Hitler was a leftist

[niceypoo]

We've all heard this from the nighties, correct? Because Hitler called his party "National Socialist" he must be a lefty, right? Think again: National socialism was A CORPORATE WELFARE SYSTEM by which capitalists willing to play the game got exceedingly rich through war contracts, cronyism and showing monetary/political support of their favorite Nazis. Sound familiar? Indeed, sounds a lot like Bush/GOP's policies of supply side economics and warmongering for contracts; that's because it is EXACTLY THE SAME THING! Supply side economics and the Neocon agenda ARE national socialism.

The Bush-Neocons embrace the politics of Henry Clay, the father of national socialism.

"While American "liberals" tend to view Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton as their political and philosophical idols, conservatives at the Weekly Standard magazine and elsewhere have begun touting Henry Clay as their first political icon."

"But Henry Clay can only be considered to be a "conservative" if conservatives embrace the economics of national socialism, for that is what Clay devoted his entire forty-year political career to."

http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=92

"Clay was a corrupt statist who spent his political career promoting mercantilism, protectionism, inflationary finance through central banking, and military adventurism in the quest for empire"

Its not hard to shut republicans up on this "issue". When they bring up their claims of a "Leftist Hitler", just ask them to list a few of Hitlers social programs and watch with glee as they stammer and fumble upon realizing there were none. Ask them this: "People who refused to work in Nazi Germany were executed, was this Hitlers "workfare" program?" and they give you a blank, glazed look with a haze of confounded stupidity. Ask them if Hitler was "Touchie feelie". Demand that they give detailed examples of nazi "Peace Mongering"!! Ask that they go in depth into the inner workings of Hitler's gay rights programs!! Watch as their claims collapse like a house of cards in a hurricane. The only "handouts" in Nazi Germany were tax cuts to war profiteers and those giving money to Nazis and corrupt cronyism, which is exactly what the republican Neocons are doing now. Endless war is good for business, ask any 1930s-1940s German industrialist.

Yes Virginia, the republicans are national socialists, just ask their mentor, Henry Clay.

"Clay was a corrupt statist who spent his political career promoting mercantilism, protectionism, inflationary finance through central banking, and military adventurism in the quest for empire"

Henry Clay: National Socialist
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?control=92

[Dogmudgeon]

1. That old canard?

It's like saying that all Fundamentalists are crazy because the word "Fundamentalism" contains the word "mental".

--p!

[Minnesota Libra]

2. As everyone knows Prescott Bush supported Hitler both...............

....idealogically and financially. In fact Roosevelt shut down a bank that Prescott Bush used to funnel money to the Nazi's during the war.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

3. They used "National Socialist" to fool people

into thinking they were Socialists and not Fascists.

Kind of like "compassionate conservative" has been used to fool people.

[ieoeja]

47. No they didn't.

The founders of the NAZI party WERE socialists. On the night of 30 June 1934 (aka the Night of the Long Knives) Hitler's supporters assassinated them.

[progdonkey]

4. National Socialism was socialist...

in the same way that the People's Democratic Republic of North Korea is a republic run by representatives democratically elected by the People.

Oh, wait.... :crazy:

Well, at least it actually is in the north....

[Poppyseedman]

5. Under Hilter National socialism was not a CORPORATE WELFARE SYSTEM

The 25 point Program of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei NSDAP was proclaimed by Adolf Hitler at a large party gathering in Munich on February 25, 1920 when the group was still known as the German Workers Party. The party kept the program when it changed its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party in April 1920 and it remained the official party program throughout the party's existence


The full text of the 25 point program is as follows:

1. We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples.
2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.
3. We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and colonization for our surplus population.
4. Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood, without consideration of creed. Consequently no Jew can be a member of the race.
5. Whoever has no citizenship is to be able to live in Germany only as a guest, and must be under the authority of legislation for foreigners.
6. The right to determine matters concerning administration and law belongs only to the citizen. Therefore we demand that every public office, of any sort whatsoever, whether in the Reich, the county or municipality, be filled only by citizens. We combat the corrupting parliamentary economy, office-holding only according to party inclinations without consideration of character or abilities.
7. We demand that the state be charged first with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and way of life for the citizens. If it is impossible to sustain the total population of the State, then the members of foreign nations (non-citizens) are to be expelled from the Reich.
8. Any further immigration of non-citizens is to be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans, who have immigrated to Germany since the 2 August 1914, be forced immediately to leave the Reich.
9. All citizens must have equal rights and obligations.
10. The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.
12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).
14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.
15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.
16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.
17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.
18. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.
19. We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.
20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.
21. The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.
22. We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.
23. We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.
24. We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: common utility precedes individual utility.
25. For the execution of all of this we demand the formation of a strong central power in the Reich. Unlimited authority of the central parliament over the whole Reich and its organizations in general. The forming of state and profession chambers for the execution of the laws made by the Reich within the various states of the confederation. The leaders of the Party promise, if necessary by sacrificing their own lives, to support by the execution of the points set forth above without consideration.

Ten of the twenty-five points are clearly pro-labor. "The program championed the right to employment and called for the institution of profit sharing, confiscation of war profits, prosecution of userers and profiteers, nationalization of trusts, communalization of department stores, extension of the old-age pension system, creation of a national education program of all classes, prohibition of child labor, and an end to the dominance of investment capital." (4) This was an important part of the party's propaganda campaign, since it raised their support among the working class, by making the party appear to have, in William Brustein's words, a "working-class orientation". However, Hitler was careful to also make it clear that "the NSDAP stands on the platform of private ownership".

The Agrarian crisis of the late 1920s prompted Hitler to add a further explanation of point 17, in the hope of winning the sizable agricultural vote in the May 1928 elections. Point 17 stated: "We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land". Hitler explained that "gratuitous expropriation concerns only the creation of legal opportunities to expropriate if necessary, land which has been illegally acquired or is not administered from the view-point of the national welfare. This is directed primarily against the Jewish land-speculation companies".

[msongs]

9. not relevant - hitler came to power because industrialists allowed

him to come to power for their own financial benefit. just like the military allowed him to come to power because hitler promised the military a huge expansion plan which would be furnished and armed by the industrialists who allowed hitler to come to power. krupp and the gang were in favor of ANYTHING that would expand their business empires, and had no problem moving into nice palacial homes vacated by jews who were driven out of germany or incarcerated.

what the nazis wrote in 1920 is irrelevant, just as most of hitler's promises turned out to be worthless, except for the part about killing jews and expanding the reich into the slavic territories. Amazing how all of euurope read mein kampf but did not believe it.

the very definition of fascism is extremist government in cahoots with the corporations to the debasement of the population, supported by jingoistic nationalism and using non-believers as scapegoats.

Msongs
www.msongs.com
batik & digital art
mugs & shirts

[Bucky]

11. Items 11 thru 20 are telling: not Socialist, but collectivist & nativist

It was certainly a populist, pro-worker, statist approach. While their philosophy was rabble-rousing, they certainly got plenty chummy with large industrial interests like Krupp and Swiss bankers. Large corporations had no beef with Hitler as long as they didn't mind the rampant xenophobia and antisemitism that led to the inevitable Holocaust.

Hitler's lunacy included:
11. Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.

12. In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

13. We demand the nationalisation of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

14. We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

15. We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

16. We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

17. We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

18. We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

19. We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.

20. The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.

Little respect for property rights, but Germany had a problem with the growing concentration of property and wealth into the hands of the few. Few of those "few" were Jewish and in the end large industries that supported Hitler were spared the confiscations that the Nazis promised. All in all a corrupt system and not ideologically consistant.

[formernaderite]

17. thanks for posting this...

back in college....ahem...the earlt 70's, I had a prof that was a devout leftist. He also bemoaned the fact that the fascists had it right in quite a few areas, particularly economic reform....but in the end their nationlistic freakshow came front and center. I think many here forget that Hitler came to power by making deals with the conservatives, and then ousted them right after seizing control. The industrialists were initially placated because Hitler assured them continued work, as long as they produced what the state saw fit. As much as we hate and denounce what the National Socialists and their fellow travellers carried out in terms of human abuse and murder...they also restructured Europe towards the good of the community rather than the individual.

