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Hitler's Identity Politics, Part I
(c) Feb 10, 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 three posts in the series were:
The current chapter is entitled Hitler's Identity Politics ,Part I.
Introduction: Cargo-Cult Political Science
No one else is considered the face of modern evil like Hitler. That is peculiar, because Mao Zedong murdered far more people than Hitler did, and caused the deaths of tens of millions more through ideology-driven malfeasance. The number of Chinese civilians that were murdered and needlessly starved under Mao was probably greater than the total number of deaths in World War II and the Holocaust from all causes, on all sides, civilian and military combined [source]. Moreover, Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, the man who was Mao's practical model of success, murdered just as many as Hitler, and, unlike Hitler, founded a regime that transformed his country into Mordor for generations.
Yet a statue of Lenin, sans head, stood in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas for years. One stands in Seattle at the corner of 35th St. and Fremont as of this writing, and that one has the head on. It is not unusual to hear people quote the allegedly wise sayings of Mao and Lenin on their merits, even while being aware of their crimes. People say things like, As Mao Zedong said, women hold up half the sky. Joe Biden repeated this quote in 2021 in a commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy, though he did not mention Mao. It also once happened that Trump unknowingly quoted Adolf Hitler, and 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 Mao said women hold up half the sky, he identified an important truth and put it in a memorable and persuasive way. Is it OK to quote Mao on that, on the merits of the saying, in spite of the fact that he killed tens of millions of people? Some think it is and some think it isn't, and I honestly I don't know. But I do know that nobody (outside of a skinhead rally) begins a paragraph with "As Adolf Hitler said, ...". That is even though Hitler was a more cogent writer and speaker than Mao -- and, like Mao, or Lenin, or any other tyrant, some of what Hitler said had merit. Even a blind, evil pig finds an acorn once in a while. I also know that there aren't any statues of Hitler in Las Vegas or Seattle, with or without the head -- and no one would put one up because it would make them a social and economic pariah. So why is Hitler completely demonized, in a way that Lenin and Mao are not?
I submit there is a great deal of 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:
The moral 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 the broadest strokes, Hitler was a far-right national socialist. Many people hold that since Hitler was "far 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 nationalist 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, if one actually reads the Nazi platform, it has about as much for Bernie Sanders to love as it has for John Birch. But at the end of the day, saying that Hitler was essentially 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 defined him was his distinctive style of moustache. Accepting any of these uncritically, from the nationalism to the socialism to the funny little moustache, is what Feynman would call 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 -- even radioactively evil, in a way that even Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong are not, though the latter were more prolific mass murders. As a kid growing up in America in the 70's and 80's, I naturally accepted that Hitler was evil. It did not have to be explained to me in any detail 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 pure evil. Like Hitler. Or James K. Polk. No, wait a minute; that can't be right. But of course anyone and orchestrates a genocide is evil. Like Hitler. Or Moses. No, wait a minute; that's not right either. Weights and weights, measures and measures.
Branding Hitler as evil without being able to cogently say why is dangerous for two reasons. First, it makes it more likely that we might be following in his 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 -- and that could make them more vulnerable to jumping on the bandwagon if another Hitler comes along, especially a Hitler in sheep's clothing. For both of 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 have none of it in you?
I will argue that what makes Hitler literally Hitler, first and foremost, was not his nationalism, or his socialism, or his right-wingism, or his wars of aggression, or even his penchant for genocide, but his identity politics. I define identity politics as the embrace of a caste system with different moral standards for different groups, based on demographic characteristics such as race, religion, and ethnicity. Hitler practiced identity politics of two substantively different forms: one form to rationalize his wars of aggression (primarily against Slavs), and another to rationalize his attempted genocide of the Jews. These will be discussed in the following sections.
Pagan Views of the International Order
Not everyone who launches wars of aggression, even copious wars of aggression, is trading in identity politics. Consider, for example, the opening lines of the Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf:
Note that in the Saxon mind, Shield Sheafson was "one good king". Why? Because he drove men in terror, not from their trenches, not from their fortresses, but from their bar stools, where they had presumably been minding their own business before he showed up -- and because he did this far and wide, making war on and subjugating, not one, not two, but every neighboring tribe, and exacting tribute from them like a schoolyard bully on an indefinite basis.
