common historic tradition of Jew-hatred, whose provenance can be traced back to Haman's advice to Ahasuerus. But modern German anti-Semitism had more recent roots than Luther and grew out of a different soil - not that German anti-Semitism was new; it drew part of its sustenance from Christian anti-Semitism, whose foundation had been laid by the Catholic Church and upon which Luther built. It was equally a product of German nationalism. Modern German anti-Semitism was the bastard child of the union of Christian anti-Semitism with German nationalism." - Lucy Dawidowicz, "The war against the jews", p23.
and Nazi theories of German racial superiority differed from then-customary British beliefs in British racial superiority mainly in that the British views were implemented with typical conservative moderation whereas the Nazi views were implemented with typical Leftist fanaticism and brutality

Er no, the fact that Hitler managed to carry out what some of the more millitant conservatives before him could only dream of doing is testament to his Rightism, not any leftism

And another aspect of Hitler's "normality" is that, as he came closer to power, he did reject the outright nationalization of industry as too Marxist. As long as the State could enforce its policies on industry, Hitler considered it wisest to leave the nominal ownership and day to day running of industry in the hands of those who had already shown themselves as capable of running and controlling it. This policy is broadly similar to the once much acclaimed Swedish model of socialism in more recent times so it is amusing that it has often been this policy which has underpinned the common claim that Hitler was Rightist. What is Leftist in Sweden was apparently Rightist in Hitler! There are of course many differences between postwar Sweden and Hitler's Germany but the point remains that Hitler's perfectly reasonable skepticism about the virtues of nationalizing all industry is far from sufficient to disqualify him as a Leftist.

Differences? The post war Swedish model,was built on Free unions bargaining on wages, not preparing for a full out war via militaristic planning programs as was the case in Nazi Germany. It is not in anyway leftist to propare for imperial war.The Swedish model was a peacuful way to create jobs and rise wages to keep up aggregate demand in depression and implement modest democracy at workplace etc. Not build a military for the purposes of imperialistic wars and putting people in horror camps. So no, Post war Sweden saw a political economy partially geared towards the betterment of the lower classes through democratic means. A centre-left political economy. Nazi germany was none of that and all the evidence therfore still points to it having an extreme Right wing political economy. So all we see from Ray here is just superficial nonsense.


Now as to hegel, what exactly was this "conservative liberal's" stance on Christianity?

"Hegel is a Christian, but not an orthodox one by the Nicene Creed. He denies the precedence of the Father, from whom the Son and the Spirit proceed. He denies that lordship is the meaning of divinity, so that Christ manifests divinity only as the risen Lord. The true definition of divinity is Spirit. But Hegel is not an ancient Gnostic like Marcion or Valentinus. He does not denigrate the body as the kingdom of the devil. He affirms the incarnation and construes natures as the logos made flesh, as spirit, i.e., the infinite Christ. He is a modern, Joachimite Gnostic: world history is the story of the logos making itself flesh in the rational state and human rights... [Hegelian philosophy] is still Christian even if not orthodox. To be a heretic one must after all first be a Christian" - Clark Butler in "New Perspectives on Hegel's Philosophy of Religion" ed by David Kolb, p139-141.
So more meaningless nonsense by Ray, as to his document, well it's been refuted by richard steigmann-gall's book "The Holy reich", and given the arguments in there, if one wishes to make the argument that Hitler was a socialist, than one has to accept that he was a Christian. Period!

Sunday 24 July 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 12, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 5"

But Neo-Nazis are Rightist!

A remaining important objection to the account I have given so far is that Hitler's few remaining admirers in at least the Anglo-Saxon countries all seem to be on the political far-Right. In discussing that, however, I must immediately insist that I am not discussing antisemitism generally. Antisemitism and respect for Hitler are far from the same thing. Although vocal support for antisemitism was in Hitler's day widespread across the American political spectrum -- from Henry Ford on the Right to "Progressives" on the Left -- such support is these days mostly to be found on the extreme Left and for such people Hitler is anathema. And the antisemitism of the former Soviet leadership also shows that antisemitism and respect for Hitler are not at all one and the same.

Of course he's not talking about Antisemitism on it's own, and yes Stalin was an antisemite, however Stalin's own anti-semitism should not be confused with that of Hitler's.

"Stalin was an anti-semite by most definitions but until after the war, it was more a russian mannerism than a dangerous obsession. He was never a biological racist like the nazis. However, he disliked any nationality that threatened loyalty to the multinational USSR. He embraced the russian people not because he rejected his own Georgian origins but for precisely the same reason: the Russians were the foundations and cement of the Soviet union. But after the war, the creation of Israel, the increased self-consciousness among Soviet Jews and the Cold War with America combined with his old prejudice to turn Stalin into a murderous Anti-Semite. Stalin and his [token] Jewish Comrades like Kaganovich were Proudly Internationalist. Stalin, however openly enjoyed jokes about national stereotypes. He certainly carried all the traditional Georgian prejudices against the moslem peoples of the caucasus whom he was to deport. He also persecuted Germans. He enjoyed the the Jewish jokes told by Pauker (himself a Jew) and Kobulov, and was amused when Beria called Kaganovich 'the israelite'. But he also enjoyed jokes about Armenians and Germans, and shared the Russian loathing for Poles: Until the 40's, Stalin was as Polonophobic as he was anti-semitic " - Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar", p310.
But in the Anglosphere countries Hitler DOES still have his admirers among a tiny band of neo-Nazis and it is true that these are usually called the extreme Right. They normally refer to themselves as "The Right",

If even neo-nazis call themselves Rightists and as i have demonstrated and will continue to do so that Hitler himself was a rightist. Why do you think that is? Is it because Nazism itself is rightist by any chance? Anyway he continues...

