Was Nazism a left-wing ideology?

[Cutlass]

I think people forget how racist the US, and nearly everyplace else, was back then.

Yeah, but that's only one aspect of the hate for Wilson. And it doesn't even appear to be the dominant reason for it. It just doesn't appear to make sense.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Wilson was a bit more racist than most, and of course, not everyone was racist back then. Calvin Coolidge certainly wasn't. (Ok, he did sign an immigration bill that could be considered racist against Asians, but he only went along with it because it was a major point of Harding's campaign and he was merely finishing out Harding's term at the time. Also, as he signed it he publicly stated his dislike for what he considered racist elements of it.) He and Wilson were pretty much polar opposites in general.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Yeah, but that's only one aspect of the hate for Wilson. And it doesn't even appear to be the dominant reason for it. It just doesn't appear to make sense.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that the far-right is trying to create even more revisionist history to try to vilify past presidents they view as being liberals. It would be far more of a surprise if they didn't.

 

[.Shane.]

Wilson was a bit more racist than most, and of course, not everyone was racist back then. Calvin Coolidge certainly wasn't. (Ok, he did sign an immigration bill that could be considered racist against Asians, but he only went along with it because it was a major point of Harding's campaign and he was merely finishing out Harding's term at the time. Also, as he signed it he publicly stated his dislike for what he considered racist elements of it.) He and Wilson were pretty much polar opposites in general.

"a bit more racist than most" is a big understatement.

Wilson, I think, is perhaps the most paradoxical president.

By segregating the civil service and putting his moral authority on such cultural phenomena as "The Birth of a Nation" he seriously set back Civil Rights.

 

[Merkinball]

He sought to replace the upper class with another upper class of his own making, one shaped according to his racial and economic fantasies, which were very much right wing. Just because he resented the current ruling class, a sentiment much exaggerated, doesn't mean that he was leftist. - Cutlass

Yes, he sought to create an upper class of all Aryan people that were all equally upper class. Hitler was notorious for saying that the farmer was just as important to Germany as the wealthy businessman. The Nazi's wanted equality and to transcend class. But I made that clear last night...

Gregor Strasser was banished for his socialist rhetoric. - Princeps

He wasn't banished. He resigned. And that doesn't discount the Nazi logic. We're talking about Nazism on the whole and in its entirety, not necessarily Hitler's own personal viewpoint.

And no. I do not claim that the Stalinist state was right wing, at least your conception of right, but that it wasn't left wing or socialist because it concentrated ownership and control to a narrow minority of private state planners. These planners owned everything, controlled everything and were totally unaccountable and their power was totally unalterable and enforced through the violence of secret police agencies. This violates the left wing central ideal of collective and communal control over the economy, where there is a political system that is democratic and sensetive to populations demands -- or that there is a direct collective (and therefore democratic) management of resources. - Princeps

I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. You are basically saying that leftist nations are impossible because central planning is an absolute inevitability when it comes to collective and communal control over an economy. And I will also state, once again, that just because one system is more left than another doesn't mean that the first is an element of the right. I think it would be best for us to say that economic totalitarianism is a "third way." A road that exists between free market capitalism and collective communal planning.

No. You alleged that the left is always attacking its fellow travellers. This is false. The Woodrow wilsonites and American progressives had nothing in common with Stalinist totalitarians. - Princeps

You're still blowing this up into something it was never meant to be. The only thing I'm equating is how political parties tend target closely bound ideological groups before they go after the opposing groups. THAT IS IT! Stalinists did this to Trotskyites. Conservative Republicans did this to country club Republicans. It's easier to either eliminate or bring in people who are closely aligned with you than to go after polar opposites.

It is not left wing either. (having lots of sex!) - Princeps

How is it not? Having lots of promiscuous sex goes directly against classical liberalism, traditional conservative family values, and the values espoused by traditional religious structures in Germany at the time. The Nazi's HATED the structures of the churches and saw them as limiting the Aryan nation! How is that at all NOT leftist when you consider that rightism is forwarding pre-existing norms and values?

The National Socialists also preferred to have stable ideal families to create their future soldiers. But they above all preferred to have more Germans, and therefore they banned abortion and such. - Princeps

You still post this...even in lieu of the quotes I posted? This is a pretty empty response Princeps. I expect more from you.

There were the ruled and the rulers, who knew their place in the natural hierachy. - Princeps

That's fine. There were still no peasants. And everyone was still equally cared for under Nazi doctrine. To go farther, what you say in your quote there is no different than America ruled under the Democratic Party.

