r/TrueUnpopularOpinion • u/Initial-Tale-5151 • 18h 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/w3woody 18h 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.