Yep, Erick The Dim went there. This may turn into a series of diaries, because where other people might have brain farts, Erick delivers the Class 5 hurricane of stupid. Oh and Breitbart jumps in as well, so apparently this is an official Rovian Talking Point.
Their jumping off point is to call Hitler a "socialist."
Right away, you know this is designed to appeal to an audience heavy with Holocaust deniers and closet Nazi wannabees, and that whatever point they are making, they will come around to embracing Hitler, because saying "Hitler was a Socialist" is deep into the weeds of Nazi apology and always ends up plagiarizing Hitler's talking points.
This was pioneered by Nazi apologist Jonah Goldberg and perfected by Nazi apologist Glenn Beck. - first lie about what Hitler said, then just spew stuff right from Mein Kampf, and that proves you aren't a nazi. War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom.
For example, Beck famously claimed that Hitler advocated "social justice," when in fact Hitler said
With infinite shrewdness he (the Jew) fans the need for social justice, somehow slumbering in every Aryan man, into hatred against those who have been better favored by fortune, ..... He establishes the Marxist doctrine. (Mein Kampf p349)
Got it? Lie about what Hitler said, then spout Nazi ideology. This has allowed the Glenn Beck crowd to embrace large chunks of Mein Kampf.
Likewise, Hitler was a vegetarian, so being a Holocaust denier doesn't mean you are a Nazi because you like your steak rare.
And next up is Erick The Dim, batting for the Short Bus Aryans. Erick calls Hitler a "socialist," like today's Democrats. This has become a popular talking point with RedStaters and meth smoking Georgia backwoods Holocaust deniers. But I digress.
Of course, Erick starts with a cherry picked Hitler quote before moving onto the Nazi apology:
Above all, the trade unions are necessary as foundation stones of the future economic parliament or chambers of estates
Whaaa? Erik says about Hitler promoted unions? Didn't Hitler ban unions? Didn't the Nazis "come for the trade unionists?" You are correct, Erick is merely lying about what Hitler did, and then goes on to hype Nazi ideology.
Nazi apologists never say that Hitler's main opponents were the Social Democrats, which we could compare to modern working class Democrats. Their mainstream political opponents, the "bourgeois employers," would be our modern Republican "job creators."
The Nazis were what Hitler called a "spiritual" populist ("Volkish") movement of relentlessly violent "spiritual terror" against the "liberals" ("press," "intellectuals," "trade unions") and the "Jewish puppetmasters" who had an "international conspiracy" against the white race ("Aryans.") Basically Glenn Beck's message, except (thank God) Beck's audience is 40 years older.
Here's what Hitler said
....in the economic sphere, the system of a trade- union movement which does not serve the real interests of the workers, but exclusively the destructive purposes of the international world Jew.
Let's look at what Hilter really said about smashing the trade unions to destroy the base of support for the Social Democrats and replacing the "Marxist unions" with fake unions run directly by the company and government.
And be warned, Erick's copy of Main Kampf apparently falls open at the parts with some of the most putrid antisemitic crap.
All quotes are from Mein Kampf....
In fact Hitler was advocating crushing the existing trade unions and creating government controlled Nazi trade unions
"......Real benefit ...can only arise from a trade-union movement, if philosophically this movement is already so strongly filled with our National Socialist ideas......(the Nazi party) must declare war on the Marxist trade union, not only as an organization, but above all as an idea...."
Got that?
Above all they must declare war on the very idea of a trade union. What would that look like? Turn on you tv if you need examples.
Hitler urges the eventual destruction of the unions, but realizes that the Nazis are far too weak in 1922, so he tells Nazis to remain in unions and destroy them from within.
And so there were only two other possibilities: either to recommend that our own party comrades leave the unions, or that they remain in them (the unions) and work as destructively as possible. In general I recommended this latter way.
Hitler explains that he does not want to take on the unions, because the unions might take over the Nazi party and abandon the Nazi program. Contrary to what Erick claims, Hitler and unions were not at all on the same page.
Here we must apply the maxim that in life it is sometimes better to let a thing lie for the present than to begin it badly or by halves for want of suitable forces... it might easily come about that trade-union motives would guide the movement instead of the philosophy forcing the trade union into its channels.
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And at that point, Hitler acknowledges that the Nazis are being criticized for not having unions. Sort of contradicts Erick, no?