I must point out that the description "Far-Right" is a great misnomer for the successors of Hitler in modern-day Germany. As we will see,... modern-day German neo-Nazis are demonstrably just as Leftist as Hitler was. So are American, British and Australian neo-Nazis also Leftist in any sense?

No.

The answer to that is a simple one: They are pre-war Leftists, just as Hitler was. They are a relic in the modern world of thinking that was once common on the Left but no longer is. They are a hangover from the past in every sense. They are antisemitic just as Hitler was. They are racial supremacists just as Hitler was. They are advocates of discipline just as Hitler was. They are advocates of national unity just as Hitler was. They glorify war just as Hitler did etc. And all those things that Hitler advocated were also advocated among the prewar American Left.

Well he's already admitted that...
"vocal support for antisemitism was in Hitler's day widespread across the American political spectrum."

It may have been a very weak description, but it's there, which kind of gives the game away as regards to the rest of his statement for here he is guilty of Deception by omission, As i have already shown all he lists here was popular on the German right too, and in-fact the Right wing in general, and even today such ideas still linger on in some right wingers. GOP House hopeful Jim Russell for example has been caught praising racist practices and advocated eugenics in a 2001 essay he wrote!

And what about David Duke. Is he a left winger now?

That does however raise the question of WHY such thinking is seen as "Rightist" today. And the answer to THAT goes back to the nature of Leftism! The political content of Leftism varies greatly from time to time. The sudden about-turn of the Left on antisemitism in recent times is vivid proof of that

Antisemitism? Actually it is the Right wingers who have performed the U-turn on Jew hatred. once they were the Jews more bitter of their enemies, now they cannot get enough of Israel [This U-turn in fact means that left wingers have been left "hung out to dry" with regards to the mantle of Antisemitism] This reflects somewhat in how the Far-right treats Israel today. Nick Griffin for example claimed on TV that his party was the only party to support Israel in its war "against the terrorists" during Operation Cast Lead [though his real support for Israel i may say is i think dubious]. Right wing terrorist "Anders behring breivik" claimed to be a Zionist and friendly towards the Jews, In fact this article from Jta.org sums up the hypocritical nature of the relationship with Israel that these Right wingers. Here's an Excerpt:
 

"European right-populist parties increasingly have been waving the flag of friendship with Israel, as well as expressing vehement opposition to Europe's multicultural society.

"Last month, after it emerged that German-Swedish far-right politician Patrik Brinkmann had met in Berlin with Israeli Likud Party lawmaker Ayoub Kara, who is deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Kara be prevented from making further trips abroad. According to Ynet, Lieberman accused Kara of meeting with neo-Nazis and causing damage to Israel's image. Brinkman said he had reached out to Israeli rightists hoping to build a coalition against Islam


In postings on the website Document.no that appear to be by Breivik, the poster pondered whether one could "accept the moderate Nazis as long as they distance themselves" from the extermination of the Jews.
The words of right-wing populist politicians "are dangerous, it allows them to radicalize," Hajo Funke, an expert on right-wing extremism in Europe and the Holocaust at Touro College Berlin and the Free University Berlin, told JTA in a phone interview.

"It is a tactical viewpoint of the rising populist right-wing to use this kind of identification, or forced identification with Israel, to be accepted," he said. "They say, 'Our enemies are not any more the Jew ... the real enemy as you can see all over the world is Islam, and not only Islam, but the Islamic person.' This is the new, great danger."

Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told JTA that "in the recent years we have witnessed the phenomenon of radical rightists proclaiming their sympathy for Jews and their support for Israel, also in Germany," adding that "In many cases, it is clear that this is no more than a PR maneuver to create an air of respectability."
Actually what he writes there about Anti-semitism was just a projection as was pretty much the whole paragraph it was in almost. He's only projecting things onto the left that really are just as true of the right, add into that his deception by ommision. Aren't the tea partiers and Sarah Palin "push[ing] it to extremes in order to draw attention to themselves as being the good guys" and try to make us believe that they are "courageous champions of popular causes"? Okay then i'd better go tell Sarah Palin she's a Leftist and see if i can outrun the bullets from her Moose hunting rifle.

But the thinking of the man in the street does not change nearly as radically as Leftists do.

Or rightists, or simply politicians for that matter. In my country if a prime minister or political party pushes the electorate too far against their taste, they jump ship as it were.

Although it may no longer be fashionable, belief in the superiority of whites over blacks is still widespread, for instance. Such beliefs have become less common but they have not gone away.

Could it be because if we were to look at the side of his blog, we can see this?

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

Moving on:

Such beliefs have become less common but they have not gone away. They are however distinctly non-Leftist in today's climate of opinion so are usually defined as "Rightist" by default. So the beliefs of the neo-Nazis are Rightist only in the default sense of not being currently Leftist. They are part of the general stream of popular thinking but that part of it which is currently out of fashion.

And hopefully you can see why now this is nonsense!

And so it is because the old-fashioned thinking of the neo-Nazis is these days thoroughly excoriated by the Left that they see themselves as of the Right and reject any idea that they are socialists.

"Reject that they were socalists"? I wonder why given all i've wrote.

