JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 12, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 5"

But Neo-Nazis are Rightist!

A remaining important objection to the account I have given so far is that Hitler's few remaining admirers in at least the Anglo-Saxon countries all seem to be on the political far-Right. In discussing that, however, I must immediately insist that I am not discussing antisemitism generally. Antisemitism and respect for Hitler are far from the same thing. Although vocal support for antisemitism was in Hitler's day widespread across the American political spectrum -- from Henry Ford on the Right to "Progressives" on the Left -- such support is these days mostly to be found on the extreme Left and for such people Hitler is anathema. And the antisemitism of the former Soviet leadership also shows that antisemitism and respect for Hitler are not at all one and the same.

Of course he's not talking about Antisemitism on it's own, and yes Stalin was an antisemite, however Stalin's own anti-semitism should not be confused with that of Hitler's.

"Stalin was an anti-semite by most definitions but until after the war, it was more a russian mannerism than a dangerous obsession. He was never a biological racist like the nazis. However, he disliked any nationality that threatened loyalty to the multinational USSR. He embraced the russian people not because he rejected his own Georgian origins but for precisely the same reason: the Russians were the foundations and cement of the Soviet union. But after the war, the creation of Israel, the increased self-consciousness among Soviet Jews and the Cold War with America combined with his old prejudice to turn Stalin into a murderous Anti-Semite. Stalin and his [token] Jewish Comrades like Kaganovich were Proudly Internationalist. Stalin, however openly enjoyed jokes about national stereotypes. He certainly carried all the traditional Georgian prejudices against the moslem peoples of the caucasus whom he was to deport. He also persecuted Germans. He enjoyed the the Jewish jokes told by Pauker (himself a Jew) and Kobulov, and was amused when Beria called Kaganovich 'the israelite'. But he also enjoyed jokes about Armenians and Germans, and shared the Russian loathing for Poles: Until the 40's, Stalin was as Polonophobic as he was anti-semitic " - Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar", p310.

But in the Anglosphere countries Hitler DOES still have his admirers among a tiny band of neo-Nazis and it is true that these are usually called the extreme Right. They normally refer to themselves as "The Right",

If even neo-nazis call themselves Rightists and as i have demonstrated and will continue to do so that Hitler himself was a rightist. Why do you think that is? Is it because Nazism itself is rightist by any chance? Anyway he continues...

I must point out that the description "Far-Right" is a great misnomer for the successors of Hitler in modern-day Germany. As we will see,... modern-day German neo-Nazis are demonstrably just as Leftist as Hitler was. So are American, British and Australian neo-Nazis also Leftist in any sense?

No.

The answer to that is a simple one: They are pre-war Leftists, just as Hitler was. They are a relic in the modern world of thinking that was once common on the Left but no longer is. They are a hangover from the past in every sense. They are antisemitic just as Hitler was. They are racial supremacists just as Hitler was. They are advocates of discipline just as Hitler was. They are advocates of national unity just as Hitler was. They glorify war just as Hitler did etc. And all those things that Hitler advocated were also advocated among the prewar American Left.

Well he's already admitted that...

"vocal support for antisemitism was in Hitler's day widespread across the American political spectrum."

It may have been a very weak description, but it's there, which kind of gives the game away as regards to the rest of his statement for here he is guilty of Deception by omission, As i have already shown all he lists here was popular on the German right too, and in-fact the Right wing in general, and even today such ideas still linger on in some right wingers. GOP House hopeful Jim Russell for example has been caught praising racist practices and advocated eugenics in a 2001 essay he wrote!

And what about David Duke. Is he a left winger now?

