Getting Away With Nazi Warcrimes!

[Ergo Sum]

The mistake we make with Nazism (or should I say Fascism) is the idea that in came to an end with the collapse of Nazi Germany. The Anglo-American elite who helped finance Adolf Hitler as shown in the OP, have gone nowhere. Through Institutions such as The Bretton Woods , which mothered the ghoulish IMF & the World Bank, they continue to implement the same kind of racist ideology. They have destroyed, for instance, through their Malthusian nightmare economics, countries like the Congo or Somalia, creating genocidal disasters like war and famines in such countries, to reduce inferior human stock. And so evil and so genius are they that in the process of committing genocide they make massive profits. Especially in the case of the Congo, whose rich extrative industries are dominated by Angloamerican companies. Its like the Nazis using their Jewish slaves in their factories in the concentration camps, then shooting them afterward.

You seem to have either a) an enthusiastic but confused grasp on buzzwords like fascism and Malthusian, or b) a failure to explain your argument well. A few pointers:
1. Multinational corporations are not exclusively American, in fact several East Asian companies exert great influence.
2. The IMF and World Bank themselves do not work for profit, and although there's an argument that they trap developing countries in endless cycles of debt, it has to do with neoliberal policies and not "Malthusian nightmares" (which are associated with pre-industrial societies, not those of today).
3. Although this is far from my specialty, the history of bloodshed in Somalia and the Congo is easier to explain with underdeveloped governmental authority and poverty than some racist conspiracy to profit off of genocide.
4. Profiting off of genocide is something that most people prefer to avoid nowadays, a far cry from Nazis vehemently hunting down Jews in Eastern Europe. Analogies to Nazis/the Holocaust should probably be removed from conversation altogether for the sake of people who value sense and perspective.

 

[ParkCungHee]

You know, now that I think about it, isn't a Malthusian nightmare where like, so many people are having babies that we start using babies to play jenga because there's just babies crawling around everywhere and forming big piles?

 

[Lord Baal]

You know, now that I think about it, isn't a Malthusian nightmare where like, so many people are having babies that we start using babies to play jenga because there's just babies crawling around everywhere and forming big piles?

I didn't know you'd travelled to Western Sydney. Seriously, Tregear in particular is hip-deep in babies. It's like a ball-pit, except instead of balls, it's babies.

 

[Leoreth]

4. Profiting off of genocide is something that most people prefer to avoid nowadays, a far cry from Nazis vehemently hunting down Jews in Eastern Europe. Analogies to Nazis/the Holocaust should probably be removed from conversation altogether for the sake of people who value sense and perspective.

Yes (excepting discussing the actual Nazis or the actual Holocaust of course). If you can't explain why something is so horrible without comparing or equating it to the Holocaust it probably simply isn't that horrible.

 

[Masada]

I'm pretty sure it's hard to profit off genocide on a nation scale. I mean, it isn't like killing a few million taxpayers is a Good Thing so far as fiscal outcomes go right?

When did we dispose the view of him [Ferguson] as a pseudo-scientist? I missed it.

Economic isn't a science; Ferguson isn't even an economist; Ferguson is a historian; Ferguson doesn't make scientific claims; therefore Ferguson isn't a pseudo-scientist. That's kind of definitive no?

Whether or not Hegel was a racist is not the point. The bottomline is that inspite of being a brilliant mind and intellectual he proposed pseudo-scientific racist theories.

There's no scientific claim advanced in the text.

Ahhh, what I can say. You caught me again. Malthus existed before Economics was an established science (or as you put it, social science). In other words he helped invent what we now recognise Economics, which I grant is not the same thing as being an economist.

To restate a point: economics isn't a science. Malthus also didn't 'invent' economics, whatever the hell that means; he had at most a peripheral role to play in the formation of political economy which later developed into economics. For an indication of his relative importance he was mentioned in just two of the six appendices of the six economics textbooks I had to hand, the same rate as John Stuart Mills, Chairman Mao and Gregory freaking Mankiw. Both entries devoted a short discussion section to him, with the sole purpose of proving him wrong.

