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.

[notdrunk]

As you may noticed, I tried to explain my position more. I tried to separate the economic policy from the social policy. The Nazi's economic policy was not truly right-wing. The Labour Party's economic policy in the UK is more to the right than the Nazis. I agreed with hippi in that their social policy was right-wing because they were authoritarian.

[hippifried]

What, pray tell, is right wing economic policy?



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.
There's those frogs I mentioned earlier. Somehow I just knew someone would research it for me & get the timeline right. The meaning of the terminology hasn't really changed, despite the herculean efforts of the Limbaughs in this world to revise history & twist the language to convince the gullible that everybody's better off if they can't get a raise & the rich & powerful don't pay taxes. It's all very entertaining, but so sad when people actually buy into the memes.

[notdrunk]

What, pray tell, is right wing economic policy?

Neoliberalism is the extreme "right-wing" economic policy. I believe it deals with market regulation and trade. You start to go left when you believe in some regulation for the market and restriction on trade.

[SarahG]

The meaning of the terminology hasn't really changed,

I say its open to debate, there comes a point where the meaning really does change over time. The way "right wing" and "left wing" are used in our culture are so far from the original/correct meaning that it might as well be new terminology altogether.

After all, when was the last time we had a debate about the power of The Church (as in, the formal Church, not talking about the role of religion) or the Monarchy, or the Nobility? The later two don't even exist in our country anymore (well, unless we chose to be picky and count Americans who have been knighted by the Queen- but those roles are honorary and do not include the actual title, hence Bill Gates is not Sir Gates, and Kissinger is not Sir Kissinger....).

[hippifried]

I don't even know what "neo-liberalism" is supposed to mean, & don't care. Liberal is liberal whether it's neo, classic, paleo, or whatever. The basic concept & mindset stays the same, regardless of the situational changes.

Liberalism is the freedom to be who you are, think & do as you please, & accept & tolerate those same freedoms for everyone else. This nation was founded on liberal principles. Left wing too, even though that term hadn't been made up yet. In declaring our independence, our first statement of principle is acceptance of the self evident truth that all men are created equal. That's who we are as a nation. We rejected all of that monarchy & nobility caste nonsense, & because of that, we have no peasantry to speak of. We rejected the feudal system.

Liberalism is the basis for free enterprize. Notice I didn't say capitalism. Monopolies are anathema to a free market. It doesn't matter if it's government or corporate. Unfettered capitalism will always consolidate into monopolies sooner or later as the big fish swallow the little fish. Under a system of corporate control of government, you can't stop it. There's no advocate for the consumer or the worker.

The nazis locked up the trade unionists & anybody who would advocate breaking up the monopolized industries. Not just Jews & communists, but anybody who dissented at all. To the monopolists, Hitler wasn't a problem. It's always easier to deal with a single strongman. You can just make up the rules as you go. When the state is gearing up for war, they become your biggest customer. Industrial tycoons love war. If they can get the state to eliminate their competition for them, all the better. Saves money. Sounds cynical, but there's no ideology or morality involved in large monetary transactions. I would imagine the Krupp industries had as much pull in nazi Germany as anybody that we ever hear about. They were the modern feudal overlords, sans titles of nobility. There was nothing left wing about the nazis, from any angle.

[Rogers]

I'm quite honestly surprised at just how often this bullshit keeps coming up. And to be perfectly honest I find it disrespectful to all the Allied servicemen who fought and died to help bring an end to the Nazi's. Was Spain's Franco left or right wing? He was a military dictator interested in preserving the power or the Church and the State. He was therefore conservative and reactionary. Were his opponents left or right wing? They were democrats, socialists, and communists seeking change. These groups are fundamentally progressive. Which side did the Nazi's actively support in the Spanish Civil War by testing out their air-force in preparation for their forthcoming Blitzkrieg against Europe? Heard of the mass-murder of innocent civilians at a town called Guernica by any chance?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX5Cn7J-h6Y

It really is very simple:
Conservative/Reactionary = Right-wing.
Progressive = Left-wing.

