No nazi's left

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I am getting so bloody tierd of people caliming to nazi, they don't have any idea of what they are speaking of.

A nazi is a non-liberal yet non-conservative because certain race politics dind't exist when the Nazism was born.

The Nazism is a very capitalistic ideology and as seen from a totally economical veiw there have never been a better contry then Nazi-germany.

The race idelogy is a very little part of the Nazism but thats what most people associate it with.

So should we forever stop calling racists Nazi?

 

Unfortunately, the term "Nazi" will forever be associated with racism, specifically white supremacy. If someone wants to start a political movement that is non-liberal yet non-conservative, very capitalistic and very successful as seen from a totally economical view, they should pick a different name when they do so. It's a simple fact of human nature that people will forever associate something with a strong negative, even after significant time has elapsed.

If this bothers you so much, just let the word "Nazi" die and be done with it. What should matter to you are the virtues of the socio-economic and political principles, not the nomenclature.

As a sidenote, there are plenty of people in this world still who consider themselves "Nazis" and also subscribe to white-supremacist ideals. As long as these people are still around, any negative connotations to Nazism will always exist. There's nothing you can do about it.

 

There are a few positive connotations associated with Nazism such as a strict order and fanatical unity/devotion to a cause. However it's more often associated with a cause that nobody finds filled with virtue.

The term Nazi is just a term used to describe somebody who shows Nazi-like qualities and pursues a hateful/evil/immoral goal.

 

Stardust wrote:

And whoever gave you that idea? The Third Reich's economic policy consisted of plundering the occupied nations to finance the goodwill of its own people - and to fund the huge armament of course. Do you think that this should be archetypical for us?

And, besides: what is positive about strict order or fanatical devotion?

 

Thats what i mean you associate it with plundering and war. How do you think that Germany got the founds to rise that army? Did they plunder it withoiut armed forces?

And for your second line take a breif peek at the US, if the "war on terrorism" isn't "fanatical devotion" what would you call it then?

Besides that i dind't sugest that we would reform our own politics, our semi-capitalistic politics work fine (US and western europe).

 

I'd love to take a brief peek at your explanation for how the US is somehow guilty of fanatical devotion, especially in a comparable context to Nazi Germany.

 

Stardust, perhaps I don't get your point because it is as fuzzy as your spelling. I'll try again, and please correct me if I misread you somewhere. The liberal/conservative part aside, you say that a Nazi shouldn't be reduced to his racist ideology and genocidal behaviour, but that the good ol' Nazism had some other successful branches as well - namely the superior economic system.

My simple question is (never bothering to comment on the fact that brushing aside the dominating trait of Nazi ideology with a reference at economics is a bit adventurous): how do you measure the success of the Third Reich's economics? What distinguished their economic system from the ones of the US or Great Britain or, says, Sweden? And why do you refrain from adopting the best traits of such a superior system? Are our fine semi-capitalistic politics good enough for you, even if you're convinced that there's something better out there?

The answer is: what ho! Superior Nazi economics? You wish! Are you trying to make Nazism appear presentable, or what?!

The other point:
1. What has your question about the war on terrorism to do with my preceding question about the presumed positive connotation of fanatical devotion?
2. There are many things that the war on terrorism could be called. I don't see how fanatical devotion fits the bill, though. Who is fanatical? Bush? The U.S. Army? The people of the USA? Who? And devoted to what cause? Is anti-terrorism an ideology?

 

Unity of purpose and loyalty. Fanatical does not mean "burn the heatens" much like a dictator doesn't mean they have to be evil - just most are.

 

Hm, with this logic you could find something positive even in murder. Of course, the group of fanatical devotees feels that the common purpose is something positive, as well as the collective striving. But since "fanatical" is aligned with "uncritical" and stands in the way of reason, all aims of fanatics are unreasonable (otherwise we needn't call them fanatics). Most are dangerous and negative for society as a whole. Hence my question. But let's not fret about this, there really is not much space for disagreement here, is it? It is all about semantics anyway.

 

I find it kind of amusing that the original meaning behind 'nazi' has mostly been forgotten, or at least that it's no longer applied when spoken of nazis.

You do know that it comes from the nationalistic party of germany, don't you?

[ August 16, 2006, 15:48: Message edited by: Iku-Turso ]

 

No, I didn't know that. Here's what I did know: A Nazi is not a nationalist but a national socialist. The associated political party was the NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei).

 

@Darkthrone: Alright, I was wrong, but never mind the exact details

My point being that in actuality there are nazis left. Any fanatical nationalist could be called as a nazi, if you stretch the concept a little bit to include other countries fanatical nationalists. And as Darkthrone has pointed out, all of the aims of fanatics are unreasonable, and counterproductive to the society as a whole. But it's not only to the society as a whole.

Nationalism by definition is counterproductive. Nationalists think that their nation is something grander, better than the rest of the world. Now inside a nation this wouldn't be a problem, if you only remember to include every people living inside that country's borders for n number of generations as members of the nation. But if you include into your nationalism racist ideas, that some people are better than others from birth, that by belonging into some race makes you more valuable person than others; this will lead into trouble inside the country.

And thinking that your "nation" and the people of that nation are better than other people doesn't lead into that good results in the relationships with other countries. Even if you wouldn't impose your will, your countrys views to other countries, you still end up thinking that whatever your coutrys policy is, it's better than others.

