NelsonRushton
Doctorate in mathematics from the University of Georgia, specializing in probability theory. Masters in AI from the University of Georgia. 15 years as a computer science professor at Texas Tech. Now I work as a logician for an AI startup. Married with one son. He's an awesome little dude.
I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit -- and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I think there is noise in the signal.
User ID: 2940
NelsonRushton
5mo ago
You might be on the wrong side of history if... your excuse for the wrongdoing on your side is, "the other side does it too", or "the other side does it more".
Species of Tyranny and their Hallmarks (Part I: The Theory)
(c) Feb 3, 2025, by J. Nelson Rushton
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.
[Matthew 7: 15-16, KJV]
Webster's dictionary defines "woke" as being aware of and actively attentive to important societal facts and issues, especially issues of racial and social justice. Notice that this definition doesn't mention identity politics, or censorship, or cancel culture, or radical progressivism. Indeed, it does not mention anything that is associated with wokeness in the commonsense understanding of the word. That is because today, even the dictionary is woke.
To be woke in the Webster's sense is a noble thing indeed; it is to be a defender of the oppressed and downtrodden. This is the defining characteristic of a storybook hero -- like Superman, or Prince Charming, or the valiant huntsman who vanquishes the Big Bad Wolf and rescues Little Red Riding Hood and her sick, old, grandma. Not coincidentally, and probably because it is sine qua non of a storybook hero, "defending the oppressed" has also been the stated agenda of some of the most murderous demagogues in modern history. Practically every murderer is also a shameless liar; thus, not being constrained by the facts, they naturally toward the loftiest possible story about their motives.
A tyrant's rise to power is often paved with woke-sounding platitudes. For example,
- [Our] aim has been to grant equal rights to those social strata that hitherto were denied such rights.
- Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others.
- There must be a revolutionary party because the world contains enemies who oppress the people.
These are the words of Hiter, Stalin, and Mao Zedong-- who, between them, murdered tens of millions of their own people, and caused the deaths of tens of millions more through ideology-driven malfeasance, all in the name of "social justice". When you see a political leader rising to power on a fanatical message of standing up for the little guy, it's best to keep your rifle clean.
And how do such wolves rise to power? In many cases they are propelled by the will of the people. It is often believed that tyranny and democracy are opposites -- but the fact is that some of the most brutal dictators have risen to power on waves of broad popular support, in some cases through legal democratic processes, as was the case with Adolf Hitler. For this to happen, the tyrant must be shiny and slick enough to fool many people into complicity, and far more into complacency -- and they must keep their predatory intent in the realm of plausible deniability until it is too late for them to be stopped. It might be hard to believe this could happen, if it hadn't happened so many times.
So, how do we avoid being fooled, by leaders of our own party or those of another party? Are there signs that can be used to spot a rising tyranny in its formative stages, while it is still in its sheep's clothing? If so, those signs must be subtle -- or else it would not have been possible for so many intelligent, well-meaning people to be taken in by tyrannical movements through history.
Nonetheless, while they may be subtle, I believe there are certain hallmarks, or "tells", that tyrannical movements tend to exhibit even early in their stages --before they have gathered power, risen up, and bared their fangs. I hold that these hallmarks include, for example, the following:
- identity politics: as a caste system based on moral double-standards, often founded on a narrative of historical class exploitation
- authoritarianism: a sense of being entitled to control other people -- which engenders censorship, lawlessness, militancy, and arbitrary, intrusive governance
- extremism: policies and moral positions that flagrantly defy reason and common sense
So, my first claim will be that these characteristics are hallmarks of tyranny -- that is, identifying traits that can be used to known one when you see one.
However, not all forms of tyranny have the same character. There are fundamental differences between, for example, communism and Nazism, or between the rise and rule of Ayatollah Khomeini on the one hand, and Ivan the Terrible on the other. To borrow a phrase from author James Lindsay, there is more than one species of tyranny -- and each species, in addition to the general traits of tyranny, has its own characteristic markers that distinguish it from other species. This chapter will touch on two particular classes of tyrannical ideologies -- populist tyranny and its subclass of leftist tyranny -- and describe what I believe to be their identifying characteristics as well.
The subsequent chapter will illustrate how these hallmarks were evident in the early stages of the most murderous tyrannical movements of the 20th century -- Soviet communism, Chinese communism, and Nazism -- even before their true nature became obvious to their victims and to the world, and how they played out as these ideologies consolidated their power. I will also discuss how they are manifest in the woke movement today in the West.
Species of Tyranny
Tyranny can be defined as oppressive government rule. As I have discussed in a previously post, Plato wrote about the forms of tyranny that he and his forebears had observed in Classical Greece, but today we have more history to look back on. From our perspective, we can see that while many of Plato's observations are timeless, not all forms of oppressive government conform to the same model. It seems, author James Lindsay has put it, that there is more than one species of tyranny.
The tyrannical movement described by Plato is populist in nature. That is, in its rise to power, the tyrannical regime of The Republic derives its strength from broad public support. Generally speaking, this support need not come from an absolute majority of the population -- but it must come from a vocal and militant minority, that is large enough, and has enough allies, in the presence of enough passive bystanders, to seize power on the impulse of a "people's movement". Thus, Plato's tyrant is a demagogue: one who rises to power by stirring up and appealing to rash, angry sentiments that are festering among the population.
A demagogue can take office through a legal election or appointment (as with Hitler), through a revolution (as with Mao Zedong), or through a popular coup d'etat (as with Lenin). But not all tyrants are demagogues. A hereditary monarch, such as Mary I ("Bloody Mary") of England or Ivan IV ("Ivan the Terrible") of Russia, might indeed lead a cruel and oppressive regime, but their ascension to power does not rest chiefly on popular support, either of themselves or of their agenda. So, typically, a monarch's path to power does not resemble that of Plato's archetypal tyrant, even if they are, in fact, a tyrant.
On the other hand, despotic hereditary monarchs are not the sort of tyrant we need to worry about much in the West these days. From this point forward I will focus on populist forms of tyranny: those in which the tyrants take office on the strength of their public support, whether by legal means, illegal means, or a combination of the two as in Plato's Republic.
Even after restricting focus to populist forms of tyranny, not all of these have the same character. On top of being populist in nature, the tyranny described in The Republic is marked by radical progressivism, defined as extreme disregard for traditional norms and values. But not all populist tyrannies are radically progressive, or even progressive at all. For example, the path from democracy to tyranny in The Republic begins with weakening household patriarchy, and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia took steps in the same direction -- but the Ayatollahs have not weakened the patriarchy in Iran (au contraire!). For another example, Plato’s tyrannical regime advocates open borders and a liberal immigration policy, much as the woke left has in recent times -- but such a program would not characterize the Nazis, to say the least.
On the other hand, while not all populist tyrannies are left-leaning in nature, it does seem that practically all, if not all, left-leaning tyrannies are populist in nature. This is empirically observable as well as naturally logical: if a tyrant, as such, has the power to impose his will upon the people without their consent, one doctrine he is not likely to impose is that of egalitarianism. He is more likely to impose a pitiless, top-down pecking order, with himself at the apex.