I can attest from my own extensive interviews with Australian neo-Nazis that they mostly blot out any mention of Hitler's socialism from their consciousness. The most I ever heard any of them make out of it was that, by "socialism", Hitler was simply referring to national solidarity and everybody pulling together.

And that was based most likely on their probably poor recollections of Hitler's "Volksgemeinschaft". Again see Ian Kershaw earlier. As to the ideas of Hegel which he then mentions, he's a very abstract thinker [the philosopher's philosopher as i have once heard it put] and someone who has been admired by the left and the right wing. I don't think he can be pigeonholed into any particular wing of thought. So one can cite him all day because it's meaningless. Neo-Cons like Francis fukuyama have been influenced by Hegel. Also "autarky and government control" are not intrinsic qualities of socialism.

And the neo-Nazis are assisted in their view of themselves as Rightist by Hitler's anticommunism. The falling-out among the Nazis and the Communists was in Hitler's day largely a falling-out among thieves but the latter half of the second world war made the opposition between the two very vivid in the public consciousness so that opposition has become a major part of the definition of what Nazism is. And Marxism/Leninism was avowedly internationalist rather than racist. Lenin and the Bolsheviks despised nationalism and wished to supplant national solidarity with class solidarity. Given the contempt for Slavs often expressed by Marx & Engels, one can perhaps understand that Lenin and his Russian (Slavic) Bolsheviks concentrated so heavily on Marx & Engels's vision of international worker solidarity and ignored the thoroughly German nationalism also often expressed by Engels in particular.

maybe, just maybe it's because Lenin saw something that JJ ray doesn't? Sorry, there's no real nationalism much less something as extreme as the extreme nationalism of the nazis in the writings of Marx and Engels except that gleaned from quotemines. And the final paragraph of the "But neo-Nazis are rightist part" is just full of superficialities and strawmans, So i'll skip it.

Insane?

So, Right wingers are insane. Leftists are sane. Hitler was sane therfore leftist?

Or is it .... Left wingers are insane. Right wingers are sane. Hitler was insane therfore leftist?

Either way, Sanity is not a determiner. Let's make the case he was sane.

Wednesday 13 July 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 11, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 4"

Non-Marxist objections

Objections to my account of Hitler as a Leftist can however be framed in more Anglocentric terms than the ones I have covered so far. In particular, my pointing to Hitler's subjugation of the individual to the State as an indication of his Leftism could be challenged on the grounds that conservatives too do on some occasions use government to impose restrictions on individuals -- particularly on moral issues. The simple answer to that, of course, is that conservatism is not anarchism. Conservatives do believe in SOME rules.

The simple answer to this is that Anarchism is a left wing philosophy too, see the writings of Mikhail Bakunin. But, as demonstrated elsewhere, Govt size is NOT a determiner for left and right.

At any rate even if we were to somehow concede that "traditional Anglo-Saxon conservatism is libertarian in that it supports freedom against the government." contentious though that notion may be to some. How does this change the fact that traditional German conservatism was not? and that it was in-fact authoritarian; it traditionally supports obedience towards the government."

"The crucial sociological determinants of German conservative ideology are to be found in the absence until 1870 of a centralized state; in the Lutheran heritage of the reformation, which fostered a submissive attitude towards authority; in the absence of a politically conscious middle class, and in the militaristic mentality of the Junker class, produced by it's need to hold down the conquered Slav peoples of eastern Europe whose land it possessed. There is in addition, the fact that Napoleon's liberal reforms set the pattern for the whole subsequent history of political and social reform in Germany to date. That tradition is a tradition of reform from above. The only system of govt ever created by the Germans for themselves, A J P Taylor acidly remarks, Was Hitler's Third Reich. Although that system was founded in Terror, and was unworkable without the secret police and the concentration Camps, it was also the only truly national one which Germany had created, since it offered something to every class of the population, whatever reservations particular groups might have had about the barbarianism it entailed. The old empire 'had been imposed by the armies of France and Austria; the German confederation had been imposed by Russia and Prussia, the Weimar republic by the Victories of the Allies. But the "Third Reich" rested solely on German force and German impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German People by themselves." - Noël O'Sullivan, "Conservatism" p80-81.

"It is not too much to talk of a progressive bureaucratization of Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and a concomitant growth among the inhabitants of the German states of habits of deference toward authority that seemed excessive to foreign observers. These last may have had ancient roots--it was a medieval pope who called Germany the terra obedientiae--but there is little doubt that they were encouraged by the traumatic effects of the [Thirty Years] war. The daily presence of death, the constant Angst of which Gryphius speaks in his poems, made the survivors willing to submit to any authority that seemed strong enough to prevent a recurrence of those terrors." - Gordon Craig, "The Germans", p22.

"Every nation has its principal motive. In Germany, it is obedience; in England, freedom; in Holland, trade: in France, the honor of the King." - Karl Friedrich Moser, writing in 1758, Quoted in Craig, "ibid", p23.

Here's the thing. Hitler himself may not have been a conservative in the strictest sense but the Nazis certainly had some conservative backing as their interests certainly overlapped. But that doesn't matter, because im not arguing that Hitler was conservative. While there are other factors involved such as that Prussian militarism, extreme nationalism, and the subservience of the social structure to an economic and social elite, the political economy question is the main determiner for left and Right. And this alone puts the Nazis squarely on the Right, for they, despite their early talk which was only propaganda, had a capitalist economy that was geared to support and give more power to the wealthy.

