Back to the 30’s: National Socialist and Republican Discourse part 4

By Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Part 4: Hatred of Liberals. This is the fourth installment of a detailed examination of the parallels between the Nazi movement in Germany and the new Republican methodology since the election of Obama. Also see parts 1, 2, 3, and 5.

“The Other” in National Socialist and Republican Discourse – Liberals

While foreigners are one form of bacilli threatening America, another is political in nature; a bogeyman for both National Socialists and Republicans are communists and socialists. In Republican discourse, the “liberal” has taken the place of the “Jew.”

As mentioned in the opening paragraph, the Right-wing likes to compare President Obama with Hitler, and liberalism with National Socialism. These arguments are ill-thought out and do not stand up to even a rudimentary inspection of the facts.

Yet somehow Ann Coulter, never known for the depth of her thought, comes to the bizarre conclusion that because Hitler expressed gratitude to Darwin and the theory of evolution, he was a liberal¹ – and therefore (since liberals are communists, she says) somehow a communist, and not a National Socialist at all?

FACT: Hitler’s hated liberalism. His views of liberalism are well documented.

Hitler had nothing good to say about liberalism and his view of liberalism was eerily similar to the Republican view.

This is what Hitler had to say:

“Liberalism led to democracy, and democracy would lead to communism.”² In Hitler’s worldview, liberals are anti-German.

Hitler, September 14, 1936, Nuremberg: “Bolshevism has attacked the foundations of our whole human order, alike in State and society, the foundations of our conception of civilization, of our faith and of our morals: all alike are at stake.”

This is what the Right-wing pundits have to say:

Ann Coulter: “Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.”³

Ann Coulter again: “”While the form of treachery varies slightly from case to case, liberals always manage to take the position that most undermines American security.”⁴

Get those liberal Weimar thugs, Dr. Goebbels! Oh, sorry, Ann…it’s easy to get confused.

Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) October 17, 2008, suggested that all that all liberal views — held by people such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, professors, and all Americans who identify themselves as “liberals” — are “anti-American.”

Robin Hayes (R-NC), October 19, 2008: “liberals hate real Americans that work and achieve and believe in God.”

Hitler, March 29, 1942, referred to Judaism as a form of “mental depravation”⁵ (Remember, Jews=Communists).

This is identical to the language used by Republicans with regards to Liberalism, as can be seen from Ann Coulter’s book title If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans (2007).

Liberalism is a form of mental aberration, of a lack of intellect. Intelligent people, good people, “real” Germans/Americans are National Socialists/Republicans.

Coulter’s pronouncement is something right out of Hitler’s mouth. The rhetoric is identical.

National Socialist discourse is Republican discourse. Let’s have another example. Remember the Reichstag Fire? Remember 9/11? Apparently, it was those damn liberals (communists) both times! Damn them, they’re out to destroy Germany, er, I mean, America:

Jerry Falwell: “The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this. … And I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way – all of them who have tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say: “You helped this happen.””⁶

Hey, Jerry…Hitler didn’t like feminists either: Consider for a moment Hitler’s speech to the National Socialist Women’s Organization in September 1934, and you will hear echoes from the American Right (or vice versa): “The phrase ‘women’s liberation’ is a phrase invented only by Jewish intellectualism, and its content is shaped by the same spirit.”⁷

Let’s pick up Ann Coulter’s logic string again (if we can use that term). If Hitler was a liberal and liberals are communists, Hitler was a communist…but that claim isn’t supported by Hitler’s attitude towards communism.

And how Hitler hated communism!

Hitler, February 1 1933 Berlin: “All about us the warning signs of this collapse are apparent. Communism with its method of madness is making a powerful and insidious attack upon our dismayed and shattered nation. It seeks to poison and disrupt in order to hurl us into an epoch of chaos…. This negative, destroying spirit spared nothing of all that is highest and most valuable. Beginning with the family, it has undermined the very foundations of morality and faith and scoffs at culture and business, nation and Fatherland, justice and honor.”

Hitler, September 14, 1936, Nuremberg: “Bolshevism has attacked the foundations of our whole human order, alike in State and society, the foundations of our conception of civilization, of our faith and of our morals: all alike are at stake.”

And like Republicans today, Hitler believed only strong-arm methods against the Left could stop the slide.

In a speech of 20 February 1933, significantly to leading German industrialists, Hitler stated that Bismarck’s statement that “Liberalism is the pacemaker of Social Democracy”is now scientifically established and proven for us” and warned that “a given school of thought – thought direction – can unsuspectedly lead towards the dissolution of the foundation of the state.”⁸

A modern comparison from the Right-wing in America comes from Glenn Beck, whose words echo Hitler. First Beck: “I, as a citizen, have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but that is not a guarantee of equal results.” – point 6 of Glenn Beck’s Nine Principles. Hitler (in the same speech to industrialists): “It is not by chance that one person accomplishes more than the other. The principle of private ownership…is rooted in this fact.”

Liberalism was represented by the Weimar Republic. Hitler opposed everything the Weimar Republic stood for. The problem for conservative arguments are that Hitler’s appeal was to conservatives. Liberals went to the concentration camps. Conservatives voted for him. Why?