That does however raise the question of WHY such thinking is seen as "Rightist" today. And the answer to THAT goes back to the nature of Leftism! The political content of Leftism varies greatly from time to time. The sudden about-turn of the Left on antisemitism in recent times is vivid proof of that

Antisemitism? Actually it is the Right wingers who have performed the U-turn on Jew hatred. once they were the Jews more bitter of their enemies, now they cannot get enough of Israel [This U-turn in fact means that left wingers have been left "hung out to dry" with regards to the mantle of Antisemitism] This reflects somewhat in how the Far-right treats Israel today. Nick Griffin for example claimed on TV that his party was the only party to support Israel in its war "against the terrorists" during Operation Cast Lead [though his real support for Israel i may say is i think dubious]. Right wing terrorist "Anders behring breivik" claimed to be a Zionist and friendly towards the Jews, In fact this article from Jta.org sums up the hypocritical nature of the relationship with Israel that these Right wingers. Here's an Excerpt:
　

"European right-populist parties increasingly have been waving the flag of friendship with Israel, as well as expressing vehement opposition to Europe's multicultural society.

"Last month, after it emerged that German-Swedish far-right politician Patrik Brinkmann had met in Berlin with Israeli Likud Party lawmaker Ayoub Kara, who is deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman wrote to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Kara be prevented from making further trips abroad. According to Ynet, Lieberman accused Kara of meeting with neo-Nazis and causing damage to Israel's image. Brinkman said he had reached out to Israeli rightists hoping to build a coalition against Islam

In postings on the website Document.no that appear to be by Breivik, the poster pondered whether one could "accept the moderate Nazis as long as they distance themselves" from the extermination of the Jews.

The words of right-wing populist politicians "are dangerous, it allows them to radicalize," Hajo Funke, an expert on right-wing extremism in Europe and the Holocaust at Touro College Berlin and the Free University Berlin, told JTA in a phone interview.

"It is a tactical viewpoint of the rising populist right-wing to use this kind of identification, or forced identification with Israel, to be accepted," he said. "They say, 'Our enemies are not any more the Jew ... the real enemy as you can see all over the world is Islam, and not only Islam, but the Islamic person.' This is the new, great danger."

Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told JTA that "in the recent years we have witnessed the phenomenon of radical rightists proclaiming their sympathy for Jews and their support for Israel, also in Germany," adding that "In many cases, it is clear that this is no more than a PR maneuver to create an air of respectability."

Actually what he writes there about Anti-semitism was just a projection as was pretty much the whole paragraph it was in almost. He's only projecting things onto the left that really are just as true of the right, add into that his deception by ommision. Aren't the tea partiers and Sarah Palin "push[ing] it to extremes in order to draw attention to themselves as being the good guys" and try to make us believe that they are "courageous champions of popular causes"? Okay then i'd better go tell Sarah Palin she's a Leftist and see if i can outrun the bullets from her Moose hunting rifle.

But the thinking of the man in the street does not change nearly as radically as Leftists do.

Or rightists, or simply politicians for that matter. In my country if a prime minister or political party pushes the electorate too far against their taste, they jump ship as it were.

Although it may no longer be fashionable, belief in the superiority of whites over blacks is still widespread, for instance. Such beliefs have become less common but they have not gone away.

Could it be because if we were to look at the side of his blog, we can see this?

People who mention differences in black vs. white IQ are these days almost universally howled down and subjected to the most extreme abuse. I am a psychometrician, however, so I feel obliged to defend the scientific truth of the matter: The average African adult has about the same IQ as an average white 11-year-old and African Americans (who are partly white in ancestry) average out at a mental age of 14. The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they have had to concede that sort of gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. 11-year olds can do a lot of things but they also have their limits and there are times when such limits need to be allowed for.

Moving on:

Such beliefs have become less common but they have not gone away. They are however distinctly non-Leftist in today's climate of opinion so are usually defined as "Rightist" by default. So the beliefs of the neo-Nazis are Rightist only in the default sense of not being currently Leftist. They are part of the general stream of popular thinking but that part of it which is currently out of fashion.

And hopefully you can see why now this is nonsense!

And so it is because the old-fashioned thinking of the neo-Nazis is these days thoroughly excoriated by the Left that they see themselves as of the Right and reject any idea that they are socialists.

"Reject that they were socalists"? I wonder why given all i've wrote.

