Populism and Nazism

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Kidicious
mmmmkay, but Berzerker is going to have a word with you about that I think.

I hope so... maybe he'll make Libertarianism seem less fringe to me. The only types of Libertarians that I have met fit into those two categories. I know that there must be some that don't fit those categories, but I remain skeptical in my heart

EDIT:
Just to make it perfectly clear, I'm not saying that being a Libertarian automatically makes you a white supremecist.

[Whaleboy]

I don't think that you adequately emphasize the fact that outside stimuli are also important.

I agree here, if you’ll forgive my lapse into analogy, the best my argument can do is describe that which “dries the forest”, it takes something else entirely to make it burn (genocide, war, nastiness ad infinitum) but a dry forest must surely preclude the fire.

Therefore, IMO, countries that are economically well off have a smaller chance of sliding down the national socialist continuim, because that populist mechanism cannot work adequately enough to create the sense of danger necessary to want to give up freedom to a leader.

In a centralised manner I agree with you, however states are not just one economy, they are composed of a myriad of smaller localised situations, for example, though the UK is relatively rich with relatively high employment, there are pockets of high unemployment, and there is also quite a perverted class structure. Even in rich areas you can find those that are discontented. Education also plays a big role, which is the angle my “vigilance” clause was going for.

Much of our dispute is labeling(defining terms). You think (as far I understand) that its perfectly fine to say a government is slightly national socialist, moderately national socialist, extremely national socialist or whatever, depending on where it falls on the national socialist continuim. I understand that. I'm saying that I wouldn't call a country that exhibits national socialist traits a "Nazi" party until it reaches a certain threshold on that continuim.

Ah I understand. Apologies for the mutual misunderstanding, if I had been clearer initially we could have avoided it. I still disagree but again semantics and I think we recognise the same concepts at work, merely call them different things; and there is, per each situation, a threshold where the interplay between nationalism, socialism and populism becomes dangerous, perhaps we might agree that this is what one might call Nazism. I still say Nazism = national socialism and vice versa because I tend to go for fluidity here and that Nazism/Hitlerism was not conceptually isolate, but a study of its history could easily conclude either way so it’s not worth pursuing this semantic perusal.

However, I would only call a group Nazi if it met the threshold of what the NSDAP stood for: hyper-racism, belligerent militarism, Fürher led party dictatorship, some capitalism in a state striving for autarchy. Call it Hitlerism if you like, because that's what I am refering to.

Interesting… where an adjective becomes a noun? I’ll have to think about that distinction to see if it’s something I can universalise but my instincts tell me it’s subjective and colloquial, but a commendable distinction, worthy of further thought.

1. It seems a bit like scaremongering. If I am reading it correctly, you are justifying calling any party that comes anywhere close to the NSDAP on your continuim a "Nazi" party. I think this is disengenuous, because of exactly what I've mentioned ad naseum: they're not at that point on the spectrum yet. Maybe the BNP is there, you know that better than me. If so, then its more correct calling them Nazis, because they are Britain's Nazi equivalent. However, if there's a party that is only moderately national socialist according to the continuim, then I think its unfair to call them "Nazis", because they aren't equivalent to the NSDAP.

No you have a good point. For expediencies sake I should have included both methods of analysis in the article. It is my opinion that both the degree of populism and national socialism in the BNP qualify it as (shall we say) on the same scale as the NSDAP, or to use your terms for my argument, they are in a similar quadrant on a continuum of national socialism. You would call them “Nazi”, I would call them “acutely Nazi”.

Your part about being vigilant ignores this to a greater degree than I'm comfortable with, because it implies that outside forces aren't that important and, without vigilance, a nationalist group will invariably lead to totalitarianism no matter the circumstances.

Going back to my analogy, my use of vigilance is more similar to one whetting a forest that’s in danger of drying, as opposed to drowning it when it’s already burning.

I should have realized this, but my preconcieved notion of what Populism means and when that term would be used blinded me to the way in which you were using that term. There again is a case of the same term used in different ways leading to confusion between us.

Nah it’s cool, these things happen. These misunderstandings are nobodies fault *stares contemptuously at mug of decaf*, but they get frustrating in debates and obviously such debates cannot proceed and quickly degenerate if different people mean different things with the same word. I suppose it’s a natural response that’s ironed out with practise and really I should have known better, that we fall in love with the beauty and elegance of our ideas, and the assumptions they rest upon, such that we don’t engage with other peoples. Perhaps in some abstract respect I’m guilty of that which I describe in the article .

[GePap]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


That nationalism is a distinct, modern ideology is not my claim. How much of nationalism is human herd behaviour? To answer "greatly" or "entirely", *is* my claim.

