Was Mussolini's Fascism as bad as Hitler's Nazism ?

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cyberdad
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09 Aug 2022, 2:31 am

CockneyRebel wrote:
I think that Hitler's Nazism was worse. Hitler was more bloodthirsty.


Comparing Hitler's crimes with Mussolini is like comparing the Schwartzneggar and Danny Devito in terms of size. Mussolini did murder 400,000 Ethiopian civilians which is no small matter. He was a mini-Hitler.



techstepgenr8tion
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09 Aug 2022, 7:09 am

cyberdad wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
Nazism added this strange kayfabe and as people have already stated - occult mysticism that almost seems to be a darker reworking of Theosophy. .


Yes I'm surprised you know about that!

Theosophy was founded by a Russian aristocrat named madame Blavatsky who lived in India and was heavily influenced by Hinduism. Despite spending time with Rishis and holy men in India Blavatsky was instrumental for founding the idea that all spiritualism and great civilisation was the result of the Aryan superman. One weird byproduct of her theosophical society was it's influence on American intellectuals at the end of the 19th century which influenced many scientists and doctors on theories of evolution of humans where science and spiritualism became entwined with racial supremacy, The Aryans of old were written as supermen like Hercules and indeed they might have influenced the Hollywood idea of superheroes and supermen as well.

Her theories influenced scientists who started the theory of eugenics as well as historians and anthropologists in the early 20th century, It was not long before these ideas filtered into the fledgling Nazi party in Germany after WWI. One of the pecularities is that in addition to Blavatsky's mythical Aryan superman a lesser known fact was the Nazis (particularly Hitler and Himmler) adopted the pseudo-hindu mythology and associated mysticism including the symbol of the swastika. Little did Hitler know that the hindu religion had nothing to with aryan pastoralists who invaded India but with the little brown men who were indigenous to the region whose religion likely influenced nearly all world religions including (ironically) christianity.

I think it went both ways though - ie. as I mentioned you saw the ideas of rounds, races, and root races everywhere. I think they were more a product of their times and, a bit like pre-Bolshevik communists, they didn't get to see the consequences of those beliefs.


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09 Aug 2022, 7:31 am

cyberdad wrote:
CockneyRebel wrote:
I think that Hitler's Nazism was worse. Hitler was more bloodthirsty.


Comparing Hitler's crimes with Mussolini is like comparing the Schwartzneggar and Danny Devito in terms of size. Mussolini did murder 400,000 Ethiopian civilians which is no small matter. He was a mini-Hitler.


The irony is that - Mussolini (who came to power in like 1922) viewed Hitler (who didnt take power until 1933) as being his cute little brother, and understudy, under his own more experienced fellow-fascist wing. :lol:

But once the world war started the Italian war effort became a disaster. Hitler quickly conquered basically all of Europe north of the Alps in the Blitz- occupied France (a nation in Germany's own weight class), and was beating the crap out of Britain (another nation in his weight class). Meanwhile Italy invaded two weaker nieghbors- Greece and Yugoslavia- resulting in Italy getting bogged down in a quagmire- that Hitler had to come down and rescue Mussolini's ass from. The German divisions sent to the Balkans to help Italy had to be subtracted from army that would soon be sent east by Hitler against Russia on the Eastern Front. Thanx for weakening me Duce'.

And it just went downhill from there.

So by the time Italy itself was attacked from the south by the American/Brit allies Mussolini's regime and war machine gradually came apart. So the Axis defense of Italy gradually degenerated from being....Italy and Germany fighting side by side against the common enemy- to- Germany outright occupying and ruling Italy like it was just another Nazi conquest.

So now today we all view Hitler as having been the top dog, and view Mussolini as being his toady, but their relationship started out as the near opposite.



cyberdad
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09 Aug 2022, 6:03 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
CockneyRebel wrote:
I think that Hitler's Nazism was worse. Hitler was more bloodthirsty.


Comparing Hitler's crimes with Mussolini is like comparing the Schwartzneggar and Danny Devito in terms of size. Mussolini did murder 400,000 Ethiopian civilians which is no small matter. He was a mini-Hitler.


The irony is that - Mussolini (who came to power in like 1922) viewed Hitler (who didnt take power until 1933) as being his cute little brother, and understudy, under his own more experienced fellow-fascist wing. :lol:


Yes, this is true, Mussolini would have looked at the 1933 Nazi party as the "new kids on the block". Whatever he thought about Hitler's prospects he definitely saw benefit in Italy allying itself with the Nazis as beneficial to his long term goals.

