So you believe that if someone is murdered in the street that no one should apprehend that murderer? Do you believe justice to be the will of angry mobs?
Do you think that someone should be able to murder your whole family without any kind of recourse from the law? That is what anarchism is. You sir are a moron.
So? Is that any more ironic than calling an anarchist a tankie because he calls out some racist white trash hillbilly droaning on about "muh rights!" to talk shit and and spread hate? Fuck him, fuck the OP, and fuck you too.
The German social democrats tried 'reasoning' with the fascists. So did the west. We got 250 million dead or injured.
A very salient point, /u/Nocturnal-Goose. While the liberal West attempted to check Germany's rise through economic and political pressure, the communists gleefully helped fuel the Nazi war machine, anticipating Hitler's pending war with France and the British Empire would leave all those parties spent, and that the Red Army could then swoop into Western Europe like a vulture, picking at the remains of their betters.
The important lesson - the shortsightedness of left wing extremists nearly always results in horrific calamity.
Also, starting a revolution just before you lose the war doesn't really make your popular.
Starting a revolution in any way will guarantee that the ruling party will absolutely abhor you, which makes absolute sense. It also drives moderates to the other side of the spectrum, like the Stahlhelm or the NSDAP.
None of that matters though, because REEEEE muh Rosa killed by socdems
The communists didn't start the revolution. A completely separate group did. Then the communists revolted against that second group, which was extremely unpopular in no small part due to the reasons you've listed here.
Don't like communists, either, but at least I have some familiarity with history.
Also, the day before Hitler marched into Poland the British foreign office was telegraphing Berlin and offering the Germans American loans. How's that fit in to your thesis exactly?
u/Nocturnal-Goose what's your parents basement like. How disappointed are they that they had a child who believes in not one but two retarded ideologies.
Basically, nobody gave a fuck about NSDAP until they started getting into it with KPD and rotfront. Like, the commies shot Horst Wessel in the face and things escalated from there.
One interesting thing was that Nazis killed about twice as many commies than vice versa. Another interesting thing was that the more street violence there was, the more support NSDAP got, precisely because Hitler promised to restore order and stop violence, while commies were all about the world revolution and bashing the fash.
All this fighting in the streets was literally what got Hitler from 2.6% of the vote in May 1928 to 18.3% in 1930 to 37.3% in 1932.
Dwarfed by Hitler's electoral gains, the KPD turned away from legal means and increasingly towards violence. One resulting battle in Silesia resulted in the army being dispatched, each shot sending Germany further into a potential all-out civil war. By this time both sides marched into each other's strongholds hoping to spark rivalry. Hermann Göring, as speaker of the Reichstag, asked the Papen government to prosecute shooters. Laws were then passed which made political violence a capital crime.
The attacks continued, and reached fever pitch when SA storm leader Axel Schaffeld was assassinated. At the end of July 1932, the Nazi Party gained 13,745,000 votes (37.3%), securing 230 out of 608 seats in the Reichstag. Energised by the incredible results, Hitler asked to be made Chancellor. Papen offered the position of Vice Chancellor, but Hitler refused.
Repeat after me: escalating political violence results in one thing and one thing only: increasing support for the far right from the upset and distressed general population.
Makes total sense if you think about it for a minute, but even if common sense fails you, here's the deal: that's literally what actually happened to bring literal fucking Hitler to power. Do you know that quote about the doomed fools who don't know history?
(another funny tidbit is this btw: "The Comintern described all moderate left-wing parties as "social fascists", and urged the Communists to devote their energies to the destruction of the moderate left. As a result, the KPD, following orders from Moscow, rejected overtures from the Social Democrats to form a political alliance against the NSDAP.")
Basically, nobody gave a fuck about NSDAP until they started getting into it with KPD and rotfront. Like, the commies shot Horst Wessel in the face and things escalated from there.
Nobody gave a fuck about the Nazis until the austerity imposed on the German people exposed how corrupt and impotent the SPD and the 'traditional' parties' proved themselves in the face of economic deprivation, the kind of which incidentally is being visited on the working classes of the U.S, France, etc. See the connection?
precisely because Hitler promised to restore order and stop violence, while commies were all about the world revolution and bashing the fash.
What Hitler promised was an end to the economic crisis that had gripped Germany since the end of the war. His platform - like the orange one's - spoke to some of the gripes working class Germans had with the economic order. He sprinkled in left ideas with his racism and hate in order to bring working class people on board.
All this fighting in the streets was literally what got Hitler from 2.6% of the vote in May 1928 to 18.3% in 1930 to 37.3% in 1932.
You're a fucking idiot if you think that.
I'll let Mark Blyth educate you about what brought the Nazis to power:
The oddest thing about the entire German experience with austerity in the 1930s was how it was ruthlessly implemented by the left and so quickly abandoned by the right. The German trade unions began to agitate for an alternative “full-fledged Keynesian type assault on the depression” in direct opposition to SPD policies. This reflationary policy took form under the aegis of the so-called WTB plan (named after the formulators’ initials), which the unions pressed hard upon the SPD and the government. Brüning ignored the plan and pressed on with austerity. The Nazis, unburdened by such structuralist nonsense, were able to take these ideas and make them their own. The centerpiece of their July 1932 election propaganda, the Wirstchaftliches Sofortprogramm (the immediate economic program) laid out an alternative to austerity that looked an awful lot like the WTB plan. The pamphlet’s first three points could not have been more anti-austerity. In 1932, unemployment accounted for 30 percent of the workforce. Repeated rounds of austerity policy, plus the ideological intransigence of the Social Democrats, helped to bring Hitler to power.
Repeat after me: escalating political violence results in one thing and one thing only: increasing support for the far right from the upset and distressed general population.
Makes total sense if you think about it for a minute, but even if common sense fails you, here's the deal: that's literally what actually happened to bring literal fucking Hitler to power. Do you know that quote about the doomed fools who don't know history?
I think YOU'RE the doomed fool. Hitler like the orange baboon is just a man, men like that come and go often without ever achieving anything. Only when the material conditions are right do they sprout forth.
(another funny tidbit is this btw: "The Comintern described all moderate left-wing parties as "social fascists", and urged the Communists to devote their energies to the destruction of the moderate left. As a result, the KPD, following orders from Moscow, rejected overtures from the Social Democrats to form a political alliance against the NSDAP.")
Some things you should perhaps know. The Stalinites would hinder the struggle against fascism again in the Spanish civil war where instead of fighting the fascists they turned on the anarchists and trotskyists, so their idiocies are not surprising. But this still doesn't seem to aid your position. IF the comintern had allowed its members to fight the fascists - and the policy of social fascism forbid them to - it might have been crushed in the cradle. Also, you forget to mention that there was reason for mistrust on the KPDs part of the SPD seeing as though the latter used the right-wing Friekorps to put down the German revolution of 1919, over a decade before Hitler and the Nazis.
The left's problem was not that they fought the fascists, as your statement (or should I say copying of wikipedia) on social fascism clearly shows, but that they listened to the madman Stalin and DIDN'T fight. The Italian PCI acted similarly (in the words of Nicos Poulantzas who wrote a history of fascism):
"The PCI attitude towards the red 'Arditi del popolo', paramilitary formations formed spontaneously in 1921 to counter fascist attacks, was characteristic. The Arditi included workers, peasants, rank and file trade unionists, socialists, communists, etc. The PCI denounced them and forbade its members to take part in them.
