How Did We Get Here?
14/5/10 12:17![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsMaybe it was Pat Buchanan saying that we didn't need any more Jews on the Supreme court. Maybe it was Lewis Black's hilarious takedown of Glenn Beck's Nazi meme. Maybe it was both things things, combined with the Roger Ebert/Caleb Howe incident, the latest example of the insane, right wing dehumanization which has been becoming more and more "normal." Maybe it's the fact that Arizona has banned ethnic studies in its public schools. Maybe it's the fact that "empathy" is now treated as a dirty word by many right wingers.
Whatever, the reason, I felt the urge this morning to rummage back among my files and find an essay I wrote about a decade ago, about a new mantra I'd begun encountering online -- the too-ridiculous-to-even-refute claim that Hitler was a leftist.
It's worth posting again, and worth reading again, keeping in mind that it was originally written in the summer of the year 2000:
Hitler Was a Leftist": The New Revisionism
Did you know that Hitler was a Leftist? That Africans have been scientifically proven to be inherently less intelligent than Europeans? That Al Gore once said, "Democrats understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child"?
If not, you haven't spent time in the world of Internet Discussion boards, where can be found the arguments, the ideas, and the beliefs that drive much of the predominantly white and young online community. While it is difficult to gauge how seriously the reader is intended to take many of these messages, it is not difficult to see that ideas once considered discredited for good are being repeated online as if they were new and exciting theories. Add to this a disturbing trend towards historical revisionism, and the result is a situation that warrants cautious attention.
When we hear the word "revisionism" most of us think of Holocaust Revisionism. The most extreme reaches of the far right were among the first to understand the usefulness of the Internet as a resource, and as a result it's easy to become distracted by the number of hate groups who have made themselves conspicuous online. Worse, it's easy to ignore the seemingly minor examples of outright untruth that crop up. Next to a statement like "the Holocaust never happened", a statement like "The Holocaust happened, but Hitler was a leftist" seems relatively sane, even harmless.
Repeated once, and on its own, it might be. Repeated often, and at the same time as certain other statements on race, heredity, and political freedom, it is neither. And the claim that Hitler was a creature of the left rather than the right is being repeated often, alongside claims that black Americans are inferior in intelligence to white Americans, the "underclass" is inferior in intelligence to the "elite," and the blacklisting bully tactics of the McCarthy era were warranted.
The most commonly cited origin for the claim of Hitler as a leftist is Austrian economist Friedrich Von Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." Published fifty years ago, "The Road to Serfdom" rejected the idea that Fascism is capitalistic, and lumped both Stalinism and Nazism together as "collectivism". While "The Road to Serfdom" was well-received by some conservatives, the idea of Hitler as a leftist does not seem to have caught on then, perhaps because both the Third Reich and the years leading up to it were still well within living memory. There were living right-wingers who had to cope with the embarrassment of having embraced Hitler in the 1930s as a fellow enemy of Communism, and living leftists who could look back with pride on having recognized Hitler as a danger long before many other Americans did. The memory of the Nazis flirting with Socialism in the 1920s -- mainly as a ploy to attract workers into the party -- was not outweighed by the memory of Hitler's suppression of unions and hatred of leftists.
This has changed. In a decade or two, the Second World War is going to seem as distant to young Americans as the Civil War seemed to my generation, the issues and debates that surrounded it just as antiquated, the truth just as slippery. Online discussions about Hitler's Germany these days often deteriorate into a wrangle over the significance of the Nazi Party platform from the 1920s with someone who seems less appalled by Nazi mass murder than by the fact that the Nazis incorporated the word "Socialist" into their party name. Discussion of the Social Darwinism, the racism, and the hatred of liberals and leftists that were the hallmarks of Nazism, is successfully avoided.
It can be argued that whether or not Hitler was a leftist is beside the point. Mass murder is mass murder, and leftists in this century have proven themselves to be as willing to commit it as right-wingers. But when the statement "Hitler was a leftist" appears at the same time as other, more familiar untruths, it comes across less as an interesting bit of historical revisionism than an attempt to divorce the name "Hitler" from some of the very theories that inspired his crimes. If Hitler's brutality can be associated, not with racism and Social Darwinism, but with the fact that the early Nazi Party gave lip service to Socialism, then a large hurdle in reintroducing white supremacy and eugenics into the mainstream of political thought will be overcome.
This is not to claim that there is an organized effort afoot to revive these ideas. There does, however, seem to be a disorganized effort. Perhaps, much of what we see on the Internet is merely the product of youth, inexperience, and ignorance, and will evaporate harmlessly as the Internet population ages and mature. But while people do and should have a right to post whatever crazy theory they have on the Internet, it's a good idea to keep track of those crazy theories, and to counter them, at least occasionally, with reason and facts.
Otherwise, we could wake up one morning appalled to discover what has been accepted as the truth, and what has been rejected.
Whatever, the reason, I felt the urge this morning to rummage back among my files and find an essay I wrote about a decade ago, about a new mantra I'd begun encountering online -- the too-ridiculous-to-even-refute claim that Hitler was a leftist.