I can attest from my own extensive interviews with Australian neo-Nazis that they mostly blot out any mention of Hitler's socialism from their consciousness. The most I ever heard any of them make out of it was that, by "socialism", Hitler was simply referring to national solidarity and everybody pulling together.

And that was based most likely on their probably poor recollections of Hitler's "Volksgemeinschaft". Again see Ian Kershaw earlier. As to the ideas of Hegel which he then mentions, he's a very abstract thinker [the philosopher's philosopher as i have once heard it put] and someone who has been admired by the left and the right wing. I don't think he can be pigeonholed into any particular wing of thought. So one can cite him all day because it's meaningless. Neo-Cons like Francis fukuyama have been influenced by Hegel. Also "autarky and government control" are not intrinsic qualities of socialism.

And the neo-Nazis are assisted in their view of themselves as Rightist by Hitler's anticommunism. The falling-out among the Nazis and the Communists was in Hitler's day largely a falling-out among thieves but the latter half of the second world war made the opposition between the two very vivid in the public consciousness so that opposition has become a major part of the definition of what Nazism is. And Marxism/Leninism was avowedly internationalist rather than racist. Lenin and the Bolsheviks despised nationalism and wished to supplant national solidarity with class solidarity. Given the contempt for Slavs often expressed by Marx & Engels, one can perhaps understand that Lenin and his Russian (Slavic) Bolsheviks concentrated so heavily on Marx & Engels's vision of international worker solidarity and ignored the thoroughly German nationalism also often expressed by Engels in particular.

maybe, just maybe it's because Lenin saw something that JJ ray doesn't? Sorry, there's no real nationalism much less something as extreme as the extreme nationalism of the nazis in the writings of Marx and Engels except that gleaned from quotemines. And the final paragraph of the "But neo-Nazis are rightist part" is just full of superficialities and strawmans, So i'll skip it.

Insane?

So, Right wingers are insane. Leftists are sane. Hitler was sane therfore leftist?

Or is it .... Left wingers are insane. Right wingers are sane. Hitler was insane therfore leftist?

Either way, Sanity is not a determiner. Let's make the case he was sane.

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 11, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 4"

Non-Marxist objections

Objections to my account of Hitler as a Leftist can however be framed in more Anglocentric terms than the ones I have covered so far. In particular, my pointing to Hitler's subjugation of the individual to the State as an indication of his Leftism could be challenged on the grounds that conservatives too do on some occasions use government to impose restrictions on individuals -- particularly on moral issues. The simple answer to that, of course, is that conservatism is not anarchism. Conservatives do believe in SOME rules.

The simple answer to this is that Anarchism is a left wing philosophy too, see the writings of Mikhail Bakunin. But, as demonstrated elsewhere, Govt size is NOT a determiner for left and right.

At any rate even if we were to somehow concede that "traditional Anglo-Saxon conservatism is libertarian in that it supports freedom against the government." contentious though that notion may be to some. How does this change the fact that traditional German conservatism was not? and that it was in-fact authoritarian; it traditionally supports obedience towards the government."

"The crucial sociological determinants of German conservative ideology are to be found in the absence until 1870 of a centralized state; in the Lutheran heritage of the reformation, which fostered a submissive attitude towards authority; in the absence of a politically conscious middle class, and in the militaristic mentality of the Junker class, produced by it's need to hold down the conquered Slav peoples of eastern Europe whose land it possessed. There is in addition, the fact that Napoleon's liberal reforms set the pattern for the whole subsequent history of political and social reform in Germany to date. That tradition is a tradition of reform from above. The only system of govt ever created by the Germans for themselves, A J P Taylor acidly remarks, Was Hitler's Third Reich. Although that system was founded in Terror, and was unworkable without the secret police and the concentration Camps, it was also the only truly national one which Germany had created, since it offered something to every class of the population, whatever reservations particular groups might have had about the barbarianism it entailed. The old empire 'had been imposed by the armies of France and Austria; the German confederation had been imposed by Russia and Prussia, the Weimar republic by the Victories of the Allies. But the "Third Reich" rested solely on German force and German impulse; it owed nothing to alien forces. It was a tyranny imposed upon the German People by themselves." - Noël O'Sullivan, "Conservatism" p80-81.