Rather than being the cause of the rise of the Nazis, which as anyone with half a brain can tell you had to do with the fact that Germany had been fucked over economically for a decade and people needed and searched for relief ANYWHERE, turning to Hitler as a LAST RESORT after all the traditional parties had failed them (sound familiar? It shoudl!), the comintern's policy of forbidding their members to fight the fascists believing the social democrats posed a more immanent threat is the problem - and they were not fucking angels as we've seen since they had long sold out their working class base not only by voting almost unanimously for the war in 1914 (the lone dissenter being Leibknecht who was executed at their hands with Rosa Luxembourg in 1919 FYI), but also by putting many socialists on the wall and shooting them.
Again I'll quote Blyth who is smarter than me on this:
if one takes the immediate and publically identifiable causes of economic harm – for example, the austerity policies pursued by the Troika in the programme countries between 2011 and 2015, as detailed by Stuckler and Basu – then there seems to be a rather strong and obvious link between the rise of the New Right, and the New Left, and a sharp rise in health inequalities, job insecurity, negative income shocks and technological disruption, which have all arrived at the same time.
Repeat after me: escalating political violence results in one thing and one thing only: increasing support for the far right from the upset and distressed general population.
Repear after me: What upsets and distresses the general population is $1.3 trillion in student debt, household debt of $12.5 trillion, lack of healthcare, loss of jobs, and lack of financial security for them and their children.
The two things don't contradict each other. I wholeheartedly agree that economic troubles and center-left inability to solve them especially for the working class provide the necessary foundation for the rise of far-right movements. Because their main promise is stability, security, return to good old days.
What I don't quite follow is how you go "center-left is throwing the working class under the bus, SO WE MUST BASH THE FASH".
Political violence also unnerves the common people and in Germany it seemed to reach the point where it was really much worse than economic troubles. Hence the initially similarly rising NSDAP and KPD popularity because both promised economic recovery, but followed by the plunge in KPD popularity and unfettered rise in NSDAP's.
The left's problem was not that they fought the fascists, as your statement (or should I say copying of wikipedia) on social fascism clearly shows, but that they listened to the madman Stalin and DIDN'T fight.
They did fight, with hundreds of people killed and the army getting involved. I think you're trying to interpret this stuff as if it were driven by rational, self-consistent goals. It was not.
Yes, commies' hatred for moderates seems to surpass their hatred for actual Nazis, and I can't help noticing the same shit in the modern left as well. This is because Nazis are a very useful enemy. Fighting the establishment is really hard and frustrating, but Nazis are, well, Nazis, and they readily respond with violence to violence thus allowing you to BASH THE FASH without repercussions and it feels like accomplishing something. While if you tried to BASH THE CENTRE-LEFT, everyone would turn against you.
And then there's the accelerationism, the idea that the worse is the better, the main obstacle is defeating the entrenched establishment, and then you'll easily beat the Nazis who look as fringe as you are currently. Speaking of analogies, same shit happened as a result of Hillary's "Pied Piper" strategy, not because it's a left thing, but because it's natural to try to be clever and play a weaker enemy against the strong one and hope to snatch victory in the resulting chaos.
Which is the game that you should NEVER play with far-right movements, because their message is of Order and the worse things get, the more support they gain. Btw, now that I think about it, the US meddling in Middle-East "totally unpredictably" resulting in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is exactly the same shit.
Anyway, back to the point, the solution to the far right problem is for the center to get working on the workers' rights (instead of labeling all such concerns as Nazi stuff (because all Nazi talking points are Nazi talking points, you see)) and everyone work hard on restoring the sanity and respect in political discourse.
Your assertion that that's how we got Hitler and the solution is to BASH THE FASH is completely wrong, because we got Hitler because of the failure on the first account (which your solution does not address) and precisely because of what you're suggesting regarding the second.
The two things don't contradict each other. I wholeheartedly agree that economic troubles and center-left inability to solve them especially for the working class provide the necessary foundation for the rise of far-right movements. Because their main promise is stability, security, return to good old days. What I don't quite follow is how you go "center-left is throwing the working class under the bus, SO WE MUST BASH THE FASH".
I don't see why you can't comprehend this. There's a big difference between the denuded masses and the fascists. If and when people are won over to fascism, there is no negotiating with them, no placating them, no asking them nicely.
Political violence also unnerves the common people and in Germany it seemed to reach the point where it was really much worse than economic troubles. Hence the initially similarly rising NSDAP and KPD popularity because both promised economic recovery, but followed by the plunge in KPD popularity and unfettered rise in NSDAP's.
You're literally just making things up. I showed you conclusively that the people turned to the only after having exhausted every other alternative. How the Nazis were the only ones to campaign on a platform of ending the soul crushing austerity imposed on the German working class. The SPD was part of the problem in this regard - like your democratic party, like PASOK in Greece, the French Socialists etc, like all neoliberal turncoats. You seem to be conflating the 1920s with 1933. The idea that people are turned off by political violence is valid enough to a point, but I don't see why accoridng to your story people would turn to the Nazis who were the thugs i.e. they were the ones who engaged in violence. Same as the Trumpeters, beating on protestors during the Orange one's rallies while he egged them on. They didn't seem too tuned off by it.
Yes, commies' hatred for moderates seems to surpass their hatred for actual Nazis, and I can't help noticing the same shit in the modern left as well. This is because Nazis are a very useful enemy. Fighting the establishment is really hard and frustrating, but Nazis are, well, Nazis, and they readily respond with violence to violence thus allowing you to BASH THE FASH without repercussions and it feels like accomplishing something. While if you tried to BASH THE CENTRE-LEFT, everyone would turn against you.
First of all, fascism is not something 'outside' the 'establishment'. Fascism represents a very particular crisis in capitalism and the political, a period where the 'normal' way of doing things breaks down - traditional political parties have a legitimacy problem wherein they experience a crisis of authority as their normal ways of bringing along the working classes no longer work. Fascism is the response, a very particular one which aims to accomplish what the traditional parties could no longer do as the people fail to buy their bullshit anymore. But to confuse it for "not the establishment" is wrong. Hitler indeed had the support of many fractions of monopoly capital in Germany, particularly German capital linked to the war industry - petrochemicals, iron, heavy industry, and especially amongst white collar bureaucrats . Yes he was opposed by other fractions - small proprietors for instance - but once he purged the left wing of his party, which WAS anticapitalist we must admit (knight of the long knives), he cemented the Nazis' commitment to 'the establishment'.
Basically what you seen against is any kind of violence against fascism. I don't wan to "BASH" the center-left. But I do blame the Third Way neoliberal free-trader Clintonites in the democratic party, the Blairites in Labour, the SPD - Sigmar Gabriel went right away to Wallonia for instance when they voted against CETA in order to campaign for it, PAOSK in Greece who created the kleptocracy, etc etc. That doesn't mean I wanna "BASH" it. I want them to offer the people the alternatives they deserve so they don't end up succumbing to demagogues.
And then there's the accelerationism, the idea that the worse is the better, the main obstacle is defeating the entrenched establishment, and then you'll easily beat the Nazis who look as fringe as you are currently. Speaking of analogies, same shit happened as a result of Hillary's "Pied Piper" strategy, not because it's a left thing, but because it's natural to try to be clever and play a weaker enemy against the strong one and hope to snatch victory in the resulting chaos.
I agree accelerationism is the most retarded thing. But accelerationism is based on doing nothing, so I really don't understand what you're getting at. Are you saying I am an accelerationist? As for the last part, this is what I think
Which is the game that you should NEVER play with far-right movements, because their message is of Order and the worse things get, the more support they gain. Btw, now that I think about it, the US meddling in Middle-East "totally unpredictably" resulting in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is exactly the same shit.
