Talk:Nazism/Archive 9

Conservative or Socialist
An edit war is under way over whether the Nazis were conservatives, one of many such edit wars associating Nazis with your party of choice. That the Nazis resemble party X is not a question that can be addressed in an encyclopedia. What can be addressed is how parties and politicians in the Weimar Republic perceived themselves and each other, or claimed to perceive themselves and each other. The Nazis believed themselves socialists and revolutionaries. The conservative parties did not believe the Nazis to be conservatives. If you want to associate the Nazis with party X, find a Weimar Republic politician or think tank associating the Nazis with party X – not as evidence that they really were like party X, but as evidence of the politics happening at the time.

If we are going to revisit the edit war as to whether the Nazis supported capitalism or socialism, let us at least quote communists of the Weimar Republic calling them supporters of capitalism, and capitalists of the Weimar Republic calling them supporters of socialism – inserting actual evidence that tends to support the conclusions we desire, while leaving the conclusions unstated.

James A. Donald 20:51, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * The article does not do what you are claiming. There is nothing that you are trying to remove that compares the nazis to any party or person. The is no consensus here to remove all claims that the party were conservative in nature. I think there are plenty of sources to suggest that part of the ideals of the nazis was to rooted in historical German nationalism. Parts of your edits were completely unsourced but i will give you the chance to source them. Please stick to facts and keep the article within NPOV guidelines. I have tried to incorporate them without removing too much material. --Neon white 23:24, 31 October 2007 (UTC)


 * That the Nazis were conservative is controversial: Nazis are revolutionaries.  To assert it in Wikipedia is a violation of NPOV.  You can insert sourced material that might incline the reader to the view that Nazis were conservatives, but to simply assert it is a gross violation verging on vandalism.   You also deleted my criticism of your edits in this talk page, and your reply to it, and the criticisms that many other have made of you.  It is completely improper to delete other people's criticisms of your edits made on the talk page James A. Donald 03:29, 1 November 2007 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neon white (talk • contribs)


 * Not really, its a widely held belief, they had conservative beliefs and consevative supporters, see Viscount Rothermere, a well known consevative that supported the nazis. You cannot deny that nationalism and conservatism are very much linked. The idea of shared ethnic heritage is at the heart of cultural conservatism. They were very much influenced by Arthur Moeller van den Bruck's work 'Das Dritte Reich' it which he specifically used the term 'conservative revolution'. Martin Heidegger was also a major critic of modern technology and believe it the 'conservation of racial inheritance' It is nowhere near a violation of NPOV, it's a cited fact that the nazis were known as conservative whether you like it or not. Nazism and fascism are both distinguished by the haunting presence of strongly conservative elements This point is clearly disputed amongst scholars so the article needs to present a balanced view, attempting to remove all reference to conservatism because of a personal view does not make the article NPOV. I did not delete anything on this talk page they were moved to the correct place at the bottom of the page. Your baseless personal accusations violate wikipedia etiquette and will not be tolerated as does your POV pushing. You have been warned. --Neon white 02:06, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Two major scholars on fascism Roger Griffin and Stanley Payne see fascism as anti-conservative. Griffin says that anticonservatism is one of the features common to all forms of fascism (including National Socialism) and Payne in his  A History of Fascism  lists anticonservatism as one of the fascist negations. -- Vision  Thing -- 13:16, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Fascism incorporated elements of socialism, but opposed socialism. Fascism incorporated elements of conservatism, but opposed conservatism. ~ Swi tch  (✉ ✍ ☺ ☒ ) 14:42, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Fascism and Nazism co-opted elements of many movements. For instance, their ideologies could be stated in religious terms to sway religious audiences, while the fascist state suppressed religious movements that could not be suborned to serve the state. The Nazi Party organized social activities for workers and for children, copying tactics from syndicalism; but the Nazis were certainly not syndicalist in their economic or labor policies. Both Nazism and Fascism drew support from conservatives for their devout anticommunism, but opposed any conservative power base that failed to support them. --FOo 19:49, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe User:SwitChar and User:Fubar Obfusco are both precisely on the mark here. Like most fascist parties, the Nazis were very eclectic, especially in their rhetoric. Once in power (and especially after the Night of the Long Knives) they (mis-)governed from the right, but in a manner that had little to do with conservatism, and even less to do with socialism (except in the sense that "anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools"). - Jmabel | Talk 20:42, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * That's exactly why i think the article needs to mention it because there are scholarly sources that call them 'conservative'. The whole principle of preserving genetic heritage, which i think we can agree, was at the root of most if not all hitler's policies can be described as conservative. Van den Bruck's term 'conservative revolution' essentialy meant a major movement against the forces which would change germany, namely the communists. --Neon white 23:14, 3 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Eugenics (what you call "preserving genetic heritage") has little to do with political conservatism. And van den Bruck was dead by the time the Nazis were politically relevant (and I don't think he was ever a member of the party, was he?)


