"Nazi"

I am going to try to explain where the word "Nazi" comes from. It is as plain as a pikestaff to a German-speaking person but I doubt if I have ever come across an English speaking person who "gets" it. Jonah Goldberg probably gets it but Yiddish is a German dialect so he has a head start.

OK: The first thing to note is that Hitler's political party was called (in English) the "National Socialist German Workers' Party". And the curious thing is that the word "National" is spelled exactly the same in German as in English. So in German the party was called the: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. "National" is in fact a borrowing from English/French. It's spelled the same in French too. But it is PRONOUNCED differently in the three countries. Germans pronounce it (approximately) as "nartsionarl". But a German word pronounced that way would not be spelled that way. It would be spelled as "Nazional". German has strict spelling rules (unlike English) so that is obvious in German. So "Nazi" is simply the first two syllables of "National" -- where "national" is pronounced in the German way. Maybe that is as clear as mud but I hope it is not. If not, just take my word for it that "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National". Quite mundane, really. Much less exciting than you might expect.

But Nazis were not simply the "Nationalists". There was another German political party at the time called Nationalists. "Nazis" were "national socialists" because "National Socialists" is one word in German: Nationalsozialisten. So "Nazi" could be an abbreviation of both "Nationalists" and "National Socialists". It was of course normally applied to the latter. Hugenberg's Nationalists were a much more minor party.

Jamming two or more words together to make one longer word is very German. In English we do the same but use Latin and Greek words as the starting point. Perhaps the most curious example of that is the word "television" -- where the Greek word "tele" (meaning "afar") is combined with the Latin word "videre" (to see). In German, a TV set is a Fernsehgeraet, or "far-seeing-gadget". I think the German word is more straightforward.

Mixing Greek and Latin is considered rather crass in the making of English words so "television" should probably have been "teleskopia" if we had stuck to Greek. A bit too close to "telescope", maybe.

Tags: Nazi word meaning derivation origin

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I reproduce below part of a report from 2007 about antisemitism in Germany today. The report repeatedly calls the antisemitic NPD party "far-Right" but at the same time keeps noting how Leftist it is. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Hitler was a Leftist who was also a nationalist and so are the NPD

Success of the Neo-Nazi NPD in East German Elections

In the last two parliamentary elections for East German federal states, the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) achieved significant success. In 2004 in Saxony it won 9.2 percent of the votes; in 2006 in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 7.3 percent. In some small municipalities it even became the strongest party. The NPD particularly attracts young people with a low level of education: in Saxony, 21 percent of voters aged eighteen to twenty-four voted NPD, and for those under thirty-five with only basic secondary education the figure was 26 percent.

This success for the NPD-for decades an unimportant party winning less than 1 percent of votes-also reflects the modernization and radicalization of its politics and propaganda. First, the NPD focuses its work on East Germany. Second, it has opened up toward explicitly neo-Nazi individuals and groups (such as the grassroots, unofficial Kameradschaften). Thus, the "left-wing"-voelkische, national-revolutionary tendency within the NPD has clearly gained in importance.

Third, the NPD cultivates the image of a "people-oriented" middle-class party. By cooperating with schools and citizens' groups, organizing children's events and leisure activities, and offering free private tuition for students, the NPD deepens its local roots. Fourth, it has successfully made contacts with the right-wing youth subculture. It distributes free right-wing rock CDs at schools, projects an activist-rebellious image for the NPD youth organization Junge Nationaldemokraten, and offers concerts by skinhead bands after NPD events.

Fifth, in the context of its increasingly national-revolutionary orientation the NPD also adopts current topics and increasingly uses anticapitalist and anti-imperialist terminology. In East Germany, in 2005, it joined massive protests against cuts in unemployment support, while adopting aggressive populist propaganda against "those at the top" who did nothing for the "ordinary German." The NPD also mobilized against the Iraq war of "U.S. imperialism," its fierce anti-Americanism finding much sympathy. The NPD agitates massively against "capitalist globalization." Employing slogans such as "Work for millions instead of profit for millionaires" or "Social instead of global," it calls instead for a national "people's economy" and for "Volksgemeinschaft" (people's community)."

Sixth, the NPD incites hatred against immigrants, declaring them to be the cause of unemployment, criminality, cuts in social security benefits, and the loss of "German identity." Under the slogan "Germany for Germans," the party demands an "ethnic reconquista." It describes the German government as "far-Left" and "bribed."

The NPD also seeks to rehabilitate National Socialism. Party chairman Udo Voigt considers Hitler "undoubtedly...a great German statesman." The NPD member of Saxony's federal-state parliament, Juergen Gansel, cites a "just economic order," "national sovereignty," and "internal pacification" as great achievements of National Socialism. At the same time the NPD vehemently denies, minimizes, and relativizes German crimes, and it agitated against the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with slogans such as "Kindergartens and old-age homes instead of a Holocaust Memorial" and "Stop the memorial! Seventy-six million for the people!"

For the NPD, the Allies were the true warmongers and the Germans the real victims of World War II. In January 2005, on the anniversary of the Allied air raid on Dresden, the NPD members of the Saxony parliament spoke of the "bomb-Holocaust of Dresden" stemming from British "eliminatory anti-Germanism," of "industrial mass murder of the civilian population that was planned in cold blood." They said a memorial for German victims should be built instead of the Berlin Holocaust Memorial.