The worse things get... how though? What causes a hankering "for the good ol'days" and for "law and order" is precisely the economic conditions people are suffering through, i.e. the things they experience in their day to day lived experiences. Mountains of debt, worries about their kids' schooling, insecure jobs, defunded communities, privatized social services which become shittier and more expensive, free trade treaties that rip good well paying union jobs out of their communities and replace them with Walmarts. THAT'S what makes people feel the angst and powerlessness. That fact that the state bails out Wall St. billionaires and kicks them out of their homes. THAT'S what makes them super pissed. Primarily the duty of the left is to show them a viable alternative. Unfortunately what passes for left parties or 'center left parties' (there is no such thing btw) are often the most eager promoters of these very policies which fuck them over: See SYRIZA in Greece which went from promising an end to austerity to promoting it, in a 6 month period!
Anyway, back to the point, the solution to the far right problem is for the center to get working on the workers' rights (instead of labeling all such concerns as Nazi stuff (because all Nazi talking points are Nazi talking points, you see)) and everyone work hard on restoring the sanity and respect in political discourse.
Agreed. But recognize that there ARE fascists out there. People running around wearing swastika's and yelling about n____ers aren't the types of people we're out to 'win over'. Those people need to be kicked in their faces. These are the people we need to reach.
Your assertion that that's how we got Hitler and the solution is to BASH THE FASH is completely wrong, because we got Hitler because of the failure on the first account (which your solution does not address) and precisely because of what you're suggesting regarding the second.
I think I made it clear how Hitler came about, and it had nothing to do with people fighting in the streets (which btw I think you're confusing the 20s for the 30s). Economic austerity and the unwillingness of the traditional parties - SPD included - to do anything about it elected Hitler. Read their platform which I linked.
I don't see why you can't comprehend this. There's a big difference between the denuded masses and the fascists. If and when people are won over to fascism, there is no negotiating with them, no placating them, no asking them nicely.
Well, so what do you think about the half of the US that voted for Trump?
That's actually a thing that I want to rant about sometime, that you commies seem to start with the denial of such a thing as "human nature" and then somehow transition to its opposite where you believe that anyone who doesn't believe the Right Thing is a lost cause because it exposes their true nature.
I believe, based on a shitton of research, that people tend to buy the whole package of beliefs they are pushed to by some particular belief. That if someone really doesn't like the "your jobs aren't coming back, suck it" from the Dems, they are pushed to Trump and they end up also believing that Mexicans and Muslims are causing all their troubles.
That is, the left's favorite pastime of drawing lines and claiming that everyone outside is a racist misogynist scum actually caused people outside those lines to become racist misogynist scum. Because the only politician that they could rally behind was that racist misogynist scum Donald and naturally they adopted those attitudes as well.
But vice versa, I then have to believe that if there were a left politician like Bernie Sanders but not old and ridiculous, that'd bring those people back and they would also adopt progressive attitudes about everything else.
They are not inherently evil, they just naturally support everything about the only politician who publicly cared about their wellbeing, who also happens to be evil.
You're literally just making things up. I showed you conclusively that the people turned to the only after having exhausted every other alternative. How the Nazis were the only ones to campaign on a platform of ending the soul crushing austerity imposed on the German working class. The SPD was part of the problem in this regard
No, you. The KPD was a thing, and quite popular. They had 10% in 1932 still. What turned the people from them to supporting Nazis was political violence. Read the fucking wikipedia article already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power
but I don't see why accoridng to your story people would turn to the Nazis who were the thugs
Again, you are trying to reason about it as if everyone were reasonable, they were not. I explicitly stated that Nazis outnumbered Communists 2 to 1 in causing fatalities. And sure they were aggressors more often than not, probably.
What mattered though was the Nazi public image that they are for ORDER, and Commies' talking about BASH THE FASH and revolution and progress and change. So common people saw the violence happening in their streets and voted for the party that promised to end it (by winning) and return the things back to normal and traditional.
It's not logical, it's base human instinct: when shit gets real bad and violent, you want a strong leader and rigid hierarchy to save you. Even if the minions of that strong leader are the ones causing most of the violence. Deal with it by not letting things to deteriorate to that point.
First of all, fascism is not something 'outside' the 'establishment'.
Yeah, just like Donald Trump is not "establishment", he's just some modest everyday billionaire guy. When thinking about politics, don't think what things really are, think what they appear to be. That's what people vote based on.
I agree accelerationism is the most retarded thing. But accelerationism is based on doing nothing
You what, mate? Accelerationism is based on actively making things worse, that's why it's called accelerationism, you accelerate the "inevitable collapse of capitalism".
Agreed. But recognize that there ARE fascists out there. People running around wearing swastika's and yelling about n____ers aren't the types of people we're out to 'win over'. Those people need to be kicked in their faces.
Kicking political opponents in their faces, when they are far-right, results in them kicking you back, you kicking them more, and so on and so on, and in the end they win the popular vote because when it escalates to a real possibility of civil war people vote for ORDER, not for PROGRESS. They are fed up with what progress appears to be.
The only way to defuse the far right rhetoric is to de-escalate violence and to restore the usual normal political discourse, where people like yourself don't get to yell "THAT'S A NAZI TALKING POINT, BASH THEM" about someone being concerned about the poor whites. Like, you yourself probably wouldn't, but your comrades totally do, and you remain silent, because if you argue against BASH THE FASH in any circumstances you get bashed yourself.
I think I made it clear how Hitler came about, and it had nothing to do with people fighting in the streets (which btw I think you're confusing the 20s for the 30s).
No, in the 20s Hitler got fucked. Fighting in the streets and general violence really escalated starting from the murder of Horst Wessel (that got immortalized in a hymn and stuff) in 1930. Read the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power, don't be doomed to repeat mistakes.
Well, so what do you think about the half of the US that voted for Trump?
What do you want me to say? My whole shtick is that I understand completely why so many people voted for him. He seemed to present an alternative to the traditional parties who's the same old same old routine diverges too far from people's lived experiences to be adequate anymore for them to do their job which is to bring the masses onside. Gramsci called this period a crisis of authority. I'm not proposing we throw out 60 million or however American voted for Trump - far from me such a thought. We have to win these people over. But don't confuse these people with the small cadre of fascists.
That's actually a thing that I want to rant about sometime, that you commies seem to start with the denial of such a thing as "human nature" and then somehow transition to its opposite where you believe that anyone who doesn't believe the Right Thing is a lost cause because it exposes their true nature.
What a strange thing to say. I haven't said one thing about so-called "human nature". I am a materialist and an anarcho-communist. I won't answer for anyone but myself but I believe that humans can be a great of things depending on the 'inputs' - this is what makes me a materialist. Under certain conditions they can be good and under certain conditions they can be bad. Neoliberal capitalism makes shit really really hard for people financially, socially and psychologically. The analogy may be simplistic, but bear with me: if I'm following a receipe, certain ingredients in certain proportions under certain conditions produce certain types of foods. Neoliberalism and the economic hardships it causes is like a recipe for shit stew. Its up to us to change that, HOWEVER one please. March, write letters, call your congressmen, etc. I can't tell you what to do that's up to you. But understand that there are some bad people who would gladly skull fuck ever Muslim, immigrant or black person and make no bones about it. If you don't want to oppose this with force, fine, I cannot make you nor do I want to. But some comrades ARE willing to. Don't preach to them. I'm afraid if you think that fascists can be won over by pleading or accommodating the, you're sadly mistaken. You seem to think BASH THE FASH applies to the millions of people who voted for Trump - its doesn't. But there are conjunctures where fascism needs to be met with force. When neo-Nazis go trampling around Greece beating on immigrants and refugees, those people need defending and bless the fact that many anarchists there put their asses on the line to do that. You think us barbarians? That's some mighty high-minded criticism.
That is, the left's favorite pastime of drawing lines and claiming that everyone outside is a racist misogynist scum actually caused people outside those lines to become racist misogynist scum. Because the only politician that they could rally behind was that racist misogynist scum Donald and naturally they adopted those attitudes as well.
