Nazism: A Paradigm


Some cackle that whenever one mentions Nazism, one has lost the debate (Godwin’s Law). Verily, of chickens today we talk.

Is the idea that nothiAdd Mediang compare to you, oh, Nazism? As in love songs? Nothing compares to Nazism, oh (my love?) Assuredly we are living in strange times. Yet, reality is even stranger.

Nazism, for want of a better word, is firmly anchored in the German mood, from way back. So much for Nazism being an “accident”, caused by “one” gangster, Hitler, who made Germans kill, purely accidentally and without any inclination to do so, 70 million people (make that more than 100 million, when counting the first round, World War One, and associated distraction, like exterminating Native Namibians).

The first pogroms of the Middle Ages started when the herds of Crusaders, during the First Crusade, reached German speaking lands. (Although the Crusade was launched from French speaking areas, and this, by the Pope, personally.)

Luther made countless declarations calling to burn Jews, destroy them, torture them, and rejoice in their lamentations: “I wish and I ask that our rulers who have Jewish subjects. . . act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, as Moses did in the wilderness, slaying three thousand lest the whole people perish.”

This murderously racist, not just racist, mood persisted, over centuries: Prussia had anti-Jewish (and also anti-Polish) laws, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries.

Geeks who subscribe to Godwin’s Principle will never know any of that, as they will declare that their history professors have lost the debate, as soon as they mentioned Nazism.

Meanwhile, geeks are preparing to make us all slaves of skynet. They can now take control of cars at a distance. Something I experienced years ago when, more than once, uninvited forces took control of computers of mine at a distance, big time.

That obscurantism of making Nazism incomparable, never to mention it, that God Win Law, is well named: Let me please introduce GOD, who is all about ignorance, that’s how those who promote him WIN.

The Godwin Law is strong in the USA. This encourages young Americans not to enquire about the troubling pattern of USA based plutocracy in supporting Hitler.

Let me put it in one sentence: if the USA had helped the French Republic by declaring war to Hitler in 1939, or in the first half of 1940, neither the Holocaust, nor the full horror of World War Two would have happened. That is, of course, a terrible revelation. It is a more comfortable strategy to  block the conversation before it starts.

Geeks spend all day programming, they have to replace the culture they never had, with a cute appearance, in search of some intellectual dignity. Deliberate buffoonery masquerading as superior wisdom, enables them to cover-up their crass ignorance, especially to themselves.

Once again, in connection with their attempt to build Skynet, the not-so mythical system where machines control everything (as found in the movie Terminator), and their demonstrated past relation with NSA and other occult organizations, this is quite troubling.

If nothing compares to the worst baddies, so they should never be mentioned, will geeks extend their desinvolte courtesy to banksters? Mention banksters, people, and you have lost the debate? This is de facto what is happening: Greece is all over the Main Stream Media, but the connection between said crisis, and its genesis in banking, rarely mentioned.

The original name of god in Hebrew was: The-One-whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Uttered. Thus by refusing to name Nazism, one makes it divine, in the old biblical way.

I propose the exact opposite. I propose Nazism is a paradigm of nationalism and socialism gone wrong. I propose that Nazism was the culmination of a process.

I propose that much of the German mood was Nazi, from 1815 to 1945. At the very least (considering Luther, it should rather be, from 1515 to 1945). After all, the racist and vicious “legal” crackdown on the Jews started in 1815, after French rule was terminated (and Europe broken by an economic system that benefited Britain).

(That Germany did not really exist in 1815, is besides the point: German speaking areas existed, and Metternich, in cooperation with Prussia, set up the anti-Jewish (Nazi) laws.)

If I am correct and Germany was Nazi from 1815 until 1945, refusing to talk about Nazism is refusing to talk about Germany, from 1815 to 1945. How to buttress my case?

Bismarck had a strong socialist bend. He imposed national health care on Germany in 1863. He was also an expansionary nationalist successfully attacking Denmark, Austria, France, while keeping Poland under the Prussian boot. The German dictatorship lived very well while treating the Jews badly.

By 1900 CE, the principle of mistreating people for their (alleged or not) race had been generalized to a holocaust in South-West Africa, of a type never seen before. How come? Maybe the cult of Kant explains much. Kant was, in practice a racist and an enslaver. That was Kant’s most practical impact: he advised European and American politicians to enslave inferior races. : “The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.”

In 1914, the Germans launched a world war outright, thus committing the exact crime which condemned the rich wine merchant (and foreign minister) Von Ribbentrop to hang slowly at Nuremberg. Germans also committed, during their blunt attack many other war crimes. Enough to hang most of the top German generals, at the same justice been applied in 1919 as in 1945. The worst crimes were thoroughly documented.

