Orwell's review of Mein Kampf

boing
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When Mein Kampf was published in 1927, the Nazis were still trying to bring in people from the other political parties, meaning the far right anti-Semitic groups, while making a lengthy attack on trade unions and the Social Democrats. Nazism, like most examples of Fascism, was a “Volkish” (populist) movement rooted in rural Christian culture which was obsessed with stopping race mixing. He also appealed to veterans of WW1 to build the SA and have street battles with the trade unions and communists. Mein Kampf fetishizes the military. Opposition to the Nazis was in the cities and universities, even though the universities were staffed by very conservative faculty (Germans born in the 19th century) and it was Hitler that went after them, not vice versa. Hitler’s purge of the universities led to shortages of engineers and chemists during the war.

Anyway, here’s a summary of Nazi propaganda talking point from Mein Kampf and a couple other sources:

Things The Nazi Were Against:
Trade unions
Communists
“Social justice”
“Liberals”
“The liberal press”
“Socialism”
“Socialists”
“Democrats”
“Social Democrats”
“Civil Rights”
Liberal “envy”
Liberal class warfare (“class struggle”)
Empathy
Homosexuals
Pacifists
Atheists
Secularists
Religious tolerance
Mixed marriages
Contraception
Sex education
Immigrants
Elections
Multiculturalism
Bilingual anything
Universal education
Art that does not glorify the state
Darwin and teaching evolution
Einstein and relativity
Elementary teachers who don’t teach nationalism
University professors
People who don’t support the troops
…and of course Jews
Things The Nazis Were For:
Crushing unions (Enabling Act 1933)
Promising church/state cooperation (Enabling Act announcement)
State take-over of local government (Reich Local Government Law of 1935)
Federal regulation of marriage and sex (Nuremberg Laws)
Pre-emptive war
State religion
“Positive Christianity”
Conspiracy theories
Undermining voter’s faith in elections and parliament
Reducing history to broad populist themes of white victimization
Claiming whites are the victims of racist liberals
A “spiritual” movement that creates ruthless, unwavering violence
Values education in the schools
Censorship
Reducing science education
School “reform” using business people
College students ratting out professors for lack of loyalty
Voting restrictions
Torture
Abstinence
Early marriage
High birth rate
State control of the media, arts, and science
Personality cults
Making nationalism part of the school curriculum
Worship of an idealized version of the past
Rebellion against “weak” authority
Blaming minorities and immigrants for everything
Invoking destiny and being judged by history
Pandering to Christians
Promising the cooperation of church and state
Claiming to do “God’s will”
Calling liberalism a mental illness (“madness”)

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What a brilliant example of projection you have shown us.

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Honestly! It’s a good time to remember that the Nazis always whipped themselves up themselves as the victims of liberals, intellectuals, atheists, Jews, and “the liberal press” (yes Hitler said that). Various people who analyzed the psychology of the Germans to figure out how normal people could commit such atrocities described the culture as being militaristic but also a bunch of rude pouty whining spoil sport sore losers. You know, the sort of people that lose an election and immediately start reaching for their guns and disenfranchising voters (which they did).

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I’m sorry, I must’ve imagined the bit about conservatives being compared to Hitler!!!.

Or is he not considered evil anymore?

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Liberals and conservatives claim to be the victims of one another. So if claiming to be the victim makes one a Nazi fellow traveler, well, I guess we’re all Nazis, now!

And please remind me. Did that armed insurrection against Washington occur in late 2008? Or was it in 2009? I seem to forget.

While we’re on the subject of rude pouty whining spoil sport sore losers: while conservatives tend to claim the media is biased, liberals tend to assert that the electoral system is rigged. Hitler made both those claims, so again, we’re all Nazis, I suppose.

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Ah, I didn’t see this one before. If “decent conservatives” ought to read Mein Kampf, you should at least consider a refresher.

As a technical matter, Hitler did disband the Wiemar trade unions. But as a practical matter, he nationalized them. He replaced the unions with the German Labour Front (DAF), which behaved as an intermediary between workers and owners, setting wages, providing job security, social security, regular hours and breaks, etc. It also made membership compulsory to getting a job, something unions to this day fight for.

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I have to ask, are you a Holocaust denier? Just asking.

