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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
I was just trying to explain the observation that Americans (and Western Europeans) have less visceral hatred for Communists than they have for Nazis. I think that this holds true for American conservatives specifically, as well as for Americans in general.
I cannot see what you did there.
As a Cold War guy, I hate Communists as much as I hate Nazis. My guess is there’s a bunch who do. This is part of why I view university rabble-rousers as the enemy, not merely disagreeable people. They are witting or unwitting agents of a long-lasting internationalist movement dedicated to among other things, separating us from our Constitution. Likewise the commie-tainted (at a minimum) Barack Obama.
I move we make it unanimous: Without objection, all Ricochetti shall be on record as hating Nazi’s
I got as far as “BDB” and when I realized I had no idea who this was, I spent the next five minutes skimming the article trying to figure out who he was. Then I lost interest.
Heh.
If you want to be a Ricochetti, you have to really hate the Nazis.
It is funny because there was quite a large segment of American society that actually held views on race that were similar to those of the Nazis. In fact it was our conflict with them that ultimately helped to drive a stake through the heart of racialist theories here in the US.
What strikes me about the Nazis is that there was nothing unique in any of the ideas that comprised them. In fact their opponents each possessed various aspects of Nazi ideology to certain degrees. What made the Nazis unique was that they managed to combine totalitarianism, racism, nationalism, and militarism into one government. The US might have been racist but it wasn’t totalitarian.
And communists. If we can’t all agree on hating communists, I just don’t know what the point is.
Both Nazis and Communists classify large groups as enemies of the people who must be destroyed. For Communists the aggregators are “class” and political opinion. Nazis include racial factors as well, though they often conflate race with the other classifications.
And this is where Pinker picks up in The Blank Slate. He takes the scientific left to task for ruining decades of research and education by pushing the noble but not-supported-by-evidence gospel that genetics have nothing to do with personality, intelligence, temperament, and so forth. This position is now well-supported by the literature, yet is plainly not true, as supported by plenty of evidence. It is silly to think it would be, or what’s evolution for?
Two fascinating books to read in conjunction are Pinker’s The Blank Slate and Colin Woodward’s American Nations. Both of these are men of the left, Pinker politely so, Woodward, not so much. But still well worth the read. I would round that out with Sowell’s Conquests and Cultures.
All divisions are not “us vs them”. Some are, of course, and those imho are the ones with potential for trouble. And a lot are completely natural – I’m thinking family. But family becomes clan becomes tribe goes to war with the next tribe and three generations down the track they may not be treating or seeing each other as equal humans.
Sure – though I’d point out that positive for one group may be pretty negative for another.
I would say a belief in the equality of human beings wrt basic rights, not just their inherent dignity (which is ambiguous re equality).
and the Dutch.
Now I am sure I’ll get pushback for this, perhaps called a Nazi or some such thing, as people equate the point above with eugenics and genocide, and some sort of nefarious Darwinism.
The left conflated these things, and laudably, in an attempt to ensure that the genocidal horrors of the 20th century never happened again, lamentably insisted that only the “human clay” model of behavior was acceptable, with unfortunate consequences for decades of science and social policy. If you want to know why you’ll pay for prisoners to get their penises removed and why your daughter must shower with sexually confused boys in dresses, it’s this idea that everything is social, malleable, variable.
(Unless they need it to be a fixed and inborn part of a person just long enough to get it past the characteristic vs. behavior test for civil rights, to support gay marriage in the courts. But that’s all over now, and they can go back to letting homosexuality be a behavior. The left honestly doesn’t care.)
Neither, I suppose, are ballet or puppies. But economic reasoning can be applied to decisions involving them, too.
Consider Cal. Cal is deciding between two desires, the desire to A) eat chocolate while Lent is going on and B) the desire to include chocolate avoidance in his Lenten rituals.
Suppose Cal eats chocolate during Lent. His behavior gives us information about the relative strength of Cal’s two desires, namely, we observe A is stronger than B.
Suppose Cal avoids chocolate during Lent. That also gives us information about Cal’s desires, namely that B is probably stronger than A.
It really is that simple.
Similarly for shame. If A) is incurring shame by doing XXX, and B) is avoiding shame by not doing XXX, doing A or B reveals a preference.
Economists have eyes and hearts. They observe that people find religious obligations (such as observing Lent) fulfilling, and that shame is often a powerful (but imperfect) deterrent.
Good economics will comport with both common experience and reason. When economics fails to be a reasonable model of human action, it fails to be good economics.
I call economics the study of decision-making. The most common method of quantifying the many parameters is money.
To meet Midge’s religious analogy halfway, let’s say that we all have to choose between working the day at Honest BDB’s Used Car Sales and going to church. If it’s just another day (a $100 day) selling used cars, let’s say that I go. Some of us would work anyway, as they need the $100 more than I do. But if I have a regular customer who is a fleet buyer and he comes in once a year on a Sunday, and this is that day, and I always make $10,000 fro0m his visit, then I will stay at work. Yet others of us will not miss church for anything. Not for $10,000, not for a million.
