In 1937, Pope Pius XI published a kind of "review" of the ideas in Mein Kampf and the actions of the Nazi Party. Mit Brennender Sorge ("With Burning Anxiety") remains the only papal encyclical ever principally published in a language other than Latin. That is, the official edition was published in German and other translations were derived from the German rather than a Latin original. Apparently, the Pope's harsh critique enraged Hitler.
"Fascism" and "Catholic right-wing" were synonymous at the time. Hitler had signed a treaty with the Holy See to basically allow them to control schools in Germany in exchange for a thumbs up for the regime, and this meant the Vatican was backtracking. Hitler thought they were allies; and the Vatican was important for Nazi power, so yeah, that move pissed him off.
Given that they clearly did not have the church on their side, isn't that a massive conflict ?
Also the wikipedia page states that because of the German (pre-nazi) agreement with the vatican that was seen as lending legitimacy to the nazi government, this rebuke by the pope was seen as a great step forward for German catholics, lending legitimacy to an already existing opposition amonst catholics which was then publicly and violently suppressed ...
The timespan between the original Reichskonkordat and this letter was six years. It appeared the Nazi regime did not respect the Vatican, and it became apparent soon that their agreement wasn't going to be upheld as expected by the Nazis. In addition, the differences between Nazism and contemporary fascism (which the Church was mostly supportive of) became more apparent over time and drew some criticism as well.
From a timing perspective, this was published in March, 1940. Some other noteworthy events with their dates:
* Germany invades Poland (September, 1939)
* Britain, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand declare war on Germany (September, 1939)
* Soviets invade Poland, which is later split (October, 1939)
* Nazis begin euthanasia of ill and disabled in Germany (October, 1939)
* Soviets attack Finland (November, 1939)
So by the time Orwell published his review, it was clear Germany and the Soviets were mobilizing for war, but it was entirely unclear what would happen next.
In the next six months, Germany would invade Denmark, Norway, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands while beginning their blitz on Great Britain. The Soviets would take Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Mussolini would meet Hitler in Munich, declare war on France and Britain and Italian forces would take Greece and enter Egypt. The Tripartite Pact would be signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan to formalize their alliance.
It's amazing to me how fast things moved during that time.
The "euthanasia" actually began in September 1939. October was when the law was passed, which was backdated to September 1st.
This isn't just to be pedantic, I'm currently reading The Third Reich trilogy by Richard J. Evans, and this is an instance of the Nazi emphasis on appearing as though they had a legal basis for their actions, even well into the dictatorship. It's one of the most bizarre parts of the story to me.
The euthanasia was attempted to be done in secret, so under what circumstance the backdating (or even the existence) of the law could possibly have been useful is beyond me. Under Nazi victory, those involved were safe from prosecution, and in case of defeat, the law could not have saved them.
It's like something straight out of the movie Brazil, though not being fiction and having resulted in the death and suffering of countless real people makes not possible to enjoy the insanity of the situation.
I highly recommend the books, though I don't exactly have a weak stomach, and many parts were quite difficult for me. It reminded me quite a bit of Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilisation, which was also extremely long and dense with suffering.
I don't think the Nazis felt as secure from internal challenge in Germany during their rule as they appear to have been in retrospect. In any case, whether it was really unnecessary or not, they seem (from the little I've read about this) to have been past masters at controlling potential domestic opposition using the rapier rather than the bludgeon, using a combination of bribery and conciliation, isolation and media control, divide-and-conquer, obfuscation and legal hoop-jumping, and judicious applications of extreme violence. Instead of flattening German "civil society" outright, they won the tug of war with it, dragging it along with them instead of having it pull them back. There was in fact open (though of course not, in the end of the day, effective) opposition to T4 from inside Germany, notably from the Catholic Church which was one institution the Nazis had to handle with some care, and Cardinal van Galen was invoking the German Penal Code against it as late as 1941. So legal changes were probably all part of the minuet.
I also don't think it's inevitable that the T4 perpetrators would have been punished if the Nazis had lost power at some point in, say, early 1941. The western world had been increasingly heading in that direction before the war, and to a large and increasing extent it's arriving back there now, as evidenced by, for example, the mysterious absence of Down's Syndrome children in many places these days. Come to think of it, many of the people implicated in T4 didn't in fact end up facing justice after the war either.
I don't know what places the author's referring to, but according to one study, most fetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome in Europe [0] and the United States [1] are aborted. The rate of live births has remained steady, but apparently it would be significantly higher if not for prenatal screening [2]. This discrepancy isn't very mysterious, nor is it really an absence, so maybe the GP has something else in mind?
I think is it a lot easier to convince people what they are doing is ok or not so bad, if it is "legalized" by law. NSA also insists that everything they do is covered by the law or at least their secret interpretation.
This kind of legalism is particularly puzzling in cases like the Khmer Rouge, which avoided enlisting sympathetic intellectuals and foreign backers to help build bureaucracies and theoretical justification for their actions and instead massacred them whilst being deliberately obscurantist about their aims and beliefs, but still kept meticulous records of their prisoners and the "confessions" they extracted as if they believed such evidence procedures had been followed correctly would assure history judged their actions kindly.
Anomalies like that can be important, I think. Clearly it made sense to the actors, but to us it seems incomprehensibly bizarre; that means our mental model is wrong, or, at least, has a gap.
I think we tend to err by confusing cruel governments with common criminals. Criminals tend to be irrational and self-defeating. Governments and larger criminal organizations tend to be cold and calculating, and their use of violence is not random; their goal isn't violence at any cost, like an individual who goes on a killing spree. They wanted to operate a government, after all, and they expected it to be enduring. They could not abolish all order and personal responsibility. Presumably, even if you were doing something abominable as part of your job, government workers could still be fired if they showed up late or got drunk on the job, etc. Maybe record-keeping was considered an essential part of maintaining an organized regime.
Edit: I don't want to overstate the calculating aspect-- It's possible that, from the standpoint of the Nazis, persecuting Jews was a drain on resources and served no rational purpose for the organization, and even that some Nazis were aware and privately opposed it. But what matters as far as running a disciplined organization is not so much that orders must serve a rational purpose; what matters is that the orders must come from the appropriate authority.
This is actually true in any disciplined organization: in the army, if you are in combat and your commanding officer orders you to shoot that guy, you're expected to shoot that guy, period. But the order makes the difference; you can't shoot people at random.
It's amazing to me that, in all likelihood, had Hitler decided to call it quits earlier, the world would have sat back and allowed him to keep some of his conquests (eg Denmark, Norway or Belgium). Today it would be unthinkable to allow a large nation to invade Belgium with no counter international military response.
There have been some pretty large scale invasions in the last 10-15 years. Those countries that were anti them faced a pretty dark few years in terms of international relations. At least that's how the deadlines were interpreted by me. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_Iraq_War
Just FYI Germany was providing training and equipment to the Chinese nationalists to fight at first against regional warlords and then the Japanese until 1941 when the tripartite pact was signed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_until_1...
And the Russia of today in relative terms is weaker than WW2 Germany militarily.
The US is looking to disengage as much as possible from global conflicts. I think that they would be extremely reluctant to be pulled into a head on war against Russia/ China over a lot of 3rd countries.
Do not forget that, whatever the strength of Russia's conventional forces, Russia also possesses nuclear weapons. For that reason, it would be unthinkable for the West to fight a head on war against Russia.
It looks like nukes are off the table. In any way, Russia is invading countries who don't possess nuclear weapons, and uses unflagged troops. From that logic it would be illogical to retaliate with nukes for attacks on troops that aren't yours...
Putin is deliberately isolating conflict regions from each other and from the bigger picture, somehow hoping that no single attack is worth it for NATO to actually retaliate in any form. So far, as long as no NATO countries are in immediate danger, this works extremely well.
I don't think that is really a factor, nukes only really come into it if you have an irrational regime that would rather be destroyed themselves than outright lose.
Russia has strategic as well as a tactical nuclear weapons. They have repeatedly stated that they will use tactical weapons to make up for any shortcoming in conventional forces.
An example could be nuking a large staging area or aircraft carriers. There's nothing irrational about it, once war progresses this far.
Heck, part of NATO's defense strategy against the USSR was to have squads with Davy Crockett missiles stationed along the eastern front. If you're not familiar with those: it's a shoulder-launched device bearing the M388 atomic round. Range: around a mile. Kill radius: around a quarter mile.
The premise is that when the Soviets decided to invade they'd lob a few of these at their forces and pin them down for a little while, so the rest of NATO could mobilize.
> One of the most fervent supporters of the Davy Crockett was West Germany's defense minister Franz Josef Strauss, in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Strauss promoted the idea of equipping German brigades with the weapon to be supplied by the US, arguing that this would allow German troops to become a much more effective factor in NATO's defense of Germany against a potential Soviet invasion. He argued that a single Davy Crocket could replace 40–50 salvos of a whole divisional artillery park — allowing the funds and troops normally needed for this artillery to be invested into further troops, or not having to be spent at all. US NATO commanders strongly opposed Strauss's ideas, as they would have made the use of tactical nuclear weapons almost mandatory in case of war, further reducing the ability of NATO to defend itself without resorting to atomic weapons.[7]
It seems that even at that time, the US wanted to keep the conflict nuclear-free as much as possible.
Kalinigrad was Prussian. L'viv and Vilnius were Polish. Szczecin and Wrocław were German. That was only 80 years ago. 100 years ago there was no Poland, and no USSR.
These cities changed hands every 50 years or less for last few centuries. It's useless to argue about these things.
Basically whole C&E Europe is a huge barrel of powder. If you start to do this stuff (this is MINE because history) the powder will explode.
That's why nobody (except Russia) do it. Even the worst nationalists in Poland don't actually want L'viv or Vilnius. Even though L'viv was a very important city for Polish culture and still 80 years later there are songs about how great a city Lwów was (French wouldn't understand, you only have one city ;) ). It was Polish San Francisco, and we don't want it back.
That's because we know that we are only safe because we're past the WW2 era of petty nationalisms. We've learnt our lesson.
Putin doesn't care - he knows EU is not united enough to react, so he basically replays Hitler 1938 strategy and he goes away with it. French traditionally don't want to die for Danzig(Donetsk this time), they even sell weapons to Putin. Great job, guys.
It's very frustrating to see it in real life and see how useless and clueless western politicians are. Like nobody learnt anything from WW2.
Germany had similar claims on some of that land it grabbed and might have been able to hold on to: notably the Sudetenland. So Russia's historical claim on the Crimea doesn't really break the analogy.
Not quite.
It was part of Russia from 1783 till 1918 (or so) then it was Part of USSR.
But let's make it 1954 as you wrote, so it gives 171 years.
Before 1783 Crimea was part of Ottoman Empire (Crimean Khanate), from about 1449. That makes 334 years.
And before that Mongols ruled there from about 200 years.
And even before it belonged partly to Kiev Rus' and Bizantium for another 300 years.
