Scarry speech by Merkel

[q1a2z3]

Merkel was remembering the genocide of the NAZIs in her speech, BUT she said the NAZIs were right wing. This is so wrong. They were/are left wing and full of homosexuals. Exactly like what is happening in America today. Stop the gay-mafia!

[hippifried]

The nazis were right wing.

You're homosexual.

[yodajazz]

They tolerated a gay segment of the party, until they got close to being in power. Then they purged them and sent many other gays to concentration camps with their zeal to create a pure German master race. Sounds like someone needs to study more history.

[notdrunk]

The nazis were right wing.

You're homosexual.

They were not "right wing." They were more "left wing" than "right wing." For example, they were not big supporters of private property. They didn't mind nationalizing businesses. They were against capitalism because they thought it was a tool of the Jews. There was a reason they called themselves Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The Nazis did have some right wing ideas like being very anti-communist. However, basically, the Nazis were Socialists mixed with nationalist ideals.

Yoda is right. During the early 1930s, the Nazis did use homosexuals in their quest for power. The SA (the brown shirts) leadership had homosexuals in its rank. A number of them were killed during the Night of the Long Knives.

[hippifried]

Well gee. Isn't historical revisionism fun?

The nazis were fascist, but fascism isn't necessarily nazism. Hitler was a follower of Mussolini & Franco. Fascism is & always was basically founded on the idea of corporate control of government. The nazi difference was the myopic desire to have that control & all social control in the hands of the mythical Aryan race. The nazis didn't have any problem with private property. They just considered anyone outside "the race" to be subhuman & therefore unworthy of owning anything. That wasn't a problem in Italy or Spain, or at least not to the extent it was in Germany. The nazis were fanatics. They weren't nationalizing business. They were just making sure that business was in the hands of people, as opposed to those subhuman animals.

Get the drift? Hitler was a megalomaniacal nutjob who scared the hell out of both Mussolini & Franco. Franco figured he had enough physical separation & declared Spain neutral in the war. Mussolini didn't have that luxury, so he made a deal with the devil in order to not have to face the German war machine. He was stalling for time because he knew he couldn't hang with the Germans & couldn't count on support from anywhere else. Oops! Wrong decision. He wasn't counting on the Japanese error & the Americans entering the war.

So what, exactly, is it that you think "right" & "left" is all about? They've become false dichotomies because all the rhetoric is about extreme fanaticism. Well, except for the droll historical nonsense about 18th century French politics, like anybody could ever give a rat's ass. Basically, it's a description of equality standards. On the extreme right, there is no equality. It's all power & caste, & society stagnates. On the extreme left, equality is forced. Differences are stifled & society stagnates. It's not really about economics or systems per se'. It's certainly not synomynous with "conservative" & "liberal".

Hitler was the most extreme right wing. Stalin was a right winger. Mussolini & Franco were comparative centrists. Mao was a left wing extremist. We've been bombarded with cold war rhetoric for the last half century, but it wasn't until the last decade or so that the revisionists started trying to spin the nazis as left wing. The same revisionists are trying to remake Joe McCarthy as an American hero. The problem isn't in the leanings of people's beliefs, but in the fanaticism of fundamentalist ideology of any bent.

[notdrunk]

The Nazis nationalized their film industry so it could spread the Nazi message and etc. Junkers, the aircraft manufacturer, was forced to focus on making military aircraft instead of civilian planes. If you ignore the racial aspects of the Nazis, they favored many things that would be considered leftist. For example, they favored a welfare state and the abolition of unearned income. As well, increased regulation and government intervention.

Wouldn't Stalin be considered a left winger under your own definition? He believed in a form of forced equality because of the global revolution against the Bourgeoisie belief.

You cannot just say the Nazis were right wingers and be done with it. Their social policy was definitely on the right; however, their economic policy was more to the left.

[hippifried]

That doesn't work. You're trying to equate commandeering with nationalization. It's not the same thing at all. We did it too. Everything was geared to the war effort. There was rationing too.

Hitler took control of Germany in 1933, & immediately started gearing up for war. Lebensraum was the buzzword. They wanted to expand in all directions & push non-Germans east of the Urals. There's no evidence that the nazis were ever left in any way. This is just a late revisionist effort to remove taint from the right. They're counting on people, especially younger people, not knowing the difference because the word "socialist" is in there, & therefore must have something to do with Marxism. It's all crap. I CAN say that the nazis were right wing & leave it at that because it's true.

Stalin wasn't about equality at all. He was a dictator. He was about state run production, but who ran the state? He wasn't even a Marxist. There was definitely no "dictatorship of the proletariat" under Stalin. The only difference between him & a Tsar is that he didn't choose his successor.