Maybe you're confusing me with the authoritarian left.
They are not inherently evil, they just naturally support everything about the only politician who publicly cared about their wellbeing, who also happens to be evil.
I never said they were "naturally" anything.
No, you. The KPD was a thing, and quite popular. They had 10% in 1932 still. What turned the people from them to supporting Nazis was political violence. Read the fucking wikipedia article already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power
Please don't link me wikipedia articles.
What mattered though was the Nazi public image that they are for ORDER, and Commies' talking about BASH THE FASH and revolution and progress and change. So common people saw the violence happening in their streets and voted for the party that promised to end it (by winning) and return the things back to normal and traditional.
Order in the face of what? Street fights? Firstly, the policy of 'social fascism' which you yourself brought up meant that the comintern specifically avoided conflict with the Nazis. The "FASH" they wanted to bash was social democracy, NOT the Nazis. Secondly, The Nazi party's platform was essentially the German version of "make American great again", which meant undoing all the shitty economic policies which had screwed over the working class and made the country a second rate power vis-a-vis the British and French.
This is why I linked you that piece from Mark Blyth (the following is his words, not mine):
"The centerpiece of their July 1932 election propaganda, the Wirstchaftliches Sofortprogramm (the immediate economic program) laid out an alternative to austerity that looked an awful lot like the WTB plan."
Nothing about street fights (there was no worldstar back then to disseminate those things btw). Working people, fucked up and lied to by the traditional parties looked at this program as said "sure why the fuck not". The KPD had their head up their asses and the SPD were full-bore what we would today call neoliberals who had played a huge part in the types of 'sound economics' which had led the German economy into the toilet.
It's not logical, it's base human instinct: when shit gets real bad and violent, you want a strong leader and rigid hierarchy to save you. Even if the minions of that strong leader are the ones causing most of the violence. Deal with it by not letting things to deteriorate to that point.
Yes but the point was IN WHAT WAY was shit bad? I keep telling you again and again that yes, shit was BAD but it was BAD economically. American loans cut-off during the depression meant FDI dried up. The Depression hit Germany HARD with 30% unemployment the year before Hitler. This after the period of hyperinflation of the early 20s, and the illogical and hysterically stupid goal on the part of the traditional German parties to "balance the budget" (again, sound familiar?) which effectively meant a complete abandonment of social policies which aided the poor and working class.
Again, in the words of Mark Blyth: "The National Socialists unsurprisingly picked up support in the 1930 election on the back of this cross-party austerity policy."
Time and again the fuckery of the traditional parties in their defence of 'sound economics' i.e. neoliberal type austerity worked in the favour of those who promised an end to it.
So ya, things were BAD, but not because people were rolling around in the streets - who the fuck cares about that? - but because Germans couldn't make ends meet.
Yeah, just like Donald Trump is not "establishment", he's just some modest everyday billionaire guy. When thinking about politics, don't think what things really are, think what they appear to be. That's what people vote based on.
I know he's part of it. But I also know that the ruling class establishment is not one giant fissure-less monolithic bloc. Its riven with internal conflicts and contradictions. What we're seeing right now is a breakdown of the order - a crisis of authority - as the different fractions of the ruling class are having a go at one another. Even within the Republican party we see different fractions representing different interests really hammering one another.
You what, mate? Accelerationism is based on actively making things worse, that's why it's called accelerationism, you accelerate the "inevitable collapse of capitalism".
We seem to be talking past one another.
When you mentioned accelerationism, I assumed you meant with regards to fascism. Because if you meant that, then you contradict yourself. How? Well if we accept your point that (a) the cause of the rise of the Nazis was due to the 'order' they promised in response to the violence of the KPD, we cannot also accept (b) that the KPD - as well as the PCI - on account of the Comintern advocated for social fascism (as you also noted). Why?
Because the policy of social fascism was accelerationist. The Comintern mistakenly characterized fascism as the last gasp of a capitalism that was dying. Rather than oppose it forcefully during the 1920s, the various Comintern congresses of the period were completely blind to the fact that fascism represented a offensive push by fractions of capital. They had read the communist manifesto too many times and interpreted it too literally beveling that capitalism proceeded through various phases culminating in the spontaneous rising up of the working masses to the horrible conditions leading to socialism and then to communism. Of course this is complete fucking nonsense, but their faith that the "iron laws of historical development" should be left to run their course is accerlationism as in practice as the policy of social fascism. I'll quote the work of Nicos Poulantzas again on this matter:
The blindness of both the PCI and KPD leaders in this respect is staggering. Fascism according to them, would only be a "passing episode". Amadeo Bordiga, introducing the resolution on fascism at the Fifth Congress, declared that all that had happened in Italy was 'a change in the governmental team of the hour bourgeoisie', The presidium of the comintern executive committee noted just after Hider's accession to power: "Hitler's Germany is heading for ever more inevitable economic catastrophe... The momentary calm after the victory of fascism is only a passing phenomenon. The wave of revolution will rise inescapably in Germany despite the fascist terror'. Fascism was no more than a passing episode in the economic advance of imminent, necessary revolution. This was only the beginning of the spiral in the Comintern's theoretical and political understanding of fascism. Fascism was considered a positive moment in the bad side of history.
Hell the proverbial night before Hitler won power, Poulantzas tells us that "... Thalmann [KPD head], in his closing speech to the Twelfth Plenum (September 1932): "In the present stage of the advance of fascism, every weakening of our struggle against social democracy... becomes a grave mistake". They didn't give a shit about fascism! They WANTED IT because that's what one's brain turns in to when listening to the trash that comes out from the brain of someone like Stalin.
The SPD was no better, Blyth tells us that: "As SPD member and one-time vice president of the Reichstag Wilhelm Dittmann put it in a speech to the SPD faithful, “We want the current situation [the crisis] to develop further".
The whole thrust of Poulantzas' argument in that book - and one which I happen to agree with - is the fact that IF the KPD hadn't been so slavishly following the dictates of a lunatic, and IF they had recognize fascism for the danger that it was, they COULD have strangled it in its crib.
So in essence you're accusing the "communists" of doing something they didn't do. They didn't oppose the fascists - they thought fascism as a way to their promised land. The same thing in Italy where as I said the PCI kicked out members who joined the Arditi and fought the fascists.
Kicking political opponents in their faces, when they are far-right, results in them kicking you back, you kicking them more, and so on and so on, and in the end they win the popular vote because when it escalates to a real possibility of civil war people vote for ORDER, not for PROGRESS. They are fed up with what progress appears to be.
No question can be settled by force, my pacifist friends all say. And this in a country in which a civil war was fought and the question of slavery and secession settled! I can speak with especial certainty of this question, because all my ancestors were Southerners and fought on the rebel side; I myself am living testimony to the fact that force can and does settle questions — when it is used with intelligence. - Upton Sinclair
Like, you yourself probably wouldn't, but your comrades totally do
we cannot also accept (b) that the KPD - as well as the PCI - on account of the Comintern advocated for social fascism (as you also noted). Why?
First of all, you're fundamentally confused, the quote was
The Comintern described all moderate left-wing parties as "social fascists", and urged the Communists to devote their energies to the destruction of the moderate left. As a result, the KPD, following orders from Moscow, rejected overtures from the Social Democrats to form a political alliance against the NSDAP.
So in essence you're accusing the "communists" of doing something they didn't do. They didn't oppose the fascists - they thought fascism as a way to their promised land.
On the evening of 14 January 1930, at around ten o'clock, Horst Wessel was fatally shot at point-blank range in the face by two members of the KPD in Friedrichshain.
The deaths mounted, with many more on the Rotfront side, and by the end of 1931 the SA had suffered 47 deaths, and the Rotfront recorded losses of approximately 80. Street fights and beer hall battles resulting in deaths occurred throughout February and April 1932, all against the backdrop of Adolf Hitler's competition in the presidential election which pitted him against the monumentally popular Hindenburg.