So basing solely on the years (assuming that what you mean by historically) it looks like Crimea should go back to Turkey or split between Ukraine and Greece, surly not to Russia.
So was Ukraine:) Part of Russia/USSR until 1991. Crimea is a special case - it was always assumed to be "Russian" even under Ukrainian rule. Ukrainians themselves never fully considered Crimea as their own. That is why it fell off so quickly and easily. Historically it has been part of Russia, true, but more importantly is never stopped being "Russian" in terms of self identity (unlike Lwow or Volyn for example, that were Ukrainianized in a rather brutal way).
Alsace and Lorraine have been historically part of the Germanic world (though it is quite true that the populations preferred to remain French). Can I take it that you won't have strong grounds to object if Merkel sends a few divisions over the border?
How did Italians take Greece? This was a great moment for the West because Mussolini invaded Greece from the North and he was repelled. The first moment where the Axis forces showed weakness-it showed that Hitler's forces where just humans and that resistance is possible-organized well it could mean victory.
Very good point, I was merely glancing at a timeline and listing the interesting bits and I must've changed some wording with Greece. The Italians definitely didn't "take" Greece, but they had invaded by October 1940 and were subsequently repelled a few months later.
Hitler actually blamed Mussolini's "idiotic campaign in Greece" for his failure in securing major victories against the USSR, so we definitely have much to thank the Greek army for.
With what we know today we could see Orwell picture of Germany was incomplete.
People did not want struggling at the time. After the Great depression created by the banks bubble and having everything they could produce taken by countries like France as payment for WWI GERMANS WERE ALREADY STRUGGLING.
Germans were dying in winter because the coal was sent to France as payment. And this is not like winter in Morocco. In Germany you have no energy in winter, with 30 Celsius degrees under zero you die.
Not only they were struggling, but having all what they could make confiscated to pay debts created a very dangerous situation, there was NO HOPE.
They had become slaves. Romans already measured that a slave worked way less than half what a free man did.
So Hitler brought hope. He stopped paying the debt(default), the military occupied the coal areas back for Germany and brought hope.
Is not that he promised suffering, but that he promised that suffering will end.
He also made suffering more tolerable making it social. Hitler created social programs for workers that let them travel and meet other people.
It is probably hard to understand for Westerns, but there are millions of people in Africa or India that are happier than people from the West, even while being very poor, because money is not everything, there are friends, for example, that people from Africa have more than isolated westerns.
Today the world is in Great Depression number II. Countries are over indebted, and we have the same problem they had: economies had stop to a halt and will be there until bad debts are cleaned, and defaults are issued.
I imagine Orwell knew much of that stuff which was to a large extent predicted as inevitable by Keynes both in his 1919 book The Economic Consequences of the Peace and before. It often surprises me how much suffering could be avoided if people just understood Keynes stuff and used it. WW2 and much of the recent depression could probably be avoided and with pretty much no downside. It's kind of mass unnecessary suffering through wilful ignorance or something like that - dunno. I guess some of the ideas are hard to understand and most people couldn't explain the concept of insufficient aggregate demand leading to lower jobs and investment and hence lower demand still in a feedback loop unless it gets broken some how. But it's not that hard I would like to think. Though I have not heard that concept repeated and dealt with by many of our current leaders. Maybe human brains are not built to grok that stuff even though you can pretty much put it on one sentence?
Undoubtedly part of the German electorate responded to Hitler in despair, as you say; however, you cannot discount the fascination he inspired in the middle classes by appealing to their sense of glory. He took that element from Mussolini, who developed it in a country that wasn't on the verge of despair as much as stuck in a lull and lacking self-confidence.
"He [Hitler] had crushed the German labor movement and for that the property-owning classes were willing to forgive him almost anything. Both left and right concurred ... that National Socialism was merely a version of Conservatism.
It's easy to forget just how many Socialisms there were. The "Ein Volk!" were the "socia" in National Socialism, reusing the Goethe-und-Wagner nationalism from the Bismarck era. It's collectivist to the core and regarded the individual as very nearly nothing. Just because it's massively illiberal does not mean it was not a Socialism.
And technically Conservatism is also quite Liberal, coming as it had from Burke. It's just been abused to identify illiberal things.
What surprised me is that Orwell did not directly identify the sadomaschistic core of Naziism. Perhaps that came later, but given "Burmese Days" and how well known the ...libertine nature of Wiemar was, why I'd a thought...
> How was it that he was able to put this monstrous vision across? It is easy to say that at one stage of his career he was financed by the heavy industrialists, who saw in him the man who would smash the Socialists and Communists.
It's easy to forget how profound the power vacuum was in Weimar Germany. The roughly Christian Socialists ( congruent with the Fabians in England, although that's not the term of art ) were a relatively stable influence in Germany. Von Hindenburg was roughly of that skein. The Communists were deadly violent and Stalin was a significant external threat.
Von Hindenburg was certainly no moderate socialist of any kind. He was nominated exactly because he was seen as a link to the previous (aristocratic and Bismarckian) past without being too virulently anti-Socialist -- a safe pair of hands, so to speak, but certainly not a "christian socialist" of any sort. In fact, his suspicion and eventual (mis)treatment of the SPD was one of the causes of Hitler's rise to power.
Well, it made sense while I was typing it :) I think you're probably right because "socialist" had a different meaning in a post-Bismarck Germany. If we consider what Fabian Socialism meant in England maybe. Even then the makeup of the Fabians was much more literary and not at all military. That doesn't work, either.
I'd have been better off identifying him as a Christian Democrat although that lacks something. He was one of the last of the Junkers Prussian caste to rule, and that really doesn't compare to much outside Germany and then only before WWII.
Of what came after, I'd say the CDU is closest to what von Hindenburg stood for, although it's still a stretch.
Hindenburg was certainly not a socialist. He was a conservative nationalist, for 1920th values of conservative. That is, he wanted to reestablish monarchy and had the interests of the Prussian Junkers at his heart. In addition he got his job because he was a WWI war hero.
I'd never seen that he wanted to reestablish the monarchy - presumably the Kaiser Wilhelm line? Some of the leftovers from (Queen Victoria's) Prince Albert's line? Interesting. Yeah, that's by-$DEITY about as conservative as it gets.
I dunno then - what do you call post-Bismarck welfare-state Germany? It was certainly cradle-to-grave, something we now identify with socialism. And yes - Bismarck was generally considered a conservative as well.
But the entire idea of Germany was basically... uh... racial. So it's a racial-ist socialism. Don't look at me like that, it's was their doing :) 19th century, phrenology, all that.
The Wikipedia page refers to Bismarck as a "revolutionary conservative". Ooh, my head hurts now :)
The funny thing is that many conservatives think National Socialism was "socialism", when in fact it was just their very own hard right conservatism. Tea Party and Republican candidates are where the Hitlers of the future will probably arise from.
> Down with immigration! Up with capital! Be a real American!
Welcome to the past.
Edit: I see the fascists have discovered my comment. Down vote away. It doesn't change history.
How do you know the next Hitler will come from the right wing? Left wing leaders have also racked up big death tolls purging and reordering society under the guise of progressive ideals.
In my original response I stated that National Socialism wasn't actually comprised of left wing socialists, but rather hard right fascists, and go on and on about how conservatives completely misrepresent this stuff all the time, and in the very next response to that comment, you do the exact same thing that I was lamenting?
Ah yes the great "leftist" Mao, so "left" wing, he purged everyone who disagreed with him (McCarthy?). Ah yes Stalin, "left" wing extraordinaire with his extermination and enslavement of Russian minorities (The Conservative American South?). Pol Pot, such a "left" wing hippy he was a jack booted military thug (Brownshirts?).
So you're saying that anyone who purges people who disagree, who exterminates and enslaves minorities, and who uses military thugs to achieve his ends, can't be left wing? Please enlighten us on your highly non-standard definition of "left wing".
> In left-right politics, left-wing politics are political positions or activities that accept or support social equality, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality
> Right-wing politics are political positions or activities that view some forms of social hierarchy or social inequality as either inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically justifying this position on the basis of natural law or tradition.
Which one seems to be more favorable to enacting your statement:
> exterminates and enslaves minorities
The equality faction or the hierarchy faction?
Here is an analogy:
You can claim yourself to be a pacifist (left wing) all you want. But if your actions are aggressive and cause war (right wing), then you aren't a pacifist, even if you claim to be one.
>In left-right politics, left-wing politics are political positions or activities that accept or support social equality, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality
Yes, and these are the positions Mao, Stalin, and Pol Pot took. They killed people using the justification that the people they killed were standing in the way of these ideals.
The next demagogue to rack of a massive body could could come from either the left or the right.
Ok, so by this definition, Stalin was certainly not left-wing, since he exterminated and enslaved minorities, which you appear to agree is not supportive of social equality. Yet Stalin is used in the same Wikipedia article as an example of left-wing activities.
Also, if pacifism is left-wing, then the Obama administration is certainly not left-wing or anything close to it, since he has repeatedly authorized military action. I suppose you could finesse this point by saying that neither major party in the US is left-wing by your criterion. But trying to apply this more generally, for example to claim that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc., were not "really" left-wing, looks a lot like a "no true Scotsman" argument.
In fact, by the pacifism criterion, I'm not aware of any government or political movement that has ever been left-wing; the closest thing to it would be some religious orders, like the Amish, who really do try to be pacifists. (Some people would put the Quakers in this category, but the Quakers have always flavored their surface pacifism with a strong pragmatic streak; they sold gunpowder to Washington's army during the American Revolution, for example.) But this makes "left-wing" a basically useless term, not to mention that you would have to explain to an awful lot of people that they have been using it wrong for a long time, since most people apply the term to Stalin, as I noted above, as well as Mao, Pol Pot, etc.
Finally, if left-wing means supportive of social equality for everyone, then once again, there are hardly any true left-wingers and never have been. Take trade unions, for example: yes, they're very supportive of social equality for their members, but are they equally supportive of social equality for management? Not to mention social equality for people who are not members but would like to learn one of the trades that are unionized? In my experience, unions do a very poor job with things like apprenticeship programs, because training new members means less job security for existing members.
Similarly, central planning in economics, which is supposed to promote more economic equality, ends up giving special privileges to the planners and those who are closely connected with them (like large financial institutions); witness the huge bailouts of investment banks after the crash of 2008, while ordinary people got foreclosed on. The closest thing to true left-wingers by this criterion are left-libertarians or anarchists (which, to be fair, the Wikipedia article does mention).
Please note, I'm not arguing your overall point, I agree with it completely. This comment is really just nit-picking over terminology.
I'm pretty sure that Stalin has been post-categorized into the "Left-Wing" camp as he stood for "Socialism".
That one label is about the only thing about Stalin that could be classified as "Left-Wing". There has been an enormous amount of jostling amongst all "Left-Wing" political parties (globally) since then in order to differentiate themselves from Stalin.
"Socialism" is now very different from Stalin's view of it, just as "Liberalism" has now been watered down to mean anyone who isn't on the extreme right.
