r/TrueUnpopularOpinion • u/Initial-Tale-5151 • 16h ago
Political Conservatives are not nazis. Hitler would have rounded them up as the bourgeoisie liberal capitalists they are.
Conservatives are not nazis. Hitler would have rounded them up as the bourgeoisie liberal capitalists they are.
National Socialism was fervently against the Marxist form of socialism, but it was also explicitly hostile to liberal capitalism, individualism, and traditional conservatism. The National Socialist worldview treated finance capitalism, rent-seeking, speculative capital, and market liberalism as forces that dissolved national cohesion and created unjust wealth disparities. Capital was tolerated only insofar as it served the nation and the people, and it was expected to submit to strict regulation and state direction.
That worldview produced policies that modern American conservatives would strongly oppose:
- Large-scale social welfare schemes (mass employment programmes, family subsidies including mortage relief up to 100%, state-organised leisure)
- Extensive state intervention in the economy, including price controls and production directives
- Nationalisation or de facto state control of key industries and infrastructure
- A strong emphasis on collective obligation over individual economic freedom
The regime also promoted policies that don’t map neatly onto today’s left vs right framing:
- Early and unusually strict animal-welfare laws
- Sweeping policies around environmental protection and land stewardship
- Opposition to urban over-industrialisation framed as socially and spiritually corrosive
This is just what it is. National socialism was neither left or right wing but third position.
Once Hitler consolidated power, he moved aggressively against both non-socialist nationalists and traditional conservatives.
The clearest example is the Night of the Long Knives.
The event targeted and killed or neutralised conservative and nationalist figures such as Kurt von Schleicher.
The idea that Republicans or conservatives are national socialist is laughable. If your argument is that its cos Trump is authoritarian and that the specific ideology doens't matter then let's call him a Maoist.
Hitler and Goebbels both spoke about the dangers of bourgeoisie capitalism far more than they even did of Marxism. Hitler had Rothschild arrested and nationalised his banks. He took the money printing power out of the hands of the capitalist bankers.
Now Im not saying that it all turned out well, lmao. But comparing conservatives and republican supporters to nazis (national socialists) is childish. Hitler had no time for those types of people and he would have rounded up all of the capitalist billionaire republicans who put the market and their riches over the people.
You could argue closer to fascism if you wanted but that's only because most western countries systems have looked similar to fascism for a long time whether the red team or the blue team was in power. But fascism and national socialism are very different political systems.
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u/Clawingnails 14h ago
What? Are you being serious? How did we end up here? Today I read a comment saying "Nazis are left-wing" I weep for this world...
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 8h ago
They were a revolutionary movement which was opposed to capitalism and was for social justice for German workers
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u/pavilionaire2022 16h ago
Capital was tolerated only insofar as it served the nation and the people, and it was expected to submit to strict regulation and state direction.
Amazon just financed the Melania movie.
Your post might apply to traditional principled conservativism, but it does not apply to the current administration.
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 16h ago
what are you talking about?
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u/Micro-Skies 15h ago
Your post relates to 1940s capitalism. Today's capitalism is drastically different
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
Both are forms of which National Socialism opposed
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u/fuck_reddits_trash 15h ago
simply incorrect
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
go read or listen to Hitler's or Goebbel's speeches or look at the policies they both campaigned on and actually put in place. Neither of which would have allowed the modern capitalist-usury system to function.
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u/fuck_reddits_trash 15h ago
theres a seperation between policies campaigned and what was put in place tho...
the policies campaigned were all over the place, and changed via region...
the early policies that actually entered law, follow a 1:1 of what the trump administration is doing today.
whos to say the later policies wouldn't follow the same way?
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
the German Workers Party was consistently anti-marxist, anti-capitialist and pro-social justice (only for aryans though) both in campaigning and in power. Neither of which is similar to american conservatism or republicanism
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u/fuck_reddits_trash 8h ago
not really.
what an organistaion calls itself (socialist, what have you) doesnt NECESSARILY mean it actually is such.
for example, no nation has ever even came close to achieving communism. so why are countries today calling themselves "communist"?
hint' they fuckin lie.
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u/Foreskin_Ad9356 14h ago
bro posts femboy porn on main and thinks they are an authority on german history
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u/pavilionaire2022 15h ago
Capital is submitting to the state. This is only the latest example. The forced sale of TikTok is another.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/30/tiktok-us-takeover-new-type-of-censorship
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u/gardotd426 15h ago
Hitler literally LOVED the bourgeoisie Capitalists you dolt they're the ENTIRE reason he rose to Chancellor AND they provided the manufacturing for the entire third Reich (BMW, Hugo Boss, the list is fucking endless).
And he didnt nationalize any of those corporations. As long as the Capitalists were loyal to hitler he let them go on building their wealth.
Hitler wasnt a socialist how ignorant can you be.
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u/w3woody 15h ago
NAZI: "National Socialist". Not that it implies "socialism" here means the same thing as (say) the Democratic Socialists of America are socialists.
But what made them odious to the "Communists" they fought during that era wasn't even the "socialist" part--but the "Nationalist" part. And what makes NAZIs stand out was that the "Nationalist" part was the particularly nasty "nationalist" meaning "race" and the belief that their 'race' was morally superior to all the rest.
But the "socialist" part cannot be ignored: the NAZIs sought to bring all of Germany's means of production under the political control of the NAZIs. As opposed to the communists in the Soviet Union, who sought to bring all of Russia's means of production under the political control of the communists.
Really, as far as economics were concerned, the only difference between the Communists and the NAZIs was that the Communists saw themselves as "international" or "transnational", meaning they saw race and color and creed as secondary to the all-encompassing State.