In light of all this, I submit the following:
- Tyranny is defined as oppressive government rule.
- Populist tyranny -- or what might be called "grass roots" tyranny -- is a form of tyranny that draws its power from broad-based popular support, at least in its formative stages.
- Leftist tyranny, of roughly the character described in Plato's Republic, is one form of populist tyranny -- though there are other forms of populist tyranny that are not leftist in character.
In summary, populist tyranny is a species of tyranny, and leftist tyranny is a sub-species of populist tyranny. What follows from that?
Populist Tyranny
The first consequence of the claim that populist tyranny is a species of tyranny is something that is obvious to any student of history, but evidently not obvious to many people: that populist tyranny is a thing in the first place. It seems to be widely believed that democracy and tyranny are opposites, and that tyranny can only take hold by being ruthlessly imposed from the top down. In fact, Webster's (now woke) dictionary lists democracy and tyranny as antonyms. But on the view I propose here, de facto democracy is not the opposite of tyranny at all. On the contrary, it is an essential prerequisite for the very kinds of tyranny we need fear most, viz., tyranny of a populist variety.
At a minimum, there is nothing logically contradictory about democracy and tyranny. The will of the people as a whole, at least in principle, could be to welcome over them a cruel and oppressive dictator -- so long as he is cruel and oppressive chiefly to a well-defined minority. So a democratic tyranny is possible in theory; the question is whether it could happen in real life. Philosopher Jean Jaques Rousseau -- a key figure of the Enlightenment -- seemed to think not. Rousseau wrote that democracy is practically infallible, so long as it truly reflects the will of the people:
*As long as several men assembled together consider themselves as a single body, they have only one will which is directed towards their common preservation and general well-being. Then, all the animating forces of the state are vigorous and simple, and its principles are clear and luminous; it has no incompatible or conflicting interests; the common good makes itself so manifestly evident that only common sense is needed to discern it.
However, when the social tie begins to slacken and the state to weaken, when particular interests begin to make themselves felt and sectional societies begin to exert an influence over the greater society, the common interest then becomes corrupted and meets opposition, voting is no longer unanimous; the general will is no longer the will of all; contradictions and disputes arise.*
[Rousseau: Of the Social Contract, Book IV]
I wonder what Socrates would have to say about that.
The plain fact of history is that the population as a whole often supports leaders who cruelly oppress certain individuals or demographic groups -- and, in many cases, supports those leaders because they promise to oppress those people or groups. It might be difficult to know what the majority silently felt about, say, Lenin, or Hitler, or Ayatollah Khomeini -- but what the majority silently feels is not worth spit. In the real world, it is what a majority of active and vocal citizens feel that makes the will of the people -- in proportion to how active and vocal they are, and regardless of whether they assert their will by counting heads or by cracking heads. Formal democracy can soften the effect of this law of realpolitik, but democracy just-on-paper cannot soften anything much when the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity [cf. Yeats: "The Second Coming"]. Germany was a formal democracy as Hitler was rising to power, as was Russia during the rise of Lenin. Yet, in the practical sense of rule by the people, Germany welcomed Hitler over them, as Russia welcomed Lenin -- in substantially the same way that Iran welcomed in the Ayatollahs, even though Iran was not a formal democracy at the time. Each of these leaders rose to power by winning a contest for popular support, one way or another, Rousseau's pipe dream bedamned.
Hallmarks of Tyranny
So, how do we recognize rising tyrannical movements before they reach full bloom?
To draw an analogy in zoological terms, consider, for example, how usually know a mammal when we see one. A mammal is defined as an animal that nurses its young with milk. But when you see a mammal in the wild, even of a species you have never seen before, you usually don't have to wait until you see it reproduce and feed its young to recognize it as a mammal. This is because mammals have a certain cluster of diagnostic traits -- that is, features that co-occur together in most mammals, and co-occur for the most part only in mammals. The diagnostic traits of mammals include having hair rather than scales or feathers, and being warm blooded -- as well as certain hidden anatomical features such as having three middle ear bones, a diaphragm for breathing, and a neocortex brain structure.
Each category of tyranny -- if we have chosen our categories in a way that reflects nature (or in this case human nature) -- should also have certain collections of diagnostic traits. I will refer to the diagnostic traits of each species of tyranny as its hallmarks. Below I will list what I believe are some hallmarks of tyranny, followed by additional hallmarks of populist tyranny, and the further hallmarks left-leaning populist tyranny. For readers familiar with the history of Communism and Nazism in the 20th century, these hallmarks may strike a chord of familiarity.
The hallmarks of tyrannical government of all sorts include identity politics, authoritarianism, and extremism, defined as follows:
- Identity politics is the stance of advocating moral double-standards, in which people are viewed as having different moral status, eventually leading to differing rights or obligations, based on demographic characteristics such as race, class, sex, religion, and ethnicity.
- Authoritarianism is a sense of being entitled to control other people. It manifests as highly centralized government authority, lawlessness, suppression of dissenting voices, and arbitrary, intrusive governance -- particularly including widespread and vicious use of government authority against political rivals.
- Extremism is the embrace of policies and principles that flagrantly defy reason and common sense. In particular, it tends to include utopian "final solutions" to problems that are endemic to the human condition.
Populist tyrannical ideologies -- from that of Plato's Republic, to Soviet and Chinese communism, to Nazism -- exhibit the hallmarks of tyranny in general, with two modifications. First, the identity politics of populist forms of tyranny tend to be based on a narrative of historical class exploitation (e.g., by the Jews, the "bourgeoisie", or straight white males). Second, in populist tyrannical movements, the characteristics of authoritarianism, identity politics, and extremism emerge in a decentralized form, imposed by partisans of the ideology in any spaces, institutions, and jurisdictions where they hold sway. This process begins long before the movement consolidates central power, as we have seen happen with the woke movement in recent years.
Leftist tyrannical movements -- including all of the above except Nazism -- share all of the hallmarks as populist tyranny, with the stipulation that their extremism takes the form of radical progressivism, defined as extreme disregard for traditional norms and longstanding laws. Elements of radical progressivism (common to the Communist movements in the Soviet Union and China, to Plato's archetypal tyrant, and to the woke movement) include things such as negating gender differences, rejection of traditional religion, aggressive wealth redistribution, disarming private citizens, gutting the pre-existing legal system (e.g. legacy police departments), negating meritocracy, and denigrating traditional culture and cultural icons.
My next few posts will illustrate how these hallmarks were visible in the early stages of the three most murderous regimes of the twentieth century -- Russian and Chinese Communism, and German Nazism -- and how they played out as those movements consolidated and then abused their power. At the same time, I will discuss how these hallmarks of tyranny are visible in the woke movement in the West today, in case you haven't noticed. In fact, I believe the hallmarks of tyranny are exactly what differentiates the woke "social justice warriors" from good-faith progressives. What is alike between the two is a message of compassion -- that is, a call for each of us to do what we can to aid the visible, present suffering of our fellow men and women in need. What is different is that, with wokeness, this call for compassion is warped into a pretext for identity politics, authoritarianism, and extremism. Tyranny to a tee.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
Respectively,
- Nothing is being molded by anyone. Petition for redress of grievances is business as usual.