Arguing left vs right is not the way to view this problem. Seeing through the emotive labels and debates, and analyzing the actual behaviour will show you that personal power is the driving motivator, not any political ideology.
According to Plato "The measure of a man is what he does with power". Most of our world leaders at the moment aren't measuring up.
> This comment is really just nit-picking over terminology.
I agree that terminology in this area is very, very messed up. That's largely because the terminology has been used as a tool to gain and hold power, rather than as a tool of clear communication--Stalin being an obvious example.
>> "Socialism" is now very different from Stalin's view of it
Didn't released documents after 1989 show that most of the West European communist parties took orders directly from Moscow/Stalin?
IIRC, it was a big shock that the reason the Italian communist party was so reasonable after WW II was because it was orders from Moscow. (Stalin wanted to split Europe in two.)
I remember that the Swedish communist party used to be staunch Stalinists until Moscow told them he was wrong. Is that where the different view of Socialism came from? :-)
(The Swedish communists (SKP/VPK/V) claim to have stopped taking orders in the 1960s and have been critics of Soviet since 1989.)
Considering that Stalin died in 1953, it's improbable that he had any influence on the communist parties of Europe during the 80's.
I'd also refrain from conflating the "communist" parties from Europe with "Socialism", despite the obvious, ideological connections. Times had changed, labels were still being re-used.
The extermination of minorities is a very popular tactic amongst people supporting social equality. Just look at the French revolution, for an explicit example, if you don't think Pol Pot and the other communists are really left wing.
By analogy, you could say that the Inquisition was inherently unchristian, in so far as Christianity has an ideological character beyond simply "Christ worship".
Similarly, if we do the obvious thing and conflate "left wing" and "socialist", and believe that socialism has an ideological character beyond simply hating the existing organization of society, then extermination, slavery, thuggery, coercion, and violence are inherently anti-socialist.
This view is also the conclusion Orwell was operating under---the utopian ideal of capital-S Socialism which he approved of was used as operating cover to assist in the seizing of power by technocratic middle classes.
This view was pretty much explicitly stated in the Goldstein treatises in 1984, which described "English Socialism" as actually a form of "oligarchical collectivism," and claimed that "The Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it does so in the name of Socialism."
Similarly, there's this bit from the supposedly ex-Trotskyist James Burnham (who Orwell rightly abuses for being a power-worshiping scumbag):
"Some apologists try to excuse Marxism by saying that it has ‘never had a chance’. This is far from the truth. Marxism and the Marxist parties have had dozens of chances. In Russia, a Marxist party took power. Within a short time it abandoned Socialism; if not in words, at any rate in the effect of its actions. In most European nations there were during the last months of the first world war and the years immediately thereafter, social crises which left a wide-open door for the Marxist parties: without exception they proved unable to take and hold power. In a large number of countries — Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, England, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, France — the reformist Marxist parties have administered the governments, and have uniformly failed to introduce Socialism or make any genuine step towards Socialism... These parties have, in practice, at every historical test — and there have been many — either failed Socialism or abandoned it. This is the fact which neither the bitterest foe nor the most ardent friend of Socialism can erase. This fact does not, as some think, prove anything about the moral quality of the Socialist ideal. But it does constitute unblinkable evidence that, whatever its moral quality, Socialism is not going to come."
To be fair, it's easy to believe claims about Stalin not being a socialist are simply ego-bruised leftists invoking the No True Scotsman fallacy. I don't think this necessarily applies simply because socialism is inherently an ideology. If someone claims to be a pacifist while marauding through a public place with an assault rifle, massacring people as they go, we have no problem resolving this dissonance: the murderer's claims of pacifism are simply lies.
Of course, pacifism was never taken all that seriously to begin with, so it's safe for us to simply say "you're lying about being a pacifist." We feel a bit more constrained telling someone they're lying about their status as a Christian or a socialist.
> You can claim yourself to be a pacifist (left wing) all you want. But if your actions result in war (right wing), then you aren't a pacifist.
So you mean "left wing" is anything that leads to peace and "right wing" is anything that results in war. You may want to look up "tautology" or "circular reasoning".
By that standard a successful nuclear strike is left wing, and a failed one is right wing.
I'm continually astonished at the ultraconservative meme that Hitler was left-wing (which seems to originate with a book called 'Liberal Fascism' by Jonah Goldberg, although it has doubtless been floating around for much longer). Point out that one of the very first things that Hitler did on attaining power was have all the trade unionists arrested, and you might as well be talking to the air.
I think they are good signifiers for significantly different economic/political beliefs. However, fanatacism in politics ends up looking pretty similar regardless of starting point.
I think that they are actively hurtful, they shut down rational thinking. Ideas that actually make sense tend not to cluster well along left/right axis, but are scattered all over the spectrum.
It' not "almost as though" but they are meaningless terms (and harmful to political discussion in my view). American politics likes to force every issue into the "liberal" or "conservative" category but reality is much more subtle.
Read it, then tell me if you still don't understand why these people might get classified as left-wing. They implemented quite a few of these points too, by the way. You can say whatever you want about Nazi's but they are by far the most successful leftist party in history, and quite a few "left-wing" rights today were first implemented by Nazi Germany. Big example : pensions. Scholarships (of the for-the-needy kind, not for-the-really-smart kind). There's many examples.
That said, it is beyond obvious that they are not comparable to today's left wing.
As hard as it is to understand today, the left-wing was very much anti-immigrant in the 1930's. But it's just one of many historical facts that have changed. What I still find hard to believe, is that it's the democrats were the pro-slavery anti-black side of the aisle.
Some choice cuts :
(the first parts are anti-versailles, and some anti-immigration)
7. We demand that the State shall above all undertake to ensure that every citizen shall have the possibility of living decently and earning a livelihood. If it should not be possible to feed the whole population, then aliens (non-citizens) must be expelled from the Reich.
(8-9 are anti-immigrant)
10. The first duty of every citizen must be to work mentally or physically. No individual shall do any work that offends against the interest of the community to the benefit of all.
11. That all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.
12. Since every war imposes on the people fearful sacrifices in blood and treasure, all personal profit arising from the war must be regarded as treason to the people. We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all trusts.
14. We demand profit-sharing in large industries.
15. We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.
You'll note, however, that many of those platform points were polar opposites to policies enacted in practice once the Nazis came to power.
War profits continued (indeed, Nazis who tried to actually push for getting rid of the profit motive were quickly removed from their posts and marginalized).
"Unearned" income continued. The Nazis even maintained the gold standard for international trade long after the other major economies had devalued their own currency, and much of the mobilization of their wartime economy came via inventive capitalist measures from the Reichsbank, Reich Economic Ministry, military-economic departments of the Oberkommandowehrmacht, and more.
Likewise the trusts were not only not nationalized (at least, at any great scale), but businesses and industry were forced to join specified cartels based on their market sector. It was through these cartels that the Reich enforced economic policy.
Most of the "left wing" economic policies that were enacted were emulated using good old standard "right wing" methods. Markets remained; instead of centrally planning economic output directly, the Reich simply regulated the market such as to achieve mostly the desired effect. Instead of banning refrigerators outright, the Reich simply failed to import enough iron ore to make civilian goods once the priority list for Wehrmacht and export needs had been filled.
Chemical plants that were absolutely essential for the Reich's strategic needs were contracted to companies like IG Farben with profit guarantees and profit sharing agreements, methods that would be perfectly accept to almost any right-wing economist.
There were state industries too (Junkers, a strategic industry expansion program, a steel/coal production cartel, etc.) so it's not as if Nazi Germany didn't have traditionally left-wing attributes to it. But nor was it lacking in traditionally right-wing attributes or methods.
All of these methods were means to an end, as opposed to being taken from either a left-wing or right-wing palette of options because they were left- or right-wing.
Your making the point that because they weren't outright communist, they must have been right-wing. I agree that they weren't communists, I disagree with the conclusion you draw from that.
Most trusts were nationalized, just nazi style : their management was replaced or forced to obey party rule, mostly by threats. Yes that doesn't technically qualify as nationalization, but for all practical intents it boils down to the same thing. It is most definitely not a laissez-faire policy.
> Most of the "left wing" economic policies that were enacted were emulated using good old standard "right wing" methods
We're talking about the introduction of pensions, scholarships, unemployments payment increases, job guarantees, ...
> Chemical plants that were absolutely essential for the Reich's strategic needs were contracted to companies like IG Farben with profit guarantees and profit sharing agreements, methods that would be perfectly accept to almost any right-wing economist.
You left out the part where the party threatened to imprison (or worse) management if they did any orders that weren't for the government. Frankly, if a party with a thorough reputation for excessive use of violence that is in control of the government threatens prison if you don't sign a contract ... would you consider that free enterprise or laissez-faire ?
I agree that the methods used were not full-blown communist. The state was in absolute control, that was the goal, the means and what happened on the ground. Calling this right-wing policy is lunacy.
The way I see left, right, far left, and far right is this :
left: communist-lite policies. Try to achieve the same aims as communists, trying to avoid the worst inefficiencies of that by having market-based policies, with judicious application of direct government intervention and regulation. Example: Obamacare.
right: laissez-faire policies. Try to achieve (mostly) the same aims as communists, doing as little as possible to achieve those aims. If something needs to be done at all, don't let the government do it itself.
far left: outright communist policy. Put the government in direct control of everything, and have a direct reporting chain into the government for everything that happens. Government intervention is the only thing allowed to exist.
far right: don't try to achieve anything at all using the state. Anarchism.
On this scale, Nazis fall under "far left". They never had the time to really get to full-blown communism but they made great progress in that direction.
I think your definition of the left-right axis is almost designed to make the Nazis belong in the far left, which is still (thankfully!) a fringe opinion.
Populism alone is not left-wing.
Your definition of left/right doesn't include aspects of the far right such as anti-labor measures (while calling themselves a "worker's party", the Nazis actually destroyed worker rights, which made them appealing to the industrial elite), and extreme racism. The Nazis also used the power of the state in a distinctly right-wing way: as a way to safeguard business and the property rights of the wealthy.
I appreciate the difference between what people claim they'll do and what they actually do given the chance. However at least in the case of the Nazis I'd like to point out the war. During this time in history, Germany, the Soviets and America destroyed worker's rights. We all know why. Does this indicate how they were aligned ? A little, but there are many other things far more important.
It keeps baffling me how offensive people find the idea that the far left was leaning towards racism and the far right was the more tolerant side of aisle during this period. Things change. Is this really so hard to imagine ? Everyone knows that the Vatican, for example, is very much for equality between races and has actually stood by this stance when politically inconvenient, just like they stand behind their (somewhat lunatic) anti-birth-control stand today. Given that, and the similar attitude of other religions, is it really so hard to believe that when public opinion turns racist (as I'm hoping people are still capable of realizing that it did), populist parties will turn with it, including leftist parties. Conservatives, as the name implies will be more constant, and will resist this change on both sides. Right now they're anti-immigration, because they're more so than the "big" left party, but not by much. That can change in a heartbeat, and if history is any guide, it will.
