In 1919, German women received the right to vote. For the first time, female representatives took seats in the German parliament. Though the percentage of female delegates remained small, women were the majority of voters in the Weimar Republic. As a result, many German political parties created special appeals to women.
The Nazi Party was no exception. It marketed specially tailored propaganda to female voters emphasizing that women could save the German family from ruin simply by voting for Hitler or the [NSDAP]. Such marketing strategies worked, despite the [NSDAP’s] poor record on women’s rights. [Fascist] messages aimed to create a sense of female empowerment by highlighting the crucial rôle of women in paving the way for social and political change.
(Emphasis added.)
Most surprisingly, the Fascists even attempted to appeal to blind folk:
The [NSDAP] used propaganda to reach out to a variety of often-overlooked audiences. One of these audiences was blind Germans. [Fascist] propagandists issued a number of publications in Braille, one of which was a three-volume edition of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
The [Fascists] claimed that other German political parties marginalized blind Germans. Moreover, [Fascist] propagandists appealed to blind Germans by reminding them that Hitler had been blinded in a poison gas attack in World War I, so he understood their plight. They promised to integrate blind people into the [Fascist] ideal of a national community.
What is unsurprising, though, is that living standards for blind Germans never improved under Fascism.
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What’s striking me most is their use of of “freedom” in their slogans, because it’s a completely overlooked aspect of fascist rhetoric.
Most generic leftists try to define fascism solely under the notion of “authoritarianism” which completely misses the point of how they appealed to petit bourgeois and middle class individuals who were scared of the evil commies taking away their freedom.
Then western leftists will slander communists by associating them to fascists on the idea that they are “both authoritarian”, dangerously missing the fact that all they do is falling for the same “we are freedumb fighterz” empty slogans that are characteristic of bourgeois ideology. As usual, the bourgeoisie doesn’t want people to resist fascism, so they will kill two birds with one stone by conflating it with pragmatic communist movements who were actually honest about their methods.