Of course if you've got the military power to back up your nations supremacy, you can and you will do whatever you want. Like genocide, for instance, or just kidnap and torture systematically other countries people.

edit: And by the by, National Socialists didn't call themselves nazis, since even to them it had a negative connotation. For instance check Online Etymology Dictionary

[ August 16, 2006, 15:59: Message edited by: Iku-Turso ]

 

Well, nationalism is, from what I know, a belief in the greater destiny of your nation (usually an ethnic group of people with some territorial organization - usually). Now, that by itself need not be exactly negative, and can be equated with patriotism on some level. Of course, one may draw the corollary that the interests of his nation are much more "just" than that of everyone else, and the viewpoint of the "nation" (whomever it is articulated by) is the only right one. From then on, racism, extremism and the like start filtering in.

Interestingly enough, this would make Nazi doctrine somewhat divergent from the orthodox nationalist beliefs - they spoke more of "race" and less of "nation." Ironically, national socialism may be considered to be neither national nor socialism.

 

People can claim to be what they want to be.

Taking Stardusts text literally means we also no longer have communists, liberal democrats or conservatives because their policies aren't identical to the original versions of said political parties. Of course this is nonsense because agendas change with the times. In the case of the Nazi's, (As DR has already pointed out) they will be forever associated with the concepts of Aryan supremacy and anti-semitism.

Personally I applaud the Nazi's on two counts (for their time in power) - Transportation and Architecture. I know little about their economic policies, but Germany as a whole must have had good policies to have pulled themselves out of the huge depression after WW1 (Inflation was astronomical) BEFORE the Nazi's started invading other countries.

 

I'm sorry for my spelling, I was in a hurry.

First of all I must say that i don't ignore the race ideology of the Nazism but what I mean is that it wasn't everything they stod for during their govening period.

After WW I a loaf of bread cost about eight billion mark because of the "mega inflation" after WW I.

I get your point, you mean that a contry's ecomomic power is measured in GDP. That is the most common way to mesure it but former nazi germany did not publish such statistics to the public. Which leaves us with just one more way to measure ecomomic power, welfare.
I never said thet they had the best welfare, but they had the fastest developing welfare. For example they lowerd the unemployment rate by over 20% which is absolutely stunning.

But I would never claim that we woould be better of with the Nazi ecomomics. In my oppinion the best possible economic system would be a pure capitalistic system.

The main diffrence between the Third Reich's economy and "our" is that the nazi's had a economy that could be called capitalistic communism. The state gave the inhabitants of Germany work much as in the Soviet. But the companies were owned by individuals as in our own ecomomic system.


Is the war on terrorism positive? I think not, but what I do think is that the US are trying to eradicate all "terrosrists" much as the Nazi's were trying to eradicate certain ethnic groups.
However I can't tell you whos a fanitic because nobody knows whos making the call about that "war".

 

The Nazi economic model was not nearly as astounding as is sometimes claimed. The economy had begun recovering during the Weimar republic, which preceded the Nazi regime.

The reduction of unemployment was basically just playing with the figures. One of the first policies was to eliminate all women, minorities, handicapped, and old people from the unemployment lists. They then recruited almost all the unemployed men into work gangs, the army, or the Hitlerjugend.

The massive arms build-up leading to the war was mostly financed by massive deficit spending. And that was then paid off by loot from their conquests.

The deficit spending and make-work projects that the Nazi's funded are quite common growth stimulation policies. The USA used similar make-work projects and deficit spending during the great depression. However, it did not spend nearly as much and its workers were paid minimum wage (I think, I do not know much about American history), while the German workers were basically slaves.

This is only what I can remember from my high school European history course, but I think it is mostly accurate.

On a side note (which is actually related to the original subject), in Austria, Nazi has become more of a general obscenity than a description of political affiliation. It has about the same potancy as calling someone a f****t or n****r in America would.

 

That's basically true. FDR had a whole bunch of stuff in the New Deal to stimulate the economy. It was the first time that workers could collect some benefits for being unemployed, and there were a lot of government sponsored projects to put people back to work (yes, some of it was make work projects, but they usually had some practical purpose), including things like building dams, roads, and bridges. It was also under FDR that Social Security got its start. What many people fail to realize is that while Germany was hit particularly hard following WWI, the Great Depression pretty much effected the entire world. No one was as bad off as Germany (since they were in bad shape since the end of WWI) but in reality, by the late 20s, pretty much all of Europe and the U.S. were in an economic depression.

 

There is often a misunderstanding between being a capitalist and the capitalistic ideology.

A capitalist is a owner of capital and general output. A capitalist is not somebody who advocate the capitalistic ideology. Or somebody that use others for thier own gain (the early capitalists were not oposed to child labour).

The follower of capitalistic idelogy belives that the higest amount of welfare can be attained by a as low as possible govenrnmental control of the economy.

However capitalism has nothing to do with the peoples rights, a person that belives in capitalism can be opposed to freedom of speech for example.

 

1. There are Nazis left. Some are not dead yet. But there is a political party in Germany (NPD = Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschland = National Democratic Party of Germany) that describes itself as national socialist. You can call them Neonazis, if you would. To me, it's the old ideology wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a pink ribbon.

2. It's a myth that Nazi Germany was economically succesfull. Actually, Uncle Adolf and his cronies ran the country into a huge debt. At first, they needed the money to create jobs: In road building and in weapon industry. These were cheap jobs, with low wages.
The welfare increases were partly financed through loot. They even melted down the gold teeth from the murdered people in the concentration camps. The rest of the money came from debts again.

The Nazis bought the goodwill of the people (or its blindness, if you will).

A german historian wrote a book about this a couple of years ago: Hitler's Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State, by Goetz Aly. Try to get your hands on it. It's controversial, but very interesting.