Anyway, it’s a Fisher-Price example, but let’s say that instead of church, we are debating value of work vs leisure hours. Sitting around the house, $100. Road trip with the family, $10,000. Road trip by myself? Priceless.
Now pit that leisure value against church, et voila! We can monetize anything. The question is of particular monetary value, not the ability to monetize. But money is not the point. It’s just a quanta of desire. Or fear. Or satisfaction, or dissatisfaction. Or piety.
You make it sound rather conspiratorial. Which I don’t really think it was. I’m sure a lot of people revolted from the Nazi conception of humanity for the obvious reasons but the science did not help them out either. There is much correlation that has been done with respect to genetics and various mental traits, but excluding abnormalities there has never been much in the way of a satisfactory mechanism proposed to account for the correlations. Without this causation is hard to test.
We have had the debates about IQ test and the results correlating to race. That certainly implies a discrepancy, but if you want to prove genetics ultimately you need a genetic mechanism to test. That is often lacking. You might say because no one is looking, but our interest in this area is substantial and the benefit of discovering such a mechanism I think out ways the potential negative social reaction.
National Socialism followed many classical Socialist tropes in their corporatist version: Soaking the rich while favoring friendly corporations with special deals and distributing the loot to the people (Götz Aly demonstrated in Hitler’s Beneficiaries that many of the Volk never had it so good, at lest until the roof fell in and the Russian wolves were at the door) in a highly successful welfare state which provided a much improved standard of living… for the favored racial class.
Michael Moynihan wrote in reviewing Hitler’s Beneficiaries:
The vicious way German National Socialism came by the other people’s money it needed resembled Communist states more than the softer postwar EuroSoc regimes, though: The Nazis systematically robbed and murdered Jews and others, and systematically looted the countries they occupied. This looting was both physical and financial: Soldiers took clothes and food, and the Nazi Germany also installed its central bankers to financially pillage the economies it occupied in order to keep inflation low at home.
Exactly. In the end, all fascist or communist regimes- regardless of socio-political rhetoric – are looking for the same thing. This is why the protection of a free market is so very important.
Well, read the book.
Midge, outside your fantasy world, unless you are educated by Christians, you have no idea what Lent means. Economics, however, does not need that education.
As for the broader conflict between thinking about human decisions by desire & thinking about them by shame, I marvel at your inability to get what the trouble is.
If you think an economist’s description of shame as ‘often a powerful but imperfect deterrent’ is adequate to the phenomenon, you are whistling in the dark. Whoever says: I could die right now, feeling shame, know more than you will ever aver in these irenic moods of yours.
As for the eyes & hearts of economists, unless you are saying, economists are simply superior human beings, you will have to admit that everyone or nearly has hearts & eyes, & yet they are not for that reason held as adequate judges of human things. Many often confess it themselves, explicitly or implicitly, by confessing, requiring advice, declaring themselves helpless, &c. The only way you could claim a less impressive authority would be to say, economists do not have eyes. In a way, you already have…
Now, the world you live in cannot adequately disclose the phenomena we are discussing: The decision for economics has already been made. Commerce & modern economics have already been taken for granted in America for longer than you seem able to imagine. But there was a time in America when the choice between Lent & chocolate was nothing like your fairy tales above!
You’re a serious man, Mr. Diamond Ball, but sometimes you say really funny things. Surely, the serious decisions are about when to go to war. That is theology, not economics. The purpose of war is to put the fear of God in the souls of the enemy. Inflicting losses does not quite cut it–they are either haunted or they will take up arms as soon as losses are recovered.
Even in the silly world where so many Americans live, there are very serious grounds underlying peaceful prosperity.
Americans past once knew horror Americans present can only learn to imagine from silly movies. That was the result of piety. North & South would not have gone to hell merely for self-interest or mistakes in communication.
There you see another kind of calculus:
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
There you can descry the origin of peace.
You mix many things here Titus, so allow me to narrow scope to war and context to economics as decision-making.
One of my touchstone quotes is this one, by JS Mill:
This is all about trade-offs, that is, relative value. No matter how fervent his devotion to God or liberty, if he were not making relative statements, he would call for a holy war to liberate all the oppressed. I myself am fond of saying “Freedom is wasted on him who will not make others free,” but I hardly insist upon trying it everywhere at all times or die trying. I have invested significant effort in it and seen others invest even more, and some have seen their positions wiped out. I no longer view it a good investment. Still, for a million bucks, I might go.
If nobody would go, bonuses would be paid, or the war might be called off. If still nobody would go, conscription might be instituted, or the war might be called off. If still nobody would go, the war might be called off. or we could simply be defeated.
Or perhaps abandoning a war might yield improved re-election chances. Or it might boost the intellectual value of certain schools of thought entertained by prominent decision-makers. What’s it worth?
Nazism and Tojoism did not burn themselves out. There were trials at Nuremberg and purges etc.
