[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s a result of the failure of the right, the German people elected a moderately leftist government to lead the nation's rebuilding. It was named the Weimar Republic for the city in which the new post-imperial constitution was written. The new government was led by Friedrich Ebert, head of the German Socialist Party.

But the country's new parliamentary system had allowed dozens of parties to run, making it impossible for any one party to win an outright majority. Ebert's party had achieved the highest portion of votes, 38%, in the first post-War elections, held in January 1919. Ebert would have to govern by coalition.

It was at this time that the right wing made its crucial decision. Despite its shocking, naked failure over the prior decade, despite the horrific devastation it had wrought on the German people, despite the discrediting of everything they had purported to stand for, they would fight Ebert, his new government, and its plans for recovery. They would do everything they could to make sure that the new government failed.

Their strategy was two-fold: first, stoke the resentment of the population about the calamitous state of its living conditions-no matter that those conditions had been created by the very right-wing oligarchs who now pretended to befriend the little guy. Rage is rage. It is glandular and unseeing. Once catalyzed it is easy to turn on any subject.

And stoking resentment was easy to do. Just before the War ended, the military concocted its most sensational lie: the German army hadn't actually been defeated. It had been "stabbed in the back" by communists, traitors, and Jews. It was an easy lie to sell. It entwined an attack on an alien political ideology - liberalism- with the latent, pervasive myth of German racial superiority.

The second strategy of the right was to prevent the new government from succeeding. To begin with, success of the left would conspicuously advertise the failure of the right. Moreover, success by the left would legitimize republican government, so hated by the oligarchs of the right. Much better for the people to be ruled by the self-aggrandizing right-wing autocracy that had governed Germany for centuries.

So the rightists set out to do everything they could to make it impossible for the leftists to govern. They would use parliamentary maneuver, shifting coalitions, domination of the new mass media, legislative obstruction, staged public relations spectacles, relentless pressure by narrow but powerful interests, judicial intimidation and, eventually, outright murder of their political opponents.

Contrition for their abject failure, humility for their destructive hubris, compassion for their crippled country-those had nothing to do with it. All they possessed was a blinding, visceral hatred of the left and a masturbatory lust for the return to power.

Eventually, they succeeded. Every setback in recovery - and there would inevitably be many - was met with hysterical demonizing of the left wing government. The lie was repeated relentlessly that the government was run by communists, traitors, and Jews-the same furtive cabal that had purportedly stabbed the country in the back at the end of the War. They steadily chipped away at the efficacy and, thereby, the legitimacy of successive republican governments.

[Ibon]

This text has parallels to our current situation and should give pause for concern that on this tight rope we are walking there is a grave risk that we could go down a dark path as Germany did afterwards. There is a huge main difference though. We are not unified as an Aryan nation. We do believe in our exceptionalism in a nationalistic sense but we shouldn't forget that the white race in America is barely a majority and in not to long from now will lose that position. How will we unify our identity? And against what enemy? Mexicans, Iranians, terrorists, muslims?

The world was a different place in the 30's in that race and culture and nations where crystalized in their own camps. Today is different. I don't see the clear lines being drawn as it was in the 30's where you could demonize your enemy.

It seems we could apply this tyranny and neo fascism only against ourselves internally.

How would the elite and wealthy manipulate the playbook to create an enemy that would take us down that path. Where and who is the enemy?

I don't see it. This is all pure frustration and rage and has no real long term traction. Hope I'm wrong.

[Ayoob]

Multiculturalism was a bad idea to begin with, and now its disastrous consequences are going to visit us at home. We haven't fought a war on our own soil in quite a long time.

[Oakley]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'M')ulticulturalism was a bad idea to begin with, and now its disastrous consequences are going to visit us at home. We haven't fought a war on our own soil in quite a long time.

[vtsnowedin]

That opening post is quite the diatribe. It forgets to mention the real cause of the failure of the Wiemar Republic which was the treaty of Versailles. It imposed such heavy war reparations on Germany that No government right or left could have succeeded.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ayoob', 'M')ulticulturalism was a bad idea to begin with, and now its disastrous consequences are going to visit us at home. We haven't fought a war on our own soil in quite a long time.

[Cid_Yama]

This was written a year and a half ago. Boy, did he call that playbook right.

They're following the same script.

