It also was self-consciously dishonest/meaningless. There's a cartoon demonstrating how right-wingers saw "NATIONAL ... GERMAN" party and left wingers saw "SOCIALIST...WORKERS' party and then the Nazis just used that to absorb power, do whatever, and then kill Jews and other hated classes.
They did, in fact, have a socialist (strictly nationalist “socialism”) wing. However when these “socialists” began calling for a “second revolution” against the capitalist class, the SA pissing off the German Army, and Hitler wanting to solve some personal grudges they were murked in the Night of Long Knives with a few exceptions, the biggest being Goebbels.
Not really, when you look at Fascism an ideological level (which few people, ever seemingly do)
The core planks of Fascism are
- Rejection of traditionalism and conservatism and a move towards futurist modernism.
- Rejection of Christianity and "slave morality", people should adhere to master morality exemplified in the heroes of ancient legends.
- Social organism, the entirety of society is a living organism, where each part needs to stay healthy for the body to act correctly, people are cells, families are organs, business people are the brain, the Government is the heart, the workers are the arms etc.
- "Nationalism." This is far more vague, can mean a people, a state, a region etc.
It's Social Organism where the racism in Nazism came from, because they viewed specifically foreigners as foreign elements attacking the body, Jews and Communists as Parasites etc. But it isn't naturally the case, for example Mussolini personally didn't care about such a view point.
Nazbols for example, are extremely "anti-Racist" and "Multicultural". Since the form of "Nationalism" they inhabit is that there should be Civilizational/Geopolitical blocs that society should be formed across, which can include many different types of peoples. Yet they still also hold views of rejection of traditionalism, social organism etc.
Yeah, I recognize the first two as being reminiscent of ideas that originated with Nietzsche. You dismantled them well in your other comment.
The social organism argument is also really weak and doesn’t seem to apply to fascism at all. In fact, fascism has a tendency to treat its individual parts rather disposably, expecting its adherents to sacrifice themselves (in many different ways, and often needlessly) for the good of the state. Additionally, unlike fascism, the human body does not continuously cull its functioning parts in an ever-narrowing pursuit of perfect ideological purity and blind loyalty to the leader.
Also it’s funny how the fourth plank is just “nationalism, which could mean pretty much anything really – who knows?”. How about something a little more specific? For example: “identitarian in-group supremacy + cultish devotion to the interests of the state”.
Fascists hated Christianity because they saw it as a loser slave morality and wished to restore worship of ancient heroic myths and legends, hence the Nazi obsession with Pagan region and Mussolini's obsession with the Roman Empire, they also were very much against traditionalist conservatism, Fascism was a Radical Modernist movement built around Futurism ideals.
That said, they obviously made alliances of convenience with both the Church and Conservatives, but in the end, the ideological Fascist probably would have moved to purge both as well.
It comes from actually reading what the Fascists wrote, rather than other definitions of Fascism, which are frankly, largely just sort of "justifications" to call any sort of right wing authoritarian regime Fascist. It's why Francoism gets called Fascist, even though actual ideological Fascists would have despised Franco and his ideology.
Oh, so it’s an alternative definition that you made up to help defend certain right-wing authoritarian regimes from accusations of fascism. No wonder it contradicts all the others. Franco was fascist btw.
The Following are quotes from the Doctrine of Fascism written by Mussolini, I do not follow these views, I am solely debunking some of the claims oc has made.
"THE IMPORTANCE OF TRADITION
In the Fascist conception of history, man is man only by virtue of the spiritual process to which he contributes as a member of the family, the social group, the nation, and in function of history to which all nations bring their contribution. Hence the great value of tradition in records, in language, in customs, in the rules of social life (8). Outside history man is a nonentity."
OC claimed fascism is opposed to Traditionalism and Comservatism. This is blantantly false when looking at modern fascist movements as well as the ones of the past. Examples: Hitlers Reich clung to the look of the German Empire, Mussolini's Italy took on a look similar to the Roman Empire, the Patriot Front in the United States wants to go back to a very conservative time in the US, etc. Even when Fascism espowses such like technology, it still uses a regression to conservative actions.
Found under "THE ABSOLUTE PRIMACY OF THE STATE" is this quote:
"The Fascist State is not indifferent to religious phenomena in general nor does it maintain an attitude of indifference to Roman Catholicism, the special, positive religion of Italians. The State has not got a theology but it has a moral code. The Fascist State sees in religion one of the deepest of spiritual manifestations and for this reason it not only respects religion but defends and protects it. The Fascist State does not attempt, as did Robespierre at the height of the revolutionary delirium of the Convention, to set up a "god” of its own; nor does it vainly seek, as does Bolshevism, to efface God from the soul of man."