It's worth posting again, and worth reading again, keeping in mind that it was originally written in the summer of the year 2000:
Hitler Was a Leftist": The New Revisionism
Did you know that Hitler was a Leftist? That Africans have been scientifically proven to be inherently less intelligent than Europeans? That Al Gore once said, "Democrats understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child"?
If not, you haven't spent time in the world of Internet Discussion boards, where can be found the arguments, the ideas, and the beliefs that drive much of the predominantly white and young online community. While it is difficult to gauge how seriously the reader is intended to take many of these messages, it is not difficult to see that ideas once considered discredited for good are being repeated online as if they were new and exciting theories. Add to this a disturbing trend towards historical revisionism, and the result is a situation that warrants cautious attention.
When we hear the word "revisionism" most of us think of Holocaust Revisionism. The most extreme reaches of the far right were among the first to understand the usefulness of the Internet as a resource, and as a result it's easy to become distracted by the number of hate groups who have made themselves conspicuous online. Worse, it's easy to ignore the seemingly minor examples of outright untruth that crop up. Next to a statement like "the Holocaust never happened", a statement like "The Holocaust happened, but Hitler was a leftist" seems relatively sane, even harmless.
Repeated once, and on its own, it might be. Repeated often, and at the same time as certain other statements on race, heredity, and political freedom, it is neither. And the claim that Hitler was a creature of the left rather than the right is being repeated often, alongside claims that black Americans are inferior in intelligence to white Americans, the "underclass" is inferior in intelligence to the "elite," and the blacklisting bully tactics of the McCarthy era were warranted.
The most commonly cited origin for the claim of Hitler as a leftist is Austrian economist Friedrich Von Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom." Published fifty years ago, "The Road to Serfdom" rejected the idea that Fascism is capitalistic, and lumped both Stalinism and Nazism together as "collectivism". While "The Road to Serfdom" was well-received by some conservatives, the idea of Hitler as a leftist does not seem to have caught on then, perhaps because both the Third Reich and the years leading up to it were still well within living memory. There were living right-wingers who had to cope with the embarrassment of having embraced Hitler in the 1930s as a fellow enemy of Communism, and living leftists who could look back with pride on having recognized Hitler as a danger long before many other Americans did. The memory of the Nazis flirting with Socialism in the 1920s -- mainly as a ploy to attract workers into the party -- was not outweighed by the memory of Hitler's suppression of unions and hatred of leftists.
This has changed. In a decade or two, the Second World War is going to seem as distant to young Americans as the Civil War seemed to my generation, the issues and debates that surrounded it just as antiquated, the truth just as slippery. Online discussions about Hitler's Germany these days often deteriorate into a wrangle over the significance of the Nazi Party platform from the 1920s with someone who seems less appalled by Nazi mass murder than by the fact that the Nazis incorporated the word "Socialist" into their party name. Discussion of the Social Darwinism, the racism, and the hatred of liberals and leftists that were the hallmarks of Nazism, is successfully avoided.
It can be argued that whether or not Hitler was a leftist is beside the point. Mass murder is mass murder, and leftists in this century have proven themselves to be as willing to commit it as right-wingers. But when the statement "Hitler was a leftist" appears at the same time as other, more familiar untruths, it comes across less as an interesting bit of historical revisionism than an attempt to divorce the name "Hitler" from some of the very theories that inspired his crimes. If Hitler's brutality can be associated, not with racism and Social Darwinism, but with the fact that the early Nazi Party gave lip service to Socialism, then a large hurdle in reintroducing white supremacy and eugenics into the mainstream of political thought will be overcome.
This is not to claim that there is an organized effort afoot to revive these ideas. There does, however, seem to be a disorganized effort. Perhaps, much of what we see on the Internet is merely the product of youth, inexperience, and ignorance, and will evaporate harmlessly as the Internet population ages and mature. But while people do and should have a right to post whatever crazy theory they have on the Internet, it's a good idea to keep track of those crazy theories, and to counter them, at least occasionally, with reason and facts.
Otherwise, we could wake up one morning appalled to discover what has been accepted as the truth, and what has been rejected.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 19:46 (UTC)I think of revisionist history in general: the idea that anyone of any ideology can twist historical fact to suit his present worldview.
Hence why I find it absurd that any of today's political machines can blame Hitler on any of the others. He came first. Any attempt to lump him in with any of today's parties is invalid; we can conjecture all we like, but Hitler and his Nazi party stand alone.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:09 (UTC)Yes, in the year 2010, a decade after this essay was written.
de: Hence why I find it absurd that any of today's political machines can blame Hitler on any of the others.
It's not just "today's political machines" who "blame" the right for Hitler. His contemporaries did on both the right or the left. Trying to paint him as a leftist is a damnable lie, and an insult to the countless leftists he murdered.
de: but Hitler and his Nazi party stand alone.
