Nazism
Nazism, also known as Hitlerism, is an extreme right-wing fascist ideology developed by Adolf Hitler and other members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party that preaches the extermination of the Jewish and Slavic "inferior race" and the preservation of the Aryan "superior race", supported by by scientific-racism. During Nazi Germany (1933–1945), Adolf Hitler allied himself with multiple non-Aryan races merely to gain support, since Italians and Japanese were not part of the Aryan race.
Neo-Nazism, a term for neo-fascist movements which seek the revival of Nazi ideology, is prevalent in both Europe and the United States. abandons the idea of Aryan German and replaces it with generic White supremacy.
Development and origins
Esotericism
Nazi ideology and iconography owes a major debt to the anti-Semitic and nationalist esoteric movement which was common among German reactionaries since the 19th century, including among "proto-fascist" paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps. By the time the Nazis began employing the swastika as their symbol, the association in Europe between the swastika and esoteric reactionism had already become well-established; in Finland, for example, where the national military used the seemingly innocuous symbol in at least some form until the 21st century, it had in fact originated in 1918 with the Swedish fascist Eric von Rosen.[1]
Racialism
The use of the term "Aryan" in Nazi racial theories descends ultimately from an unscientific interpretation of the Proto-Indo-European linguistic hypothesis. The linguistic theory posits, based on extensive linguistic evidence, that many languages and cultures of Eurasia, including English, German, Latin, Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit, originate from one linguistic-cultural group who lived during the Bronze Age. In the 19th century, this was construed by racial theorists such as Arthur de Gobineau and Houston Stewart Chamberlain to mean that these groups had all originated with one conquering, superior ethnic group or "race". Given that the autonym "Arya" appears in both Sanskrit and Old Persian to refer to the descendants of this group, this name was assumed to be the original culture's true name. According to the Nazi version of this theory, white-skinned "Aryan" invaders subjugated the Dravidian-speaking natives of India and ruled them as the original Brahmin class, producing in the meantime outstanding works of Indian culture such as the Vedas, but eventually interbred with their dark-skinned inferiors and fell into obscurity.[citation needed]
Ideology
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Relationship to socialism
"Fascism, although in the early stages making a show of vague and patently disingenuous anti-capitalist propaganda to attract mass-support, is from the outset fostered, nourished, maintained and subsidized by the big bourgeoisie, by the big landlords, financiers and industrialists."
— R.P. Dutt, Fascism & Social Revolution
Some, especially bourgeois academics and politicians, have argued that Nazism (if not fascism in general) is a form of socialism, their most common talking point being that the Nazis called themselves "national socialists." This argument only exists to demonize left-wing and progressive movements and is, ironically, directly or indirectly benefiting modern-day neo-Nazis and other far-righters.
The Nazis had little to do with socialism (a term which they used to denote national unity, not the system or ideology of socialism), with mass-privatization programs, austerity, and so on being hallmarks of the Nazi regime. The Nazis also heavily defended private property rights and repressed working class and left-wing movements. The proponents of this argument base it off a false premise of what socialism is; state-ownership, not worker ownership either directly or indirectly through a proletarian dictatorship.[2][3]
See also
References
- ↑ Allen, Claudia (July 1, 2020). "Finland's air force quietly drops swastika symbol". BBC News. Retrieved 18 Aug 2023.
- ↑ Joseph Stalin (1941). Speech at Celebration Meeting of the Moscow Soviet of Working People's Deputies and Moscow Party and Public Organizations. Available on the Marxists Internet Archive.
"Can the Hitlerites be regarded as socialists? No, they cannot. Actually, the Hitlerites are the sworn enemies of socialism, arrant reactionaries and Black-Hundreds who have robbed the working class and the peoples of Europe of the most elementary democratic liberties. In order to cover up their reactionary, Black-Hundred essence, the Hitlerites denounce the internal regimes of Britain and America as plutocratic regimes. But in Britain and the United States there are elementary democratic liberties, there exist trade unions of workers and employees, there exist workers’ parties, there exist parliaments; whereas in Germany, under the Hitler regime, all these institutions have been destroyed. One only needs to compare these two sets of facts to perceive the reactionary nature of the Hitler regime and the utter hypocrisy of the German-fascist pratings about a plutocratic regime in Britain and in America. In point of fact the Hitler regime is a copy of that reactionary regime which existed in Russia under Tsardom. It is well known that the Hitlerites suppress the rights of the workers, the rights of the intellectuals and the rights of nations as readily as the Tsarist regime suppressed them, and that they organize mediæval Jewish pogroms as readily as the Tsarist regime organized them.
- ↑ Scott Sehon (10-9-2020).""No, the Nazis Were Not Socialists". Jacobin.