You know those old movies where you see rich women react to black people as if they were smelly insects ? Those movies are quite realistic and, like today, rich women are rather unlikely to be conservatives. Those people were part of the left. There was a time, not that long ago, when that was the norm, the social and popular thing to do. I bet most black adults can enlighten you to these facts if you're confused.
Everytime some range of immigrants starts lowering pay for a large group of workers, racism becomes popular, for obvious reasons. 1930 in Europe was like 2009, on the Mexican border, for people without a degree, only worse to the point where they actually feared starving to death on a regular basis (especially in Germany, where there were a few regions where there actually was starvation). Is it really so hard to comprehend that under those circumstances, sentiment will turn racist ? Doubly so given that the majority of taxes was going to foreignors ?
People -- or rather, myself, since I can't speak for everyone -- do not find it offensive as much as nonsensical. The far right was never tolerant, by any definition of far right. Racism is also inherently not a trait of the far left. When we find a leftist government/organization enacting extreme racist policies such as mass imprisonment, deportation or execution, we know there's something deeply wrong with it, and we usually denounce it ("how can they call themselves leftists if they do this!"). But the same policies by a far right government would surprise no-one.
I'm willing to concede many points, for example:
- That some branches of the left can be "conservative" at times, if we define conservative to mean "staying with the satus quo". For example, if the status quo is a leftist society. Also, individual people may be conservative as a general attitude towards life, regardless of political ideologies.
- That some groups historically called leftists were so in name only, or had right-wing traits at the same time.
- That the more extremist left and right wing at times are cosmetically very similar, especially when their discourse is at its most strident.
But the Nazis were far-right, paying only lip service to worker's rights. Most Western entrepreneurs were also anti worker's rights, which is why they initially saw Nazis in a very good light. They were definitely not "more tolerant" than the left.
I do not consider the Vatican or the Church as right-wing organizations, by the way. More like conservatists, which I have already agreed is a more broad classification. There exist sub-groups within the Church which belong to the extreme right, of course.
> When we find a leftist government/organization enacting extreme racist policies such as mass imprisonment, deportation or execution, we know there's something deeply wrong with it, and we usually denounce it ("how can they call themselves leftists if they do this!").
Strange. I must have missed that when it came to
1) First and foremost, Che Guevara. Allow me to quote him
"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations."
Clearly being a racist murderous bastard does not preclude any leftist credentials. I would argue that if you checked the newspapers in the 1930's and 1950's-60's-70's you will find that similar reverence existed in the left for Hitler (up till July 1941, guess what happened at that moment), and Stalin, even when it was known that Soviets did the extermination camp thing.
Other examples that come to mind
2) the Soviets (against Jews, homosexuals, tatars, ...)
3) The open racism of Egypts various socialist government parties (religious, sexist and ethnic). Most glaringly, the left's support for the arab spring even when it got taken over by the muslim brotherhood, who is not merely racist, but genocidally so.
More generally, you'll see a lot of examples of this in the middle east.
4) The open racism in China, before (and even during) the latest pro-pseudo-capitalism era. And yes, this was while China was doing the Nepal thing.
Again, not just China, but a lot of Asian countries enjoyed this leftist support.
So forgive me for stating the obvious here : the left has a specific agenda, and is certainly willing to accept open racism in people it reveres, racist policies and even racist genocides to some extent, as long as they advance the cause.
I am more of a European-style leftist (meaning I find the democrats nowhere near the centre of the political spectrum), but I have very few illusions on this. I have been a party member at one time (student days ...) and after a while I was forced to conclude that while, yes, it was far-fetched that these people would ever be given the chance for genocide, but
1) there was a (granted, small) group always talking about it. Mostly about Jews and/or Israel
2) after a while I started to believe them.
3) these people were not just tolerated, but actually had high status. Some were part of the "core" of the party.
4) obviously, most people in the party were very much opposed to actually implementing this. Unlike this loud group however, they were not willing to sacrifice anything for that.
Now this will get dragged down to what can and cannot be considered the true Left :(
I won't discuss China, the Soviet Union, Che Guevara (where is that quote from, btw?) or anything of the sort here. It simply is not possible or suitable to debate this in a forum like hackernews. Call it a cop out if you want :)
However, I'll say I disagree with your fundamental assertion, that the Left is willing to tolerate open racism when it suits their needs. Racism stands directly against what the Left stands for. Of course corrupted leftist movements, often leftist in name only, are free to forget leftist ideals, just as religious organizations sometimes forget their founding principles.
But let me place emphasis on this: if a leftist movement turns racist, this is a serious contradiction that must be pointed out. If a rightwing movement is racist, there is no contradiction and its intended audience will applaud it; racism and discrimination are cornerstones of rightwing thought. It is a mistake for a leftist movement to tolerate a racist ally when it would temporarily help heir cause, but this is never a mistake for a rightwing movement because racism is often part of its core ideology.
By this definition, which I think is mainstream, it's impossible to consider the Nazis a far left movement. I believe there is an ideological intent to conflate the two extremes, left and right, which says less about them than about the people doing the conflating...
Sure, they had some left-wing traits. And they had some right wing traits too: The belief that Germany is a special country is pretty similar to today's conservatives belief that the US is exceptional and blessed by God.
My point was that by figuring out whether the Nazis were left or right wing nothing is learned. There are left wing and right wing democracies and there are left and right wing dictatorships. Left wing governments have killed a lot of people and so have right wing governments.
Both the extreme left and the extreme right are very much opposed to unions. Ergo making a difference between them on that basis seems impossible.
It worked on the other side of the fence as well : Nazi Germany restricted or outlawed trade and business organisation just as it did it unions. They went after the Church too. They restriced universities. They replaced or otherwise forced the management of large businesses to do their bidding too. Hell, they went after a number of soccer clubs.
And the Soviets did the same. Slightly different order, with the emphasis placed slightly differently, but the same result.
In general I'd say that extreme left and extreme right are both totalitarian ideologies and will not allow any form of authority or power to reside in any organisation other than their own. Left or right merely determines the order and the emphasis.
What is the extreme left for you? Stalinism isn't extreme left, it's just an totalitarianism promoted as socialism to gain credit. Just as north korea ain't a democracy even though they call themselves that. What I usually associate with "extreme" or far left is the "autonomous left" or similar where trade unions are certainly a fundamental part of the organisational idea.
This is the "but it was never implemented correctly" argument. To the rest of the world, I assure you that Soviet-style communism definitely qualifies as socialism.
I think the "but it was never implemented correctly" socialists always seem to forget the strength of a state required to simply "implement" socialism, and then enforce it.
Failing said state, it would require a very sizeable majority of the whole mass of people to simply switch over all at once, and again, somehow defend that new order from warlords and parasites.
That isn't even a reply is it? I could definitely build a solid case with a lot of historical references to support such an argument. However I'm very doubtful that you could build a solid case that Stalinism is in fact built on the foundations/ideas of Socialism. Just as it's pretty easy to build case that North Korea is not very aligned with democratic principles. This article is from 1940 and is skeptical of Stalinism. There's alot of more, and earlier, examples of such criticism as well.
But the propaganda that Stalinism is actually what socialism stands for was in the interest of both sides of the cold war, and we live with this "repeat-until-its-true" legacy today.
There's one very important way in which Fascism was very anti-conservative, and that's in the sense that they literally believed in violent revolution to overthrow the existing order and install an ideologically-driven regime. That part is almost literally cribbed from communism, although the motivating ideologies behind the two are different.
Modern American conservatism, especially lately, is almost exclusively the boring and literal type of conservatism--the type that talks about traditional values and the merits of the status quo and says "no" to all these new liberal initiatives, ranging from gay marriage to Obamacare. It doesn't have the desire to overthrow the existing order of things, nor the ideological fervor to know what to do if it did.
> neither side -- left or right -- in America is that close to the ideas of National Socialism
...
> False equivalence is a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none. It would be the antonym of the mathematical concept of material equivalence.
...
> A common way for this fallacy to be perpetuated is one shared trait between two subjects is assumed to show equivalence, especially in order of magnitude
Correct me if I am wrong, but conservatism doesn't have the social programs that Hitler had. Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps and then mass murder them.
I think this thread has reached a Godwin level. Both may be right-wing but:
Hitler supported abortion, gun control, big government, and other things the conservatives claim to be against.
To simply say conservatives = Hitler because both are right-wing is just as wrong as saying liberals = communists or anarchists because all are left-wing.
Firstly, Hitler liberalised German's gun laws slightly. He actually removed some of the restrictions and allowed Germans even to own some types of gun without a permit. Of course, Jews were banned from owning guns entirely, but in Nazi Germany, Jews were obviously a special case. The story that Hitler was a big supporter of gun control is just some bullshit propaganda by modern NRA types.
Secondly, you're conflating modern American ideas of what a Conservative is with what it would have meant in the 1930s or earlier. In the 19th century, conservatives would have been the guys in favour of protectionism and big government intervention in business, compared to the liberals of the day who'd have been more in favour of laissez-faire economics. By the 1940s, laissez-faire had been discredited by the Great Depression and nobody was too enthusiastic about the free market.
As for concentration camps, they were invented by the Conservative British government during the Boer war. (The six or seven death camps in Poland were an unprecedented phenomenon, so far unique to Nazi Germany, of course).
Political ideas change over time. You're trying to impose modern political ideas inappropriately onto what happened in the past.
Last I checked, none of those things were due to conservatives alone, nor have they been any better, on balance, when liberals control the government than when conservatives do. (Israel's methods of dealing with Gaza probably come closest to being "run by conservatives", but even there the same things tend to happen when more moderate Israeli governments are in power.)
Well, everybody calls them liberals; they even call themselves liberals (when they're not calling themselves progressives, which is an even stronger code word for "left-wing"). If your argument is that they aren't "true" liberals, then who are the "true" liberals?
The extreme skewing towards conservatism is most evident at the extreme ends of the spectrum in the House: there are only 22 strong liberals vs 74 strong conservatives. There are two Congressmen with perfect 100 conservative scores and not a single one with a perfect liberal score.
I'm skeptical of anyone's "analysis" of the positions of political figures because the analyst's biases always color the analysis. That's obvious from both of the links you give: the "That's My Congress" link is obviously biased liberal just from their naming of the categories, and both of your links only analyze positions on a one-dimensional scale, which assumes that no other dimensions are relevant. That just increases the skepticism of someone (like me) who thinks both major parties in the US are seriously off the rails on some issues (for example, the war on drugs).
As for your list of "true" liberals, McGovern is the only one who strikes me as consistently furthering "liberal" positions (by which I mean "liberal" by the definition you appear to be using--see below). Mondale didn't strike me as consistently furthering much of anything. Johnson got us deep into Vietnam. FDR got us into World War II (by which I don't just mean he was President when it started, I mean he consistently took actions, often covert ones, that were calculated to get us into the war). Douglas voted with the majority in Korematsu v. United States (his positions did change over time, so, for example, he wrote the majority opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut; but that just points up the fact that he wasn't always consistent). Marshall did win Brown v. Board of Education, but while education in the US is more integrated today than it was then, I question whether it is any more equal, unless it's in the sense that it's more equally bad. (To be fair, Marshall was pretty consistently liberal in his opinions as a Supreme Court Justice.)
