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Nazis. I Hate Nazis.
Strange times we live in when American conservatives — or some of them, anyway — think it makes perfect sense these days for Europeans to get their Nazi groove on. I’ve been hearing this a bit too much on Ricochet of late, so I thought I’d make what in normal times would be an excessively easy call.
Nazis. I hate Nazis. And so should you.
The pro-Nazi argument, as I understand it, is that Europeans have been forced into their moist embrace by a political establishment that has unwisely ignored the larger public’s concern about the large number of migrants and refugees now streaming into Europe.
In discussing this, I’m going to single out comments by BDB not because he’s the only one to represent this argument, nor because I have it out for him, but because he’s tough and I know he can take it. I thus reproduce parts of an exchange we had on another thread:
BDB: You seem to view any opposition to Muslim immigration as such, and especially for cultural reasons, as akin to Nazis. I’m sorry, but that’s a bad fit. This may make sense if you have a worldview that does not value Western Civilization, or which sees no threat to any culture through demographic change, but without at least one of those assumptions operating, mass Muslim immigration is fairly seen as a threat to Western Civilization. And not a single one of them has to intend harm in order to carry it out.
You don’t see danger — I do. That doesn’t make me Hitler. That makes me a conservative — literally — to conserve. It’s disappointing to have to make that distinction here.
CB: No, you’ve misunderstood me, but I made this point on another thread, so perhaps you didn’t see it. I said that I don’t view opposition to Muslim (or other forms) of immigration as illegitimate or akin to the Nazis:
There are political parties in most of Europe that represent a more cautious or skeptical approach toward accepting refugees, but don’t wallow in the language, tropes, ideology, colors, and mud of traditional European fascism — or Putinism, for that matter. Germans who are uncomfortable with Merkel’s approach have the option, for example, of voting for the CSU, a perfectly respectable Christian conservative party. In France, they can vote for the Républicains — not that France under Hollande has taken in anything like an “inundation” of refugees; in fact, the total accepted in France so far is 14,800, with plans to take in another 24,000. It’s a myth that there are no mainstream parties to which voters may attach themselves if they’re uneasy about immigration.
What I view as akin to the Nazis are the parties and movements that are, in fact, explicitly Nazis (in that they say, “We are Nazis”) or very much akin to Nazis, in that they skirt laws or taboos against the formation of explicit Nazi movements by appealing to Nazi language, tropes, and ideology — e.g., Golden Dawn in Greece:
(“The charm of the swastika, the splendor of red and black flag is alive today … our National Socialist task scream full of passion, faith in the future and our visions: HAIL HITLER!”) — Golden Dawn Issue 13.
(“Against the Jewish Life Perception whereby the Ioudaiochristinismos entered the history … Within the National Socialist renaissance dominance holds true religion of Europe paganism as an authentic expression of the religiosity of the Aryan man.”) –Golden Dawn Issue 59, p. 13-14
So I don’t think I’m straying into the territory of paranoia to suggest that Golden Dawn are akin to Nazis.
Some time ago, there were a spate of books written by European leftists like Nick Cohen — you may remember him; he wrote “What’s Left,” as well as by that great windbag BHL. They noted and deplored the European left’s willingness to ignore or justify Islamism in the name of multiculturalism. I see a similar tendency now on the right to ignore or justify the recrudescence of European fascism in the name of fighting Islamism. It’s a grave mistake.
BDB: And a reaction to the first. Given a dominant political position that imports a culture-wrecking crew, do you really see other alternatives? People who do not wish to be shoved off are being forced to lose or get offensive. Nobody chooses to lose.
Well, where do I start. While I don’t see “opposition to Muslim immigration as such, and especially for cultural reasons, as akin to Nazis,” I do see those who suggest that “there’s no alternative to the Nazis” as, very literally, akin to Nazis. That’s inarguable, no? If you’re offended at being tarred with the Nazi brush, I suggest it would be unwise to argue that Nazis are a natural reaction to anything, no less the only alternative in a sea of alternatives.
