We need to be less ready to throw each other under the bus when the PC media tell us to.
In London recently, Candace Owens of Turning Point talked about globalism versus nationalism, and was asked the usual idiot question about nationalism meaning Adolf. She replied,
“Whenever we say ‘nationalism’, the first thing people think about, at least in America, is Hitler. He was a National Socialist. But if Hitler just wanted to make Germany great and have things run well, okay, fine.”
Though you can be arrested for quoting Sir Winston Churchill on Islam in the UK, it is (or was, last I looked) still safe to quote him on Hitler.
I admire men who stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other side. He [Hitler] had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose.
That is how Churchill characterised a chance conversation with a fan of the fuhrer. So it seems Sir Winston held the same view as Candace. (Quoted in Churchill’s WWII Vol I, Chapter V, ‘The Locust Years’. In a follow-up conversation,
I happened to say, “Why is your chief so violent against the Jews?”
after which, it seems, these conversations, and Hitler’s reaction to the fan’s report on them, became less welcoming.)
Completing her answer, Candace went on to say
The problem is that he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German, everybody to look a different way. That’s not, to me, that’s not nationalism… I have no problems with nationalism. It’s globalism that I try to avoid.”
Even those who despise socialism tend to study its theories with a certain seriousness. Hannah Arendt’s study of antisemitism (despite the title of its first section being ‘Antisemitism as an outrage to common sense’) is one of far fewer that make the effort to study that subject seriously. Hannah ridicules the
hasty … identification of antisemitism with rampant nationalism and its xenophobic outbursts. … not only the Nazis but 50 years of anti-semitic history stand as evidence against the identification of antisemitism with nationalism. The first antisemitic parties … were also among the very first that banded together internationally. … they called international congresses and were concerned with a coordination of international, or at least inter-European, activities. … the Nazis nationalist propaganda was directed toward their fellow-travellers and not their convinced members … Nazi “nationalism” had more than one aspect in common with [WWII-and-after] nationalistic propaganda in the Soviet Union … The Nazis had a genuine and never revoked contempt for the narrowness of nationalism, the provincialism of the nation state, and they repeated time and time again that their “movement”, international in scope like the Bolshevik movement, was more important to them than any state …
She notes the Nazis’ “spiteful contempt” for the German people “which they had always had, but could hardly show before” (i.e. before they won power). Hitler described himself as a magnet drawing whatever was good out of the German people – “those who are left are worthless anyway”. Hannah remarks, “Even then, it was clear to those in his circle what would happen to people Hitler considered ‘worthless anyway’.” Hitler ordered that the word ‘German’ be replaced with the word ‘Aryan’ throughout the Third Reich’s legal code, institutionalising this contempt. In parallel, the Nazis eagerly recruited all the foreign antisemites they could. [All quotes are from Hannah Arendt’s ‘Origins of Totalitarianism’]
So when Candace Owens talked about Hiler’s place along the globalism versus nationalism spectrum, she seems to have an ally in Hannah Arendt.
The Covington incident showed some on our side betraying it and cringing to its enemies by believing what those enemies said happened. The Candace Owens pile-on is an example of doing the same by believing what those enemies say our words mean. Candace discusses the incident here. Anyone who cares what is true is still free to argue that (things being as they are today) she should practice replying in ways even harder to misrepresent. But they could they stand up for the facts enough to include those words ‘even harder’ when they say it.
I did type a long comment – but somehow it got away from me.
So I will just say…..
Good post Niall – yes someone who thinks in terms of a World Struggle of Races and has nothing but contempt for people who just wanted to develop German culture (including the very large part of German culture that was from JEWS) can not sensibly be described as a German Nationalist.
Just as racialists here in Britain historically despised “Little Englanders”.
And the racialists in the United States despised Jews – even though American culture (in its great days – the Classic period of Broadway Shows, early 20th century Hollywood, television, and even COMICS) was overwhelming Jewish.