A two year old Belgian girl who was bathing in a river was killed deliberately by German soldiers. That was thoroughly documented, as were the cold blooded killing of 160 civilians in the same area that day. Why? The Germans, in this third week of August, in this war they had launched, had been unnerved by a violent French counter offensive. That day 27,000 (twenty-seven THOUSANDS) FRENCH soldiers died in combat. How did the Germans react? By killing two year old little Belgian girls.

The big mistake the allies made in 1919 was not to find out, judge and hang, enough of these criminals. Instead, they were let go, and were basically told it was cool to be monstrous, when one is German. So they did it again, even more blatantly, twenty years later.

A lot of the commanders of 1939 already commanded in 1918 (Goering led the Von Richthofen squadron, after the death of the Red Baron; in 1939 Goering, son of his father the war criminal, commanded the entire German airforce, and, naturally enough, engaged in war crimes).

The deliberate, conspiratorial attack of August 1914, was certainly nationalistic: the initial mission was to destroy the French Republic, to make space for German plutocracy. Moreover the German Socialist Party, the SPD, some of whose principals made a show of their ignorant hatred for the Greeks, fully cooperated. In two words: National-Socialism again.

Adolf Hitler and his Nazis in all this? Just a bouquet final for German Nazism. This is the mood which resurfaced in the anger against the Greeks. Make no mistake: anger can be very good. But only when directed to the real culprits, not the innocent bystanders. In the Greek crisis, the real culprits were banks, plutocrats, Goldman Sachs, German regulators (who allowed the Drachma in at twice its rate). But the average Greek?

Tribal German madness started way back. Way before Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) applied the (ill-defined) concept of “race” to nationalist theory, thereby inventing ethnic nationalism. Bad German philosophy, widely admired, all the way back to the ill-fated Teutons, and the ill-fated Arminius (“Hermann”).

Germany was unified by the German Franks, precisely because the Confederation of the Franks rejected primitive tribalism, and embraced tolerance. It’s never too late to remember the past.

The moods at the root of Nazism, tribalism, and the social instinct, are strong, and can be excellent, given the appropriate circumstances. That, per se, makes it not just very important, and always a temptation, but also very dangerous. It needs to be counterbalanced with a strong will to disorder.

Meanwhile BMW recalled discreetly two million cars (because they could be taken over at a distance). Skynet, the taking over by the machines, will be ineluctable, if what we prefer is order. What’s more ordered than a machine?

Patrice Ayme’

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9 Responses to “Nazism: A Paradigm”

  1. De Brunet d'Ambiallet Says:

    It looks as if the mere mention of Nazism in the title made you lose the debate, hahaha. Where are the comments? The German nationalists, so virulent a few weeks ago, are clearly hiding somewhere.

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  2. hazxan Says:

    So glad you wrote this! There seems to be increase in “Godwins Law” accusations being used on any public comment forum. As if it is some sort of scientific fact, when it is just a means of derailing a discussion that is uncomfortable to those of strong right wing views.

    As westernized nations drift ever more to the political right, isn’t it natural, even healthy, that people will notice and inevitably compare with Nazi Germany? If “Godwins” is used to forbid mention of Nazism, well, it’s all very convenient for a new generation seeking to impose fascism on us.

    The other thing is that surely what happened in Germany is *the* key event of the 20th century? The largest war ever (and it wasn’t about religion!). The holocaust. Average people engaged in horrific actions, we need to know what happened so that it is never repeated.

    The history is still emerging, historians, sociologists etc. are still finding new angles on what happened.

    And isn’t it odd that there is no equivalent Law preventing right wingers to quote Stalin or Marx when anybody dare suggest a more egalitarian politics? Well, it’s not odd at all, the plutocrats are not interested in logical, fair discussion, just any old propaganda to further their wealth.

    There should be a meta-Godwins. A “Godwins Godwins Law” that points out that any discussion that mentions Nazism, will be derailed by somebody shouting “Godwins”.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Thanks for approving, Hazxan! I am always nervous when my esteemed commentators stay silent: did I put out something embarrassing? Boring? What you point out, that brandishing Godwin’s law is directly tied in to the rise of right wing extremism (erroneously called “conservative”) is an excellent point.

      Germans crowed that they were the most educated, literate, full of culture and mental superiority, around 1900 (Nietzsche had vehemently disagreed with that intellectual masturbation earlier, comparing Germans instead to a brutish herd vastly inferior to Jews, or the French… or even the Poles). Actually Germans were nothing of the sort, but quite the opposite.

      As you say, one has to ponder this, again and again, to not see it repeated.. Say on something similar to the attack on Iraq, writ much larger. Good point too that there is no Godwin law about Marx, Stalin, etc.

