Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

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gebhk
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#121

Post by gebhk » 06 Mar 2021, 09:12

The Rhineland Bastards as they were called were only mentioned and according to Hitler it was the Jews who brought them to Germany:
The Rhineland bastards aren't mentioned at all in the 25 points. It is the Jews who are 'only mentioned'.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#122

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Mar 2021, 10:57

Hi gebhk,

Nevertheless, whatever the Nazis' animus against land owners, and however much they may have been striving for electoral respectability, the fact that Point 17 was amplified to specify Jews still serves to emphasize their anti-Semitism in 1928.

You post, "I think you may be conflating Hitler with 'the Nazis'." Maybe. Is this so wrong in this context?

The mixed race population of the Rhineland were a local phenomenon and I think numbered only about 500 people. It was only a national issue if political parties chose to make it so.

The Jews were in a special category not just because they were the largest minority (of non-European ultimate origin), but because of their competitive success in German society. They were a competitive threat provoking jealousy where other races were just despised.

The fact remains that Jews are mentioned 705 times in a book only about that many pages long. This speaks of a fixation, whatever the reason.

You post, "It makes sense that if you feel the need to quote an example you will quote one that most people could identify with." This implies that Hitler believed that anti-Semitism might strike a chord with most of the German population.

You post, "I think you will find a great deal more animus towards the 'Bastards of the Rhineland' in the relevant parts of Germany than towards the Jews." Why should this be so? The children concerned were entirely innocents. While quite possibly true, this does not paint a very healthy picture of underlying German attitudes at the time towards them or the Jews.

I hadn't looked at Point 18 before because it doesn't specifically mention Jews. However, looking at it now, don't the words "usurers" and "profiteers" look like what are now known as "dog-whistle words", notwithstanding the racial inclusivity of killing that follows?

As a result, I have had a look at the whole document and it has other anti-Semitic implications. For example, having declared that only people of German blood should be citizens and specifically excluding Jews from citizenship in Point 4, it goes on in Point 6 to say "We demand therefore that all official appointments, of whatever kind, whether in the Reich, in the states or in the smaller localities, shall be held by none but citizens." This therefore meant that Jews could not hold public appointments. Just because Jews are not mentioned specifically in every point does not seem to preclude them from anti-Semitic implications.

You post, "Again, so what?" So you see no connection between the anti-Semitism of the Nazis' 25 Point Plan of 1920, Hitler's Mein Kampf of 1925 and what ultimately happened to European Jews at their hands over 1941-45 (by way of the Nuremburg Laws or 1935, Kristallnacht of 1938 and the closed ghettoizations of 1939-40)? I would suggest that "So what?" is a little too dismissive of the significance of the early manifestations of Nazi anti-Semitism.

You post, "But you do not have to be anti-Semitic to be a racist....." Yup. I am not sure that that is in dispute.

When people were voting for the Nazis at any stage, they were always effectively also voting for anti-Semitism. Nazism was not "Pick 'n' Mix".

I am sure that other groups will have ".....will have their own set of 'antis". I don't much care what the phenomenon is called, but it does require some collective categorization. I would suggest that the prefix "Neo-" allows for such new "bolt-ons" to the underlying Nazi bodywork. In any event, the term "Neo-Nazi" has already gained currency. Have you an equally pithy alternative we might consider?

Cheers,

Sid.


George L Gregory
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#123

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Mar 2021, 12:42

Sid Guttridge wrote:
06 Mar 2021, 10:57
When people were voting for the Nazis at any stage, they were always effectively also voting for anti-Semitism.
But, what did that anti-semitism mean? Did it mean that they voted for Jewish-German civil servants to be retired? Did it mean that they voted for the Nuremberg Laws? Did it mean that they voted for the Kristallnacht? Did it mean that they voted for concentration camps? Did it mean that they voted for extermination camps? Did it mean that they voted for some six million Jews to be killed?

Surely you can see where this is going...

