Socialist origins of Neo-Nazism

[This article was written in 1999, but the points made are just as valid today, as they were in 1999]

Buford Furrow’s bloody rampage is over, and now begins the predictable propaganda campaign to score political points. With egregious sleight of hand, the American “right wing” will be demonized. No doubt, the media will get around to blaming talk radio and the Internet.

Notice that some events precipitate wide-ranging discussions on political philosophy, while others do not. After a series of school-yard killings in which the murderers were linked to violent Satanic cults, and even after it was shown that the deranged kids set out to kill students who believe in God, there was no hunt for atheistic “left-wing extremists.” That would have been an unseemly attempt to use tragedy to advance a partisan agenda.

But Furrow, a deranged criminal, gives the media an opportunity to do what they love best: attack those who oppose the ever-increasing government control of our lives. Furrow, then, is being called “right wing” because he was associated with Neo-Nazi groups that imagine themselves as successors to Hitler. Their acts of violence are designed to set off a domestic war that would lead to the establishment of a New Order run by them.

But what, in Heaven’s name, does any of this have to do with “right-wing” theory? By “right wing,” the media can mean one of these killer Nazi thugs, or they can mean someone who believes in private property, free enterprise, and bourgeois social norms. The blurring of the difference — they are really polar opposites — is wildly dishonest but obviously purposeful.

Of course, the media are free to define terms however they like, but the fact is that the ideological origins of Nazism are with the left. The term Nazi itself is short for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazism was fashioned as a totalitarian nationalist alternative to the totalitarian international socialism of the Lenin model. But national or international, the relevant word is socialist, which should be the first tip-off to Nazism’s leftist origins.

It was no accident that the Nazi flag was a red banner; it was taken from the flag of socialism. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn showed in his book, “Leftism” (1974 and 1990), Hitler and all his top lieutenants were hard-core socialists who hated everything about the old Europe, including small states, the monarchs, the Church, the landed aristocracy, peace, and the free economy of the 19th century. They imagined themselves running a centralized, protectionist, and statist Germany under the executive-branch “leadership principle.” They talked constantly of a proletarian revolution that would destroy the bourgeois class.

Furthermore, as Robert Proctor showed in “Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis” (1988), the Nazis were health fanatics who banned cigarette smoking, promoted vegetarianism and organic gardening, engaged in abortion and euthanasia, frowned on all capitalist excess, and even promoted animal rights. They were environmentalists who locked up land from development to promote paganism.

The Nazi government introduced socialized medicine and government-mandated vacations at government spas, imposed handgun control, and expanded unemployment “insurance” and Social Security. The Nazis opposed the traditional calendar and wanted to replace it with one centered on race and nation rather than faith and family.

A new study of Nazi make-work programs of the 1930s by Dan P. Silverman (“Hitler’s Economy,” 1998) shows that Hitler’s government pursued a program of “public investment” even more far reaching than the U.S. New Deal. This government imagined itself as the employer of every citizen, the planner of every production decision, and the redistributor of every accumulated pocket of wealth in society. From the Nazi point of view, full glory came during the war when they took over the economy completely, Soviet-style.

Whatever you want to call a violent movement that idealizes Hitler’s socialist Third Reich, “right-wing” doesn’t cut it. Consider also the politics of the Neo-Nazi novel that inspires many of these killers. It is called the Turner Diaries. The book got a lot of attention after the bombing of the Oklahoma federal building because it was a favorite of Timothy McVeigh’s.

It has been said that the book advocates the killing of federal officials. In fact, that’s just the initial hook. Conspirators wipe out all their enemies, which include anyone who opposes their rise to total power. After taking over, they restart the calendar at the year zero, a goal associated with every socialist thinker from Rousseau to Pol Pot.

Also in the book, businessmen are portrayed as a greedy class that puts money before race, and Christians are demonized as stupid and evil. In the U.S. of the future, all free enterprise and free trade are abolished. Instead, we get a central-planning regime that distributes all resources, including food, on an equal basis. The citizens are pliable subjects of the socialist elite who exercise total power. The book ends with nuclear bombs, the invention of the socialist FDR, destroying all of Africa, China, and South America.

The plot, however crude, isn’t entirely unfamiliar. It is just a version of the nightmarish dream of every variety of socialism: millennialist imaginings of a new age of history, hatred of businessmen, opposition to established religion, a belief in central planning, a love of central power, and a world government that crushes all opposition to the revolution.

No matter what they call themselves, the people who have similar dreams of total social and economic control today are on the left, not the right. (That there exists a venerable non-socialist tradition on the left is another issue for another day.) The uncomfortable truth is this: the differences between the fevered imaginings of Furrow, and those advanced in the academic socialist literature, do not concern ideological substance, but its particular shading and application.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. is president of the
Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, Inc.