Hitler talks about the future system where unions are an extension of the company. The companies held the working papers of the workers, so they could not change jobs. Unemployment was simply made illegal. People that complained were sent to brutal labor camps.

This was not a “technical matter,” he killed or jailed the union labors immediately after passage of the Enabling Acts (spring 1933), smashed their offices, and seized their assts. This is more than disbanding the unions.

Also, Hitler made it clear that it would be illegal for Nazi trade unions to strike. I think it’s pretty likely hitler was fishing for money from wealthy industrialists rather than sympathy from the union members he would later kill

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.

In a cozy relationship of egalitarian brotherhood (featuring slave labor)

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.

You are providing a good example Nazi apology by extreme cherry picking of Nazi propaganda, trying to convince people that Hitler was actually a pretty nice guy.

Here, let’s see what else Hitler said about unions in Mein Kampf:

Naturally, it’s Jews Jews Jews, all the way down.

…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…

Declare war on the very idea of a trade union

…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….

Sabotage trade unions 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…

Early factions of the party wanted unions, but within 5 years this was taboo in the party. Hitler refers to the party platform of 1922, which Nazi apologists love to quote because it had virtually nothing to do with the Nazi party of WW2, 15 years later. Hitler makes it clear that even in 1922 the pro-union influences on the Nazi party were marginalized and by the time of Mein Kampf (1927) the party was solidly anti-union.

… 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.

And here’s the real point - smashing the trade unions to weaken the Nazis main opponents, the Social Democrats. Sound familiar? I sure sounds a lot like the GOP’s current political strategy

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.

I bet we could a very similar line to that last bit in The Road To Serfdom.

Heh, that wasn’t even hard…

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Well there’s these petulant assholes

[quote=“tryanmax, post:66, topic:39247”]
While we’re on the subject of rude pouty whining spoil sport sore losers: while conservatives tend to claim the media is biased, liberals tend to assert that the electoral system is rigged. [/quote] Movement conservatives are convinced that Democrats used “voter fraud” to the tune over 5,000,000 votes in 2008 and 2012.

[quote=“tryanmax, post:66, topic:39247”]Hitler made both those claims, so again, we’re all Nazis, I suppose.
[/quote]And that’s pretty much the essence of the modern Nazi apologist right there.

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Tea party movement
Denial of equal rights
Prevention of health care reform
Unwillingness to pass Immigration bill
Attempts to unify state and church
…

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Holocaust denier? It doesn’t take much to get you into ad hominems, does it?

In other words, syndicalism, one of Marxism’s many flavors. Ha! Even simpler.

I’m tired of your lengthy, contorted, and yes, cherry-picked assertions. I continue to defer to the man himself:

If I am an apologist, then I am a very strange one, indeed, finding Hitler aligned with a philosophy I oppose. Perhaps I should be asking you whether you deny the Holocaust?

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Wow! That’s an amazing leap, conflating near-anarchic anti-federalism with authoritarianism.

I know that 5 million figure is straight from your butt. Where should I suppose your other ideas come from?

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I’d still argue the period of modernity was a unique thing in regards to the creation of nation-states/ethnic identities and its impact. The argument lots of European historians have about this topic is whether or not the rise of the nazis was a slip back into barbarity, hence “anti-enlightenment” in nature, retrograde (Goldhagen is kind of this camp of thought) or if it was the culmination of the system of enlightenment which, despite it’s pretty language, was really just intellectually prettifying and justifying deeply brutal colonial systems (more along the lines of Arendt and the Banality of evil thinking or more to the point, much of the post-colonial, post-modern school of thought - classification).

But if it had been so bad, all the time, wouldn’t all European Jews converted a long time ago? They obviously hadn’t. And of course, people could have converted into the religion, too.

I have no problem separating the two. Israel is a state who has some bad policies. People are not states.

Yes. They often do that. It’s pretty sad, actually. You’d think a state, formed specifically to act as a safe space for persecuted people, would not go around persecuting people. But that binary, nationalistic, jingoistic mind set is pretty hard to get rid of once it’s unleashed.

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[quote=“tryanmax, post:71, topic:39247, full:true”]
Holocaust denier? It doesn’t take much to get you into ad hominems, does it?[/quote]

I notice you aren’t answering. but I ask that because you happen to using the same arguments as many Holocaust deniers.

