(rolls eyes) If Beck meant that seriously then he's an idiot.

Hitler wasn't right or left.

All he cared about was the "racial struggle" that he saw as the main driver of human development. He didn't give a single crap for whether or not an economic or political policy was "right" or "left" - he judged them solely on whether he thought they strengthened or weakened the German people for the giant race-war he planned on starting.

Hitler was left. National Socialist Workers Party.

I was having a discussion about all this with an Austrian and he finally had to admit that it was possible to be a racialist and a socialist.

And then like you he tried to change the subject.

I shouldn't have left that last post, as it sounds trollish. Right when I was beginning to post, I noticed the time, and realized I had to leave for work. I should have canceled it, and continued later. My apologies.

First, the entire right/left paradigm is severely flawed, since no one can demonstrate a single scalar value which underlies the spectrum of ideologies. Satisfaction with the status quo? In America, that means the Progressives are reactionaries (right), and the Tea Party movement is revolutionary (left). Preference for big government? Conservatives would reduce welfare and healthcare, but increase police & defense budgets. Preference for social legislation? Conservatives just have goals different from Progressives. Instead of "healthy food" and "sustainable" programs, Conservatives would outlaw gay marriage, and abortion, at the least.

The simple-minded reliance on a demonstrably incorrect model of left vs. right still doesn't address the differences between Fascism (as opposed to Nazism) and Communism. For example, the Socialist/Marxist/Communist ideology is strongly rationalistic, while Fascism is irrationalist; espousing militarism and concepts of "racial" glory. Communism is internationalist, and Fascism grossly nationalist. Communism is objectively pacifistic, while Fascism glorifies war. In many ways Communism seems congruent with Fascism (such as a pronounced preference for statist intervention and control), but in other ways (such as rationalist vs. irrationalist) Communism is at right angles to Fascism.

Now. M. Simon seems to have some significant historical deficiencies. That, or he's getting all of his ideas from Jonah Goldberg. Not that there's anything wrong that. :)

That bloody book has been driving me up the wall since its release. Yes, it is a useful rhetorical tool to jam a metaphorical crowbar into someone's otherwise closed mind with respect to what they know for sure, but the Nazis were not Socialists, no matter what Jonah has to say.

First principles: yes, the NSDAP does stand for National Socialist German Workers Party. Well done. You get a gold star. No, the Nazi movement never was a seriously Socialist movement. That branch of the party was headed by Ernst Roehm.

The devoted socialists of the Nazi party started occupying targeted businesses and stores after the initial success of the NSDAP at the polls in 1932. Roehm intended to use the Brownshirts as the basis for a "People's Army" which would replace the Wehrmacht as the armed forces of Germany. This offended the capitalists, large business owners, and the German Army. Hitler had to face the choice between the socialist enthusiasm of Roehm (the only man Hitler ever publicly addressed as "du") or the support of the established classes of German society. It was no choice at all.

During the "Night of the Long Knives," Roehm and the other dedicated socialist elements of the Nazi party were slaughtered, and the Brownshirts were effectively destroyed as an agent of social change in Germany.

In other words, Hitler willingly, and without hesitation, condoned the murder of one of his closest comrades -as well as the mans adherents- sacrificing all the alleged Socialist tenets of the Nazi party, in order to gain the endorsement of the powers-that-be in Weimar Germany.

So, no, Mr. Simon, I'm not changing the subject. I'm just highlighting -in crayon, for those who need it- that there never was any true Socialism in the NSDAP.

I might add here that "libarbarian" has the right of it. Hitler was entirely pragmatic in his quest to estabish all of Europe as the Lebensraum of the German Volk.

I admit Hitler was indifferent to ownership. He was into control. Just a different route to socialism.

You know - where the state controls enterprise.

BTW Nobel Prize Winning Economist wrote in 1944 that the Nazi Regime was socialist.

Which is why I put the book in the post.

It seems to me that most people trying to argue the Nazi phenomenon as coming from the right have bought into the propaganda campaign of Stalin and the Soviets. This campaign has been well documented in many places. The difference between the communists and Nazis comes down to what was largely an internal argument over whether the movement should be nationalist or internationalist in purpose. Period.