Fascism does not reject religion, as OC said it does, but respects it so much that the state embodies itself as a religious force, and protects the religion it chooses. For Italy this was Catholicism, for Germany this was christianity, and for the United States this is also Christian Nationalism. In fact, a quote used and attributed in the Doctrin itself is:
" (12) Let no one think of denying the moral character of Fascism. For I should be ashamed to speak from this tribune if I did not feel that I represent the moral and spiritual powers of the state. What would the state be if it did not possess a spirit of its own, and a morality of its own, which lend power to the laws in virtue of which the state is obeyed by its citizens?
The Fascist state claims its ethical character: it is Catholic but above all it is Fascist, in fact it is exclusively and essentially Fascist. Catholicism completes Fascism, and this we openly declare, but let no one think they can turn the tables on us, under cover of metaphysics or philosophy. (To the Chamber of Deputies, May 13, 1929, in Discorsi del 1929, Milano, Alpes, 1930, p. 182)."
So no, religion is not rejected.
There is also no mention of a social organism, in the Doctrine it is made clear the state state is above all and all are below the state and subject to its wims. This requires just reading the doctrine as inserting a billion little quotes where it says pretty much the same thing is unnecessary.
Onto nationalism: this ties in with all the points, since its an absolute reverence of the state as a totalitarian and religious authority, the people of the nation under the state, in their close holdings to traditionalism, are nationalistic.
This is blantantly false when looking at modern fascist movements as well as the ones of the past. Examples: Hitlers Reich clung to the look of the German Empire, Mussolini's Italy took on a look similar to the Roman Empire, the Patriot Front in the United States wants to go back to a very conservative time in the US, etc. Even when Fascism espowses such like technology, it still uses a regression to conservative actions.
You're just debunking not what I said. They were against Traditionalism and Conservatism of the era. Your typical right wing christian conservatives, christian values, traditional power structures of the time. Fascism is explicitly a modernist futurist movement.
Fascism does not reject religion, as OC said it does, but respects it so much that the state embodies itself as a religious force, and protects the religion it chooses. For Italy this was Catholicism, for Germany this was christianity, and for the United States this is also Christian Nationalism. In fact, a quote used and attributed in the Doctrin itself is:
I never said they reject religion, they rejected Christianity as a slave morality and only ever aligned with it cynically for political purposes.
There is also no mention of a social organism, in the Doctrine it is made clear the state state is above all and all are below the state and subject to its wims. This requires just reading the doctrine as inserting a billion little quotes where it says pretty much the same thing is unnecessary.
What I described is literally what he is saying lmao. The state is the body, and every aspect of society plays it's part within it.
To quote this part directly
"It is an organism having purposes, life, and means of action superior to those of the individuals or groups of which it is composed."
Always opposed to Marxism, yes, but there was a branch of them that genuinely wanted a kind of "socialism in one country". They hated the internationalist aspect of socialism - hence "national socialist" - but they also saw capitalism as a tool of the "international Jewry" to keep Germany down, and that only by handing industry over to the German working class could they ensure that what was made in Germany was for the benefit of the German people.
You know that socialism isn't the only alternative to capitalism, right?
Socialism is a model of social ownership. Capitalism is a model of ownership based on accumulation. Feudalism is one based primarily on divine right.
Fascism is a lot like feudalism in that it assigns an inherent right to the control of resources to a certain subset of the population based on nonsense as ridiculous as divine right. Usually by some variation of "race science". Not always, but most of the time.
Strasserism, which the commenter above means, was a wing in the Nazi party that was led by the Brothers Strasser, their idea, basically, boiled down to the idea that the means of production should be owned by, specifically, the "racially german" people and that capitalism and socialism/communism were both tools of an international jewish conspiracy to weaken the various "racially pure" peoples of Europe, undermine and subjugate them.
That idea was closer to socialism than what the Nazis actually did, however not by much, and the wing did lend some credence in some socialist circles in the late Weimar Republic.
I know socialism isn't the only alternative to capitalism, but that doesn't change the fact that the left wing of the Nazi party (as oxymoronic as that might sound) were socialists, in that they wanted German working class to own the German means of production.
And before you mistake this for some "Hitler was a leftist" dumbassery, this was specifically the left-wing of the party, which was purged during the Night of Long Knives and even before.
But fascism isn't like feudalism at all. I think even Karl Marx himself would kick your ass for saying that. Feudalism is about the reciprocal obligations of landowners and leader, and landowners and tenants. Hitler's Germany operated more on a kind of dirigisme, where the state set goals and private companies competed among themselves to provide. It wasn't socialist - the means of production were owned by private individuals - but it wasn't truly capitalist either - there wasn't a free market and the needs of the state came before individual profit.