- If it is illegal then it is newsworthy, but what law is being broken and by what conduct?
- BLM is not the other side from the pro Hamas protests; it is the same side. Both are illegal and both should have been dispersed by police immediately. If it was MAGA protesters they would have been.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
*Other than why the fuck are Canadian doctors so keen to help their fellow citizens maim or destroy their bodies??!!
Whatever it is, I think it is the same thing that motivated Dr. Frankenstein.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
The argument doesn't depend on Hitler wanting to exterminate the French. The Jews had no plans to exterminate the Germans; they were just a threat of some sort. Hitler's axiom is that threats to your national safety can be preempted by genocide. Germany was a threat of far greater magnitude to the Allies in 1919 than the Jews ever were to Germany, so by Nazi logic the allies were entitled to exterminate the Germans in 1919.
The Allies planned initially to treat the German nation harshly post-war in the Morgenthau plan but then moderated their stance in peacetime when they concluded it would be unhelpful.
It would only be unhelpful if it didn't go far enough.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
By "inflammatory" do you mean (a) inflammatory in the eyes of a reasonable person, or (b) something that will, if widely seen, get a lot of people riled up, reasonably or unreasonably?
Is this like a hypocrisy claim? That since science isn't literally true it would be hypocritical to criticize theism for not being literally true?
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
If there is some causally inert god or gods out there, who do not interact with our reality in an empirically testable way, I am not that concerned with their existence.
God's pronouns are He/Him. (For the sarcasm-impaired, that's a joke)
Incidentally, I think this is the deepest and most informed comment in the thread so far.
Sure, the things we call the "laws of nature" may not be the true causal description of the universe at some level. What matters is that the universe acts as if they were universally true, as best we can tell.
This may be the view of many scientists who think about the epistemology of science if you pin them down (their motte!), but I think if you talk to people walking down the street, they think we are in the business of discovering natural laws that are actually true. I suspect that when we are not pinned down, scientists like to think that we are searching for truth ourselves (our bailey!), and it seems like the phrase "May not be the true causal description... at some level [emphasis added]" hedges against giving up that bailey. As I recall, the word for not-true is "false", unqualified by levels.
If you would affirm that science has no hope of attaining even tentative knowledge of natural laws that are literally true -- but instead that its mission is purely to discover useful (but presumptively fictitious) models of the physical world -- then that position is consistent with my argument, with or without miracles. From the post, I am perhaps a little more than halfway confident you would affirm that, but I am not sure, and I'd like to know.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
You can't understand Nazism without getting to grips with the special place that anti-semitism has in Nazi ideology.
I think I understand that tolerably. The question remains what is the rationale for this antisemitism? My only assumption is that it rests on the alleged threat the Jews pose to Germany. Am I missing something? If it doesn't rest on that, what does it rest on?
This sounds contradictory - were the pagans and Hebrews meant to be the other way around in the latter?
Yes that was a typo. Thanks for pointing it out.
More generally, if I read this as a book, I think certain parts of it would strike me as failure to maintain the professional detachment
I think it's funny that you expect books to have a tone of "professional detachment". Plato didn't.
NelsonRushton
5mo ago
Tit for that is the provable optimal strategy in an iterated game of prisoner's dilemma.
I do not believe this. I don't even think it makes sense to say, game theoretically. Source?
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
The big media outlets don't seem to be interested in this story. Maybe that is because they are controlled by a Jewish syndicate, or maybe it is because it isn't a big deal. I go with "isn't a big deal". If they were conspiring to break the law that would be a big deal; if they were conspiring to change the law it would be at least interesting -- but what is happening here is that they are "conspiring" to enforce the law -- which they would already be enforcing, with prejudice, if a group on the other side were doing the same thing. So, so what?
This is a reply jointly to several comments so I will put it as a new semi-top level post. Several of the responses, including such as (what I consider) the most thoughtful ones of @sqeecoo and @Gillitrut, point in the direction that the mission of science is not to discover natural laws that are literally true, but to produce useful fictions -- stories about the world that we are better off believing and acting on. That position, if you really believe it, is immune from my argument. But if you take that position, and at the same time embrace the study of science, then you cannot, at the same time, argue against theism on the grounds that it is literally false.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
Well there you have it. Jesus dude, could you construct a more convoluted argument? Literally throwing darts at a non-existent enemy.
The conjunction of (1), (2), and (3) is not a straw man; it is exactly where Western civilization is headed. Yet it is uncharted ground. My thesis is that that ought to give us pause that no society has ever tried this combination and survived long enough to record the fact.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
@NelsonRushton: By your argument, that I quoted above, slavery was moral until 300 years ago
@anon_: This is a fairly common, silly argument.
The argument you are calling silly is your previously stated argument on the topic of CSAM (supermajority, etc. etc.).
What I asked for is your argument that the abolition of slavery was a moral improvement. I'm now asking for the second time. Whatever argument that is, it will have to prove that majorities don't decide morality, which will contradict your argument for the prohibition CSAM.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
totally aware its a very vile thing to say, but my question is how vile is it to think? Maybe my model of my fellow man is way off, but I would be surprised if you explained the idea to 100 (non Russian/Ukrainian) men at least 30-40% don't buy into it. They would do it mostly secretly, but deep down in their hearts, they know what they want.
It is a socially unacceptable thing to say in the light of day (in comments that might be made public). I cannot tell whether you really think it is vile. For example, if someone did say it (giving voice to what you believe to be the sentiments of at least 1/3 of the male population), would you think that it revealed a serious moral defect in the speaker?
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
The current battle lines of elite and counter elite in the west are once again drawn on a precise difference between two modes of dealing with modernity. And that difference is quite exactly the one we are talking about here, between an individual desire of transcendence, escape and a collective desire of management, control.
...To no end. This is whence the conflict comes.
Then I have no idea what you are trying to say. Which side of the struggle corresponds to (A) individual desire of transcendence, escape, and which corresponds to (B) collective desire of management, control ?
Does it not give you any pause that you've now likened these real and existing Canadian doctors to five fictional characters and zero real people? In fact contrasting this fictional archetype with two actual people.
Interesting question. Answer: no. Can you elucidate why you presume it ought to?
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
I won't relitigate the influence of Christianity on the Enlightenment since that veers off topic,
IMO it is pretty adjacent to the topic of the original post.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
Like if I believe that apple pies can't spontaneously appear or disappear, by your reasoning do I have any non miraculous reason to believe that?