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      • hazxan Says:

        I think the whole thing with Godwin’s law is not that people irresponsibly throw in references to Nazism, but that it this is inevitable and correct because Nazism casts the biggest shadow over the 20th century.

        The repercussions impact us today. The horror of it was a huge blow to many who believed the modern world was rational, sane and that our barbaric history couldn’t be repeated. Many people really believed that when the League of Nations was going.

        I’m still not 100% sure about the real causes. Pinning it all on Hitler, or just a very few, missed the point the nation produced them and supported them. Nations do seem to have a “character” even if the mood can change. Whether that is genetic or just the replication of the social system, I don’t know. Eric Fromm wrote some interesting stuff about the harshness of the typical German childhood at the turn of the 20th century. Swaddling the infants for the first two years of life etc. It would be amazing if those people were *not* psychologically damaged. Also, can it be coincidence that the state education systems that we consider “normal” now, were originally the Prussian education system of the mid-19th C, designed to turn out adults capable of obeying orders in the armies and factories? The Americans and British were much impressed by this system, copied it and it it what we are all subjected to today. Obey the master, be taught just enough to become a cog in the system, but never learn anything to challenge it.

        In contrast, I recall Milgrams experiments around the 1960’s -ish. Part of the aim was to scientifically examine how much people will “follow orders” as the phrase was the most used explanation of Nazism hold on the average German. Yet he found no significant difference between nationalities. I think they were expecting to find that Germanic people had a much higher tendency to “follow orders given by the master”. It shocked them to find we were all the same, hence equally likely for whole nations to “go rogue” as Germany did 1939-45.

        However, as you say, nations have a “mood”. The mood in Germany in 1960 was very different to that in 1930. And very different to today, I’d guess. The experiments could never be repeated, which is a shame as I think we could get different results now that memories of WW2 have faded. In 1960, Germans were very aware of the dangers of unquestioning obedience to authority.

        Seems to me the world is becoming more divided between those of “left and right” political ideals, to use a broad generalisation. Ultimately, our politics are down to our psychology, no amount of reasoning and presentation of facts will change peoples minds.

        I appear to have rambled off into a tangent! I think i was going to say that the “right” does not like rational argument, they prefer an argument from authority – hence the ease with which they throw around “Godwins Law” whenever they see a statement they don’t like. The “left” makes the mistake of thinking you can reason with authority. You can’t.

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        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          That Nazism was so incredibly important ought to be clear. The war of 1914-1945, a fruit of what came to be known as Nazism, killed more than 5% of the world population, and collapsed European civilization. Europe, instead of being collectively the hegemon, became a pawn of its colonies, the USA and Russia!

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        • Patrice Ayme Says:

          I have another essay on the German moods coming soon, with lively incarnation in the recent Greek crisis. The mood in Germany has changed, but it needs to change more, so that Europe gets out of its deadly embrace with austerity. I think the divide is increasingly more between plutocracy and the rest, but that’s covered up as a battle left/right, which has nothing to do with reality.

          Take Obamacare: Krugman, every week, sings its praises: Obamcare made health care available to all, it lowered costs (or, rather the increase of the increase of costs, Krugman’s fine print). Then look at the Wall Street Journal: health care spending went up 5.5% in 2014, in the USA (an acceleration from the 4% average annual increase, just prior).

          BTW, I know one professional in the health care insurance industry. He chuckles about Obamacare, says massive increases are coming ASAP, that is, as Obama leaves the WH…

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  3. Quora Says:

    How do German kids feel when they learn about what Hitler/Germany did in WW2?

    On German Turpitude Okay with much of it. However, moods live through generations, even centuries. Luther wrote Jews and their synagogues ought to be burned. Hitler did it, 4 centuries later. Meanwhile Jews were persecuted in Germany, for centuries. In…

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  4. Kevin Berger Says:

    Nazism (and WWII) have been essentialised into abstract ideas.

    One is supposed to worship at the church of WWII, forever fighting the idea Nazis, forever in the shadow of the idea WWII.

    One is never to look into the real Nazis, who made them, who helped them, who recycled them, to this day, who prospered from them, to this day as well.
    And one is never to move out of the shadow of the idea WWII, lest one be an heretic (which reminds me I’d like to be able to go through a day reading online content written in English, by Americans, Brits, Est Europeans, Northern Europeans, etc, etc, no matter, and be able NOT to at least get a glimpse, if not more usually the full view, of a “white flag”, “surrender” joke about the French. But that’s an another story)

    Really, it’s nothing more than a secular version of the superstitious religions you take aim at.

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    • Patrice Ayme Says:

      Good point, Kevin! :-)! It’s indeed a form of superstition: the super being meta-ideas of the type you evoke (Francophobia, and the desire to not learn about what really caused Nazism and the like…)

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