“I love America and hate the Jews” is an incredibly stupid thing for someone to say (given the vast amount of American culture which is Jewish – everything from “Superman” to “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer”). And that does NOT deny that some “Jewish intellectuals” have themselves gone a very stupid (and self destructive) path, with their support for “Social Justice” – which always tends, in practice, to mean the sharing out of income and wealth and ethnic group quotas in universities and the professions.
For Jewish people to support “Social Justice” is like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving, but many “intellectuals” from Jewish families (who have, themselves, rejected Judaism itself) DO support “Social Justice”. Dreaming that it means “equal rights” – when it actually means mass theft, and ethnic quotas.
And a real American Nationalist would recognise and support the Jewish element in American culture.
‘Nationalist”?
“People’s”
“Children’s”
“Labor”
“Liberation”
Self-identified, self titled, self-branded, self-“awarded”…..
Comes in handy for the posters and uniforms.
There’s ALWAYS that annoying Captain Obvious kid in the crowd yelling “Hey wait! The Emperor isn’t wearing ANY clothes!”
The ENTIRE membership of the American Democrat Party just cited a recent scientifically validated poll of..someone… that said so!
I saw it on Twitter!
*sigh…/sarc*
Paul Marks
I did type a long comment – but somehow it got away from me.
Happened to me too, but I am just random lurker, not regular user like Mr. Marks. Do other Samizdata users have similar problems?
Anyway, it is shame to lose so much of your posts – until Samizdata admins find the problem, just type your reply in the notepad and paste it to the reply box, like I do in the rare cases when i unlurk and want to post something 😳
Not me. I almost never lose a comment and on the very, very rare occasions it happens, I can usually see cause in loss of internet, my own closing the window carelessly or similar.
Me neither. I think it has something to do with Mr. Mark’s Commodore 64.
😉
Wouldn’t it just be easier for someone like Owens to just avoid saying anything that could be construed (or misconstrued) as praise, or mitigation, or in the least bit positive, about Adolf Hitler? There were hundreds of other ways she could have answered that question w/o bringing AH into it at all. For a high-profile person in an age like this one to not get that is amazing to me.
Every area of free speech surrendered is an admission that compromising free speech is acceptable.
I saw one prominent sort-of right-winger on Twitter sneering about CO raising the topic of Hitler. ‘Can’t they get through a day without doing that?’, he said. But it’s the elft who keep raising the topic, so it’s hardly surprising that the right feels the need to address it.
It sounded very false to me to claim that since Hitler wasn’t, strictly speaking, a German nationalist – he therefore was a “globalist”.
He was a globalist in the sense of his desire to conquer the globe, or at least Europe, and impose his rule (with the help of the German Army).
This is not what is usually meant by the term “globalism”…
As I understand it – globalism means free trade – globally. Not global domination by one nation. This is a GOOD thing, and it does not contradict “nationalism” since, under free trade each nation advances it’s own interests – toward becoming “great” (again or not).
“Hitler was not a nationalist, he was a globalist.”
False dichotomy.
He was a nationalist who wanted to impose the rule of his nation over the globe… that does not make him a “globalist” in the current sense of this word.
Churchill: “The problem is that he had dreams outside of Germany. He wanted to globalize. He wanted everybody to be German, everybody to be speaking German.”
He wanted to globalize the rule of Germany…. this is distinct from the current usage of the term “globalization”.
The other meaning of “globalism” is that the whole globe is to be united in what is considered punishable and what is not, what is the law and what is not, what are acceptable punishments and what are not — at all levels, including the individual.
I.e., One-World Government.
Perhaps this usage is seen less often now than it was even a decade ago (??). But it used to confuse the heck out of me how the “Right” could be considered “globalist” and excoriated by the Left, while the Left was considered “globalist” and excoriated by the Right.