A vote for the Nazis in the 1920s was not a vote for the sheer horrors that occurred during the Third Reich. As I've already explained to you which you seem to be deliberately ignoring, the Nazis did not campaign under any slogans of anti-semitism and anti-semitism was absent from most of the writings of the Nazi leaders prior to when the Nazis came to power.

Even when the Nazis came to power, Hitler didn't start out with anti-semitism. Perhaps you ought to read what I post more carefully:
By 1932, when Hitler was running for Reich President and the Nazi Movement was gaining the support of over a third of the population, the ‘Jewish Question’ scarcely featured in Hitler’s public addresses. Jews and the ‘Jewish Question’ were mentioned as such neither in Hitler’s New Year exhortation to his Party at the beginning of 1932, nor in his notorious speech to the Düsseldorfer Industrieklub in January, nor in his ‘Appeal to the Nation’, sold as a record in July and typical of his election addresses in the first half of the year.

The absence of verbal onslaughts against the Jews is also a striking feature of Hitler’s public speeches in the years 1933 and 1934. The ‘Jewish Question’ is not touched upon in a single major public address by Hitler in this period of the ‘seizure’ and consolidation of power—a time, as we saw earlier, in which his popularity was greatly extended and the ‘Führer myth’ massively enhanced.

Only the exhortation to ‘all Party organizations’ on 28 March 1933 to carry out a nation-wide boycott aimed at Jewish businesses, goods, doctors, and lawyers, starting on 1 April, concentrated explicitly on the ‘Jewish Question’. Proclamations to the Party after the ‘seizure of power’ generally went out under Hitler’s name. In this case, however, though the style is recognizably Hitlerian (apart from the accompanying specific instructions for implementing the boycott, which seem to have been composed by Goebbels), the ‘appeal’ was signed collectively by ‘the Party Leadership’. No one, of course, could have imagined that the boycott was proceeding without Hitler’s express support. But the wording of the ‘appeal’ couched the action solely in terms of justifiable retaliation for the ‘campaign of agitation’ and ‘lies’ in the foreign press allegedly initiated by Jewish emigrants, and the claim that ‘hardly a hair had been touched’ on Jewish heads in the course of the ‘national revolution’ was meant to suggest that the Party Leadership (including Hitler) was ignorant of the daily maltreatment of Jews which had taken place at the hands of the Party rank-and-file. It was possible, therefore, so far as Hitler was specifically linked to the boycott at all, to see him only in connection with presumed justifiable action, and detached from the ‘unfortunate excesses’ of Party activists. As is well known, the boycott was less than a resounding success in terms of popular reactions, and, as an organized nation-wide affair, was called off after only a single day.

The relative lack of resonance of the boycott can only have indicated to Hitler that he had been right to keep a fairly low public profile on the ‘Jewish Question’. Nor did the ‘Jewish Question’ feature in either Sieg des Glaubens or Triumph des Willens, the films of the first two Party rallies after the ‘seizure of power’, in which the Führer cult was so prominently projected of overt reference to the ‘Jewish Question’ in his major speeches, and the omission of his name as a signatory to the boycott ‘appeal’ can only be seen as a deliberate policy to detach the Führer himself in his public image from the violent anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions of which he privately approved. As we have seen, it appears that, despite his own obsessions, Hitler was politically aware from an early date— perhaps as early as 1923—that a wider currency than anti-Semitism was needed to distinguish the NSDAP from the purely sectarian politics of other völkisch groups, to extend the Party’s appeal, and to make a serious bid for power.

The closer he came to attaining power, the more, purely for presentational purposes, anti-Semitism had to be subordinated to or subsumed within other components of the Hitler image. And once he had become Head of Government, the need to detach himself in public from the distasteful gutter tactics of his activist anti-Semites was prompted above all by foreign political considerations as well as by the necessity to avoid gratuitous alienation of the conservative German establishment around Hindenburg, whose own ingrained anti-Semitism nevertheless stopped short of arbitrary open violence.