As with so much in life, it is all a matter of degree and in the centrist politics that characterize the Anglo-Saxon democracies, the degree of difference between the major parties can be small. But to compare things like opposition to homosexual "marriage" with the bloodthirsty tyranny exercised by Hitler, Stalin and all the other extreme Leftists is laughable indeed.


Demonology is demonology. But do you know what i find laughable? This...




And this


And this




And all the other Stupid Tea-Party Obama-Hitler references, and the Bush-Hitler references of the Left too which were equally laughable. The Reductio ad Hitlerum is a laughable piece of logic, Period.


And it is the extremists who show the real nature of the beast as far as Leftism is concerned. Once Leftists throw off the shackles of democracy and are free to do as they please we see where their values really lie. Extreme conservatism (i.e. libertarianism), by contrast, exists only in theory (i.e. it has never gained political power anywhere in its own right)


You may as well say that Communism, by the same type of thinking, "exists only in theory (i.e. it has never gained political power anywhere in its own right)". And Extreme conservativism is NOT libertarianism. Irving Kristol has this "interesting" take on Neoconservatives

"Neoconservatives are not libertarian in any sense. A conservative welfare state is perfectly consistent with the neoconservative perspective" - Irving Kristol, "Reflections of a Neoconservative", p77.
And an Extreme German Conservative in i guess it's traditional sense wouldn't be a libertarian minded person either would he? Afterall different places produce different Conservativms don't they? So his point about "Extreme conservativism" is nonsense. As to the part about Extremism, well when we see the Extreme Right throw off the Shackles of democracy we see where their values really lie don't we?

Tuesday 12 July 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 10, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 3"

Other Leftist nationalists


When it comes to Hitler and by extension Mussolini, we are NOT dealing with "leftist nationalists". Yes it is true that these creatures do exist and nationalism is NOT a determiner for left and right, I think it's important to make the distinction between rightist nationalists using the "socialist" tag for propaganda, as hitler and mussolini were and most certainly did, and leftist nationalists, who were Genuine socialists.

In the post-WW2 era, internationalism and a scorn for patriotism has become very dominant among far-Leftists but that was not always so. From Napoleon to Hitler there were also plenty of nationalist and patriotic versions of Leftism

True, but so what? Hitler was not a leftist!

That was part of what was behind the various diatribes of Marx and Lenin against "Bonapartism". "Bonapartism" was what we would now call Fascism.

Here's oxford's Take on Bonapartism.
Following the practices of Napoléon Bonaparte, First Consul and subsequently Emperor of France between 1799 and 1815, and/or his nephew Louis Bonaparte (Napoléon III), Emperor of France between 1851 and 1870. The term was given its specific meanings by Marx (see especially his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852). For Marx, Bonapartism was an opportunistic and populist alliance between part of the bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat (‘proletariat in rags’), which relied on plebiscites, in which Bonaparte set the questions, to secure legitimacy for the regime. For Marxists, Bonapartism represents the autonomy that the state may achieve when class forces in society are precisely balanced. Historically, Bonapartism stood for strong leadership and conservative nationalism without advocating a return to the ancien régime." Oxford concise Dictionary of Politics.

-

"Bonapartism has always been associated with the cult of the Bonaparte family, and Corsica has invariably been the stronghold of any movement connected with it. In political terms Bonapartism has usually been classified as right-wing, but a number of reservations have to be made.

Napoleon I ended the Revolution, but he attempted to bring about the reconciliation of the French. He established authoritarian government, but sought to preserve the work of the Revolution. He established the rule of notables, gave guarantees to property-owners, distributed hereditary titles, and increased centralization, but maintained the abolition of privileged casts and corporations and declared that careers were open to talent. Napoleon III was accused of establishing a police state and suppressing public opinion, but at the same time he was concerned with economic growth and with the plight of the poor. The notion that Bonapartism is impossible to define seems to be confirmed when one remembers that Napoleon I was famous for his military victories, while Napoleon III's defeats have never been forgotten.

The essence of Bonapartism is that it seeks to be a unifying force in a divided country and tries to achieve this by concentrating on the talents and reputation of an individual. Both emperors drew support from many varied sectors of the population. After 1870 Bonapartism did not die out; it was in the Bonapartist tradition that notables were elected to the National Assembly, and that striking miners shouted ‘Vive Napoléon IV!’ The movement led by General Boulanger to capture power between 1886 and 1892 had many of the characteristics of Bonapartism. The same has often been said of Gaullism." - The new Oxford Companion to Literature in French.

Although this website (Rays source) makes it out that he sat on the left of the chamber, ergo left wing but in the old outdated sense, but regardless of whether or not Bonapartism is left or right wing, what influence did he have on Hitler? Ray doesn't tell us. Overall, I would perhaps clasify Bonapartism as an authoritarian, centrist, perhaps centre right ideology as an absolute on the political spectrum, as does "The Napoleon Bonaparte Wiki"

"In a wider sense, Bonapartism refers to a broad centrist or center-right political movement that advocates the idea of a strong and centralised state, based on populism" - Reference is Outhwaite, William. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

and it was a rival reformist doctrine to Marxism long before the era of Hitler and Mussolini. It was more democratic (about as much as Hitler was), more romantic, more nationalist and less class-obsessed. The Bonapartist that Marx particularly objected to was in fact Napoleon III, i.e. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the original Napoleon. One of Louis's campaign slogans was: "There is one name which is the symbol of order, of glory, of patriotism; and it is borne today by one who has won the confidence and affection of the people." So, like the original Napoleon himself, the Bonapartists were both very nationalist and saw themselves as heirs to the French revolution.