 * If you have a view you want to get into the article, could you give an example of a scholar who holds the view you want to present, so that people can look at the relevant article by that scholar? - Jmabel | Talk 23:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Conserving genetic heritage is surely conservative. Van den Bruck works were known to be a major influence on nazi idelogy and he met with hitler in 1922. The idea of the third reich as a third germanic ethnic empire, came from his work of the same title. The fact that it was to be the third germanic empire suggests a certain amount of nationalism routed in the past which is very much part of conservatism --Neon white 00:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Nazism, fascism, communism, socialism, etc. which doesn't function like a capitalist-based anti-authoritarian multiparty democracy is considered morally wrong, kinda "evil" or just not politically correct in the eyes of most Americans whether they are conservative, liberal or moderate, and in Republican, Democrat or third parties...but Americans today like post WWI Germany began to sense their government hasn't worked, despite the belief "we the people" and elected representative government of the U.S., but to me Nazism was far-right with limited socialist elements and so was Mussolini's "corporate state/social republic".

I feel the same way about many forms of Communism (i.e. Stalinism) was far-left adapted totalitarian ideas like the "cult of personality" and the opposition to individual human rights was shared by the Nazis. One claims Hitler was a fanatic nationalist, religious zealot, antileftist and militarist, but the other pointed out he was an atheist, national socialist, and was a young liberal in 1914 Vienna who hated the Hapsburgs and the Catholic church. Which makes better sense? An ultra-rightist in the socialist left category of the modern-day political spectrum? + 71.102.53.48 (talk) 02:03, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

"Category attack"
--Neon white 12:49, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

User:EliasAlucard reverted my removal of Category:Discrimination, Category:Socialism, and Category:Homophobia from the article, with the edit summary "reverting category attack".

I would suggest that Category:Socialism here is particularly tendentious: as discussed above, it is just as inappropriate as it would be to include Category:Conservatism, and certainly more inappropriate than Category:Anti-communism. "Discrimination" in this case is a horribly euphemistic term for "genocide", but in any case the topic of this article is Nazism, not the policies of the Nazi regime, so it's a dubious inclusion. Similarly, the Nazi party was (at least post Night of the Long Knives) duly homophobic, but so have been quite a few other German political parties. Take a gander at Paragraph 175: for decades, West Germany's record of jailing homosexuals actually exceeded the Nazis', although at least they were placed in ordinary prisons rather than in deadly camps. Sadly, their homophobia is an area where the Nazis were arguably not far from the mainstream of their time (except, again, in their use of concentration camps).

But more to the point: if any of these categories are deemed appropriate, then Category:Nazism should be a subcategory of those categories, and it is redundant to include them in the article itself. - Jmabel | Talk 05:40, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I will give a long reply later in a few hours. I'm a sort of busy at the moment. &mdash;  09:30 07 Nov, 2007 (UTC)


 * the topic of this article is Nazism, not the policies of the Nazi regime. That makes no sense, what do you think nazism refers to, if not the nazi regime? The nazis discriminated against and killed alot of gay people, what anyone else did at the time is not relevant. --Neon white 17:30, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
 * First of all, whether some hardcore leftists/socialists/marxists like it or not, Nazism is a Socialist ideology, and both Communism and Nazism have a lot in common, more so than most nazis and communists would like to admit. Now, you might say, 'Marx defined Socialism, his Socialism is the only version that should be accepted as the standard model for everything Socialism.' I personally don't agree with that, but it's not up to me, you, or anyone else to decide what Socialism is. Hitler, considered himself a Socialist, and he considered the Communists as his enemies. This is true. He considered their version of Socialism, to be a Judeo-Bolshevik version of Socialism and that is why he hated their Socialism. Now, this debate whether Nazism is a Socialism or not, is not a new discussion. It's been going on ever since the second world war stopped. I am not going to discuss it anymore than it has been discussed, but some leftists simply have to accept that this was in all aspects, more or less, a Socialism based on Nationalist foundations. As hard as it can be to realise this for leftists, we who aren't Socialists, usually tend to agree on Nazism being a Socialist ideology. Homophobia? If Nazism isn't homophobic, then neither is Islam homophobic. Discrimination? I disagree that it's an euphemism for genocide. Nazism is an ideology based on the Indo-Aryan/European races and specifically, the German/Germanic peoples. Any group of people who are non-German and/or considered to be of no good or a threat to the German race, will be discriminated, and yes, in some cases, it can even lead to genocide. I see no problem with these categories being here. &mdash;  20:13 07 Nov, 2007 (UTC)