Moreover, by 1935, if not before, it was being made abundantly clear that anti-Semitic outrages and terroristic hooliganism aimed at Jews by Party activists were generally un¬ popular among the public at large. Nevertheless, by this time the violence provoked by the new anti-Semitic wave and incited by propaganda had put the ‘Jewish Question’ back in a high place on the agenda, and pressure was mounting from within the Party for anti-Semitic legislation to fulfil the aims of the Party programme, and from the public for regulations to put an end to the ‘individual actions’ which had characterized the summer of violence. Hitler could no longer remain aloof from the ‘Jewish Question’.
Has it become any clearer for you now? :D

Hitler's popularity amongst the German people wasn't because of his pernicious anti-Semitism, it was because he focused on creating an equal society for German citizens who were considered to be Germans. He promised to undo what the Treaty of Versailles had imposed on Germany and promised to get equal rights for Germany. Up until 1938, despite the anti-Semitism (forcing German with Jewish ancestry to retire from the Civil Service, the Nuremberg Laws, the Kristallnacht, etc), Hitler was a very popular person, both at home and abroad. If Hitler had died in 1938, despite all of what I just mentioned, he would be viewed a lot differently today by most people.

German historian Joachim Fest posed the following question in his biography Hitler:
The course of this life, and the pattern of events themselves, will throw light upon the whole matter. Yet here we may well ask ourselves a few pertinent questions. If Hitler had succumbed to an assassination or an accident at the end of 1938, few would hesitate to call him one of the greatest of German statesmen, the consummator of Germany's history. The aggressive speeches and Mein Kampf, the anti-Semitism and the design for world dominion, would presumably have fallen into oblivion, dismissed as the man's youthful fantasies, and only occasionally would critics remind an irritated nation of them. Six and one-half years separated Hitler from such renown. Granted, only premature death could have given him that, for by nature he was headed toward destruction and did not make an exception of himself. Can we call him great?
Germans and non-Germans were drawn to Hitler in the early years of the Third Reich because of his successes. You can find many accounts from people who visited the country in the 1930s. David Lloyd George visited Germany in 1936, a year after the Nuremberg Laws had been introduced and stated that he was glad to have met "the man who won the war" and described Hitler as the "greatest living German". He wasn't the only non-German who took a pro-German stance in the 1920s because he believed that Germany had been treated unfairly by the Treaty of Versailles. He was also one of many who believed that Hitler wasn't going to start a world war.
Nazism was not "Pick 'n' Mix".
Actually, it largely was. There was no unified ideology and it was a mixture of all sorts of ideas which were fairly popular before the Nazis even arrived on the political scene - pan-Germanism, extreme German nationalism, stab-in-the-back myth conspiracy theory, hatred of the Treaty of Versailles, unifying all Germans, etc, etc.

The more extreme elements of the party, such as the vile anti-Semitism spouted out of the mouths of Julius Streicher and other nutjobs was on the fringe of the Nazi movement and was not at all popular.

George L Gregory
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#124

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Mar 2021, 12:44

Sid Guttridge wrote:
02 Mar 2021, 14:20
I agree that definitions of "Holocaust" are arbitrary. You make that point better than I did. I have a personal preference that I feel free to express. Others may not feel the same and are free to quiz me on it. However, I also reserve the right to question them on their position and to point out any inconsistencies in it.

Cheers,

Sid.
What is the "personal preference"?

Are you Jewish?

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#125

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Mar 2021, 12:55

Hi GLG,

I was just about to sit down and give an extensive reply to your earlier post when I read your little add on:

"Are you Jewish?"

What relevance would that have either way?

Surely you should be addressing the contents of my posts, not my ethnicity?

Frankly, I am astounded even to be asked this question on AHF, or, indeed, anywhere!

And, whatever I answered, how would you know if I was telling the truth anyway?

Cheers,

Sid.

George L Gregory
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Location: Britain

Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#126

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Mar 2021, 18:39

Sid Guttridge wrote:
06 Mar 2021, 12:55
Hi GLG,

I was just about to sit down and give an extensive reply to your earlier post when I read your little add on:

"Are you Jewish?"

What relevance would that have either way?

Surely you should be addressing the contents of my posts, not my ethnicity?

