If you told me 5 years ago that at this time weâd have a president that was palling around with the leaders of NK, Russia, China, and Turkey, and that Republicans and Fox News were totally cool with this Iâd think you were mad.
As I see it, populism tends to be about simple answers to complex problems, which is usually a bad idea. And easily co-opted by unscrupulous demagogues and existing elites.
Lynching is still a lynching⌠and they were chased out of western NY before any of that happened.
Sometimes they do, but they often donât. And both of those (ideological meanings and lived meanings) tend to shift over time anyway⌠which is where historians come in! 
I donât advocate lynching at all. Tar and feathering is humiliation. Running out of town on a rail is forced expulsion. Neither require harming anyone really aside from rope burn and skin irritation.
In anycase, joe earned his expulsion from ny too. He kept promising gullible people wealth amd treasure over and over. Taking their money, living on their land, refusing to work or repay for years.
Hot take, vaguely directed at @RedFury : Yup. They really were socialist. However, the way they were socialist is so general that it (a) captures nearly every government of the time and since and, (b) therefore cannot possibly be used as an argument against socialism which is what the people asking the question really want to do. Since if Nazi = socialist, Nazi = bad, socialist = bad logic hold it can be applied to, effectively, every single government in the world.
Which, if you are a Von Mises Institute doctrinaire libertarian⌠yeah. You actually probably believe, but donât expect anyone outside that circle to agree with you on account of that logic.
Nazis represent an unutterably horrible political position not because of their views on economics, but their views on the wholesale industrialized slaughter of human beings.
(They were in favor)
No. They werenât. Please read all the very detailed posts that addresses that point. They were not by todayâs definition of a socialist or by the definition of the time. USING the term doesnât make it a fact.
I didnât say you did? The Smith brothers WERE lynched. His brother was shot in the face, and Joseph was chased out a second story window. This was after the tar and feathering, which while certainly not a lynching, are most certainly deeply unpleasant and a form of torture.
Did his followers? I suspect the polygamy played a role here, too.
But somehow weâve managed to derail a derail from a derail by having a debate on a very different historical topic! This might be the geekiest thing Iâve seen all day!
They arenât by the definition I use, sure. Or the one most historians and political theorists use. But they totally were by the definition heavy-duty libertarians use. The point of my post was that even accepting this definition which is quite the concession, you still canât get to the desired rhetorical stopping-point, viz. âsocialism is bad because Hitler.â
I have read the other posts. Thatâs why I wrote mine, because I think itâs important to point out that even if youânot @Mindysan33-you, a rhetorical, libertarian youâthink we all are using a wrong, evil, culturally-Marxist definition of socialism you still donât get to win, rhetorically.
And i could keep going. You will not find a source saying that the Nazis were actual socialists that isnât from a right wing, ideological venue.
And yes this is high school social studies stuff. Most junior and high school history curriculums cover the Nazis early rise, and relationship to socialism as part of the lead up to WWII.
The occurrence of âsocialismâ on their name, and aping of socialist rhetoric is part of an well understood, and documented, branding effort. Essentially propaganda intended to appeal to the working class, and obscure the partyâs seat on the far right of German politics. The Nazis took pains to portray themselves in a wholly nationalist light, and as such portrayed itself as containing and drawn from all areas of the political spectrum. Both to create the illusion of discourse, and to portray Nazism as something wholly new, and uniquely German.
But even as they did that. They also portrayed them selves as the alternative to socialism and communism. Most of their early actions as a group were physical attacks on socialist groups, and communists and labor unions. And especially once Hitler got involved they scare mongered widely about a communist or socialist uprising. And portrayed both as Jewish conspiracies against Germany funded by foreigners. Especially once in power they described themselves as fascist, associated with other fascist movements (especially the Italians which is where the name comes from). And none of their policies or even their overall ecconomic approach could be described as socialist. They destroyed the labor movement, stocked their leadership with wealthy business owners. And union members, socialists, communists and assorted leftist were among the classes of descentors who were banned, targeted, and sent to the camps.
This is all recorded and represented in plain language, in original sources. There is little room for reinterpreting it.
No one serious argues that authoritarianism is the exclusive purview of the right. The idea that this is the default idea, is a right wing straw man intended to portray authoritarianism as the exclusive purview of the left.
There is zero support for the idea that Nazis were actual socialists among actual, credentialed historians political scientists and in academia in general. The claim is rooted in right wing attempts to smear their opponents, and portray authoritarianism as the exclusive purview of the left.
Accepting this claim is not a matter of being open minded or well read. It is a matter of accepting the Naziâs own propaganda at face value. Which is why this claim is so often associated with Holocaust Denial. And of being unaware (as in not well read) on the actual details of Nazi ideology and the history of their rise.
You arenât better informed because you drank the koolaid. This is not open mindedness. This is cherry picking and credulity for the sake of being contrarian. At best.
So, I hear you like derails and historyâŚ
Meta as F.
Just a minor derailment:
What if theyâd welded a 6 foot digging bar to the tracks at a 45 degree angle? I have the feeling that torsion force may have done a more reliable job than cleanly snipping out bits of track.
Hereâs I understand the democratic critique.
Society is stratified into classes-- social classes, political classees, economic classes, political classes, civil classes. Your rights, and consequenbtly, your ability to control your fate depends on which class you belong to. And this is unjust, (The more dedicated democracies, realizing that direct democracy is terribly unweildy, propose to assign political office by lottery, thus removing the bane of political classes)
In Marxism-- your civil,. social, religious, and even your political class do not matter next to your economic class-- where one derives ones income. Having solved that problem, it stands to reason that the end result-- a classless society-- is also a democratic one. Thus-- the German Democratic Republic.
Wedge beats edge
Point beats edge, but thatâs more suited to swords than trains.
You jest, but people do literally believe this on the far right.
It is far from the nuttiest thing people believe on the far right too.
And often was a death sentence, since it was hot tar. If the initial burns didnât kill you, the resulting infection probably would.
Cut for graphic and disturbing content
Hot tar, feathers still covered in chicken or goose shit and literally having to peel your skin off to get it all off you, in the absence of antibiotics and most likely any medical care whatsoever⌠Itâs not as amusing as the cartoons make it out to be.