Im not a specialist into the french revolution, I'll grant that Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was a nationalist, it wouldn't surprise me in the socio-political context. plus it doesn't matter as nationalism is not a determiner for left and right. But Hitler havng a modicum of democracy? what a Joke. And as for it being more democratic than marx, (and to repeat myself.) you need to remember that When Marx talks about "The dictatorship of the Proletarian" he doesn't mean an actual physical dictatorship but is referring to how society is structured through the concept of the 'Base' and the "Superstructure" and the interplay between the two.

You see, according to Marxian Theory, we now live in something called "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"; the social structure is apparantly mainly geared to support them and their interests and the bourgeoisie apparantly run the political structure for their own benefit

From this perspective, Marxists argue that this is why america has two parties that are just different flavors of the very same capitalist substance, Both parties are acceptable to the bourgeoisie that apparantly run the Superstructure. All Marx is saying is that a Worker's democracy that is run for the workers will change that and the base and Superstructure will be set in accordance with worker's needs and not capitalists. if you read his works, What Marx was striving for, was in fact a radical democracy.

So it was very grievous for most communists when, in his later writings, the ultra-Marxist Trotsky identified not only Fascism but also the Soviet State as "Bonapartist". That was one judgment in which Trotsky was undoubtedly correct, however!

Perhaps the term Bonapartism in a Marxist sense can be best understood is a term often used to refer to a situation in which counter-revolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. In the process, Marx argued, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a narrower ruling class, And Trotsky, being part of the so-called "Left Opposition" and believing that his communism was the true heir to the revolution of 1917, took that analysis to Stalin. He was arguing that stalin was not a true revolutionary and had in-fact created a new bourgeoisie to rule over the proletariat , ergo Trotsky, from the perspective of a far leftist was saying both Stalin and Nazi germany were rightist. Obviously not a correct analysis as far as Stalin is concerned

In other words, Trotsky labeled Stalin's regime as Bonapartist because he felt it shared similar traits.

"Napoleon’s downfall did not, of course, leave untouched the relations between the classes; but in its essence the social pyramid of France retained its bourgeois character. The inevitable collapse of Stalinist Bonapartism would immediately call into question the character of the USSR as a workers’ state."

It should be noted that Trotsky also claimed...

"Hitler’s program is the program of German capitalism, aggressive but bound hand and foot by Versailles and the results of the World War." -  Hitler's program (1934).

There have always been innumerable "splits" in the extreme Leftist movement -- and from the earliest days nationalism has often been an issue in those. Two of the most significant such splits occurred around the time of the Bolshevik revolution --- when in Russia the Bolsheviks themselves split into Leninists and Trotskyites and when in Italy Mussolini left Italy's major Marxist party to found the "Fascists". So the far Left split at that time between the Internationalists (e.g. Trotskyists) and the nationalists (e.g. Fascists) with Lenin having a foot in both camps. And both Marx and Engels themselves did in their lifetimes lend their support to a number of wars between nations. So any idea that a nationalist cannot be a Leftist is pure fiction.


Lenin was still an internationalist, he just realized after the trauma of the Civil war that the revolution could not survive unless the original base was built up and THEN the revolution moved forward. Trotsky wanted the revolution to move forward without regard to the forces that would be brought against them.

Internationalism in the face of the power of the nation state to demand ones allegiance is admittedly difficult to maintain particularly amongst the rank and file, but nevertheless Communism by ideology is still internationalist. The split in the soviet Union wasn't really about nationalism but on how to and at what speed to proceed with the revolution.

And, in fact, the very title of Lenin's famous essay, "Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder" shows that Lenin himself shared the judgement that he was a Right-wing sort of Marxist. Mussolini was somewhat further Right again, of course, but both were to the Right only WITHIN the overall far-Left camp of the day


The "Left-Wing" that Lenin is talking about here is the anarchist school,and those that wanted to prematurely dissolve the state before the revolution was complete, it's like the disagreement between Marx and Bakunin. Mussolini was on the Right-wing period, not on the Left at all. private industrialists were empowered and enriched by his regime and he never adopted any sort of socialist program.
"He (Mussolini) was relieved no doubt to find the commanding heights of Italian capitalism joining the great majority of the liberal order and certainly most landowners in applauding the march on Rome." (don't misread here, the word 'liberal' is being used in its actual form and not the politicized form that exists in the US. One could substitute 'upper middle-class' or 'Petty Bourgeoisie' here) Thereafter he and de' Stefani were careful to present the new government as fiscally orthodox, preoccupied with cutting wasteful expenditure but willing to assist capital by the denationalization of the telephone network and the cancellation of Giolitti's investigation into excessive war profits, and determined to balance the budget." - RJB Bosworth, "Mussolini's Italy", p224.
and wasn't that McCains platform too? And the actions of the Italian fascists showed their capitalist intentions.

"Once in power the fascists issued the so called "Carta del Lavoro" or Labor Charter which encouraged private entrepreneurship and specifically stated, "State intervention in economic production will only happen when private initiative is lacking or insufficient and when the political interests of the state are directly involved." - Bosworth, "ibid", p227. 


If you want to read Lenin's "1920 pamphlet against ultra-leftism and anarchism", You can find it here.


It should further be noted in this connection that the various European Socialist parties in World War I did not generally oppose the war in the name of international worker brotherhood but rather threw their support behind the various national governments of the countries in which they lived. Just as Mussolini did, they too nearly all became nationalists. Nationalist socialism is a very old phenomenon.