It is obvious that any rhetoric of classlessness were transparently false, just like lies about work creation. If one promises work to the unemeployed, but forgets to mention that it happens through genocidal war, you can say that one is dishonest. Likewise, any promises of classlessness, which never happened nor were intended, as is plainly obvious from Hitler's actions and rhetoric about race, were dishonest. - Princeps

But you can only reach this conclusion if you ignore the war and the gradual degradation of the state. How can you possibly say, unequivocally mind you, that it was transparently false rhetoric. If you are going to make this argument, then I would kindly ask you to support it with literature. Something. Something from someone meaningful that indicates that classist/populist lingo was nothing more than a transparent false tool used to gin up support in the initial phases of the revolution.

There is nothing in either Italian Fascism or Nazism that suggests that this was the case.

There is an obvious different interpretation of the quote you provide. He doesn't say that social origin, class, profession, fortune, education, capital any everything that seperates men should be abolished, but transcended to create unity. This is standard right wing argument that we should forget any social problems and inequality, and celebrate nationalism or god or something. - Princeps

Doesn't all the other quotes and raw info I've provided seem to indicate that my interpretation is the accurate one? Come on Princeps. That's a big time plea to ignorance in the context of this thread.

Right-wing governments are just as eager, if not more so, to churn out agricultural subsidies for meat providers, for example. - Princeps

Government control over peoples lives is not classical liberalism. Subsidies is not a factor in classical liberalism. You can't have your cake and eat it too Princeps. You can't say that vegetarianism isn't left wing, but then say that government trying to get people to eat more meat is right wing.

Even if so, lifestyle promotion and even imposition is not un-right-wing. After all, the right does seek to use the state to impose values. - Princeps

Imposition of values is not classically liberal. And if self-proclaimed right wingers do it, then it escapes the right, and transcends into the left.

All of America's leaders have been imperfect men. That's just his imperfection. And it really wasn't that out of the ordinary for his generation. Where does all the vitriolic hate come from? - Cutlass

Because he was Bush X10? And a much larger racist?

 

[.Shane.]

If I'm interpreting you correctly, that's a pretty insulting response, Shane. I have no idea why you think I use the American definitions of left and right given my posting history here, even within the last week, but I don't. And I am neither A, B or C.

It would only apply to you if you are forwarding that viewpoint. Are you? I took your OP to be more about the idea that some people think that way.

ymmv.

 

[Formaldehyde]

"a bit more racist than most" is a big understatement.

Wilson, I think, is perhaps the most paradoxical president.

By segregating the civil service and putting his moral authority on such cultural phenomena as "The Birth of a Nation" he seriously set back Civil Rights.

I think that was far more the result of the southern Democrats assuming political power again, as opposed to Wilson's personal views on the subject.

 

[RedRalph]

It would only apply to you if you are forwarding that viewpoint. Are you? I took your OP to be more about the idea that some people think that way.

ymmv.

What's ymmv?

 

[Formaldehyde]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/your_mileage_may_vary

 

[.Shane.]

I think that was far more the result of the southern Democrats assuming political power again (and consequently helping to elect Wilson), as opposed to Wilson's personal views on the subject.

I disagree. Much of what he did was totally within his sole authority to do. Also, if you know anything about Wilson you know that he had an extremely strong, domineering personality and ego. He wouldn't do these things simply by being pushed over by Southern Democrats. No doubt they supported it, cheered it on, and I'm sure at times he erred in their favor, but given his personality and power, I think you're apologizing a bit too much for him here.

 

[Formaldehyde]

If that is actually true, it isn't a result of my apologism as much as ignorance based on years of hearing sugar-coated history, and even lies, from my public school teachers and parents.

But the more I dig, the more you appear to be correct.

According to Friedman, President Wilson said as much to those appalled blacks who protested his actions. He told one protesting black delegation that "segregation is not a humiliation but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen." When the startled journalist William Monroe Trotter objected, Wilson essentially threw him out of the White House. "Your manner offends me," Wilson told him. Blacks all over the country complained about Wilson, but the president was unmoved. "If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me," he told The New York Times in 1914, "they ought to correct it."

Wilson appears to have perceived his presidency as an opportunity to correct history, and to restore white Americans to unambiguous supremacy. That is apparently the reason he embraced the poisonous message of D.W. Griffith's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation; it offered a congenial narrative.

