No more than we* use socialism to describe the fire department and public works administrations and the like. The only people who describe their policies as socialist are actual socialist (and communist) parties.
*“We” here meaning people who aren’t crazy right-wing ideologues who think the market would do a better job of putting out house fires and building roads and so on.
See the question mark on the end? It *wasn’t *a statement. And a big ole sheesh! right back atcha.
I don’t want to argue against the main point Hitler = left, as other dopers have already posted good arguments and facts about that.
I also didn’t read the currently 5 pages of thread, so maybe this lie* has been addressed already - in that case, apologies.
But I do want to point this out generally, before it becomes another lie spread around on the net.
The Nazis/ Hitler ** DID NOT** introduce or promote Public Health Care. This was done by the arch-conseravtive** Otto von Bismarck, starting in 1883.
The pillars of the German Social Security system (german wiki) and their start dates:
* 1883 Krankenversicherung (Public Health insurance)
* 1884 Unfallversicherung (Insurance against accidents at work)
* 1889 gesetzliche Rentenversicherung (ursprünglich Invaliditäts- und Altersversicherung) (Official pension fond, originally fond for invalids and old age; also pensions for widows and orphans)
* 1927 Arbeitslosenversicherung (unemployment insurance)
* 1957 Rentenreform: Einführung der dynamischen Rente (pension system reform to dynamic pensions)
* 1995 Pflegeversicherung (der Krankenversicherung angegliedert) (insurance for nursing in old age and for handicapped people, adjunct to public health insurance)
The reason that a conservative did this? Not for control of the population - in the militaristic prussian German Empire, citizens were already well-behaved.
It was - together with laws forbidding children work, affordable housing and other measures against extreme poverty - part of his campaign against socialism.
By removing on the one side the justified grievances of the workers and curbing the extreme excesses of Manchester-style capitalism = extreme libertarianism, he caught over the moderate workers threatening to move to socialist parties. On the other side, he made socialist parties themselves illegal.
At that time, workers were so underpaid that even with 12-hour days, they didn’t have enough money to save for emergencies; often the wife and even children had to work just to have enough money for food. If a worker fell ill, there was no money to pay the doctor or to buy medicine.
If a worker was injured, he was laid off by the employer, without money to pay for treatment, or feed his family.
If a worker was too old to work, or was killed on the job, there was too often no money left to provide for his family.
All of this made the workers desperate for revolution, and prevented prosperity.
Today, the rich people and top managers in Germany and other European countries wouldn’t dream of getting rid of Public Health insurance, because they know how much society benefits having healthy workers, and having consumers who aren’t bancrupted by health care costs of half a million or more, as more and more middle-class families in the USA are facing.
** It’s true that Bismarck was a staunch monarchist with disdain for democracy who once called the parlament a talking shop. He was also violently against Socialism and Communism - which at that time, the founding of the German Empire - were only political theories; this was long before the October revolution!
NO. Not in the normal reality. Whoever told you this is an unreliable, deluded source.
Europeans differentiate closely between communism, socialism and social state/ social democracy, which many Americans seem to lump together into “red=bad”. This is appallingly stupid and uneducated about real history for Europeans, and paranoid to the extreme.
Not even our crazy conservatives would call taking taxes so the state can provide the basic services that are necessary as “stealing / taking our money”, what so many American liberatarians scream about.
No politican with a hope of being elected would talk about abolishing the social system. They try the underhand method of talking about the Sozialschmarotzer (social parasites) that abuse the system, and try to chip away at it, and so in order to prevent the safety net from becoming a hammock, they instead cut so many services that the safety net has turned into a net with more holes than catching power.
Interesting. Thanks, constanze, I didn’t realize the introduction of public health care in Germany was actually designed to curb the spread of socialism.
And as always, one is astounded by the right’s ability to simply twist the historical record to fit their agenda, without the slightest real concern for truth or accuracy. No matter how many times I see it, I’m still always gobsmacked; if a conservative makes an argument, you can with assume the exact opposite of his claims are true, with an accuracy rate of about 95%.
I’ve read a lot about Bismark, and have one overiding conclusion: I’m really glad he’s dead.
American conservatives will no doubt brush it off as evidence of Bismarck capitulating to the socialists. :rolleyes:
Hitler would be severely insulted to be called a man of the left.
Heck, I don’t think Bismarck, father of the welfare state, was especially of the left.
You win the “Understatement of the Decade” prize.
I do try.
They’re called “welfare queens” or “welfare cheats” over in the States. But the approach is the same.
Of course he’d want to be known as a Leftist. Leftists are well-known for their Aryan superiority theories and their violent anti-cultural leanings.
Especially in Europe, right? I mean, it’s not like Europe, with its multiplicity of languages, defined Right & Left on ethnocentricism/internationalism lines, right?