Nice of Ray to ignore the work of all those like Jean Jaurès who prevented a previous war and attempted to also stop WWI. And to also forget those on all sides that continued to be against the war even as they were compelled by their gov'ts to fight in it. And Mussolini was ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention in the War.

And it still exists today. Although many modern-day US Democrats often seem to be anti-American, the situation is rather different in Australia and Britain. Both the major Leftist parties there (the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party) are perfectly patriotic parties which express pride in their national traditions and achievements. Nobody seems to have convinced them that you cannot be both Leftist and nationalist.

One problem, Ray is what Ray does here is to mistake the patriotism that is i think common in every nation state and on both sides of the political spectrum, ie that of having pride in your nation's achievements with the extreme rightist nationalism of Hitler. This is what i was talking about in the beginning of this post, it's a real logiclal fallacy on his part.

That is of course not remotely to claim that either of the parties concerned is a Nazi or an explicitly Fascist party. What Hitler and Mussolini advocated and practiced was clearly more extremely nationalist than any major Anglo-Saxon political party would now advocate.

They were good nationalists, as Ray now admits, contridicting his earlier claims. But that aside, as this offers us no defense of his fallacy, The connotation is still there.

And socialist parties such as the British Labour Party were patriotic parties in World War II as well. And in World War II even Stalin moved in that direction. If Hitler learnt from Mussolini the persuasive power of nationalism, Stalin was not long in learning the same lesson from Hitler. When the Wehrmacht invaded Russia, the Soviet defences did, as Hitler expected, collapse like a house of cards. The size of Russia did, however, give Stalin time to think and what he came up with was basically to emulate Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin reopened the churches, revived the old ranks and orders of the Russian Imperial army to make the Red Army simply the Russian Army and stressed patriotic appeals in his internal propaganda. He portrayed his war against Hitler not as a second "Red" war but as 'Vtoraya Otechestvennaya Vojna' -- The Second Patriotic War -- the first such war being the Tsarist defence against Napoleon. He deliberately put himself in the shoes of Russia's Tsars!

Russian patriotism proved as strong as its German equivalent and the war was turned around. And to this day, Russians still refer to the Second World War as simply "The Great Patriotic War". Stalin may have started out as an international socialist but he soon became a national socialist when he saw how effective that was in getting popular support. Again, however, it was Mussolini who realized it first. And it is perhaps to Mussolini's credit as a human being that his nationalism was clearly heartfelt where Stalin's was undoubtedly a mere convenience.


Stalin may have been was using patriotic propaganda, but he was still something of a internationalist in terms of ideology and What Ray forgets here is that, even during the war the Russians still managed to produce posters with internationalistic themes, like this one for example. Note the Black person and the Chinese person? It translates as "We greet fighters against fascism" according to SovMusic.ru


No sorry Ray, here's the truth of the matter:
"Stalin and his Jewish Comrades like Kaganovich were Proudly Internationalist." - Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar", p310.


As to Hitler being a Social Democrat? Well that was something Hitler manages to call a "pestilential whore, cloaking herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hope humanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, since otherwise the earth might well become rid of humanity." - Mein Kampf, vol 1, chapter 2

And his claim about Nazi-KPD collaboation has already been covered

Monday 27 June 2011

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part Nine, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 2"

Objection 2

Kangas

This is the essay he's talking about. And if you haven't read it yet, it's best to do so before reading the rest of this post.


Modern day Leftists of course hate it when you point out to them that Hitler was one of them. They deny it furiously -- even though in Hitler's own day both the orthodox Leftists who represented the German labor unions (the SPD) and the Communists (KPD) voted WITH the Nazis in the Reichstag (German Parliament) on various important occasions -- though not on all occasions.

As explained elsewhere, Any Nazi/communist collaboration had machiavellian justifications, especialy against the Weimar democracy that they both detested. The Nazi voted against it from the Right, and the Communists voted against from the Left; It still remains that there were two entirely different sides and reasons behind it. And additionally the Nazis also marched lock step with the other right-wing parties like the Nationalists and the Stahlhelm. And the Nazis went against the expropriation referendum of 25/26. So when they had a chance to act in a real socialist manner, They actualy failed to do so. Both the SPD and the KDP supported passage of that referendum, the Nazis did not.

"Although the SPD and KDP both supported the referendum, the communists failed to create United Front committees, and the two parties conducted entirely separate campaigns." - Bernhard Fulda "Press and politics in the Weimar Republic", p121-122.

Anyway, lets talk about the main point here.

As part of that denial, an essay by the late Steve Kangas is much reproduced on the internet. Entering the search phrase "Hitler was a Leftist" will bring up multiple copies of it. Kangas however reveals where he is coming from in his very first sentence: "Many conservatives accuse Hitler of being a leftist, on the grounds that his party was named "National Socialist." But socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production". It does? Only to Marxists.

Er. Sorry, Socialism at it's most basic is indeed an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources, How you achieve this is of course, another matter. But the means of production in nazi Germany, ideologically consisted of Private property, and their economy made capitalism an adjunct of the state, as Ian Kershaw told us earlier.

"Whatever level of state intervention, it could be argued quite forcefully that belief in private property was central to fascist ideology, as [Roger] Eatwell states: the sympathetic reference to socialism did not mean that fascists accepted the abolition of private property. This was seen as a law of nature." - "The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right" p141.

Plus The Nazis never interfered with the profits made by such large German firms as Krupp, Siemens AG, and IG Farben. In fact...