[BasilBoy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ':')razz: That opening post is quite the diatribe. It forgets to mention the real cause of the failure of the Wiemar Republic which was the treaty of Versailles. It imposed such heavy war reparations on Germany that No government right or left could have succeeded.

[dsula]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'W')hich culture would you have preferred, among those that make up America?

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BasilBoy', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', ':')razz: That opening post is quite the diatribe. It forgets to mention the real cause of the failure of the Wiemar Republic which was the treaty of Versailles. It imposed such heavy war reparations on Germany that No government right or left could have succeeded.

[Plantagenet]

The National Socialists were just another group of totalitarian socialists like the communists---they were a party of the left.

The national socialist movement had its origin in the 19th and early 20th century international socialist movement. The fascists and the national socialists were those socialists who split from the socialist international during WWI when the socialist international proclaimed that all workers were brothers and so shouldn't fight for their countries---the facists and national socialists split from the socialist international and decided to fight for their countries, so the international socialists labelled them, as communists and socialists always do to splittist factions, as "rightists" ---- Cid and other leftists still use this terminology today.

But the German national socialists and Italian facists were socialist totalitarians---they never supported protecting individual freedoms from an expansive state or limiting the size of government----they were all about eliminating individual freedoms and exerting political control over the courts and media and maximizing governmental control of every part of society and private industry----and that puts them clearly on the left.

And just as there were "useful idiots" on the left who admired the socialist dictators of the USSR, there were useful idiots on the left who admired the national socialist dictators in Germany and Italy--- For instance, the famous author and British leftist H.G. Wells argued that liberals and progressives in Britain should become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis," as he told the Young Liberals at Oxford in a speech in July 1932.

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'T')he National Socialists were just another group of totalitarian socialists like the communists---they were a party of the left.

[efarmer]

Are they prone to being judgmental as well?

[Cid_Yama]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'F')ascism is a term used to describe authoritarian nationalist political ideologies or mass movements that are concerned with notions of cultural decline or decadence and seek to achieve a millenarian national rebirth by exalting the nation or race, and promoting cults of unity, strength and purity.

Fascists promote a type of national unity that is usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, national, racial, and/or religious attributes. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as among its integral parts: nationalism, militarism, anti-communism, totalitarianism, statism, dictatorship, economic planning (including corporatism and autarky), populism, collectivism, autocracy and opposition to classic political and economic liberalism.

[PrestonSturges]

And if you want to read about the commonalities of fascism and communism, you can read Erick Fromm and Karl Popper, who saw both first hand. The commonalities aren't in the politics at all, which is why the "liberal fascism" crowd comes across as total 'tards.

The commonality is that the same thieving rat-fink can't-mind-their-own-business petty sadists try to toady their way up the ladder of the both systems. That's how you can have people like Huck ridiculing people with pre-existiing conditions. The sadism is an essential part of the pitch.

The stuff that was written in the 1960's was more focused on the threat of communism. As recently as 1995, Ecco could not conceive of a situation where the middle class could to turned to Fascism, but he knew that when it happened television and the internet where a small group of astro-turf protesters would be pitched to the country as the "will of the people."

[dorlomin]

What a shockingly bad historiography of late WWI and early interbellum Germany. No mention of the widespread strikes and failed revolutions in the late WWI germany, what would be crucial in froming the "stabbed in the back" story. No mention of the use of Friekorps to suppress comunist revultionary coups in parts of Germany hence giving the ultra right a huge sense of legitimacy. No mention of Eberts signing of the Versialle treaty....

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')The national socialist movement had its origin in the 19th and early 20th century international socialist movement. The fascists and the national socialists were those socialists who split from the socialist international during WWI when the socialist international proclaimed that all workers were brothers and so shouldn't fight for their countries

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dorlomin', '
')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')The fascists and the national socialists were those socialists who split from the socialist international during WWI when the socialist international proclaimed that all workers were brothers and so shouldn't fight for their countries

[Quinny]

Some people just don't suffer fools gladly!

[PrestonSturges]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cid_Yama', '
')When I hear right-wing authoritarians try to define Fascists as being left-wing, it is either an attempt to hide they are fascists, or they don't like the idea that they could be fascists.
Attempting to redefine the term Fascist into it's opposite is very Orwellian and totalitarian.
Fascism has a very specific definition in the field of political science and is not open to interpretation.
Educate yourself.

[Cog]

I see Godwin's Law is alive and well on PO.