…has to be Keith Olbermann:
But you’ve got to love the staggering ignorance behind his continued insistence that fascists weren’t socialists because they beat other socialists to death. Golly. How many socialists did Stalin kill? Pretty much all of the show trial victims weren’t mere socialists but hardcore Communists. I guess Stalin was anti-Communist. Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives involved the slaughter of Nazis, so I guess by Olbermann’s logic Hitler was anti-Nazi. Most lefties can’t stand Joe Lieberman, I guess they’re anti-Democrat.
Heh.
Oberfurher Olberman said that? Seig Heil!
Rand,
I guess I missed the joke.
~Jon
I’d guess that the punchline has something to do with ~100 million people who aren’t alive now.
National Socialist party (NSDAP: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei), end of discussion.
A question for Rand: what do you think of libertarian socialists? My guess is that you think that’s an oxymoron, but I don’t want to make a false assumption.
I’m working my way through the book. What a drag.
The problem is, Goldberg is trying to write for an imaginary person who may be swayed by arguments. But there are no such. Let’s make Ferris to read it and then see if he would denounce the Democrat party. This WILL NOT HAPPEN, ever. So why waste all this paper (and my time) on all the intricate arguments? The book could’ve been much nicer as a compact collection of best dirty laundry and closet skeletons of liberals.
The blog is the gift which keeps giving though.
I do think that it’s an oxymoron, but to the limited (perhaps zero) degree that such a creature could exist, it would be a very foolish one. As Glenn wrote today:
Pete, Jonah didn’t write the book to persuade modern fascists that they’re fascists (though I do in fact think that it will have that effect for a few if they can be persuaded to actually read it). He wrote it to provide ammunition for classical liberals against the oft-hurled charge by modern fascists of being fascists. In that, I think that it will be very successful. In any event, it certainly has sales through the roof, so there must have been a long unfulfilled need for such a book.
I suggest that if you think the Nazi’s were true Socialists, you read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (by William Shirer). Hitler despised Socialists and anyone who took the Socialist part of the National Socialists seriously ended up with minimal power or dead. Hitler wasn’t a liberal, fascists weren’t liberal, it’s a crock. Serious analysis of this has been done before and Goldberg is simply trying to make a comparison between modern Democrats and Hitler, that’s it. There are very few links, if any. I suggest if you want the real story reading Shirer’s book, which is well acclaimed and covers the subject at GREAT length (in fact the book is over 1000 pages long, and a good read).
I suggest that if you think the Nazi’s were true Socialists, you read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (by William Shirer). Hitler despised Socialists and anyone who took the Socialist part of the National Socialists seriously ended up with minimal power or dead. Hitler wasn’t a liberal, fascists weren’t liberal, it’s a crock. Serious analysis of this has been done before and Goldberg is simply trying to make a comparison between modern Democrats and Hitler, that’s it. There are very few links, if any. I suggest if you want the real story reading Shirer’s book, which is well acclaimed and covers the subject at GREAT length (in fact the book is over 1000 pages long, and a good read).
Every socialist faction claims they are the only “true” socialists, Kevin.
Hitler never claimed to be a “Nazi.” That term was invented by his detractors. He was a “National Socialist,” no matter how many authors claim otherwise at GREAT length.
If you think Hitler was not a “true” socialist, then who was? What made them “truer” than Hitler? Did they expropriate more private property and exert more state control over individuals?
Or are you going to cop out and say the true socialists are only found in academia and haven’t had the chance to implement their version of the worker’s paradise?
“…libertarian socialists?”
Hmm as an ideologically impure individual I think I see what’s going on there. If I were to try to as objectively as possible pigeonhole myself I would end up with just about every ideology out there and then be left with the problem of trying to give each some sort of estimate of percentage of influence and contextual significance. And it still wouldn’t fit. Better to just wave in a general direction on the ideological charts ^_^ and decide upon which ideas seem most important to yourself.
Or maybe Ashley’s point was about libertarian socialists versus liberal fascists? Good interesting point in my opinion.
“I suggest that if you think the Nazi’s were true Socialists, you read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (by William Shirer).”
{pft}
If you’re ignorant enough to believe that Hitler was not a socialist, then get your ass to a decent bookstore and read Alan Bullock’s magesterial “Hitler And Stalin: Parallel Lives” and bloody learn something serious. (Here’s a note: somewhere in Usenet, I have a challenge posted about ten years ago, citing two specific government policies taken from the book at random, and daring anyone to identify either the USSR or Nazi Germany as the perp. Nobody has ever passed that test.) Start digging around and find Guenter Reiman’s “The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism”, written on the scene in Germany in 1939.
Shirer is for kids. Don’t be stupid. Get to work.
It all depends on what you mean by socialism doesnt it? In traditional Marxian terms, socialism is more or less a synonym for communism – a classless stateless moneyless community based on volunteer labour and free access to goods and services. Nothing could be further removed from the ideology of Nazism which was in reality a kind of corporate state capitalism backed up by big businesses. Some people here need to wise up on their grasp of terms such as socialism. Try for example the http://www.worldsocialism.org link for a good introduction