And as Jonah Goldberg noted in Liberal Fascism, Nazism was a populist movement — and one designed from its start to appeal to the communists of post-World War I Weimar-era Germany, by yoking socialism and nationalism together:
Hitler is just as straightforward in Mein Kampf. He dedicates an entire chapter to the Nazis’ deliberate exploitation of socialist and communist imagery, rhetoric, and ideas and how this marketing confused both liberals and communists. The most basic example is the Nazi use of the color red, which was firmly associated with Bolshevism and socialism. “We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation…so as to arouse their attention and tempt them to come to our meetings…so that in this way we got a chance of talking to the people.” The Nazi flag—a black swastika inside a white disk in a sea of red—was explicitly aimed at attracting communists. “In red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of Aryan man.”
The Nazis borrowed whole sections from the communist playbook. Party members—male and female—were referred to as comrades. Hitler recalls how his appeals to “class-conscious proletarians” who wanted to strike out against the “monarchist, reactionary agitation with the fists of the proletariat” were successful in drawing countless communists to their meetings. Sometimes the communists came with orders to smash up the place. But the Reds often refused to riot on command because they had been won over to the National Socialist cause. In short, the battle between the Nazis and the communists was a case of two dogs fighting for the same bone.
AdvertisementNazism’s one-nation politics by its very definition appealed to people from all walks of life. Professors, students, and civil servants were all disproportionately supportive of the Nazi cause. But it’s important to get a sense of the kind of person who served as the rank-and-file Nazi, the young, often thuggish true believers who fought in the streets and dedicated themselves to the revolution. Patrick Leigh Fermor, a young Briton traveling in Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, met some of these men in a Rhineland workers’ pub, still wearing their night-shift overalls. One of his new drinking buddies offered to let Fermor crash at his house for the night. When Fermor climbed the ladder to the attic to sleep in a guest bed, he found “a shrine to Hitleriana”:
The walls were covered with flags, photographs, posters, slogans and emblems. His SA uniforms hung neatly ironed on a hanger…When I said that it must be rather claustrophobic with all that stuff on the walls, he laughed and sat down on the bed, and said: “Mensch! You should have seen it last year! You would have laughed! Then it was all red flags, stars, hammers, sickles, pictures of Lenin and Stalin and Workers of the World Unite!…Then, suddenly when Hitler came to power, I understood it was all nonsense and lies. I realized Adolf was the man for me. All of a sudden!” He snapped his fingers in the air. “And here I am!”…Had a lot of people done the same, then? “Millions! I tell you, I was astonished how easily they all changed sides!”
No one should be in retrospect, almost a century later.
“People were being investigated and punished solely for what they thought.”
Dear Progressives, why set the Wayback Machine back to the 1950s when a McCarthyism of the type described above is creating blacklists in the entertainment in the here-and-now?
Scott Eckern, former director of Sacramento’s California Musical Theatre was ousted from his job (presumably, “in the only profession he had ever pursued”) in 2008 for thought-crimes.
His thought-crime? Being Mormon and donating $1000 to California’s Prop 8.
“Mr. Eckern said that his donation stemmed from his religious beliefs — he is a Mormon — and that he was “deeply saddened that my personal beliefs and convictions have offended others.” (NYT Nov 12, 2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/theater/13thea.htm
Sixty years on, the Tolerance-Based Community(tm) postures and preens about how brave they are to combat the long-since dead-and-gone Tail-Gunner Joe, meanwhile spectatacularly failing to speak out against the new McCarthyism in their midst.
I thought one of the reasons the Committee was trying to ferret out Communists was that it was thought that many were on the take for the Soviet Union. There is a fine line between being an idealist and being on the take for a foreign power, and some clearly crossed that line.
Did somebody mention ‘I Married Joan”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvHjhbba8Z8
Someone should ask Erik if the government should go after people for their beliefs if they are “deemed” racist or even “right-wing”.
Sure, this is what the NY Times and the modern “progressives” would rather you not know but the fact remains, there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between Nazism and communism.
What the Hell did McCarthy have to do with the Hollywood 10 or the blacklist? He had not even been elected yet when the Hollywood 10 refused to testify. Anytime I hear someone talk about McCarthy and the blacklist I know they do not know what they are talking about and refuse to pay any attention.
This guy’s father may have been blacklisted. It was not by McCarthy. It was not even by the govt. It was by private organizations ie;MGM, Warner etc.
McCarthy investigated nobody from Hollywood. All the people that McCarthy investigated were govt employees. Agree or disagree with how McCarthy (and Bobby Kennedy) did this, it is certainly a legitimate function of the Senate and/or House to investigate security risks.
It was the *HOUSE* Committee on UnAmerican Activities (Not the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, BTW. Can we at least get the names right?) that investigated Hollywood folks. It was the movie industry that ran the blacklist.
Why does McCarthy keep getting dragged into it? Perhaps because he was a Republican and the HCUA was Democrat?
John Henry
McCarthy was just a little before his time. Before the 2010 ‘shellacking’ there were 75 Democratic Congresscritters and 2 D Senators that were openly and unashamedly members of the Democratic Socialists of America – a joint creation of the Communist Party USA and the Socialist Party USA.
http://www.thecypresstimes.com/article/News/National_News/CONGRESSMEN_FAIL_TO_INCLUDE_DEMOCRATIC_SOCIALISTS_OF_AMERICA_MEMBERSHIP_IN_THEIR_ELECTION_CAMPAIGNS/32227
Correct that last to read:
HCUA was mostly Democrats
John Henry
There are some famous political color metaphors:
“Oreo”: black on the outside, white on the inside/
“Watermelon”: “Green” on the outside, “Red” on the inside.