I think this issue turns out to be pretty deep. Note, first, that apple pie is not a natural kind in physics, and is not of a character that it ever could or would become a natural kind in the domain of physics. That is, you will not find any mention of "apple pie" in a physics text that is not interchangeable with, say, "blueberry pie". For example, there could be a problem that says "Suppose an apple pie weighs 2 kilograms, and falls from a height of twelve meters in a vacuum..." -- but in this case, the apple pie is interchangeable with any other common sense object that might way 2 kilograms, and is just there to make the problem more fun than if it were a falling rock, or a falling stick. On the other hand, if we changed kilograms to pounds, or "in a vacuum" to "in a pressure of one atmosphere", that would change the problem physically. So, to restate, apple pie is not a concept that is mentioned in any law of physics, nor a concept of the sort that would ever be mentioned in a law of physics.
In that light, an apple pie of all things popping into existence is categorically more unlikely, a priori, than the sorts of things that are explicitly ruled out by the laws physics. Even a 2Kg object (in particular, of all weights) is not a natural kind in physics. The laws that actually prohibit apple pies from materializing and disintegrating -- viz. the law of conservation of matter and energy -- could, in theory, be violated in myriad ways that do not involve apple pies in particular, or flying teapots in particular, or objects that weigh 2KG in particular. And I do stand by my argument in the case of the law of conservation of matter and energy.
I still wouldn't claim to have gotten to the bottom of it (of what makes something a candidate to be a natural kind in physics, that is), but I do think that my argument is only supposed to apply to propositions that are actually candidates to be laws of the physical sciences, and the Law of Conservation of Apple Pies, for whatever reason, does not have that property.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
Is this just because gravitation is claimed to be "universal" e.g. for all we know, gravity could suddenly change to work differently tomorrow, or work differently as soon as we leave the solar system?
Yes, it is because of the claim of universality, but this is a different issue than skepticism about induction and causality a la Hume, or the laws of nature turning on a dime. It could be that even yesterday, there were unobserved exceptions to any physical law we think we know. In fact, the point of my argument is that we have no (non-miraculous) reason to doubt that there were.
Is it? Maybe since I live in this world, I am corrupted by it and I can't imagine it any differently. But: I cannot imagine a world where the scientific method doesn't work.
What I claimed is that we have no non-miraculous reason to believe that the scientific methods works, for purposes of inferring universal generalizations, even in this world.
NelsonRushton
1yr ago
this post is too smug by half.
Can you please give some examples from the text of the smugness and shady thinking, perhaps with comments, to make this more concrete?
NelsonRushton
3mo ago
Note: this is my edit of the above post based on feedback after some reflection.
Hitler's Identity Politics
1. Introduction: Cargo-Cult Political Science
Of all the villains of the 20'th century, no one symbolizes evil in the Western consciousness like Adolf Hitler. This is a little odd, because Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong murdered more of his own people than Hitler did, and caused the deaths of tens of millions more through ideology-driven malfeasance. The number of Chinese citizens killed by Mao's regime is comparable to the total number of deaths in World War II and the Holocaust -- both civilian and military, on all sides, from all causes. Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin murdered about as many of his own people as Hitler did, and, unlike Hitler, founded a regime that transformed his country into Mordor for generations. Lenin's successor Stalin probably also murdered more of his own people than either Lenin or Hitler.
Yet Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are not seen as radioactively evil in the way that Hitler is. A statue of Vladimir Lenin, sans head, stood in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas for years. A statue of Lenin stands in Seattle at the corner of 35th St. and Fremont as of this writing, and that one has the head on -- and another statue of Lenin stands in San Antonio at the 300 block of West Commerce Street (also with head). It is not unusual to hear people quote the allegedly wise sayings of Lenin and Mao, even while being aware of their crimes. People say things like, As Mao Zedong said, women hold up half the sky. Joe Biden repeated that quote in 2021 in a commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy, though he did not mention Mao and was probably not aware of the source of the quote (he may not have been aware he was at the Coast Guard Academy). For comparison -- in a case that should have been viewed similarly -- Donald Trump once unknowingly quoted Adolf Hitler. However, for some reason, corporate media amplified and attacked Trump's gaffe an order of magnitude more than Biden's. You can compare the news coverage of those two events by looking at the results of this google search in terms of news coverage compared to this one.
While I believe that Mao was a man consumed by evil, I also believe that when he said women hold up half the sky, he identified an important truth and put it in a memorable way. Is it OK to quote Mao on the merits of that saying, in spite of the fact that he also killed tens of millions of people? Some people think it is and some think it isn't, and I don't know -- but I do know that nobody, outside of a skinhead rally, begins a paragraph with As Adolf Hitler once noted.... This is even though Hitler was a more cogent writer and speaker than Lenin, Stalin, or Mao -- and, like any other tyrant, some of what Hitler said had merit. I also know that there aren't any statues of Hitler in Las Vegas, or Seattle, or San Antonio, with or without the head -- and that no one with any sense would put one up because it would make them a social and economic pariah.
So why is Hitler demonized in a way that Lenin, Stalin, and Mao are not? I submit it is part of a wider phenomenon: there is a great deal of what might be called "cargo-cult science" surrounding Hitler. The phrase cargo cult science comes from Richard Feynman's 1974 Caltech commencement address, where he related the following story:
In the South Seas there is a "cargo cult" of people. During the war, they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires [like landing lights] along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut [like a control tower] for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones, and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas. He's the controller, and they wait for the airplanes to land.
The point of Feynman's story is that when you look at something to see what makes it tick, the features that matter are not always the ones that meet the eye most easily. For example, in broad strokes, Hitler was a right wing national socialist. Many people seem to hold that since Hitler was on the political right, the more right-wing you are, the more like Hitler you must be. And many hold that, since Hitler was a nationalist, the more nationalistic you are, the more like Hitler you must be. But for some reason, vanishingly few people hold that the more socialist you are, the more like Hitler you must be -- even though the National Socialist platform has about much for Bernie Sanders to love as it has for John Birch to love. At the end of the day, saying that Hitler was principally defined by his right-wingism, or his nationalism, or his socialism, just because he was a right wing national socialist, is no more logical per se than saying that what made Hitler "literally Hitler" was his distinctive style of moustache. Accepting any of these uncritically, from the nationalism to the socialism to the funny moustache, amounts to cargo cult (political) science.
Beyond the question of what made Hitler and his ideology so evil, there is widespread uncritical acceptance of the proposition that Hitler was evil in the first place -- and superlatively evil, in a way that even Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were supposedly not. As a kid growing up in America in the 70's and 80's, I unquestioningly accepted that Hitler was evil. It did not have to be explained to me what made Hitler count as being evil; duh, he started World War II and murdered six million Jews. Of course anyone who launches a war of conquest is evil. Like Hitler. Or James K. Polk. No, wait a minute; that can't be right. But of course anyone who orchestrates a genocide is evil. Like Hitler. Or Moses. No, wait a minute; that can't be right either. Weights and weights, measures and measures.