[manic expression]

29. Hold up

It's easy to stimulate an economy when you do it with a.) an iron fist and b.) slave labor. Sure, there may have been a Volkswagen in every German driveway, but who the **** do you think were building them? Slavery is not having it "right".

Next, they restructured Europe so that business and the state would benefit and no one else. Translation: THEY would benefit. The community was forced into serving the interests of the few, the OPPOSITE of the good of the community.

[niceypoo]

16. Just like the GOP does.....

Do you actually believe that Hitler followed through on anything he promised? Thats like holding up the "Contract with America" as being what the republicans are about. You can fool some of the people all of the time......

[inthebrain]

18. The first people Hitler killed were Socialists and Communists

Goes to show how little people actually know about NAZI Germany. If Hitler was so in love with Socialism why target those people for execution?

[primative1]

21. Interesting ..

Thanks for the post. We all know the story of where they went, but at least myself, am so unfamiliar with how they got there.

[ieoeja]

46. Did you READ that program?

You claim Hitler kept that program throughout his administration. Let's do a point-by-point review.

1. Conquer their neighbors. Yes.
2. Conquer their neighbors. Yes.
3. Conquer their neighbors. Yes.
4. Kill Jews. Yes.
5. Kill Jews. Yes.
6. Kill Jews. Yes.
7. Kill Jews. Yes.
8. Kill Jews. Yes.
9. Civil Rights. No.
10. Nothing. N/A
11. Abolition of unearned incomes. No.
12. Stop war profiteering. No.
13. Nationalisation of industries. No.
14. Nationalisation of industries. No.
15. Welfare. No.
16. Nationalisation of industries. No.
17. Nationalisation of farms. I don't know. Did he do that?
18. Mass executions. Yes.
19. Common sense judges instead of strict constructionist judges. I don't know. Were judges given a lot of leeway in NAZI Germany? I doubt it.
20. Slavery. Yes.
21. Physical Education. Yes.
22. Nationalisation of military. Yes.
23. Censorship. Yes.
24. Kill Jews. Yes.
25. Totalitarianism. Yes.

In summary, under Hitler the NAZIs dropped all the economic points of the founders (whom Hitler had killed on the Night Of The Long Knives) while retaining all the racist, totalitarian and nationalistic points.

[nytemare]

6. And, don't forget the People's Republic of China.

Oh, and the USSR.

:D

[IronLionZion]

13. Republicans, both of them, and Saddam's Republican guard!

bwahaha :silly:

[tabasco]

7. Yah, that's why they sent communists to concentration camps.

The idiot kool-aid drinkers will believe anything Rush tells them.

[kenny blankenship]

8. ALso remember

Hitler rounded up and assassinated KPD (Communist Party) figures without trials. The Nazi campaign of assassination of KPD members and friendly journalists began before Hitler was able to take power. After he took full dictatorial power, largely by blaming the KPD for the fire he himself probably set to the German Parliament building, liquidating of the KPD was the first accomplisment of the Nazi new order, prefiguring the "Final Solution" the Nazis would apply to the Jews.

Hitler sent the Social-Democrats to the first concentration camp a full five years before the start of the war--the Social Democrats (SPD) were the next largest party in Germany at the time and were the actual socialist party founded back in the 19th century, seeking theoretical guidance from Marx and Engels. Hitler sent Kurt Eisner's Bavarian Socialists Union party to concentration camp as well. The Bavarian Socialists were a small splinter from the SPD embracing harder Marxian revolutionary ideas that the SPD had long since abandoned. Few of these Parliamentarians would survive the decade long ordeal. These parties were all outlawed. Soon all parties but the Nazis were to be disbanded, but these real and traditional left wing movements were his first targets.

After taking power Hitler incorporated into his government some figures from the former Center Party (a Catholic traditional-values and pro-business party headed by aristocratic land owners like Fritz Von Papen) and the Nationalist Party (an old small pro-monarchy party centered on the military like old Reich President Von Hindenburg, although Hindenburg was dead by the time Hitler made his big moves). No former SPD figures would be invited to take part in Hitler's administration of the new undemocratic Germany.