Frankly, I am astounded even to be asked this question on AHF, or, indeed, anywhere!

And, whatever I answered, how would you know if I was telling the truth anyway?

Cheers,

Sid.
It may have something to do with your “personal preference”. I wouldn’t be able to know if you were telling the truth but I’ll make an assumption based on you refusing to answer the question. Not that I care if you are Jewish or not.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#127

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Mar 2021, 20:21

Hi GLG,

You post, "It may have something to do with your “personal preference”." Eh?

You post. "I wouldn’t be able to know if you were telling the truth but I’ll make an assumption based on you refusing to answer the question."

Nope. You will make no assumption as to my race based on me declining to answer the question.

What you will do is have a good look at yourself and wonder why you asked such a racial question in the first place, especially if is true that you really don't care if I am Jewish or not.

We all have bad days and I am going to assume that that is all it was.

Cheers,

Sid.

George L Gregory
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#128

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Mar 2021, 20:41

Sid Guttridge wrote:
06 Mar 2021, 20:21
Hi GLG,

You post, "It may have something to do with your “personal preference”." Eh?

You post. "I wouldn’t be able to know if you were telling the truth but I’ll make an assumption based on you refusing to answer the question."

Nope. You will make no assumption as to my race based on me declining to answer the question.

What you will do is have a good look at yourself and wonder why you asked such a racial question in the first place, especially if is true that you really don't care if I am Jewish or not.

We all have bad days and I am going to assume that that is all it was.

Cheers,

Sid.
Jews are not a race.

What is the "personal preference" based on with regard to the Holocaust?

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#129

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Mar 2021, 21:05

Hi GLG,

As far as the Nazis, who are the subject of this thread, were concerned, being a Jew was a racial matter. One could not renounce being Jewish or convert out of it. This is the context of this thread.

OK, so if in your own mind you are not raising a racial point, what sort of identity point are you making? How would it be relevant here?

If you are wondering about my "personal preference", you only have to look back at the context in which I first posted that: "I agree that definitions of "Holocaust" are arbitrary.......I have a personal preference that I feel free to express." We had been discussing how the "Holocaust" was to be defined. I had quoted three options from Gray. I reserved the right to exercise my own personal preference as to which to espouse.

How this gets to me being asked if I am Jewish escapes me, but I await your explanation with interest.

Cheers,

Sid.

George L Gregory
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#130

Post by George L Gregory » 06 Mar 2021, 21:53

Sid Guttridge wrote:
06 Mar 2021, 21:05
Hi GLG,

As far as the Nazis, who are the subject of this thread, were concerned, being a Jew was a racial matter. One could not renounce being Jewish or convert out of it. This is the context of this thread.

OK, so if in your own mind you are not raising a racial point, what sort of identity point are you making? How would it be relevant here?

If you are wondering about my "personal preference", you only have to look back at the context in which I first posted that: "I agree that definitions of "Holocaust" are arbitrary.......I have a personal preference that I feel free to express." We had been discussing how the "Holocaust" was to be defined. I had quoted three options from Gray. I reserved the right to exercise my own personal preference as to which to espouse.

How this gets to me being asked if I am Jewish escapes me, but I await your explanation with interest.

Cheers,

Sid.
Except no one was arguing what the Nazis thought about Jews. I don't care in the slightest how the Nazis defined Jews. In fact, if you actually bothered to read about the Third Reich you would know that the Nazis were never actually able to define "Germans" and "Jews" from a racial point of view. You were the one who equated asking whether or not you were Jewish with your racial background. Have you been watching too much Nazi propaganda recently?

I don't know. Maybe because one of your Jewish ancestors could have unfortunately been one of the victims who were killed by the Nazis prior to 1941. I really don't know... anything could be possible as to why you have such a "personal preference" to include the victims prior to 1941 as Holocaust victims.

gebhk
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#131

Post by gebhk » 06 Mar 2021, 21:55

Hi Sid

Sorry, but I refuse to get drawn any further into any of these rabbit holes, entirely irrelevant to the topic and entirely of your own creation.

