A movement with a distorted sense of individual rights that would seek to hamper vaccination in the midst of a global health crisis is reactionary to the core and hostile to human life itself. The dangerous rise of the anti-vax far-right is a symptom of a sickness in this society that we will still be confronting well after the last wave of the pandemic has finally receded.
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ah ye olde tHe NaZIz WeRe SocIAliSt line of argument
I encountered some anonymous modern day Nazis that blabbered the same crap. It is going to be tough for everyone from here on.
I thought by definition NAZIs would hate socialists…where does this argument come from?
The argument comes from capitalists who want to scare people away from socialism.
so weird tho! Why don’t people understand what fascism is? I guess nothing surprises me insofar as what people will believe these days.
Basically, it comes down to ignorance. This stuff isn’t taught in the schools in the west, and most people can’t even define what capitalism, socialism, communism, or fascism actually are. This is why communists implore people to read theory and history. Education is the first step towards actually acting effectively in one’s own interest.
I went to school in the west! In the US, we take US History (over and over again!) We definitely covered WWII and definitely learned about Fascism. But, yeah, it seems better education could solve alot of problems.
US history taught in schools is probably whitewashing all the genocide they commit and making it look as if they’re the heroes, so it’s no surprise no one knows what fascism is even though the US is exactly that and served as inspiration for literally the nazi Germany.
So, you are right that we were not taught that we were Fascist - and you are right, alot of US History is whitewashed here. We were actually taught that Italy was Hitler’s inspiration. I am not knowledgeable enough to debate this though, just telling you what we were taught here. But still, we were taught Hitler HATED socialism!
That’s actually completely right. You can’t understand WWII without reading about the prior century, especially the history of colonialism.
The chief reason WWII happened was because Japan and Germany looked around and saw a US-Anglo global hegemony forming. The British had pretty aggressively expanded their empire world-wide, killing millions along the way, and were using that as economic leverage to bully everyone else. In the US, well, they did the same thing, but throughout the North American continent, and were beginning to expand globally as well.
Both Japan and Germany, who previously hadn’t done much colonial expansion, realized they could sit home doing nothing and become feudal states to a US/British alliance, or try carving out their own empires by invading their weaker neighbors like the British and Americans had done. And, of course, they took that chance, which ultimately failed since they started way too late in the game. The US had an entire well established continent of resources, and the British controlled global trade and the world’s largest navy.
Ironically, the modern EU, now dominated by Germany, is pretty close to Hitler’s original vision of Europe, albeit without quite as much bloodshed or ethnic “purity”. It’s a continent-spanning political system where almost all of Europe is economically and militarily unified under German leadership. It’s the kind of system Hitler would have made if he hadn’t been such a stupid asshole.
It’s because the definition of fascism has been intentionally diluted to mean “anything I personally do not like” - especially by people who match the pre-diluted definition.
But look to the etymology of it:
Fasces. To bundle or bind.
Fascists view themselves as the ‘connective tissue’ holding their civilization together and protecting it from nefarious “OUTSIDERS”. This is an illusion that serves only as a surface level justification for destructive actions. In reality it can look an awful lot like a paranoia-based psychological contagion that causes its infested drones to reflexively congregate into an exclusive ‘in-group’ that collectively hallucinates out-groups to scapegoat. Every time an out-group is neutralized, they choose a new out-group to destroy. This will continue until there is no one else lift, whereupon they will form internal factions and start to tear each other apart.
THAT. IS. FASCISM.
And it’s existed as long as humanity has, long before we came up with a name for it.
That’s a dangerously broad definition that effectively describes almost every modern political party today. Most people want to protect their community, both from threats internal and external. When Joe Biden talks about his need to protect the “soul of the nation” from an outsider like Trump, that fits your definition exactly. When Democrat activists argue they need to punch conservative political pundits for saying things they don’t like, that fits your definition exactly.
Nazis weren’t fascists. Fascism was an Italian political philosophy.
Yes they were
Hitler’s inspiration was Mussolini (originally, it did go south eventually, of course), Nazism is fascism with a racial component added to it. It wasn’t just Italy…there was Spain and Japan that embraced Fascism at that time period.
The argument comes from historians who know how to read books and are aware of all the socialist programs the German National Socialists instituted as part of their socialist ideology.
The idea that the Nazis weren’t socialists comes from sheltered kids who got their entire history education about the early 1900s from Hollywood war movies that depict Germans as either murderous psychopaths or blank faced robots to be gunned down FPS-style by the “good guys.”
The argument does not come from historians. In fact, anyone who’s read a book in their life knows that nazis actively broke up unions, and eradicated socialists and communists. The idea that nazis were socialists comes from idiots.
The original German Nazis called themselves “national-socialists” to get votes from the working-class and differentiate themselves from the back then dominant monarchist conservatives. But they always hated and fought against real socialist and anarchists.
too funny, I know what NAZI stands for, but I never thought about the “socialists” part of it based on what I was taught of Hitler! But what you say makes alot of sense for back then and perhaps for people’s apparent misunderstanding today.
Hell, remember the ‘first they came for’ sequence?
It literally STARTS with “First They Came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out–because I was not a socialist.”
The NSDAP was also anti-union. The very SECOND line was, “Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out–because I was not a trade unionist.”
Anti-Socialism and Anti-Union are CORE NAZI PRINCIPLES.
Now I can’t help but give everyone who is against socialism and against unions the hard side-eye.
That’s a No True Scottsman argument.
The Nazis instituted a ton of socialist welfare programs, issued a lot of propaganda to that effect, and even instituted universal healthcare and free higher education.
By the textbook definition, they were socialists.
Nazis were socialists. It’s literally in the name. National Socialists. Hitler instituted a ton of government welfare programs for Germans.
As much as I detest socialists, to be fair to them, Hitler’s brand of socialism was also coupled with jingoism, which called for those socialist programs to be provided for by invading all “lesser” peoples and taking their stuff.
Socialists hate being reminded that the National Socialists were, in fact, socialists and believed in things like the “right” to housing, food, healthcare.
All provided by a benevolent government that definitely would always have their best interests in mind and would never do anything evil.
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Anybody who knows a modicum of history knows that NSDAP was not socialist in any way, shape, or form. In fact, their main focus was on eradicating communists in Germany.