Hitler disbanded the trades unions, of which the political arm was the Socialist SPD. So the real Socialist party of Germany was abolished, it's leaders in dungeons, and the worker's organizations which formed the grassroots strength of the Socialist party suppressed.

Hitler's political allies within the economic sphere were not worker's unions, which he directly outlawed, but industrialists like the Thyssens and big bankers like Hjalmar Schacht. These capitalist figures helped Hitler build bridges to America and Britain, bringing in massive investments without fear of "labor disruption"; among Hitler's big American backers were the Fords, the Rockefellers, and the family of George W. Bush--real notorious Red Commie labor agitators every last one of them! The Anglo-American foreign policy elites looked at Hitler's militarist and anti-Bolshevist rhetoric as proof that he would be a crusader against the USSR and hoped he would shield the west from the possibility of Soviet expansion. They looked at his economic policies (which could hardly be separated from his militarist policies) and saw on the one hand a model for how to destroy the political power of labor and on the other, how to mobilize the west's own fallen economies in a way that would begin to line their own pockets again. Hitler insisted (quite nationalistically) on keeping profits from foreign investment in his new Nazi state within its borders to catalyze its economic recovery and developement. There was no suggestion however, of cutting the German workers in on these inpatriated profits from the deals he was making. Simply having a job was the workers' end in the bargain--and of course their participation in the Nazi bargain was not exactly consensual.

Anti-Socialism even figured into Hitler's racial mania. The constant refrain of the Nazis was that Judaism and Bolshevism were the same thing, in some underlying realm where ideas and blood mingled in a kind of unsolvable chicken-or-the-egg? circularity. It's true that very many prominent Socialist and Communist theoreticians and politicians had been Jews--Marx himself, Edouard Bernstein, Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Kautsky--the list is long. And beyond Germany, the list certainly included Trotsky and even Lenin had Jewish ancestry (Nazis would/will claim Lenin as a Jew, many Jews would/will deny it). Examples of Hitler's Judaism-Bolshevism equation can be found in many of Hitler's utterances and writings from Mein Kampf onwards--here is a particularly bizarre and chilling example:
Hitler's Speech to the Reichstag, 30 January, 1939:

"Europe cannot find peace until the Jewish question has been solved. …One thing I should like to say on this day which may be memorable for others as well as for us Germans. In the course of my life I have very often been a prophet and have usually been ridiculed for it. … Today I will once more be a prophet: if the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshivization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe."

Somehow even the figure of rich Jewish international financier was, according to Hitler, enmeshed in a global Jewish plot to spread Bolshevik (Leninist-Marxist) Revolution.

-----------------------------

Hitler was a Socialist like George W. Bush is a Socialist--he'll use the power of the state to enrich his friends and allies, who're already rich, enlarging their wealth and enlarging the military capacity to seize wealth from distant lands, and he'll gladly shaft the common man to help make this happen. For Hitler as for Bush, and for most conservatives of any stripe, the rich individuals and corporations of the country (the wealth of the nation) are the strength of the nation: what makes the rich rich also makes the nation's military strong. (Which makes another example of a chicken-and-egg puzzle that Conservatives cannot see past.) And so, as far as a conservative nationalist or fascist or rightwinger is concerned, the rich and the corporations ARE THE NATION. To rightwingers, the rich and powerful are the nation in abstract, or at least an efficient shorthand for the nation, with which they merge their individual personality, even if they do not belong to this favored class themselves. Since what matters to a conservative or fascist is the abstract idea of the national strength, in which they've invested everything of their own identity and their family's identity, it follows that everything else should be subordinated to the cause of making this wealth and strength larger (even if the conservative individual will or their family never benefit from it). A "socialist" in this contorted meaning is, of course, not a socialist at all, but a capitalist and a crony capitalist at that--or else a deluded camp follower of capitalism.