Dwarfed by Hitler's electoral gains, the KPD turned away from legal means and increasingly towards violence. One resulting battle in Silesia resulted in the army being dispatched, each shot sending Germany further into a potential all-out civil war. By this time both sides marched into each other's strongholds hoping to spark rivalry. Hermann Göring, as speaker of the Reichstag, asked the Papen government to prosecute shooters. Laws were then passed which made political violence a capital crime.
The attacks continued, and reached fever pitch when SA storm leader Axel Schaffeld was assassinated.
Again, you're being confused by a century-old political bullshit. Yes, commies publicly and openly stated that their real enemy is democrats and that "they would prefer to see the Nazis in power rather than lift a finger to save the republic". Because they saw the Nazis as another fringe movement that would be easily (and inevitably!) defeated after the liberal democracy falls.
At the same time they did fight Nazis tooth and nail in the streets leading close to an actual civil war, as a result of willingness to escalate violence on both sides, but also in a correct but misguided idea that all this chaos weakens the present social order.
is the fact that IF the KPD hadn't been so slavishly following the dictates of a lunatic, and IF they had recognize fascism for the danger that it was, they COULD have strangled it in its crib.
How? By even more violence, or by allying with SPD?
From the other comment:
You seem to think BASH THE FASH applies to the millions of people who voted for Trump - its doesn't.
So far it's literally the only people it applied in the US. Literally, among all reports of political violence from the left, not a single episode was against an actual fascist. All y'all endlessly jerk off to the idea of bashing the (real, actual, no shit, oven-heating) fash, then go out and bash random Trump supporters indiscriminately.
Nothing about street fights (there was no worldstar back then to disseminate those things btw).
Why are you surprised that a dudebro focused on economic causes of fascism focuses exclusively on the economic causes of fascism? Read the wikipedia article to see that there was another, just as important side to the whole thing -- the escalating violent conflict between the commies and the fascists.
The social democrats tried 'reasoning' the West into being satisfied with a slow, sad, orderly decline. We got 250 million dead or injured. Now they are trying the same thing again, and still bewildered at the pushback.
70 comments
n/a SnapshillBot 2017-03-29
No wonder you have an army of pretentious neckbeard losers following you around
Snapshots:
I am a bot. (Info / Contact)
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
Who the fuck are you calling a tankie you stupid fucking idiot. I am an anarchist. Fuck tankies and fuck fascists too.
n/a Cat_Waffles 2017-03-29
calm down you stupid tankie
n/a [deleted] 2017-03-29
[deleted]
n/a Ultrashitpost 2017-03-29
"Every anarchist is a frustrated dictator" - Benito Mussolini (peace be upon him)
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
You mean this bloated corpse
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/28th-april-1945-view-of-the-mutilated-bodies-of-benito-mussolini-and-picture-id3208670
n/a Ultrashitpost 2017-03-29
Is that supposed to disprove what i said?
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
I don't try to prove things to faggots.
n/a Ultrashitpost 2017-03-29
I still don't understand what you're trying to gain from this.
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
What are you trying to gain by being a whiny faggot?
n/a wwyzzerdd 2017-03-29
It looks like he's hitting on you.
n/a 80BAIT08 2017-03-29
Nobody cares about your preferred nomenclature. Degenerate or Role Playing Enthusiast suits you just fine.
n/a StopTalkingOK 2017-03-29
Calm the fuck down you pudgy little child.
n/a Dial_A_Dragon 2017-03-29
t. tankie
n/a ChipChippersonAMA 2017-03-29
Easy there tankie
n/a evannever 2017-03-29
/u/Nocturnal-Goose, more like silly-goose, tss, tss.
n/a ChipChippersonAMA 2017-03-29
Fawkin home run
n/a evannever 2017-03-29
tanks, chippah.
n/a BrotherToaster 2017-03-29
Whatever you say tankie
n/a TSwizzlesNipples 2017-03-29
Just when I thought you couldn't sound any more retarded...
n/a BigOldWhiteDick 2017-03-29
So you believe that if someone is murdered in the street that no one should apprehend that murderer? Do you believe justice to be the will of angry mobs?
Do you think that someone should be able to murder your whole family without any kind of recourse from the law? That is what anarchism is. You sir are a moron.
n/a BigOldWhiteDick 2017-03-29
Really though do you think there should be no laws against murder /u/Nocturnal-Goose ? I need to know so badly.
n/a YourGayOpinion 2017-03-29
More like Nocturnal-Goose-Step
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
Sure
n/a Scummy_mofo 2017-03-29
>Refers to the daily stormer as "alt-right."
Lol.
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
Save yourself the caloric loss and the 1 word responses
n/a Scummy_mofo 2017-03-29
MFW
n/a YourGayOpinion 2017-03-29
My family is black, you numpty.
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
So? Is that any more ironic than calling an anarchist a tankie because he calls out some racist white trash hillbilly droaning on about "muh rights!" to talk shit and and spread hate? Fuck him, fuck the OP, and fuck you too.
Blacks can be reactionary morons too.
Judging from your posts and your issue with trans people, I'd say you seem to fit the bill.
n/a meatpuppet79 2017-03-29
You're a lolcow. You know that?
n/a YourGayOpinion 2017-03-29
Good shit. UpTrumped.
n/a phoenixbasileus 2017-03-29
"guys i'm not this specific type of retard, i'm a totally different specific type of retard"
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
You're not mentally equipped to deal with me, so do yourself a favour and shut the fuck up you fascist piece of shit.
n/a phoenixbasileus 2017-03-29
You're right, I'm not prepared for this level of complete and utter autism without some form of training
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
There's nothing wrong with autism.
Stupidity and willful ignorance on the other hand is a serious issue amongst you lot.
n/a phoenixbasileus 2017-03-29
There's clearly something wrong with your minder if they're allowing you unsupervised onto the internet
n/a Teresa_May 2017-03-29
A very salient point, /u/Nocturnal-Goose. While the liberal West attempted to check Germany's rise through economic and political pressure, the communists gleefully helped fuel the Nazi war machine, anticipating Hitler's pending war with France and the British Empire would leave all those parties spent, and that the Red Army could then swoop into Western Europe like a vulture, picking at the remains of their betters.
The important lesson - the shortsightedness of left wing extremists nearly always results in horrific calamity.
n/a BrotherToaster 2017-03-29
Also, starting a revolution just before you lose the war doesn't really make your popular.
Starting a revolution in any way will guarantee that the ruling party will absolutely abhor you, which makes absolute sense. It also drives moderates to the other side of the spectrum, like the Stahlhelm or the NSDAP.
None of that matters though, because REEEEE muh Rosa killed by socdems
n/a ThatDamnedImp 2017-03-29
The communists didn't start the revolution. A completely separate group did. Then the communists revolted against that second group, which was extremely unpopular in no small part due to the reasons you've listed here.
Don't like communists, either, but at least I have some familiarity with history.
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
That's a nice story.
How about a dose of reality though?
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
Also, the day before Hitler marched into Poland the British foreign office was telegraphing Berlin and offering the Germans American loans. How's that fit in to your thesis exactly?
n/a Teresa_May 2017-03-29
> globalresearch.ca
Oh sweetie, didn't you know that's a conspiracy theorist site?
n/a HULK_HOGAN_FASCISM 2017-03-29
k
n/a botchlings 2017-03-29
Antifas and Tankies may be the most ridiculous people on earth.
Keep doing what you're doing guys, but don't be surprised when your behavior leads to President Trump's second term.