Let me quickly establish two important points. First, that the parties and movements we’re discussing are indeed Nazi parties. They are not misunderstood Jeffersonian Democrats with a curious but incidental taste for cuffbands, chevrons, belt buckles, commemorative badges, regimental standards, trumpet banners, field caps, service medals, shoulder flashes, permits, passes, boots, leather, chains, Iron Crosses, swastikas, and the Horst Wessel song. Their penchant for nattering on about Jewish Conspiracies and Blut und Boden is not a meaningless historic coincidence.
Here again is Golden Dawn:
Still not convinced?
No? Perhaps this will persuade you: When Nazi slogans were painted on Nikaia cemetery in Piraeus, Greece’s largest Jewish burial ground, they left behind their calling card: Hrisi Avgi — Golden Dawn. In May 2012, they ran under the slogan, “So we can rid this land of filth.” Party Leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos placed an adorable marble eagle on his desk. Here’s Golden Dawn MP Eleni Zaroulia during her inauguration, wearing the Iron Cross. Oh, and what have we here? Panagiotis Iliopoulos, another Golden Dawn MP, displaying his tattoo: Seig Heil! Then there’s Artemis Matthaiopoulos, another Golden Dawn MP and the frontman of the tastefully-named band “Pogrom,” which churns out hits such as “Auschwitz” with lyrics such as “[redacted] Anne Frank” and “Juden raus.“
Beginning to believe me yet? Well, let’s continue. Spokesman Ilias Kasidiaris quoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in a speech to parliament on 23 October 2012. Golden Dawn’s leader, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, denied the existence of gas chambers and ovens at Nazi extermination camps:
“There were no ovens — it’s a lie. I believe it’s a lie. There were no gas chambers either,” Michaloliakos said in an interview with Greece’s private Mega television, broadcast on Sunday.
Then Golden Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris said it outright, in the Greek Parliament: He’s a Holocaust denier.
It’s not just the rhetoric, either: It’s the action:
Late on Thursday, about 50, wielding blunt objects, violently confronted Communist party members in the Greek capital while they were passing out flyers … Nine leftists were hospitalized after sustaining severe wounds.
“The way in which they acted and the weapons employed … are evidence of the murderous nature of the attack. Among the Golden Dawners, some of whom had covered their faces or wore helmets or [party] shirts, were their leaders, well-known fascists and thugs.”
In April 2014, Golden Dawn MP Ilias Panagiotaros described Hitler as a “great personality, like Stalin,” and denounced homosexuality as a “sickness.” He described immigrant Muslims to Greece as, “Jihadists; fanatic Muslims” and claimed that he supported the concept of a one-race nation, stating, “if you are talking about nation, it is one race.”
Look: If looks like a Nazi, swims like a Nazi, and quacks like a Nazi, it’s not a duck.
They’re now the third-largest party in the Greek Parliament, by the way.
Now, suppose you’re a normal Greek, not a Nazi, and you’d like to vote for a party that takes a tough line on immigration. Well, you could vote for ANEL, the Independent Greeks — they’re not particularly attractive; a bit of that old anti-Jew stench off hangs off of them, too — but at least they’re not outright Nazis. They have a strong anti-immigration agenda; they want a 2.5% quota for non-Greeks residing in the country, the mass expulsion of illegal immigrants, and a hierarchy of “preferred” immigration by country of origin, heavily biased towards western and Latin American countries. They’re a little crazy and little conspiracy-prone, but at least they’re not Nazis. Or you could vote for the perfectly sane, center-right New Democracy Party, which proposed during its recent time in office to introduce a strict immigration policy. They recently strengthened this part of their platform. Or perhaps you could vote for the Popular Popular Orthodox Rally, which describes itself as “Hellenocentric,” opposes illegal immigration, and suggests deporting all undocumented immigrants. “I don’t want them to become a majority,” party leader Giorgis Karatzaferis says.
But frankly, if you’re Greek, it doesn’t seem that immigration is anything like the biggest of your concerns, no matter what you think Greeks should think. According to opinion polls — for what they’re worth — immigration barely even ranks in their top concerns. If you’re Greek, your biggest concerns (at least, as of last year) were “International Financial Stability,” (95 percent), followed by “Global Climate Change” (87 percent), followed by Iran’s nuclear program (64 percent). I certainly understand why the first and the third issues are sources of concern. As for the second, I am beginning to doubt that the Greeks are a fully rational people, but then again, Americans too seem much preoccupied by this fear.
