My recent foray into the fascist sentiments of present day "conservatives" brought me a specimen of the "NAZI = NATIONAL SOCIALISM=NAZIS WERE LEFTISTS AND LEFTISTS ARE FASCISTS" school of thought.
This sort of simplistic, garbage thinking can lead to all sorts of confusions.
It occured to me this morning that the 19th-century "Iron Chancellor" who devoted his life to preserving and increasing the authority of the traditional Prussian monarchy (and who did so brilliantly) would be described as a "socialist" by these yahoos.
Bismarck picked the brains of an imprisoned socialist, and from these conversations, developed a system of social welfare that he believed (rather soundly) would win a qualified loyalty from the German working class for the new German state, and dilute their loyalty to genuine socialism.
To sloppily apply the label "socialist" to Bismarck because of his social welfare program would render the term meaningless. I don't even want to address this Hitler stupidity.
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2 comments:
1) A straw-man argument involves attributing a position to one's opponent and then attacking that position. "Would be described as" is your own extension; "is described as" requires some sort of evidence. Simplistic, garbage thinking indeed.
2) The Nazis and the Italian Fascists are beyond superficial characterizations in terms of left and right, much as Stalin was far more totalitarian than leftist and probably shouldn't be used to beat down the ideology itself (its tendencies are of course another matter) Things get fuzzy around the fringes of the fringe. Again, and this is well supported by the historiography, Ultra movements thought they'd stumbled upon a new political synthesis that transcended European politics-as-usual. The case of France is an excellent one, with Jacques Doriot (ex-Communist) leading the Parti Populaire Francaise, Charles Maurras of the Action Francaise comprising the moanrchist-Catholic bloc, Marcel Deat (ex-socialist) participating first in the neo-Socialist SFIO and then the collaborationist Rassemblement National Populaire, Joseph Darnand running the Milice Francaise (quite ultra) and others joining what would eventually become the SS Charlemagne brigade (originally the LVF). Here one can see currents of monarchism, Catholicism, anti-Republicanism, anti-parliamentarianism, anti-capitalism, working-class solidarity, socialism on the model of Henri de Man, blood-and-soil tendencies, and far-right anti-Bolshevism and military adventurism. The point is that these tendencies existed in French society prior to the war, and that the movements that came to be uncritically described as ultra-right actually sought transcendence of the ideological spectrum. The French example rather successfully puts the lie to attempts to describe these movements as either predominantly left or right, as they contained elements of both and were far beyond the mainstream.
3) Bismarck was a conservative nationalist and no one disputes this. The evidence is incontrovertible, from the reincarnation of raison d'etat in his foreign policy to his nationalism to his extension of the franchise to protect the existing social order, and as you mention the use of good social policy to forestall serious class dissension.
You're much better when you write about real issues instead of imaginary ones, you know. Couldn't you write an article on the torching of those Montreal police cars by those anticapitalist anarchist types or something?
Well, that's pretty impressive. It's too bad you weren't able to apply that sensitivity to history's complexities in the last comments section.
Too busy trying (and failing) to score easy points against me I suppose.
Your comment deserves a better response than that, but if you'll notice, I've been light blogging for a couple of weeks because of work pressures and this little burst of activity has been quite distracting.
I want to type a post responding to the outright supporter of Steyn's book, and I'll get to your ideas next.
Not that I expect you to care. I'm just being polite.
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