Your response to this appears to be “[…] it burnt itself up […]”
I think, what he means is, both in terms of political & war thinking & in terms of popular attachment, these ideologies self-destructed. The politicians & armies had to be exterminated–but they are not self-created–they were the creatures of a fighting faith. That faith self-destructed. Germans in ’45 were not hot for Hitler anymore.
I would agree with the opinion, Nazis were all about proving to Germany that crime pays, at least if it’s big enough. & therefore that defeat alone could prove such people wrong–because they had already abandoned law & the sacred limits on human action that underlie law.
But at some level, you have to think through a faith as its adherents do–you have to understand them. It matters that Japanese died to the last one & Germans surrendered to Americans by the tens of thousands. Those differences matter to American war efforts, to American politics, & therefore require people who can think about Japanese & German in the way they themselves do, entering into their animating faiths for the sake of comprehension rather than agreement.
The faith itself is the only way to learn why the Japanese soldier of 1940 is so different to that of 1900; &, too, the German; without neglecting, of course, the similarities…
You see that even a pansy utilitarian knows that behind peace & reasonable deliberations & calculations lies something uglier than anything now said publicly. We are reasonable not to fight holy wars always, everywhere. But all war is holy war.
The Greeks were the first fanatics of freedom of whom we know. hey bowed to their gods & took that to mean, bow to no man. We have learned that, too.
All this is sensible: But what lies behind it? What drives men to war? That is an awful truth far beyond economics. The sensible stuff merely moderates it…
If we now approach the issue from far on the other side, we find that peacocks invest so much metabolic effort in adorning themselves because it helps them mate. A peahen apparently takes this ostentatious display of wealth as a promise to be good mating material. There are winners and losers after all, and other things being equal, nobody wants to be stuck with a loser — the rewards are fewer.
This of course rests upon an assumption that viability is the currency of evolutionary biology, which I do not find unreasonable. I do not find it an all-convincing argument in its every use, but in general I find it convincing. other animals will jealously guard their territory, and still others will destroy competitors for food or for mates, that is, for one’s life itself, and for one’s lineage.
All without a shred of faith, with no divine nature nor appreciation of it elsewhere. We retain this nature, although we do not like to admit it. The animals are not economists — they are decision-makers. The study of those decisions can be done in an economic framework, but not a divine one, except for arguments from the greatest authority.
“Poo-tee-WEET?”
Viability is a pretty silly thing, at least because it’s radically unpredictable. Evolutionary biology? Piffle! Think about extinction events. From changes in the earth to asteroids from the heavens, chance–from our point of view it’s chance–mocks evolutionary biology.
Evolutionary biology you should take for another self-serving fantasy. Because America won its wars, Americans like to believe this sort of thing, as do many, though not all, who have been saved or spared by America.
Americans would not be flattered with talk of viability had they lost, which they must, eventually. Then they would learn to say that success is not the only thing, & Vince Lombardi be damned! That is why Lincoln’s view is so important: That is the highest awareness of the endangerment in which we live, with none of the fancy excuses of science.
The price you pay for this evolutionary biology talk is to deny man mind. Man is not unable to conceive of the conquest of nature–the repeal of any laws of evolutionary biology. From men who dream of technological immortality to those who use science to avoid or contain the ugly side of nature–everywhere you see the self-possession of man, the work of getting out of nature, at least as they think of nature. Darwin & his epigones are also Americans in their hearts–otherwise, they’d ask themselves, why think up theories of evolution?
Man’s quest to liberate himself from chance is all about the divine.
What we have to do is to think clearly about what our situation really is. The latter-day habit of abandoning our own experience for images drawn from science–with the silent invocation of scientific knowledge to drown out the yearnings we can actually see in actual men but cannot explain scientifically–we have to abandon. When a man decides about marriage or war or any important thing, unless he is insane or foolish, he must look for the best guidance available to him. Then scientific fairy tales fall silent.
We need more clarity, not abstractions. Our own experience is already too mixed up with science to be easily clarified. That is why there is always a temptation to reduce life to science in those who can afford to do it: It tells them, there are reasons for your being a winner right now–it lies to them in silence, you won’t be a loser later.
The radical unpredictability of the most important things we face is ameliorated by a moralism far less serious than that of the simpleton who trusts God will spare or save him. That simpleton is more human & has a much better entry to the thoughtful consideration that is the preserve of man alone, not peacock or any other animal.
After all, only man wants to humiliate other men by telling them scientifically they are no better than other animals. Only man understands therefore human exceptionalism, of which the American is the dominant variety now.
Then what does man do with that mind? You speak of guidance from on high,but deny that we make decisions. If we are commanded without free will then we are no less mindless than if we are unreconstructed peacocks.
So we must take that guidance (in your paradigm) into consideration, rather than mechanically act upon it. We have a choice between good and evil, say, and why would we ever choose evil? Are there two sets of omnipotence, each warring with the other over the action a mindless peacock will take? in that case we may consider that fight external to the man, and the result of that fight as the eventual guidance.
Do we not weigh the divine guidance against other things, and determine the value of that guidance to us, relative to those other things, in that instant?