Thomas_More
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Google: “During World War II, the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp network functioned as a massive site of forced labor and resource exploitation, yielding direct financial and material profit for the Nazi regime and supporting German industrial corporations.”
Auschwitz and Operation Reinhardt were capitalist enterprises, not something external to capitalism.
Not so Nordic.
Landing the job:
Google: Adolf Hitler paid tribute to Gustav Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, the head of the Krupp industrial empire, during a visit to the Krupp ammunition plant on August 13, 1940. Historical footage from this visit shows Hitler shaking hands with Krupp and interacting with him, acknowledging the crucial role of German industrialists in rearmament.
Critical Past
Critical Past
Key context regarding Hitler’s relationship with the Krupp family:
Visit to Essen: Hitler visited the Krupp works in Essen, Germany, to pay tribute to Gustav Krupp.
Support for Rearmament: Krupp, along with other German industrialists, was vital to Nazi war efforts, and Hitler relied on them for military production.
70th Birthday: Earlier, on another occasion, Hitler visited Gustav Krupp at his estate near Essen to mark his 70th birthday.
Critical Past
Critical Past
+3
While Hitler frequently used populist rhetoric during visits to the factory, promising that he stood by the workers, his visits to the owners and industrialists were focused on solidifying the alliance between the Nazi party and industrial power.
YouTube
YouTube
+1You would have to say “If Luther had never been born”, and “If Christianity had never succeeded”, &c. &c …
Let us assume there was no Hitler born. Would the Lutheran princes still have defeated the Emperor, delaying capitalist development in Germany? Would anti-semitism not have still been a centuries-old phenomenon? Would the German principalities still have been united into one Reich? Would WW1 still have been lost? Would the social problems of the 1920s still have existed? The answer has to be yes, and the same horrors of the 1940s would have come about, without Hitler and the Nazi Party, but with someone else and a party with another name. Someone would have had to meet German capitalism’s criteria at the time: a nationalist embodying the frustrations and bigotry of the working class in Germany and moulded by the past. One with the suitable charisma to land him the job.
The anti-semitism of central Europe was born of Christianity in those lands and the turmoil of the 16th century in Germany and Austria. Have you read Luther against the Jews? Julius Streicher couldn’t improve on its vitriol.
In the Balkans the same vitriol was aimed at Eastern rite Christians. SS reps visiting the Ustasha death-camps in Yugoslavia threw up. The Ustasha was not under Germany’s control. This too was rooted in the history of those regions. War necessarily produces supplementary horrors, everywhere.
Anyway, Fascism was not the same as Nazism. They both had nationalism in common, of course.
Without Hitler, similar horrors would have manifested.Genuine philosophy is either materialist or idealist, and I recognise (without agreeing with) an idealist philosopher as long as he has come to his philosophical position by means of thought (though it does not agree with mine, being a materialist) and personal development, and not by obedience to another. Rousseau was not a materialist, but he was a philosopher, not a hack.
Yes, there are those who call themselves philosophers who are in fact ideologues, or, as an earlier century would have called them without today’s PC nervosity, hacks. Propagandists of an ideology, like Maoism, Leninism, Hitlerism, Christianities, Hindu nationalism, Pol Potism, conspiracisms etc., will make use of, and have among them, such hacks, their “intelligentsia”, misusing the name of philosopher or thinker, whereas in fact they are mere lick-spittles.
That real socialists are not such is easily perceived by anyone witnessing our sometimes venomous disagreements with one another, as opposed to a chloroformed audience sitting before a “leader”, be it a head of state, the guru of a cult, or a Master Conspiraloon.
philosophy n. Gk. “Love of wisdom.”
The analysis, subjected to reason and evaluation (dependent upon a person’s evolution of thought), of impressions, desires, feelings, leading to the further elaboration of thought.
______ideology n. A body of ready-made beliefs containing its own ready-made logic; hence, accepted by a person without scrutiny and with an emotional need to ‘belong’: e.g. a follower.(See follow, v.)
The difference between brainwashing and thought is the difference between ideology and philosophy.
The ideologist adopts instantly the entire credo of a group because of an emotional / romantic / image-based need, or a need to belong.
This is what the “phases” of adolescents are, seeking belonging, or seduced by imagery.
It is true that most, having passed through this stage, and being working-class (99% of the world’s population are working class), have little time on their hands for thought beyond that of working for their living and struggling to raise families etc. Life under capitalism means it is convenient to rely on mainstream media, and hence be patriotic and trusting of whichever nation-state apparatus governs them and the news it puts out.
Minorities, some small, some large, will seek belonging, still, in groups and cults which, demonstrating some “rebelliousness” or “difference” from “the herd” give them the sense of belonging through difference. Such are converts to religions, racist groups, anything that has a leader or pundit to follow, and by following, belong. For some, the more outrageous and the more reviled, the better.
All these are ideology.Philosophy, however, is very different from ideology.
The philosopher does not accept the entirety of someone else’s thought, nor reject that entirety, on the basis of agreement or disagreement in one or two particulars. A philosopher does not require leaders to follow. S/he does not wish to lead. S/he is not interested in imagery. S/he doesn’t care about belonging to anything. S/he may be mistaken in things, but cannot be brainwashed. There is no danger for the philosopher in listening to or watching or reading any media or propaganda.
S/he is not susceptible to brainwashing, neither by the state nor by any cult, neither by the majority nor any minority.
The only way to damage the philosopher is to physically do so, by violence applied to the brain.
The philosopher sifts information in the light of views – philosophy – developed through the course of their lifetime. This is why philosophers usually disagree about most things. If s/he joins a group it is not to find belonging; it is not because of any need to be in a group. It is purely because of a shared interest.
The philosopher does not abdicate his/her thought in order to be part of a group or party.Nationalism is a better word, but then, nation-states being the political units of capitalist society, all politicians are nationalists.
And, “All government is violence.”
(Tolstoy).You seem to think socialism too is an ideology. It is, in fact, the conclusion drawn from socio-historical scientific thought. By calling it an ideology, you hazardously flirt with the “every view is equally valid” nonsense.
As for Fascism, only Italy called itself Fascist, and Mussolini’s views were those of every capitalist state – which is why it was only in war and defeat that Mussolini was disowned by the parliamentary “democracies” whereas in the 1920s and 30s Britain especially had praised him to the skies as “a strong leader” who “did wonders for his country” – which is the stuff of every party campaign in the world, except for us of course.
You probably think too that WW2 was a war between “fascism and democracy” and that Germany, Italy and Japan were united by “fascism.”
I think Wez is seduced by the Trump Is The Problem movement now current and forgetting that capitalism is the problem, which is what people need to wake up to, not go down yet another blind alley. After the Trump blind alley there’ll be another, and another, and another.
Business as usual, with no need for Nazism or Fascism, but going on all the same and all the time under capitalism:
(And other animals are being put through an Auschwitz by the tens of millions every day of every year with no sign of let-up and never a peep from 99.9% of people, including socialists!) It is all business as usual under this system, just as profits and wars are. “To the [other] animals, all humans are Nazis.” (Patterson, Eternal Treblinka).