You do not see what is inhuman about describing as Positives "all the causes which tend in any way prematurely to shorten the duration of human life, such as unwholesome occupations, severe labour and exposure to the seasons, bad and insufficient clothing arising from poverty … the whole train of human diseases and epidemics, wars, infanticide, plague, and famine ? Read the Webster Tarpley Link. Forget about wiki.

Quick check: You don't seriously think that a Church of England prelate thought that wars, epidemics, (loving) infanticide, plague and famine were good things right? I do hope not. Because this is what he means:

The positive check to population, by which I mean the check that represses an increase which is already begun, is confined chiefly, though not perhaps solely, to the lowest orders of society.

For a helper, think of 'check' in the sense of Chess.

greater genius of these people cannot be discounted because of theories which later evidence (especially in the case of Malthus) proves as flawed. But in the case of ferguson, you need to understand what Krugman and others mean when they describe Niall Ferguson as thus:

And Krugman does indeed know a lot less than economists knew in the 1940s, I mean hasn't heard of stagflation or figured out that AD isn't that great a diagnostic test? You'd think that pseudo-scientist hadn't learned a thing from sixty years of research?

Lemme give you an example of the Sanctity of Debt being a bad thing in of itself. This is from a blog by F. William Engdahl , giving a description of how the Congolese economy was destroyed by the IMF through the implementation of policies which exemplify the Sanctity of Debt philosophy. A philosophy which says paying off debt and deficit reduction should be a premium priority, even if it means humanitarian disaster:

Er, right. That's got nothing to do with sanctity of debt.

The problem with you is your dogmatic position that pseudoscience should be reference only to natural sciences as oppossed to social sciences. I hardly think there is such a thing as a qualified economist who does not see economics as a science. But in any event, here is Nial Ferguson himself describing Economy as a science:

To those of us who first encountered the dismal science of economics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.....

Is it economic textbook trawl time again? I think so! McTaggart, Findlay and Parkin's sixth ed. tells me that economics is a social science; Waud, Hocking, Maxwell and Bonnici's second ed. tells me economics is a social science; Jackson, McIver, McConnel and Brue fifth ed. talk about abstractions... [and] models; while Miller and Shade third ed. talk about economics as a social science. The behaviour of people is not easy to predict and that is why economists... assemble economic 'laws' in this social science. However, by adopting a scientific approach to problem solving, the economist can assist society. For the record, I teach out of the first.

And the use 'the dismal science' is hardly a claim to economics being a hard science. It's a pet name for economics - originally an insult - that was coined in the 1870s. Quite why it's had the longevity that it has had is beyond me. And while I'm no scholar of science history but I suspect that distinction between a hard - empirical - science and a social science hadn't yet been made in the 1870s to quite the same degree that predominates now. Besides, the dismal social science isn't quite as peppy. But w/e Plot could probably tell us something more in depth. I can't save to say that nobody I know, or nothing I've ever read, has used that phrase to paint economics as a science proper.

 

[Lone Wolf]

You don't seriously think that a Church of England prelate thought that wars, epidemics, (loving) infanticide, plague and famine were good things right? I do hope not. Because this is what he means:

You don't understand the Categories of Advanced Morality. They may be bad per se, but it's all for the Greater Good.

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

I'm afraid the argument of the OP lost credibility for me when it asserted that "the British" go around boasting about how wonderful the British Empire was. It then lost what remained when it got both Niall Ferguson's own name, and the name of his book, wrong, when it misrepresented the contents of said book, and when it described him as a "pseudo-scientist". He's not a scientist at all, pseudo- or otherwise, he's a historian. And, yes, he's a right-wing apologist for imperialism, but he is not a racist or a Nazi, or if he is, he has successfully kept these views to himself.

You, of all people, ought to know that almost every written work, whether it be a biography or a history of whatever subject, will have inaccuracies in it.

Tacitus was one big example. How many time had he go about offering his perspective of the inner motivations of his subjects? Quite a lot. And he wasn't neutral most of the time as well.

 

[mghani]

I'm pretty sure it's hard to profit off genocide on a nation scale. I mean, it isn't like killing a few million taxpayers is a Good Thing so far as fiscal outcomes go right?.

who cares about taxpayers contributions when you can own all the natural resources beneath their feet.