Note also what these lines do not say about Shield. They do not say that he settled some ancient score, or imposed cosmic justice on his tribe's historical exploiters, or even that the clans "beyond the whale road" deserved what they got because they were lesser men than the Danes. Sheafson's greatness lay in his sheer will-to-power and the macht to impose it on others. Moreover, the hero of the passage is not a member of the poet's tribe: Shield was a Dane, while the poet is a Saxon. If Shield Sheafson was a historical person, the author's ancestors may have been among his victims -- and yet the poet esteems Sheafson's mægen (greatness) impartially. Even if Shield was not a historical person, this glimpse into the Saxon mind tells us something important about them: if they glorify a Danish king for his rapacious imperialism, they certainly wouldn't need a moral pretext justify their own kings waging wars of aggression -- such as that targets had it coming because they did it to us first, or even because they were lesser men than us. The greater men they were before we whipped them, the better. Lo!
For a second example of the pagan view of warfare, consider Homer's Iliad. The Iliad tells the story of the beginning of the Trojan War. It is a tale of heroism and excellence on both sides -- but also, as much as anything, a lament for men caught in a bloody struggle whose making was beyond their control. If you had to pin the blame for the catastrophe on a single person it would be the Trojan prince Paris -- but he is more of a self-indulgent simpleton than a villain; his bumbling takes place before the story begins, and is barely deemed worth mentioning by Homer. In Homer, there are no black hats and no white hats, for individuals or for groups. Though the story was written by a Greek poet, and was a national epic of ancient Greece (comparable to a book of their Bible), it could have been written by a Trojan with much the same perspective, even if with far less craft.
Considering Beowulf and the Iliad side by side, we see that whether the story is written by the winners or the losers, there is no need in the pagan mind to cast international conflicts as matters of right and wrong, or of who is entitled to what (in stark contrast, for example, to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people in modern times). We should be careful not project part of our own worldview onto Homer or the Beowulf poet, and ascribe to them the belief that "might makes right". In fact, they would find that view alien. Their view of international relations is not that might makes right, but that might makes might, and right barely enters into the picture. Lo!
For a third example we will consider the Roman Republic. In 61 BC, in honor of his 45th birthday, a monument was erected to the Roman general Pompey bearing this inscription:
There is no indication, in the inscription or anywhere else, that Pompey was seeking vengeance or justice, or that the Goths and Gauls he subjugated, enslaved, and killed were scumbags, or even bad folks.
The Romans did think of barbarians as lesser men than themselves, but they did not feel entitled by a sense of cosmic justice to rule over them on that account. On the contrary, the Romans believed that Heaven as well as Earth existed in a Hobbesian state of nature: an amoral war of all against all, or what we might call the "law of the jungle". While the Romans believed that their own gods favored Roman victory and imperialism, they also believed that foreign gods, just as real as their own, favored their barbarian adversaries in much the same way. Thus before battle, the Romans prayed not only to their own gods, but sometimes to those of their enemies as well. The Roman prayer to the gods of their enemies was known as the evocatio, and a version of this prayer, said during the siege of Carthage, is recorded by the Roman historian Macrobius Theodosius:
The Romans did not share our modern idea of human rights. Human rights, in the modern sense, are rights granted equally to all men by natural law. The Romans had a sophisticated code of due process, but the rights of the accused -- e.g., to stand trial and cross examine witnesses before being deprived of liberty or property -- were in their view not human rights granted to all men by natural law, but Roman rights granted to Romans by the state of Rome! Acts 22 relates the following:
The passage records that under Roman law, jailing and flogging a Roman citizen without a trial was strictly forbidden, and must have carried a rather grievous penalty -- but jailing and flogging a mere human being without a trial was allowed. Even if this account is not fully historical, it must have been intended to be believable to its contemporaneous audience -- which could only be the case if that was indeed the Roman policy.