Cappiche? :wink:

Nowhere in the "Communist Manifesto" does Marx mention a permanent dicatorship of the proletariat, it was only meant to be a temporary step in helping distribute power and wealth away from the ruling classes to the greater majority. But sadly power tends to corrupt and the commies became as bad as those that they replaced. This is what Orwell's "Animal Farm" is all about. Orwell was badly injured in the Spanish Civil War fighting for one of International Brigades against Franco. He lived through those times.

You simply have to understand that Hitler was twisted. He strongly held the common view at the time that Germany had lost the First World War because of Jews and Communists. Like many of his fellow Nazi's he felt completely sold out by his government after fighting so hard in the trenches. It was actually the British blockade of German ports that eventually did for the Kaiser. Hitler and a large segment of the German population continued to strongly believe that these groupings were continuing to undermine the German people. The Nazi's believed that the rights of ordinary Germans came before everything else, because the upper levels of Germany society were now in the hands of Jews and Communists. This is the reason they included socialist in their title. Anyone who can't see through the title of a person or an organization and see what they truly are is little more than a fool in my opinion. The Nazi's are claiming to be both libertarian and green as well these days. Please tell me what's progressive about hating people because of their ethnicity or sexuality?
http://www.nazi.org/

[hippifried]

Please tell me what's progressive about hating people because of their ethnicity or sexuality?
Well, if James W von Brunn survives his gunshot wound in DC, maybe we can ask him. "Hey Jimmy, are you a leftist?"

[notdrunk]

I don't even know what "neo-liberalism" is supposed to mean, & don't care.

And there is the problem. Liberalism in economics is different from American Liberalism in politics. Liberalism in economics means there is no controls. Capitalists can do what they please. It is a dog eat dog world.



There was nothing left wing about the nazis, from any angle.


Just because you say so doesn't mean it is the truth. I already pointed out examples in which the Nazis acted left wing.

I have not called the Nazis flat out leftist.

[hippifried]

I already pointed out examples in which the Nazis acted left wing.No. You made the claim that they nationalized industries, & you called that left wing. Even if they did, that still doesn't bolster the left wing claim. Nazis were/are oligarchic. Oligarchy is right wing. Oligarchs consolidate power, & create monopolies because economics is power.



Liberalism in economics means there is no controls. Capitalists can do what they please.Incorrect. You're confusing capitalism & free markets. Capitalism is merely using other people's money to expand business. Left unfettered, it will consolidate the capital into a monopoly. Every time. Oligarchy is anathema to liberalism because it creates caste. The control is in keeping anyone from consolidating power, politically or economically. That way the free market is able to carry on without the need for controls.

[trish]

Hippiefried is correct on this one. Liberalism promotes individual freedom and [] advocates checks and controls on the governmental, societal, political and economic powers that’s would oppress those freedoms. As shown by von Neumann and Morgenstern in their game theoretic analysis of economics, a completely free market, without regulation, will always tend toward monopoly. The free market competition, that the right wing worships, doesn’t produce better products but produces bigger and hungrier corporate monsters…just like real evolution. Right wing politicians adore these sorts of monsters. They are exactly what libertarianism is designed to produce. Right wing judges will find in their favor over individuals every time. Right wing legislators will actually let these monsters write their own bills!

What is the relevance of categorizing Hitler’s economic policies? To my mind they are conservative. In Mein Kampf he rails against communism and socialism. But what does that matter? He was also a vegetarian. So what? The relevant point is that it was Hitler’s extreme right wing social and military policies that were deplorable and horrendous.

[edits in square brackets]

[hippifried]

Relevance?!!? You're looking for relevance in these claims?

Gee Trish, you've really got your sights set high.

[notdrunk]

Relevance?!!? You're looking for relevance in these claims?

Gee Trish, you've really got your sights set high.

It is calling getting the whole picture. The Nazis were not an oligarchy; however, they were a totalitarian regime. An oligarchy would be Apartheid South Africa. A privilege group (in the case of South Africa..whites) ruling the masses. The Nazis did consolidate power; however, a German (non-jew or "non-defective") could join the party and obtain power. The majority had a chance even if it might of been slim to some.