To restate a point: economics isn't a science. Malthus also didn't 'invent' economics, whatever the hell that means; he had at most a peripheral role to play in the formation of political economy which later developed into economics. For an indication of his relative importance he was mentioned in just two of the six appendices of the six economics textbooks I had to hand, the same rate as John Stuart Mills, Chairman Mao and Gregory freaking Mankiw. Both entries devoted a short discussion section to him, with the sole purpose of proving him wrong. .

your dogmatic distinction between social science and natural sciences is something i care nothing for. And also do you deny the contributions made by Malthus to modern day Ecoonmics, such as the theory of glut.

Quick check: You don't seriously think that a Church of England prelate thought that wars, epidemics, (loving) infanticide, plague and famine were good things right? I do hope not. Because this is what he means: .

not only did he think it as a good thing; he was oppossed to contraception. He believed in allowing the human population to be culled by the positives of war, famine and disesase, instead. Maybe alll the stories about priest raping little boys is also fiction. How could men of God do such a thing. Maybe George Bush is not really a Christian, how could he wage wars that killed several hundred thousand.

And Krugman does indeed know a lot less than economists knew in the 1940s, I mean hasn't heard of stagflation or figured out that AD isn't that great a diagnostic test? You'd think that pseudo-scientist hadn't learned a thing from sixty years of research? .

whatever you say. you are the expert. Krugman can only behave as if he knows anything.

Er, right. That's got nothing to do with sanctity of debt.

Why not?

Is it economic textbook trawl time again? I think so! McTaggart, Findlay and Parkin's sixth ed. tells me that economics is a social science; Waud, Hocking, Maxwell and Bonnici's second ed. tells me economics is a social science; Jackson, McIver, McConnel and Brue fifth ed. talk about abstractions... [and] models; while Miller and Shade third ed. talk about economics as a social science. The behaviour of people is not easy to predict and that is why economists... assemble economic 'laws' in this social science. However, by adopting a scientific approach to problem solving, the economist can assist society. For the record, I teach out of the first.

Again i care nothing for your dogmatic persistence on your straight-jacket definition of science. And you are aware that you keep referring to economics as a social science, right? Nial Ferguson still remains a poseur, and economic illiterate pseudo-scientist.

 

[Verbose]

Again i care nothing for your dogmatic persistence on your straight-jacket definition of science. And you are aware that you keep referring to economics as a social science, right? Nial Ferguson still remains a poseur, and economic illiterate pseudo-scientist.

Well, what he did was to increase the level of induction backing his assertions (by looking at economists self-descriptions of what they're up to). You might do well from doing the same.

 

[mghani]

Well, what he did was to increase the level of induction backing his assertions (by looking at economists self-descriptions of what they're up to). You might do well from doing the same.

Why else do you think I call him a fraud?

 

[Masada]

who cares about taxpayers contributions when you can own all the natural resources beneath their feet.

Right, Roma and Jews owned natural resources?

And also do you deny the contributions made by Malthus to modern day Ecoonmics, such as the theory of glut.

You could just read what I have to say.

Malthus also didn't 'invent' economics, whatever the hell that means; he had at most a peripheral role to play in the formation of political economy which later developed into economics.

your dogmatic distinction between social science and natural sciences is something i care nothing for.

Again i care nothing for your dogmatic persistence on your straight-jacket definition of science.

Right. It's all mah opinion. I wrote all those textbooks, I admit it

I'm the one man economics army!

not only did he think it as a good thing; he was oppossed to contraception. He believed in allowing the human population to be culled by the positives of war, famine and disesase, instead.

I thought I'd made it rather clear that Malthus didn't use 'positive' in a normative/judge valued sense of the word but in terms of a check (block) to population growth. Moreover, accepting that something will happen doesn't of necessity make one want it to happen. I might accept that earthquakes/floods/volcanoes and other 'positive' checks to population might occur from time to time but that doesn't mean I want them to happen.

whatever you say. you are the expert. Krugman can only behave as if he knows anything.