"Nazi planning left business intact, from the great firms like IG Farben all the way down to small retailers and backstreet artisanal workshops" - Richard Evans, "The Third Reich in Power", p371.

Before anyone brings up dictionaries, one does not use a dictionary to find the meaning of important concepts and ideas, it's really only for spelling. we look for answers to rather complex concepts, in real academic books.

But let's have a look at the Dictionary definition for socialism anyway shall we?

Socialism

Pronunciation:/ˈsəʊʃəlɪz(ə)m/

noun
[mass noun]

a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole

. Policy or practice based on this theory

. (In Marxist theory) a transitional social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of Communism

The term ‘socialism’ has been used to describe positions as far apart as anarchism, Soviet state Communism, and social democracy; however , it necessarily implies an opposition to the untrammelled workings of the economic market. The socialist parties that have arisen in most European countries from the late 19th century have generally tended towards social democracy.

Contrast this to what Zeev Sternhell says on p7-8 in his "The Birth of Fascist Ideology", which i have already quoted from. Any intervention in the Nazi economy was only for its military ends and had nothing to do with socialism. Nazi Germany; private ownership, private profits. Not socialism!

And perhaps one could consider Richard Overy, who never calls the Nazis socialist. He refers to Germany as having a dirigisme economy which is a form of capitalism, and Hitler a "reluctant dirigiste" at that because again he only wanted to control the parts of the economy that were related to war. See his book "War and Economy in the Third Reich", p2.

So Kangas is saying only that Hitler was less Leftist than the Communists -- and that would not be hard. Surely a "democratic" Leftist should see that as faintly to Hitler's credit, in fact.

No, Kangas is not saying that at all

At any event, Leonard Peikoff makes clear the triviality of the difference:

Contrary to the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership, they explained, is secondary; what counts is the issue of CONTROL. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property -- so long as the state reserves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.


Which sounds just like the Leftists of today.

And the German owner was still the master of his property, the system of regulation did not take over total control as Peikoff suggests. It's Just more of the same superficial Bullshit. If anything, the Nazi economy resembles more the modern day Japanese economy rather than anything else inherently modern leftist, as even a certain "Robert Locke" reminds us. Both Nazi Germany and Japan are Dirigisme capitalist economies, neither socialist.

Japan is something that is virtually impossible by definition within the frame of reference of neoliberal economics: a non-socialist state-directed system.  To over-simplify a bit, it is a centrally-planned capitalist economy.

Neoliberal economists are dimly aware of the fact that fascist and Nazi economics were centrally-planned but not socialist, but they tend to dismiss these economic systems because of the attendant political horrors and have made precious little effort to develop rigorous theoretical accounts of how they worked.  As we shall see, the Japanese [economic] system has achieved many of the things the fascists wanted.

But it must be stressed, just because they share economic similarities does not mean that modern day Japan is a Fascist or a Nazi state. It clearly isn't Totalitarian for one thing!

As to Peikoff himself, You'd think it be hard to make Bill O'Reilly look sane and rational, but he actualy manages to achieve just that



And just for the lols, Here's part of an amusing Conservative critique of him


"Peikoff, deriving all his intellectual inspiration from the corrupted sources of Rand's quasi-leftist view of human nature, is not fit to give advice on any important question of social policy [or History for that matter. My addition.]. Lacking any knowledge of the fundamentals of realpolitik, his proposals can only serve to distract the individual from confronting the real problems at issue. Randian idealism about human nature and morality is incapable of providing guidance in a world that is far different than either Rand or Peikoff imagines it to be. By following it in their own lives, Rand and Peikoff have brought ignominy and ruin upon themselves and their cause. We should all be wary of taking advice from anyone inspired by such polluted intellectual currents"

Some other points made by Kangas are highly misleading. He says for instance that Hitler favoured "competition over co-operation". Hitler in fact rejected Marxist notions of class struggle and had as his great slogan: "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer" (One People, One State, one leader). He ultimately wanted Germans to be a single, unified, co-operating whole under him. 

The nazi regime operated a Working Towards the Führer concept, Nazi Germany was both a monocracy (rule of one) and polycracy (rule of many). Hitler held absolute power but did not choose to exercise it very much; the rival fiefdoms of the Nazi state fought each other and attempted to carry out Hitler's vaguely worded wishes and dimly defined orders by "Working Towards the Führer". and if that's not competition over co-operation, then i do not know what is. for more details, see Ian kershaw here, but i think the following quote sums up the idea well...


"Fritz Wiedemann, one of Hitler's adjutants, wrote that Hitler 'disliked the study of documents. I have sometimes secured decisions from him, even ones about important matters, without his ever asking to see the relevant files. He took the view that many things sorted themselves out on their own if one did not interfere.' The result was, in the words of Otto Dietrich, Hitler's press chief, that 'in the twelve years of his rule in Germany Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilized state.'

Nor does Hitler's daily routine at this time sound like that of a political workaholic. Fritz Wiedemann wrote, 'Hitler would appear shortly before lunch, read through the press cuttings prepared by Reich press chief Dietrich, and then go into lunch. When Hitler stayed at the Obersalzberg [the mountain in southern Bavaria on whose slopes Hitler built his house - the Berghof], it was even worse. There he never left his room before 2.00 p.m. Then he went to lunch. He spent most afternoons taking a walk; in the evening straight after dinner, there were films.'