The problem there is that your alliegence in Nationalism is to "THE NATION", which is an abtract. Herd behavior ends when you leave the herd physically. You can't leave THE NATION, as it is an integral part, supposedly, of your identity, anymore than you could stop being a man.

This is what makes it abstract.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Wycoff


I meant to edit that part regarding Italy, but I forgot to do so. It should be eaither a loss in a recent war or an embarassment in that war. Italy was technically a victory, but it didn't have that great of a showing in the war, and after the war its demands were basically ignored and the other allies refused to give Italy what they had promised to give them to entice Italy's entry. That national embarassment worked largely in the same way that a loss in the war would have.

Yes, correct to that point. At the same time thought that discontent should not be seen as deep or widespread as that from a real defeat.

Also, Franco wasn't fascist. There was a Fascist party in Spain, but it was the Spanish Phalange, headed by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. Franco's party was a traditionally nationalist/ religious authoritarian party (much like the German DNVP), and regarded the Phalange as being too radical. Primo de Rivera was assasinated in the mid 1930s.

I generally feel the same way about Franco, but at the same time, he is generally considered a Fascist, so keep that in mind as you make an arguement.

[Whaleboy]

The problem there is that your alliegence in Nationalism is to "THE NATION", which is an abtract. Herd behavior ends when you leave the herd physically. You can't leave THE NATION, as it is an integral part, supposedly, of your identity, anymore than you could stop being a man.

This is what makes it abstract.

I concur, perhaps then it would be sensible in that respect to say nationalism is "nation of whatever" (culture, colour, philosophy, d1ck size), and patriotism as nationalism re. nation in the political boundary sense?

[BeBMan]

Oh, Whaleboy, as much as I find your philosophical threads interesting, here I find your OP highly superficial and sometimes blatantly wrong. Don't take it as offense, I think it is good to debate such things anyway, but I strongly dislike this essay. I should say that I read only the OP and page one of the discussion, then I lost track somehow.

However, lots of your points simply don't hold: You cannot take over the NSDAP's name without explaining what in the end was really the "socialist" element there. In fact the Nazis weren't socialist at all, the "Volksgemeinschaft" was a joke, only useful as propaganda tool (since in fact the Nazis did not create, and did not even try to create equality), and many core elements of socialism weren't present between 33-45 (you can't ignore economical differences as you do in your OP, since they belong to the key points in socialism).

Same with your unreflected use of nationalism. Of course there were socialist movements that were nationalist, but hadn't anything in common with Nazism, for example in China during the country was still occupied by Japan. Here nationalism had a completely different meaning more comparable to the early German forms of nationalism (ca. from Napoleon's time to the revolutions around 1848). OTOH labeling Stalin a national socialist makes simply no sense at all. You can say both Nazi Germany and the USSR were totalitarian, but to say they were both national socialist is just wrong, if that is your point (not sure if I understood you here right). And while it is possible to use national socialism only in its technical sense I'd argue it is rather unwise since the term is so loaded and stands generally for a specific system, that of Germany 33-45.

[Whaleboy]

The essay is full of flaws, I'm fine with conceding that, it was basically tapped out in minutes with planning "on the hoof" as it were but I think the points do hold...

the "Volksgemeinschaft" was a joke, only useful as propaganda tool (since in fact the Nazis did not create, and did not even try to create equality),

One has to work with socialism not as a holism but as a relationship (I'd identify altruism precluding egoism, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts yadda yadda), from which the social and economic consequences can be deduced. It's predictable then that in any given manifestation of socialism/communism, the particulars there are going to vary. High taxation and public spending, present in Nazi Germany IIRC, as well as the massive public works that cut unemployment to virtually zero in the early years. I should have been clearer, in popular socialism, except libertarian socialism for obvious reasons, the egalitarian element is usually just an unworkable pretense anyway imo.

With regards to nationalism, I'm not saying that nationalism is inherent to socialism (i.e. i'm not saying socialism -> nationalism), because of the likes of lib.soc et al. From the angle I'm coming at the article, which again I should have been far clearer on in the OP, nationalism is not defined as a particular manifestation, Chinese nationalism, Japanese nationalism, German nationalism during the Franco-Prussian war, etc, are naturally going to differ and differ greatly in appearance and guise, but can you say the same of usage and effect? My point is that these manifestations are symptomatic of the same human nature.

To call Stalin a national socialist I simply have two criteria then, assuming the conceptual definitions I have. Nationalism present? Socialism present? National Socialist. Obviously that's not a "true/false" determination but a degree.... if nationalism and socialism are there to a great extent, and/or a comparable extent to Nazi Germany, then we could say they are similar.