Julie near Chicago (February 9, 2019 at 9:49 pm), you have well-expressed one way in which Hitler was a globalist, but (to reply to Jacob) Hannah Arendt also meant it in a deeper sense.
Just as the bolsheviks believed they served the interests of some future proletariat their policies would create, not the actual workers of their day, so the Nazis believed in the race they would create, not the Germans.
There is also the important point that before deciding whether one agrees with every quote I give of Winston Churchill, Hannah Arendt or Candace Owens, one can simply see that Candace Owen’s answer to the question she was asked is wholly reasonable, undeserving of the pile-on (in which some on our side joined).
(BTW, rereading my post later in the day, I realised the order of the argument could be confusing, so recast it – same words, different order. I mention this just in case anyone re-reads it and wonders about their memory of it.)
“And that does NOT deny that some “Jewish intellectuals” have themselves gone a very stupid (and self destructive) path, with their support for “Social Justice” – which always tends, in practice, to mean the sharing out of income and wealth and ethnic group quotas in universities and the professions.”
Some? What percentage of Jews are aligned with the Dems and openly espouse an explicit anti- white agenda? 90%?
Ok fellow white people…
Owens mention of Hitler seems very reasonable. Need not be correct.
It is a good thing to talk about Hitler. There is too much myth, too much of Evil Man, end of conversation. His views were often usual; past and present. It still surprises me that Hitler can be confused with many sociologist writers of his time and ours.
Good grief.
His expansionist, hegemonist, racially-based beliefs – and his willingness to slaughter in service to them – directly or indirectly caused over 85 million deaths. He is the poster boy for genocide. Volumes have been written about the psychological issues that drove him.
Unless you want to make some point about how he made the trains run on time, I think it really is the End of the Conversation.
The country Hitler was born into had fought (Prussian) German expansion.
It’s fairly obvious that “German” to him didn’t end at country known as Germany.
bobby b (February 10, 2019 at 1:32 am), it may be the point that HGS (February 10, 2019 at 12:36 am) sought to make is that even Hitler thought the sun rose in the east and the day had 24 hours. Attaching his name to an opinion is relevant when few outside his movement held it, less so otherwise.
A factual example occurred in the 80s. The Prince of Wales (conforming to Conquest’s law that everyone is a conservative about what they know) campaigned against the concrete brutalist architecture we’d been enduring since WWII (and achieved a marked improvement!). The communists loved concrete brutalism but Hitler, the failed artist and architectural hobbyist, was more sensible on that specific subject. In between giving each other awards, some architectural bureaucrats denounced the prince for “supporting nazi architecture”.
A less telling example was the case of the hoaxers getting excerpts from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, translated with use of modern intersectional buzzwords, published in an ever-so-woke feminist journal. It exposed the journal but the ability of the hoax to work was in part because Hitler shared many of the common-people-are-not-rational views fashionable amongst intellectuals in his day and likewise fashionable amongst intellectuals today.
“There is too much myth, too much of Evil Man…”
Here is a rare case of no myth at all.
He was exactly that: an EVIL, psychopathic mass murderer. This is not a myth. And his “ideas” as expressed in Mein Kampf were shallow, silly and idiotic.
Hanna Arendt: “The Nazis did not believe that the Germans were a master race. They believed the world, including the Germans, should be ruled by a master race and this race [the Aryan race] was only in the process of being born.”
That is a distinction without a difference… Arendt was perfectly capable of saying silly things (beside wise things), as she was of doing silly things.
“Perhaps this usage is seen less often now than it was even a decade ago (??). But it used to confuse the heck out of me how the “Right” could be considered “globalist” and excoriated by the Left, while the Left was considered “globalist” and excoriated by the Right.”
The axis of excoriation is at right angles to the globalism axis.
You can be a nationalist authoritarian who believes only one’s own nation should follow your rules, or a globalist authoritarian who believes the whole world should follow your rules.
You can be a nationalist libertarian who believes only one’s own country should be free, or a globalist libertarian who believes the whole world should be free.