[trish]

It is calling getting the whole picture.

No. It's called a diversion.

So let's just leave the revisionary history to Fox Views and stay on target: the relevant point is that it was Hitler’s extreme right wing social and military policies that were deplorable and horrendous.

[notdrunk]

It is calling getting the whole picture.

No. It's called a diversion.

So let's just leave the revisionary history to Fox Views and stay on target: the relevant point is that it was Hitler’s extreme right wing social and military policies that were deplorable and horrendous.

Diversion how? I posted awhile back his social policies were right wing. Everybody knows that. Without his economic policies, Hitler's military policies would of been just on paper.

[hippifried]

Despite the popularity of Ronald Reagan & Margaret Thatcher, the right has had a bit of an image problem for the last 70 years or so. Every time they gain power, they do something stupid like supporting brutal military dictators or running up debts for imperial adventures. Then there's all the other examples of right wing control around the world. Rudollah Khomeini was a right winger. Saddam Hussein was a right winger. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a right winger. Pinochet, Samosa, the Duvaliers, all the various murderous regimes in El Salvador, etc... All right wingers. & just as they think they can make enough excuses to cover all that, Somebody comes along & throws the nazis in their face.

So now the revisionists are working overtime, trying to convince the gullible that right means left.

[Rogers]

As shown by von Neumann and Morgenstern in their game theoretic analysis of economics, a completely free market, without regulation, will always tend toward monopoly. The free market competition, that the right wing worships, doesn’t produce better products but produces bigger and hungrier corporate monsters…just like real evolution. Right wing politicians adore these sorts of monsters. They are exactly what libertarianism is designed to produce. Right wing judges will find in their favor over individuals every time. Right wing legislators will actually let these monsters write their own bills!

In ecosystem biology it's called "competitive dominance". Evolution by natural selection always throw up species and individuals which will try to outcompete others. It played a key part in Nazi idealogy, further strengthening the idea that they were indeed right-wing. For example, homosexuals don't tend to have offspring so lets get rid of them. And Jews are taking over things so lets get rid of them too.
http://www.benthos.org/database/allnabstracts.cfm/db/Anchorage2006abstracts/id/311
http://www.thomaspowell.co.uk/article_pdfs/dominance.pdf

If a competitive dominant rises to the fore it does everything it can to remain on top. This is why power tends to corrupt. It's environment then stagnates, sometimes deliberately on the part of the dominant, and damaged. Humans have been THE single biggest competitive dominant species in the history of the planet for sometime now. Every ecosystem has a "carrying capacity", and if humans don't change the way we live substantially and quickly our planet's environment will be critically damaged, and increasingly more so given that there will be a few more billion of us before 2050, all of which will be wanting to live like Americans too. Because of our dominant activities we are currently living through the sixth mass extinction of species this planet has seen. This massive loss of species itself bites us in the ass for reasons to lengthy to explain here, but examples are Lyme Borreliosis and Ebola. And exactly who have been the biggest opponents of the ever strengthening science of anthropogenic climate-change? Non other than big oil and king coal because it threatens their dominant positions. They have stiffled new energy technologies for decades and funded so-called scientists to try and debunk climate-change.

It's just another example of why laissez-faire doesn't work in any area of life. What happens to cats and dogs if they go without human contact when they are born? What would happen to kids without years of schooling? What happens to kids left with violent parents? The current global recession has been caused by poor regulation in the banking sector. Letting the affected banks collapse would have caused even more turmoil in the world and most likely led to a second great depression. World War Two was a direct result of the first great depression. Of course, the Nazi's solution to the question of carrying capacity, or as Hitler put it "Lebensraum", was to exterminate all that they classed sub-human or "Untermenschen". But the Nazi's ideas were/are based on an heavily flawed, twisted, and incomplete understanding of science, nevermind a complete lack of compassion and humanity.

[Rogers]

All right wingers. & just as they think they can make enough excuses to cover all that, Somebody comes along & throws the nazis in their face.

So now the revisionists are working overtime, trying to convince the gullible that right means left.