I concede the weakness of that analogy is on economic grounds, Stalin was, economically speaking, far more socialist than Hitler, which I point out in the OP.

[Whaleboy]

I'd argue it is rather unwise since the term is so loaded and stands generally for a specific system, that of Germany 33-45

Well I think I said earlier that if a term is correct as per its definition and the concepts behind it, then connotations and colloquial associations are no reason not to use it. However, I'm not concerned about that, since one of the aims of my argument is to show that Nazism is more a human condition and not a discrete political category.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
What about the wars against Communism? do they count?

US casualties in, for instance, Vietnam were significantly less than 100,000. While enemy casualties were larger, it certainly isn't significant compared to WWI and II.

[Whaleboy]

Indeed, it's quite difficult for people of our generation to perceive the sheer scale of the bloodshed. Thousand or so Allied dead in Iraq? A dozen dead here or there, the odd downed aircraft. A drop in the ocean compared to, say, the Blitz, or Overlord. Nowadays soldiers of the US and UK are well organised, have automatic air superioty, better intelligence *ahem* and better equipment, weapons, armour etc. Consider the troops on D-day, Allied and Germans equally matched, thousands upon thousands of troops, casualties that are almost incomprehensible today... those people must have had balls of iron.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Whaleboy


Well I think I said earlier that if a term is correct as per its definition and the concepts behind it, then connotations and colloquial associations are no reason not to use it. However, I'm not concerned about that, since one of the aims of my argument is to show that Nazism is more a human condition and not a discrete political category.

Well, I have more whining about your essay ( ), and also to your first reply to me, but I'll be busy learning stuff this weekend (so no chance for looong posts), for the moment only this: yeah, you can use it, and it is not wrong - but still unwise, because this is asking for misunderstandings. At least one could expect a lengthy explanation why someone would use terms against their general meaning .....

[Whaleboy]

True, but then for it to be wise requires that I'm writing to wise ends . The grammar Nazi in me keeps avoiding assassination

[Wycoff]

Whaleboy,

Do you agree with me that, according to your descriptions, you could make a national socialism graph, with one axis representing level of nationalism in that government/part, and the other axis representing the level of socialism (socialism in a loose sense, meaning the willingness to appeal to a sense of egalitarianism and group wellbeing rather than necessarily referring to socialism as the economic philosophy. Economic socialism would be somewhere along the "socialism" axis, but everything on the axis isn't economically socialist) A group or party could therfore have some "national socialism" coordinate on said graph. Am I interpreting you correctly?

[Elok]

WRT Nationalism being stupid, feeling "pride" in anything you have not accomplished yourself is daft. As an American, I am aware that Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin, the Roosevelts, and countless others have done great things and left me a great legacy. That just makes it all the more important that I work hard to live up to that legacy, and not tout the memories of a great cultural history to excuse the deficiencies of the current age. Even if I am voluntarily American, and I suppose one might be "proud," a very little, of that, I'm still only a child dressing up in Daddy's clothes, and I had squat to do with all the accomplishments I might be proud of.

I am of the same race, perhaps, and heir to their ideology, but history has shown us how little ideology matters when the chips are down and hackles are up. And to argue that my racial relationship to my past is tied to the accomplishment of that past's legacy, that greatness is somehow inherited through one's blood, is both unproven and dangerous. Not to mention silly, as nobody ever suggests, say, that I should be ashamed of being white because Jeffrey Dahmer was too, which would seem to follow logically from any statement of racial pride.

That, I think, is close to what might be called Nationalism in my book, a pride in the people as an idea separated from all connection to reality or indeed to the people themselves. And that's why I prefer to think of myself as human first, and American only as an afterthought. If I'm going to identify myself with the heroes of 1776 I'll need to do a lot more than I have to earn the privilege.

[Whaleboy]

Whaleboy,

Do you agree with me that, according to your descriptions, you could make a national socialism graph, with one axis representing level of nationalism in that government/part, and the other axis representing the level of socialism (socialism in a loose sense, meaning the willingness to appeal to a sense of egalitarianism and group wellbeing rather than necessarily referring to socialism as the economic philosophy. Economic socialism would be somewhere along the "socialism" axis, but everything on the axis isn't economically socialist) A group or party could therfore have some "national socialism" coordinate on said graph. Am I interpreting you correctly?

That's right, nicely interpreted! The economic socialism is an interesting (if slightly irrelevant) one, since it runs in a kind of circular tapesty with *socialism* socialism (sic), of respective cause and consequence, but that's going off on a tangeant I think.... that aside that's a good representation of my position.

Of course, there are factors that mean that it's more likely one will be clustered around one set of coordinates than others, for example, nationalist individualism can only go so far before becoming .