Sudan Massacre

[Emily Lake]

Then you lack both historical education and reading comprehension. Hitler was the head of an explicitly theocratic state, that both created and endorsed a Christian denomination.

Nazism was an explicitly Christian movement.

Hitler was the head of an explicitly socialist state, that both created and endorsed a socialist denomination. Nazism was an explicitly socialist movement.

So do you agree that socialists were responsible for the Holocaust?

Not this old Nazis were socialists bullshit again. The Nazis were corporatists, similar to current USA under Trump (though of course it existed for decades before Trump, but has expanded greatly under him). If the Nazis were socialists then North Korea is the most democratic nation in the world, because its in their name.
The US army is a socialist organization, but I bet you don't complain about them being socialist.

Did YOU read the link Poli posted to the Nazi platform objectives? Saying that the nazis were "corporatists", sheesh.

 

[Emily Lake]

The US army is a socialist organization,

Why do you believe that? Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Which means of production does the US Army collectively own? The US Army isn't in the production business. Quite the reverse. Collective ownership of the means of destruction is not socialism.

It's also not collectively owned - soldiers don't own any part of the armed services, they're employees by contract.

 

[Emily Lake]

It's not a question with a simple answer, if you're asking me. The Nazi party knew there was a widespread popular demand for socialist ideals and wanted to capitalize on them, but feared and hated the direction of most nationalist worker's movements. The brief rise and fall of the Frankfurt School and its association with the November Revolution and the unpopular governmemt that followed in its wake gave them the justification for many of their proposed reforms, and they used both elite scholarly work on socialist theory, and on the other end, more overt communist movements on the street, as "evidence" of Jewish conspiracy that needed to be expunged from a more correct, in their view, "national socialism". Did the Nazis identify as socialists? Yes. More so, in fact, than they identified as "Nazis". Were they "good socialists"? Not by the definition of most socialists today, that's certain. Should modern socialists study the rise of National Socialism and seriously consider where and when things went badly, badly wrong? Absolutely. Denying the complexity of history does not make its impact go away.

It's really weird and contradictory that you want immense nuance and contextualism when it comes to whether nazis were socialist, even while you recognize that they explicitly identified themselves as socialist... but you simultaneously demand that we're all supposed to accept them as being a christian theocracy because they made a passing mention of "positive christianity" in their platform objectives, despite not actually embedding any religiosity into their government structure whatsoever, and additionally persecuting various christians who disagreed with their much more blatant socialist endeavors.

See, even though they thought of themselves as socialists, and they explicitly engaged in socialist rhetoric and policies, they weren't really actually socialists. But they were totally a theocracy because they included the word 'christian' in there.

 

[Emily Lake]

That is one definition of socialism. Actually I was being partly facetious in calling the US army socialist. The military are not a democracy, so by American standards they must be communist.

My employer isn't a democracy either; it's absurd to say that my employer is communist. The US military is an employer.

 

[Politesse]

It's not a question with a simple answer, if you're asking me. The Nazi party knew there was a widespread popular demand for socialist ideals and wanted to capitalize on them, but feared and hated the direction of most nationalist worker's movements. The brief rise and fall of the Frankfurt School and its association with the November Revolution and the unpopular governmemt that followed in its wake gave them the justification for many of their proposed reforms, and they used both elite scholarly work on socialist theory, and on the other end, more overt communist movements on the street, as "evidence" of Jewish conspiracy that needed to be expunged from a more correct, in their view, "national socialism". Did the Nazis identify as socialists? Yes. More so, in fact, than they identified as "Nazis". Were they "good socialists"? Not by the definition of most socialists today, that's certain. Should modern socialists study the rise of National Socialism and seriously consider where and when things went badly, badly wrong? Absolutely. Denying the complexity of history does not make its impact go away.

It's really weird and contradictory that you want immense nuance and contextualism when it comes to whether nazis were socialist, even while you recognize that they explicitly identified themselves as socialist... but you simultaneously demand that we're all supposed to accept them as being a christian theocracy because they made a passing mention of "positive christianity" in their platform objectives, despite not actually embedding any religiosity into their government structure whatsoever, and additionally persecuting various christians who disagreed with their much more blatant socialist endeavors.

See, even though they thought of themselves as socialists, and they explicitly engaged in socialist rhetoric and policies, they weren't really actually socialists. But they were totally a theocracy because they included the word 'christian' in there.

I never said the situation wasn't nuanced. You're the one who keeps insisting, like a toddler, that only one party must be at blame for all the evils of history. But there is a huge difference here between socialists, who never institutionally endorsed Nazism, and the church, which absolutely did. Well, churches. But the Vatican and the German churches all a accepted the Nazi mantle freely, barring a handful of moral dissidents like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and some brave minorities like the Adventists, all of whom were expelled or slaughtered by their fellow Christians.

And your italicized portion, though seeming to represent what you think my view is, misrepresents it utterly. I do not agree with your summation.

 

[Politesse]

The US army is a socialist organization,

Why do you believe that? Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production. Which means of production does the US Army collectively own? The US Army isn't in the production business. Quite the reverse. Collective ownership of the means of destruction is not socialism.

It's also not collectively owned - soldiers don't own any part of the armed services, they're employees by contract.

Were soldiers stripped of their citizenship and I haven't heard about it?

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

Then you lack both historical education and reading comprehension. Hitler was the head of an explicitly theocratic state, that both created and endorsed a Christian denomination.

Nazism was an explicitly Christian movement.

Hitler was the head of an explicitly socialist state, that both created and endorsed a socialist denomination. Nazism was an explicitly socialist movement.

So do you agree that socialists were responsible for the Holocaust?

Not this old Nazis were socialists bullshit again. The Nazis were corporatists, similar to current USA under Trump (though of course it existed for decades before Trump, but has expanded greatly under him). If the Nazis were socialists then North Korea is the most democratic nation in the world, because its in their name.
The US army is a socialist organization, but I bet you don't complain about them being socialist.

Did YOU read the link Poli posted to the Nazi platform objectives? Saying that the nazis were "corporatists", sheesh.

Anyone who has studied the rise of the Nazis knows about their strong links to the German (and American) corporations, as well as German military and aristocracy. World War II historians talk of this often. Krupp is just one example, there are many more.
It may not have been an "objective", but it was actual practice, just as their other practices were anti-socialist, not socialist.

 

[bilby]

it's absurd to say that my employer is communist.

Is it? Most corporations are run as centrally planned command economies by a politburo who expect obedience from those beneath them. We call the politburo a "board of directors", but really, what are the differences? The biggest corporations have "populations" larger than some countries. Those who disobey or dissent in any way are "exiled", as is anyone unproductive.

The fact is that despite being a terrible way to run a country, Stalinist Communism is the preferred way to run a company. We just don't call it that.

And there's no good reason why different ideologies and control systems shouldn't be appropriate for different kinds of endeavour. Communism works for corporations. A mixed economy works better for nation states. Libertarian free market economics doesn't appear to work very well for anything.