Branding Hitler as evil without being able to sensibly say why, or applying that label using standards that we don't apply when the shoe is on another foot, is dangerous for two reasons. First, it makes it more likely that we might be following in Hitler's footsteps without realizing it. Second, it increases the risk that our children will reject our assessment of Hitler when they see that we have made up our minds for no good reason. That could make them more vulnerable to jumping on the bandwagon if another Hitler comes along. For those reasons, it is important to understand what made Hitler Hitler in deeper than cargo-cult fashion -- so that we can better recognize whatever that thing is in other contexts, most importantly within our own hearts. Or do you believe that, whatever made Hitler Hitler, it can't happen here, or that you don't have any of it in you?
If a leader were to come along talking about racial genocide, that would be a dead giveaway that he is peddling a Hitler-style tyranny. But we can't count on that, first and foremost because Hitler himself did not come along talking about racial genocide. Hitler did, however, come along talking about the importance of racial identity, about certain races being historical class exploiters, and about the evils of capitalism. He did proclaim that groups should have different rights and obligations on the basis of race, and he did peddle victim identity politics rooted in flagrant double-standards. Moreover, Hitler and his followers were militant, authoritarian, and censorious, both "on the streets" before they took office, and under the auspices of legal authority after they were in office. I submit these are the most telling characteristics of the National Socialist ideology, from which it could have been (and was by some people) identified as a menace in its early stages. These characteristics are typical of racial supremacist movements generally, and are also present in the woke movement.
2. National Socialism and "Nazism"
The word 'Nazi' has an interesting history. Hitler and the members of his party never called themselves Nazis; they called themselves National Socialists. The term 'Nazi' was originally used as a slur against members of the National Socialist party by their ideological opponents -- much like American opponents of communism refer to its adherents disparagingly as commies. The National Socialists, in turn, called their ideological opponents reds. So the term Nazi -- like the terms red and commie -- all began as all slurs applied to members of certain ideologies by their opponents.
This slur Nazi was picked up by the Allied press and During World War II, and newspapers routinely referred to National Socialists as Nazis -- at the same time referring to the Japanese as Japs. Both Nazi and Jap carried a sense of enmity and contempt. After the war, the press dropped Jap but kept Nazi. This is understandable on the grounds that National Socialism was an ideology which had been defeated, while Japan was a nation that was still intact and no longer at war with us. But that may not be the whole explanation. Disparaging terms for communists, such as red and commie, have barely ever been used by the American press, even during the cold war, the Korean War, and Vietnam War, and even by authors (such as myself) who firmly believe that communism is evil. The slur Nazi has stuck in the mind of the intelligentsia like no other slur --just like Hitler has been demonized like no other tyrant.
Were National Socialists really socialists?
It is a delicate exercise to define socialism. Self-identifying "socialists" often differ on the matter, and sometimes differ fiercely. The term has been self-applied by people with views as diverse as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Bernie Sanders, George Orwell, and David Ben-Gurion. So I ask the reader's forgiveness if I can't come up with a definition that makes everyone happy. The Wikipedia definition of socialism is social ownership of the means of production [capital], as opposed to private ownership,... which can take various forms including public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. That is the definition I will use.
By that definition, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were clearly socialists, in the sense that their regimes directly managed the allocation of capital in their respective countries in a thoroughgoing way. It is safe to say micromanaged planned economies such as those of Lenin and Mao have been uniformly disastrous -- leading to third-world economic output in the best cases and famine in the worst cases. Food shortages are a typical result of Marxist revolutions, and occurred on the heels of such revolutions, for example, in Albania, Yugoslavia, Russia, Romania, China, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Mongolia, Yugoslavia, Laos, and Angola. When you see children starving in an ad for charities engaged in famine relief, you are usually seeing the results of Marxism.
Under the National Socialist approach, by contrast, the government reserves the right to manage capital -- at will and without limit -- but only steps in when they feel it is necessary. Necessity typically arises when the business in question is deemed crucial to some national objective, and "word to the wise" from the regime fails to have the effect desired effect. This form of socialism is largely hands-off in practice, or at least appears to be -- because no one wants a visit from the secret police, and a raised eyebrow will do. This form of largely hands-off socialism, sometimes identified with Fascism, has typically dramatically better economic outcomes than socialism of Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist variety. In fact, Germany under National Socialism recovered from the Great Depression years before the rest of Europe and the United States. China has been moving toward a hands-off approach that might be fairly called "national socialism" (or fascism) since the reign of Deng Xiaoping (though they prefer to call it "socialism with Chinese characteristics), and China has gone from a third world country to an economic superpower as a consequence.
So under the Hitler-style economic model, whom does capital belong to? I submit an analogy that I believe is instructive. Suppose, for example, that there is a certain bicycle which is currently in your possession, but which you can only use in ways I approve of, and which I can take away from you at any moment I choose. Whose bicycle is it, really? It seems to be my bicycle, on roughly the same terms as if I had loaned it to you: do with it as you please, within limits set by me, unless and until I wish to repossess it. These are basically the same terms under which you manage capital under your possession in a National Socialist regime. Thus, I submit that if a borrowed bicycle still belongs to the man who loaned it, National Socialism is bona fide socialism per the Wikipedia definition.
It may clarify the issue further to consider the one form of communal ownership that is not considered to be socialism by most definitions: stockholder ownership. Stockholder ownership is as "communal" as employee ownership or municipal ownership -- and in fact stockholder ownership is often called "public ownership" in the United States -- but there is a key feature that separates stockholder-ownership from the other kinds of communal ownership that are admitted under the heading of socialism: under stockholder ownership, just as in private ownership, capital belongs to the people who paid for it.
This kind of ownership -- the ownership of capital by those who bought and paid for it in a free market -- is precisely what socialists of all kinds stand against. Hitler writes, for example,
A grave economic symptom of decay was the slow disappearance of the right of private property, and the gradual transference of the entire economy to the ownership of stock companies.
Now for the first time labor had sunk to the level of an object of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the alienation of property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange began to triumph and prepared slowly but surely to take the life of the nation into its guardianship and control.
The internationalization of the German economic life had been begun even before the War through the medium of stock issues To be sure, a part of German industry still attempted with resolution to ward off this fate. At length, however, it, too, fell a victim to the united attack of greedy finance capital which carried on this fight, with the special help of its most faithful comrade, the Marxist movement.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Book X
The above passage is characteristic of Hitler in that he sees stockholder capitalism and Marxism as twin evils, both characterized by materialism, anti-nationalism, and Jewish conspiracy -- and both fiercely opposed by National Socialism.
For the rest of this essay, I will refer to Hitler's philosophy as National Socialism rather than Nazism -- first because that was how Hitler and his followers referred to themselves, second because the term National Socialist is accurate, and third because it is more fit for serious writing -- as opposed to terms that originated as slurs, like red, commie, Jap, and Nazi.
3. Hitler and Plato
In Vol 1, Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf, Hitler describes the moral and economic decay of Germany leading up to World War I. Echoing the narrative of Plato's Republic in its broad strokes and in several key details, Hitler describes a state which has regressed, in his view at least, from timarchy (military rule), to oligarchy (unrestrained greed and rule of the wealthy) to libertine, left-leaning populism. The parallels between Mein Kampf and Plato's Republic are too close to be ascribed to chance -- though Hitler doesn't mention Plato, and I do not know whether Hitler had read Plato's Republic, or whether he and Plato witnessed similar events two thousand years apart, or both.