So don’t tell me that becoming a Nazi is a perfectly understandable reaction to an ambient political class that won’t take seriously your concerns about the assault on European culture — especially because most Greeks, from what I can tell, don’t share your concerns. They seem to want to do the decent thing toward these boat people, and I find it impossible to blame them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOVx_reOlXQ
This post is too long as it is, but I’ll continue tomorrow by looking at other countries, other parties, and other plans for handling the refugee influx beyond The Nazi Option. I will, I hope, convince you that there are many alternatives to Nazis. Stay Tuned.
Published in Foreign Policy, General
This gets to it. The fundamental battle for me is between collectivists and individualists.
(And, to hate only Illinois Nazis is even more parochial. ;)
Here’s what I’m not understanding about your argument, then. If you don’t care, why do you feel strongly about this issue? Are you looking at Europe entirely as synonym for the United States? Yes, Europe and the US (and Canada and the rest of the Anglosphere and indeed large pockets of culture on most Continents) make up Western civilization, and Western civilization is a real thing — which ought to be defended. But the US and Europe are not a one-to-one map, by any means.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “process arguments.” I’m making arguments about laws and treaties. If you’re arguing that laws and treaties should be torn up because civilization is at risk otherwise, I think it falls to you to make an overwhelmingly good case that this is so. I’d say that “rule of law” is an essential part of the civilization I want to defend.
No winking, no nudging: I argued that
I don’t think so, but this isn’t because I’m just shrugging at the thought.
Which anecdotes? You asked about Marseille, and I replied to that.
I’m in favor of accepting refugees from Syria, in particular, on several grounds. The first is humanitarian, but the second is that the alternative is an even greater long-term security nightmare for the West.
I’m disposed to discount bad arguments against it. I accept the good ones, which are strong.
No, I’m describing the bogey-man like qualities of fascist movements in Europe, and arguing that it’s in not in any American’s interest to legitimize these movements. I’m arguing that there are alternatives to them, and that we should support them.
I’m also arguing that it’s far too soon to give up on democratic politics, and making what I think is the common-sense point that the rise of parties and movements that are based on anti-Americanism are not good for America.
I’m not sure what you mean.
Me too. I’d suggest this principle in foreign policy for all Americans: support the people and parties who like Americans and are closest to us in values. My point, which I’m very willing to substantiate until you feel satisfied that the evidence I’ve provided is sound, is that there are a number of dangers here. Islamic migration isn’t the only one, or even the one that should most alarm us.
Ok, back to fascism. Zafar, the problem with what you’re saying is that Moses was even more of a fascist then. Calvin & Luther? Worse still or just about. If you cannot see that this is insanity, then you do not truly understand law. You will have to believe that law equals fascism if you are willing to dismiss the banal experience that taught people that fascism was gangster politics, tyranny & lawlessness in the streets.
I think this misunderstanding takes several forms. Some liberals will say Moses was a bronze age nobody, what did he know? Others will say, only an open society is really any kind of society worth the name, the rest are all totalitarians, Plato as much as Moses–it’s not necessarily that they were woefully ignorant, they just had passions or beliefs that are evil or insane.
But I really wonder how then do not you say, the Pilgrim fathers were also fascists. The birth of freedom in England: Also fascists.
It may seem to a casual onlooker that I am making fun of you & forcing you into a fundamental contradiction by showing up a view of law or civilization that assumes it was invented yesterday & cannot comprehend any phenomena from the day before that… But the Ricochet audience surely has no taste for aporetic exercises & you & I have spoken before, not without a certain warmth, not least in defending each other’s unpopular opinions.
I would simply say, your understanding of decency is apolitical.
Wait. Are you claiming that Muslims want to integrate into European(Western) society, but are being prevented?
Because that pretty much flies in the face of everything I understand about the situation.
I will claim it. Some cases are obvious, like in Scadinavia. I would think France is somewhat similar, but let us leave that to Miss Berlinski.
The locals have no community with these foreigners & do not persuade their parties, whom they keep electing, to stem the flow. Whether the locals are racist or not or to what extent is not an issue, so far as I am concerned; whether the foreigners are in love with their new host country or not need not even be asked.