 * The socialism in National Socialism does not make Nazism a socialist ideology. This is the consensus reached on many, many discussions on Wikipedia talk pages, and in many political/historical texts. Pretty much the only people who claim that Nazism is a socialist ideology are extreme free-market supporters who oppose almost all government intervention in the economy, and third position SA/Stasserite-types who want Nazism and neo-Nazism to appear to be a progressive ideology.Spylab 22:15, 7 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Hitler certainly did not considered himself a Socialist. As i pointed out many times he banned all talk of the national socialist program. Your posts are becoming more and more incoherent as your POV pushing starts a POV that is based on a serious misunderstanding not only of the nazi regime but of politics in general. The categorizrd does not mean they were socialist it means they are linked the socialism, which they were. --Neon white 12:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * New comment posted after below comments were posted: No, putting it in the socialism category implies that Nazism is a socialist ideology, which it is not. Lots of topics are "related" to Nazism, but do not necessarily belong as categories in this article (e.g. conservativism, capitalism, Catholicism, Paganism, the occult, homoeroticism, Volkswagon, IBM, etc.).Spylab 16:00, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

For exactly the reasons stated by Spylab, I believe Category:Socialism should simply be removed.

Category:Nazism is already included in Category:Homophobic violence. It is their violence against gays, not their homophobia, that distinguishes the Nazis from many other political parties of the time in this respect. We do not normally include categories at multiple levels of the hierarchy. Again, it is redundant to include supercategories of Category:Nazism in the article itself.

As remarked above, Category:Discrimination is, at best, horribly euphemistic, but I'm less concerned with this than the other inclusions; once again, though, if valid it belongs on Category:Nazism, not on the article.

I stand by my view that these categories should not be on the article, but I've already removed them once and was simply reverted by EliasAlucard. I'm not looking for an edit war, but I hope he is not either (which is to say, if someone else removes them, I hope Elias will show as much restraint as I am showing). - Jmabel | Talk 05:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * After all the discussion that has gone on, it's clear that at the very least this argument should be moved from Nazism to Category:Nazism. I'm removing the categories from this article; if anyone wishes to discuss this further, please raise the issue at Category talk:Nazism, not here. ~ Swi tch  (✉ ✍ ☺ ☒ ) 06:50, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * None has yet come up with any reason why these categories have nothing to do with nazism. The only thing being posted here are POVs. Especially the ludicrous claim that a categoty is 'euphemistic'. The discussion is about this page so it belongs here. --Neon white 12:49, 8 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Hello? Except for socialism (where there is a clear argument that the connection to Nazism is tendentious, as would be Category:Conservatism) the argument isn't that they "have nothing to do with nazism". Don't set up straw men. It's that we don't attach supercategories of categories that are already attached: that "homophobia" is redundant to "homophobic violence" and that if Category:Discrimination belongs, it should be attached to Category:Nazism, not to the article. - Jmabel | Talk 17:55, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Anti-capitalism
In the section beginning "Nazi thinking had an anticapitalist (and especially anti-finance capitalist) direction", which is currently marked as original research or non-trivial synethesis: can we perhaps solve the issue simply by changing that sentence to "The Nazis often used anticapitalist (and especially anti-finance capitalist) rhetoric"? That is certainly borne out by the two paragraphs that follow. - Jmabel | Talk 17:59, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

A point about religion
Quoting this article on wikipedia:
 * ''[Hitler] preached that his was a "true" or "master" religion, because it would "create mastery" and avoid comforting lies. Those who preached love and tolerance, "in contravention to the facts", were said to be "slave" or "false" religions.

Contrasted with this other, from a book review on about.com
 * ''In “Michael,” the evil of Communism finds its greatest enemy in Christ, who is elevated as the ideal expression of “German” socialism: “The idea of sacrifice first gained visible shape in Christ. Sacrifice is intrinsic to socialism. ... The Jew, however, does not understand this at all. His socialism consists of sacrificing others for himself. This is what Marxism is like in practice.... The struggle we are now waging today until victory or the bitter end is, in its deepest sense, a struggle between Christ and Marx. Christ: the principle of love. Marx: the principle of hate.”