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
There's no way people are going to make the same mistake twice. He's going to be our first one term president in a generation. Sad.
n/a botchlings 2017-03-29
We didn't make the same mistake twice... that's why we didn't elect a Clinton again.
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
Exactly... and we won't reelect Trump after the pictures of him fucking 12 year olds come out.
n/a botchlings 2017-03-29
Yeah we would. He's not a Democrat...
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
So we're supposed to be OK with Trump being a pedo?
n/a botchlings 2017-03-29
He's not.
Stop believing everything you read on Facebook.
n/a TraurigAberWahr 2017-03-29
So we're supposed to be OK with Trump being an space lizard, a marionette of les Frères Bogdanoffes???
n/a EllenPaosFrontButt 2017-03-29
ok so that vid has a quick rundown but i really need the basic gestalt here fam
n/a TraurigAberWahr 2017-03-29
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR__AvCwnaQ
n/a EllenPaosFrontButt 2017-03-29
this nigga #WOKE AF (how fucking high was he during this?)
n/a YourGayOpinion 2017-03-29
"The only thing that can tarnish the people's love for President Trump is a dead girl or a live boy."
n/a SlavophilesAnonymous 2017-03-29
The crazy part is that our last one term president was better than the last three two-term presidents.
n/a ffkssk 2017-03-29
Too bad he and his wife weren't more pro-abortion.
n/a TheButtholeOfBravery 2017-03-29
n/a donaldthelion 2017-03-29
u/Nocturnal-Goose what's your parents basement like. How disappointed are they that they had a child who believes in not one but two retarded ideologies.
n/a Works_of_memercy 2017-03-29
/u/Nocturnal-Goose, you might want to read some wikipedia, it's pretty interesting and the parallels are uncanny.
Basically, nobody gave a fuck about NSDAP until they started getting into it with KPD and rotfront. Like, the commies shot Horst Wessel in the face and things escalated from there.
One interesting thing was that Nazis killed about twice as many commies than vice versa. Another interesting thing was that the more street violence there was, the more support NSDAP got, precisely because Hitler promised to restore order and stop violence, while commies were all about the world revolution and bashing the fash.
All this fighting in the streets was literally what got Hitler from 2.6% of the vote in May 1928 to 18.3% in 1930 to 37.3% in 1932.
Repeat after me: escalating political violence results in one thing and one thing only: increasing support for the far right from the upset and distressed general population.
Makes total sense if you think about it for a minute, but even if common sense fails you, here's the deal: that's literally what actually happened to bring literal fucking Hitler to power. Do you know that quote about the doomed fools who don't know history?
(another funny tidbit is this btw: "The Comintern described all moderate left-wing parties as "social fascists", and urged the Communists to devote their energies to the destruction of the moderate left. As a result, the KPD, following orders from Moscow, rejected overtures from the Social Democrats to form a political alliance against the NSDAP.")
n/a Will0saurus 2017-03-29
There's nothing commies hate more than reasonable leftists.
n/a TheRootinTootinPutin 2017-03-29
There we go
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
Nobody gave a fuck about the Nazis until the austerity imposed on the German people exposed how corrupt and impotent the SPD and the 'traditional' parties' proved themselves in the face of economic deprivation, the kind of which incidentally is being visited on the working classes of the U.S, France, etc. See the connection?
What Hitler promised was an end to the economic crisis that had gripped Germany since the end of the war. His platform - like the orange one's - spoke to some of the gripes working class Germans had with the economic order. He sprinkled in left ideas with his racism and hate in order to bring working class people on board.
You're a fucking idiot if you think that.
I'll let Mark Blyth educate you about what brought the Nazis to power:
Repear after me: What upsets and distresses the general population is $1.3 trillion in student debt, household debt of $12.5 trillion, lack of healthcare, loss of jobs, and lack of financial security for them and their children.
I think YOU'RE the doomed fool. Hitler like the orange baboon is just a man, men like that come and go often without ever achieving anything. Only when the material conditions are right do they sprout forth.
Some things you should perhaps know. The Stalinites would hinder the struggle against fascism again in the Spanish civil war where instead of fighting the fascists they turned on the anarchists and trotskyists, so their idiocies are not surprising. But this still doesn't seem to aid your position. IF the comintern had allowed its members to fight the fascists - and the policy of social fascism forbid them to - it might have been crushed in the cradle. Also, you forget to mention that there was reason for mistrust on the KPDs part of the SPD seeing as though the latter used the right-wing Friekorps to put down the German revolution of 1919, over a decade before Hitler and the Nazis.
The left's problem was not that they fought the fascists, as your statement (or should I say copying of wikipedia) on social fascism clearly shows, but that they listened to the madman Stalin and DIDN'T fight. The Italian PCI acted similarly (in the words of Nicos Poulantzas who wrote a history of fascism):
Rather than being the cause of the rise of the Nazis, which as anyone with half a brain can tell you had to do with the fact that Germany had been fucked over economically for a decade and people needed and searched for relief ANYWHERE, turning to Hitler as a LAST RESORT after all the traditional parties had failed them (sound familiar? It shoudl!), the comintern's policy of forbidding their members to fight the fascists believing the social democrats posed a more immanent threat is the problem - and they were not fucking angels as we've seen since they had long sold out their working class base not only by voting almost unanimously for the war in 1914 (the lone dissenter being Leibknecht who was executed at their hands with Rosa Luxembourg in 1919 FYI), but also by putting many socialists on the wall and shooting them.
Again I'll quote Blyth who is smarter than me on this:
n/a Works_of_memercy 2017-03-29
The two things don't contradict each other. I wholeheartedly agree that economic troubles and center-left inability to solve them especially for the working class provide the necessary foundation for the rise of far-right movements. Because their main promise is stability, security, return to good old days.
What I don't quite follow is how you go "center-left is throwing the working class under the bus, SO WE MUST BASH THE FASH".
Political violence also unnerves the common people and in Germany it seemed to reach the point where it was really much worse than economic troubles. Hence the initially similarly rising NSDAP and KPD popularity because both promised economic recovery, but followed by the plunge in KPD popularity and unfettered rise in NSDAP's.
They did fight, with hundreds of people killed and the army getting involved. I think you're trying to interpret this stuff as if it were driven by rational, self-consistent goals. It was not.
Yes, commies' hatred for moderates seems to surpass their hatred for actual Nazis, and I can't help noticing the same shit in the modern left as well. This is because Nazis are a very useful enemy. Fighting the establishment is really hard and frustrating, but Nazis are, well, Nazis, and they readily respond with violence to violence thus allowing you to BASH THE FASH without repercussions and it feels like accomplishing something. While if you tried to BASH THE CENTRE-LEFT, everyone would turn against you.
And then there's the accelerationism, the idea that the worse is the better, the main obstacle is defeating the entrenched establishment, and then you'll easily beat the Nazis who look as fringe as you are currently. Speaking of analogies, same shit happened as a result of Hillary's "Pied Piper" strategy, not because it's a left thing, but because it's natural to try to be clever and play a weaker enemy against the strong one and hope to snatch victory in the resulting chaos.
Which is the game that you should NEVER play with far-right movements, because their message is of Order and the worse things get, the more support they gain. Btw, now that I think about it, the US meddling in Middle-East "totally unpredictably" resulting in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism is exactly the same shit.
Anyway, back to the point, the solution to the far right problem is for the center to get working on the workers' rights (instead of labeling all such concerns as Nazi stuff (because all Nazi talking points are Nazi talking points, you see)) and everyone work hard on restoring the sanity and respect in political discourse.
Your assertion that that's how we got Hitler and the solution is to BASH THE FASH is completely wrong, because we got Hitler because of the failure on the first account (which your solution does not address) and precisely because of what you're suggesting regarding the second.