Griffith's notorious film portrays the overthrow of debasing black rule in the Reconstructionist South by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The film's black characters (most of them white actors in blackface) are either servile or savages; Klan members are represented as both heroic and romantic. The movie was based primarily on The Clansman, a novel written by Thomas Dixon in 1905. Not only was Dixon a personal friend of Wilson's, he had been pushing for a Wilson presidency for years, and Wilson regarded himself as being in Dixon's debt.

Wilson discharged that debt by helping Dixon and Griffith publicize their movie. He arranged for preview screenings for his cabinet, for Congress, and for the Supreme Court, and he gave Dixon and Griffith an endorsement they could exploit. "It is like writing history with lightning," Wilson said of this KKK celebration, "and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The first half of Wilson's endorsement is still affixed to prints of the film that are screened for film students studying Griffith's advances in editing.

 

[.Shane.]

Yes, his endorsement of "Birth of a Nation" as good and correct history, esp. given that his academic background was in history (or was it polisci?) was particularly appalling and I think correlates to the revival of the KKK.

That said, I'm not a hater on Wilson. In his first term they did a lot of good in terms of the Progressive agenda. But, you have to take the good w/ the bad if you want to fairly appraise him. And there was a lot of bad.

 

[Cutlass]

But the fact that Wilson was an extreme version of racist still doesn't explain to me where a statement like

Wilson entered the war because he was a sociopath that wanted to have a say in European affairs, no matter how many Americans had to die for him. The Lusitania and Zimmerman Telegram were both excuses to prevent public backlash.

would come from.

 

[.Shane.]

But the fact that Wilson was an extreme version of racist still doesn't explain to me where a statement like

would come from.

I'm not familiar w/ the context of that quote, but in general, I've learned to not bother arguing w/ irrational people/arguments.

So, for me, its quite easy to separate the good and bad in Wilson and see him as the paradoxical figure that he is.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I never understood this. Wilson was certainly a racist. And that's to his disgrace. But that's the only thing really bad I heard about him. All of America's leaders have been imperfect men. That's just his imperfection. And it really wasn't that out of the ordinary for his generation. Where does all the vitriolic hate come from?

While Merkinball is exaggerating, Wilson did really run roughshod over constitutional rights during the war, and if he wasn't personally involved in it, he set up a system that he knew would do so. Theres some real horror stories out there of some of the repressive measures used during the war. Stuff like throwing conscientious objectors out of trains in the middle of the desert, and threatening people with litigation for questioning whether the President can send the National Guard abroad.

And there was also the imperialist mucking about in Latin America to teach them "how to elect good men".

 

[.Shane.]

While Merkinball is exaggerating, Wilson did really run roughshod over constitutional rights during the war, and if he wasn't personally involved in it, he set up a system that he knew would do so. Theres some real horror stories out there of some of the repressive measures used during the war. Stuff like throwing conscientious objectors out of trains in the middle of the desert, and threatening people with litigation for questioning whether the President can send the National Guard abroad.

Yeah, the sedition stuff passed during the war was pretty bad. See also the "Red Scare" and Palmer raids in ~1919. As well as all the race rioting that occured that summer as well.

And there was also the imperialist mucking about in Latin America to teach them "how to elect good men".

Well, in this regard he was as bad as many others before and after.

---
fun fact: The 16th Amendment was passed by a predominently Republican Congress...

fun fact 2: interesting reads on US involvement (under Wilson) in Bolshevik Russia.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You'd except respect for constitutional rights for a man famous for declaring that the constitution was an outdated document and should be ignored? (Granted, by the time he was elected he'd moderated the position to saying it is a living document that should be interpreted to better fit a modern world rather than taking the plain meaning of the text.)

 

[ParkCungHee]

Also, there was the embarrassingly incompetent management of War Bonds.

 

[RedRalph]

This is interesting a relates to it... Glenn Beck is making a docu about how Nazism was left-wing

http://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks?blend=1&ob=4&rclk=cti#p/u/15/dsYuT_c77GI

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

TYT is wrong to state "by definition is right wing" even though he specifies he doesn't mean mainstream right wing.

Besides that, I really do believe that Glenn Beck is harming the United States and is effectively an enemy of the country he claims to love so very much. He doesn't love his country he only loves a part of it specified by political boundries. He's not a very effective enemy and is only armed with soft poo, but still his intentions make him what he is.

It's a good thing only the truly moronic buy what he says.


Link to video.