Nazi Leftists

Via Jihadpundit:

Great list and pretty much spells it out. One thing I am gonna steal from Jihadpundit again is a great argument that went on in the comments section of his post:

First the token moonbat “mr lefty”:

And I’ve commented on it there. It’s a stupid, stupid list which depends on completely misrepresenting what the left does actually stand for, and selectively picking at various of Hitler’s comments without considering what he actually did in practice.

Here’re a few more for the Nazis & The Right side, anyway:

* militarism
* hatred of leftists
* racism
* authoritarianism
* lack of respect for the rule of law or due process
* complete lack of caring for the weak & unfortunate in society

And some of your caricature ideas of the left are ridiculous. Aligned with the islamic world? Youth indoctrination? Obsession with race? Rejection of religion? (Rejection of STATE religion, but wanting such a thing is just one more thing the conservatives have in common with the Nazis. Anti-Semitism??! Oh, come ON.

The rest of the list is equally as ridiculous.

This isn’t a serious list, you’re just baiting me. I refuse to bite further.

Then “david” who if he doesn’t have a blog yet should get one going:

It is a source of consistent irritation to me that otherwise educated individuals construct a axis of human political ideology which consists of Marxism and Nazism as the two extremes and call one ‘Left’ and the other ‘Right’.

Politically, Left and Right can only be measured by the weighting of power between the individual and the government. Politically, Marxist and Nazi ideologies weight the political power equation heavily toward the government, as do all authoritarians – Maoism, Feudalism, Socialism, Communism and all the others. Nazis and Marxists are both Leftists – the difference between them politically is less than tweedledum and tweedledee. Rightists weight the power equation toward the individual. Anarchists (no government), not Nazis, are the extreme right, the opposite of Marxists. Also on the right are Libertarians.

Nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, etc. can be identified with political idologies (Nazis are often racist and pagen, Marxists are often anti-intellectual and militaristic, etc.), but none of these define them politically; their totalitarism defines them. Anarchists can be racists too.

Get a grip people. Michael’s definitions are accurate because – politically – Nazis and Marxists and other extreme Leftists are identical – they’re dictators looking for subjects.

LEFTY –

Politically, Left and Right can only be measured by the weighting of power between the individual and the government. Politically, Marxist and Nazi ideologies weight the political power equation heavily toward the government, as do all authoritarians – Maoism, Feudalism, Socialism, Communism and all the others. Nazis and Marxists are both Leftists – the difference between them politically is less than tweedledum and tweedledee. Rightists weight the power equation toward the individual.

David, you fundamentally do not understand what the terms “left” and “right” mean.

You’re confusing “totalitarianism” with “leftism”, “libertarianism” with “rightism”, which is clearly wrong.

The political right as it exists today DOES believe in big government. It just believes in a big government militarily, and a big role for government socially. The left believes in a government role in terms of services, education, health etc – and the government largely getting out of people’s private lives.

If you define “leftism” as “totalitarianism”, then of course Nazism would equal leftism. But that’s taking a definition that’s completely meaningless, because none of today’s leftists would be leftists according to your definition.

Fundamentally, leftists are opposed to everything the Nazis stood for.

The problem with this argument is that because you hate the things the left does stand for (things like public education and health) you are projecting everything else you think is bad on the left as well. Which is clearly completely inaccurate.

DAVID –

Left is Right, Up is Down, and this must be Oz.

Politics is how people, as individuals, govern themselves. Therefore any political scale must be a measure of the the relative power exchange between the individual and the government. All-powerful government (Communist, Fascist, Baathist, etc.) is the Left of the scale. All-powerful individual (anarchy – no government) is the right of the scale. A Rightist for big government is an oxymoron. A Republican who wants big government would be a Leftist.

I do not ascribe ‘bad’ things to the Left; I ascribe them to immoral, evil or unethical individuals, Left or Right. I don’t ‘hate’ Leftists; I just believe them to often be ignorant, naive or misguided. Don’t weight political definitions with so much emotional baggage.