While Hitler saw alliances with italy and Japan as strategically important, I doubt he cared less about them in as much as they cared about him. So it is when criminal gangs make temporary alliances. Hitler wanted lebensraum or living space to spread the German people and create a "reich" emulating the holy roman empire from the time of King Charlegmane.

Mussolini wanted to create a new Roman empire and for him to become a caesar. Obviously as the war transpired there was no way Hitler would ever let Mussolini become anything more than a vassal.



cyberdad
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09 Aug 2022, 6:17 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I think it went both ways though - ie. as I mentioned you saw the ideas of rounds, races, and root races everywhere. I think they were more a product of their times and, a bit like pre-Bolshevik communists, they didn't get to see the consequences of those beliefs.


I agree they were a product of their times but their legacy fed into existing belief systems. The myth of the aryan superman is now carefully erased from living memory but it was everywhere at the turn of the 20th century.

One of the purpose of the world trade fairs was to showcase the achievements of the master races (Europeans) and subject peoples were shipped over to be a curiosity to be viewed like animals in a zoo or circus. Every attempt was made to recreate huts/villages where the locals would dress in costumes that contrasted the advancements/achievements made in Europe against the "untamed savagery" of Africa and Asia.

Racial supremacy was not fringe in the first half of the 20th century, it was also scientific fact. It provided America to justify Jim Crow laws and the containment of native peoples in reservations and South Africa to initiate apartheid and there was science (actually pseudoscience) to back all this up that it was a good idea.

Hitler's Nazis adopted all of these ideas and carried Blavatsky's legacies without necessary giving her credit, Germany was fertile ground as the christian germans had been antisemetic for centuries before so the rationalision of this ideology fed into the idea the jews (despite being the most successful group in Germany) obtained their benefit by trickery.

Scientific racism started by Blavatsky outlived nazism and continued in South Africa and the United States. Black people in the US were being tested as lab rats up to the 1960s until illegal experimentation was outlawed. Many US doctors breached their own ethical guidelines by injecting black men with Syphillis (Tuskegee experiments) with tacit support of the US government. Laws forbidding intermarriage between black people and white people were extended up to the end of the 1960s (within my lifetime) laws which were soldified by scientific racism fed by theosophist nonsense.

Even in the 1980s the bell curve theory tried to perpetuate the old Aryan superman myths by claiming black people were born with lower IQs (now completely debunked). Scientific research straight out of theosophy and would sit comfortably in the pages of Hitler's Mein Kampf. There are still many Americans who believe this stuff.



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09 Aug 2022, 6:21 pm

Basically, I wouldn't have wanted to live under either regime----though I probably would have had a slightly better chance under Mussolini.

Both, at least, died rather brutal deaths which both wholeheartedly deserve.



cyberdad
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10 Aug 2022, 6:31 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Basically, I wouldn't have wanted to live under either regime----though I probably would have had a slightly better chance under Mussolini.

Both, at least, died rather brutal deaths which both wholeheartedly deserve.


At least we saw Mussolini's body. Hitler, Boorman and Mengele got away.



techstepgenr8tion
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10 Aug 2022, 7:27 am

cyberdad wrote:
Hitler's Nazis adopted all of these ideas and carried Blavatsky's legacies without necessary giving her credit, Germany was fertile ground as the christian germans had been antisemetic for centuries before so the rationalision of this ideology fed into the idea the jews (despite being the most successful group in Germany) obtained their benefit by trickery.

Scientific racism started by Blavatsky outlived nazism and continued in South Africa and the United States. Black people in the US were being tested as lab rats up to the 1960s until illegal experimentation was outlawed. Many US doctors breached their own ethical guidelines by injecting black men with Syphillis (Tuskegee experiments) with tacit support of the US government. Laws forbidding intermarriage between black people and white people were extended up to the end of the 1960s (within my lifetime) laws which were soldified by scientific racism fed by theosophist nonsense.

Even in the 1980s the bell curve theory tried to perpetuate the old Aryan superman myths by claiming black people were born with lower IQs (now completely debunked). Scientific research straight out of theosophy and would sit comfortably in the pages of Hitler's Mein Kampf. There are still many Americans who believe this stuff.