OUCH!!! :lol: :rock2 :claps :peanutbutter

Another example of how the right tries to monopolize power and wealth:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3739500579629840148

[trish]

Thanks for the links, Rogers. Looks like a difficult but interesting read. The pdf is in my TO DO folder.

[notdrunk]

The extremes on both sides try to monopolize power and wealth. Plenty of examples in which extreme left wingers abusing their power. For example, Mugabe, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-il, Khmer Rouge regime, and etc.

Saddam was an interesting character because he was a secularist and he favored Arab socialism. I wouldn't call him just a right winger. Saddam was..well..Saddam

[trish]

Can't win the Hitler argument, so change the topic. Nice strategy. Have you looked up the definition of diversion yet?

[notdrunk]

Can't win the Hitler argument, so change the topic. Nice strategy. Have you looked up the definition of diversion yet?

You fail at reading. I didn't change the thread from Hitler to bashing right-wingers in general using extreme right wingers. If you haven't noticed, the bashing starts after I posted a reply to your quote. I was on-topic until someone else changed the direction of the thread.

So yea...:roll:

[Rogers]

The extremes on both sides try to monopolize power and wealth. Plenty of examples in which extreme left wingers abusing their power. For example, Mugabe, Stalin, Mao, Kim Jong-il, Khmer Rouge regime, and etc.

Saddam was an interesting character because he was a secularist and he favored Arab socialism. I wouldn't call him just a right winger. Saddam was..well..Saddam

And how did all those brutal thugs come about, notdrunk? Mugabe is the result of British Imperialism. Stalin of Russian Imperialism. Mao and Jong-il of Chinese and Japanese Imperialism. The Khmer Rouge came to power thanks to the C.I.A. fucking up Cambodia, i.e. American Imperialism. They were all revolutionaries who turned into the monsters they tried to replace. One extreme begets another. Guevara was pretty crazy before his end too. Castro on the other hand never started out a commie, he just wanted rid of the corrupt U.S. backed government. Cuba was known as America's whore-house back then, and it was U.S. hostility that drove him into the arms of the Soviets.

If you brutalize and persecute people you really shouldn't be surprised if they turn into mirror images of their attackers. Mandela is a much more recent example of a brutalized leftist revolutionary. How did he turn out? :wink:

[hippifried]

I didn't change the thread from Hitler to bashing right-wingers in general using extreme right wingers.
The topic of the thread hasn't changed. It's stretched out a bit, but it's still about Adolph the one ball wonder & how his policies fit into the memetic dialog of modern American political rancor.

This "Hitler was really a leftie" ploy is historically new. Post cold war, really. The right had 40 years of carte blanche to red-bait & attack anything or anyone left of reactionary, without challenge to their impunity. That went away when the Soviets imploded. There was no more "red menace". China had already begun their transition to a market economy, North Korea was boxed in, so was Cuba, the Sandanistas had been beaten by the electorial process, & we weren't going to screw with the VietNamese who had already kicked our ass & taken out Pol Pot. The red-baiting kept up, & still does, but there wasn't any rhyme or reason to it anymore because there's no "socialism" to point at except Europe. I ran out of sympathy about 10 seconds into the first whine about bashing the right that I ever heard. Sorry, but the extremes are always going to be held up as examples of what happens when one side or another gains absolute power. Lying about who's who isn't going to work. Perhaps we should attempt to change the argument to a civil one about what actually works & doesn't on a situational basis, instead of trying to stamp out competing ideologies. After over 40 years of cold war, it should be obvious that ideas aren't the enemy & we don't need to create enemies to prosper.

[q1a2z3]

so easy to flush out the moonbats on here...

[hippifried]

so easy to flush out the moonbats on here...You started the thread.

[TommyFoxtrot]

The nazis were right wing.

You're homosexual.

They were socialists, maybe it's better to look at them in terms of being Statists or Anti-Statists. They were definitely Statists, which is more associated with left wingers. I think that's a little more helpful when looking at European politics, even from 50 60+ years ago.

Even today, the "fascists" in British politics, the British National Party are definitely socialists. They espouse Labour's socialist principles and want full employment. They are picking up votes in the Labour party's core districts who feel left behind as Labour has moved to the center.

