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YeshuaRedeemed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCu7IT81gh8
I think we really need to learn from history, or history will be repeated. With the radical far left attacking free speech, and religious liberty, as well as supporting eugenics (I repent for my past comments), I am starting to think Hitler was a liberal by 1940s standards. The things that make you go hmmmmmm.

YeshuaRedeemed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VybWkpt_3Jo

MayCaesar

Why do people employ any sort of self-destructive behavior? Because they give in to their pain and start being controlled by it, rather than being controlled by more constructive feelings.

Germany after World War I was a beaten up country. No army to speak of, no economical independence, heavy sanctions. Unbelievable unemployment rates, highest inflation in human history, extreme crime abundance. People were literally starving to death on the streets.
In such a situation, people become fearful and desperate enough to try something, anything, new. Both communists and Nazis offered something new; two totalitarian groups offering simple solutions to complex problems. In the end, Nazis won the ideological struggle, and Hitler took over.

To his credit, Hitler did solve the economical problems of Germany. More than that, he turned it from one of the poorest into one of the strongest and richest nations on Earth in mere 5 years. Hitler's Germany is possibly the only example in human history of a socialist system working - although he was educated enough to let the private market run its course, only taking a fraction of its output away. Ultimately, however, his system was doomed, both due to its expansionist traits, and to his domestic ideology being extremely divisive.

I do not think we will have a second Hitler on the West any time soon; like I said, Hitler's triumph was caused by extreme desperation in the German society. Today even the poorest Western countries offer quality of life high enough that people will not risk losing it all just to try something drastically new. It is not the German situation, where people had nothing to lose and were doomed either way.

However, the current resurgence of populism world-wide does have certain similarities to Germany in 1933 in that people are frustrated by certain elements of the modern Western society and are willing to elect people promising to solve their problems quickly with simplistic policies. My personal outlook on this is that populists and pragmatists regularly switch places in developed democracies, and we are now on the populist stage, just like we were in early 2000-s or in mid-1980-s. It will pass, and in a couple of election cycles we will have pragmatists in power again.

People like to see the current trends on the West as unprecedented, but the historical perspective disagrees. The rise of socialism and nationalism is not a new thing, it has happened multiple times throughout the last century and will happen multiple times again in the future. I do not think the authoritarian message will stick for long, and I do believe that we as a civilisation are past taking such ideologies seriously in the long run.

piloteer

@MayCaesar

The reason hitlers economic plan may have worked was because the German government seized all the property of "non-German" people, and political dissidents, and enslaved the Jews. Then they redistributed the stolen property to the rest of the German population. I guess if theft of private property is a good economic plan, then sure, hitler was a genius. But I still think it's just theft.

piloteer

It's worth noting that the far right in America and Europe and Russia are fiercely nationalistic, just like the nazis. The far left aren't nationalistic. 

CYDdharta

piloteer said:

It's worth noting that the far right in America and Europe and Russia are fiercely nationalistic, just like the nazis. The far left aren't nationalistic. 

Right, these days they're more communistic (back in FDR's day they were certainly nationalistic).  It's also worth noting that Stalin was worse than Hitler.

MayCaesar

One of the core ideas of communism is inter-nationalism, which is essentially nationalism in disguise. It suggests that all traditional national traits (except, of course, those that the communist personally approves of) are in the way of the glorious revolution and must be purged, violently if necessary.

Nationalism is an inherent part of socialist and communist ideologies. This is why, for example, Jews were extremely oppressed in Soviet Union, and Uygurs were and to this day are extremely oppressed in China. The only difference in this regard between Hitler and, say, Mao is how much importance nationalism had in their ideology: in Hitler's case it was used to justify expropriation of property and mass purges, while in Mao's case it was overshadowed by other violence-advocating considerations. Uygurs face much bigger issues than open nationalism in the Chinese society, while for Jews in Third Reich anti-semitism was pretty much at the core of all of their problems.

In Russia, interestingly, a lot of communists are also conventionally nationalistic. It is a strange mix of Russian supremacism and communist views - strange from the Western perspective, at least, as in Russia it is very common and does not surprise anyone. Take Sanders with his "redistribute everything", add Trump's positions on immigration and international trade and Bzezinski's hawkish foreign policy stances - and you will get what a lot of members of the Communist Party of Russian Federation stand for.

piloteer

@CYDdharta

The only reason stalin turned out to be worse than hitler is because stalin had time to do his atrocities. If hitler had as much time as stalin, I think it would have been a pretty close competition between the two. Perhaps you can differentiate between communism and socialism, but I cannot. hitler was a socialist, which is no different from communism when you boil them down.

TKDB

@piloteer

"The far left aren't nationalistic."

But the far left is supportive, of the 300 Sanctuary cities, in the U.S.?

Is that far left philosophy, fair to the rest of the constituents, who live, in those same cities?

The far left also is in favor of border security, but not a border barrier?

Is that far left philosophy, fair to those constituents who live along the southern border?

The far left is for taxing the Rich, when a better tax idea, would be fair and equal taxation being applied to all of the states, in the country, IE, all of the states paying their fair share in taxation?

CYDdharta

piloteer said:

@CYDdharta

The only reason stalin turned out to be worse than hitler is because stalin had time to do his atrocities. If hitler had as much time as stalin, I think it would have been a pretty close competition between the two. Perhaps you can differentiate between communism and socialism, but I cannot. hitler was a socialist, which is no different from communism when you boil them down.

OK, if you want to say that these days the left is Stalinist and Hitleresque, I won't argue with you.  The tactics being employed by their Brown Shirts in ANTIFA is certainly a point in favor of that argument.