"It is not too much to talk of a progressive bureaucratization of Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and a concomitant growth among the inhabitants of the German states of habits of deference toward authority that seemed excessive to foreign observers. These last may have had ancient roots--it was a medieval pope who called Germany the terra obedientiae--but there is little doubt that they were encouraged by the traumatic effects of the [Thirty Years] war. The daily presence of death, the constant Angst of which Gryphius speaks in his poems, made the survivors willing to submit to any authority that seemed strong enough to prevent a recurrence of those terrors." - Gordon Craig, "The Germans", p22.

"Every nation has its principal motive. In Germany, it is obedience; in England, freedom; in Holland, trade: in France, the honor of the King." - Karl Friedrich Moser, writing in 1758, Quoted in Craig, "ibid", p23.

Here's the thing. Hitler himself may not have been a conservative in the strictest sense but the Nazis certainly had some conservative backing as their interests certainly overlapped. But that doesn't matter, because im not arguing that Hitler was conservative. While there are other factors involved such as that Prussian militarism, extreme nationalism, and the subservience of the social structure to an economic and social elite, the political economy question is the main determiner for left and Right. And this alone puts the Nazis squarely on the Right, for they, despite their early talk which was only propaganda, had a capitalist economy that was geared to support and give more power to the wealthy.

As with so much in life, it is all a matter of degree and in the centrist politics that characterize the Anglo-Saxon democracies, the degree of difference between the major parties can be small. But to compare things like opposition to homosexual "marriage" with the bloodthirsty tyranny exercised by Hitler, Stalin and all the other extreme Leftists is laughable indeed.


Demonology is demonology. But do you know what i find laughable? This...

And this

And this

And all the other Stupid Tea-Party Obama-Hitler references, and the Bush-Hitler references of the Left too which were equally laughable. The Reductio ad Hitlerum is a laughable piece of logic, Period.


And it is the extremists who show the real nature of the beast as far as Leftism is concerned. Once Leftists throw off the shackles of democracy and are free to do as they please we see where their values really lie. Extreme conservatism (i.e. libertarianism), by contrast, exists only in theory (i.e. it has never gained political power anywhere in its own right)


You may as well say that Communism, by the same type of thinking, "exists only in theory (i.e. it has never gained political power anywhere in its own right)". And Extreme conservativism is NOT libertarianism. Irving Kristol has this "interesting" take on Neoconservatives

"Neoconservatives are not libertarian in any sense. A conservative welfare state is perfectly consistent with the neoconservative perspective" - Irving Kristol, "Reflections of a Neoconservative", p77.

And an Extreme German Conservative in i guess it's traditional sense wouldn't be a libertarian minded person either would he? Afterall different places produce different Conservativms don't they? So his point about "Extreme conservativism" is nonsense. As to the part about Extremism, well when we see the Extreme Right throw off the Shackles of democracy we see where their values really lie don't we?

JJ Ray: Hitler was a socialist debunked. Part 10, "Discussing so called 'Objections' to his theory part 3"

Other Leftist nationalists


When it comes to Hitler and by extension Mussolini, we are NOT dealing with "leftist nationalists". Yes it is true that these creatures do exist and nationalism is NOT a determiner for left and right, I think it's important to make the distinction between rightist nationalists using the "socialist" tag for propaganda, as hitler and mussolini were and most certainly did, and leftist nationalists, who were Genuine socialists.

In the post-WW2 era, internationalism and a scorn for patriotism has become very dominant among far-Leftists but that was not always so. From Napoleon to Hitler there were also plenty of nationalist and patriotic versions of Leftism

True, but so what? Hitler was not a leftist!

That was part of what was behind the various diatribes of Marx and Lenin against "Bonapartism". "Bonapartism" was what we would now call Fascism.

Here's oxford's Take on Bonapartism.