These migrants are not treated like so many foreigners were treated by Americans–much less do they have to face the hatred typical of European ethnic politics in the past. But they have no knowledge of this new world except that they are invited or accepted, tolerated at arm’s length, & maybe never treated like human beings.
I am not sure I know any European regime or society or state or whatever that is trying to integrate large numbers of Muslim strangers or aliens. They are administered, at best. I am not sure how many of the strangers or aliens want to be integrated. I think, were they told by serious people that it has to be done, it can be done, & it is worth doing, most strangers or aliens would cause little or no trouble. This is in part because there was no serious trouble with millions of strangers or aliens, Muslim or otherwise, who came to Europe two generations ago…
That might be a good thing, but is it what’s happening? Refugees tend to be relatively evenly distributed between men and women, and of a wide range of ages. That is not a good description of the predominantly (>75%) young adult male migrants (invaders?) who are flooding into Europe. They are not being sent home so that the refugees from Syria can be succored properly. Syrian refugees are not coming in in such large numbers, for example, as to bring a center right politician to propose conscripting German youth for a year of social service to serve the newcomers.
Maybe this is what’s going on: Germany, acting out of a false diagnosis of what made Germany go Nazi, is instituting a quack cure of heroic proportions that is likely to destroy Europe and which so far looks to be irreversible.
That town of 150 whose initial allotment of 750 migrants was grudgingly lowered by the German government to 500 is a good symbol of the problem. The absence of effective non-Nazi political opposition to things like that – and the demonization as Nazis of non-Nazis (who then have less to lose by becoming Nazis) for objecting – creates a political vacuum.
Something ugly might well fill it.
You mean individualists like the communists and American left who are destroying all relationships except those between autonomous individuals and the government?
There are different types of individualism.
There’s a difference between accepting refugees and accepting resettlement.
Do you think it would be un-humanitarian to ask that these people return to their homelands after the events which caused them to become refugees in the first place come to an end?
If not, why do we even bother with having different countries if we’re expected to accept the permanent settlement of culturally orthogonal third-worlders who are going to have profoundly negative effects upon life in this country?
Let’s not fall victim to the “Magic Dirt” theory which states that the same people who wrecked their home countries and turned it into a hellhole are going to automatically become westernized and enlightened… merely because they are now on western dirt as opposed to their dirt which caused them to wreck their point of origin in the first place.
To set them up with the expectation that they will return to their homeland, on the other hand, is oftentimes to give them false hope and a very good excuse for not assimilating.
That is what happened to first-generation Hmong refugees to the US in the 70s and 80s.
We know from experience that “small enough” numbers of “culturally orthogonal third-worlders” can be assimilated in as little as a generation or two. The first generation of refugees – adults already set in their ways – may well be a lost cause, but their children can assimilate, and their children’s children. Again, Hmong refugees – who are notoriously hard to assimilate – provide a case-study. Even these “hardest to assimilate” people (or at least that is the reputation they had at one point) assimilate much better past the first generation.
What is a “small enough” number? That is a prudential question whose answer I don’t claim to know. I’m not going to claim that all arbitrarily large numbers are “small enough” to ensure rapid assimilation :-)
Like they don’t have that already? Show me where large numbers of Muslims in places like Sweden, Norway, Michigan or Minnesota have assimilated into their surroundings.
7.5:1 ratios as has been mentioned is going on with tiny German hamlets is not going to work.
Onesies and twosies seem fine. Entire communities being summarily uprooted and replanted in western countries aren’t.
Perhaps there needs to be some criteria: If you aren’t showing a net contribution in terms of becoming a net tax payer within a couple of years you get sent back.
Why this isn’t a criterion for ALL immigration baffles me.
If I correctly understand the fundamental urge you’re referring to as “us vs them” then you can add other things to your list such as family, neighborhood, congregation, community, brotherhood, sisterhood, men’s rooms, women’s rooms.
The problem with lumping this all onto the negative side of the ledger is that 1) it’s objectively not always negative and often positive, and 2) just like any other natural urge to which we can apply the virtue/vice continuum, that assessment depends on context, circumstances, and on what constitutes ordered vs disordered urge fulfillment.