I do not know what anyone’s particular political kink is, but Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Saddam and Castro are/were all Leftists politically. They were all also evil, but that’s not a political ideology.

LEFTY –

David, big/little government is not how left/right are separated.

If that’s your understanding of the terms “left” and “right”, then little that goes on in the real political world between people who identify as lefties and people who identify as righties must make much sense to you. Your caricature of the left has very very little in common with any of the people I know who are part of the left.

Accordign to your definition, how “right” is the current Republican administration, with its huge military spending? And how “left” are the pacifists?

DAVID –

I agree – big/little government is not, per se, determinate of political Left or Right. The determinate is the power of government vis a vis the individual.

To employ your question, huge military spending does not define Left or Right politically. Confiscatory taxation to support such spending would be a indication of a government which held larger power than its citizens, and therefore Left-of-Center. Using the military or paramilitary for domestic control would be a Leftist characteristic. Involuntary military conscription of individuals would be a characteristic of a Left-of-Center government.

Staying with your example, a pacifist who refused to personally bear arms, such as a Quaker, is neither Left nor Right politically. A government without the power to overturn this decision would be Right-of-Center. A pacifist, such as a gun control advocate, who advocated using the power of government to force citizens to disarm against their will would be Left-of-Center.

All of this is high school civics. I would submit the people you know may be using other than political criteria to define themselves as political Leftists.

LEFTY –

All of this is high school civics. I would submit the people you know may be using other than political criteria to define themselves as political Leftists.

“High school civics” indeed. As taught by whom?

David, what’s your basis for this definition? Do you have a source?

I would define “left” and “right” according to what the proponents of each themselves say they believe. That’s a meaningful definition. Yours is of very little use because it has nothing to do with how the terms “left” and “right” are used in actual political discourse today.

According to your definition George Bush is a leftist, and people opposed to military spending are rightists. It’s a nonsense.

You must have attended a really weird high school civics class.

Oh yes, and you’d have to define the Religious Right as lefties, too, under your definition.

DAVID –

As a interesting historical note, the fiction that Nazism and Communism were at opposite ends of the political spectrum politically was first propogated by the Stalin-era KGB. Its original objective was to explain why Communism was a ‘good’ totalitarianism (It wasn’t really the State in charge; it was the proloteriat); and fascism was ‘bad totalitarianism (the State really was in charge). The degraded political definition was subsequently adopted by Eurpopean academics in the 1950’s to justify Socialism as on ‘the side of the angels’ and not like that evil fascism, which only looked like ‘real’ Socialism (Nazis were Socialists, but British Socialists wanted to write that out of history). From there it found its was to American academics.

Today’s neo-Marxist educators usually define Leftist a ‘concerned with individuals’, ‘dedicated to equality’, and any number of other attributes which fool useful idiots, add incoherence to their discussion of political Left and Right, and are irrelevent to political orientation. Orwell would have been proud. But, despite the rewriting of history, Hitler called himsef a Leftist, his allies and enemies called him a Leftist at the time, and politically he was a Leftist. Unfortunately, if your government-educated in Europe or parts of the U.S., you won’t learn that.

LEFTY –

I’ll ignore the rest of the drivel above, but I’ll bite on this:

But, despite the rewriting of history, Hitler called himsef a Leftist, his allies and enemies called him a Leftist at the time, and politically he was a Leftist. Unfortunately, if your government-educated in Europe or parts of the U.S., you won’t learn that.

Really. Hitler called himself a leftist, did he? When? (If you mean calling themselves “national socialists”, then he also called himself a nationalist, ie a “rightist”.) When did his allies and enemies call him a leftist?

He was a totalitarian, yes. If that’s your definition of leftist, then fine, but none of the actual political left today are leftists on that definition, so what’s it achieve?