And in 1922 we acted according to this view. Others thought they knew better and founded trade unions. They attacked our lack of unions as the most visible sign of our mistaken and limited views. But it was not long before these organizations themselves vanished, so that the final result was the same as with us. Only with the one difference, that we had deceived neither ourselves nor others.
Back to Erick's origional quote that mentions the "economic parliament:"
Above all, the trade unions are necessary as foundation stones of the future economic parliament or chambers of estates
Hitler describes the future Nazi state where there will be "unions" run by industry and government in the "economic parliament" Erick cited, but of course, strikes will be illegal.
For the National Socialist union, therefore, the strike is an instrument which may and actually must be applied only so long as a National Socialist folkish state does not exist......The things for which millions fight and struggle today must in time be settled in ... the central economic parliament. Then employers and workers will ...solve these problems jointly (for) the welfare of the people as a whole and of the state.
Hitler describes how the "economic paraliament" will be a cozy arrangement of politicians and lobbyists.
The National Socialist trade union is no organ of class struggle, but an organ for representing occupational interests. The National Socialist state knows no 'classes,' but politically speaking only citizens with absolutely equal rights and accordingly equal general duties, and, alongside of these, state subjects who in the political sense are absolutely without rights.
"State subjects" without rights are elsewhere defined as immigrants and Jews, and you can see foreshadowing of actual slave labor. That's the Nazi trade union Erick compares to the AFL-CIO.
Hitler also saw the need to smash the unions as a way to reduce the power of his main opponents the Social Democrat.
The fact that Social Democracy understood the enormous importance of the trade-union movement assured it of this instrument and hence of success; the fact that the bourgeoisie were not aware of this cost them their political position. ....It never occurred to the Social Democrats to limit the movement they had thus captured to its original task. No, that was far from their intention. In a few decades the weapon for defending the social rights of man had, in their experienced hands? become an instrument for the destruction of the national economy......By the turn of the century, the trade-union movement had ceased to serve its former function. From year to year it had entered more and more into the sphere of Social Democratic politics and finally had no use except as a battering-ram in the class struggle....By screwing the demands higher and higher...Like a menacing storm-cloud, the ' free trade union ' hung, even then, over the political horizon and the existence of the individual. It was one of the most frightful instruments of terror against the security and independence of the national economy, the solidity of the state, and personal freedom.
Sounds a little like the Libertarian take on unions, no?
Oh, and did we mention that Hitler thought the Jews were involved? Yes, like Glenn Beck always tells us, it's all connected by a web of international conspiracy.
I gradually became aware that the Social Democratic press was directed predominantly by Jews....I took all the Social Democratic pamphlets I could lay hands on and sought the names of their authors: Jews....as the real leaders or at least the disseminators of Social Democracy came within my vision, my love for my (Aryan) people inevitably grew......
In the 1920's at least, Hitler realizes he can't simply declare war on the workers.
No. The better acquainted I became with the Jew, the more forgiving I inevitably became toward the worker.....
Note that by Erick's standard of being able to cherry pick one patronizing comment by Hitler,
all workers are Nazis.
Hitler puts the powerful analytical engine of paranoid schizophrenia to work sleuthing out the culprits
Inspired by the experience of daily life, I now began to track down the sources of the Marxist doctrine. .....
Was there a chalkboard involved Adolph?
Hitler describes the conspiracy of the Social Democrats, trade unions, and Jews
.the original founders of this plague of the nations must have been veritable devils- for only in the brain of a monster-not that of a man-could the plan of an organization assume form and meaning, whose activity must ultimately result in the collapse of human civilization and the consequent devastation of the world..... If I reached my goal more quickly than at first I had perhaps ventured to believe, it was thanks to my ...knowledge of the Jewish question. This alone enabled me to draw a practical comparison between the reality and the theoretical flim-flam of the founding fathers of Social Democracy, since it taught me to understand the language of the Jewish people.....
I wonder if Eric would still compare the AFL-CIO and Nazis?
Blah blah George Soros blah blah Van Jones, blah blah blan Saul Alinsky blah blah blah....