Following the practices of Napoléon Bonaparte, First Consul and subsequently Emperor of France between 1799 and 1815, and/or his nephew Louis Bonaparte (Napoléon III), Emperor of France between 1851 and 1870. The term was given its specific meanings by Marx (see especially his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852). For Marx, Bonapartism was an opportunistic and populist alliance between part of the bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat (‘proletariat in rags’), which relied on plebiscites, in which Bonaparte set the questions, to secure legitimacy for the regime. For Marxists, Bonapartism represents the autonomy that the state may achieve when class forces in society are precisely balanced. Historically, Bonapartism stood for strong leadership and conservative nationalism without advocating a return to the ancien régime." Oxford concise Dictionary of Politics.

-

"Bonapartism has always been associated with the cult of the Bonaparte family, and Corsica has invariably been the stronghold of any movement connected with it. In political terms Bonapartism has usually been classified as right-wing, but a number of reservations have to be made.

Napoleon I ended the Revolution, but he attempted to bring about the reconciliation of the French. He established authoritarian government, but sought to preserve the work of the Revolution. He established the rule of notables, gave guarantees to property-owners, distributed hereditary titles, and increased centralization, but maintained the abolition of privileged casts and corporations and declared that careers were open to talent. Napoleon III was accused of establishing a police state and suppressing public opinion, but at the same time he was concerned with economic growth and with the plight of the poor. The notion that Bonapartism is impossible to define seems to be confirmed when one remembers that Napoleon I was famous for his military victories, while Napoleon III's defeats have never been forgotten.

The essence of Bonapartism is that it seeks to be a unifying force in a divided country and tries to achieve this by concentrating on the talents and reputation of an individual. Both emperors drew support from many varied sectors of the population. After 1870 Bonapartism did not die out; it was in the Bonapartist tradition that notables were elected to the National Assembly, and that striking miners shouted ‘Vive Napoléon IV!’ The movement led by General Boulanger to capture power between 1886 and 1892 had many of the characteristics of Bonapartism. The same has often been said of Gaullism." - The new Oxford Companion to Literature in French.

Although this website (Rays source) makes it out that he sat on the left of the chamber, ergo left wing but in the old outdated sense, but regardless of whether or not Bonapartism is left or right wing, what influence did he have on Hitler? Ray doesn't tell us. Overall, I would perhaps clasify Bonapartism as an authoritarian, centrist, perhaps centre right ideology as an absolute on the political spectrum, as does "The Napoleon Bonaparte Wiki"

"In a wider sense, Bonapartism refers to a broad centrist or center-right political movement that advocates the idea of a strong and centralised state, based on populism" - Reference is Outhwaite, William. The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003. Print.

and it was a rival reformist doctrine to Marxism long before the era of Hitler and Mussolini. It was more democratic (about as much as Hitler was), more romantic, more nationalist and less class-obsessed. The Bonapartist that Marx particularly objected to was in fact Napoleon III, i.e. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of the original Napoleon. One of Louis's campaign slogans was: "There is one name which is the symbol of order, of glory, of patriotism; and it is borne today by one who has won the confidence and affection of the people." So, like the original Napoleon himself, the Bonapartists were both very nationalist and saw themselves as heirs to the French revolution.

Im not a specialist into the french revolution, I'll grant that Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was a nationalist, it wouldn't surprise me in the socio-political context. plus it doesn't matter as nationalism is not a determiner for left and right. But Hitler havng a modicum of democracy? what a Joke. And as for it being more democratic than marx, (and to repeat myself.) you need to remember that When Marx talks about "The dictatorship of the Proletarian" he doesn't mean an actual physical dictatorship but is referring to how society is structured through the concept of the 'Base' and the "Superstructure" and the interplay between the two.

You see, according to Marxian Theory, we now live in something called "the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie"; the social structure is apparantly mainly geared to support them and their interests and the bourgeoisie apparantly run the political structure for their own benefit

From this perspective, Marxists argue that this is why america has two parties that are just different flavors of the very same capitalist substance, Both parties are acceptable to the bourgeoisie that apparantly run the Superstructure. All Marx is saying is that a Worker's democracy that is run for the workers will change that and the base and Superstructure will be set in accordance with worker's needs and not capitalists. if you read his works, What Marx was striving for, was in fact a radical democracy.