People keep on confusing the axes – thinking it’s a left-right battle when opposing the authoritarian-left, instead of an authoritarian-libertarian battle. Likewise, globalism-versus-nationalism is sometimes an argument, but it’s *not* the argument we had with Hitler.
His nationalism wasn’t the problem. His socialism wasn’t the problem. His racism and homophobia wasn’t the problem. It was that he thought he had the right and duty to impose by force what he saw as the best interests of the German people on everyone else.
We also forget – it wasn’t just Hitler. He’s only one man, and he’d have got nowhere if he hadn’t had hundreds of thousands of other Germans with the same beliefs willing to follow him. It wasn’t that they believed only because Hitler fooled them, persuaded them, or just because he happened to be leader of the country. They believed, and Hitler seemed the one most able to make it happen.
This confusion of axes is a danger. People are on guard against the rise of another Hitler, but they’re looking for the wrong signs. They raise the alarm at the sign of nationalism or racism or eugenics. They’re not as alert to the signs of authoritarianism. So I’m all in favour of pointing out the distinction.
Nationalism, like Socialism, is just another variety of Protectionism, and is a really bad idea economically. But it’s just an economic mistake, it’s not what leads us to prison camps and gas chambers and secret police.
Candace Owens should certainly have phrased her point better, but I note that many of those most loudly denouncing her also denounce Bush and Blair for invading Iraq. They passionately assert that other countries should NOT intervene to stop a dictator such as Saddam Hussein oppressing his own people but concede that such intervention is permissible, indeed obligatory, if the dictator steps outside his own borders, as Hussein did in his 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Natalie:
Of course, they’re also saying we must go into Syria even though it’s all happening inside the country, because Russia. But on the other hand, we’re not supposed to go into Venezuela, presumably because they like it when the piles of dead bodies and the misery are being caused by socialists.
bobby b – I am sure that the little men who work in the box in front of me (that is how a computer works is it not?) do their best.
Of course the problem is nothing to do with me being clumsy, hitting the keys too hard, and having very large hands – as my father used to say of me (and not as complement) “big feet, big hands, thick neck – IRISH PEASANT” although blaming me for his choice of wife (or rather ethnic origin of wife) is a bit weird.
As for Mr Hitler – was he really a lover of German culture? A lover of German culture who banned Mendelsohn?
“You see Paul, Mendelsohn was from a Jewish family…..” – and what of it? Very large parts of German culture are from people from Jewish families. Someone can be a sincere lover of German culture or someone can wish to destroy everything created by Jews – but a person can not adopt BOTH of these positions at the same time.
Adolf Hitler thought in terms of a World Struggle of races – he did not really care about German culture or the historical experience of the German speaking peoples.
Apart from in a few “Free Cities” (ruled by merchant – the most famous Free City being Hamburg) the German speaking peoples had been ruled by hereditary monarchies for thousands of years – being a Republic was a French idea (trying to get back to Ancient Rome) so did Mr Hitler restore the traditional monarchies of Bavaria and so on? No he did not – indeed such ancient families as the Hapsburgs (Austria) and the Wittelsbach family (Bavaria) were his deadly ENEMIES. The German lands without hereditary families in charge?
Mr Hitler set himself up as absolute ruler – without any family claim to authority what-so-ever. A more ANTI German idea is hard to imagine. Historically Germans looked with horror at someone claiming to be a wood worker or a metal worker if they did not have the family tradition to back this up. The son of a low ranking civil servant claiming to be the Ruler?
It is said of an English village (English – Anglo Saxons, Germans) that one knew who the leader was – the Lord of the Manor, normally a kindly soul but not known for being bright (one difference between the English and the Germans is that England, traditionally, anyway to call someone intelligent or clever was an INSULT). In spite of his Cornish name Squire Trelawney in “Treasure Island” is typical of the type.