First point, saying someone is wrong doesn't make it so. Evidence is usually required. Second, if you don't get that I'm simply paraphrasing Krugman and replacing a droll snipe at classical economics with an equally droll snipe at Keynesian economics then we're really going to have trouble conducting this debate any further. To someone, indeed anyone, with a passing familiarity with economics that line-of-attack should be familiar. Krugman is notorious for it; although in fairness the other side gives as good as it gets.

Why else do you think I call him a fraud?

So you accept the words of two economists uncritically. But you refuse to accept the words of thirteen economists writing in four separate textbooks? (Well fourteen, you can include me I suppose).

 

[mghani]

Right, Roma and Jews owned natural resources?

What are you talking about? The Jews were an example of slave labour exploited for profit in Nazi Germany. I never said anything about oppressed minorities in Europe having natural resources stolen from them by Nazi Germany. I made reference to the Congo, which may well be the richest country on earth when it comes to mineral wealth. But whose population has been left in a Malthusian and nightmarish struggle, for the sake of Anglo-American and other Western Corporations desperate to own that wealth.

I thought I'd made it rather clear that Malthus didn't use 'positive' in a normative/judge valued sense of the word but in terms of a check (block) to population growth. Moreover, accepting that something will happen doesn't of necessity make one want it to happen. I might accept that earthquakes/floods/volcanoes and other 'positive' checks to population might occur from time to time but that doesn't mean I want them to happen.

He was personally oppossed to contraception, believing instead that famine and disease and barbaric working conditions were more efficient in culling inferior human stock. There is nothing outrageous about calling the theory of such a man or the attitude of such a man as anti-human.

First point, saying someone is wrong doesn't make it so. Evidence is usually required. Second, if you don't get that I'm simply paraphrasing Krugman and replacing a droll snipe at classical economics with an equally droll snipe at Keynesian economics then we're really going to have trouble conducting this debate any further. To someone, indeed anyone, with a passing familiarity with economics that line-of-attack should be familiar. Krugman is notorious for it; although in fairness the other side gives as good as it gets.

Krugman and other Keynesian Economists have already been proven right on the basics of Kernesian Economics, whereas Milton Friedman was proven wrong . If the present economic crisis does not make this clear to you. I donot know what will. And you are really oversimplifying Krugman in a reallly crude way. Donot speak about Krugman (or for that matter Friedman) as if he were a equivalent of that hero of yours Niall Ferguson. Here is Krugman lavishing praise on the Genius of Friedman in prophesying the stagfaltion which you claim Keynesian economists like Krugman know nothing about:

In 1967, however, Friedman gave a presidential address to the American Economic Association in which he argued that the correlation between inflation and unemployment, even though it was visible in the data, did not represent a true trade-off, at least not in the long run. “There is,” he said, “always a temporary trade-off between inflation and unemployment; there is no permanent trade-off.” In other words, if policymakers were to try to keep unemployment low through a policy of generating higher inflation, they would achieve only temporary success. According to Friedman, unemployment would eventually rise again, even as inflation remained high. The economy would, in other words, suffer the condition Paul Samuelson would later dub “stagflation.”

How did Friedman reach this conclusion? (Edmund S. Phelps, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics this year, simultaneously and independently arrived at the same result.) As in the case of his work on consumer behavior, Friedman applied the idea of rational behavior. He argued that after a sustained period of inflation, people would build expectations of future inflation into their decisions, nullifying any positive effects of inflation on employment. For example, one reason inflation may lead to higher employment is that hiring more workers becomes profitable when prices rise faster than wages. But once workers understand that the purchasing power of their wages will be eroded by inflation, they will demand higher wage settlements in advance, so that wages keep up with prices. As a result, after inflation has gone on for a while, it will no longer deliver the original boost to employment. In fact, there will be a rise in unemployment if inflation falls short of expectations.

At the time Friedman and Phelps propounded their ideas, the United States had little experience with sustained inflation. So this was truly a prediction rather than an attempt to explain the past. In the 1970s, however, persistent inflation provided a test of the Friedman-Phelps hypothesis. Sure enough, the historical correlation between inflation and unemployment broke down in just the way Friedman and Phelps had predicted: in the 1970s, as the inflation rate rose into double digits, the unemployment rate was as high or higher than in the stable-price years of the 1950s and 1960s. Inflation was eventually brought under control in the 1980s, but only after a painful period of extremely high unemployment, the worst since the Great Depression.


