DPF has a critique piece today about my post on White Rose (below). It warrants some response. (DPF, I always enjoy our robust debates…you don’t, like another mammalian blogger, brain explode in public with “F*** you are thicker than s***…F*** off, you are a knob of the highest order”) simply because I used the word “lame” as several of that oceanic blogger’s other commentators did too, in response to a lame video he posted up (as I did, titled “lame”).
But to DPF’s non-abusive critique of White Rose.
Did you know the Nazis were liberals??? March 7th, 2013 at 9:00 am by David Farrar
John is effectively comparing the Nazis to those who dare to critique those who argue against him. Not a winning strategy. Any comparison to the Nazis is offensive and ill-considered unless someone is actually out there committing genocide and the like…
I think DPF is drawing a very long bow here. The piece does not compare anyone specifically with Nazism rather a historic comparison of a political mob mentality that eschewed traditional morality and attacked conservative groups.
I agree with DPF that comparing people to Nazis is offensive. But we have to be careful that is really done – it is not in my piece. Discussing nazism historically is valid, and just because you make linkages (“nazism did this, the Nigerian Liberation Flower Society did that”) is not necessarily a comparison. Nazism does not exist in a societal bubble. There are flow-ons, repeats and societal commonalities. This is the central point of the White Rose piece.
DPF falls perhaps into jumping too soon and crying wolf ”Ooo he used the ‘N’ word.”
Yes, but socialism and liberalism are very different things.
Agreed. But my point is a rebuff that Nazism was a conservative movement.
Is John saying he is risking his life by arguing against same sex marriage? Does he see himself as a brave martyr risking the mob burning down his home?
For the record, totally not. I don’t buy into martyr complexes and am not vain enough to see myself in this polarised way. (Although protestors did picket my church, twice, for talking favourably about Americans and how they celebrate funerals. I was out of the country at the time).
Also on a historical note, while there were many brave Christians who risked their lives to save Jews, the record of the Christian churches as a whole was very mixed.
Agreed, especially the Vatican (let’s remember they have killed more Christians than anyone else, so there are historical issues there on a massive scale) but as a whole, it was a Christian worldview that was in conflict with Nazism; the German societal ‘secular’ ‘norm’ was swept away by Nazism. The church generally held against Hitler.
Oh yes, the Nazis were liberals and progressives. For someone who is meant to be complaining about the use of language to demonise, John does the exact thing he complains about.
What words would you use DPF? ”National SOCIALISTS?” Nazis were progressive and modern, Hitler was very ‘progressive’ morally, almost libertarian, that doesn’t mean I am saying “progressives” are Nazis (ie Lindsay Perigo is not Herman Goring).
Newflash to John. The Nazis executed Germans for being homosexuals…
Newsflash to DPF, I did not mention homosexuals in the article.
The Nazi regime was also full of homosexuals, especially the SA, and at the highest level, such as Ernst Rohm and Wolfgang Teubert (actually called “Fraulein Schmidt” by Hitler’s inner circle) to name just two. This as a statement will be taken by the simple-minded (not DPF) to mean I am saying homosexuals are Nazis. Homosexuals were victims and perpetrators. This is the contradiction of the Nazis. There are a number of books about the pink nazis; at best Hitler was ambivalent towards homosexuality. One of his few ‘friends’ (his flatmate) said he was neither fully heterosexual or fully homosexual. But Hitler’s sexuality is irrelevant here; or any discussion between homosexuality and Nazism; I did not mention homosexuality in the White Rose piece, so the connection is not mine but an inference drawn by DPF on my behalf.
John says the Nazis were liberals and the(n) wonders why he gets verbally abused by some. You get verbal abuse when you say outrageous offensive things such as the Nazi were liberals. Don’t say stupid offensive things, and you won’t get so much flak.
I don’t mind the flack. I stand by my claim and I dispute it is stupid, that the Nazi movement was a liberal progressive one, not a conservative one. I’d be interested in other’s views, especially scholars.
…John’s portrayal of liberals (such as supporters of same sex marriage) as akin to Nazis.
An utter distortion. I do not believe supporters of the Wall bill, or homosexual people – including my gay friends – are Nazis. I actually really like gay people. For one, they have a much better dress sense than average Kiwi blokes and eat well.
Comments welcomed on DPF and my contretemps on Nazism as progressive/liberal or conservative, but let’s excise homosexuality from the debate. It’s a distraction.
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If anything, you’re demonstrating nicely that Nazism was far closer to a conservative ideological position than a liberal one. Rejection of equality, loathing of democratic principles, oppression of those different to you, both in law and socially, in-built intolerance. But in any event you’re really just taking the opportunity to abuse your opponents by erroneously comparing them to mass murderers. A good way to earn people’s lasting disdain.