So it was very grievous for most communists when, in his later writings, the ultra-Marxist Trotsky identified not only Fascism but also the Soviet State as "Bonapartist". That was one judgment in which Trotsky was undoubtedly correct, however!

Perhaps the term Bonapartism in a Marxist sense can be best understood is a term often used to refer to a situation in which counter-revolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. In the process, Marx argued, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a narrower ruling class, And Trotsky, being part of the so-called "Left Opposition" and believing that his communism was the true heir to the revolution of 1917, took that analysis to Stalin. He was arguing that stalin was not a true revolutionary and had in-fact created a new bourgeoisie to rule over the proletariat , ergo Trotsky, from the perspective of a far leftist was saying both Stalin and Nazi germany were rightist. Obviously not a correct analysis as far as Stalin is concerned

In other words, Trotsky labeled Stalin's regime as Bonapartist because he felt it shared similar traits.

"Napoleon’s downfall did not, of course, leave untouched the relations between the classes; but in its essence the social pyramid of France retained its bourgeois character. The inevitable collapse of Stalinist Bonapartism would immediately call into question the character of the USSR as a workers’ state."

It should be noted that Trotsky also claimed...

"Hitler’s program is the program of German capitalism, aggressive but bound hand and foot by Versailles and the results of the World War." -  Hitler's program (1934).

There have always been innumerable "splits" in the extreme Leftist movement -- and from the earliest days nationalism has often been an issue in those. Two of the most significant such splits occurred around the time of the Bolshevik revolution --- when in Russia the Bolsheviks themselves split into Leninists and Trotskyites and when in Italy Mussolini left Italy's major Marxist party to found the "Fascists". So the far Left split at that time between the Internationalists (e.g. Trotskyists) and the nationalists (e.g. Fascists) with Lenin having a foot in both camps. And both Marx and Engels themselves did in their lifetimes lend their support to a number of wars between nations. So any idea that a nationalist cannot be a Leftist is pure fiction.


Lenin was still an internationalist, he just realized after the trauma of the Civil war that the revolution could not survive unless the original base was built up and THEN the revolution moved forward. Trotsky wanted the revolution to move forward without regard to the forces that would be brought against them.

Internationalism in the face of the power of the nation state to demand ones allegiance is admittedly difficult to maintain particularly amongst the rank and file, but nevertheless Communism by ideology is still internationalist. The split in the soviet Union wasn't really about nationalism but on how to and at what speed to proceed with the revolution.

And, in fact, the very title of Lenin's famous essay, "Left-wing Communism, an infantile disorder" shows that Lenin himself shared the judgement that he was a Right-wing sort of Marxist. Mussolini was somewhat further Right again, of course, but both were to the Right only WITHIN the overall far-Left camp of the day


The "Left-Wing" that Lenin is talking about here is the anarchist school,and those that wanted to prematurely dissolve the state before the revolution was complete, it's like the disagreement between Marx and Bakunin. Mussolini was on the Right-wing period, not on the Left at all. private industrialists were empowered and enriched by his regime and he never adopted any sort of socialist program.

"He (Mussolini) was relieved no doubt to find the commanding heights of Italian capitalism joining the great majority of the liberal order and certainly most landowners in applauding the march on Rome." (don't misread here, the word 'liberal' is being used in its actual form and not the politicized form that exists in the US. One could substitute 'upper middle-class' or 'Petty Bourgeoisie' here) Thereafter he and de' Stefani were careful to present the new government as fiscally orthodox, preoccupied with cutting wasteful expenditure but willing to assist capital by the denationalization of the telephone network and the cancellation of Giolitti's investigation into excessive war profits, and determined to balance the budget." - RJB Bosworth, "Mussolini's Italy", p224.

and wasn't that McCains platform too? And the actions of the Italian fascists showed their capitalist intentions.