“Radish”: “Red” on the outside, white (conservative) on the inside
(This had a double pun effect when applied to the French “Radical” Party, because “Radical” and “Radish” are both derived from Latin radix, “root”.)
But here’s one more, which was applied to the Nazi Sturm Abteilungen (“Storm Troopers” – the street-fighting Brown Shirts). They were called “beefsteaks”: brown (i.e. fascist) on the outside, but Red (socialist) on the inside.
(Mind you, once Hitler took power, the Nazis abandoned nearly all of their socialist agenda, and Hitler murdered the SA leaders.)
“Mind you, once Hitler took power, the Nazis abandoned nearly all of their socialist agenda”
Don’t be too sure about that.
‘Harry Truman was more on the mark when he described the Un-American Activities Committee as “the most un-American thing in America.” Nobody, after all, was being accused of treason, or of terrorism. People were being investigated and punished solely for what they thought.’
More like Harry Truman was a big fat hypocrite if he actually said that, and Tarloff is a brainwashed, liberal, Dem nitwit if he believes a single word of what he’s blathering on about (either that, or he’s lying through his teeth).
First of all HCUA was 100% a creation of the Democrat Party (typical Dem trick, first they create something: Jim Crow, the CIA, HCUA, whatever, then they start screaming and hollering about how wicked the thing they created is, and acting like their creation is sonmeone else’s fault!…libtards are ALWAYS doing that). IOW, guys like Truman created HCUA.
Second of all, contrary to Tarloff’s insinuation, HCUA didn’t punish anyone for what they thought, only for refusing to testify (without having legitimate grounds to refuse).
Third of all, the only people that were being sent to jail for what they thought were CPUSA members who were rounded up, tried, convicted and jailed by…the Truman adminstration, which sent dozens of people to prison, using the Smith Act (also a creation of the Dems) simply because they belonged to a political organization Truman and his liberal Dem pals didn’t like.
Tarloff’s blather is mostly about deflecting attention away from exactly who it was that was screwing people because of their political ideas, back in the day (not that I particularly give a hoot if some commies got screwed over by the liberal Dems…too bad for them), hence the feeble attempt to put Truman forward as a champion of truth, justice and the American way, while painting Joe McCarthy as a villain, even though it was Truman and his boys who were carting people off to jail, not Joe McCarthy (who Tarloff takes a swipe at later in the article).
Tarloff’s article is pure lib Dem propaganda..and, needless to say, it’s 100% nonsense.
Actually, when I think of Harry Truman and “the most un-American thing in America,” something very different comes immediately to mind.
“Americans of my parents’ generation joined the Communist Party out of genuine idealism, no matter how misplaced. ”
What a joke. They joined the Communist party because it offered them the opportunity to enrich themselves while sating their blood-lust.
After reading Tarloff’s article carefully, I find I agree with his parents. I can see how economic troubles (the Great Depression, a $14 trillion deficit), the election of FDR (or Obama), the racism of Jim Crow (or affirmative action, set-asides, and studies departments), and endless wars of FDR (or Obama) can lead one to believe the only hope lies in a mass-murdering, thugocracy of “idealists.”
Since Communism has achieved its control of EUrope through the EUSSR, where does one go to find dynamic idealists who want to slaughter their way to social justice?
I, myself, am not interested, being an old coward, but I wish to offer advice to others. Thanks, Tarloff for showing me the way.
Also, HUAC did investigate Nazis. IIRC, the committee had another name in the 1930s.
On Fascism, you must understand that today’s leftists have convinced themselves that Fascism is/was a right-wing movement. Mr Tarloff’s question is based on this false premise.
As you correctly point out, Fascism is merely Socialism + Nationalism. Of the 30+ political parties in Germany before the Nazis started eliminating the competition only the Communists were further Left than the Nazis.
For a while I thought they were simply rewriting history to distance themselves from Fascism. After all, they are almost universally despised as pure evil and who’d want to be associated with them? So, why not just come up with some revisionist history redefining Fascism from the form of socialism that it was into a purely right-wing phenomenon? However, there’s a bit more to it. It seems leftists mistake the authoritarian aspects of Fascisms for right-wing. But, of course, every dictatorship currently in power on the planet is both authoritarian and left-wing. We on the right stand for limited government and freedom. The American Left refuses to understand that. Also, there is the racial component to Fascism and the images of American neo-nazis that hate blacks and Jews and strut around in Nazi uniforms. To an American Leftie, this is also purely right-wing. They are determine to forget the fact that the KKK was the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party and American neo-nazis are an outgrowth of that movement. The only difference being that, while the Democratic Party has become the Party of racial grievence mongering, some of the white southern racists that formed the base of the Democratic Party are still racist and find their outlet through neo-nazism rather than the KKK. Its really far more about racism than any political ideology, but has had the result of distorting how liberals view the real Fascists in Europe and South America (and elsewhere). They see the racism of the neo-nazis, their world view is based on the erroneous belief that conservatives are racist, therefore conservatives are synonymous with neo-nazis.