[quote=“tryanmax, post:71, topic:39247, full:true”]
PrestonSturges said:
Hitler talks about the future system where unions are an extension of the company.

In other words, syndicalism, one of Marxism’s many flavors. Ha! Even simpler. [/quote]

Workers owning the means of production is the opposite of the Nazi system of slave labor and forced labor.

Emotionally, what are you getting out being a public idiot Nazi apologist?

Cherry picked as in page after page of direct quotes versus your odd snippets?

More than you realize, cupcake, more than you realize.

(edited for clarity)
Did he say that? That wasn’t in an authoritative book like “Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich” or a transcript of any speech. It was a “quote” from someone who left Germany in 1934 for the Untied States and made a nice career of parlaying his acquaintance with Hitler into mostly fictional popular books for the mass market. No doubt the Allies encouraged him to spin anti-nazi stories about how Hitler was closet Bolshevik. Some of his work was dropped as propaganda leaflets, so I guess that makes him an actual propagandist. Again, you can’t take the Nazi propaganda at face value and you can’t take the anti-Nazi propaganda at face value either, because it’s, you know, propaganda and not this other thing that we call “history.”

His Gespräche mit Hitler (Conversations with Hitler) was a huge bestseller but its credibility would later be severely criticised, and it now has no standing as an accurate document on Hitler for historians.

If you are a Nazi apologist, you are doing it exactly right - you are hinging your political identity on a couple of cherry picked or unsourced quotes and a buttload of ignorance.

As I explained way upthread, to be a Nazi apologist, just lie about what Hitler said, then claim that the lie proves you aren’t a Nazi lover.

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And who is spreading all these lies about poor poor Hitler? I’d love to here that conspiracy theory. Obviously it would involve the Jews, and what Hitler called “the liberal press,” and of course the various multicultural liberal henchmen (still waging the “war on whites” no doubt), and maybe George Soros as the demonic “International Jew” puppet master.

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If you weren’t so confident that you could leap down to the end of a thread without reading it, you’d answer the question without exactly the kind of maniacally defensive whining that the question predicts.

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Maniacal? Defensive? Clearly you speak a different dialect than I do.

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By all means, continue to avoid the question.

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The Nuremberg laws set the bar at 1/4 Jewish blood. German Jews were the most assimilated and cosmopolitan, so this was extra dramatic. The laws took a while to implement because they were so severe, and that was when they lost the support of the Christian churches (around 1938) because people who had been Christian for two generations were being rounded up as Jews.

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Of course Orwell was a socialist, which makes his popularity among goobers all the more entertaining. And Ayn Rand was a militant atheist who believed in free love and unlimited abortions.

You seem to be a fan (perhaps unknowingly) of Cleon Skousen who may have been the first person to be remembered for suggesting Hitler was a leftist in 1962. because there were lots of people that actually remebered WW2, he was widely regarded as being at least a little bit insane. And his critics noted that if one looked beyond this red herring argument that Skousen’s agenda was close to outright Fascism. He was considered too far right for the John Birch Society and the old segregated Mormon Church.

Skousen also believed that he was an LDS prophet, because nothing says “Hey I’m not insane!” like thinking you’re a prophet.

He languished in obscurity until being promoted by Glenn Beck, another totally-not-insane conservative with a very shaky grasp even on his own religion.

And this led to the very visible Skousen institute pamphlet in Cliven Bundy’s shirt pocket. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with Bundy’s Mormon faith, or he just feels the same comfort level of many evangelical Christians who also take the ramblings of a fringe self-styled Mormon “prophet” as the word of God - Elohim or Yahweh, I guess it’s all the same.

The “consitutional conservatices” love affair with Skousen and his ideas that Hitler was a leftist is apparently not dimmed by Skousen’s proposal to eliminate most of US society and replace it with a centrally planned economy.

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Nope.

For the sake of some kind of abstract justice, read the damned thread, then answer the question and stop wailing like a child. As for me, no, it does not matter. I’m just poking my nose in because you are complaining about big meanies when you have absolutely no clue of what’s being discussed. I’ll disengage now and let you get back to avoiding @PrestonSturges’s question.

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