"Once in power the fascists issued the so called "Carta del Lavoro" or Labor Charter which encouraged private entrepreneurship and specifically stated, "State intervention in economic production will only happen when private initiative is lacking or insufficient and when the political interests of the state are directly involved." - Bosworth, "ibid", p227. 

If you want to read Lenin's "1920 pamphlet against ultra-leftism and anarchism", You can find it here.


It should further be noted in this connection that the various European Socialist parties in World War I did not generally oppose the war in the name of international worker brotherhood but rather threw their support behind the various national governments of the countries in which they lived. Just as Mussolini did, they too nearly all became nationalists. Nationalist socialism is a very old phenomenon.


Nice of Ray to ignore the work of all those like Jean Jaurès who prevented a previous war and attempted to also stop WWI. And to also forget those on all sides that continued to be against the war even as they were compelled by their gov'ts to fight in it. And Mussolini was ousted by the Italian Socialist Party for his support of Italian intervention in the War.

And it still exists today. Although many modern-day US Democrats often seem to be anti-American, the situation is rather different in Australia and Britain. Both the major Leftist parties there (the Australian Labor Party and the British Labour Party) are perfectly patriotic parties which express pride in their national traditions and achievements. Nobody seems to have convinced them that you cannot be both Leftist and nationalist.

One problem, Ray is what Ray does here is to mistake the patriotism that is i think common in every nation state and on both sides of the political spectrum, ie that of having pride in your nation's achievements with the extreme rightist nationalism of Hitler. This is what i was talking about in the beginning of this post, it's a real logiclal fallacy on his part.

That is of course not remotely to claim that either of the parties concerned is a Nazi or an explicitly Fascist party. What Hitler and Mussolini advocated and practiced was clearly more extremely nationalist than any major Anglo-Saxon political party would now advocate.

They were good nationalists, as Ray now admits, contridicting his earlier claims. But that aside, as this offers us no defense of his fallacy, The connotation is still there.

And socialist parties such as the British Labour Party were patriotic parties in World War II as well. And in World War II even Stalin moved in that direction. If Hitler learnt from Mussolini the persuasive power of nationalism, Stalin was not long in learning the same lesson from Hitler. When the Wehrmacht invaded Russia, the Soviet defences did, as Hitler expected, collapse like a house of cards. The size of Russia did, however, give Stalin time to think and what he came up with was basically to emulate Hitler and Mussolini. Stalin reopened the churches, revived the old ranks and orders of the Russian Imperial army to make the Red Army simply the Russian Army and stressed patriotic appeals in his internal propaganda. He portrayed his war against Hitler not as a second "Red" war but as 'Vtoraya Otechestvennaya Vojna' -- The Second Patriotic War -- the first such war being the Tsarist defence against Napoleon. He deliberately put himself in the shoes of Russia's Tsars!

Russian patriotism proved as strong as its German equivalent and the war was turned around. And to this day, Russians still refer to the Second World War as simply "The Great Patriotic War". Stalin may have started out as an international socialist but he soon became a national socialist when he saw how effective that was in getting popular support. Again, however, it was Mussolini who realized it first. And it is perhaps to Mussolini's credit as a human being that his nationalism was clearly heartfelt where Stalin's was undoubtedly a mere convenience.

Stalin may have been was using patriotic propaganda, but he was still something of a internationalist in terms of ideology and What Ray forgets here is that, even during the war the Russians still managed to produce posters with internationalistic themes, like this one for example. Note the Black person and the Chinese person? It translates as "We greet fighters against fascism" according to SovMusic.ru

No sorry Ray, here's the truth of the matter:

"Stalin and his Jewish Comrades like Kaganovich were Proudly Internationalist." - Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar", p310.

As to Hitler being a Social Democrat? Well that was something Hitler manages to call a "pestilential whore, cloaking herself as social virtue and brotherly love, from which I hope humanity will rid this earth with the greatest dispatch, since otherwise the earth might well become rid of humanity." - Mein Kampf, vol 1, chapter 2

And his claim about Nazi-KPD collaboation has already been covered