Only if you carefully unfocus your eyes and pretend that history has no relevance.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:21 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:21 (UTC)Ten years, in the gap between the millennium and the end of World War II, is not that long. I used the word "revisionist" as I use it now; it has the same context. Doesn't mean I'm any less passionate about what happened. It means I was taught to use the word differently. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to which circles think of "Holocaust revisionism" first -- I haven't run across them.
Whether Hitler came from what we now think of as right-wing or left-wing origins, the outcome was the same: he took a philosophy and twisted it until he found a way to take out what he believed were undesirables. That twisting renders the original question null and void, to my mind. I don't care where he got his ideas. I care that what he did with them killed a vast amount of innocent people, and I'd like to prevent anyone else doing that again, right, left, or center.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:27 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:32 (UTC)How about being power-mad, murderous maniacs?
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:34 (UTC)I think of Zinn first.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:39 (UTC)Dehumanization.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:40 (UTC)Well, let's look at your list and see who that applies to.
Both the "right" and the "left" are racist.
Both the "right" and the "left" espouse various permutations of this.
Both the "right" and the "left" do this, in different ways.
Not something tied to Hitler. The best you can say is that he didn't like Communists, and that's similar to the fight between Trotsky and Lenin. So, not a relevant comparison point for now.
No one in the U.S. advocates this. At best you have some who put logic ahead of empathy, and these are generally on the "right", sure.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:45 (UTC)One-Hitler is not a Leftist under even the Stalinist/Maoist understandings of the word. The Left is for labor and for state ownership of the means of production. Hitler was for an all-encompassing tribal state.
Two-In his own lifetime Genghis Khan had far more haters than he ever did allies. With the receding of centuries, Moderns nowadays look at the Mongol Peace and ignore the leveling entire towns to make pyramids of skulls. That Hitler becomes less a ogre and figure of fear and more human and more within a broader context is inevitable.
Three-Mass murder very obviously isn't mass murder. The USA simply succeeded in doing it to blacks and to Indians for centuries. Germany and Japan and Italy failed extremely spectacularly. That's the only difference.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:47 (UTC)And until they actually start thinking that the same solutions fit our problems, I'll be over here not particularly caring whose politics Hitler would have liked today. The man's dead. Time we buried him.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:49 (UTC)It's been a long time since I've heard anyone supporting Grossdeutschland extending from the Pyrenees to Volga-Archangelsk.
Hitler *did* support these things, but what got him his support was a promise to undo the Diktat of Versailles and what kept his support was that everyone else was led by idiots in comparison to his own chaotic system of government. Hitler was a pan-German in an era when every single flaw you stated was typical of the Western world at the time as a whole.
The only thing Hitler did different was to commit a massive genocide on white men. If Herr Hitler had been from Uganda nobody would have given a damn.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:50 (UTC)The Klan was not a leftist organization
Social Darwinism:
What "permutation of social darwinism" do you feel the left has embraced?
How has the left displayed "contempt for the poor and the sick?"
I'm sorry, but the claim that "a rabid hatred of liberals and leftists" was not tied to Hitler could be made only by someone who knows next to nothing about Hitler.
No one in the US rejects empathy? Sure they do. They imagine that logic and empathy are opposites.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:51 (UTC)Nazism feared an all-encompassing racist conspiracy that somehow turned the Jews, languishing in Ghettos into an all-powerful force intent on destroying Western civilization. Everything evil was Jewish.
Stalinism feared the Kulak, defined as a rich peasant and to this end unleashed mass slaughter of people who by Western standards were well.....
Maoism demonized the gentry and intellectuals of China, coming as it did from a POV of agrarian revolution as opposed to the working-class based revolutionary ideology of the Soviet Union.
Pol Pot saw intellectuals as the enemy. Full-stop.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:52 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:53 (UTC)Well, there *was* a time when the Left following in the lead of Mao and Stalin believed that forcible collectivization was the shit....
Yes. But not in the United States. Here Samuel Gompers and Eugene V. Debs really *did* give a damn, which is why Debs was put in a political prison by Woodrow Wilson.
The problem is that today's "Left" in the United States and the meaning of "liberal" in Hitler's time have precious little to do with the meanings they have in ours.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:54 (UTC)I didn't like W and certainly consider any number of actions he authorized, be it Guantanamo or waterboarding or the ham-fisted provisions of the Patriot Act tyrannical, but I didn't agree with Godwining him. Until one of these guys start putting people to death, there's no valid comparison.
(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 14/5/10 20:56 (UTC)Hitler was against Communism with a capital C. Given that Stalinists were engaged at the time in mass murder of millions no matter how low you slice it and that there had been Soviet-backed full-fledged coups and insurrections in Berlin and Bavaria following World War I.....
Let's just say that in the aftermath of the failed attempt to create the Bavarian Socialist Republic and the demonstration of the power of the Freikorps, a movement like Nazism would gain mass adherence. If the Commies had never launched the putsches, Hitler would even after WWI have remained on the fringes. Instead they launched two failed ones which would have still been fresh in the memory of Germans in the 1930s.
Leaving aside, of course, how the KPD was a paramilitary totalitarian movement in its own right, dancing to the tune of its Soviet puppetmaster.....