[bluestateguy]

10. And Neville Chamberlain the appeaser was a Conservative

So it cuts both ways.

[IronLionZion]

12. actually it's a circle, not a line

that's why communists and fascists are so similar. Just because Hitler called it socialism, doesn't mean anything. He can call it what he wants but it's still fascism, which has been described by Mussolini as a merger of state and corporate powers.

But if you still want to look at it as lines, remember there's a line for economic freedom and a line for personal freedom.

[rman]

20. Which communism?

Lenin and Trotsky never maneged to obtain the goal of creating a communist state - then Stalin took over and Russia got stuck in bureaucracy and authoritarianism.
Russia/USSR has never actually been communist in spite of it being called communist.

[IronLionZion]

22. The utopian Communism is a myth

there will never ever be a system in place where everyone is economically equal. The human nature is such that someone will always try to take advantage of the situation for their own personal gain. That's why so called "communist" states have rich powerful people at the top who are "more equal" than the poor majority. China is the most ridiculous example, with all their privately owned businesses and foreign direct investment and "free trade zones". The People's Republic enacts brutal human rights violations on personal freedoms to control their poor uneducated rural majority who could easily overpower the military if they put their minds to it. They have to call it something, so they went with "communism".

On a related note, what many DUers fail to realize is that Al Gore and Russ Feingold are huge free marketeers and want less government bureacracy and regulations. Bush is against free market competition and prefers corrupt corporate cronyism.

[rman]

24. But fascism isn't a myth

So you can't argue that "communism and fascism are similar" or that "it's a circle".

The extreme right and the extreme left are not similar. Communism has never really existed.
The extreme right does exist and there are plenty examples of it in history. The extreme left, the one you are referring to (violent and dictatorial) is a myth created by the extreme right. For instance the "Red Army Faction"/Bader-Meinhof Grupe was created by RW elements in the US intelligence community as part of Operation Gladio (the point being to discredit leftism, as part of the fight against communism in Europe). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio


I very much doubt that Gore wants less regulation of corporations. For one, he certainly was and is against deregulation of media ownership.

[IronLionZion]

26. Gore is a great guy, but he wants fewer but more effective regulations

Many of the regulations in place are outdated or are so complicated that they are not effective and corporations find loopholes. There are always unintended consequences to everything, no matter how well-intentioned. Like the massive energy company tax breaks for researching alternative fuels, even though they have record profits and don't do any meaningful research.

VP Gore did a lot to streamline government: cutting waste, cutting bureacracy layers, and making the process more transparent as a way to cut down on corruption also known as pork. His plan was called the National Performance Review and it was a hell of a plan. The roaring 90's were good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#Initiatives

I'm glad you brought up the media consolidation. The free market encourages competition. The regulations Al wants would encourage free enterprise, not hinder it.

I'm all for helping our fellow people, but there is a lot of tax money going down the toilet without helping anyone who needs it. Taxpayers for Common Sense: http://www.taxpayer.net/

Thanks for the link on Operation Gladio, I didn't know about it. But I do know that many radical movements were encouraged or even funded by undercover agents as a way to shape public opinion against their cause. That's why the most radical members of any group need to be checked to see if they are with any law enforcement agency.

[treestar]

25. How to square that with Gore and environmentalism?

If what you say it true it is a great freeper-confuser. But they immediately react about Gore - to them Gore = tree hugger and from that massive government regulation.

[IronLionZion]

27. Gore is against unnecessary regulations, waste, fraud, and bureacracy

and believes strongly in the American dream. As great as he is, he's no socialist. Gore invests a lot of money into companies that are socially and environmentally responsible and he profits from it. Doing the right thing is profitable, both spritually and financially. Preserving the environment means you can ensure the future potential of the land and get more from it in the long term. Destroying the land is like killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore#Initiatives

[rman]

39. Everybody is against that - which is why even neocons -say- the are

against it. Nobody is going to say they are in favor of unnecessary regulations, waste, fraud, and bureacracy.

At any rate it isn't exactly the same thing as wanting less regulation, which is what you initially said Gore is about.

