Fascism emerged as an appropriation of revolutionary left strategies in service of right-wing ideology. That’s why the Nazis adopted the name “national socialists.” At the time the word socialist was used to refer to pretty much any populist working class movement. Blaming communists for fascism is a bit like seeing one of those spiders that mimics ants and blaming the ants.
Not everything anti-establishment is left or right. The strategies the nazis used were false flags and complete narrative control followed by regulatory capture, martial law, and then finally taking what they wanted by force.
If you claim those tactics for your ideology then I don’t associate with you.
You’re probably referring to right wing populism, right?
The strategies I’m referring to are best summed up as populism, yes. The left vs right terminology originally referred to those who opposed or supported monarchy, respectively. In Weimar Germany those who opposed the political establishment in favor of working class movements were considered socialist, irrespective of their other beliefs.
What I’m saying is that as capital S Socialism gained popularity among the working class, fascist movements appropriated the Socialists populist methods, taking advantage of the work that Socialists had already done in organizing working class opposition to the political establishment. The majority were not ideologues, they simply knew the status quo was not serving them and were looking for explanations, which at one point only Socialists were providing (though arguably not very effectively). That’s when fascism emerged to provide an alternative explanation; one which was not a threat to the wealthy and powerful, and played into the deep-rooted prejudices of the time.
Well yes of course, in this context communism and socialism aren’t very literal aside from the parties empty promises. That was a given in the historical context, as there has never been a true communism by definition.
Because the splintering of the left wing as a result of radical Communist Party spoiling Social Democrat and Centrist parties resulting in failure to form a left or centrist government for 3 years allowed the Nazis to take over and effectively end the republic. And also, even if they opposed communism and practiced socialism, they were all basically favors of the same thing but had different leaders in mind.
That’s not really true. It was a coordinated effort to dismantle any and all worker protections, rights, and organization.
Blackshirts and Reds - Michael Parenti - Ch 1
In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.
During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brown-shirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.
In that same campaign the Nazis received 37.3 percent of the vote, the highest they ever won in a democratic national election. They never had a majority of the people on their side. To the extent that they had any kind of reliable base, it generally was among the more affluent members of society. In addition, elements of the petty bourgeoisie and many lumpenproletariats served as strong-arm party thugs, organized into the SA storm troopers. But the great majority of the organized working class supported the Communists or Social Democrats to the very end.
In the December 1932 election, three candidates ran for president: the conservative incumbent Field Marshal von Hindenburg, the Nazi candidate Adolph Hitler, and the Communist party candidate Ernst Thaelmann. In his campaign, Thaelmann argued that a vote for Hindenburg amounted to a vote for Hitler and that Hitler would lead Germany into war. The bourgeois press, including the Social Democrats, denounced this view as “Moscow inspired.” Hindenburg was re-elected while the Nazis dropped approximately two million votes in the Reichstag election as compared to their peak of over 13.7 million.
True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party’s proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.3 Meanwhile a number of right-wing parties coalesced behind the Nazis and in January 1933, just weeks after the election, Hindenburg invited Hitler to become chancellor.
Upon assuming state power, Hitler and his Nazis pursued a politico-economic agenda not unlike Mussolini’s. They crushed organized labor and eradicated all elections, opposition parties, and independent publications. Hundreds of thousands of opponents were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered. In Germany as in Italy, the communists endured the severest political repression of all groups.
Here were two peoples, the Italians and Germans, with different histories, cultures, and languages, and supposedly different temperaments, who ended up with the same repressive solutions because of the compelling similarities of economic power and class conflict that prevailed in their respective countries. In such diverse countries as Lithuania, Croatia, Rumania, Hungary, and Spain, a similar fascist pattern emerged to do its utmost to save big capital from the impositions of democracy.4
So you’re saying the left parties were unified and did form a government and didn’t lose votes to the Nazis in every election before Hitler?
Because if that is what you’re saying then you’re lying. But if that is not what you’re saying then you just pasted 7 Paragraphs to say a whole fucking lot of nothing, @Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
Thanks for stopping by to be a great example of the kind of fucking Tankie bastard nobody likes. Hey do you recommend I do or do not read some theory?
Haha what? This is a take I have never heard before. What part of hitlers ideology was influenced by communism exactly? Weird for the nazis to be influenced by an ideology that they actively hated and crushed as soon as they were in power haha
Gosh, I wonder what communism had to do with the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The Weimar Republic laid the foundations for rejection of the democratic parliament, which Hitler then took advantage of to assume uncontestable power. The major reason Germany jumped to the conservative right politically was news of the political uprisings in Soviet Russia and the splitting of left factions into small uncooperative groups.
Hitler transformed the party to be strongly anti-communist and anti-bolshevist (though mostly bolshevist was used as a dogwhistle for jewish people), but the fact remains that Nazi Germany was built on the foundations laid by communists.
It absolutely wasn’t but whatever man you do you. Like none of what you said was what I asked but whatever. Blaming the communists for the Nazi’s is just a really stupid take and is just a total lack of understanding of history.
I kinda have to disagree with you. The other commentator was explaining their reasoning and they are in a certain way right, the rise of the soviet union definitely influenced politics in the rest of Europe. But it is in the end just victim blaming the left political scene of the time.