Squire Trelawney breaks down in tears not from injury to himself (you could torture him for days and not get any crying out of him), but because due to his stupidity he has led an old family retainer to his death. Squire Trelawney begs the dying man for his forgiveness – but there is never any doubt that the dying man will forgive him (the only doubt of the dying man being whether he has any right to make such a judgment on his chief), but no one (on the side of the good guys) has any doubt that Squire Trelawney remains in charge – no matter how stupid his decisions may be, OF COURSE he is in charge he was born to be the leader of the area by family-right.
Indeed the more stupid the hereditary chief is, the MORE loyal one should be to them – as they will need the loyalty all the more. See the “Homecoming of Beorhtnoth” by J.R.R. Tolkien, of the Battle of Maldon, where the Anglo Saxon lord allowed the Vikings to cross a ford, so there could be a “fair fight”. The “fair fight” cost him his life, and the lives of many of the men who choose to stay with him (when they could have fled). But the two men in Tolkien’s story do not resent the folly of their lord (although they wish he had listened to wiser council)- they seek his mutilated corpse for honourable burial, and they find it. An immoral or dishonourable decision may YES cause an hereditary chief their right to lead – but not a stupid decision, indeed stupid decisions are almost EXPETCTED. That is why one gives wise advice – and stays to the terrible end if the advice is rejected.
There is no concept of a “fair fight” in National Socialism, and leaders are regarded as Super Intelligent – not as well meaning honourable fools, who one follows because their family right (and honourable and moral conduct) gives them the leadership.
Of course Mr Hitler had the word “German” removed from the German Legal Code and replaced (wherever possible) by the word “Aryan” – that is what he thought he represented, the Aryan race in the world NOT some narrow provincial little Germany
Churchill “I admire men who stand up for their country in defeat, even though I am on the other side. He [Hitler] had a perfect right to be a patriotic German if he chose.”
I beg to differ.
Germany, before Hitler, started the terrible catastrophe that was WWI, just to conquer it’s “right place under the sun”. So, if you met some German Nationalist or patriot (after WWI), who wished to make Germany great again, the best thing to do to him would be to hang him, not admire him.
As to Hitler – using the term “Aryan” rather than “German” – as I said – it’s a distinction without a difference. It’s the same thing.
Paul Marks writes about the finer aspects of German culture that Hitler disdained. Correct. But Hitler represented and tapped a much stronger strain of German nature – the Barbarians. There were, in Germany, probably, far more Barbarians than there were lovers of Mendelssohn or Goethe.
Jacob (February 11, 2019 at 11:57 am), you seem to me to be endorsing Candace’ and Churchill’s point, though saying you differ.
seems to be endorsing the idea that (while the evil of Hitler and naziism lay in other things as well) the evil of German nationalism lay in its expansionist urge.
One can of course argue (and perhaps that is what you are arguing) that, at least at that moment in time, the expansionist urge was so embedded in the German soul that to speak of a non-expansionist German nationalism was practically pointless. But it’s plain from what Candace said that she was well aware that she was making a purely theoretical point, to which she knew the ‘National’ of ‘National Socialism’ did not conform. Likewise Churchill ends the section from which I’m quoting by remarking that in later years Hitler several times suggested they hold the meeting the fan had arranged after all.
My point about Churchill is that he was wrong “in the former years” when he said he could “admire a German Patriot”. He got wise in “later years” after “a lot had happened” – fine. But a lot had already happened in “former years” – during WWI, for Churchill to get wise too, but he didn’t.
German Nationalism was barbarous and poisonous, and this was made amply obvious by WWI. The attempt to rationalize away the barbarous nature of German Nationalism and “understand” it, or accept it – this led to the second, far bigger, disaster of WWII. It was a terrible mistake.
About “well meaning honourable fools” of the ruling families – this respected English tradition has it’s limitations too…
If Kaiser Wilhelm II had been less of a fool and weakling maybe he could have reigned in his Barbarians (the Generals) and prevented WWI. He tried, but too late and too feebly.