None of them dispute my point which was that the Nazi manifesto significantly downplayed their extremism and racist hatred/phobia and upplayed socialist and other populist aspirations they had little real appetite for and that this phenomenon is observeable in many modern Neo-Nazi party manifestos.

Sid Guttridge
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Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#132

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Mar 2021, 22:17

Hi gebhk,

You post, "None of them dispute my point which was that the Nazi manifesto significantly downplayed their extremism and racist hatred/phobia and upplayed socialist and other populist aspirations they had little real appetite for and that this phenomenon is observeable in many modern Neo-Nazi party manifestos" and I wouldn't disagree.

However, the Nazi Party remained an unapologetic anti-Semitic party throughout its existence. As a consequence any vote for it was always effectively a vote for anti-Semitism. NSDAP Lite was not "lite" because it was no longer anti-Semitic. It was just NSADAP Classic repackaged.

Anyway, thanks for the chat.

Cheers,

Sid.
Last edited by Sid Guttridge on 07 Mar 2021, 01:22, edited 1 time in total.

Sid Guttridge
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Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#133

Post by Sid Guttridge » 06 Mar 2021, 22:42

Hi GLG,

You post, "I don't care in the slightest how the Nazis defined Jews." Well, this is Axis History Forum and the Nazis did kill an awful lot of Jews on racial grounds, however slipshod they may have been about precise definitions, so it might be a good idea if you acquainted yourself a little better with their motivations, don't you think?

You post, "You were the one who equated asking whether or not you were Jewish with your racial background." Yes, I did. And with reason, because it was definitely a possibility. I am giving you the benefit of any doubt following your denials.

Anyway, now that you are backing away from any possible racial implications, perhaps you would care to answer my earlier question:

OK, so if in your own mind you are not raising a racial point, what sort of identity point are you making? How would it be relevant here?

Or was this the answer to it: "I don't know. Maybe because one of your Jewish ancestors could have unfortunately been one of the victims who were killed by the Nazis prior to 1941. I really don't know... anything could be possible as to why you have such a "personal preference" to include the victims prior to 1941 as Holocaust victims." ?

It appears from this that you "don't know" quite a lot! Who'd have thunk it!

Cheers,

Sid (Firmly tongue in cheek).

George L Gregory
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Location: Britain

Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#134

Post by George L Gregory » 07 Mar 2021, 00:29

Sid Guttridge wrote:
06 Mar 2021, 22:42
Hi GLG,

You post, "I don't care in the slightest how the Nazis defined Jews." Well, this is Axis History Forum and the Nazis did kill an awful lot of Jews on racial grounds, however slipshod they may have been about precise definitions, so it might be a good idea if you acquainted yourself a little better with their motivations, don't you think?

You post, "You were the one who equated asking whether or not you were Jewish with your racial background." Yes, I did. And with reason, because it was definitely a possibility. I am giving you the benefit of any doubt following your denials.

Anyway, now that you are backing away from any possible racial implications, perhaps you would care to answer my earlier question:

OK, so if in your own mind you are not raising a racial point, what sort of identity point are you making? How would it be relevant here?

Or was this the answer to it: "I don't know. Maybe because one of your Jewish ancestors could have unfortunately been one of the victims who were killed by the Nazis prior to 1941. I really don't know... anything could be possible as to why you have such a "personal preference" to include the victims prior to 1941 as Holocaust victims." ?

It appears from this that you "don't know" quite a lot! Who'd have thunk it!

Cheers,

Sid (Firmly tongue in cheek).
gebhk has basically said all that needs to be said really. You're just an argumentative type of person who thinks he's always right, thinks he knows everything and loves to derail thread after thread.

I refuse to answer any of your responses which are full of fallacious arguments.

Back on ignore you go.

Sid Guttridge
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Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Nazi vs Neo-Nazi

#135

Post by Sid Guttridge » 07 Mar 2021, 01:02

Hi GLG,

It's a free country.

I am sure we both have better things to do.

Look after yourself,

Sid.

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