To be a lefty is not just to be over-sensitive and easily offended, but also to let everyone else know this, all the live-long day. They are offended by so many things that free speech and the unfettered exchange of ideas are rendered all but impossible due to the various verbal minefields the Left position everywhere in public discourse.
Innocent people suffer because of these strictures. Thanks to the multicultural obstacles placed by the politically-correct, every single public authority in South Yorkshire looked the other way while 1,600 girls were gang-raped over many years. This mass rape, committed by members of third-world heritage communities, and the social and political cultures that facilitated it and effectively protected the criminals, is not even now seen as a high priority feminist issue. Anti-rape campaigners remain more interested in chasing errant footballers than they are in supporting hundreds of child victims and seeking justice for them. Labour is still ignoring the problem. If they win at the next election, lock up your daughters.
One of the easiest ways to set off a lefty, or, in enforced parlance, to ‘trigger’ them, is to suggest that Adolf Hitler was actually a socialist. They can’t stand it. And yet all the evidence is there. True, Hitler did not follow the words of Das Kapital, he was egotistical enough to write his own book, but then socialism surely does not rely exclusively on the words of Marx as some kind of King Karl’s Bible.
One of the most interesting buried facts is the actual name of Hitler’s party. In German it is the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei. This is usually translated as the ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’. So it does seem Hitler was a socialist. Not a Soviet Socialist, demonising economic groups according to Marxist principles, not Internationalist, where the workers of the world unite, but a National Socialist, demonising ethnic groups according to nationalist principles. The communal social ties of Russia was replaced by the volkish blood-ties of Germany. However this is but one translation of the party’s name. In official documents produced by the Allied Control Commission that ran Germany after the War, the party was actually called the National Socialist German Labour Party by the Allied Control Council when they officially abolished it in October 1945. For some reason, this translation is no longer used. ‘Arbeiter’ also translates as ‘Labourer’.
The actions and policies of Soviet Socialism and National Socialism in the 1930s and early 1940s were effectively identical. Both countries sported a red national flag with a stylised cruciform device in it. Both had national economic plans, the Soviet five-year plan, the Nazi four-year plan. Both had personality cults of the leader. Both mobilised and organised their populations. They both used propaganda and state terror, outlawed other political parties, both had concentration camps, both had party purges, both had secret police, both had the State directing the economy, both rearmed at a terrifying rate. Both of them invaded Poland, both murdered thousands of Poles, both continued invading other neighbouring countries, both signed an agreement dividing up Eastern Europe. Both had a national leader sporting a distinctive moustache. They both, in succession, invaded each other. The list of not just similarities, but also direct equivalence, goes on.
Socialists hate having Hitler included as one of them. They cannot help but ignore or denounce this concept to remain sane and credible. They will go to any lengths, even verbal abuse, to attack the notion that Bohemian Corporal with the toothbrush moustache bears any resemblance to the pockmarked Georgian with a bushier counterpart.
However, any vigorous defence misses the main point. If National Socialism is not actually socialism, then what is? When the Socialist Unity Party that ran East Germany was ordering its soldiers to murder those that would cross the Berlin Wall, was that socialism? Yes, it was. Socialist economics require a captive population with closed borders. Were the millions murdered in the time of Lenin and Stalin, the leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, killed by socialists? Yes they were. Killing political opponents is the easiest way to perpetuate a socialist one-party state. A dead person cannot point out the faults of Marxism when put into practice.
The lefties want to pick and choose who is really a socialist so they can keep their consciences clean. Deny Hitler being a socialist, then why not, in the name of socialist ‘equality’ deny Stalin as well? If the definition of socialism is that which is practised by politicians whose corrupt states do not murder by extrajudicial decree or kangaroo court, then this is a very narrow definition. Perhaps the only real socialists are to be found in Western Europe after 1945, and that’s it. If that is the case, perhaps some socialists could come forward and issue some kind of Marxist bull to counter this thesis pinned to socialism’s door. And do it politely.
The problem is that those on the left refuse to confront the hard fact that socialism that they slavishly support comes in a lot of unpleasant flavours, including those that cause human disaster, which is why they currently try to avoid discussing the economic and political cesspool of Venezuela, their verbal contortions causing much merriment now that odorous dam has overflowed. They want socialism to be pure and unsullied by evil associations. It is way too late for that. If people who describe themselves as socialists of one kind or another commit atrocities that other socialists deny are the product of socialism, then socialism itself is actually a meaningless term. And that is perhaps the truth. Socialism means absolutely nothing apart from whatever the self-identifying socialist is saying or doing. And that could be any old rubbish, including the toxic kind that kills people.
(Image: Andrew Kitzmiller)
