Slashdot Mirror
Google Listed 'Nazism' as the Ideology of the California Republican Party (gizmodo.com)
Less than a week ago, if you searched for the California Republican Party on Google, you might have read that the political party's ideologies included conservatism, market liberalism, and nazism. The latter listing has since been removed, and Google is blaming the results on Wikipedia "vandalism." From a report: Vice first reported the inclusion of "Nazism" under ideologies in Google's knowledge panel -- the box that shows up to the right of search results. It's unclear how long the term had been there, but the tech giant removed it after being notified by the publication. "We regret that vandalism on Wikipedia briefly appeared on our search results," Google tweeted on Thursday in response to California congressman and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. "This was not the the result of a manual change by Google. We have systems in place that catch vandalism before it impacts search results, but occasionally errors get through, and that happened here."
There are real issues out there in the world. Distracting from them by name calling is not helpful
Some jerk edited the Wikipedia page. Google served the information without knowing the content. Once discovered, the page and Google presentation were corrected.
In other extremely important breaking news, it was discovered that a Facebook billboard had "penis" spray painted across it. Users are outraged that the company would display such language in their marketing material.
This is just the "no true Socialism" thing again. Of course the Socialists acted as authoritarian fascists, they have to get the money from SOMEWHERE. If you're going to tell me "oh, they can just print it" then I'll invite you to Brazil or Zimbabwe.
Anyhow, the Nazis were all about taking the wealth of the 1%ers, they just happened to identify those as Jews as there were a lot of Jewish bankers, given that most gentiles didn't want anything to do with usury for a very long time.
If only Wikipedia had some kind of freely available edit history log, you could find out.
The National Socialist German Workersâ(TM) Party, aka Nazi party had some leftist ideology, a lot of leftist rhetoric, but can't be accurately classified on the left-right spectrum at all. It was primarily nationalist.
The name, "Socialist German Workersâ(TM) Party" fairly accurately represents much of what they SAID; like all politicians what they said isn't what they did. There was a lot of anti-capitalism and especially anti-banker stuff, but Hitler directed that into very different actions. For several hundred years, due to Christian religious teaching and kings using loopholes, most banking concerns were run by Jewish people. Hitler used the anti-banker (essentially anti Wall Street) rhetoric and sentiment to go after the Jews, as most bankers were Jewish.
Leftists are known for identity politics - rich vs poor, gay vs straight, black vs white, etc. The Nazis very much focused on race. Leftists generally talk about race a lot, but not to the extent the Nazis did.
Leftists are socialist / communist, saying the factories and such should be owned by the people, and unlike the conservatives believe people should not be given a CHOICE buy stock in companies they choose, but instead must own all or most of the big companies, whether they want to be owners of an oil company or not. Because a million people can't individually vote or otherwise have a hand in running a company, the government must do that for them, the leftists say. So left says the workers ideally own the company, but in practice the government does, with the politicians in control. Nazis mentioned the government running everything on behalf of the people, but the emphasis was on the nation (government), not on the people. It was about making Germany strong as a nation, as opposed to focusing on individual success and happiness.
That ties into another aspect. Conservatives and US Republicans tend toward individualism, the left is about collectivism. Nazis were an extreme version of collectivism, to the point that individuals didn't matter at all. Germany, the German people mattered, not each German person.
Because it was Germany that mattered, not each person, the state's power was far more important than individual rights. Those on the left and those on the right argue about limited government. Naziism was unlimited government, the government was the nation, and only the nation mattered.
As heads of the only thing that mattered, the nation, politicians / rulers had essentially unlimited power. Particularly there was a cult of personality around Hitler himself.
So Naziism had these major characteristics:
Socialist, class-based rhetoric
Hatred of the bankers and capitalists
Identity politics based on race
Extreme collectivism
Extreme nationalism
Near-absolute power for leaders
Some of that is similar to the modern left, but it's also significantly different in some ways.
Is North Korea a Democratic Republic, or does the name someone adopts not always indicate what they are?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
California’s 2018 U.S. Senate election attracted nationwide attention in April 2018, not long after the publication of a poll showing that little-known Republican and committed neo-Nazi Patrick Little had 18 percent of support among likely primary election voters, second to incumbent Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein with 39 percent.
In the SurveyUSA poll, Little — who describes himself as a “white nationalist” — had greater support than four other candidates in the state’s open primary, which candidates of any party (or none) can enter. These included outgoing California Senate President Kevin de Léon, a Democrat, and businessman Rocky de la Fuente, a Republican.
If those poll numbers were to hold, Feinstein and Little would advance from the primary as the two top candidates and contest the general election in November. The Republican party would be represented in a national race by a candidate who advocates a future United States “free from Jews” and has repeatedly and unreservedly expressed anti-semitic and white nationalist views during his campaign.
But this is not limited to California:
Little is the third Republican candidate for national office during the 2018 electoral cycle to have expressed openly anti-semitic and racist views.
In March, former American Nazi Party leader Arthur Jones ran unopposed in the GOP primary for Illinois’ Third U.S. Congressional District, and will represent the party in November’s general election.
In Wisconsin’s First U.S. Congressional District, one of the Republicans seeking to replace retiring House leader Paul Ryan in November is Paul Nehlen, who has described himself as “pro-white” and frequently expresses virulently anti-semitic sentiments on social media.