Anti-Semitism in NPD Propaganda

Although open anti-Semitism is prohibited in Germany, the NPD uses it in only slightly moderated form throughout its propaganda. Mostly the NPD presents Jews as the main obstacle to putting German crimes aside and building a proud "national identity." A member of the NPD executive stated:

We are not to be pseudo-morally blackmailed, politically treated like children, and financially squeezed dry by the Holocaust industry...sixty years after the end of the war.... No German needs to put up with the Jews constantly presenting themselves as victims and the cult of guilt that the Jewish side has exercised for sixty years. Similarly, the psychological warfare by Jewish power groups against the German people must be stopped immediately.

Again it is the Jews who blackmail and exploit the Germans, and again the "German people" must protect themselves. The NPD finds Jews to be the originators of dangerous "work undermining the foundations of German communal life." The "critical theory" of Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and others -"all of them the sons of rich Jewish fathers"- is said to be a "destructive program of undermining people, state, culture, and family," a "poisonous muck that was supposed to damage the internal organs and the brain of the body of the German people."

Anti-Semitism is also prominent in NPD propaganda against globalization and "U.S. imperialism." Even when not explicitly mentioning Jews, the NPD says the world is dominated by a conspiracy of "controllers of capital," "globalists," and "plutocrats." Characterizing the United States as a "decadent society of the West," "civilization of grocers," or "embodiment of the antination" also has clear anti-Semitic overtones. The NPD often conflates anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism: "Just like a squid, dollar-imperialism has the world in its stranglehold,...the global power of Jewish capital strategists...seems to have reached its world-historic climax." "Jewish-America" is said to be working to destroy all "peoples" throughout the world: "In Washington and New York-it may remain an open question if the tail called Israel wags the dog called the USA or not-there are the deadly enemies of all peoples."

Of course, the NPD is also hostile to the Jewish state. "Jews and Americans who are driven to the same extent by Old Testament hatred of other peoples and the belief in chosenness," "Jewish-America," and "USrael" are said to be foisting their "neoprimitive dollar civilization" on the world, with "the Jews" intending to "build up ‘Eretz Israel' through a campaign of extinction against the Arabs."

Notwithstanding the NPD's usual hostility to foreigners and Islam, all Arab and Muslim enemies of Israel are guaranteed its solidarity. The party particularly approves Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because of his threats to annihilate Israel and his recent Holocaust-denial conference. As for Iran's earlier Holocaust-cartoon contest, the NPD submitted a caricature showing the Berlin Holocaust Memorial as an Israeli missile launching site.

The NPD says German politicians are entirely "true to and in serfdom to USrael." Only the NPD, it claims, has the courage to stand up to the "impudent financial demands of the Zionist lobby,...the more and more unscrupulous lust for predominance over the world expressed by the American East Coast, [and] Israel's state terrorism."

The NPD's agitation against the "Israeli entity" features much anti-imperialist terminology and iconography that is typical of the Left. Neo-Nazis of the Kameradschaften and the Junge Nationaldemokraten demonstrate against Israel wearing keffiyehs, and the NPD youth organization flaunts posters of stone-throwing Palestinians. The NPD protested the summer 2006 war in Lebanon with slogans such as "No to war and repression," "For the freedom of peoples," and "Hurrah for international solidarity."

For the NPD, the Jews are the driving force behind every evil: globalization, immigration, "Wallstreet," "East Coast," "U.S. imperialism," the pluralization of values, the democratizing and dissolving of "people," the state, culture, and family. This classical anti-Semitism is supplemented by the specifically German accusation that the Jews seek to impose a guilt complex on the innocent Germans and destroy their national identity. This is the old, anti-Semitic principle: the Jews, now in combination with the United States, function as the global evil, the counterimage that is necessary for forming an integrated Volksgemeinschaft.

More HERE

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Obama Census Plan: No Illegal Alien Left Behind

I have seen the electoral future, and it is rigged. With fraud-prone, ideologically driven interest groups swarming the census-gathering process, the left is solidifying its chances of a permanent ruling majority. Lax immigration enforcement is the not-so-secret key to the Democrats' power grab. And the Obama administration is all too happy to aid and abet.

The volunteer groups Locke is entrusting to protect accuracy and fairness include the voter registration con artists of tax-subsidized ACORN, the amnesty activists of Voto Latino and the labor bosses of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The fate of $300 billion in federal funding -- and, most importantly, the apportionment of congressional seats -- rest in their hands.

As for "privacy rights," it's not your privacy rights they care about. It's the privacy rights of millions of illegal aliens, whose advocates have enshrined for them a sacred right never to be questioned about their immigration status. Obama's census partners are using the process to pressure homeland security agents to halt interior enforcement efforts and workplace raids so that illegal alien cooperation with the national survey is maximized. Inclusion of the massive illegal alien population has resulted in a radical redrawing of the electoral map.

The census is used to divvy up seats in the House as a proportion of their population based on the headcount. More people equals more seats. More illegal immigrants counted equals more power... Translation in plain English: Open borders have profound consequences. And they don't end with congressional apportionment. The redistribution of power extends to presidential elections because the Electoral College is pegged to the size of congressional delegations.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

See here for an explanation of the present economic woes in terms of "Austrian" economics

Peta under fire over claim that it kills most animals left at its US headquarters: "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - is itself on the receiving end of angry words over its own treatment of animals after it emerged that the organisation put down 96 per cent of the animals handed into its American headquarters. Of 2,216 animals taken to its premises in Norfolk, Virginia, last year, 2,124 were put to sleep - almost six per day. Homes were found for just seven. The high-profile charity, famous for its "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaigns, has euthanised more than 20,000 pets in the last decade, according to figures it has supplied to Virginia state officials.

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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