If you look at what Hitler opposed, and what drew Christians to his cause, you find the same things Republicans oppose and the same things that draws Christians to their cause:

Godlessness, communism (which go hand in hand, after all – just ask Ann Coulter), homosexuality, abortion, modernity, a lack of order and indiscipline in society, sexual license, liberalism, prostitution, pornography, obscenity, coddling criminals, socialism.⁹

Bill O’Reilly complains that the alleged “War” on Christmas part of “secular progressive agenda” that includes “legalization of narcotics, euthanasia, abortion at will, gay marriage.”¹⁰

Unsurprisingly, Hitler voiced agreement:

Today Christians … stand at the head of [this country]… I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity .. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit … We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theater, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past … (few) years.¹¹

Hitler, March 23, 1933 Berlin: spoke of “a thorough moral purging of the body corporate of the nation” and of “the maintenance of the eternal values present in the essential character of our people.”

Compare Mein Kampf (which Ann Coulter dishonestly equates with Obama’s autobiography) to Ann Coulter.

First Hitler:

Parallel to the training of the body a struggle against the poisoning of the soul must begin. Our whole public life today is like a hothouse for sexual ideas and simulations. Just look at the bill of fare served up in our movies, vaudeville and theaters, and you will hardly be able to deny that this is not the right kind of food, particularly for the youth…Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea. – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1 Chapter 10

Now Ann Coulter:

“Americans cannot comprehend how their fellow countrymen could not love their country. But the left’s anti-Americanism is intrinsic to their entire worldview. Liberals promote the right of Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and Communists. They instinctively root for anarchy against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position is to be for treason.”¹²

Words, as shown here, literally right out of Hitler’s mouth.

So though Republicans like to call Hitler a liberal, he was in fact a conservative, and the German people who supported him were conservatives and moreover, not atheists or Pagans (both groups ended up, with liberals, in concentration camps) but conservative Christians, both Protestants and Catholics. We have already seen how he denounced liberalism and communism.

He also favored big business, he called for a renewal of values, he embraced morality and denounced immorality.

Take Hitler’s proclamation of February 1, 1933 on his assumption of power the day before: “It struck a conservative, revivalist, anti-communist tone.” – a description that might fit the Republican message of today:¹³

Communism with its method of madness is making a powerful and insidious attack upon our dismayed and shattered nation. It seeks to poison and disrupt in order to hurl us into an epoch of chaos…. This negative, destroying spirit spared nothing of all that is highest and most valuable. Beginning with the family, it has undermined the very foundations of morality and faith and scoffs at culture and business, nation and Fatherland, justice and honor.

Republicans like to claim Hitler that was a socialist but he was not. He was a capitalist, as his policies towards industry demonstrate. There is also the problem for conservatives today in attempting to “prove” Hitler was a socialist on the basis of his party’s name: the “socialism” in National Socialism was not socialism as Americans know it.

The Nazi conception of socialism in fact sounds very much like Republicanism: “The Nazis’ notion of socialism bore some resemblance to the ‘Prussian socialism’ of discipline, duty, and service advocated by such theorists of the ‘conservative revolution’ as Oswald Spengler.”¹⁴ Republican ideologues, including Coulter, decry liberals for having no conception of these things: discipline, duty, service. They cannot have it both ways.

As noted above, if the word “liberal” is substituted in place of “Jew” many of Hitler’s utterances could come directly out of the mouths of Republican pundits. Look for a moment at Point 24 of the 1920 NSDAP platform:

We demand freedom of religion for all religious denominations within the state so long as they do not endanger its existence or oppose the moral senses of the Germanic race. The Party as such advocates the standpoint of a positive Christianity without binding itself confessionally to any one denomination. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: The good of the state before the good of the individual.

Make this single change: “It combats a liberal-materialistic spirit within and around us, and is convinced that a lasting recovery of our nation can only succeed from within on the framework: The good of the state before the good of the individual.” Keep in mind now, as you read this, that Hitler equates Jews with “bolshevism” – in modern parlance, Communism/Socialism.

On might take a peek at the Conservapedia, which defines a liberal (communist/socialist) in basically the same terms as Hitler: someone who rejects Christianity and embraces a materialistic spirit: “A liberal (also leftist) is someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons.”¹⁵

We see on the same Conservapedia that conservative values are the same as National Socialist values when contrasted with the evils of Judaism/Liberalism: “placing ideas and principles above personal desire, weaknesses, fears and regrets” and “downplaying significance of wealth, disparities in wealth, and materialism in general,”¹⁶ whereas liberal values embody “Strict materialism.”¹⁷

Keep in mind as you read this Hitler’s hatred of liberals and leftists, a materialistic spirit, as well as his endorsement of a “positive Christianity” and the overwhelming support of German conservative Christians.

Finally, keep in mind that Germany, like America, for National Socialists and Republicans, was the bastion against the Red Tide: Hitler’s anti-communist rhetoric echoes Ann Coulters: “Only brainless dwarfs cannot realize that Germany has been the breakwater against Communist floods which would have drowned Europe and its culture.”¹⁸ And of course, only the right kind of people will stand up to the Communists: conservatives, real Germans/Americans – National Socialists and Republicans.

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