Alice Weidel's Most Absurd Statement
Thoughts on The Ludicrous Assertion That Hitler Was a Communist
Alice Weidel, co-chair of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), recently did a video stream with Elon Musk. The end of the video stream concluded with Musk not only endorsing the AfD, but saying that the AfD alone can save Germany. It remains to be determined how much if any this will help the party win an election, although Germany’s parliamentary form of government would make it very difficult for the AFd to come to power unless the CDU can somehow be convinced to form a coalition with the right-wing, populist upstart. During the course of the interview, Weidel made a number of unfortunate statements, among them that Alternative fur Deutschland is fundamentally libertarian. This is troubling because of the staggering naivete of libertarianism, based on the absurd, ludicrous premise that individual choice somehow originates from the self, rather than being drastically influenced and predetermined by external factors, as well as the dangerous and utterly stupid idea that what others do somehow is their concern alone and does not affect others. Perhaps of greater interest to readers of this publication was the astonishing assertion by Weidel that Hitler was a communist.
Even given allowances for her limitations in the English language, the comment is shocking for how ridiculous it is. Adolf Hitler and National Socialism were fervently anti-communist. Before coming to power, brownshirts regularly clashed with the KPD in the streets throughout Berlin and Germany. The Nazis banned communism immediately after coming to power, and not without good reason. The Third Reich, of course, invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 for various reasons that historians continue to debate about, but the decision was made at least in part as an ideological crusade against Bolshevism. The term “communist” is often conflated with tyrannical authoritarianism of any sort, but such utterances are rarely uttered by anyone other than American rubes, not Europeans. Revealing her abject ignorance on the matter further, Weidel even claimed that Hitler and the Nazis nationalized industry in Germany the way the communists did. Germany in fact did no such thing, but preserved private corporations and collaborated with them in accordance with the “Third Way” that is the hallmark of fascist ideology, with the purpose of revamping the economy during peace, as well as to re-arm Germany and later to facilitate industrial production once war broke out.[1] There are some assertions that Hitler was briefly interested in communism in 1919, the veracity of which this article will not examine or entertain. But even with her limitations in English, she was more than capable, one would think, of qualifying the statement by stating “After the war, in 1919, Hitler was this communist, socialist guy,” rather than her actual, verbatim statement “Hitler was this communist, socialist guy.”
It is of note that interspersed with this assertion was her insistence that Hitler was a socialist—a contention made both before and after stating that “Hitler was a communist,” and later “Hitler was this communist, socialist guy.” While ridiculous, these sorts of remarks clearly stem from German neuroticism about war-guilt, especially as this comment was made in response to Musk asking Weidel to disavow or refute any suggestions that the AFD is somehow a sort of apologism for Hitler or National Socialism or any sort of successor to that historical political movement. Going beyond that, however, such utterances reveal influence from a certain train of thought, to the extent one can call such ramblings ideas or thoughts at all, that is uniquely American: the idea that somehow fascism, national socialism, and other radical-right or populist right movements in history and modernity alike are somehow left-wing. Such inane ramblings are commonplace, ubiquitous even, in “normy,” mainstream conservative spaces. Above all, they reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of European politics or history. Aside from astonishing ignorance, such comments stem from the very worst sort of “reasoning,” if one can call it reasoning at all.
In order to better illustrate the logical fallacies such “thinking” suffers from, readers are directed to the illustration above, featuring an assortment of memes that exemplify this “boomer-tier” conservative take. A common theme among many of these ramblings is an obsessive fear of being called racist, or a Nazi, and so on and so forth. This tendency is exacerbated by how the terms “fascist” and “fascism” have lost almost all meaning, reduced to a vague, nebulous stand-in for tyranny, senseless, oppressive authoritarianism, and so on, rather than a useful descriptor of reactionary, even revolutionary right-wing movements that embrace collectivism, (rightly) denounce democracy and communism, and grapple with the evils of communism and unbridled, predatory capitalism with a “third way” that rejects international communism and central planning, while confining, limiting and channeling capitalism in ways that are conducive to the greater good of the nation and the Volk. These and other phenomena explain why mainstream, “boomer-tier” conservatives have been so susceptible to such absurd theories and constructs asserting that fascism and other far-right, reactionary movements are somehow “left-wing.” Such drivel has, with much success, been advanced by the likes of Dinesh D’Souza, such as when he tries to juxtapose nazi propaganda featuring blonde German girls with the left championing Greta Thunberg. It also explains other such ridiculous inane ramblings that convince no one other than those of the “boomer-tier conservative” sort, such as images or talking points that attempt to discredit the Democrat Party because Robert Byrd of West Virginia belonged to the Ku Klux Klan over eighty years ago or how “Democrats are the real racists.”
Some make a great deal about the fact that the word “socialism” is in national socialism, overlooking that the word national is also in this term. These ideas, whether encapsulated in ridiculous memes or inane diatribes on twitter, “faceberg,” or wherever, always focus on the Nazis, rarely if ever focusing on Mussolini’s Italian fascism, fascist movements in Hungary or Romania, or Falangism and General Franscisco Franco’s fascist movement that saved Spain from communist tyranny, or even Augusto Pinochet’s glorious junta which saved his nation and people.