Aka “if the poor wouldn’t have gotten uppity, the middle and rich class wouldn’t have needed to vote for the fascists.” And that part is the bullshit, were I totally agree with you.
Yeah exactly we are on the same page here. His first comment was implying that the nazis ideology was based on communist ideologies which was misleading at best.
You are actually defending the people who split the votes and spoiled left wing politicians in Weimar Germany leading to consecutive failures to form government and eventual nazi takeover. What skin do you have in this game?
If it was post-nazi takeover then I can see the merit in supporting the now underground nazi resistance of the communist party of Germany, but from 1919 to 1933 they did nothing but shit the bed.
TBF, the decline of Germany and rise of Hitler did involve a lot of communist influence towards the start.
Kind of the same vibe as ruining a kids life and then being partially responsible for every bad thing he does.
They should remove the name tho.
Fascism emerged as an appropriation of revolutionary left strategies in service of right-wing ideology. That’s why the Nazis adopted the name “national socialists.” At the time the word socialist was used to refer to pretty much any populist working class movement. Blaming communists for fascism is a bit like seeing one of those spiders that mimics ants and blaming the ants.
Not everything anti-establishment is left or right. The strategies the nazis used were false flags and complete narrative control followed by regulatory capture, martial law, and then finally taking what they wanted by force.
If you claim those tactics for your ideology then I don’t associate with you.
You’re probably referring to right wing populism, right?
The strategies I’m referring to are best summed up as populism, yes. The left vs right terminology originally referred to those who opposed or supported monarchy, respectively. In Weimar Germany those who opposed the political establishment in favor of working class movements were considered socialist, irrespective of their other beliefs.
What I’m saying is that as capital S Socialism gained popularity among the working class, fascist movements appropriated the Socialists populist methods, taking advantage of the work that Socialists had already done in organizing working class opposition to the political establishment. The majority were not ideologues, they simply knew the status quo was not serving them and were looking for explanations, which at one point only Socialists were providing (though arguably not very effectively). That’s when fascism emerged to provide an alternative explanation; one which was not a threat to the wealthy and powerful, and played into the deep-rooted prejudices of the time.
Well yes of course, in this context communism and socialism aren’t very literal aside from the parties empty promises. That was a given in the historical context, as there has never been a true communism by definition.
Then why are you trying to say that Nazi Germany was directly created by communism if they never practiced communism?
Because the splintering of the left wing as a result of radical Communist Party spoiling Social Democrat and Centrist parties resulting in failure to form a left or centrist government for 3 years allowed the Nazis to take over and effectively end the republic. And also, even if they opposed communism and practiced socialism, they were all basically favors of the same thing but had different leaders in mind.
That’s not really true. It was a coordinated effort to dismantle any and all worker protections, rights, and organization.
Blackshirts and Reds - Michael Parenti - Ch 1
So you’re saying the left parties were unified and did form a government and didn’t lose votes to the Nazis in every election before Hitler?
Because if that is what you’re saying then you’re lying. But if that is not what you’re saying then you just pasted 7 Paragraphs to say a whole fucking lot of nothing, @Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
Thanks for stopping by to be a great example of the kind of fucking Tankie bastard nobody likes. Hey do you recommend I do or do not read some theory?
Haha what? This is a take I have never heard before. What part of hitlers ideology was influenced by communism exactly? Weird for the nazis to be influenced by an ideology that they actively hated and crushed as soon as they were in power haha
Gosh, I wonder what communism had to do with the rise of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The Weimar Republic laid the foundations for rejection of the democratic parliament, which Hitler then took advantage of to assume uncontestable power. The major reason Germany jumped to the conservative right politically was news of the political uprisings in Soviet Russia and the splitting of left factions into small uncooperative groups.
Hitler transformed the party to be strongly anti-communist and anti-bolshevist (though mostly bolshevist was used as a dogwhistle for jewish people), but the fact remains that Nazi Germany was built on the foundations laid by communists.
It absolutely wasn’t but whatever man you do you. Like none of what you said was what I asked but whatever. Blaming the communists for the Nazi’s is just a really stupid take and is just a total lack of understanding of history.
I kinda have to disagree with you. The other commentator was explaining their reasoning and they are in a certain way right, the rise of the soviet union definitely influenced politics in the rest of Europe. But it is in the end just victim blaming the left political scene of the time.
Aka “if the poor wouldn’t have gotten uppity, the middle and rich class wouldn’t have needed to vote for the fascists.” And that part is the bullshit, were I totally agree with you.
Yeah exactly we are on the same page here. His first comment was implying that the nazis ideology was based on communist ideologies which was misleading at best.
Yeah, there was even at the time already caricatures about the hypocrisy of the Nazis:
Haha yeah I’ve seen similar caricatures like this.
You are actually defending the people who split the votes and spoiled left wing politicians in Weimar Germany leading to consecutive failures to form government and eventual nazi takeover. What skin do you have in this game?
If it was post-nazi takeover then I can see the merit in supporting the now underground nazi resistance of the communist party of Germany, but from 1919 to 1933 they did nothing but shit the bed.