Like Plato, Hitler views the transition from timarchy to oligarchy to be driven by moral decay, and in particular by a cultural shift in what is held in esteem. He writes,
Thereby the ideal [martial] virtues for all practical purposes had taken a position second to the value of money, for it was clear that once a beginning had been made in this direction, the aristocracy of the sword would in a short time inevitably be overshadowed by the financial aristocracy. Financial operations succeed more easily than battles. It was no longer inviting for the real hero or statesman to be brought into relations with some old bank Jew: the man of true merit could no longer have an interest in the bestowal of cheap decorations; he declined them with thanks.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch X
Both Plato and Hitler write that after the transition from timarchy to oligarchy, the greedy predation of the oligarchs gives birth to a class of ruined men, who then form a cohort of non-working poor. As Plato puts it,
The men of business, stooping as they walk, and pretending not even to see those whom they have already ruined, insert their sting --that is, their money --into some one else who is not on his guard against them, and recover the parent sum many times over multiplied into a family of children: and so they make drone and pauper to abound in the State.
-- The Republic, Book VIII
And Hitler tells a similar story of exploitation and inequality:
For the first time labor had sunk to the level of an object of speculation for unscrupulous Jewish business men; the alienation of property from the wage-worker was increased ad infinitum. The stock exchange began to triumph and prepared slowly but surely to take the life of the nation into its guardianship and control.
Now the abrupt alternation between rich and poor became really apparent. Abundance and poverty lived so close together that the saddest consequences could and inevitably did arise. Poverty and frequent unemployment began to play havoc with people, leaving behind them a memory of discontent and embitterment. The consequence of this seemed to be political class division.
-- Mein Kampf, Vol 1 Ch X
Both Plato and Hitler write that the oligarchic state soon degenerates into one of class division, moral relativism, anti-nationalism, anti-meritocracy, multiculturalism, and general half-heartedness in attempts to keep order. It then further degenerates toward leftist populism (communism for Hitler, and dimokratia for Plato).
Plato and Hitler part ways, however, on the underlying cause of this degeneration. For Plato it is all about values; for Hitler, it is all about race. In this respect, Hitler bears a stronger resemblance to another noted author in the Western Canon, as we will discuss next.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
I am not sure. The unifying theme of the posts is in the main theater of the culture war, but some of the essays don't have any visible connection to it as stand-alone posts. Any input would be welcome.
Hitler's Identity Politics, Part II
(c) Feb 19, 2025, By J. Nelson Rushton
Note:
This post is an installment of a book I am writing, under the working title They See not, which I am serializing as a series of posts on The Motte. The book is planned to be about the nature and common characteristics of populist tyrannical movements, with special focus on the woke ideology, and about how to combat such movements. The first four posts in the series were:
The current chapter is entitled Hitler's Identity Politics, Part II.
1 Introduction
The Nazi worldview, as definitively expressed in Hitler's Mein Kampf, has certain similarities with the pagan worldview, certain similarities with the Judeo-Christian worldview, and certain similarities with the woke worldview.
Like a pagan, Hitler is righteously proud of the conquests of other peoples by his people, and he credits these conquests to the greatness of his folk and their leaders. Hitler's glorification of Bismarck and the German military command in Vol 1 Ch 10 of Mein Kampf, for example, echoes the tribute to Shield Sheafson's mægen in the opening stanza of Beowulf.
However, unlike the pagans, but ironically following in the Hebrew tradition, Nazism also posits a transcendent, universal moral order. This seems an odd conjunction, and it is an odd conjunction, but the Nazi rationale is as follows: (1) the fabric of Nature has a fixed moral compass, and (2) as it happens, that compass inexorably points toward the triumph of the German Volk and Reich [people and state].
This Nazi picture of the world entails a theory of social justice rife with double-standards, and this is where it comes to resemble wokeness. In the Nazi view, those people and nations who stand in the way of German imperialism, or who make convenient targets of opportunity for German imperialism, are stripped of their would-be human rights by the Law of Nature. On the other hand, when the shoe is on the other foot and Germany is defeated (in World War I) and imposed upon (by the Versailles treaty), Hitler wails with righteous indignation that would make Ibram Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates look like trifling wanna-be's in the arena of victim politics.
2 The Competing Mythologies of Nazism and Judaism
This section compares the grand narrative of Mein Kampf with that of the Hebrew Bible in terms of (1) a vision of transcendent purpose, (2) their respective views of conflict and conquest, and (3) where they place credit and blame for national victories and national catastrophes. It may seem strange on its face to compare the Bible with Mein Kampf, but I believe the comparison bears discussing. Both books are manifestos of sorts, and both lay out ideas that nations have felt were worth fighting over.
My interest here is not in questions of who were the Hebrews, or who were the interwar Germans, or who was better than whom. I am less interested in comparing groups of people than in comparing ideologies -- that is, in the effect the Hebrew Bible had on the Hebrews and their cultural descendants, and the effect that Nazism had on the Germans of the Weimar Republic and their cultural descendants. Before they became Jews, the Hebrews were bronze age barbarians; before they became Nazis, the Germans were Western Christians like me. I doubt that any ideology is going to come along and make people like me act like the Hebrews in the book of Joshua; moreover, if there is an ideology that could do that, it isn't in the Bible -- because I've already bought into that one and I am still not interested in launching wars of aggression in the Holy Land or anywhere else. On the other hand, an ideology did come along and turn people like me into genocidal Nazis. So evidently these two ideologies have very different effects on their adherents.
I submit that key features of the Nazi ideology include the following:
Transcendent Purpose
The pagan worldview is one of shameless conquest of the weak by the strong. The conquest is naturally shameless because in the pagan view, Heaven, like Earth, is a theater of war between separate sovereigns. For example, the Romans presumed their gods favored them in battle (so long as the Romans had been properly pious), but they also presumed that their enemies' gods favored their own worshipers. Thus, the best the Romans could hope for from those foreign gods, as they prayed for in the evocatio, was that they would sit things out.
The Greek view was similar. Homer's Iliad depicts forces of Heaven engaged on both sides of the war:
In the Judeo-Christian view, by contrast, Heaven takes only one side. As Abraham Lincoln wrote,
While Hitler's Mein Kampf espouses an ethos of shameless conquest, Mein Kampf is decidedly not a pagan book. Ironically following in the Hebrew tradition, Mein Kampf extolls a vision of a singular, transcendent Higher Purpose. The first section of Vol I, Ch X contains Hitler's founding myth of the German Reich. In this section, Hitler mentions Nature as a singular, grand force in almost every paragraph. Moreover, Hitler casts Nature as a personified force: one which has goals, and which takes action to achieve those goals. For example, he writes,
For Hitler -- as for a Hebrew but not for a pagan -- Heaven takes one side in every conflict. In Hitler's view it is the side of the strong,
and Hitler tells us precisely who the strong happen to be:
So, the Nazi worldview holds that there is a moral compass woven into the fabric of the universe -- but instead of pointing North, it always points to Nazi.