The quotes on the review are from Joseph Goebbels, however. But I think that it suggests that it's necessary to work a bit on it. The excerpt of the wikipedia's article suggests (at least to me) a somewhat simplistic notion that Hitler's religious views were purely "anti-love" (like some super-villain you'd expect from the carebears cartoon), as if love and tolerance by itselves were "in contravention to the facts", while perhaps these "facts" were some reasonings of him concluding that only aryans were supposed to be accepted/loved/tolerated. --Extremophile 04:45, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Outdated cites
The first four paragraphs of this entry are almost entirely based on outdated cites that do not reflect current scholarship on Nazism. They need to be rewritten based on scholarly studies published in the past 20 years. Otherwise marginal and outdated claims will continue to distort this entry.--Cberlet 00:49, 12 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Apparently even the slightest change casues frustration. Reversion without discussion other than a crisp edit summary is hardly useful.  There are a number of issues in the lead:


 * Nazism was a form of national socialism. It may have been the main form, it may be the best known form, it is not the only form, which is why time after time most editors support the disambiguation page for National Socialism.


 * In the past 20 years, a number of scholars, especially Payne, Griffin, Eatwell, and Gentile have argued that there were both ideological and cultural core elements of both Fascism and Nazism. Not all agree on what they are, but the claim that Nazism lacked substance ideologically is no longer the main current concept in the social sciences.


 * the text: "Nazism consisted of a loose collection of positions focused on those held to blame for Germany's defeat and weakness" violates WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. In light of recent scholarship, this claim, although popular in the 1950s and 1960s, is now outdated.

I will start with some basic edits, and we can go from there.--Cberlet 13:46, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * What do you mean, "a form of National Socialism"? Nazism is the original National Socialism ideology that was created in the 1920's, and 1930's in Germany. It had two different factions, one more orientated towards Socialism (Strasserism) and one more leaning towards Nationalism (Hitlerism). Hitler won, and his version became the standard for future National Socialist parties (Neo-Nazism). You're making it sound like there were at least 20 different movements in the 30's with different National Socialism as their ideology. And it's not outdated sources. Britannica Encyclopaedia is most definitely a WP:RS. &mdash; Ryu vs Ken (talk · contribs) 16:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * The Britannica Encyclopaedia is an inferior source for an entry in Wikipedia, especially for the lead. We need to do our own work, and cite it to the majority view of recent scholarship.--Cberlet 16:59, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * You can't just cite a book, you have to cite pages, and preferably also provide links and citations. The way you're doing it now, anyone can just add the title of an academic book and write whatever input he wants. It doesn't work that way on Wikipedia, you have to cite specific passages, or else it will be reverted. Use the cite templates available. The ideology is not a "form of National Socialism", it is simply National Socialism. You are mistaken about this. &mdash; Ryu vs Ken (talk · contribs) 17:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * In point of fact, there are several neonazi groups that consider themselves "Strasserite." White Aryan Resistance is a good example.  Your research is outdated.  Sorry.--Cberlet 17:02, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
 * And your refs aren't good enough at the moment. My research isn't outdated, you are just adding your 'expert' opinion and listing a few books as if they were unquestionable facts. This is clearly WP:OR. Needless to say, you are not doing things right. &mdash; Ryu vs Ken (talk · contribs) 17:05, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup
Someone posted a cleanup tag in September 2007, for good reason. This article needs drastic improvements in organization, references, and general copy editing.Spylab 15:44, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

