A LEFTIST HITLER AND RIGHTIST NEO-NAZIS?

I have just put up here an interesting email about the historical Hitler and modern-day Neo-Nazis. The writer makes several good points which question my own formulatuion that Hitler was simply the most nationalist of the extreme Leftists. I would like to look here therefore at his three main points. Firstly, though, readers here might like to read what I am replying to, as it does embody some common misconceptions and assumptions.

1). I have previously pointed out at some length that Hitler’s eugenic ideas were in fact typically Leftist for his times and were supported in America by “progressives” of the day. My correspondent then asks how I square that with my general support for Chris Brand today -- who also has some eugenic ideas. Am I being inconsistent?

For a start, although I support some of Chris Brand’s ideas, I do not support them all. I assist him to circulate his ideas mainly out of free-speech considerations -- as there have been great efforts made (sacking him from his university job, pulping his book) by Leftists to suppress him. And I myself have never commented on the eugenic ideas he occasionally raises. Nonetheless, I do think it is absolutely stupid to condemn an area of science or scholarship just because it has been misused in the past. One might as well condemn all dog-lovers because Hitler loved dogs. So just because Hitler and the American “progressives” of the interwar era had the perverse and ridiculous idea that Jews were genetically inferior does not mean that all and any genes are therefore equal in any sense. The rise of genetic engineering -- with its capacity to filter out genetic defects in children -- has in fact really made the matter a non-issue. Genes are ALREADY being selected for and against by medical science in today’s world with little controversy. And Jews, ironically perhaps, are one of the major beneficiaries of that, with the recent virtual elimination of Tay Sachs disease.

2). The second point made is a common one: That the Fascists of the 1920s and 1930s were opposed in their day by other Leftists and admired by many mainstream politicians in Britain and America. Mussolini in fact achieved the remarkable feat of being admired not only by Hitler but also by Winston Churchill and F.D. Roosevelt! All that, however, is really no more than an illustration of how radicalized interwar politics had become in Europe. If Hitler and Mussolini were seen as moderate and reasonable by nervous Anglo-Saxon politicians and businessmen, how radical must have been the alternative? And the alternative was very radical indeed. Stalin’s Russia was to the forefront of everyone’s mind with the unprecedented challenges it presented to almost the whole of society’s traditonal arrangements. And Stalin’s Russia had extensive support throughout Europe. So it is no wonder that slightly less radical Leftists (Nazis and Fascists) were gladly greeted for their apparent capacity to prevent the Communists from taking over the whole of Europe. And the Communists, of course, were not oblivious of the effective opposition provided by their Fascist rivals. So Communists and their symathizers did indeed hate and oppose the Fascists. Mainstream democratic Leftists -- such as Germany’s Social Democratic Party -- however were much less opposed to Hitler and in fact voted with the Nazis in critical Reichstag votes. For a fun poster that makes crystal clear how Leftist Hitler’s ideas were see here.

Interestingly, the basic economic policies of the Fascists and the Nazis -- permitting private business to continue but only under tight State controls and supervision -- were radical in their day but are now the staple of Leftist political parties worldwide. The greatest affinities of the Fascists and Nazis were then not with the Communists but with parties like the Democrats of the modern-day USA and the Labour Party of modern-day Britain! The Fascists were in fact the first of the modern Leftists -- something that I have already set out at great length here.

3). The third major point is that Hitler's few remaining admirers in at least the Anglo-Saxon countries all seem to be on the political far-Right. If Hitler was a socialist, how come that some modern-day far-Rightists admire him?

In considering this, the first thing to ask is whether the description "Far-Right" is an accurate one for the people we are talking about. I think it is. The American far Right do share important basic values with mainstream "conservatives": They are independent, individualistic, suspicious of big-government and find great wisdom in traditional American values and arrangements. But they seem to be much more doctrinaire about it all and sometimes carry their independence and individualism so far as to become "survivalists" -- trying to live as independently of government and of what they see as a corrupted society as they can. But the far Right is a broad church with many opinions within it and it must be noted that only some of them have added pro-Hitler and antisemitic attitudes to their gospel.

So although 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 -- it has lived on during the postwar era mostly on the extreme Right. (Though recent upsurges of "Anti-Zionism" among Leftists on university campuses seem to be a harbinger of big changes in that situation). Why?

The pro-Hitler, antisemitic orientation of some modern Rightist fringe groups goes back to the fact that Marxism and Leninism were internationalist. Marx and Lenin despised nationalism and wished to supplant national solidarity with class solidarity. That this was the best way to better the economic position of the worker was, however, never completely obvious. The Fascists did not think so nor did most Leftists in democratic countries. Nonethless, it did have the effect of identifying Leftism with skepticism about patriotism, nationalism and any feeling that the traditions of one's own country were of great value. The result of this was that people with strong patriotic, nationalist and traditionalist feelings in the Anglo-Saxon countries felt rather despised and oppressed by the mostly Leftist intelligentsia and sought allies and inspiration wherever they could. And Hitler was certainly a great exponent of national pride, community traditions and patriotism. So those who felt marginalized by their appreciation of their own traditional values and their own community tended in extreme cases to adopt Hitler and blot out of their minds or otherwise rationalize the fact that he was also a socialist. And the Leftists also blotted out of their minds or otherwise rationalized Hitler's socialism for exactly the same reason -- because Hitler was also a nationalist. The Rightists liked Hitler's nationalism and the Leftists did not but it suited neither to acknowledge his socialism. It did not suit the Leftists because it would have associated them with a failed and condemned figure and it did not suit the Rightists because socialism was no part of the traditional independent culture that they wished to preserve.

So antisemitism lived on in the postwar era among the extreme Right for two reasons -- firstly because such people are traditionalists and antisemitism had been traditional in European societies for roughly 2,000 years and secondly because it was a central part of Hitler's doctrines. Their liking for Hitler's national and ethnic pride led to their adopting his antisemitism too.

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