Stupid people are confusing the political terms

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Why do people believe that nazis were/are socialists, just because it comes from National Socialism?

People have to remember that National Socialism has NOTHING to do with Socialism.
National Socialism must be understood as one word, and to understand what I mean,
I would like to draw upon an example from software programming:

In software programming, you have constants and variables, which are said "boxes" that you put in values.

For instance, you can have a variable containing numbers and another for text.

Let's say we have a variable named "Anything" and give it a value of an integer (a whole number).
In Pascal language, we write it like this:

Var
Anything: Integer;

Now you put in another variable, named Any_thing and give it a text. You now have TWO variables, and although they are pronounced the same,
they are totally different because of the one and single underscore:

Var
Anything: Integer;
Any_thing: Text;

Now I hope to close the discussion of whether National Socialism is Socialism or not, forever in all eternity!

F.A. Hayek wrote a chapter about the socialist roots of Naziism in his book 'The Road to Serfdom' that you can read here.(link)

In short; the Nazis were 'socialst' becuase they dissagreed with economic liberalism, and didn't support 'true' capitalism. The Nazis were 'socialist' becuase socialism means big government.

Ironically though, they recieved support from capitalists, especially from heavy industrialists because of their emphasis on the military.

Hitler was an unapologetic admirer of the aristocracy because he regarded them as 'paragons of strength'. He could often be found sucking up to wealthy indigenous Germans to get funding for the nazi party.

The SS brownshirts were even initially funded by well off gentlemen's societies, which is where they got the money for their uniforms and regalia.

National socialism is about socialism for the indigenous race, irrespective of class. It encourages class collaboration and seperation along ethnic or cultural lines. The nazis supported capitalism up till the point that it interfered with their ambitions for a master race.

Last edited by thomas81 on 22 Dec 2013, 12:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hayek's chapter is of limited use because he doesn't define his terms. For example, at one point he talks of "the anticapitalist forces of the Right". As I understand it, this is a contradiction in terms. I know Hayek was not a stupid man, so therefore his definition of these terms is different to mine. His idea of socialism could easily be different from mine too.

The only true instance of right wing anti-capitalism that comes to my mind is national bolshevism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Bolshevism

It is an attempt to mix communism with nazism, if you can imagine that.

Even that though, has definite left wing elements. Its very hard to pin down where it lies on the political spectrum. With that exception capitalism is supported to a greater or lesser degree by all right wing forces. The dogma of the freedom of markets seems to underpin a common denominator behind the reactionary thought process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_anarchism

LOL

Hitler himself despised socialism and always did, but he figured that there were people in the movement who were somewhat socialist (the Strassers come to mind) and this was a way to win popularity, he allowed these people space until he won power after which his true preferences were promoted through an alliance with the conservative ruling class. The Nazis were more playing the petty bourgeouis populism card than any socialism at any rate even when the Strassers were around.

hitler despised communism, not socialism per sae.

He wanted a form of socialism that rich white people could also access.

Anarchists who are also bigots basically.

Nazism was neither "right" nor "left". Totalitarian movements are never "right" or "left", although they adopt the trappings of either to suit their short-term goals. Hitler had nothing but hatred (in private) for the aristocracy. He only held respect for "the peasants". Himmler, on the other hand, adored the Prussian (and only the Prussian) aristocracy. Ideological consistency did not matter to the Nazis, only the road to power. The goal of totalitarian movements is to eliminate all other worldviews, thus "right" and "left" are both hated by them and slated for destruction.

The origins of the Nationalist-Socialist party was of an attempt to meld elements of the left (socialism) with the right (nationalism). It was only a matter of time till one or the other philosophy would win out, and that winner was the right, as Hitler was of that political verve. Some left wing members like Joseph Goebbels changed his whole political outlook for his personal adoration of Hitler, while others, like Ernst Rhom and the Brownshirt leadership were purged at the behest of the right wing Heinrich Himmler and his SS, and the German military establishment who feared Rhom would turn the Brownshirt SA into the German army.

Many reasons. First and foremost, people regard it as the far-right only because the USSR lobbied for it to be internationally known as such, because Stalin wanted the USSR to be known as the polar opposite of Nazi Germany. Second, Hitler saw the planned economy as a permanent solution, and planned on keeping this planned economy after WWII ended.

If you think about it, there were few (if any) significant differences between the USSR and Nazi Germany, but plenty of similarities. If you compare Nazi Germany to a dictatorship that actually was right wing (with Pinochet being the farthest to the right a dicator has ever been), you'll still see plenty of differences.



Hitler himself claimed that it was indeed socialism.




Furthermore, many of the nazis were in fact former communists.




False analogy. You can name a variable or object in programming what you want (within the constraints of supported characters). It's behaviour is determined by what's hard coded into the programming language, before it's translated to a lower-level language (in the case of Pascal, this is assembly code). There are conventions for naming them, however. A String and an Integer are two different concepts; you can't give a String any value unless it's within quotation marks--and likewise, an Integer needs to have a numerical value. Nazism had plenty of Stalinist values, and vice versa.

If Any_thing has the value "4" and Anything has the value 4, and you then parse Anything to a string, they're identical apart from the memory adresses. This is how similar National Socialism and Stalinism are. Both Lenin and Stalin were nationalists (even though the former was against it officially), as was Kim Il-Sung, Nicolae Ceaucescu, Mao Zedong and many other communists.

This analogy (in C) is how it really was:

Both fascism and socialism makes the collective primary and the individual secondary. In the case of socialism the main elelement of the collective is class. The workers versus the capitalists etc. In the case of Nazi fascism the main elements of the collective were Volk and Race. Both combined were the Gemeinschaft, the central element of Nazi ideology.

Both fascism and socialism are opposed to the individual as individual being sovereign and central to human existence.

ruveyn

Kugan@

Which Nazis were former communists? I know Goebbels had been originally to the left, but he changed everything he believed in, so strong was his infatuation with Hitler.

I was always under the impression that Nazi ideology was mostly "make it up as you go along," ending at "conquer the world!" and "kill the Jews!"