I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and become an anti-Semite.....Have we an objective right to struggle for our self-preservation, or is this justified only subjectively within ourselves?........The Jewish doctrine of Marxism rejects the aristocratic principle of Nature and replaces the eternal privilege of power and strength by the mass of numbers and their dead weight. Thus it denies the value of personality in man, contests the significance of nationality and race, and thereby withdraws from humanity the premise of its existence and its culture. ....If, with the help of his Marxist creed, the Jew is victorious over the other peoples of the world, his crown will be the funeral wreath of humanity and this planet will, as it did thousands l of years ago, move through the ether devoid of men.
OK, bring it home, invoke God in your fight against the Jews and labor unions. Mother fucking Nazis.
Eternal Nature inexorably avenges the infringement of her commands.
Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.
So let's review how today's flabby fascist wannabee operates:
1) Start with cherry picked Hitler quote that sounds liberal.
2) Claim the cherry picked quote proves "Nazis were liberals or communists."
3) Embrace big swaths of Nazi ideology because you aren't a liberal and therefore not a Nazi.
Why is this alarming?
Because the whole "never forget" thing has been replaced by a torrent of Nazi apology.
If we no longer think of Fascism and Nazism as specific and readily identifiable types of evil that spring spontaneously from human nature in every generation, we will inevitably soon be knee deep in flabby little fascists. And they will be fueled by the knowledge of Germany's successes, and the belief that the next time someone dusts off Mein Kampf, they'll do it just a little bit better. Ladies and genttlemen, Dennis hopper:
I mean it's not like CNN is openly asking Are White People Dscriminated Against? and then using the he-said-she-said approach of giving the lunatics equal time....oh wait they are.
Rebranding Fascism For The Modern Consumer
You can repackage something that isn't selling well. This is "rebranding" like when a company tries to walk away from a scandal by changing its name (Blackwater becoming Xe or Arthur Andersen becoming Accenture). We see the constant effort to blur the definition of Fascism, so that Hitler is not the trademark for a specific brand of evil that is immediately recognizable, but merely a cranky antisemite that can be repackaged into something slick and tested before 21st century American focus groups.
Oh, And Was Hitler a "Socialist?"
As Umberto Eco pointed out, Nazism was a "spiritual" movement that believed that each person's or nation's character and fate was determined by their "blood," "spirit," and "purity." In contrast to Fascism, communism was a pseudoscientific system that believed man's character was like clay that could be molded by the state. They even rejected basic genetics, and believed that oranges would grow in the artic because nature was plastic to be molded by man. For this reason, communism was not by nature racist, so it spread across many countries.
However, communism believed economics and society was governed by pseudo-scientific laws (see footnote) that had been revealed to the elite, and this is philosophical "materialism" (in Marxism it's "dialectic materialism") which is the exact opposite of Fascism's "spiritual" movement that rejected "Jewish materialism" (ie dialectic materialism).
Communism is as a rule strictly atheist. Because Fascism is a "spiritual" movement, it is not neccessarily atheist, and various Fascist governments have endorsed conventional religions. Hitler was a great admirer of religion as a model of organized intolerance, but later suppressed relgion. But during the period where he had not yet declared actual war on unions, he was also still heaping praise on the Catholic church. Go figure.
Note To Erick
The unions were a threat to Hitler because they were not a part of what he called his "spiritual" movement, they were not concerned enough with racial purity, wars of expansion, and they were not mobilized by constant paranoia about what Hitler called the "liberals" who were conspiring against the nation along with what Hitler called "the liberal press." The unions just didn't buy into the Nazi's exceptionalism and the inevitable "destiny" of Nazism.
Is that what the AFL-CIO is Erik? Working to protect the nation's Aryan blood from race mixing and the "niggardization" and "Jewification" of the nation's blood by the "mulattoes" and their "Jewish puppetmasters?"
Footnote:
The discerning reader note the contradiction of communisms belief in the plasticity of nature and belief in materialism. Part of the strident hypocricy of authoritarians is that all dictatorhips must incorporate hopeless contradictions (since they can't allow the opinions to be split among opposing parties), hence the need for the "Newspeak" of dialectics: "War is Peace, Slavery Is Freedom." And of course authoritarians always claim to have conquered "moral relativism" which means pointing out their hypocracy is a criminal subversive act.
Update:
Oh, and Politifact checks on Sherrod Brown's statement about Hitler hating unions and rates it "true."
http://www.politifact.com/...