Albert Speer, the architect who was to become the Nazi armaments minister, tells how, when Hitler was staying in Munich, there would be only 'an hour or two' a day available for conferences: 'Most of his time he spent marching about building sites, relaxing in studios, cafés and restaurants, or hurling long monologues at his associates, who were already amply familiar with the unchanging themes and painfully tried to conceal their boredom.' The fact that Hitler 'squandered' his working time was anathema to Speer, a man who threw himself into his work. 'When,' Speer often asked himself, 'did he really work?' The conclusion was inescapable: 'In the eyes of the people Hitler was the leader who watched over the nation day and night. This was hardly so.'

Hitler was not a dictator like Stalin who sent countless letters and orders interfering with policy, yet he exercised as much or more ultimate authority over the state and was at least as secure as a dictator. How was this possible? How could a modern state function with a leader who spent a great deal of time in his bedroom or in a café?

One answer has been provided by Professor Ian Kershaw in a careful study of a seemingly unimportant speech given by Werner Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, on 21 February 1934. Willikens said:

"Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Führer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realise sooner or later. On the contrary, up til now everyone with a post in the new germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Führer ... in fact it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Führer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough. But anyone who really works towards the Führer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work." - Werner Willikens [State Secretary in the ministry of food], speech. 21 feb 1934.

'Working towards the Führer' suggests a strange kind of political structure. Not one in which those in power issue orders but one in which those at the lower end of the hierarchy initiate policies themselves within what they take to be the spirit of the regime and carry on implementing them until corrected. Perhaps the nearest example we have in British history occurred when Henry II is supposed to have said, 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?' and the barons rushed to Canterbury to murder Thomas à Becket. No direct order was given, but the courtiers sensed what would please their liege lord.

Professor Kershaw believes that the practice of 'working towards the Führer' is a key insight into understanding how the Nazi state functioned, not just in the 1930s, but also during the war, and is particularly relevant when examining the provenance of many of the administrative decisions taken in the occupied territories. It gives the lie to the excuse offered by some Nazis that they were just 'acting under orders'. Often, in fact, they were creating their own orders within the spirit of what they believed was required of them.

Nor does the idea of 'working towards the Führer' excuse Hitler from blame. The reason Nazi functionaries acted as they did was because they were trying to make an informed judgment about what Hitler wanted of them and, more often than not, the substance of their actions was retrospectively legitimized. The system could not have functioned without Hitler or without those subordinates who initiated what they believed were desired policies.
'Working towards the Führer' can be used to explain the decision-making process in many of those areas of domestic policy that Hitler, through temperament, neglected. Most political parties, for example, have a carefully conceived economic policy at the core of their manifesto. The Nazis did not. Indeed, one academic joked to me that the question, 'What was Hitler's economic policy?' was easy to answer -'He hadn't got one.' Perhaps that is unfair in one respect, for despite a lack of policy, Hitler always had economic aims. He promised to rid Germany of unemployment, and, less publicly trumpeted but, in his eyes, more important, to bring about rearmament. Initially he had only one idea how to achieve this and that was to ask Hjalmar Schacht, a former president of the Reichsbank and a brilliant economist, to 'sort it out'. Apart from rearmament and strengthening the army, Hitler had little detailed interest in domestic policies.
Surprisingly, for those who believe that a successful economy has to be guided by a political leader, in the short term Hitler's delegation of the economy to Schacht seemed to work. Schacht pursued a policy of reflation financed on credit, and alongside this implemented a work-creation programme based on compulsory work service for the unemployed." - Laurence Rees,"The Nazis: A Warning from History", p52 -55.


See also, Richard Evans...
"The Darwinian principles that animated the regime dictated that competition between companies and individuals would remain the guiding principle of the economy, just as competition between different agencies of state and party were the guiding principles of politics and administration." - Richard Evans, "The Third Reich in Power", p410.

Other claims made by Kangas are simply laughable: He says that Hitler cannot have been a Leftist because he favoured: "politics and militarism over pacifism, dictatorship over democracy". Phew! So Stalin was not political, not a militarist and not a dictator? Enough said.

He was, he was, he was which is why Kangas claims Stalin NOT to be a socialist! Notice how Ray doesn't actualy refute his arguments but instead repeats them?

In summary, then, Kangas starts out by defining socialism in such a way that only Communists can be socialists and he then defines socialism in a way that would exclude Stalin from being one! So is ANYBODY a socialist according to Kangas? Only Mr Brain-dead Kangas himself, I guess.

See last comment. Well me and Ray can agree Stalin exhibited a Totalitarian varient of Socialism, but where we disagree is that it doesn't mean Socialism itself is inherently totalitarian. As Kangas states...

"Socialism has been proposed in many forms. The most common is social democracy, where workers vote for their supervisors, as well as their industry representatives to regional or national congresses. Another proposed form is anarcho-socialism, where workers own companies that would operate on a free market, without any central government at all. As you can see, a central planning committee is hardly a necessary feature of socialism. The primary feature is worker ownership of production."

If you're interested, this by the way is what Kangas wrote about Soviet Union's supposed "socialist credentials"...

"The Soviet Union failed to qualify as socialist because it was a dictatorship over workers -- that is, a type of aristocracy, with a ruling elite in Moscow calling all the shots. Workers cannot own or control anything under a totalitarian government. In variants of socialism that call for a central government, that government is always a strong or even direct democracy… never a dictatorship. It doesn't matter if the dictator claims to be carrying out the will of the people, or calls himself a "socialist" or a "democrat." If the people themselves are not in control, then the system is, by definition, non-democratic and non-socialist."

So does Ray do a good job refuting Kangas? Not really!