The battle between statism and anti-statism was long ago won by the Left. Here in the U.S. that battle is still raging.

I thank god that it is too. I feel the American right wing needs the left wing, and vice versa.

[TommyFoxtrot]

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!

Well I don't know, this could also be looked at as an attempt to flush out us "Kool-Aid" drinkers or whatever. Which is kind of a funny term because the original Kool-Aid drinkers in Jonestown were led by a left winger.


I mean stating that they were left wing is dubious when you look at the full breath of their policies, and Left wing/Right is imprecise.

Plus going on about homosexuals on a site like this? We're all a little gay here, and your avatar features some rat-faced toadie being banged in the face.

If I didn't know any better, I would think you're having a great laugh at all of us who replied to your thread. :roll:

[Rogers]

The nazis were right wing.

You're homosexual.

They were socialists, maybe it's better to look at them in terms of being Statists or Anti-Statists. They were definitely Statists, which is more associated with left wingers. I think that's a little more helpful when looking at European politics, even from 50 60+ years ago.

Even today, the "fascists" in British politics, the British National Party are definitely socialists. They espouse Labour's socialist principles and want full employment. They are picking up votes in the Labour party's core districts who feel left behind as Labour has moved to the center.

The battle between statism and anti-statism was long ago won by the Left. Here in the U.S. that battle is still raging.

I thank god that it is too. I feel the American right wing needs the left wing, and vice versa.

With respect, I really think you need to do a bit more reading, Tommy. The terms left and right simply aren't about one thing. The Tsars' of Russia were "statist" as you put it. Were they left-wing? Even Merkel, a right-winger in the country where the Nazi's emerged, is saying that they were right-wing. Talk about flogging a dead horse. This thread was started by a troll, and that's the answer to your second post.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum

There's a big scandal currently going on in the U.K. about expenses claims that's affected all of the main parties there. Non-mainstream parties have benefited as a result.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/international/europe/2009/06/03/210649/British-minister.htm

[tstv_lover]

Tackling this from a slightly different perspective, has anyone read "The Shield of Achilles" by Phillip Bobbitt?

He makes a strong argument that the nation state is a relatively recent concept and the past 100+ years has been a battle between liberal democracy vs totalitarian vs communism. World Wars 1 and 2, together with Vietnam, Korea, Spain, etc were just battles in this ideological war. Hitler and the totalitarian approach failed at the end of WW2 and communism finally failed in 1990, leaving liberal democracy as the legitimate form of government for nation states.

Makes for interesting reading, but his predictions of nation states giving way to market states is well justified.

Like I said, just a different slant on Hitler. IMO, right wing and left wing are predominantly democratic concepts. Totalitarian states are not right-wing or left-wing, they're just totalitarian!

[hippifried]

The reality is that unless you're a hermit, hiding alone in your cave, we're all socialists. We're social critters. We band together so we can pool our resources to accomplish specific tasks. Capitalism is nothing but privatized socialism with a narrow scope. The word has no connotation to right or left except in specific writings & rhetoric.

Fascism is corporate control of government. Its polar opposite, communism, is government control of production. Either way, the extremes create monopolies, & monopolies are anathema to free markets. That's why right & left is a false dichotomy in an economic sense. It's all about power. In the quest for power, economics is one means to an end. They're all "statists", whether the state is controlling everything or protecting those private interests who control everything. The results of extremism in charge is that society gets screwed, regardless of whether the extreme is right or left. This current ploy to bathe right wing extremism in a favorable light gets wierder & wierder as the revisionists try to change the definitions of left & right. Basically, in defense of the right, the argument has become that there's no such thing as right wing.

[TommyFoxtrot]

Tackling this from a slightly different perspective, has anyone read "The Shield of Achilles" by Phillip Bobbitt?

He makes a strong argument that the nation state is a relatively recent concept and the past 100+ years has been a battle between liberal democracy vs totalitarian vs communism. World Wars 1 and 2, together with Vietnam, Korea, Spain, etc were just battles in this ideological war. Hitler and the totalitarian approach failed at the end of WW2 and communism finally failed in 1990, leaving liberal democracy as the legitimate form of government for nation states.

