NAZI GREENS - An Inconvenient History • Martin Durkin

originally posted by: daskakik

originally posted by: greencmp
You can truly see no similarities in the philosophies, justifications or policies?

I'm willing to bet that neither of us knows what things were really like in the USSR.

You choose to believe your leaders and defectors who may have been guided in what they said.

If you dismiss the entire historical record which is available to both of us, what conclusions are ever possible?

originally posted by: greencmp
By broader sense, you mean the secondary definition in the dictionary.

And now collectives can be between two parties.

Why not?

I'm not buying it and it doesn't seem to explain anything other than the fact that you believe that collectivism is universal.

The words means what it means.

Yes it is popularly used a certain way in some political circles but, you should ask yourself why you choose to cling to that version so tightly.

You haven't said it explicitly but, I infer that any other type of human interaction must be exploitive.

You'd be wrong.

a reply to: daskakik

Words can't have absolutely precise meanings, because human knowledge doesn't know everything.

Words are an attempt at communication first and can be used as labels for specific thoughts to the extent that they can.

Collectivism has always been used in the context of the society being the real thing and the individual being the cell in the body.

Individualism holds that society is not a life form, and individuals are the only living things with rights.

a reply to: Semicollegiate

That doesn't change anything that I have said.

a reply to: daskakik

Well, for the sake of argument, by your definition, what is your conclusion?

It would be a shame if this has just been pedantic semantics.

a reply to: greencmp

Conclusion about what?

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: greencmp

Conclusion about what?

Why do you challenge the observation that many of the features of national socialism are manifest in environmentalism?

originally posted by: greencmp
Why do you challenge the observation that many of the features of national socialism are manifest in environmentalism?

I though pointing out that it is a non sequitur answered that.

Wasn't it clear with my USA=USSR example?

originally posted by: daskakik

originally posted by: greencmp
Why do you challenge the observation that many of the features of national socialism are manifest in environmentalism?

I though pointing out that it is a non sequitur answered that.

Wasn't it clear with my USA=USSR example?

I think that totalitarians are dummy heads but, that doesn't absolve me of my responsibility to articulate my argument against them.

To simply state that this observation is a syllogism is perhaps true but, syllogisms are not automatically fallacious and you have provided no support for your position, which I should point out, we still don't know.

a reply to: greencmp

Really?

You still don't recognize this simple propagandist tool. Sure the environmental branch of the NAZI party has many similarities with "environmentalists".

What else would you expect?

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: greencmp

Really?

You still don't recognize this simple propagandist tool. Sure the environmental branch of the NAZI party has many similarities with "environmentalists".

What else would you expect?

I realize this was a longish essay but, I was operating under the presumption that you had read it.

It sounds like you saw this...



And were dissuaded from doing so.

For that embellishment, I apologize.

a reply to: greencmp

I read it.

ETA: This was a red flag for me:

Two disturbing stories recently on the greens.

The purpose of exploring Nazi environmentalism is not just to upset the greens.

Yeah, right.

a reply to: daskakik

I think I hear an intimation of opinion in there, it appears that you do hold a position on this topic.

originally posted by: greencmp
I think I hear an intimation of opinion in there, it appears that you do hold a position on this topic.

Is that really so important to you?

I'm just pointing out what I see.

a reply to: daskakik

I was using what I perceived to be our oppositional viewpoints as a basis for discussion and made references to that effect.

You claimed that you had no such viewpoint thereby shutting down what might have been some interesting comparisons.

a reply to: greencmp

My thoughts on the article are that, given the place where it is posted and the other articles in that blog, it is biased and nothing more than a hit piece.

I've been saying that all along so I don't understand what other "position" you might be talking about.

a reply to: daskakik


What about the Peter Staudenmaier piece I posted? He is an ecologist,anarchist,historian, and admittedly a member of the green movement.

originally posted by: NihilistSanta
a reply to: daskakik


What about the Peter Staudenmaier piece I posted? He is an ecologist,anarchist,historian, and admittedly a member of the green movement.

