That's not what I am saying. Nazis are bad, but the GP has a poor way with words and it looks obvious to me that the comment was made in a context that applied to "the anti-nazi crowd's MO of bullying" not applicable to just nazis, but anybody they disagree with. Basically cancel culture, whether you're a nazi, or just somebody they don't like. The point was specific to the bullying, not about Nazis. The GP clearly conflated these two ideas when responding.
You can be an opponent of both "cancel culture" and nazis at the same time. And you can be an opponent of cancel culture while still publicly calling out legitimate Neo-Nazis (even though I think it is a waste of time). But if you call somebody a Nazi for disagreeing with you, or voting for a republican, or having a viewpoint that isn't leftist, then that's crossing a line. This happens all the time, and the GP is obviously aware of it like many of us are.
Just because some people (like the GP) do a shitty job of criticizing cancel culture, that doesn't make cancel culture any more right or wrong. It is what it is.
Damn, how to expose yourself as a shallow unintellectual not worth listening to: thinking that because it says "socialist" on the label it means all socialist parties are Nazi-like.
By your logic, the Democractic People's Republic of Korea (aka North Korea) is an example of democracy...
No one considered Hitler a "socialist" (which still had a very positive association at the time). It was just a label he piggy backed on. None of the important socialists of the time ever had one good word to write about Hitler or his party. In fact, Hitler put communists and socialists in jail. Pointing out "Hitler was a SOCIALIST" is just a dumb ahistorical take, the mark of a propagandist.
And for mister Kelogg, he wasn't "the foundation" of the American Progressive movement, he was just a progressive. Plenty of other Progressives from that time were not eugenicists or avowed racists. Unfortunately, racism and eugenics were very popular in many parts of society in this time. There is still no doubt that today's Progressive movement is decidedly anti-racist and anti-eugenicist, while all neo-nazis are still proud to hold these 19th century views (with modern-day morons like Charles Murray to invent and lie their way to a more modern-day scientific racism).
Sorry I have to respond to this but it’s so problematic and common I feel the need.
1. Let us not get hung up on what the nazis were selling at that time, place and language by using the word socialist (oh wait it wasn’t in English!?! Oh that’s a translation??!!!). In any case, that’s nearly meaningless unless you really think the People’s Republic of China under Mao was really a republic? Then I can’t help. TLDR , political labels are meaningless lies. This is not a serious argument to point out their name.
2. All of these authoritarian movements have different origin stories and sometimes they’re pulled out of different movements, and it’s hard to attach their origins to the final product, more confusingly for labels such as progressive and conservative (or left and right ).. they may be very very “right” or very very “left” in two different policy areas. If we want to stick to the nazis.. they were a good billion times more interventionist and militaristic than any American progressive movement ever was so (super right wing I guess?!?), despite legitimately saying some things you’d hear out of the American left at the time.
3. Ultimately authoritarians are mostly about being in power, and whatever else you go for here, that’s the main takeaway you should have taken away from the nazis neither left nor right but being about themselves being in power.
In any case, the nazis were the nazis and the fascist salute they’re famous for I’ve seen made by more than my fair share of otherwise entirely right wing organizations such as Franco’s Spain, who openly opposed and fought against communists and socialists.. and yet were assisted by the nazis directly in Guernica. You can read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia for a good first person account if you’d like to understand how confusing this all can be to label the nazis as either progressive or socialist.
Of course the most challenging example of all of this is Chile’s Pinochet. Nazi salutes at his funeral for a man that also openly fought communism, had an economic policy designed entirely from University of Chicago economists in a way that would have made Milton Friedman proud, much more free market than anything we had in the states at the time. I still don’t really connect the University of Chicago to fascism, because that’s silly.
The fascists movements are at least definitely fascist but I assume they would have been anything to be in power.
How are any of those socialist policies? That happens in many countries whatever the system. This is like saying north Korea is Democratic because they have it in their name.