Jacob – Winston Churchill certainly did not support the unjust German cause of 1914, that is not what he meant.
One can oppose the cause of an enemy and still respect the courage and loyalty of the enemy.
And, of course, as you know it was the German academics (the Professors) who were the heart of the problem – the Generals (like the Kaiser) were the products of the ideas of the academics. It was the academics (the Professors) who rejected ideas of objective and universal moral right and moral wrong. They embraced moral relativism and historicism (the believe that different principles, in ethics as much as economics, were correct in different “historical stages”) and taught that power-relationships were all – even in the 19th century in German universities it had become the fashion to praise Julius Caesar and sneer at Cicero.
A more different intellectual world from the English “Colonel Blimp and the old school tie” would be hard to imagine.
Some German Generals such as Ludendorff embraced the fashions of the German universities (the Germans being the “most educated people in the world”) and some German Generals, such as Falkenhayn, rejected it.
It should be noted that this was an ELITE matter (a matter of the universities and so on) – the ordinary German soldiers of 1914 still believed in universal principles of right and wrong.
Note the German Declaration of War upon France in 1914 – it does NOT say “we are the next stage in human development, you and everything you have are our natural prey” (which is what the German INTELLECTUALS, the academics and so on, believed), it claims that France has attacked Germany, even bombed Bavaria.
It was all LIES – the entire German Declaration of War upon France in 1914 is a tissue of lies from start to finish – which is why the French President (Poincare – a philosopher) described it as not so much as a declaration of war upon France (France just happened to be the target for today), but as a declaration of war on the very idea
of universal principles of truth and justice (which he knew that German academia, in its relativism, REJECTED). But WHY WRITE IT AT ALL?
It was written to impress the ordinary German soldiers (not the educated elite) – they had to be convinced they were fighting a defensive war, that the French had attacked Germany.
Even in 1939 the ghost of traditional morality remained – otherwise why did Mr Hitler have prisoners from the concentration camps dressed up in German uniforms and SHOT DEAD. “The Poles have attacked us – we must strike back” this is what ordinary Germans (Germans who were not “intellectuals” and had not “freed themselves from the moral chains of “right” and “wrong”” as Mr Hitler had) were told.
The Nazi Party dominated the universities when it was only getting one or two percent of the general vote. And not just the students – hundreds of academics as well.
And why not? After all National Socialism is the natural conclusion of the philosophy of Fichte and other collectivist philosophers. The sort of thing that General Ludendorff had been taught.
Today in the West it is the intellectual elite who are the source of the decay (a fish rots from the head) – but it has reached all parts of society now.
Let’s leave Germany and it’s special madness aside.
The interesting question is: can Nationalism be benign and good, or does it inevitably lead to conflicts between nations and war?
For example: there is no doubt that Brexit is driven by Nationalism. But I don’t see any sinister or, God forbid, criminal side to it. It may lead to improvement of the economy, or, more probable – some deterioration. It won’t cause Britain to try to conquer it’s lost duchies in Normandy.
Or Trump’s Nationalism. He is not going to start a new Boxer war.
On the other hand – China’s Nationalism – vs. the South China sea, vs. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Tibet, vs. the Uighur – this could spell trouble.
Here is a very good article about apple strudel and the Germany’s hatred of America.
Speaking about that German insanity…
My! I’d like a second opinion on that. I imagine a large number of Samizdatistas could give one. Jacob?
By the way, I see our old friend Subotai Bahadur among the commenters there. –I assume it’s the same S.B. I used to like his comments here. Wish he’d come back. Also Sunfish.
America helped defeat Germany in TWO World Wars. So, it’s only natural that Germans hate America. If someone expected the Germans to think “we were terribly wrong and needed to be defeated” – he is deluded – you won’t find many Germans believing that. They are more likely to think: “Why did America interfere in Europe? It’s none of their business!”.