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
I don't see why you can't comprehend this. There's a big difference between the denuded masses and the fascists. If and when people are won over to fascism, there is no negotiating with them, no placating them, no asking them nicely.
You're literally just making things up. I showed you conclusively that the people turned to the only after having exhausted every other alternative. How the Nazis were the only ones to campaign on a platform of ending the soul crushing austerity imposed on the German working class. The SPD was part of the problem in this regard - like your democratic party, like PASOK in Greece, the French Socialists etc, like all neoliberal turncoats. You seem to be conflating the 1920s with 1933. The idea that people are turned off by political violence is valid enough to a point, but I don't see why accoridng to your story people would turn to the Nazis who were the thugs i.e. they were the ones who engaged in violence. Same as the Trumpeters, beating on protestors during the Orange one's rallies while he egged them on. They didn't seem too tuned off by it.
First of all, fascism is not something 'outside' the 'establishment'. Fascism represents a very particular crisis in capitalism and the political, a period where the 'normal' way of doing things breaks down - traditional political parties have a legitimacy problem wherein they experience a crisis of authority as their normal ways of bringing along the working classes no longer work. Fascism is the response, a very particular one which aims to accomplish what the traditional parties could no longer do as the people fail to buy their bullshit anymore. But to confuse it for "not the establishment" is wrong. Hitler indeed had the support of many fractions of monopoly capital in Germany, particularly German capital linked to the war industry - petrochemicals, iron, heavy industry, and especially amongst white collar bureaucrats . Yes he was opposed by other fractions - small proprietors for instance - but once he purged the left wing of his party, which WAS anticapitalist we must admit (knight of the long knives), he cemented the Nazis' commitment to 'the establishment'.
Basically what you seen against is any kind of violence against fascism. I don't wan to "BASH" the center-left. But I do blame the Third Way neoliberal free-trader Clintonites in the democratic party, the Blairites in Labour, the SPD - Sigmar Gabriel went right away to Wallonia for instance when they voted against CETA in order to campaign for it, PAOSK in Greece who created the kleptocracy, etc etc. That doesn't mean I wanna "BASH" it. I want them to offer the people the alternatives they deserve so they don't end up succumbing to demagogues.
I agree accelerationism is the most retarded thing. But accelerationism is based on doing nothing, so I really don't understand what you're getting at. Are you saying I am an accelerationist? As for the last part, this is what I think
The worse things get... how though? What causes a hankering "for the good ol'days" and for "law and order" is precisely the economic conditions people are suffering through, i.e. the things they experience in their day to day lived experiences. Mountains of debt, worries about their kids' schooling, insecure jobs, defunded communities, privatized social services which become shittier and more expensive, free trade treaties that rip good well paying union jobs out of their communities and replace them with Walmarts. THAT'S what makes people feel the angst and powerlessness. That fact that the state bails out Wall St. billionaires and kicks them out of their homes. THAT'S what makes them super pissed. Primarily the duty of the left is to show them a viable alternative. Unfortunately what passes for left parties or 'center left parties' (there is no such thing btw) are often the most eager promoters of these very policies which fuck them over: See SYRIZA in Greece which went from promising an end to austerity to promoting it, in a 6 month period!
Agreed. But recognize that there ARE fascists out there. People running around wearing swastika's and yelling about n____ers aren't the types of people we're out to 'win over'. Those people need to be kicked in their faces. These are the people we need to reach.
I think I made it clear how Hitler came about, and it had nothing to do with people fighting in the streets (which btw I think you're confusing the 20s for the 30s). Economic austerity and the unwillingness of the traditional parties - SPD included - to do anything about it elected Hitler. Read their platform which I linked.
n/a Works_of_memercy 2017-03-29
Well, so what do you think about the half of the US that voted for Trump?
That's actually a thing that I want to rant about sometime, that you commies seem to start with the denial of such a thing as "human nature" and then somehow transition to its opposite where you believe that anyone who doesn't believe the Right Thing is a lost cause because it exposes their true nature.
I believe, based on a shitton of research, that people tend to buy the whole package of beliefs they are pushed to by some particular belief. That if someone really doesn't like the "your jobs aren't coming back, suck it" from the Dems, they are pushed to Trump and they end up also believing that Mexicans and Muslims are causing all their troubles.
That is, the left's favorite pastime of drawing lines and claiming that everyone outside is a racist misogynist scum actually caused people outside those lines to become racist misogynist scum. Because the only politician that they could rally behind was that racist misogynist scum Donald and naturally they adopted those attitudes as well.
But vice versa, I then have to believe that if there were a left politician like Bernie Sanders but not old and ridiculous, that'd bring those people back and they would also adopt progressive attitudes about everything else.
They are not inherently evil, they just naturally support everything about the only politician who publicly cared about their wellbeing, who also happens to be evil.
No, you. The KPD was a thing, and quite popular. They had 10% in 1932 still. What turned the people from them to supporting Nazis was political violence. Read the fucking wikipedia article already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power
Again, you are trying to reason about it as if everyone were reasonable, they were not. I explicitly stated that Nazis outnumbered Communists 2 to 1 in causing fatalities. And sure they were aggressors more often than not, probably.
What mattered though was the Nazi public image that they are for ORDER, and Commies' talking about BASH THE FASH and revolution and progress and change. So common people saw the violence happening in their streets and voted for the party that promised to end it (by winning) and return the things back to normal and traditional.
It's not logical, it's base human instinct: when shit gets real bad and violent, you want a strong leader and rigid hierarchy to save you. Even if the minions of that strong leader are the ones causing most of the violence. Deal with it by not letting things to deteriorate to that point.
Yeah, just like Donald Trump is not "establishment", he's just some modest everyday billionaire guy. When thinking about politics, don't think what things really are, think what they appear to be. That's what people vote based on.
You what, mate? Accelerationism is based on actively making things worse, that's why it's called accelerationism, you accelerate the "inevitable collapse of capitalism".
Kicking political opponents in their faces, when they are far-right, results in them kicking you back, you kicking them more, and so on and so on, and in the end they win the popular vote because when it escalates to a real possibility of civil war people vote for ORDER, not for PROGRESS. They are fed up with what progress appears to be.
The only way to defuse the far right rhetoric is to de-escalate violence and to restore the usual normal political discourse, where people like yourself don't get to yell "THAT'S A NAZI TALKING POINT, BASH THEM" about someone being concerned about the poor whites. Like, you yourself probably wouldn't, but your comrades totally do, and you remain silent, because if you argue against BASH THE FASH in any circumstances you get bashed yourself.
No, in the 20s Hitler got fucked. Fighting in the streets and general violence really escalated starting from the murder of Horst Wessel (that got immortalized in a hymn and stuff) in 1930. Read the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power, don't be doomed to repeat mistakes.
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
What do you want me to say? My whole shtick is that I understand completely why so many people voted for him. He seemed to present an alternative to the traditional parties who's the same old same old routine diverges too far from people's lived experiences to be adequate anymore for them to do their job which is to bring the masses onside. Gramsci called this period a crisis of authority. I'm not proposing we throw out 60 million or however American voted for Trump - far from me such a thought. We have to win these people over. But don't confuse these people with the small cadre of fascists.
