Everyone wants resources so the USSR stole some from poland and other countries for selfish reasons
Capitilism as we know it today (need for constant growth, etc) was only invented recently so for much of imperialist history capitilism didn’t exist.
Fascism is imperialism turned inward…
Fascism is when you when you give the government complete and utter control over everything. Of course that would lead to human rights abuse
Some argue this process is why Hitler and the Third Reich are looked on as the ultimate evil.
My great-grandpa was a holocaust survivor. Here are the key differences between Hitler and let’s say manifest destiny:
When the americans were manifest destinying they didn’t gas people to death just for being “inferior”
The Nazis were not anti certain groups they were anti people not part of certain groups. Sure the vast majority were Jews but a close second was russian civilians (not POW, just citizens). Disabled people were also killed. The total deaths, just for being “inferior” were
17,109,750–19,619,500
The Nazis killed people in the worst ways they could. They would either work people to death (not slavery, because at least in slavery your master would prefer you wouldn’t die)
The Nazis did stuff around the time everyone decided to stop being jerks. Slavery was mostly abolished by then, people mostly decided to not kill each other in wars. In fact - when Germany invaded France, some of their colonies left and formed “Vichy France” or “Free France”
And here is where it starts to get way, way worse - the reasoning for this. Hitler didn’t do this all for material profit. He did it because he believed that the “superior” Aryan race needed land (or “living space”) to expand. He exterminated people for their race because he didn’t want the people he called inferior to intermarry with the Aryans and cause the Aryans to become less pure
Fair point about everyone wanting resources, but the question was about why people conflate capitalism with fascism. These comments are big enough as it is without starting a long-term discussion on the broader subjects of world history, politics, and economics.
To the topic at hand:
Your analysis fails to answer why members outside of the preferred races, etc, were chosen by the Nazis for exploitation. This isn’t about who was chosen or how they were chosen.
A large part of answering the question of “Why?” comes back to the economic depression experienced in Germany and other nations who turned to fascism at that time , how capitalist powers directly sided in them overthrowing labor movements and coming to power, and how racism was used as a tool to justify fascist action. I’m not arguing about how they chose different groups of people or denying that it extended beyonds Jews. That’s a larger topic than I was willing to go into for my comment and not particularly relevant. The holocaust was awful and they did truly vile shit. I’m not denying that in any way, those specifics just aren’t relevant to the question. For more info on this topic, I suggest the book “Black Shirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti.
This topic isn’t about holding a dick measuring contest for who suffered the worst atrocities. Was it the victims of Nazi Germany or American manifest destiny or French/English/Dutch/Spanish/etc colonialism? This is about WHY those things happened and WHY some of them stuck in the minds of the Western world better than others. It’s just like how everyone focuses on the atrocities committed in Europe during WWII, but they ignore the atrocities committed in Africa during the same time period. What were the material conditions of the time and the forces that drove these events to occur? If we can understand those things, we can act directly against those forces and prevent them from repeating the parts of our history that we find repulsive.
If you really do want to dig into the horrors of imperialism, you might want to start by taking a good look at American manifest destiny again because I assure you that it was no “nicer” than the holocaust. Are you aware that many of the holocaust practices were adopted as a result of studying American manifest destiny and that the Nazis came to the conclusion that some of those practices were too cruel? American manifest destiny was used as direct inspiration for the holocaust! Yes, I could go on and talk about the tragedies caused by imperialism across the global South as well, but the point of this conversation was to answer why does this happen so we can then determine how we can prevent it from happening again.
I think we should denounce the violence of imperialism no matter who was affected and work to prevent it from happening again no matter where it occurs. There are people who are directly affected by the remnants of manifest destiny and contemporary imperialism who live in our world to this very day. To deny that this is a result of our systems at work is a disservice to those people.
The USSR would like a word
Everyone wants resources so the USSR stole some from poland and other countries for selfish reasons
Capitilism as we know it today (need for constant growth, etc) was only invented recently so for much of imperialist history capitilism didn’t exist.
Fascism is when you when you give the government complete and utter control over everything. Of course that would lead to human rights abuse
My great-grandpa was a holocaust survivor. Here are the key differences between Hitler and let’s say manifest destiny:
When the americans were manifest destinying they didn’t gas people to death just for being “inferior”
The Nazis were not anti certain groups they were anti people not part of certain groups. Sure the vast majority were Jews but a close second was russian civilians (not POW, just citizens). Disabled people were also killed. The total deaths, just for being “inferior” were 17,109,750–19,619,500
The Nazis killed people in the worst ways they could. They would either work people to death (not slavery, because at least in slavery your master would prefer you wouldn’t die)
The Nazis did stuff around the time everyone decided to stop being jerks. Slavery was mostly abolished by then, people mostly decided to not kill each other in wars. In fact - when Germany invaded France, some of their colonies left and formed “Vichy France” or “Free France”
And here is where it starts to get way, way worse - the reasoning for this. Hitler didn’t do this all for material profit. He did it because he believed that the “superior” Aryan race needed land (or “living space”) to expand. He exterminated people for their race because he didn’t want the people he called inferior to intermarry with the Aryans and cause the Aryans to become less pure
I could go on
Fair point about everyone wanting resources, but the question was about why people conflate capitalism with fascism. These comments are big enough as it is without starting a long-term discussion on the broader subjects of world history, politics, and economics.
To the topic at hand:
Your analysis fails to answer why members outside of the preferred races, etc, were chosen by the Nazis for exploitation. This isn’t about who was chosen or how they were chosen.
A large part of answering the question of “Why?” comes back to the economic depression experienced in Germany and other nations who turned to fascism at that time , how capitalist powers directly sided in them overthrowing labor movements and coming to power, and how racism was used as a tool to justify fascist action. I’m not arguing about how they chose different groups of people or denying that it extended beyonds Jews. That’s a larger topic than I was willing to go into for my comment and not particularly relevant. The holocaust was awful and they did truly vile shit. I’m not denying that in any way, those specifics just aren’t relevant to the question. For more info on this topic, I suggest the book “Black Shirts and Reds” by Michael Parenti.
This topic isn’t about holding a dick measuring contest for who suffered the worst atrocities. Was it the victims of Nazi Germany or American manifest destiny or French/English/Dutch/Spanish/etc colonialism? This is about WHY those things happened and WHY some of them stuck in the minds of the Western world better than others. It’s just like how everyone focuses on the atrocities committed in Europe during WWII, but they ignore the atrocities committed in Africa during the same time period. What were the material conditions of the time and the forces that drove these events to occur? If we can understand those things, we can act directly against those forces and prevent them from repeating the parts of our history that we find repulsive.
If you really do want to dig into the horrors of imperialism, you might want to start by taking a good look at American manifest destiny again because I assure you that it was no “nicer” than the holocaust. Are you aware that many of the holocaust practices were adopted as a result of studying American manifest destiny and that the Nazis came to the conclusion that some of those practices were too cruel? American manifest destiny was used as direct inspiration for the holocaust! Yes, I could go on and talk about the tragedies caused by imperialism across the global South as well, but the point of this conversation was to answer why does this happen so we can then determine how we can prevent it from happening again.
I think we should denounce the violence of imperialism no matter who was affected and work to prevent it from happening again no matter where it occurs. There are people who are directly affected by the remnants of manifest destiny and contemporary imperialism who live in our world to this very day. To deny that this is a result of our systems at work is a disservice to those people.
I wrote a response to this but my battery died so just know I mostly agree with you
Lol, fair. Been there too. Thanks for the thoughtful replies.