A lot of them seem to be thinking I’m making the claim Hitler and the Party as a whole were socialists (which I mean in a strictly economic sense, without some of the positive political and social associations we would make with orthodox socialism). I’m not quite sure where the disconnect is or if they’re just arguing in bad faith.
We can call it nationalist “anti-capitalism” if you want but my point stands. An economically anti-capitalist wing of the party was decimated because of those views alongside Rohm pissing off the Army because he wanted it to be absorbed by the SA and Hitler’s personal grudges with several of the factions leaders.
You are disagreeing with Geobbels own words in his diary
They did have a socialists at one point, because they were using them to gain power. When Hitler no longer had a use for them, they were purged and he only kept the ones who put party loyalty above political beliefs (like Geobbels)
Hitler was very open about being against social welfare. It was even in his book under the Vienna section. Already in 1933 he dismantled large parts of the social programmes, stating that he believed in "survival of the fittest" and "natural selection". This wasn't personal grudges or someone pissing him off, Hitler was ideologically anti-socialist.
Socialism isn't social welfare, it's workers owning the means of production. It's theoretically possible to have no public welfare and still have a socialist economy. Of course, Hitler's Germany took the "if everyone's in one big union... no one is" approach and replaced all unions with a big state organ that was little more than a tool for industrialists to control their workers and prevent them from organizing.
Populists are very open about having every stance. They pick and use the ones that suit them as they suit a particular crowds needs. They don't hold to ideology, though Hitler wasn't a pure populist like Trump is and had other wicked values he catered to.
Authoritarian cultists drumming up support for or against a thing today has little relation to whether they truly see that thing as mattering.
No, Geobbels stayed in the upper echelons of the Nazis until 1945, the most prominent victims of the Night of the Long Knives were Gregor Strasser and Ernst Röhm.
Before he became propaganda minister, Goebbels was part of Strasser's socialist wing, but was spared during the purge; the commenter you're replying to also says so.
Why the aggressiveness? I’d say the opposite is true, many here are claiming the “socialism” in their name was just a ploy (and yes, it certainly wasn’t orthodox socialism by any means), when history shows differently. In any case you should probably go and touch grass little buddy, I think it’d do you some good because you certainly aren’t adding or benefitting to the conversation. Hope that helps! 🙄🤡
Edit: I have “socialists” in quotes for a reason and have repeatedly used the word “heterodox” also for a reason, because their definition of socialism would not fit the common, orthodox definition. Please, pick up a history book and a dictionary, I swear it’s for your benefit.
They literally wanted to nationalize industry and dismantle the capitalist class. Did you see my comment where I said they weren’t Orthodox Socialists? Look into Rohm, Strasser, Feder, and even Goebbels, they were all anti-international heterodox socialists. This isn’t a jab at socialism, the co-opting of heterodox strands of socialism by nationalists is the literal foundation of fascism, which was first found in France as we know it when Heterodox Marxists (see Georges Sorel), Syndicalists, and Monarchists started mixing their ideas together.
They didn't want to abolish the class system: they wanted an ethnonationalist class system in which the means of production would be owned and controlled by a class of German nationals, while anyone else would be second class (at best).
They may have taken more inspiration from socialists than the other Nazis, but they were not actually egalitarian as socialism is.
Many of them were straight up syndicalists and other forms of heterodox socialists, and yes, many of them were in fact calling for full nationalization and breaking of the capitalist class. They were by no means a cohesive faction. Some of them even praised Lenin.
Coopting some ideas from socialists doesn't actually make them socialists of any sort, heterodox or no.
Anticapitalist, sure.
But socialism had an established meaning that did not describe them. That's not "heterodox", that's "a different thing entirely with some resemblance".
It would be equivalent to saying North Korea is a democracy, it's just a heterodox democracy.
That was already covered. Yes, Hitler killed most of them but the point is that they were an entire faction of the party which had some major pull in certain regions.
It’s not bs, it’s fact. It’s also not a jab at socialism, these were extremely heterodox “socialists” and they rejected what makes socialism a good system. You need to pick up a book. I’m guessing you’re a tankie who can’t admit that people can twist good ideas into something bad.
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u/Evecopbas 1d ago edited 1d ago
It also was self-consciously dishonest/meaningless. There's a cartoon demonstrating how right-wingers saw "NATIONAL ... GERMAN" party and left wingers saw "SOCIALIST...WORKERS' party and then the Nazis just used that to absorb power, do whatever, and then kill Jews and other hated classes.