In February 2018, Nehlen was permanently banned from Twitter after posting a racist cartoon in reference to the actor Meghan Markle — whose mother is black — after her engagement to Prince Harry was announced.
You seem to think that sticking the term "corporate" something means that it is right wing; that is false. Both state corporatism and state capitalism are left wing ideologies; that is, the "corporation" is very much a tool of left wing ideologies, used to control free markets. Right wing ideologies are free market ideologies.
What the Nazis actually did is what leftists in general do: they tightly regulated businesses, highly taxed unearned income, controlled prices and wages, engaged in massive redistribution, massively expanded government welfare systems, provided free education, oppressed and controlled the churches, regulated news media to promote what they considered truth, categorized people into desirable/undesirable, implemented free healthcare and mandated fitness, stimulated the economy through government spending, promoted environmentalism an a return to nature, promoted sustainability, and oppressed their critics. That is, in most policies, European fascists were just like leftists. And until the horrific crimes of European fascists in the 20th century came to light, American leftists were quite laudatory of European fascists.
Nazis were indeed "not socialists", but they were most certainly leftists and ideologically very close to socialism and progressivism.
Capitalism works best (as in, markets work most efficiently in solving the basic economic problem) when market failures (monopolies, asymmetrical information, negative externalities, etc.) are corrected. This requires government.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Much like the modern ANTIFA "anti-fascist" thugs are anything but anti-fascist.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Borders, language, and culture are all important for the survival of a political state. Borders define what is and isn't lawful, and what rights/protection those who live within those borders have. Language is critical to business, trade, political discourse, and official communications. You highlighted this yourself when you began to explore the difficulty of translation due to the confluence of language and culture. Culture is obviously critical for common identity and to reduce the potential of "othering" that often leads to tribal violence and exclusion. Ethno-nationalism is not what's being promoted by Donald Trump, despite how much you may wish to draw ties.
I didn't "accuse others", I gave a long list of Nazi policies that coincide with leftist policies and the historical close connections between fascists and leftists. You are welcome to try to try to refute my points with facts. You will find that I am correct: fascism and socialism are both leftist ideologies and closely connected.
You do make an important observation, though: it is leftists that have been going around after WWII to make groundless accusations against others of being fascists and neo-Nazis. Every Republican president over the last couple of decades has been denounced as a "fascist", "Nazi", and/or "white supremacist" by the left. Every conservative commentator or intellectual has been denounced as such. It's not surprising that you quote Goebbels to point out a strategy that has been pursued for more than half a century by leftists.
Also, my family just barely survived the Nazis and then suffered under socialism, so I know first hand how utterly evil both ideologies are. It's also unclear why socialists are so afraid of having it pointed out how closely related they are to fascists; after all, socialists themselves are responsible for mass killings, genocides, racism, torture, war, and destruction that easily puts fascism to shame.
Every time a liberal *genuinely* attempts to compare the republican party (or infact, anyone, including other liberals they don't agree with) as a nazi, they lose favour.
They look stupid, they look ridiculous, they look crazy. It's not a good look. The endless name calling and branding is mind boggling, how people can be just that dense.
Worst part is for the ex-lefties who are now centrists or perhaps still somewhat left. They don't want to vote right but they feel compelled to, because they can't bring themselves to associate with such wildly insane people.
Let's go punch a nazi and fire whitey from his job, privileged cracker has had it too good for too long!
And thank you for a civil discussion on an often heated topic.
Fascism is authoritarian, and both the far right and far left end up as authoritarian, which makes them all share a lot of characteristics. Nazism was fascist, and had some traits that were more closely far right than far left (don't take my word for it, read the wikipedia article and follow the references). To that end, the elements I consider to be typical of the far right in the Nazis are also likely to be elements that are fascist. Elements that are far left are less likely to be classically fascist although they are just as authoritarian. I've tried to distinguish between authoritarian and things that are more definately right/left.
I don't think I've used a nazi=fascist=far-right=nazi loop, but that's the problem with unconscious bias; it's hard to see.
specifically;
4-6 are citizenship and race. The right is usually focused on its own citizens, uses nationalism and in the far right can become xenophobic. I think this is a pretty clear case for being classically 'right' and then exaggerated by the far right.
13-14 I acknowledge as being both far right and far left. It's a failure mode both can reach, although from different paths.
23 and 24 I acknowledge can be argued to be either neither or possibly far right. I think this is a case where traits that are present in the moderate right (citizens first, and the sort of conservatism that values national culture/religion) become exaggerated by the far right but I can see an argument that sees these points as being so far removed from the concerns of the moderate right that they are qualitatively different. ... and that's all I identified as 'far right'. One that's an exaggeration the nationalism to the point of xenophobia. One that's as much far right as far left and one that's arguable.
I'm genuinely curious, can you provide an example where you think I've used a circular definition?
---
You list a number of things that the right have endorsed, but you've omitted a number as well. The right is usually nationalistic, the left usually internationalisation. The right is usually (in the modern era) conservative culturally and socially as well as fiscally, the left is usually progressive and/or liberal. Personally, I'd add that the right advocates individual rights and responsibilities, the left focusses on collective rights and responsibilities.
Specifically the nationalism - which when distorted by extremism becomes the racism/xenophobia of the far-right and can give rise to militarism. I don't know. Maybe that's where I'm arguing circularly. The far left can be just as bloodthirsty, but it's usually classist, not racist, so I do think that racism is usually a far-right phenomenon.