What is not accurate in the lead I rewrote and cited to recent scholarship? As Spylab notes, this article needs serious work.--Cberlet 16:56, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the best solution to the many issues raised may be to ask a prominent scholar of National Socialism to write the article. Despite what many people think -- not everyone can be an historian. It takes years of training to learn the ins and outs of writing good history. Angela Thomas Winkler —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.8.54.22 (talk) 15:26, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Nazi racism
There is a section on Nazi racism, ticking off some of the categories of people the Nazis despise (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, etc.). So why is there a subsequent section on Nazi antisemitism? If this is done, there should also be sections about Nazi attitudes toward Gypsies, Slavs, and other "races" dissed by Nazis. Why give special attention to one, and not others, of these categories of people, and to Nazi attitudes thereto? Tom129.93.17.135 05:48, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That's a good question. Gypsies and Slavs were kind of like "normal" enemies of the Nazis, while the Jews were "the Big Boss", at least if you want to believe Hitler and his rants about Jewish Bolshevism. In any case, the Nazis focused a lot more on the Jews compared with other ethnic groups. &mdash; Devil May Cry (talk · contribs) 16:46, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Whilst the article needs to be balanced, the jewish holocaust has recieved alot more attention, reporting and studying and the article has to reflect that. --Neon white 18:05, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree it needs to be balanced. So what do you suggest? &mdash; Devil May Cry (talk · contribs) 18:34, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Nazism is pure racial nationalism, a hatred of different ethnic groups, nationalities and cultures different from the Nazi racial dogma of a "superior race" of humans over others (whether it's ethnic Germans, "Nordic Aryans" or white Caucasians in Northern/western Europe). Hitler was a bigot, chauvinist and xenophobe who disliked human diversity and cultural tolerance, and desired Austria along with Germany to displace or destroy non-Germanic ethnic groups he felt stood in his nation's way. According to Hitler, Germany should stay "German" and Pan-German nationalism to unite all German-speaking peoples is important, while he excluded fellow Germans because they are Jewish or had Jewish parents, or Slavic minorities (i.e. Poles, Lusitanians, Sorbians and Wends) in Easternmost Germany are to be expelled.

Hitler felt Jews are "alien" or hasn't originally belonged to the German reich, because Hitler studied but misinterpreted anthropology and he didn't like their religion and worried about the Jews' origins are from Africa, Arabia, India or east Asia, where Semitic languages and local darker-skinned peoples live, despite the widely accepted racial classification charts stated Jews are only a religious group, as well Arabs and South Asians are classified Caucasian and shared Indo-European languages. The Nazis' false theory of "Aryans" are the one "light-skinned" race whom conquered northern India about 2,500 years ago are German or European, although the Aryans could originated from Persia or present-day Iran and migrated first to Turkistan, Central Asia then went southward and dispersed in all four directions.

He felt Jews are too liberal, involved in progressive, reform and socialist movements around the world, and in the late 20th century, white racist groups in America and nationalist groups or nativists in Europe blamed Jews for "assisting" African-Americans in the civil rights movement (1960s) and also backed Islamic immigrants (despite radical Islam's comparison of Jewish Zionism with Nazism and colonialism), in part of a "plot" or some conspiracy to politically, socially and demographically drive down the white European/"Aryan" races in European majority countries and North America (the U.S. as a superpower) during the recent wave of Hispanic-Latin American (mostly mestizo) and Asian (east and south) immigration aren't considered "Aryan".

The Nazis always placed Germans (esp. they had blonde hair, blue eyes, much taller or hardly any previous intermarriage with Jews or non-Germans) on the top of the racial hierarchy, while Scandinavians, the Dutch and English along with British-descended countries like the U.S. are equally "pure" or the reason why Britain had a world empire is explained by racial theories. But the Latins with exceptions of Northern French and Northern Italians are placed lower, which the list includes most Italians, Greeks and Spaniards, the Nazi race scientists claimed the Moorish-North African occupation of Iberia/Spain and later Ottoman Turkish occupations of Southeast Europe was responsible for ethnogenetically degrading a formerly white "Aryan" people.

Interestingly, Hitler and the Nazis allied themselves with a non-Caucasian country, Japan in East Asia and the Japanese knew of Nazis' dislike of Asian races in part of their racist ideology. But the Nazis observed Japan's rise in military strength and industrial power in the same way they noted the much feared Soviet Russia and Hitler knew the militarists in Japan equally dispised Marxism and the U.S. Hitler once considered the U.S. as an idealistic "white Aryan" country but he felt was threatened by non-white minorities (i.e. African Americans) and was under "Jewish socialism" with finance capitalism, since Jewish immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe arrived in large numbers to America in the late 19th/early 20th centuries.

Today, Neo-Nazis and white supremacists in part admire Hitler, Nazism, and share his psuedoscience and xenophobia to further their hatred of African-Americans, Latinos (illegal immigration has gained momentum in national politics) and after 9/11, Middle Easterners in the U.S. Neo-Nazis express the same illogical feeling of "white Aryans" of Northwest European extraction are no longer in charge of the world, the percentage of native-born whites are declining in number and the increase of racial intermixing is "bad" for European lands with a former homogenous character and in racially diverse but segregated North America. Hitler's ideas shown he's a fanatic racist alright. + 71.102.53.48 (talk) 01:36, 1 May 2008 (UTC)