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BigFoot175 t1_j1cx1fz wrote

Reply to comment by Toecuttercutter in Why does Hitler hate golf? by LilGoughy

Obviously not making excuses for anything the National Socialist German Workers Party or their leadership did (except build the foundations of modern animal welfare laws for much of the Western world), but I do have to ponder... Why Socialism regarded as a left-wing ideology until you mix it with Nationalism? The whole left-right paradigm is based around economics, with the right side being more about free markets and people/enterprises retaining most of their money so they can choose where and how to spend it, while the left side sees the state control money and the markets and so forth, in theory providing far more services to its constituents than a right-leaning government would. All forms of Socialism, National or otherwise, are by necessity authoritarian because people want to keep the money they've worked hard for, so Socialist governments need some way of enforcing the high tax rates necessary to fund their spending.

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MansfromDaVinci t1_j1d1mda wrote

The simple answer is they weren't socialists, calling yourself a socialist doesn't make you one. The complicated answer is that they co-opted some very minor aspects of socialism but they called themselves socialists as a publicity exercise to attract the working classes and because they attacked 'Jewish merchants and bankers' however real socialists were, along with trade unionists and communists the first victims of the regime.

By the way all forms of government beyond some kind of small scale tribalism or anarchy are by necessity authoritarian, there is no modern government that doesn't extract taxes and obedience by means of force, you could equally say capitalists need a structure of force to keep an unequal wealth structure propped up and to extract the resources and labour from the workers to enable the unearned passive income of the onwers/rulers.

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BigFoot175 t1_j1d3ii9 wrote

I mean... You're not wrong. Upon further reading, I conclude that it definitely started out as a Socialist movement - German Workers' Party - but after everyone's least favorite Austrian got his grubby mitts on the reigns, it all went to shit.

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Songmuddywater t1_j1e3p1z wrote

You mean it became a dictatorship but really no different from communist North Korea.

Which makes it just another left wing totalitarian authoritarian ideology.

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Taloniano t1_j1eefet wrote

I do agree that the whole right-left thing does not really fit the 21st century at all anymore. I also think socialist thinking has at its core an idea of equality, dignity, solidarity among all humans. Anything nationalist, even more so fascist, and especially Nazis have at their core the idea of one "people" being superior to the rest of mankind and derive social rights or even a historical obligation from that, to subdue, or in the case the Nazis to even exterminate other peoples.

For me that's the main difference, and from that different policies are derived.

And some random thoughts I couldn't control anymore, sorry for that 🤪 The capitalist point of view is just something different; it starts with the assumption that following egoistic objectives magically produces the best possible economic situation for all, while the state should keep itself out of almost everything. In a way, the perfect capitalist market nirvana is almost anarchy - no rules, the strongest survives, the other must blame themselves.

(Obviously, Stalin perverted the original ideas of socialism to arrive at something pretty much indistinguishable from fascism; even the reference to the Russian people being superior was used later - and in present days again, in the most appalling way. Stalin was in fact a sort of sick kind of role model for the Nazis in "techniques" of deporting masses of people in the late 1930s. That's why neither the Nazis nor any form of actually existing communism have anything to do with the spirit of Socialism.)

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MansfromDaVinci t1_j1ercex wrote

I'd say the capitalist nirvana is what they have now, weak enforcement of rules by the state, weak contribution to infrastructure, but massive handouts and bailouts of tax money collected for them by governments. In an actual pure free market, near anarchy, the communal structures would likely collapse and the capitalist institutions would go tits up soon after.

The Romans and other empires went in for deporting peoples en mass, after all the Persians and Babylonians did it to the Jews millenia before hilter or stalin.

Most of the problems with Russian communism were that it was authoritarian and dictatorial which is not an inherent part of socialist dotrine, but there was also the intrinsic problem that 'everyone's benefit' is not as strong a motivator as 'my benefit' and so there was widespread apathy and corruption.

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doubletaxed88 t1_j1d0kfq wrote

If I could give you 10,000 upvotes, I would. Well done.

Also, thanks for ruining the joke.

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BigFoot175 t1_j1d2198 wrote

Thank you, thank you... I'll be here all week.

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LittleLui t1_j1d7les wrote

Your question is based on a wrong premise. National Socialism isn't a mixture of Nationalism and Socialism.

Speaking very broadly, Socialism has as its goal the ownership of the means of production by the workers, and focuses on class and the relations between classes as the way of looking at a society.

National Socialism doesn't share that goal and neither that perspective. It has Socialism in its name in the same way the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has Democracy in its name.

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Songmuddywater t1_j1e3jm7 wrote

Because it's hard to make the claim that what happened in Germany under the socialist was the worst thing that ever happened while supporting socialism. Which is why they have to play with language and gas light us.

Every single country in 1930's-1940's was nationalist. Every single one.

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