A lot of this rhetoric reduces any political schematic between the left and right as simply a barometer for expanded or limited government or even no government at all. This ridiculous schematic asserts that leftism is pro-government, and that therefore the right is somehow against government as a categorical imperative, so anything that endorses or uses state power to achieve political or ideological ends is somehow left-wing. This is so stupid as to defy credulity. Otto von Bismarck, who was fiercely nationalist and anti-democratic, was, in the minds of these morons, akin to “big government democrats” because he helped promulgate Germany’s social security system. This measure was of course implemented in a high trust, homogenous European society where such welfare programs—welfare in the proper sense, not the pejorative sense it has morphed into over time—actually work. Judge Robert Bork, infamous SCOTUS nominee and author of Slouching Towards Gomorrah, went well beyond mainstream conservatism with his truly reactionary thoughts and ideas. But, according to this schematic, Bork was actually left-wing in his sensible calls for state power to censor pornography and obscene, vulgar expression. The “normy” tier conservative who drones on about how any government action or expansion of the role of government should be avoided when possible is kind of right-wing, but the real trail-blazer of the real right-wing is the radical libertarian who unironically embraces Ron Swanson, not understanding the character played by Nick Offerman is a really bad joke from a dumb, wildly overrated sitcom. That radical libertarian who does not want any government at all—not for schools, not for the fire department, not for border enforcement or immigration control—that guy is the real right-winger, not like those lefty, socialist fascists and Nazis. After all, are not government functions like the fire department socializing fire-fighting and fire prevention? Are not public schools or police departments socializing education and law enforcement? To quote David Foster Wallace, such ramblings are so stupid they practically drool.
Going beyond historical ignorance, and ignorance of much else besides, these ideas are incredibly faulty just in terms of their reasoning. Very often things that are different—polar opposites even—bear many similarities. If one examines the anatomy of a cat and dog, one will find many similarities. Both have fur or hair. Depending on the breed of a dog that fur can be similar to some breeds of cats. Both cats and dogs have “beans” or pads on their paws. They have very similar front and hind legs (as do rabbits and other creatures). Both have tails. Both have canine teeth, as both are carnivorous creatures, although cats chew their food in a very different way. Cats and dogs are also beloved pets around the world. That, quite obviously, does not mean cats are dogs or vice versa. Although one can—and should—say cats and dogs are both pets as different breeds of these animals also exist in the wild, that does not change the fact that, fundamentally, cats and dogs are very different from each and not the same thing. Indeed, in many ways, cats and dogs are, perhaps erroneously, regarded as opposites of each other, even though they are just different types of incredibly popular pets, the same way oranges are different than apples, even as they are popular fruits commonly found together in many households.
These memes are a little better, making comparisons of similar attributes, Such objections always focus on the tactics, never considering that the motives behind such tactics are what counts.
Perhaps a more illustrative example demonstrating the logical fallacies in this sort of “thought” involves comparing Crusaders and Saracens during the religious crusades. Both fought religious wars born partly from religious conviction, but also in part from Realpolitik emanating from worldly ambitions from various nobility and rulers of the time. Both, quite obviously, fought in the Crusades, and did so with weaponry and tactics that were contemporary to that time, although each with variants peculiar to their civilization and geographic and racial origins. Both wanted Jerusalem. One could go one listing any number of similarities between these arch enemies. Despite such similarities, it does not follow, logically, that crusaders are therefore actually Saracens, or vice versa. Despite the long list of similarities, crusaders are the antithesis of saracens, and vice versa. This most absurd syllogism was featured and mocked in an episode of Family Guy, in which Peter gets addicted to Red Bull—incidentally, Red Bull is, without apology, a favorite of yours truly—before Lois throws her husband’s stock of Red Bull out. The next scene shows Peter trying to make his own concoction of Red Bull, mixing kerosene with other unspecified ingredients. His logic is similar to those insisting that Hitler, or national socialism, or any number of radical right movements in history or modernity, are somehow left-wing because they have some similarity with communism, socialism, or other assorted evils. Such “logic” is stated thusly:
Kerosene is fuel, Brian. Red Bull is fuel. Kerosene is Red Bull.
A more reasonable synopsis might read as follows. Stalin and Hitler were tyrants. They were both megalomaniacs that ruled totalitarian states in the 20th Century, each having gained a political mandate due to extraordinarily egregious circumstances, with each betraying that mandate or cause in his own peculiar ways. They waged war against one another in the most bloody, insane struggle in human history, on the Eastern Front. That does not mean they are the same thing, or that Hitler was a communist, or socialist, or somehow left-wing.