Celente Calls for ‘Revolution’ as the Only Solution

Taxed to death, angry at government bailouts, outraged by Wall Street greed, and bitterly resentful of a system that rewards the undeserving rich, the American public is ready to revolt.

 

“The Tea Parties and Tax Protests sprouting across the nation, which we had predicted, are harbingers of revolution,” said Gerald Celente, Director of The Trends Research Institute. “But they are not enough. Much stronger and directed action is required. Our call for ‘Revolution’ will galvanize the people, destroy the corrupt ruling systems, and produce a prosperous and more just nation.”

The Revolution Celente proposes is unique in concept and bold in execution. It is about a lot more than just “taxation without representation.”

“Nothing short of total repudiation of our entrenched systems can rescue America,” said Celente. “We are under the control of a two-headed, one party political system. Wall Street controls our financial lives; the media manipulates our minds. These systems cannot be changed from within. There is no alternative. Without a revolution, these institutions will bankrupt the country, keep fighting failed wars, start new ones, and hold us in perpetual intellectual subjugation.” Continue reading . . .

94 Years of Serfdom

This April 15 is the 94th year that Americans have had to file an income tax. For most Americans, the day is a non-event. The federal and state governments have already collected the taxes due by withholding from each paycheck over the course of the calendar year. Most Americans never saw the money and have no real idea that they earned it.

Some Americans have their incomes over-withheld as a form of forced savings. They look forward to tax time as it means they will receive a refund check from the government that they can use for a summer vacation, a big screen TV, a new appliance, or a down payment on a new car.

Few Americans realize that over the last 94 years they have been enserfed and have no more rights to their own labor than medieval serfs or 19th-century slaves.

The 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified because the income tax was only for the rich. Some states ratified the amendment because no one in the state had an income high enough to be subject to the tax.

According to the US Department of the Treasury’s history of the income tax, less than one percent of the US population was subject to the income tax. A progressive structure was applied to this less than one percent of rich Americans, with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent on incomes over $500,000, a great sum of money in those days.

In the first year of the income tax, the world’s richest person, John D. Rockefeller, paid $2 million in income tax, almost 3 percent of the total income tax collected.

People were happy. They had finally gotten the rich.

And themselves as well. Exemptions were reduced and tax rates were raised in rapid succession in 1916, 1917, and 1918. Within five years the tax rates ranged from 6 percent to 77 percent, and people whose incomes were initially exempt now paid tax at more than double the initial top rate that had applied to John D. Rockefeller.

In “free” America today, despite the Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush tax rate reductions, ordinary Americans have no more claim to their own labor than a medieval serf. Most are content, however, with handing over 30 percent of their income as long as they can hope to tax the rich at 50 percent, the tax rate on 19th-century slaves.

Some 19th-century slaves, whose skills were worth more in towns than on plantations, were leased by their owners to businesses in towns. The businesses would remit half of the slave’s wages to the owner. Out of the remainder, slaves could save enough to purchase their freedom.

Today, we cannot purchase our freedom from the IRS. The only free Americans today are those who can work off the books or who can live on public welfare. Continue reading . . .

Individualism and Self Defense

There are present in America today a very large number of citizens who believe protection of themselves and their loved ones from violent physical attack, robbery, rape and general mayhem is the sole responsibility of others. Most of these ignorant folks believe that employees of the state should be responsible for protection of the individual in our society. This view is elitist and based on false assumptions.

Depending on others for personal protection masks the belief by many that they are of a higher station in life; that those of a lower social level and therefore inferior in stature and value should be responsible for their personal protection. They believe their lives and property to be more important than the lives of members of law enforcement and the military.

Many are unaware that, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, the police have no obligation to protect the individual in society. The court ruled as late as June 27^th 2005, in Castle Rock v Gonzales, that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police protection for herself, or her children, even though she had obtained a restraining order against her husband Simon. Simon Gonzales subsequently abducted their three children, murdered them, and was killed by police after shooting into the police station window. Ms. Gonzales called the police after the children were abducted, but, the police, believing Simon Gonzales to be non-violent, did nothing. Perhaps, had the police enforced the restraining order, the children would be alive today?

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled the police have no obligation to defend the individual. Beginning with South V. Maryland in 1856 and several subsequent rulings on the subject, the court has ruled, “…there is no Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen.” Emphasis added. Yet, the state and its myriad civilian supporters persist in the belief the individual in society should be disarmed, stating the police are there, should anyone need protection.