This one looks very interesting as well (from the comments of MD's blog). There are a few paperback copies on amazon.

The Vampire Economy (1939) - The Vampire Economy by Guenter Reimann

From a review by "John Galt"...

I am just 30 pages into this book, but the author uses letters from businessmen in 1939 Germany as evidence that Hitler's Reich was a clone of Stalin's USSR. The Nazis hated private property and essentially outlawed it. Bribery was the only way to obtain raw materials, foreign currency, workers - virtually anything. Nazi party apparatchiks infested even the smallest parts of the economy.

"Some businessmen have even started studying Marxist theories, so that they will have a better understanding of the present economic system", wrote one businessman. The businessman goes on to say that once Hitler confiscates all property from the Jews, that " it will be the turn of the 'white Jews' which means us Aryan businessmen after the Jews have been expropriated.".

When you combine this book with General William Donovan's Nurnburg trial papers concerning Hitler's anti-Christian, anti-liberty and Soviet style indoctrination policies, you realize that thinking of the Nazis as "right wing" is total propaganda, which of course it was and still is to this day.

You should also read Albert Speer's books to understand how he tried to dismantle this corrupt Soviet style economy late in the war to increase military production:

www.amazon.com...=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393595969&sr=1-1&keywords=albert+speer

OK - finished the book. The Nazis were ignorant when it came to economics. They did virtually everything wrong just like Herr Hitler's alter ego - Joseph Stalin. Because markets set prices, markets indicate where to allocate capital and hence where opportunities lie for innovation and increased production. Once the "all-knowing" state interferes in this process, markets and hence economies collapse.

Reimann meticulously describes how the Nazi economy operated. It was an economy of statism, cronyism, bureaucracy and coercion. What wasn't confiscated was trashed. As Nazi Germany expanded geographically, the state expropriated businesses while paying the owners and creditors pennies on the dollar.

History books give the impression that businessmen were natural allies of Hitler and the Nazis. That is total nonsense. Every business was loaded with political commissars who siphoned off money for themselves and the Nazi party leaving the natural owners and operators of the businesses powerless.

Hitler was a Socialist. So is Obama. Their combined knowledge of how economies operate is ZERO. They destroy everything they touch.

a reply to: NihilistSanta

What about it?

Does he equate current environmentalists to nazis?

I couldn't find anything like that with the quick glance that I gave it. If not, there's the leap in logic that I have been talking about.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: NihilistSanta

What about it?

Does he equate current environmentalists to nazis?

I couldn't find anything like that with the quick glance that I gave it. If not, there's the leap in logic that I have been talking about.

I think this is a particularly relevant quote from NihilistSanta's contribution.

Fascist Ecology:
The "Green Wing" of the Nazi Party and its Historical Antecedents • Peter Staudenmaier:

The various strands of the youth movement shared a common self-conception: they were a purportedly 'non-political' response to a deep cultural crisis, stressing the primacy of direct emotional experience over social critique and action. They pushed the contradictions of their time to the breaking point, but were unable or unwilling to take the final step toward organized, focused social rebellion, "convinced that the changes they wanted to effect in society could not be brought about by political means, but only by the improvement of the individual." 16 This proved to be a fatal error. "Broadly speaking, two ways of revolt were open to them: they could have pursued their radical critique of society, which in due course would have brought them into the camp of social revolution. [But] the Wandervögel chose the other form of protest against society -- romanticism."

This posture lent itself all too readily to a very different kind of political mobilization: the 'unpolitical' zealotry of fascism. The youth movement did not simply fail in its chosen form of protest, it was actively realigned when its members went over to the Nazis by the thousands. Its countercultural energies and its dreams of harmony with nature bore the bitterest fruit. This is, perhaps, the unavoidable trajectory of any movement which acknowledges and opposes social and ecological problems but does not recognize their systemic roots or actively resist the political and economic structures which generate them. Eschewing societal transformation in favor of personal change, an ostensibly apolitical disaffection can, in times of crisis, yield barbaric results.