Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

Comment by martinced | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

"The man that Germany’s baby boomers loathed as the archetype of fascism, a living symbol of the evil Nazi-ish past, actually was a Stasi hero, a loyal servant of Communism"

Two sides of the exact same coin. Hitler himself repeatedly stated that communists would make perfect nazis once he'd have conquered russia.

National socialism and communism really aren't that far apart: Hitler did adopt 8 of Marx's ten major points of communism.

That an ex-nazi in free western germany would actually be a Stasi agent is really not surprising at all.

These kind of person are the ennemy of freedom and the ennemy of individual liberties. They'll do anything they can to work for an ever bigger and ever more restrictive state.

Socialists refuse to admit that national socialism was actually an ideology from left and keep telling that if Hitler was allied with Italy and Japan nazis were right-wing fascist. But that logic has its limits.

Statism is statism. Planned economy is planned economy. An article like this one only reinforce the notion that what I know is not wrong: communism and national-socialism are two sides of the same coin.

Hitler wanted to rule alone, hence his wish to annihilate Stalin and to convert russians into nazis. But it's not because Hitler wanted to replace Stalin that nazism suddenly becomes a free-market, liberal, ideology where individual liberties would be the most important thing.

A different, in my opinion more sane, way to look at these things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8B6DRsw4_o

and

A good way of finding out who won a war, who lost a war, and what the war was about, is to ask who's cheering and who's depressed after it's over - this can give you interesting answers.

So, for example, if you ask that question about the Second World War, you find out that the winners were the Nazis, the German industrialists who had supported Hitler, the Italian Fascists and the war criminals that were sent off to South America - they were all cheering at the end of the war. The losers of the war were the anti-fascist resistance, who were crushed all over the world. Either they were massacred like in Greece or South Korea, or just crushed like in Italy and France. That's the winners and losers. That tells you partly what the war was about.

Now let's take the Cold War: Who's cheering and who's depressed? Let's take the East first. The people who are cheering are the former Communist Party bureaucracy who are now the capitalist entrepreneurs, rich beyond their wildest dreams, linked to Western capital, as in the traditional Third World model, and the new Mafia. They won the Cold War. The people of East Europe obviously lost the Cold War; they did succeed in overthrowing Soviet tyranny, which is a gain, but beyond that they've lost - they're in miserable shape and declining further. If you move to the West, who won and who lost? Well, the investors in General Motors certainly won. They now have this new Third World open again to exploitation - and they can use it against their own working classes. On the other hand, the workers in General Motors certainly didn't win, they lost. They lost the Cold War, because now there's another way to exploit them and oppress them and they're suffering from it.

-- Forum with John Pilger and Harold Pinter in Islington, London, May 1994

I am sorry, I only just realized.. I forgot to mention that the last quote is by Noam Chomsky (and it's too late to edit the post).

> Socialists refuse to admit that national socialism was actually an ideology from left

Sounds great if you don't let facts get in the way of your world view. Communists, socialists and social democrats (read: the left) where fighting the Nazis in the streets before Hitler even came to power, they were the ones who openly resisted in parliament and they were the first to be cast into concentration camps when Hitler came to power. All while the right readily embraced the Führer...

"Communists, socialists and social democrats (read: the left) where fighting the Nazis in the streets before Hitler even came to power"

Sorry, that's not persuasive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

Internecine wars are always the most bloody. Ask the ghost of Leon Trotsky, or are you going to argue that he wasn't a communist? Maybe Ernst Röhm wasn't a Nazi?

This is utter bullshit. It is hardly a war if only one side is doing all the murdering, incarcerating and driving people into exile.

The political right had a long history of political murder and prosecution all throughout the Weimar Republic, long before 1933, which just intensified afterwards. The murders auf Jaurès in France, of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in Berlin, Eisner in Munich, the extrajudicial killings (and subsequent dismissed court cases) by various Freikorps were all aimed at leftist activists. The expatriation lists of the German Reich were also further acts against the political left, especially its intellectuals and journalists. Ossietzky's incarceration and Tucholsky's exile were further indicators, alongside the exile of many other prominent intellectuals, among them Brecht, Adorno, Horkheimer, Benjamin (whose suicide is a direct consequence), Marcuse, the Manns, A. Zweig, S. Zweig and many, many more.

The National Socialists were from the very get-go utterly opposed to any form of leftist political activity, and many paid the price.

"It is hardly a war if only one side is doing all the murdering, incarcerating and driving people into exile."

Losing a war doesn't make it not a war.

So you're arguing that Communists don't do exactly the same thing when they take power?

Please read my comment and the part quoted again. I have made no such claim, and I have, in fact not even touched upon such arguments.

My whole argument is based around the fact that you are trying to equate things that are in fact very distinctly different. The whole point is that the history of Weimar Germany is everything but an internal fight, unlike both historical events you mentioned.

The German Left and the German Right leading up to 1933 are very distinct groups, with specific affiliated cultures, outlets, forerunners etc. Equating the events leading up to fascist rule in Germany with the in-group fighting you mention is a) misleading and b) void of any historical precedent. The two distinct blocs have never been a coherent group that then splits into two factions. They have never been united and have always been very easy to tell apart. Bismarck's Sozialistengesetze are just one of the many examples of the clear and effective divide between the Left and the Right, both in the Kaiserreich and subsequently during the Weimar Republic.

I know you are trying to make an overly generalised point equating left and right, however, this does not make your view any more substantiated. Historical evidence, recent (and not-so-recent) scholarship, as well as cultural history suggest that the equation you make is a crass reduction -- and thus oversimplification -- of the actual, very complex historical process for the sake of the popular argument that left and right are the same, and that any conflict between them is an internal conflict.

"the popular argument that left and right are the same, and that any conflict between them is an internal conflict."

They are, and it is.

The only useful distinction here is that between liberty and slavery.

If you selectively quote, why not at least make an effort instead of just quoting what seems to reinforce your point of view, ignoring the critique of your standpoint?

There doesn't seem to be a point trying to argue with you, since you already decided that you are right and therefore beyond critique.

If you can actually argue your point instead of just off-handedly quoting wrongly equated wikipedia articles then please do, since I'd be interested in hearing you out. Otherwise, what's the point?

You write as if you weren't aware of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov–Ribbentrop_Pact

I don't know how it is where you live, but where I grew up (Sweden), the left has never supported a democratic country against a dictatorship... The communists stopped being Stalinists when Moscow told them Stalin wasn't in, anymore.

Etc...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com