Admittedly I didn't read much Blavatski but I did read Bailey, and in Bailey and in most other places where I saw 'Aryan' brought up they were speaking of the Caucasian central-Asian group who had moved into India and become the ruling class.

The other point of importance, Thule Society, had its own distinct cosmology that dealt with the refinement of 'ice crystals' of which the further north you were in your hereditary origin the more ice crystals you had in your structure and thus the suggestion went the more pure your biology. I can't remember seeing anything like that said in any of the Theosophic literature. Theosophy does get all into Polars, Hyperboreans, Lemurians, Atlantians, ideas of ancient human civilization living in various states of solidity that supposedly culminated in the solidity of the Atlanteans and since they were the fourth root race it means the Slavic root race (which we're supposedly a part of) is a proximate ascent up the tree of moving back up into the etheric in planetary structure. People would then say that groups like Australian aborigines were remnant Lemurians, that Hispanics were remnant Atlanteans, etc.. Human tribalism being what it is I suppose one can twist any distinction into a mark of inferiority to be used for domination but then describing anything, or coming up with a mystical history of anything - no matter what you're trying to do - is a big bag of dog whistles no matter what you actually intended. In that regard, while one can make all kinds of valid criticisms of Theosophy, I'm not sure there's any good signal suggesting that they would have been for anything Thule Society did, let alone pogroms / ethnic cleansing.

What Thule Society did use was the Las Vegas parade float, 'larger than life' razzle-dazzle which... the terminology's gotten a bad rap lately based on certain WP users but, in the state Germany was in, that psychotechnology was great for mass formation.


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10 Aug 2022, 8:14 am

I’ve been labeled both a fascist and a nazi. Given the sources, both labels I’ve worn proudly. :D


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10 Aug 2022, 9:02 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
cyberdad wrote:
Hitler's Nazis adopted all of these ideas and carried Blavatsky's legacies without necessary giving her credit, Germany was fertile ground as the christian germans had been antisemetic for centuries before so the rationalision of this ideology fed into the idea the jews (despite being the most successful group in Germany) obtained their benefit by trickery.

Scientific racism started by Blavatsky outlived nazism and continued in South Africa and the United States. Black people in the US were being tested as lab rats up to the 1960s until illegal experimentation was outlawed. Many US doctors breached their own ethical guidelines by injecting black men with Syphillis (Tuskegee experiments) with tacit support of the US government. Laws forbidding intermarriage between black people and white people were extended up to the end of the 1960s (within my lifetime) laws which were soldified by scientific racism fed by theosophist nonsense.

Even in the 1980s the bell curve theory tried to perpetuate the old Aryan superman myths by claiming black people were born with lower IQs (now completely debunked). Scientific research straight out of theosophy and would sit comfortably in the pages of Hitler's Mein Kampf. There are still many Americans who believe this stuff.


Admittedly I didn't read much Blavatski but I did read Bailey, and in Bailey and in most other places where I saw 'Aryan' brought up they were speaking of the Caucasian central-Asian group who had moved into India and become the ruling class.

The other point of importance, Thule Society, had its own distinct cosmology that dealt with the refinement of 'ice crystals' of which the further north you were in your hereditary origin the more ice crystals you had in your structure and thus the suggestion went the more pure your biology. I can't remember seeing anything like that said in any of the Theosophic literature. Theosophy does get all into Polars, Hyperboreans, Lemurians, Atlantians, ideas of ancient human civilization living in various states of solidity that supposedly culminated in the solidity of the Atlanteans and since they were the fourth root race it means the Slavic root race (which we're supposedly a part of) is a proximate ascent up the tree of moving back up into the etheric in planetary structure. People would then say that groups like Australian aborigines were remnant Lemurians, that Hispanics were remnant Atlanteans, etc.. Human tribalism being what it is I suppose one can twist any distinction into a mark of inferiority to be used for domination but then describing anything, or coming up with a mystical history of anything - no matter what you're trying to do - is a big bag of dog whistles no matter what you actually intended. In that regard, while one can make all kinds of valid criticisms of Theosophy, I'm not sure there's any good signal suggesting that they would have been for anything Thule Society did, let alone pogroms / ethnic cleansing.

What Thule Society did use was the Las Vegas parade float, 'larger than life' razzle-dazzle which... the terminology's gotten a bad rap lately based on certain WP users but, in the state Germany was in, that psychotechnology was great for mass formation.