Hitler, national socialism, the origins of World War II and other such topics are incredibly difficult, complex and, in actuality, very ambiguous topics. Anyone with any semblance of intellectual sophistication has sought to at least try to understand why—without the advantage of hindsight—the German people turned to him and the swastika for redress of very legitimate grievances. The myriad injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, and the very real threat posed by Soviet Bolshevism help inform any such intellectual query, as does the hyper profligacy and degeneracy that had run rampant during the Weimar years, especially in Weimar Berlin. While sympathizing greatly with the German cause at the time, while also discerning a clear delineation between the German people and even large contingents of the Germany military on one hand and the upper echelons of the Nazi political leadership on the other, this author regards Hitler with a great deal of aversion.[2] Such aversion however does not stem from the reasons urged by Jonathan Greenblatt or Abraham Foxman or the Anti-Defamation League, or seemingly for the reasons Alice Weidel, Elon Musk, and so many others denounce him, but for many of the same reasons so many of his best generals and officers rightly came to loathe him. Such grievances include how he lost the war by involving Germany in a war with three peer powers simultaneously, giving Roosevelt and Churchill exactly what they wanted in the process, the way he brutalized so many European Slavic peoples, and, towards the end of the war, the callus disregard and even brutality with which he regarded even the German people and those men—those forgotten and tragic heroes—who fought and all too often died in the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS. Such difficult but important topics need to be discussed with intelligence and sophistication. Ridiculous outbursts that fascism, national socialism, and so on are actually leftist, or socialist, or communist are the precise opposite of such intelligence and sophistication. One rather expects such idiocy from your garden-variety Ami, not so much from an educated European woman, even if she is a lesbian in a "partnership” with a brown woman of Sri Lankan descent.
These sorts of statements, as well as the fact that Alice Weidel is not only lesbian but in an interracial lesbian relationship beg this question: what is the AfD’s angle in propping her up as the “face” of the party? Given that there is strong momentum to have the party banned under the provision in the Grundgesetz allowing for the banning of parties that are hostile to democracy, and given just how deep and pervasive Germany’s collective trauma is about war-guilt and neuroticism about that certain period of history, the decision to hoist Weidel into the lofty position of co-chair of the AfD and probable chancellor of Germany should the AfD ever come to power smacks of Dick Morris style political strategy[3], a way to triangulate the AfD away from such concerns and deflect shrill accusations of Nazism, fascism, and so on by those who want to ban the Alternative für Deutschland. Propping up a lesbian woman cohabiting and raising two children with a woman of alien ancestry overtly deflects such accusations. A strange gambit indeed.
[1] It is true Nazi Germany did not have a free market capitalist system. Given that free market capitalism is invariably predatory, and that free-market capitalism lends itself to any number of vices, from fast-food, to sports gambling, to pornography, to rap “music” and other vulgar, highly commercialized expression devoid of any artistic or cultural value, this is not exactly a discredit. More importantly, once war broke out the United States and Britain were not that much different. Just as in Germany, private corporate concerns like Boeing or General Motors were never seized, but it was in effect illegal for such concerns not to take government orders for airplanes, tanks, or whatever armaments were contracted for.
[2] An absolutely correct and reasonable position, but one that is likely to alienate—and indeed has alienated—many different factions from different perspectives, from mainstream conservatives who buy into various national myths, to those of a more enlightened, radical persuasion who, although correctly sympathizing with various policies embraced by national socialism and to a greater extent fascism and right-wing authoritarianism, fail to discern, for whatever reason, his colossal failings, morally and militarily, as a leader. Very simply put, Hitler lost t he war by allowing Germany to involve herself with three peer powers simultaneously. This does not, of course, mean I am unaware of severe provocations by Roosevelt that rendered his administration “neutral in name only,” from lend lease to both Great Britan and the Soviet Union, attacking German u-boots without provocation, and so on. Roosevelt of course conducted these provocations in order to bait Germany into war. Hitler apologists and are reminded of the Trent Affair which occurred during the early stages of the Civil War, in which union forces detained the British vessel HMS Trent, detaining confederate delegates. This was an outrage to the British public, introducing the real possibility of bringing The British Empire on the side of the Confederacy. In response to aids disappointed by Lincoln’s prudent decision to release the Trent and the confederate delegates who were in British custody before being seized, Lincoln merely replied “once war at a time gentlemen.” However legitimate Germany’s grievances against the United States were—and they were more than legitimate—such considerations are for naught unless Germany had the wherewithal and the material to also wage war against the United States, in addition to two other world powers. Germany did not, and this led to catastrophic defeat so ruinous, Germany, and indeed Europe, may never recover. The manner in which Nazi state policy brutalized tens of millions of European Slavic peoples and, increasingly through the late stages of the war, the German people themselves render him irredeemable. This does not, of course, mean the Allies—complicit if not collusive with Soviet tyranny, conducting terror bombings that deliberately targeted German civilians, or even the policy of unconditional surrender—are the lesser of evils. They are most emphatically not.
[3] After the Republican “revolution” in 1994, Bill Clinton was in serious danger of losing his bid for re-election. In addition to a less than inspiring GOP candidate in Bob Dole, Bill Clinton won reelection in no small part by hiring Dick Morris as a political strategist, implementing the master stroke of triangulation, whereby Bill Clinton campaigned on agreeing with certain issues that made the GOP popular with swing voters, such as being tough on crime. This deflected any criticism of the Democrat party away from his campaign, on to the democrat party writ large, while using the strength of the Republican platform against itself.
Whilst it is patently false it’s an argument I find myself throwing out there just to enrage socialists. :P
It makes them SO damn mad!