Makes for interesting reading, but his predictions of nation states giving way to market states is well justified.

Like I said, just a different slant on Hitler. IMO, right wing and left wing are predominantly democratic concepts. Totalitarian states are not right-wing or left-wing, they're just totalitarian!


I think you've explained it best.

[Rogers]

Tackling this from a slightly different perspective, has anyone read "The Shield of Achilles" by Phillip Bobbitt?

He makes a strong argument that the nation state is a relatively recent concept and the past 100+ years has been a battle between liberal democracy vs totalitarian vs communism. World Wars 1 and 2, together with Vietnam, Korea, Spain, etc were just battles in this ideological war. Hitler and the totalitarian approach failed at the end of WW2 and communism finally failed in 1990, leaving liberal democracy as the legitimate form of government for nation states.

Makes for interesting reading, but his predictions of nation states giving way to market states is well justified.

Like I said, just a different slant on Hitler. IMO, right wing and left wing are predominantly democratic concepts. Totalitarian states are not right-wing or left-wing, they're just totalitarian!

Well, if that's what Bobbitt says I think I'll avoid that book then. I think that anyone who says that communism when applied isn't totalitarian is on shaky ground to be perfectly honest. And the same goes for saying that China, North Korea, and Cuba aren't still communist too. As I've already said, there is more than one characteristic that has seperated left from right throughout history, but authoritarianism isn't one of them. For example, one of the Nazi's foremost policies was the deliberate persecution and murder of people because of their sexuality. Communist regimes have never done this, yet they were/are most definitely authoritarian/totalitarian too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism

Sorry, lover, but this book sounds like revisionism, which is what hippi has already suggested is going on here. It's a nice way to sell more books though. :wink:

[notdrunk]

Communist regimes have never done this, yet they were/are most definitely authoritarian/totalitarian too.

Incorrect. For example, in the Soviet Union, it was a criminal offense to be a homosexual. Homosexuality wasn't decriminalized until 1993. The East Germans didn't accept homosexuality until Communism started to collapse in the 1980s. Cuba didn't start accepting homosexuality until the late 1970s.

They didn't murder them; however, they persecuted them.

[hippifried]

Sounds like here.

[Rogers]

Communist regimes have never done this, yet they were/are most definitely authoritarian/totalitarian too.

Incorrect. For example, in the Soviet Union, it was a criminal offense to be a homosexual. Homosexuality wasn't decriminalized until 1993. The East Germans didn't accept homosexuality until Communism started to collapse in the 1980s. Cuba didn't start accepting homosexuality until the late 1970s.

They didn't murder them; however, they persecuted them.

My, my, aren't you the expert on homosexuality, notdrunk. But hey, thanks for helping me prove my point. The practice of homosexuality has been discouraged everywhere throughout history, and has only been legal in all U.S. states since 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_US_sodomy_laws.svg

So I guess you could say that the commies were most definitely ahead of us on that one. There's always been big, big differences between tolerance for homosexuality, an intolerance of it, and sending people to a gas chamber for it. Egalitarianism is most definitely a left-wing trait. Right-wing conservatism = reactionary.

[notdrunk]

The United States didn't throw homosexuals into psychiatric clinics if the authorities found out if s/he was a homosexual. The Soviet Union did. To the Soviets, homosexuality was a personality disorder and a bourgeois thing. The Communists were not ahead of us.

[wadeintheslade]

One fundamental thing most people here are forgetting is that fascism and naziism are separate from the left wing/right wing spectrum.

[hippifried]

Well, not really, but left/right is a false dichotomy in it's current usage. Fascism is an economic term more than anything, but right leaning in its power structure. The nazis were the fanatical wing of that.

