# The straight dope on the Nazis: were they left or right/liberal or conservative? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 22, 2009, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316 "2009-05-22T18:27:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/41 "2009-05-24T07:24:26Z")
Conservatism is about preserving traditional institutions. Liberalism is about the rights of individuals. Yes, an oversimplification, but both are common and necessary in a healthy democracy. The Nazis were about power and bending the world to their will preferably by force. They were a radical rogue movement that captured the seats of power in one of the world’s most industrialized nations. It can happen again. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/42 "2009-05-24T08:25:23Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Had Hitler not come along and permanently married fascism with racism and genocide, I think fascism today would be considered by the left to be a decent experiment in using state power to correct the ‘flaws’ of the market. Aside from Italy being an economic basket case under Mussolini, sure. Take a look at the disaster that the Italian economy was attempting to support WW2 compared with say, Nazi Germany or the USSR under Stalin. Oh, and aside from the cult of personality required under all these forms of totalitarianism. And that tricky bit of beating up people in the streets. And eliminating any possibility of political opposition under a one party state. All of this is pretty much Obama, I can see where you can equate him and Mussolini and by extension the Democratic party to fascists. Obama is an obvious spiritual successor to Mussolini. > [@](#): > > I’ve said for years that modern American liberalism is much closer to fascism than it is to communism, and I stick by that. When I see liberals marrying their progressive views with isolationism and a desire for trade tariffs, coupled with the kind of corporatist ‘third way’ politics that Mussolini championed, the parallels get even stronger. I don’t even know how to respond to such absurdities. American liberalism is marching towards fascism? I must have missed the fliers about American liberalism being centered on a cult of personality around someone and their desire to seize power and outlaw any other political parties. Damn, and I even voted for Obama, I’m sure gonna regret that when he makes the USA a fascist state. Hopefully he’ll wind up shot and strung up by his feet just like Il Duce. > [@](#): > > The Nazis were about power and bending the world to their will preferably by force. They were a radical rogue movement that captured the seats of power in one of the world’s most industrialized nations. It can happen again. And this makes the Nazis different in practice than fascism or communism as a totalitarian state how again exactly? ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2009, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/43 "2009-05-24T08:39:41Z")
> [@](#): > > The Nazis were about power and bending the world to their will preferably by force. They were a radical rogue movement that captured the seats of power in one of the world’s most industrialized nations. It can happen again. My apologies for attributing this to **Sam Stone** rather than **The Second Stone**. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/44 "2009-05-27T02:39:30Z")
From [_The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,_](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300011h.html#part14) by George Orwell (1941): > [@](#): > > Socialism is usually defined as “common ownership of the means of production”. Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee. This does NOT mean that people are stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it DOES mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery, are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer. It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism, but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus (wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc etc) and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone sees his way to making a profit out of it. In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them. Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money, for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment. > > However, it has become clear in the last few years that “common ownership of the means of production” is not in itself a sufficient definition of Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes (it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class-system. Centralised ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government. “The State” may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party, and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money. > > But what then is Fascism? > > Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and—this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathise with Fascism—generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere EFFICIENCY of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen. > > But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human INEQUALITY, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognise any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have “proved” over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that nonnordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the “semi-apes” as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery. > > However horrible this system may seem to us, IT WORKS. It works because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest, and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker, to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective. It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed to those of the State. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/45 "2009-05-27T03:19:30Z")
Why do you assume Orwell is right? If nothing else he’s wrong in that Nazism didn’t “work”, and British capitalism did. The Nazi economy wasn’t efficient…it was horribly inefficient, and full of waste and obstruction. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/46 "2009-05-27T03:23:16Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Why do you assume Orwell is right? If nothing else he’s wrong in that Nazism didn’t “work”, and British capitalism did. Only by adopting “war socialism” for the duration. In any case, Orwell **was** right, if not about the relative merits of socialism and capitalism, then about the difference between socialism and fascism; which is what the thread is about. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/47 "2009-05-27T03:33:30Z")
[More on fascism.](http://www.johnreilly.info/fah.htm) Very, very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Lust4Life](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lust4Life](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lust4Life)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/48 "2009-05-30T18:35:00Z")
Haven’t read through all of the posts because some git keeps making me work damn him to heck and back! The Nazis used a title that would attract votes and popularity. It was not necessarilly true. Did you know that us Brits invented Concentration Camps? Yes we did,during the Boer War. But Adolf,who had a quite sly/cunning rating titled the camps where undesirables were abused,tortured and then murdered in masses in thirties Germany,Concentration Camps . So calling yourself a socialist,Buddhist,Vegan doesn’t mean bugger all. I used have a friend who was a severley Irish Socialist. She was also an extreme Nationalist. So I asked her … Are you a Nationalist Socialist ? Oh yes . So you’re a Nazi then? I’m going to pay for this I know. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/49 "2009-05-30T20:51:50Z")
Those sneaky liberalnazis. They managed to stockpile a weapon not invented until 1944. ---
**Author:** ![ShibbOleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/848f3c/32.png) [@ShibbOleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ShibbOleth)\ **Post date:** [May 30, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316/50 "2009-05-30T22:28:02Z")
Nazi = National Socialism, but just because a country or party puts a word in it’s name doesn’t mean much. Take, for example, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. It’s not much of a democracy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-straight-dope-on-the-nazis-were-they-left-or-right-liberal-or-conservative/497316.md?page=2)