I don’t disagree with any particular point - Christo-fascism is on the rise and it’s terrifying - but specifically the nazis were very much anti-church and thus anti-ten commandments lol
No, no, he is right. Republican and Nazi are the same side of the coin.
To quote Hitler
"We tolerate no one in our ranks who attacks the ideas of Christianity... in fact our movement is Christian."
Speech in Passau 27 October 1928
Not to weigh in on one side or the other but the Nazis claimed a lot of things.
That they were socialists, that Poland had attacked Germany...
I wouldn't rely on what they said.
Hitler also told a lot of people they were part of the movement. Then the Night of The Long Knives happened. He was meth addict willing to say whatever he needed to say.
The nazi party espoused its own distinct, schismatic form of Christianity as it repressed Catholics and Protestants across the country. I am NO defender of the church but to act like churches/institutions weren’t attacked during that era is revisionist history. They were absolutely repressed, if certainly nowhere near as severely as Judaism was (which “repressed” doesn’t even come close to covering).
So, they were attacking other religious sects and churches that were different than their specific version of Christianity?
That sounds like Christianity to me.
Just because it wasn't the form of Christianity we recognize today, doesn't mean it wasn't a valid religious movement. Sure, it specifically helped the Nazi party, but all the pieces of the puzzle to create their christo-fascist state were there for them to put together.
And they used Christianity to do it. Saying otherwise is being disingenuous and revisionist. They espoused Christianity. They espoused the teachings of Jesus. They claimed moral superiority just like every other religion does.
Sure, they used it to attack other religions to set theirs up as the state religion, but that doesn't make it less like Christianity. Just a form that doesn't exist today.
Repressing other religions is a cornerstone of most religions, including Christianity. To say otherwise is invoking apologetics.
Look we can be flippant about how evil organized religion is or we can discuss history. We can’t just vacillate between the two and expect a productive discussion. Major Christian institutions were attacked by the nazi party/hitler. This is historical fact. Whether or not they branded themselves as Christian or even were Christian doesn’t change that fact. They went after both Catholic and Protestant institutions across the country. Many clergy were arrested and/or killed. This is history, not another proxy battle for “church bad.”
I mean the nazi party had “socialist” in its name. Would it not be pretty reductionist of me to say “they were socialist”?
Give one good reason why the Nazis started with the Jews and not the millions of other groups that are much further separated from their idea of the Übermench.
I'll give you one. Because Nazis were Christians, and they hate the Jews for not accepting Jesus as their messiah.
I didn’t say nazis weren’t christians. I think this conversation simply isn’t lending itself to a nuanced discussion unfortunately, people are getting too incensed over it. Nazis are bad. Republicans are installing Christo-fascism and it’s a huge problem. All of these things I agree with. I am just talking about the relationship of the 3rd reich and christianity, which is not as simple as you want it to be. It’s a fascinating, if dark, subject. You’d do well to go read about it tbh. It taught me a lot about institutions can be wielded like cudgels even against their own interests.
To understand nazis religion it is important to understand religion in germany.
Back in the day, and today is similar in former west Germany, Germany had a fairly even split between catholicism and protestantism.
So the nazi party taking a strong religious dogma either way would had been very harmful towards their objectives, as half the population could refuse to follow a catholic/protestant movement. That's why their leader and the party didn't really seemed to take a strong religious stance. But at the end they were linked to the conservative values that are associated with religion.
And his allies, Spain and Italy. Both formed fascist dictatorships very linked with the Catholic church, being their countries homogeneous in that aspect. In fact Spanish dictatorship is often refered as national-catholicism, and Mussolini had full support from the Vatican and the Pope.
At the end fascism, in whichever form and name it takes, tend to link with conservative values that are usually also linked with religion. The nazi party being just an exception due Germany particular religion situation.
Think of it more like the flu. If I caught the flu I might have a temperature, a sore throat, loss of appetite, and headaches. If you catch the flu you might get headaches, diarrhea, exhaustion, and a dry cough.
Fascism is built upon and characterised by the exploitation of the current fissures of a stressed society. It is unlikely to lead to gas chambers and Hugo Boss uniforms as they were part of the specific evolution of fascism in Germany after it was crippled by the loss of the first world war. Usually, there are all sorts of barriers to full blooded fascism that give it part of its local character too as it tries to morph into whatever conglomerate of memes that it can ride to power.
Right now in America the pressure for fascism is being built with the tacit support of a lot of evangelical christians. It is not the whole of the story. It is part of the conglomerate. So the pride flags come down and the ten commandments go up.
I heard some PhD types who had written papers on Hitlers rise one time explain it that even though we can draw parallels to Hitler's rise. It in no way means we should expect another group like the Nazi's to rise to power. They were saying hindsight can say Hitler rose to power because X,Y and Z. But it in no way means that X,Y and Z are what create a Nazi power or means another one is going to show up. That it's wrong to take something like lists that detail the things that contribute to fascism and say its happening now so therefore the other party are the next Nazi power.
I think what the message was that X,Y and Z only shows what could have contributed to Nazi's seizing power but when used with foresight its not accurate.
He's not wrong, but he's not right either. Those lists are meant to be paired with deep analysis of the ideology and an academic understanding of the terms used. When used correctly they are absolutely useful for predicting oppressive authoritarian regimes. Can they predict the second coming of Nazis? No, because that was a unique moment in history.
Political scientists who write their papers and books on ideology have been sounding the alarm bells about conservative and fundamentalist Christianity since the 2000's. There's been papers about wealth ministry and the GOP since at least the 90's.
So yeah, the brief lists on the Internet are about as effective as a Hogwarts personality test, but that doesn't mean the watchers aren't screaming at you to pay attention.
See I don't really follow this stuff to hard. But that's what I found funny was what you said sort of. These guys were the guys who write papers and study the rise of fascists and especially a focus on the Nazi's and their opinion the were bringing up was that its not a predictive tool. Its something that is useful to look backwards and hypothesis what lead to a rise but it doesn't work looking forward as well and can often be used to be a pretty big political hammer regardless of accuracy and that we should be more careful with it.
That's what I was saying. I guarantee you they keep a list as a reference. But they aren't just xeroxing the list with checked boxes for their writing. Throwing the lists onto the Internet is the same thing as putting Fascist on a sign whenever the government installs a new traffic camera. That's what has them upset.
And if they're telling you there's nothing to worry about with the current conservative movement they're either bad at their job or part of the problem. Because every political science professor I know, even the conservative and libertarian ones, are telling anyone who will listen that we are dangerously close to voting ourselves out of a democracy.
Right, fascism molds itself to a particular condition and ground truth. There's actually a decent body of work which holds that it is a historical form of autocratic politics, and that searching for it in modernity is problematic because of how fungible the core ideology is. You can always stop fascism by stopping autocracy, regardless of whether you positively identify it as such, so all autocratic movements should be treated with the same level of urgency as Nazis. Easy peasy, okie dokie.
The biggest problem with this is that a lot of leftists like autocracy as well. And I am convinced that's where a lot of this rhetorical pearl clutching really comes from. A whole generation of left wing opposition is effectively null and void because it reduces to a very inconvenient "well our autocracy is different..."