Of course, from your point of view, this just makes the case stronger that "true" liberals have very little power in the US. But from my point of view, it makes the case stronger that your definition of the word "liberal" is not a useful or historically accurate one.
Last I checked Gaza were nothing like a concentration camp, and calling it that is an offense to anyone who experienced any real one.
When did foreign journalists have access to ccs? When did ccs have markets in broad daylight? Where is forced labour? (I didn't mention starvation etc because those ones are contested but still.)
I literally don't like to bring this up as it isually brings downvotes but letting people frame something this important, -no.
You're right, Gaza is more like the Warsaw ghetto than a concentration camp. History never repeats itself exactly.
But I should say that I didn't really want to emphasize the "conservative" aspect of what Orwell wrote about Hitler so much as that he was able to get away with a lot of what he did in the early days because the "property-owning classes" allowed him to. That is the part I found chilling.
Gaza is a bit like a concentration camp - an area where a group of people are contained and kept from moving freely. Generally concentration camps aren't big enough to support markets, but other concentration camps have allowed journalists, and forced labour is not a prerequisite for one either.
It is better associated with the Warsaw ghetto, but your requirements for a concentration camp are not actually definitive of one.
Let me add a couple of points re calling Gaza a concentration camp:
1. Gaza has among the highest population growths on the planet. Anyone implying organized murder is ... well, to not be impolite I also have to say: "is an offense to anyone who experienced any real [concentration camp]".
2. The borders were quite open to Israel, until the murders of Israeli civilians really started. It was common that people commuted to work in Israel and Israelis drove the car over to Gaza to have it fixed. Some problems are self generated.
I agree with you that this argument has little to do with conservatism vs. liberalism, but to state "Conservatism doesn't send people to concentration camps" is ignoring some glaring realities, unless you want to be really selective about the definition of a concentration camp.
Is Gitmo a concentration camp? How about Manus Island? Azouli Prison? These "detention centers" are full of people put there by both conservatives and self-labelled "liberals".
Left / Right, Conservative / Liberal, etc. don't really matter if the people in charge are just aligning themselves with these ideologies for political gain. I think you'll find that the politically opposed leaders of the world have more in common with each-other than they do with the average members of the populations they represent.
Gitmo isn't a concentration camp because there is no 'concentration'. That is, the Gitmo prison is clearly not part of an effort to take some population of people and stick them all in one place. Nominally everyone there is a prisoner of war - they are not there because they a member of some Afghan minority, or homosexual or disabled or whatever the hell else. Neither is it a death camp, although it seems most everyone still there, will die there. Probably the most accurate label is that it's an internment camp.
You should detail the logical relationships between theses and people acting on them because -isms don't send anyone anywhere, people do. To say they do without offering a road map is loose thinking.
Yes, just like guns don't kill people, people do. Especially people who believe in -isms.
People justify their actions with -isms and theses and society often accepts those justifications. You can always say the -ism isn't to blame, because the person would have probably found another suitable -ism to justify their actions anyway.
The mistake a lot of people make is assuming that political leaders actually believe in ideologies (-isms), rather than assuming they just manipulate them for their own gain. Most politicians will flip-flop on any stance if their constituents demand it.
More seriously the claim was xxxism doesn't send people to concentration camps, this was responded to by counter examples. This is a perfectly reasonable response and disproof of the claim that xxxism doesn't send people to concentration camps. It was not a standalone claim that xxxism leads to concentration camps which may need to be supported as you wish.
I know the ideology wasn't xxx but exactly what it is isn't important to the point I was making.
It is nonsense to say that. If you think "Nazism sent people to concentration camps" is not a valid thing to say, then replace "Nazism" with "Jainism [0]" or "postmodernism".
Nazism entails the belief that a group of humans is inferior to other humans and that they can be destroyed. The arrow "someone is Nazi" -> "someone sends people to concentration camps" follows from their ideology. It would be absurd to say that Jainists or postmodernists send people to concentration camps, because nothing about their beliefs suggests a destruction of other people!
Saying that people's -isms "don't do anything" is dangerously morally relativist. Don't pretend that meaningful things cannot be said about the consequences Nazist beliefs might have. -isms are an important categorization of what kind of software people are running on their brains. It is useful in distinguishing what kind of destructive behaviour that software can result in.
Unrelated to the matter but since you work at genius, can you talk to the geniuses (sic) who thought that hijacking text highlight was a good idea? A lot of us speed readers use text highlight to read along. It is easier on the eyes and the brain.
For technical reasons: we want to allow users to annotate arbitrary segments of text, so what better (or other) way is there than adding an annotate button to highlighted text?
For philosophical reasons: genius is about annotating text, and as a result, about close reading. We'd rather optimize for a close read than a speed read.
The annotate button covers the highlighted text. And I don't just highlight text when I speed read, I do it all the time because it is easier on the eyes - it is just a habit common to speed readers as that's where most people pick it up.
Moreover you actually break selection pretty badly along with it. There are other ways to annotate than to pop crap up every time a user highlights text.
I'm in no mood of solving UX problems for a website that has gotten me so disgusted within seconds of opening it. And no, this is not an exaggeration. Imagine if, while reading the newspaper, every few seconds some really annoying guy moved it out of the way and yelled "DID YOU SEE THE SPORTS SECTION?" or similar crap you don't care about. This is the most direct analogy I can find to explain the situation to someone who doesn't highlight-read.
It seems everyone would be happy if the annotate button didn't overlap the highlighted text.
Would it be possible to move the button just to the right of the highlighted block? Then speed-readers don't get hindered, and the annotate functionality remains usable.
Would be nice to just add a toggle for the annotations? I rarely use genius for the various annotations, but with the wealth of song (rap) lyrics, I often end up on the site. Being able to switch off annotations would be great.
[edit: Come to think of it, I'd love to see three modes: the current highlight, none, and footnotes (which one might hoover/click). Whenever I read annotated texts, I rarely care about all annotations -- I only look up the things I need to look up. And the highlights are really annoying when reading a text.]
You can just display the "annotate" dialog outside the main text. Also it's pretty annoying that it wants me to click just to take me to a login screen. Fuck this.
I'm a text highlighter too, I do it across most articles and the like. Genius on the other hand, I use that for close analysis of lyrics and text, so I only highlight to annotate something, so it's never annoyed me like it has you. I also really like the website, so I guess we differ there, but hey different strokes and all that!
This is a great reminder that at one time Hitler was not the caricature of pure evil that he is now. He was real and nobody knew what the future held. Amazing snapshot into that time.
Bearing in mind that this "caricature of pure evil" image is basically result of propaganda of the winning side of WW2 it's only natural that it wasn't the case before he lost his war. Far more interesting about this article is the fact how much it was known about what the future held. Sure, Orwell might be somewhat above average in questions of history and politics, but still I'd say it is pretty surprising that he is giving attention precisely that parts of Mein Kampf and Hitler personality which are interesting now, 70 years after. Especially that part about Hitler seeing himself as "Christ crucified". "Hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds". Indeed, wasn't it pretty clear back then, that whatever war he started — he couldn't win? What must had happened in order to make victory possible? Yet his popularity was amazing, and Orwell describes perfectly why. I'm not sure I understood the reason so well before I read this.
From my reading of WW-II, no one was fighting war to stop Hitler was committing genocide. Participating countries really didn't cared so much about jews, they were just afraid that Hitler will march in to their borders. In fact, nations actively refused to give fleeting jews asylum.
There are however also theories that people actually didn't knew how ugly this was and there was often uncertainty if actually systematic genocide was in progress. It was only after allies found concentration camps, mountain of skulls, gas chambers etc, they realized full extent of what was going on. So Hitler's "caricature of pure evil" probably wasn't possible because of lack of reliable facts until he got defeated.
>What must had happened in order to make victory possible?
the nuke could have done it.
Scientifically Germany was on top since the second half of 18-nth century.
Oppie took a Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Gottingen, 1927.
> this thread rises lots of questions
'evil is perverted good' Paracelsus of middle-ages.
> "Bearing in mind that this "caricature of pure evil" image is basically result of propaganda of the winning side of WW2"
I'm not sure that any propaganda is necessary to convince 99.9% of people that the instigator of the largest genocide in human history is, in fact, a "caricature of pure evil."
Yea, Mao Ze Dong wasn't the same thing though. It's estimated as many as 60 million people died in China from hunger. Many others died from the civil war (Cultural Revolution). There may have been some genocide but the term doesn't apply as well as in Germany/Russia.
Yes but people were dying from hunger as a direct result of the policies that Mao implemented http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine He is largely responsible for these deaths even if he didn't personally exterminate them.
Genocide, as defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, is any of the following acts committed with INTENT to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:
killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The intent is important, no matter what you might believe. That's why the killings in Srebrenica were recognized as genocide, even though "only" 8000 civilians were killed. It does not matter if 10 million or 10 thousand are killed, the intent is all that matters.
What follows is that the starvation caused by Maos policies were not a genocide, no matter how many people died, simply because the government didn't intend to kill all Chinese systematically. Quite to the contrary, they seriously believed that collectivization would end the starvation that has plagued China for decades.
The same applies to most deaths caused by Stalins regime. In some cases there was genocide going on, but the largest part of the victims of his regime were due to failed economic policies (starvation) and political persecution.
Whereas Hitlers policy was to exterminate ethnical or religious groups he deemed worthless, like the Jews, the Slavs, the Roma and many more. He clearly had the intention to exterminate those groups, he even stated it publicly.
So are you saying that when climate change happens, if it's as bad as many scientists fear, then modern US conservatives will take up the mantle of "largest genocide in history"?
> but in politics the outcome is all that matters, not the intent
And where is this written as Canon?
Politics is also performed with imperfect predictions of the future. If policies pursued in good faith result in the death of millions, the people implementing them are not as responsible as those for whom death is the policy.
Now, if their intent was to starve the masses to further their goals, you would have a point.
>> but in politics the outcome is all that matters, not the intent
> And where is this written as Canon?
In the minds of the survivors.
> If policies pursued in good faith result in the death of millions, the people implementing them are not as responsible as those for whom death is the policy.
History doesn't see it that way. People don't see it that way. Hitler and Stalin are equally reviled, even though Hitler's genocide was intentional and Stalin's was a side effect of "good intentions" -- a Communist revolution.
> Now, if their intent was to starve the masses to further their goals, you would have a point.
Like Mao and Pol Pot? Both were able to explain their programs as "for the good of the people", and both pursued their programs long after their effect was perfectly clear.
You may be able to find a specific definition of genocide, which makes that statement true. But in a very narrow definition of genocide as targeted extermination policy, as well as in a very broad definition, where a large part of the people who died in WWII would count against Hitler, this is not true.