Conflict and Conquest
The Hebrew vision, in contrast with the Nazi vision, is not one of eternal victory by the strong over the weak, nor of themselves over anyone else. It is a vision of progress toward peace. The envisioned peace is not ruled by the strongest tribe, nor by the Hebrews themselves, but ruled impartially by God:
The Biblical vision of a Messianic age of peace on earth stands in stark contrast, of course, to the Hebrews' narrative of their own national founding. When confronting their neighboring tribes, the Israelites are commanded by God, through Moses, to make them an offer they can't refuse, largely in the mold of pagans like of Pompey or Shield Sheafson:
Moreover, in case of the previous residents of the Holy Land, the Israelites are to make no offer and give no quarter, even to women and children -- more reminiscent more of Genghis Kahn, or perhaps of Hitler himself, than of Shield or Pompey:
Lo!
The Biblical stories of conquest and slaughter by the Hebrews are gruesome even for the ancient world. One key thing about them, however, is that they probably never happened. The rough consensus of secular historians is that the tales of ruthless conquest in Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua are legends and fables. The fact that that is the story the Israelites chose to tell about themselves tells us something about their culture -- but exactly what it tells us is subject to debate, and that debate should be constrained, first and foremost, by the facts of history. We know a lot about what the Nazis did, and it is reasonable to look for explanations for their what they did in their founding mythos. We know a little about what the Hebrews did, and it is reasonable to look for explanations for what they did in their founding mythos. What is not reasonable -- though it seems to be fairly popular -- is to speculate about the cultural impacts of those narratives without looking primarily at what their believers have done.
Unfortunately, we don't have copious records of what the ancient Hebrews did. However, if they had been conquistadors like the Assyrians or the Persians, we would know; ergo they weren't. The Hebrews may well have tried to subjugate their neighbors and failed in the endeavor. They probably would have if they could have. Why do I believe that? Because that is what everyone would have if they could have in the bronze age. We have no reason to think the Hebrews were different in this respect, Biblical or historical. But precisely because that was typical for the age, that tells us nothing about the effects of the Bible on Hebrew culture and morals, except that it didn't miraculously turn them into pacifists overnight. Surprise! The Bible didn't even turn the Hebrews into non-pagans overnight, and the Bible itself is clear about that.
What we do have records of, and very good records, is Hebrew law. Now if God came down from Heaven and cast a spell on the Hebrews to turn them all into superhuman moral geniuses, then we should expect them to have suddenly implemented a system of laws whose wisdom and insight meets or exceeds those of the most enlightened societies of today. That didn't happen (Surprise!). But the relevant control group against which to measure the ancient Hebrews is not the Kingdom of Heaven, or even the modern West; it is their contemporary neighbors. By that standard, I submit that Hebrew law was a deeply important and substantially unique departure in the direction of modern morality. I will make that argument at length in future posts, but here I will restrict the discussion to how the Biblical view of conflict and conquest differs from the Nazi vision.
In the Nazi story, as we saw above, the Reich was born in battle. In the Hebrews' account, their nation is born when God forms a covenant with Abraham (notably in direct contrast to Hitler's disdain for origins based on mere talk).
Having been brought up in the Judeo-Christian tradition, it is easy for us to overlook something in this passage, that to the pagan mind would have been quite puzzling: what's the point of blessing the families of the Earth? except maybe with the end of a spear, a la Pompey or Shield Sheafson?
To the point, the Nazis had no interest in being a blessing to all of the families of the Earth. Hitler's long-term vision, noted above, is eternal victory of the strong (viz., the German Volk and Reich) over the weak (viz., whomever is convenient to attack and exploit). In the short run, he has his sights set on the seizure of foreign lands, through wars of aggression, for the purpose of Lebensraum ("living space") for the German people. If there are others currently in that "living space" -- such as there were in the lands of the Soviet Union which he intended to seize and occupy -- Hitler held it is only right that they be killed or displaced to make room for better people.
Note that a pagan would not need a pretext for conquest, but a Nazi -- on the view of a transcendent moral order -- does. In service of this pretext, Hitler uniquely dignifies and uniquely and humanizes the Aryan race:
By contrast, he expresses relative disdain for the Slavic people of Russia and Eastern Europe, whom he intends to attack and kill or displace. Hitler's disdain for the Slavs takes on special significance in the context of an "eternal victory of the strong over the weak", and of Hitler's imminent plans for war:
And of course Hitler spews venomous hatred toward the Jews, whom he would like to extirpate from the Earth.
I am afraid many readers will have trouble stepping outside the Judeo-Christian moral waters in which they swim, whether they profess belief in God or not. So, at the risk of being redundant, I repeat that a pagan wouldn't need a pretext for conquest or slaughter; a pagan conqueror would not need to disparage his victims, and a pagan conqueror would have no need for Hitler's view that might makes right. For a true barbarian, might makes might, might is enough, and "right" need not enter the picture.
The Hebrew Bible has many verses that give Jews special status in their own country, which celebrate their victories (real or imagined) over foreigners, and which warn against mixing in marriage with foreigners. But none of that makes it unique. What makes it unique is that it contains verses that point toward equal human rights under Natural Law, with repeated emphasis on equal rights for non-Jews. For example,
Neither pagans nor Nazis entertain this idea of equal treatment under law for mere human beings dwelling among them, even as an aspiration.
The Hebrews are commanded to conquer the Holy Land and kill its inhabitants. That is bronze age business as usual. What is not business as usual is that they are specifically commanded not to attack their other neighbors, nor to take so much as a cup of water from them without paying for it, even though they have the power to do so. For example,
Pompey would just be befuddled by this, and so would Hitler.
In summary, Mein Kampf and the Hebrew Bible are both narratives of a transcendent purpose, but the consistent purposeful vision of Mein Kampf is domination by the strong of the weak, forever, the strong being Deutschland (uber alles). The Hebrew Bible has sprinkles of jingoism and chauvinism as well, and to expect otherwise would be ridiculous; but it also contains sprinkles of other things, that are mostly if not wholly missing from the pagan worldview and the Nazi worldview: equal treatment of mere human beings under law at home, and a far future vision of peace on Earth abroad. In the sweep of history, the fact that so many people even view these as good things is relatively new in the world -- but Germany consciously relapsed from those aspirations under the Nazi rule.
Credit and Blame
When the Germans win, Hitler credits this to the greatness of the German people and their leaders:
By contrast, in the Hebrew Bible, it is not the Hebrews who are said to be mighty, but their enemies:
Whereas the Nazi narrative credits their victories to the German Volk and Reich, the Hebrew story credits the victories to God:
Lest the Hebrews dare to think they earned God's favor because they are such good people, their Bible makes it clear that they did not and are not:
So the Nazi and Jewish views of who gets credit for their national victories are quite opposite. But so are their accounts of who gets the blame for their national defeats. On those occasions where the Hebrews are defeated or oppressed, the Hebrew bible -- particularly in the books of Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah -- places the blame squarely and somberly on the Hebrews themselves. In a twisted sense, this is the one point of agreement between the two ideologies: Nazi mythology places the blame for the German national catastrophes on the Hebrews as well. I could quote Hitler ad nauseam on this, but I don't think the fact is in dispute, and I don't care to repeat Hitler's words on the subject.