In any case, I think belief in inherent human dignity is the key to virtuous fulfillment of this urge. Materialism doesn’t seem to me to offer many/any paths to that conclusion that aren’t simply ammoral preference or imposition of one’s will on others.
Obviously, some kinds of immigrants have more excuses for not assimilating than others. It would be reasonable to expect that influences how small is “small enough”.
For known terrorists, for example, it would be unreasonable to set “small enough” at anything other than zero.
Well, you are saying “large numbers”. I specified that “small enough” numbers were not arbitrarily large.
I’m a little confused by this. Perhaps it’s your use of the word liberal in association with Mao and Stalin. Otherwise, are you putting Mao and Stalin on the fascist column or somewhere else? If a strong trait of fascism is not caring about improving others, then how are the Spartans not fascists? Is the belief in genetic superiority a required trait of fascism or more simply a belief in identifiably separate “peoples”?
This distinction has it’s limits, though. Sure, it’s all about doing you (and everyone else too) a favor – as long as you remain passive like a cow getting fed, getting put out to pasture, getting milked, getting slaughtered. All for your own good and everyone else’s good too. Once you push back and and assert yourself then you’re just as much a reviled “other”, and the reaction becomes indistinguishable from any fascist.
The point is that there are functionally no numbers at this point that are small enough yet still meaningfully large enough to deal with the flood of “refugees”/invaders and turn them into digestible/assimilable bits.
Add to that the sort of oikophobic cultural sadomasochism which western societies have recently fallen into and we aren’t exactly showing these refugees the sort of grit and cultural confidence that is required to get them to abandon their radically different and alien culture.
It’s a fool’s errand. We are intentionally balkanizing ourselves for generations to come.
Let me try to explain. The source of his use of the word is a philosopher, Harry Neumann. American.
The reasoning goes like this: Modern liberalism has invented the first anti-political politics, where individuals have rights without prior duties & are not tied to any regime beyond their own choice. There is a freedom prior to any concrete human situation.
This means freedom from divine law & from natural necessity both. This means, in the centuries of modern liberalism, the gradual emergence of natural science & then historical studies to empower new political arrangements meant to bring about the end of history, the world state, & perpetual peace.
Now, if one takes the principles of liberalism with the metaphysical seriousness of revolutionaries, one arrives as did the French revolution at a really bloody concept of what individual autonomy authorizes revolutionaries to do. Man must be wrenched from his old superstitions. He must be remade in the light of the new discoveries or reason & science & history.
This turns out to be bloody business. The people who most talk about equality & freeing the old slaves of the old regimes & creating a future where everyone will be a fully autonomous individual are the tyrants most responsible for slaughter.
In the old regimes, self-interest–as a class or tribe or both–grounded slaughter. Now, it is humanity itself that commands the hecatomb!
No, in their decisions. Whatever those decisions are. Even the decision to not-buy or not-consume.
It’s neither pathetic nor fearful. It is a reasonable observation: the desires we act on (the “preferences” “revealed” by our actions) matter.
Economics doesn’t deny that hot-hearted humans are a welter of desires struggling for priority. Acting on a desire, though, is evidence of prioritizing it enough to act on it.
For example, we feel shame when we act wrongly because we know it’s evidence that we (at least temporarily) desired wrong, or did not desire right enough to prevent the wrong. If our actions revealed nothing important about our desires, this shame would make no sense.
Again, denying or delaying gratification is hardly uneconomic. I may desire chocolate, but desire even more the penance of forswearing chocolate during Lent, or the specialness chocolate maintains if I eat it only once monthly. We know it’s not unreasonable to enjoy intensifying a desire more than satisfying it. (In doing so, we “satisfy” something else, desire for intense desires.)
Umm… you do know there are many economists who would never assume this, right? That human desires are unlimited is in fact a fairly standard economic assumption.
It’s a fun and self-flattering game, I suppose, to assume that economists (and anyone who tries to think economically) are a species of Martian idiot, incapable of either being human themselves or even seeing the most basic aspects of human nature for what they are. But it’s little more than a game.
Read your Coase, man! Who knows? You might even like Coase.