Consider that modern day fascists are (rightly) reviled by modern mainstream society, yet communists are tolerated. There are even communists being voted into various parliaments and no-one bats an eyelid. Aren't you curious as to why this is, given Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Kim family, even Castro?
The reason is that roots of communism and nazism are different. Marx wrote Communist Manifesto in 1848 and it influenced working class movement in many ways, which, one can argue, has led to several good things in society. It also influenced the horrors you mentioned. Nazism, on the otherhand, is largely associated with Hitler, although it has roots in pan-Germanism and nationalism in general.
Thus, communism is associated with a wider spectrum of ideas and events than nazism, and because of that expressing some forms of communist ideas is tolerated in the modern society better than expressing the Nazi ideology.
The mistake often made in describing the crimes and actions of the Third Reich is to somehow dehumanize them, turn all the players into demons and monsters, the same techniques used by the Nazis themselves to target and exterminate Jews and other undesirables. To dehumanize Nazis is to turn them into archetypes as opposed to functioning humans; it sets us up to be "surprised" again when traits of the Nazis show up elsewhere, in other places, at a lessened level but with the same misguided goals and logic behind them.
Has anyone here actually read Mein Kampf? Doing so is probably banned in Germany and I am not sure what there is other than kiddie porn or some al-qaeda training manual that you totally would not want in your browsing history. There could come a time when no living person has read Mein Kampf and nobody would know first hand why it is wrong.
It is not banned in Germany, though there obviously exists a stromg social stigma if you chose to display it in your living room.
The legal situation is this:
The free state of Bavaria has inherited Hitler's assets. Including the copyright to My Kampf.
Bavaria does not allow any reprints, unless for scientific purposes with commentary alongside the text. Obviously publishers abroad don't always care about that.
(Interestingly, publication in the US and England is actually legal, since the rights to publish in English were sold long before Hitler's death).
Other than that copyright issue there is no legal mechanism in place to ban Mein Kampf. People have been buying, bequeathing and selling unannotated versions (of which there are many around, the Third Reich isn't some fantastically distant past, after all!) without problems.
The question that has been popping up in political circles every now and then and that has reached some urgency now is how to proceed.
Because Hitler died in 1945, his copyright ends on January 1st, 2016.
There are people calling for special legislative action, but I doubt it's coming.
Yes, I have (yay protection of free speech!) and it is dreadfully boring.
It is amazing though how it pretty much spells out exactly what he would end up doing once he took power, in all the horrid detail, and yet some politicians of the time believed that simple appeasement would work...
As someone else here said, the lesson is that crazy people sometimes mean what they say, even when it sounds totally crazy.
It's like here in the UK millions of people voted Lib Dem without reading the Orange Book, then were surprised that they're actually to the right of the Tories.
>>As someone else here said, the lesson is that crazy people sometimes mean what they say, even when it sounds totally crazy.
Yeah, the challenge is to figure out which crazy people are actually crazy and mean what they say, and which ones say crazy things simply to gain votes.
But that is true of all such literature. The little Red Book, The Communist manifesto, Mein Kampf, the Quran, all of these books are boring to the point that despite their historical influence, and the massacres ascribed to them, it is a real struggle to get through them.
The Communist Manifesto is a pamphlet and it contains a lot of great quotable passages. The Little Red Book contains contains quotes and proverbs from Mao. The Quran.. you can hardly say that it is boring. Your book comparison is just wrong. If you want to compare Mein Kampf to something, then Josef Stalin wrotes some tomes which are dreadful.
Mein campf is ... well, it's rambling. Think one of those internet "we didn't land on the moon, climate is bad, boo immigrants" texts rambling. The quran is rambling too, but of a different kind. "you must do X, you can't do Y, he must do Z, if you do A, B and C you'll be rewarded". It'd be fine, but it's 50 freaking pages of that. Why are you claiming "boring" is an unfair assessment of this ?
I'm unsure what the definition of pamphlet is, but the communist manifesto definitely exceeds what I'd consider length limits for pamphlets.
Trying to make some kind of comparison between Mein Kampf and the Quran (and by extension, the Torah and the Bible since they contain much the same content) is beyond idiotic. Have you really read either of the Quran and/or Mein Kampf?
The definition of a pamphlet is an unbound booklet, which is how the Manifesto was originally printed. It's length was 23 pages.
You're way off base as it pertains to most of the world.
Having anything about Mein Kampf in your browser history is absolutely zero problem in the US at least.
You could read about Hitler and read his book all day long if you like, nothing will come of it. Not an exaggeration, not a joke.
Mein Kampf can be purchased at just about any major bookstore in the US. Very few people in this country would find it weird or shocking if you read that book. If you proclaim an association with his ideas or the Nazi movement, that's an entirely different matter.
It is required reading in many university courses that cover that time period. Nothing is really taboo when trying to understand the past as it actually was than how we would rather remember it.
What's the difference between the two editions? I can't imagine what these added annotations are about that make the book legal. Is it the occasional "Editor's note: genocide is very naughty"?
It's dull. I don't think anyone has actually finished it. That's why Orwell spent more time reviewing the photograph on the latest British edition than the book itself. He probably put it down by page 20.
>Doing so is probably banned in Germany and I am not sure what there is other than kiddie porn or some al-qaeda training manual that you totally would not want in your browsing history.
So, merely reading it transforms you into a monster?
I wonder if hitler is studied in political sciences.
Especially his speeches, rhetorics and strategies, and why they worked out how they did.
I hate to feel that hitler is somehow still a little controversial today. I don't really want to watch his speeches or read what he was saying because it's a little depressing and painful to think about, but understanding how he politically convinced people, and the underlying causes.
We're safe from that today, but I'd still like to understand how we protected ourselves from that happening again.
Hitler used very simple formula that had been often repeated: You have a nation of people defeated and stripped of wealth and pride. A leader comes up with a extremely strongly held view that these people are the greatest thing on the Earth and they will rise from the ashes. He quickly gains followers, boldly breaks rules and obtains initial victories that fuels his next moves in self-feeding way.
Mein Kampf actually does not have any plans or even hints for the atrocities that Hitler's regime performed later on. There are few words of Hitler's dislike for jews here and there where he basically complains that they are not as sophisticated as Germans, they smell, have unusual rituals, they look different etc. He then complains about they controlling major outlets of newspapers and art. Finally he discloses his real reason for dislike: He believed that jews supported socialist party that Hitler hated truly bottom of his heart, perhelps far more than jews.
One should not underestimate frustration of German people in those days. After WW-I, the peace treaty essentially put Germany in the dumpter. They can't have their army, Austria was broken apart, country needed to pay huge sums as part of the treaty and entire nation was under extreme financial depression. It was difficult to get a loaf of bread during that time for an average person. German people though their nation was sold off to winners of World War by their monarch. They thought they had been forever relegated as defeated people from who winners of the war stole everything. This was quite opposite to their belief of Germany as the greatest nation before the WW-I started.
Hitler promised to make bold moves including breaking the post WW-I treaty and payments all together. He promised to throw away monarch and socialist party which were favoring the status-quo. It was little surprise that he won hands down in elections.
The interesting part of Mein Kamf is that Hitler was rather regular guy without any political connections and even desires during the early years. He had bad experiences with members of socialist party which combined with his belief that nation was being sold by them and monarchs, lead him to rebel without caring about consequences including going to prison. This gave him publicity and outlet to write articles in newspapers as well as his autobiography. This in turn earned him strong supporters and even more exposure. Rest is the history.
I still wonder if the more a country is in a financial depression, the more it's vulnerable to extremism, and how do you measure it, and do you avoid it.
I wonder how much anyone care about not going in to war, deep in one's heart, to not let crazy type be in control, especially nowadays politicians.
I believe democracy and moderate, boring, slobbish politics are still the key in having a peaceful civilization. If the CIA is conspiring to assassinate potential war-mongerers, I would feel fine about it. Conspiracists have a point that peaceful and consented exploitation is a sad situation to be in, but it's far better than the many past horrors of conflict.
The more WW2 gets old, the more people don't realize what war really is. Short conflicts in the middle east or vietnam are not the same than when a conflict comes at your doorstep.
I don't think we are. I bet that a modern Hitler could slowly exploit the same reactions in the general population and have the same arguments against opponents as used before.
It already happens where I live where we have what I'd consider a mean government in power, winning the vote based on fears over financial position and terrorists and Muslims and whatever else.
I think the belief that we're more wary and would "see it coming next time" is quite dangerous.
It depends what you mean by "we". Russians seems pretty ok with accepting it's strong man in Putin with propaganda and media control. And they're a large nation with immense resources and a huge nuclear arsenal, not very comforting in my book.
I remember from reading a biography that he got some training in public speaking when he was a drifter in Munich. If I recall correctly, it was from some organization of the State tasked with organizing the anti-communist forces. I remember distinctly that the biographer wrote that it was then that Hitler discovered that he had a "gift" for public speaking - and that this changed his life (and the fate of the World).
"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
George Santayana
Somebody asked, why this document is so high up-voted. I would say, we can't up-vote it enough, when we have the chance to learn from history and especially from the dark sides of history and from people like George Orwell.
Chance is very big, that a new era of darkness could fall on humanity, if we don't stop it at the right time (and nobody knows, when the chance is over).
I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers. I think what was most damning was the manner in which Germany lost the war. If I thought it was mainly Hitler's values and racism, I would not feel as safe. Hitler bet big on war and he lost in spectacular fashion. I think he forever associated that style of leadership with catastrophe.
People told themselves the same thing about Napoleon, though. And they told themselves the same thing about WW1 - it was 'the war to end all wars,' and everyone was so thoroughly sick of it afterwards (not least Hitler, who was gassed), that somply having the audacity to march an army around was treated as a a strategic victory.
For some time governments that were opposed to Hitler congratulated themselves on resolving international territorial disputes without all the messy fighting and dying. Hitler's troops were clearly superior to those of the countries he was invading (in terms of number and equipment) so the outcome was obvious and the actual business of conflict seen as archaic, other than maybe a few token shots to satisfy military honor. Even when Germany and Britain finally declared war on Hitler, there was no actual fighting at first - this period is referred to by historians as 'the Phoney War', and at the time it was humorously called 'Sitzkrieg' (a pun on the Blitzkrieg, or 'lightning war' style of Hitler's conquests up to that point). It was imagined that when Britain and France had their forces in place, they could be sized up against the German forces, and a simple economic calculation would quickly bring Hitler to the negotiating table.
To the astonishment of most of the allies (though not Winston churchill, who had dourly foreseen exactly this outcome) Hitler responded to the deployment of forces with an all-out attack, ignoring treaties and invading the Low Countries (Belgium, NL, Luxembourg) almost incidentally in order to encircle the British and the French, dealing a crushing blow. France in particular wildly overestimated the robustness of its own defences, which were essentially a giant fortified wall (the Maginot Line). Since the Germans had been manning their version (the Siegfried Line) without doing anything very much, the French convinced themselves that they had forced a stalemate and that sooner or later a diplomatic solution would emerge.