What a strange thing to say. I haven't said one thing about so-called "human nature". I am a materialist and an anarcho-communist. I won't answer for anyone but myself but I believe that humans can be a great of things depending on the 'inputs' - this is what makes me a materialist. Under certain conditions they can be good and under certain conditions they can be bad. Neoliberal capitalism makes shit really really hard for people financially, socially and psychologically. The analogy may be simplistic, but bear with me: if I'm following a receipe, certain ingredients in certain proportions under certain conditions produce certain types of foods. Neoliberalism and the economic hardships it causes is like a recipe for shit stew. Its up to us to change that, HOWEVER one please. March, write letters, call your congressmen, etc. I can't tell you what to do that's up to you. But understand that there are some bad people who would gladly skull fuck ever Muslim, immigrant or black person and make no bones about it. If you don't want to oppose this with force, fine, I cannot make you nor do I want to. But some comrades ARE willing to. Don't preach to them. I'm afraid if you think that fascists can be won over by pleading or accommodating the, you're sadly mistaken. You seem to think BASH THE FASH applies to the millions of people who voted for Trump - its doesn't. But there are conjunctures where fascism needs to be met with force. When neo-Nazis go trampling around Greece beating on immigrants and refugees, those people need defending and bless the fact that many anarchists there put their asses on the line to do that. You think us barbarians? That's some mighty high-minded criticism.
Maybe you're confusing me with the authoritarian left.
I never said they were "naturally" anything.
Please don't link me wikipedia articles.
Order in the face of what? Street fights? Firstly, the policy of 'social fascism' which you yourself brought up meant that the comintern specifically avoided conflict with the Nazis. The "FASH" they wanted to bash was social democracy, NOT the Nazis. Secondly, The Nazi party's platform was essentially the German version of "make American great again", which meant undoing all the shitty economic policies which had screwed over the working class and made the country a second rate power vis-a-vis the British and French.
This is why I linked you that piece from Mark Blyth (the following is his words, not mine): "The centerpiece of their July 1932 election propaganda, the Wirstchaftliches Sofortprogramm (the immediate economic program) laid out an alternative to austerity that looked an awful lot like the WTB plan."
Nothing about street fights (there was no worldstar back then to disseminate those things btw). Working people, fucked up and lied to by the traditional parties looked at this program as said "sure why the fuck not". The KPD had their head up their asses and the SPD were full-bore what we would today call neoliberals who had played a huge part in the types of 'sound economics' which had led the German economy into the toilet.
Yes but the point was IN WHAT WAY was shit bad? I keep telling you again and again that yes, shit was BAD but it was BAD economically. American loans cut-off during the depression meant FDI dried up. The Depression hit Germany HARD with 30% unemployment the year before Hitler. This after the period of hyperinflation of the early 20s, and the illogical and hysterically stupid goal on the part of the traditional German parties to "balance the budget" (again, sound familiar?) which effectively meant a complete abandonment of social policies which aided the poor and working class.
Again, in the words of Mark Blyth: "The National Socialists unsurprisingly picked up support in the 1930 election on the back of this cross-party austerity policy."
Time and again the fuckery of the traditional parties in their defence of 'sound economics' i.e. neoliberal type austerity worked in the favour of those who promised an end to it.
So ya, things were BAD, but not because people were rolling around in the streets - who the fuck cares about that? - but because Germans couldn't make ends meet.
n/a Nocturnal-Goose 2017-03-29
I know he's part of it. But I also know that the ruling class establishment is not one giant fissure-less monolithic bloc. Its riven with internal conflicts and contradictions. What we're seeing right now is a breakdown of the order - a crisis of authority - as the different fractions of the ruling class are having a go at one another. Even within the Republican party we see different fractions representing different interests really hammering one another.
We seem to be talking past one another.
When you mentioned accelerationism, I assumed you meant with regards to fascism. Because if you meant that, then you contradict yourself. How? Well if we accept your point that (a) the cause of the rise of the Nazis was due to the 'order' they promised in response to the violence of the KPD, we cannot also accept (b) that the KPD - as well as the PCI - on account of the Comintern advocated for social fascism (as you also noted). Why?
Because the policy of social fascism was accelerationist. The Comintern mistakenly characterized fascism as the last gasp of a capitalism that was dying. Rather than oppose it forcefully during the 1920s, the various Comintern congresses of the period were completely blind to the fact that fascism represented a offensive push by fractions of capital. They had read the communist manifesto too many times and interpreted it too literally beveling that capitalism proceeded through various phases culminating in the spontaneous rising up of the working masses to the horrible conditions leading to socialism and then to communism. Of course this is complete fucking nonsense, but their faith that the "iron laws of historical development" should be left to run their course is accerlationism as in practice as the policy of social fascism. I'll quote the work of Nicos Poulantzas again on this matter:
The blindness of both the PCI and KPD leaders in this respect is staggering. Fascism according to them, would only be a "passing episode". Amadeo Bordiga, introducing the resolution on fascism at the Fifth Congress, declared that all that had happened in Italy was 'a change in the governmental team of the hour bourgeoisie', The presidium of the comintern executive committee noted just after Hider's accession to power: "Hitler's Germany is heading for ever more inevitable economic catastrophe... The momentary calm after the victory of fascism is only a passing phenomenon. The wave of revolution will rise inescapably in Germany despite the fascist terror'. Fascism was no more than a passing episode in the economic advance of imminent, necessary revolution. This was only the beginning of the spiral in the Comintern's theoretical and political understanding of fascism. Fascism was considered a positive moment in the bad side of history.
Hell the proverbial night before Hitler won power, Poulantzas tells us that "... Thalmann [KPD head], in his closing speech to the Twelfth Plenum (September 1932): "In the present stage of the advance of fascism, every weakening of our struggle against social democracy... becomes a grave mistake". They didn't give a shit about fascism! They WANTED IT because that's what one's brain turns in to when listening to the trash that comes out from the brain of someone like Stalin.
The SPD was no better, Blyth tells us that: "As SPD member and one-time vice president of the Reichstag Wilhelm Dittmann put it in a speech to the SPD faithful, “We want the current situation [the crisis] to develop further".
The whole thrust of Poulantzas' argument in that book - and one which I happen to agree with - is the fact that IF the KPD hadn't been so slavishly following the dictates of a lunatic, and IF they had recognize fascism for the danger that it was, they COULD have strangled it in its crib.
So in essence you're accusing the "communists" of doing something they didn't do. They didn't oppose the fascists - they thought fascism as a way to their promised land. The same thing in Italy where as I said the PCI kicked out members who joined the Arditi and fought the fascists.
No question can be settled by force, my pacifist friends all say. And this in a country in which a civil war was fought and the question of slavery and secession settled! I can speak with especial certainty of this question, because all my ancestors were Southerners and fought on the rebel side; I myself am living testimony to the fact that force can and does settle questions — when it is used with intelligence. - Upton Sinclair
I don't think my comrades do.
n/a Works_of_memercy 2017-03-29
First of all, you're fundamentally confused, the quote was
Again, you're being confused by a century-old political bullshit. Yes, commies publicly and openly stated that their real enemy is democrats and that "they would prefer to see the Nazis in power rather than lift a finger to save the republic". Because they saw the Nazis as another fringe movement that would be easily (and inevitably!) defeated after the liberal democracy falls.
At the same time they did fight Nazis tooth and nail in the streets leading close to an actual civil war, as a result of willingness to escalate violence on both sides, but also in a correct but misguided idea that all this chaos weakens the present social order.
How? By even more violence, or by allying with SPD?
From the other comment:
So far it's literally the only people it applied in the US. Literally, among all reports of political violence from the left, not a single episode was against an actual fascist. All y'all endlessly jerk off to the idea of bashing the (real, actual, no shit, oven-heating) fash, then go out and bash random Trump supporters indiscriminately.
Please read the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler's_rise_to_power
Why are you surprised that a dudebro focused on economic causes of fascism focuses exclusively on the economic causes of fascism? Read the wikipedia article to see that there was another, just as important side to the whole thing -- the escalating violent conflict between the commies and the fascists.
n/a j4x 2017-03-29
It's even more hilarious when you realize most of the people in that video are carrying airsoft guns.
n/a i_lick_fedoras 2017-03-29
/r/asablackman
n/a YourGayOpinion 2017-03-29