[IronLionZion]

42. Republicans always talk about smaller government,

but Clinton and Gore actually did it. They shrank the federal government and made it more effective.

Bush and Cheney have increased the size of government and obviously there is a lot more waste and fraud now. They spend $1 trillion on the Iraq war but where does that money go? It's not going to our troops who need equipment and health care benefits.

I'm glad you said " Nobody is going to say they are in favor of unnecessary regulations, waste, fraud, and bureacracy". Republicans have been saying Democrats favor it every day. In fact it's one of their standard Orwellian talking points. They always say that we support those things when actually Clinton and Gore cleaned it up. Bush and Cheney messed it up again. Their regulations are obviously helping the big corporations that put them in office.

Republicans do a lot of illegal stuff. When they get caught, they just create laws that legalize it.Just because something is a "regulation" doesn't mean that it makes the world a better place. Let's face it, there are regulations that may have sounded good when created but are just plain worthless today. Regulations don't always work the way we think they do.

cutting unnecessary regulation = less regulations. Fewer and simpler regulations make the system more efficient and transparent. Reviewing the performance of government departments help to make them more effective.

[manic expression]

32. On 'economic freedom'

freedom isn't freedom if you have to be able to afford it. In other words, the "freedom" to manipulate and exploit workers and the market for personal gain is not a right, and it should not be tolerated by society. It is wrong to put greed before the welfare of the people, and people do not have the "freedom" to deny individuals necessities and decent living standards.

Just my opinion.

[LittleClarkie]

35. I've often heard it said that Hitler and Stalin were standing so close

together on the political spectrum, but with their backs turned to each other, that all they would have had to do was turn around and they could have shaken hands. Totalitarianism looks pretty much the same, regardless of what political model is used to justify it.

[ieoeja]

51. Hitler didn't call it socialism.

The people who founded it did. And Hitler killed them on the Night of the Long Knives.

[Kurovski]

14. K&R.(nt)

[Canuckistanian]

15. Must be a German thing

Just like the communist half of the old Germany used to be called "German Democratic Republic"

[Warren DeMontague]

19. Pah. Old, warmed over crock of BS for people with little or no historical

comprehension.

Far more accurate to say that Stalin was a Right Wing Fascist.

For what it's worth, Authoritarians of all stripes can suck my left-libertarian ass.

[niceypoo]

49. Stalin was a fascist?

Fascism is a capitalist dictatorship, please explain your reasoning......

[underpants]

23. Hitler didn't smoke and was a vegetarian

that is (from I can tell) what this BS is based on. See all us liberals hate smokers even those of us who smoke or DID smoke and of course only liberals are vegetarians and all vegetarians are liberal has to be don't you know.

Communism is when the government runs businesses
Fascism is when businesses run the government.

[unpossibles]

33. actually, from what I've heard the vegetarianism claim is false too

even though I know you're just being funny.

I heard The Governator was a vegetarian for a long time too, so there goes the theory that only lefties abstain from meat.

http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html

;)

[IronLionZion]

34. and alcohol,

he drank copious amounts of non-alcoholic beer and then surprised everyone by giving spectacular speeches. Or maybe they thought it was spectacular because they were drunk on real beer!

Teenage Hitler also ran around with much younger children because he could push them around.

[Lilith Velkor]

38. And he was pagan even though he called himself Christian

Because TRUE Christians aren't capable of doing evil things, so he musta been one of us filthy liberal pagans.

[manic expression]

28. Do people actually think that?

Wow. Just...wow.

:wow:

People can be so stupid. Conservatives are just worse.

[LoZoccolo]

30. There's a book by Gary Allen from the John Birch society...

...that was published in the sixties called None Dare Call It Conspiracy that basically lays out a confusing case to that affect.

[LSK]

44. yes, i have seen that MANY times

[Anarcho-Socialist]

31. It comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of European politics

Freepers love to point to Hitler's economic policies of creating demand in the economy by state spending as evidence of 'leftism' and socialism. This concept was practiced by governments of various political persuasions throughout the middle part of the 20th century, including conservative ones. However the main recipient of state spending was rearmament (sound familiar). The economic system that Nazi Germany operated under was a form of national capitalism. Hitler did have some welfare policies but the reason was social engineering rather than socialism, aryan families received gifts and tax breaks from the state for the more pure aryan children they produced.