Today’s economic problems have revealed the true purpose of most law enforcement personnel in our country: revenue collection. Apprehending killers, rapists and robbers does not contribute to the coffers of law enforcement and their governing bodies; they are, in fact, costly to the agency involved. Unconstitutional law enforcement checkpoints, where a great majority of DUI citations, license, registration, and insurance violations are issued, are vital to the state in the collection of revenue. In today’s economic times, many departments have detailed officers from personal crime assignments to activities that are revenue producing. This takes the law enforcement emphasis away from protecting citizens. To the police, manning checkpoints or speed traps is much more important than answering a prowler call or a call concerning a restraining order’s enforcement. Continue reading . . .

U.S. Banks Overrun by Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels

Dirty, Rotten Scoundrels. The world is full of them.

Our theme today comes from a movie, in which Michael Caine teaches Steve Martin how to be a gigolo. The idea is to identify rich, vulnerable women…seduce them…and then take their money.

In today’s world, becoming a real gigolo is social climbing. The average man – even one from a good school and a good family – is an oaf. Next to him, the gigolo, with his suave manners and dandyish airs, is like a Venetian palace next to a double-wide.

Besides, the gigolo gives value for money. A woman gets little thrill or merit from landing a Wall Street hustler; no matter how rich, he is almost always boorish and preoccupied. But the gigolo brings refinement and taste to a woman; he makes her feel exceptional because he is exceptional. To a woman of a certain age, his attentions are a welcome as bad lighting.

We only bring it up because it is the front-page story at the Financial Times this morning. Whether life imitates art, or the other way around, we don’t know; but yesterday a poor gigolo was sentenced to six years in a German hoosegow for taking advantage of Susanne Klatten. The two met at a health spa – where the hunter scouted his prey. Then, after he had made his advances…without too much resistance, it appears… he made up some cock-and-bull story about having an accident in which a child was hurt. According to him, the mafia was after him. And if he didn’t come up with $7 million to pay them off, he was going to have his fine bones broken – or worse.

Naturally, his rich mistress produced the money. But then he got greedy and wanted more. He threatened to show some embarrassing photos to her husband. And then she called the cops.

All of this might have gone unnoticed had the woman involved not been the richest woman in Germany, heiress to the BMW fortune.

Ms. Klatten, no doubt, regrets the affair. Her spirit might have been willing to put up a fight, but her flesh was weak…as it with us all. But she is hardly the only woman – or man – to be robbed by dirty, rotten scoundrels.

“Help needed as investing frauds rise,” says a piece in the International Herald Tribune. The IHT focuses on another swindler – Arthur Nadel, accused of bilking investors out of as much as $300 million. But the point of the article is that while jobs are scarce – even bank robbers can’t find a bank worth robbing – “receivers,” court-appointed liquidators, can name their price: It’s a “job that has become increasingly in demand in such huge investment fraud cases as the Bernard Madoff scandal and the one against the Texas tycoon, Allen Stanford.” Continue reading . . .

We Need Our Heads Examined, Says Harvard (If you believe in the free market)

Last weekend, Harvard University sponsored a conference called (I am not making this up) “The Free Market Mindset: History, Psychology, and Consequences.” Its purpose was to try to figure out why, since everyone knows the current crisis amounts to a failure of the market economy, the stupid rubes continue to believe in it. The promotional literature for the conference opened with That Quotation from Alan Greenspan – the one in which he suggested that there was, after all, a “flaw” in the free market he hadn’t noticed before.

Well, that does it, then! If our Soviet commissar in charge of money and interest rates says the free market doesn’t work, who are you to disagree?

The promotional material continues: “If the current state of the U.S. economy makes clear that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s faith in free markets was misplaced, the question remains: what was it about free markets that proved – and still continues to prove – so alluring to economists, scholars, and policy-makers alike?” Because, of course, if there’s one guiding principle behind the largest government in world history, it’s free markets. Ahem.

This conference, we were told, “brings together leading scholars in law, economics, social psychology, and social cognition to present and discuss their research regarding the historical origins, psychological antecedents, and policy consequences of the free market mindset. Their work illustrates that the magic of the marketplace is partially an illusion based on faulty assumptions and outmoded approaches.” The speakers then spent the day, I am sure, laying out their own faulty assumptions and outmoded approaches, and studiously ignoring the Austrian School of economics.

In short, the conference was about this: Why do people still think the interaction of free individuals is a superior economic system to one directed by Harvard Ph.D.s like us? I mean, apart from the failure of central planning in every case in which it’s been tried, a failure so staggering that only a blockhead could miss it, why would people cling to the idea that being herded into a collective run by the experts isn’t the best way to live?