In the Roman mind, when Caesar conquered Gaul, he was not violating anyone's "human rights" -- for there were no "human rights" to violate in the first place. Does this mean that the Romans were engaging in identity politics? On the contrary, it means they were not. Identity politics is not merely protecting your own people and exploiting others; it is protecting your own people, and exploiting others, and then wailing and moaning in righteous indignation when the shoe is on the other foot. Identity politics is when Ibram Kendi complains about the Atlantic Slave trade and the exploitation of Native Americans America while turning a blind eye to the vicious enslavement of a million whites by the Barbary Pirates. But hypocritical, self-righteous wailing of this sort was not the Roman way.
Consider, for example, the Roman reaction to the worst defeat in the history of the Republic, in the Battle of Cannae at the hands of Hannibal Barca. Around 60,000 Romans were killed at Cannae in a single day -- far more than the number of Americans killed in the whole of the Korean war. Additionally, between 10,000 and 20,000 Roman soldiers were taken prisoner, and Hannibal sent ten of these to Rome to plead for ransom for the rest. And what was the conversation in Rome over this event? What an affront it was to the Natural Order for Romans to be defeated by barbarians? How Rome had been stabbed in the back by traitors from within and without? How it would never have happened but for the weather? As the Roman historian Livy relates the events, no to all of that. There was resolve to continue fighting, and a somber debate over whether to ransom the hostages. The decision of the senate was to not ransom the hostages, because this would only fill Hannibal's coffers and enable and encourage further aggression. The ten Roman soldiers who had come as a delegation to Rome were sent back to Hannibal under Roman guard -- because they had given their word to return to whatever fate awaited them at the hands of the foreign general. Even the law of the jungle is a law, and fair's fair.
The Hebrew View of the International Order
The ancient Hebrews were not pagans, and their view of tribal conflict was fundamentally different from that of pagans. The Hebrews held (and still hold) that the universe has an immutable and impartial moral compass, that points in the same direction for every man and every group of men -- and that therefore, when two tribes go to war, one must be in the wrong and deserve defeat. But the Hebrews were not fundamentalists; in the scads of wars that show up in their own historical account, half of the time it was the Hebrews that were in the wrong. More than half the time, actually, by my recollection.
As an illustration of the Hebrew view, consider the book of Isaiah. The backdrop is that the Hebrews have been defeated and enslaved by the Assyrians. It is a tale of privation, defeat, and despair. Here are a few snippets from Chapter 9 [KJV translation]:
And why is this happening? Chapter 1 explains why, and almost every chapter thereafter reminds us: because the Jews have done wrong.
The conquest and subjugation of the Hebrews by the Assyrians was a historical event, and these verses were written by a Hebrew priest within living memory of it. Moreover, the attitude expressed in the book of Isaiah is not a one-off; it is characteristic of Hebrew culture over long periods. The books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah were written over a hundred years later, under similar circumstances of defeat and enslavement for the Hebrews, this time by the Babylonians. In all three books -- Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah -- the Hebrews humbly accept their fate of defeat and cruel exploitation as a penalty for the error of their ways. The book of Daniel, while focusing more on a single individual captive in enemy hands, takes the same tone of humility and forbearance in defeat.
So the Hebrews teach that they are God's chosen people, but they are not chosen to rule the Earth. God does that. The Hebrews are chosen to receive God's law and proclaim it to the world, and in doing that to be held to a higher standard -- being especially blessed when they do right, but also especially cursed when they do wrong. It turns out people of every sort, Hebrew or otherwise, do wrong often enough this is no enviable bargain. As Tevye (Jewish main character in "Fiddler on the Roof") said, I know, I know, we're the chosen people. But once in a while, could You choose someone else?
Now here is a riddle for you: How is the book of Isaiah like Hitler's Mein Kampf? Answer: Both are stories of national desolation and defeat, told poignantly by one of the defeated -- and both blame the Jews. The next chapter will compare Hitler's view of the international order with the pagan view on the one hand, and the Hebrew view on the other, as well as with that of the woke movement.
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:
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,
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,
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,
And Hitler tells a similar story of exploitation and inequality:
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.
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