And also here is Krugman descibing economics as a science:

...don’t want to push the religious analogy too far. Economic theory at least aspires to be science, not theology; it is concerned with earth, not heaven

Paul Krugman on Friedman

 

[Tank_Guy#3]

Fun fact! No one was ever killed or was even threatened with killing, torture or imprisonment for unwillingness to take part in the Holocaust.

I would be inclined to disagree. Granted I'm looking more at the Wehrmacht, which isn't really the subject here, but plenty were executed or "asked" to commit suicide for failing or not following the orders the Fuhrer.

These failures could be perceived or real.

Why arrest the commandants? They didn't kill anybody, they just ensured the camp stayed running. Why not arrest prison wardens of depriving prisoners of their will to come and go as they please. They are allowed to shoot prisoners attempting to escape, rioting, etc as well.

Suppose one could say they were facilitators. They made sure the executions/hard labor/etc kept going.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I would be inclined to disagree.

Disagreement in and of itself isn't worth anything. Can you find any examples of anyone executed for not participating in genocide?

 

[mghani]

Also, as far as I know, fascism isn't inherently racist either. The racialism is a Nazi thing, although of course fascist regimes were racist where it suited them.

my point is that the racial supremacy of Nazi beliefs did not begin nor end with the Nazis. here is what a wise man ( a historian and economist) has to say about the continuity of the racist ideology of the Nazis:


As I document in my book, Seeds of Destruction8, since the 1920’s the Rockefeller Foundation had funded the eugenics research in Germany through the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institutes in Berlin and Munich, including well into the Third Reich. They praised the forced sterilization of people by Hirtler Germany, and the Nazi ideas on race “purity.” It was John D. Rockefeller III, a life-long advocate of eugenics, who used his “tax free” foundation money to initiate the population reduction neo-Malthusian movement through his private Population Council in New York beginning in the 1950’s.

F W Engdahl

 

[innonimatu]

I thought I'd made it rather clear that Malthus didn't use 'positive' in a normative/judge valued sense of the word but in terms of a check (block) to population growth. Moreover, accepting that something will happen doesn't of necessity make one want it to happen. I might accept that earthquakes/floods/volcanoes and other 'positive' checks to population might occur from time to time but that doesn't mean I want them to happen.

Sorry, but imho your argument for excusing Malthus lacks credibility. They guy did welcome those "checks", his whole theory was that those checks were necessary. Necessary things were, for him as a man of the cloth, god-ordained things, therefore good things.

I have no doubt that he was a scumbag who liked the fact that those poor classes were being killed off in high numbers.

 

[LightSpectra]

Sorry, but imho your argument for excusing Malthus lacks credibility. They guy did welcome those "checks", his whole theory was that those checks were necessary. Necessary things were, for him as a man of the cloth, god-ordained things, therefore good things.

I have no doubt that he was a scumbag who liked the fact that those poor classes were being killed off in high numbers.

Necessary things were for him God-ordained things, which means he was delighted by them? That does not follow at all. Maybe he said something to that effect, to which I don't know, but if you're only going off of this as a logical jump, it's very, very faulty.

I'm vaguely familiar with Malthus' religious writings. It seems like he denies God's role in human suffering, and thinks population and economic problems are entirely man's fault.

 

[Yeekim]

Exactly. There are actually numerous cases of Germans - both soldiers and camp guards - outright refusing to take part in atrocities. While they weren't looked upon very kindly, they were allowed to transfer to different camps, moved to non-frontline units, etc..

Conforming with war crimes seems to have been. It wasn't a wise move for your career, but if you don't mind cleaning the latrines for the day, or passing up a promotion, or going to the front, you didn't have anything to worry about.

I believe this article gives a pretty good picture.
http://www.colorado.edu/ReligiousStudies/chernus/4800/Kittterman.pdf
1) I wouldn't have objected, had you said that "in most cases no-one was forced to take part". But saying noone was forced nowhere, ever, was just incorrect.
2) Yeah, a soldier could get away with digging the graves instead of being part of the firing squad. If your definition of "taking part in Holocaust" would exclude that guy, then again, I don't object.