Obviously, I'm simplifying a great deal here.
Now of course, people might have responded to Hitler much earlier if they had taken all his Jew-baiting and so on at face value, and realized that when he talked about exterminating large groups of people he meant exactly that, as opposed to just conquering and looting in the traditional fashion. But I can easily imagine contemporary parallels.
Now of course, people might have responded to Hitler much earlier if they had taken all his Jew-baiting and so on at face value, and realized that when he talked about exterminating large groups of people he meant exactly that, as opposed to just conquering and looting in the traditional fashion.
If people had called Hitler's bluff, things would have gone differently. Do you think the next one will be able to bluff?
Of course, another major factor in enabling Hitler to become Hitler was the circumstances of world power. WWII didn't happen in a vacuum. It was the dramatic culmination of the centuries-long rise of Europe. You mentioned that WWI was destructive. But not destructive enough: thirty years later the same adversaries were ready for another attempt to settle scores and dominate Europe. WWII had to be the end of that cycle: after WWII, Europe was shattered, and world power had shifted to the east and west. The Europe that the combatants had sought to dominate no longer existed.
I'm not much of a scholar of Napoleon, but the way it was framed to me was that the Napoleonic war(s) was the first total war: the size of the French forces were unprecedented, and contemporaries could have been forgiven for not predicting the outcome. Each subsequent war of this type raised the stakes further. That cycle has run its course forever, because the stakes are now so high that victory would mean acquiring territory that was radioactive and uninhabitable.
PS. One of the things that's striking about Mein Kampf is how provincial and small-minded it is. I read a little bit, and one of Hitler's biggest bugbears was the Habsburgs and their treatment of Austria. Hitler was very much a product of his time and place. That time and place is gone forever.
My final point: no one wants to be the next Hitler. What do you suppose was going through Hitler's mind when he committed suicide in a bunker beneath Berlin, surrounded by foreign armies closing in from all sides? He may have anticipated being hanged as a war criminal, or feared retribution from his own people now that defeat could no longer be credibly denied. People make a lot of how Hitler was a maniac and insane, but he knew he lost. In photographs of Hitler from near the end of the war, he looks clearly downcast and exhausted. Hitler started the war maniacally certain of victory, and he ended his reign thoroughly aware of his failure. Hitler was not an imbecile, and if he had known what was coming, I don't think he would have chosen it.
I agree with all that/ What I mean about another Hitler being possible is that I find it quite easy to imagine that establishe powers will turn a blind eye to disturbing rhetoric if it suits them, much as people shrugged off Vladimir Putin's repeatedly expressed nostalgia for the USSR until very recently (although I don't think Putin is an ideologue in the mold of Hitler, just strategically ambitious).
I do agree that nobody could be as obvious about their ill intentions as Hitler was; mass communication through radio, film newsreels and so on was a fairly new phenomenon when he rose to power and people were not fully aware of how it could support totalitarianism as they are today. But you can get away with a lot in politics by simply making the right noises, sadly.
Yes. It's instructive to look at the examples of the two major autocrats of the 20th century. Hitler died a lonely death surrounded by ruin. Stalin died in his own bed as an old man. Stalin bided his time and played the patient opportunist. Hitler was feverish for military victory. It's obvious which dictator Putin wants to emulate.
Just like every other empire that ever failed stopped all other empires from ever forming again? As Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and the like fall further into historical curiosities, things like Putinism and whatever you call what goes on in North Korea seem like viable answers distinct from those that came before it. And indeed, in many ways they are different, but especially in the case of the former, I think they clearly show that cult-of-personality authoritarian style of leadership will always be a problem.
There are and have been plenty of small Hitlers. It depends on where you set the bar for "a Hitler" as far as significance. Hitler was significant because he was leader of one of the world's most powerful countries at the time.
> I actually don't foresee another Hitler rising, because the first Hitler ruined it for all future Hitlers.
He only "ruined it" for all future Hitlers in the next ~100 years. A lot of peace and prosperity we have enjoyed in the last 60 years can be attributed to people remembering and recovering from death and destruction of the II World War. There are only few people alive today who lived during WWII, soon there will be no one with first-hand memories of what has happened then. You can already see a new wave of nationalistic trends. For many young people today, Hitler is no different than Napoleon, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan - some dude who killed a lot of people some time ago. They can't relate to them in any way.
The name Hitler is still virtually a curseword. People may not know much about history, but they know one thing: don't be Hitler.
A lot is made of the fact that people are ignorant of history, but Hitler wasn't: he loved history, perhaps a little too much. He inserted himself into historical events and imagined that he could right historical wrongs and slights suffered by Germans. That is the underlying theme of Mein Kampf. You can say that he distorted history, and I won't dispute that point -- however, his ideas were based on real events, with added sentimentality and sensationalism, the way Hollywood movies are.
Nazism was crushed as thoroughly and decisively as probably any movement ever has been. Hitler is despised by people that don't even know history. Historical events may become dormant, but they are remembered when they become pertinent again, and there has rarely been a historical event as clear and one-sided as WWII: whether Hitler was wrong is a matter of opinion and can be debated (not a good idea in public), but that Germany suffered total military defeat under Hitler's leadership is indisputable fact.
He did fight Great Britain alone (well, the Dominions as well) for over a year once France was occupied and before the invasion of Russia.
Britain couldn't have defeated Germany on her own but she also wasn't going to be defeated. Even leaving aside the Battle of Britain Germany had no way to invade the UK - some of the plans to defeat Operation Sealion (the planned German invasion) were pretty effective, like setting the English channel on fire.
If Hitler had just left Stalin alone the latter would have been happy to let the capitalists destroy each other, and Germany could have conquered all of western Europe.
The USSR was initially part of an anti-fascist pact but made amends with Germany after the western allies' betrayal of Czechoslovakia.
It's interesting to speculate on what would have happened if Hitler hadn't betrayed Stalin. Hitler had reasons for doing so (I can't remember what they were), and they probably had some validity -- but the Soviets were certainly uneasy allies with the US and Britain, so perhaps the Soviets could have been kept out of the war, at least for a while. If Germany was weakened, though, Stalin might have seen an opportunity and attacked Germany on his own.
Hitler's reasons for invading the USSR were batshit insane. He wanted to wipe the Slavs out, and thought he could do it before winter set in.
If Germany hadn't broken their agreement with the USSR the Soviets probably would have stayed out of the war - remember that they had just been humiliated by the Finns.
I took another look at the wikipedia entry [1], and it's inconclusive. Hitler had tipped his hand in Mein Kampf by describing war with the Soviets, and the Germans needed the oilfields at Baku, so completely avoiding war might have appeared impossible to Hitler. If one accepts that war was inevitable, then it probably was better sooner than later from the German standpoint: the Soviets began upgrading their tactics in response to Germany's from the first German action in the war, so the Soviets were becoming stronger adversaries. On the other hand, German observers with cooler heads could see that the odds of success were low and the action was foolhardy. But then, why pick on one aspect when the entire war was foolhardy?
The comparison with Naopoleon in the text is inappropriate and anachronistic. Napoleon WAS fighting against destiny. France was then attacked on all fronts by foreign kingdoms who wanted to crush the republic and restore the monarchy. Napoleon was the one to rise to defend the nation against foreign powers. It had nothing to do with Hitler agressing other countries around.for the sole purpose of establishing a larger German land and destroying its enemies.
EDIT: I can only attribute this silly parrallel between Hitler and Napoleon to Orwell's origins. Being a British writer, he was probably educated throughout his life to loathe Napoleon, presented as the ultimate Evil causing trouble in Europe.
Read it again: he's saying that both Napoleon and Hitler appealed to a sense of unjust martyrdom the masses experienced, and which is actually a very common element of popular culture. He's only discussing the rhetorical device, not any actual merit of the stance (which, as you say, Napoleon might have had at some point -- certainly not when he invaded Italy though -- not unlike Hitler in Weimar Germany, humiliated and mistreated after WWI).
I don't see the parallel as intended to put Napoleon down, but instead to attribute the same force of personality to Hitler. As someone who never met either man (perhaps that's obvious :), I'm not sure the connection works with me.
The German philosopher, Hegel had quite the man-crush on Bonaparte.
"I saw the Emperor -this soul of the world- go out from the city to survey his reign; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it."
Similarly, Hitler saw himself as being the concrete expression of the soul of the German people. He may not have been aware of the quote, but the ideas it expressed were strong themes in the German romantic movement.
"As far as the philosophy of history is concerned, what is the first trait of the Hegelian vision of the Napoleonic hero ? A famous passage is often quoted. It is an extract from the letter Hegel addressed from Iena to his friend Niethammer, October 13th, 1806, when he had just finished writing The Phenomenology of Mind : " I saw the Emperor -this soul of the world- go out from the city to survey his reign; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it. " (Correspondance, T. I, p.114)."
"Napoleon soul of the world" makes a pretty good search phrase[2].
I assume this is posted and up voted now because of the similarities to Putin?
Anyway, let me recommend "Down and out in Paris and London". It taught me more about the human condition, and why you want to stamp out poverty and let everyone to be able to have a humane life, than most any book I ever read.
Also, imho after learning a bit about Eastern Europe after 1945, I put "Animal farm" along "1984". It is a master piece.
Edit: 'adventured', I really hope you are correct. The problem with your argument is that we see Hitler with hindsight now; he was a joke in the beginning too.
Putin is almost entirely lacking the cult of personality, the movement, around him that Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Fidel, etc. all had. He wasn't a revolutionary, he's primarily a gangster, and historically those are relatively short-lived and weak political types. Putin has more in common with Capone than Hitler, he leads a cult of money and theft.
Even Putin's attempts at nationalistic projection have been remarkably pathetic by historical comparison. Putin's dominance of Russia won't leave the mark / impact that other far more dangerous people throughout history have. Stalin would eat Putin for lunch.
I expect Putin to be forced out of office, rather than die in office. If Putin's inner circle wanted him gone, he'd be gone tomorrow. Eventually they'll tire of him.
I thought of Putin too when I first saw this posted a day ago for the reason that Putin has indicated many time that he would like to reestablish the USSR. If he ends up invading Ukraine and other former Soviet states (he already took a test drive through Georgia), we were all forewarned and did nothing to prevent it - much as Hitler's clear statements were ignored. I hope Putin has more foresight as this could be an enourmous disaster.
"The breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century." - Putin 2005
"However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life."
This seems wrong (with hindsight, I suppose). My mental image of Orwell is that he was quite sharp. How did he manage to get this bit wrong so badly? Does anyone know the reason?
Read it in context. Hedonistic utilitarians believe in the alleviation of suffering and the delivery of pleasure (in the sense of such things as comfort and intellectual pleasures as well as baser pleasures). This is in the tradition of John Stuart Mill, and many English thinkers, including socialists such as Orwell, take this premise for granted. The phrase "the greatest good for the greatest number" is commonly used as a description of this kind of hedonistic utilitarianism. The type of socialism that Orwell subscribes to is meant to be an attempt to achieve this end.