I suppose Casey, that Stalin's occasional cleansing (murder/reeducation camps/enslavement in gulags) of thousands of his own party members (Trostky being a prominent example) makes him a Nazi? or, using libarbarian's twist, just a pragmatist? Look, arguing over the minutia of particular policies to find variance between these only slightly different and abhorrent political philosophies confuses the proverbial forest for the trees. You come close by the way, to that age old argument from the left that true socialism has never been tried. A claim I can only respond to with, yeah right.

Here are the significant ways they were alike.

Both were collectivist movements. Both advocated and carried out plans that ended with state control of the means of production, whether directly or indirectly. Both carried out cleansings of groups of peoples they deemed undesirable; this phenomenon was repeated, by the way, in every country that tried the socialist/communist experiment. The individual and individual rights counted as squat in the USSR and Nazi Germany. And everything was within the state, nothing outside the state. So what were the differences again?

Know this is two posts from me but I read over Casey's post again.

Communism is rationalistic?

Just because believers chant this doesn't make it true. I suppose Lysenko believed he was being rational when he was developing his "science". The state directing and manipulating science/art/economics/etc. for it's own ends might seem reasonable to those suffering from Marxist delusions, but the results of these methods in the USSR, China, Vietnam, Cambodia were anything but rational.

Same for pacifistic. +/-100 million deaths.

Confusing party propaganda for the reality of how communism actually functions?

Simon, you are missing the forest for the trees. The point is not that Hitler executed a purge. The point is that every single genuine advocate for socialism was slaughtered. As in Hitler never meant a single word he ever uttered about "socialist" movement. As in Hitler never was honestly committed to socialism. Can you provide three solid examples of socialist action ordered by Hitler?

I honestly can't believe you can't comprehend the differences between the two ideologies, in parallel with Crawdad incomprehending remark.

There is, Crawdad, a difference between "rationalism," and being rational. The former amounts to a devout belief in logic and reason over all other factors. One of the classic examples is the question "Why can't we call just get along?" This follows from the rationalistic (not rational, per se) belief that if everyone just sat down and talked things out, horrible stuff like war wouldn't happen.

Apparently some readers here are having trouble with the concept that rationalism does not equal rational. Rationalism fetishizes the middle-class belief in rationality, to the point where communists -who rely upon the Hegelian process of thesis, antithesis, synthesis to produce a "scientific" process of history in which communism is the only logical result of the increasingly suffering proletariat taking control of the means of production, before the arrival of true communism, and the decay of the "artificial" state. The very essence of communist ideology is rationalistic, which is how they could justify putting dissidents into mental institutions. Since the progress of "true" history is "scientific" (i.e. rationalistic), opposition to said history is by definition irrational, or insane.

Fascism (or in this case, Nazism), on the other hand, was explicitly irrationalistic. The Nazi Party paid faith to concepts such as the "Volk," destiny, and the innate superiority of one "race" (i.e. national ethnic group) over another.

I repeat -for those with reading difficulties- other differences such as internationalistic communism vs. jingoistic fascism, pacifistic (according to propodanda, anyway) communism compared to militaristic fascism, the over-arching concept of the "brotherhood" of the proletariat of communism vs. the fascistic idea that certain "races" are destined to rule others.

One wonders if some of the commenters here have read anything more complex than Goldberg's book. What I've seen so far is "us, gooooood. Them, baaaad." Excuse the cheesy Frankenstein reference. ;)

On the other hand, no one here has yet remarked on the ultimate bankruptcy of the right-left paradigm, so I'm not optimistic about original insights on 20th-century ideology over here...

Casey,

Of course advocates for other brands of socialism were slaughtered. It avoids having to deal with the competition.

Russia was notorious for purging socialists.

Purging allies is a well worn socialist tactic.

As to Right-Left foolery. I'm against economic socialism and I'm against moral socialism.

Oh, Lord, give me strength.

Ok, I give up. I surrender. I am casting historical pearls before metaphorical swine with no success.

Casey,

I don't disagree wit your points. It is just that the Austrian Corporal is no longer counted among the socialists due to the extreme publicity some of his more unfortunate adventures received.

Back in the day he was counted as a socialist. All the rest is revisionism.