In the last few years, online discourse has basically descended to “you’re a Nazi” “No, you are!” “No, you are!”
It’s good to see that we as a society still haven’t risen above the level of five-year-olds.
Oddly, the same people then go on to call the people they called Nazis “Communists.”
Like Pierre Polievre, for instance.
Which kinda breaks my brain. Because while the Nazis were officially the “Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei”, which translates to the “National Socialist German Workers’ Party”, the movement wasn’t really about socialism or the German workers.
Let’s unpack this.
Socialism is, according to Wikipedia: “an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems.
Hitler never really formed an economic idea for his government other than “Germans are the greatest people to ever live and should have all the things, the end.”
Hitler’s use of the word “Socialism” was more a racial model than an economic one. They were looking to define the social group—the German People—which for them was the idealized Aryan Race.
And, while the Nazi party presented a socialistic front to gin up interest from the German people,
If there was an economic policy put forward by the Nazis it was to take the money away from the Jews.
Hitler wanted to get out from under the thumb of the Versailles Treaty, rearm the county and establish the country as financially independent, but he never really got past getting all the guns and killing all the Jews as a way to make the country financially independent.
Why was killing the Jews part of the plan? Historically, Christian Europe had laws around “Usury”, which is basically charging interest on loans. This created a great reluctance amongst Christians to lend money out. There was no gain, other than spiritual, to lending out money.
While Jewish people were not allowed to charge other Jewish people interest, there were no rules against charging interest to non-Jews. Add to this the fact that Jews were often excluded from professional guilds, frequently couldn’t own land, and were typically well educated, and soon, many Jewish people became very powerful in the finance world.
Historian Howard Sachar has estimated that in the 18th century, “perhaps as many as three-fourths of the Jews in Central and Western Europe were limited to the precarious occupations of retail peddling, hawking, and ‘street banking,’ that is, moneylending.”
Because most Christians viewed usury as a sin, this led to strong feelings that the Jews were “morally deficient, willing to engage in unethical business practices that decent people had rejected,” according to the myjewishlearning.com website.
So, moving into the 20th Century, German Jews were frequently extremely rich and not well liked.
And one of the ways to create an in-group? Is to create an out-group. Liberals. Trump supporters. East Indians. Rednecks. Women. Trans people. The gays. And in the case of the Nazis? The Jews. (And gay and trans people, black people, the Roma, people with disabilities, people from Poland and the Soviet Union, and anyone who wasn’t a card carrying Nazi member.)
But the Nazis hated the Jews for all the reasons mentioned before and more besides. And the fact that the Jews held most of the private wealth in Germany? Well, let’s declare ourself socialists and liberate that money being held by the Jewish people and in Jewish businesses.
If Nazi Germany took control of the means of production for the people? It wasn’t really for the people, it was against the Jews.
I mentioned earlier that some people on the right are calling people on the left both Nazis and Communists. But Communists have spent years arguing that Nazism is actually runaway capitalism.
This isn’t really true, either. Again, they didn’t really have an economic policy.
If we are going to apply a political system to the Nazis, it would be fascism, which is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political system.
So what do we say then, when people claim the current government of Canada is “socialist, just like the Nazis?”
Well, we can actually agree. Because the Nazis weren’t socialists, and the current Liberal government isn’t socialist, either.
How can we tell? Well, way back when I said that the defining feature of socialism was that the workers owned the means of production.
In Canada, 80 percent of the wealth of the country is controlled by 20 percent of the population. So, rest easy; Canada is still firmly in the grip of runaway capitalism.
But it is also becoming more polarized, as people toss around terms like “fascist” and “Marxist” and “Communist” and “Nazi” without knowing, or even caring what these terms mean.
And the trouble with this type of dialogue is you’re not really trying to find a solution, you’re just creating an out-group that you can pin labels to and then ignore.
Don’t look at the other, look at yourself. Look at the way you are communicating, to others and about others. Are you labeling? Demonizing? Saying that trans people shouldn’t be allowed to…? Canada should get rid of the immigrants? Because if you are creating, or at least buying into the idea of an outgroup to persecute, then maybe, just maybe, the one who is closest to the ideologies of the Nationalsozialismus is you.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