 

[Masada]

He was personally oppossed to contraception, believing instead that famine and disease and barbaric working conditions were more efficient in culling inferior human stock. There is nothing outrageous about calling the theory of such a man or the attitude of such a man as anti-human.

You still don't get it. Malthus imagined a system which checked itself, independent of human agency. The system did it; people might commit individual atrocities but ultimately war, famine, disease and barbaric working conditions were inevitable however good the intentions of people. Thus famines occurred not because of some proximate human factor but because humans interacting at the macro - sub-concious - level ultimately created famines.

Furthermore, I don't think Malthus took pleasure in thinking that this was the natural course of events. There's no hint of that in his writings, instead he seems to just accept them. Which to be frank isn't markedly different to Marx imagining capitalism turning humans into poor servile cogs not as a result of human nature but because the system rewarded that kind of conduct for some. Marx doesn't get called out for imaging this to be inevitable - granted Marx offered a means out. Malthus couldn't imagine a serious means of getting out, so far as he was concerned sex was necessary and inevitable. The problem wasn't that people ****ed but that people ****ed in aggregate enough to have more children than the system could support. Obviously, unless people stopped ****ing there wasn't much one could do and since Malthus didn't want to kill or otherwise inhibit (force being about the only means I can think of working) people ****ing there wasn't a solution save to ride the tiger and leave it at that. Identifying 'the problem' is rather different from solving it; Marx is often accused of doing this.

Consider these quotes for evidence:

constant effort towards an increase in population subject the lower classes of society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition…The way in which these effects are produced seems to be this. We will suppose the means of subsistence in any country just equal to the easy support of its inhabitants. The constant effort towards population …increases the number of people before the means of subsistence are increased. The food, therefore which before supplied seven millions must now be divided among seven millions and half or eight millions. The poor consequently must live much worse, and many of them be reduced to severe distress

or this

An Alaric, an Attila, or a Zingis Khan, and the chiefs around them, might fight for glory, for the fame of extensive conquests, but the true cause that set in motion the great tide of northern emigration, and that continued to propel it till it rolled at different periods against China, Persia, Italy, and even Egypt, was a scarcity of food, a population extended beyond the means of supporting it.

or this

Want was the goad that drove the Scythian shepherds from their native haunts, like so many famished wolves in search of prey. Set in motion by this all powerful cause, clouds of Barbarians seemed to collect from all points of the northern hemisphere. Gathering fresh darkness and terror as they rolled on, the congregated bodies at length obscured the sun of Italy and sunk the whole world in universal night. These tremendous effects, so long and so deeply felt throughout the fairest portions of the earth, may be traced to the simple cause of the superior power of population to the means of subsistence.

Krugman and other Keynesian Economists have already been proven right on the basics of Kernesian Economics, whereas Milton Friedman was proven wrong . If the present economic crisis does not make this clear to you. I donot know what will. And you are really oversimplifying Krugman in a reallly crude way. Donot speak about Krugman (or for that matter Friedman) as if he were a equivalent of that hero of yours Niall Ferguson. Here is Krugman lavishing praise on the Genius of Friedman in prophesying the stagfaltion which you claim Keynesian economists like Krugman know nothing about:

Er, right. Please stop strawmanning me. I don't like Ferguson: I've mocked him on any number of occasions. You'd also note that I admitted to just using the same polemical, normative, tone as Krugman used to dismiss Ferguson. Which isn't to say that I believe the accusations, they were stock phrases, but that I don't put much stock in normative statements to begin with as a Good Economist should. Go have a read of Samuelson & Nordhaus. Moreover, Friendman isn't a classicist.

...don’t want to push the religious analogy too far. Economic theory at least aspires to be science, not theology; it is concerned with earth, not heaven

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, Krugman's right. Economics does aspire to be a science. But as the use of 'aspires' suggest, we fall rather short of being one.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Was Malthus actually opposed to contraception, though? Granted, every Good Catholic/Anglican/whatever should...