So by assuming from the outset the very thing that needs to be proven – namely, that the current state of the economy just occurred spontaneously, as the result of wicked market forces – our betters relieve themselves of the need to consider that central banking, a government-established institution, just might have had, you know, a little something to do with what happened. Continue reading . . .

The Fed Has Destroyed Your Retirement

In early February, President Obama was looking for a place to symbolize the recession. He wanted to rally support for his proposed $800 billion bailout of the economy, a bailout that he admitted would send the Federal government’s annual deficit to $1.7 trillion in fiscal 2010.

He chose Elkhart, Indiana, which advertises itself as the recreation vehicle capital of America, and hence the world. Elkhart’s economy has collapsed. There is 15% unemployment and no hope in sight.

For years, the RV industry grew. The scene in About Schmidt was representative. The retired middle manager bought an RV for his retirement. Then his wife died. He went out on the open road by himself. He went back to his home town. Nothing remained of the places he remembered.

This industry is today representative of the profound economic breakdown we are experiencing. This is not business as usual. The industry is close to collapse.

In 2005, the Indiana Business Magazine ran a story: “On a roll? What’s behind the dramatic growth of Indiana’s RV industry? Baby Boomers buying vs. higher fuel costs.” It reflected the final year of Greenspan’s decade-long bubble economy. Like California housing, the RV industry seemed to levitate high above economic rationality.

It would seem like the past few years should have been tough on the recreation-vehicle business. The economy was in recession for a time and sluggish even longer, and gas prices have been moving ever-upward, which would seem like a poor climate for selling expensive discretionary items that don’t exactly sip gas. Yet the RV industry – which is centered in Indiana – in recent years has enjoyed dramatic growth. And as sales have grown, Indiana’s share of the business has increased as well.

These words now seem as realistic as a real estate salesman’s promise to some young couple that paying ten times annual income for a house was a good bet. The home would appreciate. Continue reading . . .

How to Acquire an Elite College Education for Less Than $7000

After attending college in the late 80’s I became skeptical of the “received wisdom” approach to education I encountered there. I strongly believed that real truth and understanding could only be found through a Socratic Dialogue of systematic doubt. Instead each course was taught as if the facts presented were truths handed down by God to be memorized. After reading the very revealing Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich, I gained confidence in attempting a Socratic Dialogue directly with the immortal books. This approach has taken a long time and is still ongoing. However I believe I have discovered a straightforward approach to achieve an education level that is the peer of any elite undergraduate college in the modern world. This wouldn’t have been the case 70 years ago when colleges were far better, but it is now.

This will take 4 to 5 years. Pick a season and work for 3 to 4 months to pay for living expenses for the rest of the year while studying. If you have to live at home or with roommates to afford that then do so.

Your study plan will be based on 7 books. Each book will take 4 to 12 months of intensive study to work through one at a time. You will study to completely master the material in each book. You will seek out inexpensive tutors that are easily found on college campuses to help with this task. They often charge $10 to $20 an hour. Interview tutors until you find the right ones for each book. If possible try to find a tutor who will read or hopefully reread the books at the same rate as yourself. Meet with your tutor every 1 or 2 weeks for a couple hours to go over corrected homework and engage in a Socratic Dialogue. If you need to fill in gaps from your high school education, that will become apparent while working through the 7 books and your tutor will assign supplementary reading. During these 4 years you will also want to do some networking for intern and apprentice opportunities, if at all possible to be done during the 4 working months. If it’s not possible to work as an apprentice during the 4 years of study, that should be your goal after graduating.

That’s the meat of the course. The dessert is getting a recognized college degree. You will do this by taking your final year of study in a distance program at either Empire State College or Open University. These colleges allow testing out of other courses, so you will do that for the other 3 years. You’ll want to be in communication with either of these 2 from the start about your plan and progress. Make a 4.5-year study schedule of the chapters of each book under advisement from your tutors and college. You may have to skip some chapters depending on your ability and commitment. Be sure to stay on top of this because these books will require a tremendous amount of work. Your payback however will be literally priceless.

Here are the 7 books, in the order they should be studied:

1. Complete Works of Shakespeare or part of that in combination with a literary anthology to be assigned by a tutor. Be sure to get plenty of writing assignments. 5 months.
2. History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. Engage in a lot of Socratic Dialogue. 5 months.
3. The Making of the Modern Mind by Randall. Engage in a lot of Socratic Dialogue. 5 months.
4. Man, Economy and State by Rothbard. Engage in a lot of Socratic Dialogue. 5 months.
5. What Is Mathematics by Courant and Robbins. Work every problem and ask for additional ones. 5 months.
6. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Abelson, Sussman and Sussman. Work every problem and ask for additional ones. 8 months.
7. Lectures on Physics by Feynman. Work every problem and ask for additional ones. 10 months.