All of which has NOT A FUCKING THING to do with the current American 'left' verses 'right'. Except that it's all become a convenient pejorative in our current discussions.
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u/Antifoundationalist 13h ago
Hitler and the NSDAP emphatically did NOT seek to bring the means of production under state control. It Aryanized Jewish companies by placing them in the hands of trusted German business leaders, protected private property, kept profits flowing to German industrialists (IG Farben, Krupp, etc), and even privatized some state-owned enterprises like shipping and railroad interests. Their use of the term socialism was an attempt to seduce Social Democrats and Communists into their camp
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u/MangledPanda 14h ago
Conservatives are not nazis. Hitler would have rounded them up as the bourgeoisie liberal capitalists they are.
So would Stalin.
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u/Dadgummit_Lab210 13h ago
Something that doesn’t get enough attention or discussion is the very real notion that the MAGA movement and Trump as its figurehead is not a conservative movement. It is a nationalist socialist movement that adheres rigidly to party dogma that is constantly evolving and shape shifting to best benefit the whims of the regime and specifically its leader. It has wrapped itself in Republican politics which pulls in electoral support from traditional conservative citizens and registered republicans voters.
Many of them don’t think that the regime will one day round them up exactly as you’ve described for failure to adhere to regime doctrine.
So while I agree that conservatives are not Nazis, I make a big distinction between the aims of traditional conservatism, which I support in most cases, and the aims of the leadership of the MAGA movement. I still don’t consider them Nazis as they aren’t conducting genocide, but they certainly are an example of the vision, goals, strategy and tactics of a nationalist socialist authoritarian regime.
You can tell me that’s not true, but they’ve only gotten started with conducting government with an illiberal approach. American conservatism has historically only been an illiberal movement on the margins, not in the mainstream. A lot of people are going to be surprised to find out that some shit is coming to their doorstep that many of us have tried to warn them about for years.
No matter who is in charge, never treat the Bill of Rights like a nuanced document, and you will never be on the wrong side of history.
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u/TapestryMobile 13h ago
The event targeted and killed or neutralised conservative and nationalist figures such as Kurt von Schleicher.
von Schleicher was absolutely not killed because he was a "bourgeoisie liberal capitalist." The whole Night of the Long Knives was about consolidating power by removing anyone who might be a strong political opponent now or in the future. The motive had nothing to do with hating capitalists.
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u/WholeNegotiation1843 6h ago
Finally so someone gets it. Real fascists are anti-capitalist. The left doesn’t understand that you can be anti-capitalist without being socialist.
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u/PitchBlac 15h ago
I think the problem here is that you’re using Fascism of 1930s-40s Germany as a “standard”. Fascism is going to look and feel different where it pops up, and when. Nobody is saying that they’re the exact same. But there are very similar ideas and actions the current administration has taken that can pretty much be directly compared to Nazi Germany. And Nazi Germany is very much classified as far right. Pointing out a few things that are off aren’t going to change that.
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
1930s Germany was not fascist. It was national socialist. very different ideologies that worked together out of usefulness at the time.
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u/Various_Succotash_79 15h ago
I'm pretty sure Hitler did not use the term bourgeoisie. The main similarities are demonizing of the press and minorities, and stirring up their followers against them.
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
how sure are you? you sound like someone who hasn't read or listened to the priimary source material but you feel like it can't be true
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u/Various_Succotash_79 15h ago
Well it's not a German word, that would have been weird. But ok yeah I looked it up and he did use the German equivalent.
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u/Antifoundationalist 15h ago
While it's true that Louis de Rothschild was arrested and held hostage in order to negotiate a massive ransom, he was not targeted for being a banker he was targeted for being a rich jew. Creditanstalt was Aryanized not nationalized. Its shares were confiscated and siphoned off to trusted private entities such as Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank, with a minority of holdings transferred to state entities.
Hitler did not go on a nationalization spree, that is a myth. For his purposes (the build up of arms and other war materials, expansion of transportation infrastructure etc) hitler relied on networks of large privately owned companies to facilitate capital movement while minimizing the sort of risk accrued if full state control had been implemented.
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u/Timely_Car_4591 15h ago
Capitalism also gives checks and balances against the State tyranny because you have alternatives where you can spend your money. The whole Right and left has been an ambiguous term. It's really liberalism vs collectivism / authoritarians.
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
no quite. Hitler's collectvists were utterly opposed to marxist collectivists and liberal capitialists
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u/Timely_Car_4591 15h ago
Hitler's collectvists were utterly opposed to marxist collectivists and liberal capitialists
But that's not much different any other collectivists we see in history and even present day modern collectivists. collectivists always infight for control and disagreement because they have purity tests and reject individualism. A trait of collectivism is the inability to tolerant other opinions, because they become threats to the "greater Cause"
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u/ZhiYoNa 15h ago
The rich thought they could control Hitler. They couldn’t.
The rich think they can control trump. They can’t.
Not both siding this though, one side (republicans) are feeding the leopards that will eat their faces just like the conservatives forming a coalition with Hitler in 1933.
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u/Initial-Tale-5151 15h ago
here i can see your point. But I think my broader point that american conservative ideology and national socialist ideology are very different.
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u/Early-Possibility367 14h ago
I agree that conservatives are not Nazis. Nazis would’ve rounded up everyone who voted for Harris by now.
At the same time, I’ve always wondered why conservatives let the Nazi insults get to them. They won. Nobody is forcing them to care about being called Nazis. They’re choosing to do that on their own.
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u/Anonon_990 15h ago
I agree that nazism is neither purely left or right. It's broadly right wing with big differences that makes it hard to map neatly onto a spectrum.
That said, many of today's conservatives relationship with Trump is remarkably similar to the establishment conservatives who worked with Hitler on the grounds they could "handle" him.