Comments by "Liam" (@1495978707) on "Why the Nazis Weren’t Socialists - ‘The Good Hitler Years’ | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1937 Part 2 of 2" video.

  1. That's true, but the whole point of postmodernism has been to muddy what socialism even is. Thus the refrain of "it's never been tried!". Picking a definition of socialism that specifically excludes Nazism because you want to avoid that association doesn't make socialism a good idea, but it does make you a socialism apologist
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  2. 7:52 A politician promising to not do something in order to gain support is certainly to be taken at his word... Also, as someone else said in the comments, everyone has a different notion of "socialism". Like, for example, how our cronyism riddled neoliberal system in the USA is often referred to as "socialism for the rich". Per Marx, socialism is the stage after capitalism where the government seizes private property to be "held in common", and people are indoctrinated into the cause. The hypothesis is that this will eventually obviate the need for a government and it will just shed away leaving his vision of communism, which is by now clearly a fantasy. Did not the Nazis seize private property to be held by the state? Did the Nazis not indoctrinate the people into their cause? Sure, they didn't seize all means of production and private property. But this is how socialism works in practice: the people in power apply policy of seizure, redistribution, taxation and spending in order to secure their power and benefit their pals. Because this always happens, this leads to the claim that "real" socialism has never been tried. Just because it doesn't go down the way Marx wanted it to. In fact, Hitler appreciated Marx's vision, but was frustrated at its failure to materialize. An open party platform of policies that are "good for workers" and doing back room dealings with powerful people is classic real world socialism. The only way that this isn't socialism is if you take it to only mean the pipe dream of Marx. Someone else in the comments said "our textbooks even say they weren't socialist". Yes, because academia is infested with Marxists and postmodernists, who are interested in promulgating apologia for socialism. This should be clear even just by observing that self proclaimed communist/socialist countries killings vastly more people than the fascists did, yet we all remember 6 million. I didn't even learn about the holodomor until way after grad school, and out of everyone I've asked in my life, everyone knows about the holocaust, and almost no one knows about the holodomor. If it's still not clear how this is part of apologia, trace back the history of our modern day postmodernism through the frankfurt school and Gramsci. Another thing to consider: squabbling over whether the nazis were left vs right wing is just a lazy attempt to bypass thinking and sling crap at opponents. A la "everything I don't like or disagree with is Hitler". The notion of what is right or left was vastly different then as opposed to now, and american politics has always been different from european, primarily because of the federalism debate. We should judge policies by merit, logical analysis, and evidence, not by emotions and provenance. Most people just want a quick answer and to know who to vote for though, because politics is exhausting to obsess over.
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  3. That's true of most important content. Free speech is important to protect specifically because the most important speech is often the most controversial
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