By claiming your inheritance of human achievement in truth, knowledge, science, virtue and art, you will also be well prepared for a glorious future of achieving freedom and prosperity.

There should probably also be an 8th book that would be a general world history, including of art. Any suggestions? Reading additional books by Rothbard would also be a great idea, especially This one. Given current circumstances, everyone of every education level should read This one.

March 11, 2009

Joe O’Donnell [send him mail] is a Programmer from Buffalo NY.

via: Lew Rockwell

Beating Back Obamanomics

It’s raining, pouring economic fallacies by the hour, followed by a flood of horrible policy that is driving us ever further into economic depression. The regime in charge has really gone nuts, revealing itself as both deeply ignorant and horribly evil.

We find ourselves facing the horror of what has always been the Achilles’ Heel of the left wing: its abysmal ignorance of economic science. The ideological tendency has gone from Keynesianism to outright socialism in a matter of a few weeks.

And the trajectory seems to be accelerated mainly by the logic of the interventionist cycle: bad policy leads to bad results that are addressed through bad policy, and so on, straight down the fast track to serfdom. Obama’s attachment to “transparency” – the buzzword of the day – allows all intelligent people to observe the sickening sight in real time, and to the cheers of the kept class of intellectual phonies like Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman.

The encouraging thing – and perhaps this too was inevitable – is that the right wing is getting its act together. It has suddenly discovered that economics matters. You can cheer on the hot wars, fight the culture wars, and crack down on political dissidents all you want. But in the end, what makes for the good society is a sound economy. Without it, all the rest falls apart.

Thus all our favorite conservatives are starting to make sense. The American Spectator is alarmed. Rush Limbaugh sounds like LRC. The American Conservative has temporarily dropped its love of protectionism to warn of dollar inflation. The love of war has gone AWOL at National Review. The Heritage Foundation is warning that government spending and taxation are driving us to ruin. Pat Buchanan is defending the free market. Continue reading . . .

We Want Obama To Fail

Talk show host and conservative icon Rush Limbaugh recently ignited a firestorm of criticism for expressing his desire that Barack Obama should fail. Democrats, and even some Republicans, suggested that he had put aside his patriotism to wish for an economic collapse that would result in political advantage for conservatives. However, if you believe as I, and apparently Rush, that Obama’s plans will prevent recovery, then wishing that they fail to become actual policy is the right thing to do. The problem is that since Mr. Limbaugh has a history of partisanship, and since he did not forcefully criticize the Bush Administration for similar (if slightly more modest) plans, many cannot see past the messenger to recognize the truth in the message.

I am certain that if Obama and the Pelosi/Reid Congress succeed in fully implementing their agenda, there is no chance the U.S. economy will recover its position as world’s leading economy. Instead, America will start down the road that has condemned so many nations to economic mediocrity. By continuing and magnifying the Bush stimulus and bailout policies, the economic rebalancing that is so vital to a sustainable recovery cannot occur.

Limbaugh merely said what members of the loyal opposition would say if they were true to their supposed philosophy. But since so many Republicans supported the Bush bailouts and stimulus packages, it would be too blatantly hypocritical to reverse course now. In truth, for all his talk of change Obama has merely continued and expanded the failed policies of Bush.

The one aspect of Obama’s agenda that has galvanized Republican criticism is higher taxes on the rich. While I also abhor tax increases, the spending increases supported by both parties are far more damaging to the economy. In fact, I actually support Obama’s decision to eliminate the “carried interest” tax advantages that had so unequally benefitted hedge fund managers. If I had my way the income tax would be abolished completely, but as long as we have one it is not fair for hedge fund managers to pay lower marginal taxes than the guys who shine their thousand dollar shoes.

The arguments that higher tax rates will discourage hard work and initiative are true across the entire income spectrum. It makes no sense politically to single out the mega-wealthy for special treatment. The sad truth is that Republicans are spending their dwindling political capital on a non-issue. Most hedge funds relied on leveraged borrowing to produce oversized returns. Now that the debt markets are essentially closed, there is not much “carried interest” income left to tax.

The bigger issue is that few Republicans are making any serious effort to oppose the staggering deficits that will guarantee huge future tax increases and runaway inflation for everyone, rich and poor. By simply clinging to tax cuts as their single economic miracle cure, Republicans risk further marginalization. Continue reading . . .