[Rogers]

The United States didn't throw homosexuals into psychiatric clinics if the authorities found out if s/he was a homosexual. The Soviet Union did. To the Soviets, homosexuality was a personality disorder and a bourgeois thing. The Communists were not ahead of us.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (D.S.M.) is the psychiatrists' handbook and is compiled and published by the American Psychiatric Association. It is used worldwide. I don't know if the Soviet's used it, but they almost certainly had something like it if they didn't. In it, homosexuality was listed as a personality disorder right up until 1973. After that they had something called, "Sexual Orientation Disturbance". Today, transsexuality is still listed there as a personality disorder.
http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/138/2/210

Homosexuals were indeed sent to psychiatric hospitals because of their "illness" in the U.S.. I don't have any figures, but I did a quick google search of the keywords, "homosexual soviet mental institutions". The following link was the only one that I didn't have to look at too long to see that it was half decent, and it said nothing about this happening in the Soviet Union. I personally think that you're exaggerating because of ignorance and bias, but I'm more than happy to look at anything that you might find for my own gain of knowledge. Please feel free to enlighten me. :)

"Just as Britain included homosexuals in its repression of dissidents during the French Revolution, the Cold War fed state searches for "traitors" and dissidents. In the United States, McCarthyism criminalized a wide range of people imagined to be the "un-American other" as "communists" driving many out of their careers and into exile. Again, among its fantasy enemies were homosexuals pursued as "security risks" and forced into jails and mental hospitals (D'Emilio)."
http://law.jrank.org/pages/1336/Homosexuality-Crime-Modernity.html
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=43848

That'll be that right-wing reactionary thingy I was going on about again. :wink:

So it seems that there was no more persecution of homosexuals in the Soviet Union, an extreme left regime, than there was in the U.S., a liberal democracy. This is the complete reverse of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the points I've made in my previous posts about this still stand. Please stop trying to re-write history to fit your beliefs. When you do that the only people you are deceiving is yourself and other gullible fools.

[Rogers]

One fundamental thing most people here are forgetting is that fascism and naziism are separate from the left wing/right wing spectrum.

Says the poster with "white people" as his sig.. LMAO and SMDH. This site really is an eye-opener. :D

[notdrunk]

I personally think that you're exaggerating because of ignorance and bias, but I'm more than happy to look at anything that you might find for my own gain of knowledge. Please feel free to enlighten me.

http://www.savanne.ch/tusovka/en/pilot/homosexuality-russia.html
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,USCIS,,RUS,4562d8b62,3df0ba597,0.html
http://www.thegully.com/essays/russia/030411_gay_overview_law.html (has some statistics on how many homosexuals were tossed in jail during the late 1980s.)



That'll be that right-wing reactionary thingy I was going on about again.

The Soviets were smart enough to use homosexuals has tools for their goals. The KGB blackmailed John Vassall, a British homosexual, into working for them. There was some rationale for the West to look at homosexuals has security risks for a while because the Soviet Union were known to force homosexuals to work for them. I cannot think of the West forcing gay Soviet citizens into that position.



So it seems that there was no more persecution of homosexuals in the Soviet Union, an extreme left regime, than there was in the U.S., a liberal democracy.

You claimed the Commies were ahead of us on homosexuality and they were not. The Soviets, an extreme left peoples, were not a follower of egalitarianism (a trait that you claim is left-wing).



This is the complete reverse of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the points I've made in my previous posts about this still stand. Please stop trying to re-write history to fit your beliefs. When you do that the only people you are deceiving is yourself and other gullible fools.

The Soviets were equal opportunity killers. Millions died due to collectivization and the Great Purge.

[Rogers]

I personally think that you're exaggerating because of ignorance and bias, but I'm more than happy to look at anything that you might find for my own gain of knowledge. Please feel free to enlighten me.

http://www.savanne.ch/tusovka/en/pilot/homosexuality-russia.html
http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,USCIS,,RUS,4562d8b62,3df0ba597,0.html
http://www.thegully.com/essays/russia/030411_gay_overview_law.html (has some statistics on how many homosexuals were tossed in jail during the late 1980s.)

The links you’ve given also describe what has happened in the States too, both the sending of dissidents to hospital and the locking-up of homosexuals in general. I have little doubt that more of it happened in the authoritarian Soviet Union.




That'll be that right-wing reactionary thingy I was going on about again.