MIKE JERICHO (who posted the list above) –

Let’s ask ‘the man’ himself:

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions”

– Adolf Hitler, Speech of May 1, 1927.

I think that covers that, don’t you?

DAVID –

As MrLefty suggests, let’s consider the historical, objective scale of political left/right against his post-modern scale. According to the post-modern scale he cites, communism and fascism are the opposite extremes on a scale encompassing every conceivable form of human political endeavor. Interestingly, a reading of source documents for these two political ideologies (Marx’s “Das Kapital” and Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”) reveals that the single largest difference between the two political schools is that under communism, the State owns and controls the means of production, whereas under fascism, the State controls the means of production, but permits private ownership by individuals authorized by the State.

That’s it. That’s the biggest difference between the two post-modern political extremes of Left and Right.

Now, where between the two extremes on this post-modern scale would a democratic republic fall? A parlimentary democracy? Well, obviously they don’t. That’s why a post-modern modern definition which fails to define the political Left and Right in terms of government power vs. individual power is inherently corrupt.

It suits the neo-Marxist Left to pretend that modern humanity may only choose between two dictatorships, but that their Left cares about baby seals, Mother Nature, etc., therefore their totalitarianism will be more benign then the Christian, racist, etc. dictators on the Right.

All dictatorships are politically Leftist, by definition, whether they claim the Koran, proletariat, divine right of kings, Wicca, the Volk, or any other excuse as their justification. All political ideologies which elevate the individual’s power over the State, which includes all the U.S. Founding Fathers, are politically Right.

As of yet Lefty hasn’t answered back since early this morning but it was a great discussion and I actually learned quite a bit from David. As you can guess I learned how leftists will turn anything around to suit their ideology from Lefty.

Update 3/28/05 – More of this conversation

LEFTY –

Mike – do I have to go and find the countless quotes where Hitler gets stuck into the communists for you?

The man was mad. He changed what he was saying according to what was politically convenient. Yup, he made a pact with the soviets for a very short space of years – but only because it was politically convenient and he needed to shore up his eastern borders at the time.

The Nazis were always established as a right-wing party, and no-one outside a very small RWDB echo-chamber is going to buy this historical revisionism of yours.

David – we’re just going around in circles. “All dictatorships are politically Leftist, by definition” – well, sure, if you define leftism in that way. It’s just that that’s a meaningless definition of leftism, since it’s not something that people who call themselves lefties actually believe in and are arguing for.

DAVID –

How curious. MrLefty’s perception is that this thread has been “going around in circles”; mine is that it’s been going in half-circles. His contribution to his half of the ‘circle’ seems to consist of “you fundamentally do not understand”, “you are projecting”, and, my favorite, “I’ll ignore the rest of the drivel”.

Ultimately, MrLefty keeps coming back to the position we should use a post-modern definition of political Left and Right based on ‘what each says they believe’…and yet, when told the Right believes in individual liberty, he adamently asserts the Right is authoritarian. The inescapable conclusion is he’s arguing all points on the political spectrum will be defined by what HE feels they believe, irrespective of any objective measure. By this measure, the number of different definitions of political Left and Right are limited only by the number of humans in existence – an absurd result.

The use of subjective, emotional, value-laden, ego-centric dogma is characteristic of post-modern relativism applied to political definitions. For example, the mendacity of asserting Communist North Korea and fascist Syria, both indisputedly authoritarian dictatorships, are at opposite ends of the political spectrum, while simultaneously maintaining the Left is not authoritarian because it’s ‘what they believe about themselves’, is breathtaking. Adolf Hitler believed he was a warm, caring, loving autocrat, therefore he was a Leftist? Joseph Stalin believed he was a cruel, sadistic, war-mongering SOB, therefore he’s a Right-wing fundamentalist? What’s wrong with this picture?

I don’t believe this circle can be squared.

UPDATE – 3/31/05 0915HRS –

LEFTY –

DAVID –

Curt

See author page