• star_wraith [he/him]
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    4 years ago

    The thing is, if we're going to base our perceptions of what makes a leader "good" only on doing what they thought was right for the country... I have no doubt that Hitler genuinely thought fascism was what was "right" for Germany. I mean, it was monstrously, unspeakably evil, but Trump only acts on what he think will benefit himself, not the country. So in that sense, Trump actually deserves less sympathy and respect than Hitler (who of course deserves none).

      • Neckbeard_Prime [they/them,he/him]
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        4 years ago

        Indeed; right in the opening pages of Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds:

        In Germany, a similar pattern of complicity between fascists and capitalists emerged. German workers and farm laborers had won the right to unionize, the eight-hour day, and unemployment insurance. But to revive profit levels, heavy industry and big finance wanted wage cuts for their workers and massive state subsidies and tax cuts for themselves.

        During the 1920s, the Nazi Sturmabteilung or SA, the brownshirted storm troopers, subsidized by business, were used mostly as an antilabor paramilitary force whose function was to terrorize workers and farm laborers. By 1 930, most of the tycoons had concluded that the Weimar Republic no longer served their needs and was too accommodating to the working class. They greatly increased their subsidies to Hitler, propelling the Nazi party onto the national stage. Business tycoons supplied the Nazis with generous funds for fleets of motor cars and loudspeakers to saturate the cities and villages of Germany, along with funds for Nazi party organizations, youth groups, and paramilitary forces. In the July 1932 campaign, Hitler had sufficient funds to fly to fifty cities in the last two weeks alone.

        ...

        Along with serving the capitalists, fascist leaders served themselves, getting in on the money at every opportunity. Their personal greed and their class loyalties were two sides of the same coin. Mussolini and his cohorts lived lavishly, cavorting within the higher circles of wealth and aristocracy. Nazi officials and SS commanders amassed personal fortunes by plundering conquered territories and stealing from concentration camp inmates and other political victims. Huge amounts were made from secretly owned, well-connected businesses, and from contracting out camp slave labor to industrial firms like LG. Farben and Krupp.

        Hitler is usually portrayed as an ideological fanatic, uninterested in crass material things. In fact, he accumulated an immense fortune, much of it in questionable ways. He expropriated art works from the public domain. He stole enormous sums from Nazi party coffers. He invented a new concept, the "personality right;' that enabled him to charge a small fee for every postage stamp with his picture on it, a venture that made him hundreds of millions of marks.

        Edit: ...

        Far from being the ascetic, Hitler lived self-indulgently. During his entire tenure in office he got special rulings from the German tax office that allowed him to avoid paying income or property taxes. He had a motor pool of limousines, private apartments, country homes, a vast staff of servants, and a majestic estate in the Alps. His happiest times were spent entertaining European royalty, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, who numbered among his enthusiastic admirers.

    • OhWell [he/him]
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      4 years ago

      Liberals are obsessed with the status quo and the system. I saw them yesterday talking about how Trump dying looks bad for "American democracy" and how they need to beat him with an election. And then they wonder why people are abandoning the Democratic party and looking for something else.

    • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]
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      4 years ago

      Yes but I'm explicitly arguing that we shouldn't do that. Being "good" is not about intentions, it's about material outcomes. And by that measure both Trump and Hitler do not by any means qualify as "good."