By my reading, Orwell is giving Hitler a bit of credit, not only in the fact that he rejects this premise and emphasizes patriotic and militaristic virtues above quality of life, but that he could move an entire nation to agree with this vision. What Orwell means here is that people don't just want comfort and prosperity; they are in fact willing to actively sacrifice these things to achieve a vision, especially one expressed in warlike or patriotic terms. Orwell might be a bit disappointed, and is definitely unsympathetic to fascism, but he does give it credit for being able to inspire people to a grander cause than their own comfort and well-being.
The hedonistic conception of life gives people no meaning at all -- there are many better psychological concepts around, that fill people with a meaning and not only with gadgets.
Why do you think, the catholic church survived for 2000 years -- that is longer than the US capitalism currently lived.
> [Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades…. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.
I'm not sure this appeals to people more then peace and prosperity but it can have a strong appeal to some people some of the time especially to young men(see ISIS) and especially when your side is winning the war and civilian losses are low.
I think there is a difference between how you paraphrased him, and what he wrote. He didn't say "appealing" (which I think would have meant the appeal was superficial), he instead chose to say "psychologically sound" (meaning he thought it was not superficial at all). To me those two concepts are quite different.
He, the author, is saying that characterizing people as desiring struggle (as referenced in the book) is more psychologically sound than characterizing them as seeking pleasure as an end-goal as a hedonistic principle would state.
It's not saying nazism is 'correct' and should be practiced, but rather the way nazis view human psychology is a better model than that of the hedonist.
It sounds completely wrong to me (my opinion). It's a very utilitarian view of people where, as Orwell describes it here, you get to define some "great" goal, and convince people to fight for it, getting them to sacrifice things of their own in the process. It's all very subservient, manipulative, and a bit inhuman.
Given how prosperous and successful such societies have turned out to be in the past (they all failed), I would have expected someone to just reject it outright in favour of all the other ideas like individuality and freedom, as they are clearly better. I mean, you can't say some ideology is "psychologically sound" and have all its adoptees crash and burn everywhere causing untold amounts of damage. That's not sound at all.
So I was wondering if he meant it, or he was just depressed from how the war was going in 1940. Plus, and maybe I'm just ignorant, I always thought he was against totalitarianism.
What he writes, does not imply that he is pro-totalitarianism. He only says, that the concept to give people something to hope for, to fight for, to give their life for a "higher meaning" is a more sound psychological concept as "hey, have a good time ... and just live for the next gadget"
It's also the basis of all advertising, marketing, and PR.
I think Orwell was wrong, but not for the obvious reasons.
As an observation, it's impossible to argue with the suggestion that humans need more than comfort. Humans have been creating crusades, pogroms, holy wars, riots, race riots, and revolutions since almost forever.
But I don't think he understood what made Nazi fascism so extreme - which is the way it turned war, patriotism, and death into ends in their own right, rather than means to an end.
There was no pretence at higher purpose or salvation. The entire German political system became a suicide and death cult, and swallowed itself whole.
>There was no pretence at higher purpose or salvation.
Maybe not in the traditional form (with religious meaning), but in a new, nationalistic form. The pretence of a higher purpose of the NS system was in my opinion, that the nation will succeed in its god given plan to succeed. You can hear it shining threw in many of Hitlers speeches.
No, when you understand "purpose" in a strict religious way, it did not have such pretence. But when you have an open mind to something that is more common than religion, it definitively had.
There are also many things that are clearly directed into a cult or replacement-religion. Also Hitler uses many religious phrases and imitations. Many see this as a clear sign for a cult.
Also the fact, that for example the wife of Goebbels killed her children, speaks clearly that many people (many killed themselves either) lost all hope and life purpose, because the NS system was (for them) something like the salvation for the German nation.
>The entire German political system became a suicide and death cult, and swallowed itself whole.
Now you say it yourself and contradict yourself by saying that it became a cult. It was a kind of cult and thus had the pretence of a higher purpose. (of course, if you always define "purpose" as going to heaven, you are right -- but in my opinion there are different levels or kinds of purpose).
That is right. But this was possible, because with the dead of the system, many of the involved people also lost hope for Germany as a whole. I don't want to excuse, what they did (some of them slaughtered their own people and behaved like real monsters), but in some cases it might become a little more understandable.
I also don't want to show this cult in a shiny light. It was really a death cult (and that from the start) -- but because of a different reason: The system was based on the notion, that the German nation will rise -- and the condition for that was, that others had to fall. It was a kind of social-darwinism (hope, got that word right). This whole notion: I will rise, and others have to fall (for that) is anti-christian and a total abuse of Darwins findings. It is a cult, based on the death of others. What happened was, that this death fired back on the Germans.
You have it backwards. The conception of hedonistic comfort and "the greatest good for the greatest number" is the definition of utilitarianism; the fascist concept Orwell is calling "psychologically sound" is in fact the rejection of utilitarianism.
I mean you don't have to go too far to find similar themes in say the US. The whole "War on Terror" sure has a very similar feel to it. Not as extreme as in Fascist countries but the general components are still there.
The entire "war on X" formulation is a Fascist concept. Though the war on terror involved literal military action, the "War on Drugs", "War on Poverty", and so forth are reminiscent of Mussolini's series of initiatives such as the "Battle for Grain", "Battle for Land", "Battle for the Lira", and "Battle for Births".
The way I read it he is not saying that totalitarianism is good. He is just saying that it should not be underestimated, since it allowed Hitler to get into power and rally a people into war.
Not that wrong. The whole passage tells more about how he meant it: that people don't just want ease and hedonism, but they also need struggle and passion and meaning and hurt.
People that have it all too easy more often than not fell in for drugs, depression, etc. And conversely, some of the most "happiest" place on earth, according to their citizens own estimations in polls, are places with tragic poverty and harsh conditions.
> And conversely, some of the most "happiest" place on earth, according to their citizens own estimations in polls, are places with tragic poverty and harsh conditions.
That's very far from my recollection of those polls where Scandinavian countries frequently come out on top. Common denominators of those countries include low wealth inequality, an extensive social safety net, and a grounded attitude towards the future. With all this, there's still plenty of struggle and passion and meaning and hurt in the microcosm of daily existence. Humans don't seem designed to be suspended in a state of constant happiness.
> He was a communist for a long time, then got disenchanted because of Stalin (he wrote 1984 in this period).
This is wrong. It's hard to succinctly characterize Orwell's political views[1], but it's simply incorrect that he was "a communist" for any length of time. An uncharitable reading of your comment might be simply that you think democratic socialism and communism are the same thing, in which case it might be very helpful for you to read some of Orwell's political essays [2] and other non-fiction. 'Homage to Catalonia' is wonderful.
I don't think in the context of Spain, at least, the various versions of libertarian socialism saw themselves as that clearly distinguished. POUM had people who described themselves as "communist", "socialist", and "anarchist", some of whom were the same people. They specifically dissociated themselves from the Soviet Union (and more specifically from Stalin), but were largely supportive of some kind of non-authoritarian "socialism" or "communism". I mean the party flag was the red flag with a hammer and sickle!
> I don't think in the context of Spain, at least, the various versions of libertarian socialism saw themselves as that clearly distinguished.
I don't disagree. Reading in 'Homage' about the wide variety of affiliations and beliefs is really eye-opening, which is one reason I recommended it in my response to the (now deleted) comment above.
However, it's just completely wrong from 2014 and with a view of the entire 20th century and of Orwell's entire life to state that he "was a communist for a long time," which is what I was responding to. I hope the author of that comment takes my recommendation. Orwell writes with such integrity and clarity and without even a hint of the tribalism that plagues political discussions.
I just finished reading 'Homage to Catalonia' and 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. Two early Orwell novels that possibly reveal more of his political thinking than either 'Animal Farm', or '1984'.
Homage is great. What I came away with was a profound sense of how ideology and labels are completely destructive to clear political understanding. This is really a running theme in Orwell's work. Once one identifies as a 'this' or a 'that' one becomes beholden to its leaders, or whomever might be wagging 'this' or 'that' dog.
His reference and definition of Trotskyism in Homage sticks with me the most. When Poum are labelled Trotskyists it's never made clear what Trotskyists actually are, only that they're bad, and somehow counter to goodness. This appears again in his discussion of how Stalin, American and British interests want Fascism to fail, but actually dread any real social revolution in Spain more than Fascism. So they're not willing to arm anarchists against Fascists. The eventual suppression of Poum and the anarchists by Communists loyal only to the USSR, ultimately ruins any chance the Republicans might have had.
It was a fascinating read, and it must be read by anyone interested in understanding the Spanish Civil war, or Orwell. One can see where Orwell got the idea for '2 legs bad, 4 legs good' --> '4 legs good, 2 legs better' in 'Animal Farm' from his experience in Spain.
This scene from chapter 10 sticks in my mind. Orwell is approached by a Communist friend and asked to join their unit. This is after Communist propoganda has started to paint the Poum as 'counter revolutionary'.
"I had to tell him that after this affair I could not join any Communist-controlled unit. Sooner or later it might mean being used against the Spanish working class. One could not tell when this kind of thing would break out again, and if I had to use my rifle at all in such an affair I would use it on the side of the working class and not against them. He was very decent about it. But from now on the whole atmosphere was changed. You could not, as before, 'agree to differ' and have drinks with a man who was supposedly your political opponent."
Orwell wants the reader to understand that these various 'isms' and 'ists' are extremely susceptible to internal corruption. No matter what their initial beliefs. In addition he strongly discouraged 'mealy mouthed' language, and imprecision. 'Doublespeak' from '1984' and his essay on 'Politics and the English Language' are all about this strongly held belief of his. He skill and precision at writing allowed him to more easily deconstruct propoganda, and he was frustrated by the misuse of language for political manipulation.
So any notion someone might have that Orwell was a 'this' or a 'that' is utter hogwash. He would never identify himself as anything, for he knew that once he did that something would alter its form to something terrible.
Technically, the difference is the power structure. They have sort of the same economic system as a goal, but social democratism is reversible, since it's based on democratic voting while right-out communism is more autocratic. Most social democrat parties are just capitalist redistributionists at this point, though.
I'm not sure power structure is inherently part of the definition. There's a certain kind of communism that supports the vanguard party, General Secretary, etc. (the Soviet approach). POUM had a lot of anarcho-communists, and more recently council communism also supports decentralized power. There's a lot of gray area in the terminology. I think the terms are more different now than they used to be, however. Many libertarian socialists who might've used the term "communism" prior to the 1930s are more likely to call themselves something else today, to avoid being mistaken for Leninists or Stalinists.
But it's pretty hard to call POUM "social democratic" or even "democratic socialist" either. By modern standards they are far too radical-left to fit into a "respectable" socialist or social-democratic party. Could you imagine them standing for Labour, or the Parti Socialiste or SPD? Waving a red flag and declaring that the time is ripe for the socialist revolution...
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/docume...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_brennender_Sorge