Do you really have evidence that most do not wish to integrate? Integration is a mutual process and a slow one. It is also a mutual process. Assimilation is not the negation of one culture by another, but rather the combination of the two roughly proportional to their relative population levels. To the extent Europeans pass laws banning minarets, head scarfs, etc. they are actively opposing Muslim integration, and to the extent that Muslims turn to their own private code of justice they are also opposing integration.
Communists and the Left consider groups politically, and even metaphysically, more important than individuals, so they are not individualists.
That’s not true. They consider the state more important, but not groups, except insofar as those groups are part of the state apparatus.
I should note here that the in my view the idea of a multicultural society as envisioned by many leftists is also a barrier to assimilation as at its hear it seeks to ghettoize the various cultures, at once preserving them in their original state but also preventing a true synthesis. The rate of integration would seem to me to always be dependent on the nature of the laws governing the society in which the integration is about to occur. The laws can be more or less structured to facilitate integration or prevent it. Usually the laws are used as a means of preventing integration, by setting up barriers for immigrants accessing all the same rights and privileges that the the native population enjoys. Democracies such as America have to a certain extent been very good at assimilating people because our laws have for the most part endeavored to be universal with respect to fundamental rights. Our government safe guards the property and life of all within its jurisdiction (at least in theory). When we have failed to do this it has led to serious and long lasting problems. I would argue that much of Americas racial problem are basically a form of improper and incomplete assimilation of African Americans into the large white culture, and what prevented this assimilation was not just the attitudes of people but also the laws enacted to prevent this assimilation.
Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this subject. As far back as the Medieval period, the aristocracy often hired Jewish citizens to collect rent and taxes from feudal peasants thus creating some of the earliest tension. They had unenviable jobs as middlemen and were disliked by both their employers (unwilling to ‘dirty’ their hands) and the taxed.
Entrepreneurial Jews grew to become fairly active in the money lending business creating more resentment most prominently noted in Shakespeare’s less than sympathetic character Shylock from Merchant of Venice.
The association between Jews and financial success continues today and often adds fuel to the burgeoning class warfare across the globe. Anti-Semitism certainly plays a role but it is accompanied by something equally powerful- economic envy.
You mean like the one in North Korea?
Before WWII euro-weenie Lefties had two main flavors of Leftism to choose from: fascism (i.e., National Socialism, which partitioned humanity by nation and race ) and communism (which partitioned humanity by class.) After WWII fascism was so radioactive that Lefties found themselves in a situation where they had, by Hobson’s choice, nothing viable to join but commies parties.
That said, I agree: both Communist parties and Fascist parties are equally reprehensible if they are judged by the same standard. That the Left gives Communist Parties a pass shows that today’s Leftists are just as contemptible as yesterday’s Fascists.
If you think economics has an adequate account of consumption, to say nothing of not-consuming, please summarize it. That would then make a serious theoretical confrontation possible. We would have clarity, if not agreement… At this point, you are not even able to claim that economics does anything but reduce humanity to consumption & confess there is some remainder by opposition…
Shame is not on economics concept. Desire is. But acting on desire obviously goes beyond economics, maybe even law!
Lent is not an economics concept. ‘We know’? Tell me, who is we & how do we know intensifying desires is reasonable?
You are not engaging this with any seriousness: You confuse common experience with economics & both with reason in such a casual way that I have no assurance you take my remarks with the seriousness required to make sense of them, whether you would then agree or not.
The point about democracy is that it fosters capitalism out of an unstoppable eroticism. Consumption becomes a form of prophecy. People are overtaken by desire. It is no answer to say, there are pre-democratic, pre-capitalist beliefs, habits, & institution in the way!
Claire, I just want to reassure you that I, too, hate the Nazis.
I mean, I really hate the Nazis. A lot.
The only people I hate more than the Nazis are the [CoC] Judean People’s Front.
Bravo, Robert Lux: for your comment #134. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
On a serious note, I want to respond to the comparison made in several comments about the relative demerits of Nazis and Communists.
I think that there are two good reasons that Americans and Western Europeans generally consider Nazis to be worse than Communists:
Why on Earth would these be considered reasonable arguments to be had?