Ѻ
To summarize, the Nazi ideology is distinguished by
3 Hitler and Plato
In Vol 1, Chapter 10 of Mein Kampf, Hitler describes the moral and economic decay of Germany that he believes led to its defeat in World War I. Echoing the narrative of Plato's Republic, Hitler describes a state which has regressed, in his view at least, from timarchy (military rule), to oligarchy (unrestrained greed and rule of the wealthy), to libertine, Marxist-leaning populism. The parallels between Mein Kampf and Plato's Republic Book VIII are too close to be ascribed to chance -- though Hitler doesn't mention Plato, and I do not know whether Hitler had read Plato's Republic, or whether he and Plato witnessed similar turns of events two thousand years apart, or both.
Like Plato, Hitler views the transition from timarchy to oligarchy to be driven by moral decay, and in particular by a cultural shift in what is held in esteem. He writes,
Both Plato and Hitler write that after the descent from timarchy to oligarchy, the greedy predation of the oligarchs gives birth to a class of ruined men, who then form a cohort of non-working poor. As Plato puts it,
Hitler tells a similar story of exploitation and inequality:
For Hitler as for Plato, the oligarchic state soon degenerates into one of class division, moral libertineness, anti-nationalism, anti-meritocracy, multiculturalism, and general half-heartedness in all attempts to keep order. It then further degenerates toward leftist populism of some form (communism for Hitler, and dimokratia for Plato).
There is one point, however, where Hitler and Plato part ways. For Plato it is all about values; for Hitler, it is all about race. Hitler's final assessment of the root of his country's problems is this:
On this score Hitler diverges from Plato, and more closely resembles another noted thinker of the Western canon.
4 Hitler and Ibram Kendi
A colleague of mine at a certain university (which will go unnamed) once described certain bureaucrats of that university's administration as Nazis. What he meant was that they were ruthless, tribal authoritarians -- which they were -- but something about the metaphor struck me as wrong. It took me a few seconds to put my finger on where the comparison broke down, after which I blurted out in protest, "Nazis were effective".
There are many disparaging charges that could be rightly leveled at Hitler, but pipsqueak is not among them. Ibram X. Kendi -- author of the woke manifesto How to be an Antiracist -- is, by contrast, a poster child of pipsqueak. For that reason among others, it feels strange to analogize Hitler to Kendi. Nevertheless, the calculus of ideological similarity puts these two on the same plane in several key respects.
For starters, both Hitler and Kendi hate capitalism. Hitler writes, for example,
and for Kendi:
There is some nuance to Hitler's views from the standpoint of terminology: he is both fanatically anti-capitalist and fanatically anti-Marxist. For many readers, "capitalism" and "Marxism" are ideological polar opposites, but Hitler's ideological emphasis is different from that of most readers. For him, both Marxism and capitalism are tools of an international Jewish conspiracy to exploit the Aryan people, with national socialism standing in direct opposition to both. What Marxism and capitalism have in common for Hitler, besides their association with Jewry, is their materialist, individualistic, and anti-nationalist character. In any case he uses "Jewish", "capitalist", and "Marxist" all as slurs, often together in reference to some tripartite conspiratorial hydra:
Both Hitler and Kendi identify predatory capitalist oligarchy as the immutable genetic characteristic of a certain race. Hitler of course identifies it with the Jews:
Kendi has a different race in mind:
The similarity is quite remarkable. Whites for Kendi, like Jews for Hitler, are a race of (1) genetically disposed (2) deceivers and (3) capitalist (4) exploiters. They just can't help it.
It must be pointed out that Kendi's statements here are beyond the pale even for woke pundits, and most notable SJW's would not follow as far in Hitler's ideological footsteps as Kendi does. It must also be pointed out, however, that Kendi's comments were well known for years, and he was seldom if ever denounced for them by the woke left -- so, while unusual, these statements were not particularly unwelcome. If a right winger had said any such thing, about any group of people, you can be sure that woke cancel-culture would have unearthed the offense and kicked into high gear over it.
Like Hitler, Kendi sees his people as the heirs of a glorious past with glorious leaders:
And he holds that it remained glorious until the capitalist exploiter race stepped in and ruined it all with their underhanded backstabbing:
Even Hitler doesn't blame the Jews entirely for the German defeat in WWI. He actually says the Germans brought it on themselves by.... wait for it... tolerating the Jews and their capitalist exploitation in their midst! Similarly, Kendi gives a nostra culpa [our fault] on behalf of his people, blacks. The problem with blacks, says Kendi, is that too many of them feel they are to blame, instead of whites, for their lagging outcomes:
5 Conclusion
Hitler claimed that the Jews had undermined the German war effort in World War I. In truth, there were probably a lot of people who contributed to Germany's loss in WWI and its subsequent economic collapse, and of course some of them were Jews. But in all likelihood, most of them were not Jews, and there was no massive program to exterminate those people, either as individuals or as members of any group they belonged to. On the other hand, around 30,000 Jews won medals for bravery fighting on the German side in the WWI -- and yet many of those very men, along with their families, perished in Nazi death camps under the pretext that they were somehow enemies of the Reich.
In particular, Hitler said he despised Jews because of their penchant for Marxism. It is true that Marxist leadership, in Germany and elsewhere, was populated disproportionately by Jews -- but if you want a litmus test for likely Marxists, current or former member of the Communist party is a pretty good one, and yet there was no systematic effort by the Nazis to exterminate them, of the sort that was directed against Jews (who merely might be Marxists). These obvious failures of the shoe-on-the-other-foot test, once we think to apply it, tell us that the stated reasons for the Nazi persecution of the Jews must have been quite different from the actual reasons. That is the nature of group guilt, aka social justice.
Hitler claimed that the Jews of Europe needed to be exterminated, war heroes and all, because they were a menace to his people. Alright then, Austria and Prussia had been a menace to their neighbors in Europe for hundreds of years, and their union in the German Empire was a greater menace after that. By Hitler's logic, the Allies would have been within their rights to implement a final solution to the German problem while they had Germany at their mercy following WWI. In hindsight that would have saved the allies a great deal of blood, toil, and tears. If the Treaty of Versailles were a Jewish conspiracy (as Hitler loudly charged), then Germany should have expected Old Testament justice out of the deal. But the Versailles treaty, while it caused significant hardship for the German people, was no Holocaust (not the same ballpark, not the same sport). And yet how did Hitler respond to it? Vae victis [woe to the vanquished] in the eternal triumph of the strong over the weak? No. What did we do to deserve this? Not really. He wailed that it was an unfair, unjust, absolute abomination against the Natural Order. Poor baby. That is the nature of double standards.
Group guilt and double standards: that is the nature victim identity politics.
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