[notdrunk]

Hitler didn't immediately gear up for war. The Four Year Plan didn't start until 1936. You are talking about social policy (I agree it was right wing) and I am talking about economic policy. The Nazis favored the creation of a welfare state. A welfare state is not a right wing idea. Their 25-point plan, their policies, was a mixture of left and right wing ideas. Search it out for yourself. It shouldn't be hard. Search for "25-point program."

[hippifried]

The Nazis favored the creation of a welfare state. A welfare state is not a right wing idea.

Well, I disagree with you on their motivations, but it's irrelevant because a welfare state actually is a right wing idea. It's a way of keeping people down & dependent on the state. Artificial interference in the free market isn't right or left. It's the excuses & methods that make it right or left.

Once again, you're trying to use today's American political rhetoric to describe something that happened somewhere else before the rhetoric was even developed. It doesn't wash. The right/left construct doesn't equate to conservative & liberal at all, regardless of the rhetoric. Socialist doesn't equate to Marxist. Especially in the context of European political rhetoric from 75 or 80 years ago. Cold war linguistic revisions were always bogus to an extent, & they certainly don't work here. Marx wrote his thesis during the the industrial revolution, based on what he saw as the emerging capitalist system being an extension & revision of feudalism. The left/right construct predates Marx, & doesn't work in the context that current historical revisionists are trying to create.

Hitler didn't immediately gear up for war.

Sure he did. The agenda that brought him to power was German expansion & negating the Versailles treaty. 15 years hadn't even passed between the armitice & his becoming Chancellor.Germany was in the grips of economic depression, & it was the military buildup that pulled them out. Just like here. The nazis were militarists, & designed everything to conform to a rigid hierarchical structure. Ergo, right wing. A feudal construct in the modern world.

[SarahG]

The nazis were right wing.

You're homosexual.

They were not "right wing." They were more "left wing" than "right wing." For example, they were not big supporters of private property. They didn't mind nationalizing businesses. They were against capitalism because they thought it was a tool of the Jews. There was a reason they called themselves Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. The Nazis did have some right wing ideas like being very anti-communist. However, basically, the Nazis were Socialists mixed with nationalist ideals.

Yoda is right. During the early 1930s, the Nazis did use homosexuals in their quest for power. The SA (the brown shirts) leadership had homosexuals in its rank. A number of them were killed during the Night of the Long Knives.

Are you SURE you're "not drunk"?

You're trying to apply American politics to historical Europe, which is a fallacy.

We (we being Americans) have a very perverted use of political terminology when talking about stuff like "left wing", "right wing," "liberal," and "conservative."

The term liberal comes from the word liberty for a reason. The founding fathers were liberal in the true sense of the word because they saw a value in private property rights, and individual civil liberties. The purpose of government was to protect these universal personal rights.

This was a great deviation from the conservatives & reactionaries of the time who were more concerned with titles then individual liberties. To the conservatives, the purpose of government is to use the masses as a tool for the gain of the monarchy/government itself. People had a duty to "god, king and country" first and foremost, even if it came at the cost of their private property and personal "liberties."

The terms "left wing," and "right wing" come from the French Revolution where they were debating not communism, but the power of the Estates of the Realm. The "left wing" wanting to dissolve and/or severely reform the amount of power available to the monarchy & clergy, in order to protect the individual rights of the people, whereas the "right wing" wanted to either preserve the system of monarchical/church dominance, or go further and give the two even more vast power.

With Germanic politics, a rightist (pre-Cold War) would be someone who believed everyone had a duty to the fatherland which overruled their individual rights, and this duty was embodied in the form of the patriarchal leader. Thus, 2nd Reich you existed to serve the Kaiser first & foremost, and then, AT HIS WILL, you could entertain yourself with limited individual freedoms that did not get in the way... and then when the Nazis came to power they essentially stole the concept and reused it. Führer is an older title that comes from the 2nd Reich, even though people only know it from the 3rd...

Now, I suppose there is some confusion because both extremes of the right & left are similarly authoritarian (life under the Führer, and life under Stalin not being so different for a peon of the masses) but the missed part of this is that the objectives are different. Right extremists take the position that this duty to the country (i.e. "Fatherland") is paramount to the point of being all that matters, hence nationalization of certain industries, whilst Left extremists take the position that nationalization is needed... not "for the country" but "for the workers." This is why anyone who attempts to plot political philosophy today, does so not with a simple left/right X-axis, but a multi-dimensional left/right X-axis combined with an authoritarian/libertarian Y-axis.