So...madam Blavatsky was just innocently batshit crazy. While the Thule Society was evilly batshit crazy. Though the two crazies had some overlap in content the Nazi Thulies were not really inspired much by Blavatsky?

Got it!

Actually the occult content of Nazism can be exaggerated. That was mostly just Himmler's thing. Hitler tolerated Himmler's occult dabbling, but was kinda embarrassed by it.

----

Apparently, according to you, Blavatsky DID seem to have some kind of mystical notion of the supremecy of the Slavs. Gee...I wonder why someone with a name like "Blavatsky" would think Slavs were a superior race? :lol:



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10 Aug 2022, 5:20 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Actually the occult content of Nazism can be exaggerated. That was mostly just Himmler's thing. Hitler tolerated Himmler's occult dabbling, but was kinda embarrassed by it.


Actually the occult and mysticism was widespread throughout Germany, They even used it in the last days of the war

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ ... 180970522/



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10 Aug 2022, 5:21 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Apparently, according to you, Blavatsky DID seem to have some kind of mystical notion of the supremecy of the Slavs. Gee...I wonder why someone with a name like "Blavatsky" would think Slavs were a superior race? :lol:


Blavatsky self-identified as an ethnic German from Yeketarinburg



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13 Aug 2022, 8:09 pm

Dox47 wrote:
No, the two were very different, the Italians never had the racial and mystic elements of the Nazis, and were frankly weirded out by them. I've heard Italian Fascism described as "war socialism" and it feels accurate, a public-private alliance held together by a permanent war footing (Mussolini had noticed the way the country came together and got things done during WWI and wanted to harness that), IIRC it's usually considered the root of "war on poverty/drugs/etc" style social programs trying to take advantage of the wartime attitude.


Though Mussolini had allowed for the teaching of Nazi racial theory in Italy, upon Hitler's insistence, as well as Anti-Semitic laws. For his part, Mussolini started telling the Italian people that they were both Roman and Germanic in origin, so that the Nazi racial theories wouldn't make Italians feel inferior.


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13 Aug 2022, 8:37 pm

Kraichgauer wrote:
Though Mussolini had allowed for the teaching of Nazi racial theory in Italy, upon Hitler's insistence, as well as Anti-Semitic laws. For his part, Mussolini started telling the Italian people that they were both Roman and Germanic in origin, so that the Nazi racial theories wouldn't make Italians feel inferior.


Hitler held the romans in high regard for creating a European empire. He admired the warrior culture which the roots of which both the germanic and italic people's draw upon.

However, I think Hitler and the Nazis were not naive and would have perceived the modern Italians as merely a shadow of their ancestors. Mussolini struggled to hold Ethiopia. The italian army had a bad reputation. That wouldn't have been lost on Hitler. For centuries since Rome the italians were never able to amount to anything apart from being a nation of traders and farmers like the Greeks.



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15 Aug 2022, 12:50 pm

The abusive / racist eugenics and medical experementation resulting in millions of slow deaths puts hitler in another league of tyranny over his competition, even if they killed far more people.

One good thing is he slowed down eugenics in North America by giving it a bad name, but not as much as most realize.

It is still strong in Education, teachers call it "neo-eugenics", but most of the methods go back to Nietzsche 140 years ago., most blatantly in the Will to Power.

For those decieved by Walter Kaufmann, it is true Nietzche was not racist or antisemitic, but he did set up a plan for mass extermination of the weak, or was working on it when he snapped. Kaufmann and his minions just ignore this.


and his sister did not write will to power wtf lol

and even if she did, N called for mass murder in his published stuff, so its largely moot.

ps,
despite finding his ideas ethically horrifying, I find Neitzche strangely tolerable personally, but it took a few years for me to warm up to him . Id like to go back in time do strange drugs with him. Maybe bring a copy of the Brothers Karamozov in case he missed it :mrgreen:



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15 Aug 2022, 4:33 pm

The_Znof wrote:
For those decieved by Walter Kaufmann, it is true Nietzche was not racist or antisemitic, but he did set up a plan for mass extermination of the weak, or was working on it when he snapped. Kaufmann and his minions just ignore this.
:


Ironically the famous ethicist Peter Singer has also called for euthanasia of severely handicapped. It is a slipperly slope,