Looking at any aspect of National Socialist social or foreign policy shows a distinct lack of leftist influence. Their social policy was strongly about 'family values' and homosexuality was a distinct 'immoral perversion' (sound familiar). Then there was the outlawing of all trade unions (how leftist is that?), and the repression of leftist parties.

Let us not forget that it was the conservatives and nationalists who went in coalition with Hitler in the first place, and it was those parties that gave the Nazi Party the votes it needed in the Reichstag for Hitler to receive supreme executive powers. For contemporary conservatives, Hitler was "a bit of a hot-head, but he's got the right idea about communism."

Hitler's foreign policy was about race and a greater nationalist Germany. This was certainly not about unifying the working classes of the world. The Nazis were for a society governed by a racial aristocracy with aryans as the ruling class with everyone else as their slaves. (Hardly bleeding-heart liberalism)

[bobbieinok]

36. Hitler took over a very small party in Munich that he discovered

when he was spying on political groups for the military after WWI.

A few of the members were indeed socialists; these and many others were eliminated from the party, the final elimination occuring during all the executions of Hitler's enemies in the party in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.

Roehm, the leader of the Nazi street fighters (SA) was one of many executed. He had been a major help in Hitler's rise to power, but his demand that the army be abolished and replaced by the SA was impossible/intolerable. So 'all of a sudden' the Nazi party 'discovered' that Roehm and some other leaders were homosexuals who, of course, 'had' to be eliminated.

[rman]

40. first time i ever heard "Hitler spied on political groups for the military

I think it's possible, but never heard about it before. Got any sources on this?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

37. ok, the lead tricked me and I was just getting in a flame mood...

good rant and accurate too.

[sadiesworld]

41. Hitler wrapped fascism in socialist rhetoric.

What else was he going to say? Hey, I've got this really great idea about millions of you dying in order to make the industrialists fatter and happier?

[niceypoo]

50. My point exactly Sadie

Same thing that Bush and co are doing today. War = profit$$

[LSK]

43. simple, Hitlers 1st acts including banning the communist party

Would an extreme leftist do that?

[niceypoo]

48. Right wing political parties were banned in germany after WW2

Do the math.

[noonwitch]

45. Hitler was a psycho dictator who defies labels like liberal/conservative

He was a sick puppy who should have been committed to an asylum for life long before he had any opportunity to become dangerous.

[suigeneris]

52. Hitler is an excellent authority on Hitler and quite good on

National Socialism as well. From this his Munich speech of April 12, 1922: http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/speeches/1922-04-12.html

"1. 'NATIONAL' AND 'SOCIAL' ARE TWO IDENTICAL CONCEPTIONS. It was only the Jew who succeeded, through falsifying the social idea and turning it into Marxism, not only in divorcing the social idea from the national, but in actually representing them as utterly contradictory. That aim he has in fact achieved. At the founding of this Movement we formed the decision that we would give expression to this idea of ours of the identity of the two conceptions: despite all warnings, on the basis of what we had come to believe, on the basis of the sincerity of our will, we christened it ''National Socialist.' We said to ourselves that to be 'national' means above everything to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it. And similarly to be 'social' means so to build up the state and the community of the people that every individual acts in the interest of the community of the people and must be to such an extent convinced of the goodness, of the honorable straightforwardness of this community of the people as to be ready to die for it.

[baldguy]

53. People who call Nazis "leftists" b/c of the word "socialism"

Have no idea what "socialism" is. They called themselves National Socialists because in Germany in the 1920s, the idea of nationalism was popular and the idea of socialism was popular. It had almost nothing to do with ideology and almost everything to do with propaganda.

Much like the "Family Research Council" doesn't really support families, and the "Christian Coalition" doesn't follow the teachings of Christ. Fascist propaganda is alive & well in 21st century America.

[zeppelin24]

54. Yeah, okay?

If you must say?