The Soviets were smart enough to use homosexuals has tools for their goals. The KGB blackmailed John Vassall, a British homosexual, into working for them. There was some rationale for the West to look at homosexuals has security risks for a while because the Soviet Union were known to force homosexuals to work for them. I cannot think of the West forcing gay Soviet citizens into that position.

The communists became as reactionary as those that they replaced. That’s what George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” is all about. What you’ve just said and implied suggests that homosexuality was actually less acceptable in the West than in Soviet Russia. :lol:



You claimed the Commies were ahead of us on homosexuality and they were not. The Soviets, an extreme left peoples, were not a follower of egalitarianism (a trait that you claim is left-wing).

You gave dates for the legalization of homosexuality in the communist countries you cited that suggested that they were ahead of the U.S. on this issue. The Soviets legalized homosexuality when they took power, only for paranoid schizophrenic Joseph Stalin to repress it again. Homosexuality was only legalized across the United States only six years ago. People were sent to hospital and jail for it up until then. Egalitarianism IS a left-wing trait.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism#Broadly_egalitarian_philosophies




This is the complete reverse of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the points I've made in my previous posts about this still stand. Please stop trying to re-write history to fit your beliefs. When you do that the only people you are deceiving is yourself and other gullible fools.

The Soviets were equal opportunity killers. Millions died due to collectivization and the Great Purge.

Indeed, yet no one is claiming that they weren’t left-wing. This thread was about Nazism, remember? :wink:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/European-political-spectrum.png

[techi]

I agree, there's very little difference between fascism and communism.

Under Soviet communism the Politburo was in charge.

And if America ever went fascist then Wallstreet would be in charge. :shock:

Politburo... Wallstreet... whatever, two groups of people that I didn't elect and cannot count on to work in the best interests of our citizens.

I've found that the US main stream media seems to label pro corporate leaders as centrists, pro labor leaders as leftists and crazy people as right wing. This tends to confuse the already limited left-right discussion because pro corporate politics can also be called corporatism/fascism which is supposedly right wing.

Anyway, the only "-isms" that I aprove of is Americanism. Too bad we've gone horribly off course since 1963. :(

[Rogers]

"The following selection is an excerpt from an article on Fascism which Mussolini wrote (with the help of Giovanni Gentile) for the Enciclopedia Italiana in 1932. Following this selection I have included two versions of the Fascist Decalogue (1934 and 1938) and brief passage on myth from one of Mussolini's speeches of 1922."

"9. . . . The theory of Fascist authority has nothing to do with the police State. A party that governs a nation in a totalitarian way is a new fact in history. References and comparisons are not possible. Fascism takes over from the ruins of Liberal Socialistic democratic doctrines those elements which still have a living value. It preserves those that can be called the established facts of history, it rejects all the rest, that is to say the idea of a doctrine which holds good for all times and all peoples. If it is admitted that the nineteenth century has been the century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy, it does not follow that the twentieth must also be the century of Liberalism, Socialism and Democracy. Political doctrines pass; peoples remain. It is to be expected that this century may be that of authority, a century of the "Right," a Fascist century. If the nineteenth was the century of the individual it may be expected that this one may be the century of "collectivism" and therefore the century of the State. . . . The doctrine itself, therefore, must be, not words, but an act of life. hence, the pragmatic veins in Fascism, its will to power, its will to be, its attitude in the face of the fact of "violence" and of its own courage."
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html

[Rogers]

"For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes: Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francos Spain, Salazars Portugal, Papadopouloss Greece, Pinochets Chile, and Suhartos Indonesia. To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power. These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity."

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
Often the regimes would incite spontaneous acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, andterrorists.

5. Rampant sexism.
Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elites behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug.

9. Power of corporations protected.
Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of have-not citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27/076.html


14 Points of fascism: The warning signs
http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm

[hippifried]

Thanks Rogers. Modern rhetoric equates fascism with the nazis, but Hitler was a johnny come lately. Franco, & especially Mussolini were the ideological purists & thinkers on the subject. We're still toying with the ideas of fascism. We just don't mention the "F" word.