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> "It's about Nazis getting rid of their political enemies, not about revolutionaries purging their own ranks." "Revolutionary" is a word I would reserve for p
by catalogia 7y ago
> "It's about Nazis getting rid of their political enemies, not about revolutionaries purging their own ranks."
"Revolutionary" is a word I would reserve for people I agree with, but it should be noted that the Nazis purged their own ranks. "Political enemies" and "their own ranks" are not even remotely mutually exclusive. Rather, the later is a subset of the former.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives
(Note also that poet in question was originally a Nazi, until he realized he'd be targeted by them too.)
- yorwba 7y agoYes, the Nazis also purged their own ranks, but the groups listed were all external political enemies. If the poem were worded in the first person as "First we came for ...", it would serve better to illustrate your own group turning against you rather than it being some third party you don't dare speak out against.
- all2 7y agoNazi == National Socialist German Workers' Party So... why would a socialist party first target socialists? The people who started the thing are the ones getting targeted.
- colejohnson66 7y agoI can’t reply to the dead post, so I’m commenting here: I see this confusion a lot, and I don’t understand it. North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and its clearly not democratic. China claims to be communist when they’re not.
- all2 7y agoI think that's part of the point, though. People get sold on an ideology; enough so that they revolt. But those who begin the revolution are fodder for the machine as it progresses. The socialist party in Germany began with socialists. Then, when Hitler and Co. had concentrated enough power, their original constituents became liabilities and thus political enemies. [edit] I'm curious to know if the downvotes are because I'm not adding anything substantive? Or if they are happening because someone disagrees with what I am saying? Am I incorrect in my assertions? [/edit]
- yorwba 7y agoThe big Socialist party in Germany at the time (SPD) never had any relation to Hitler at all. They founded a paramilitary organization to fight both Nazis and Communists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Front I think you're overthinking the "Socialist" in the NSDAP's name. Their ideas weren't exactly compatible with mainstream Socialism.
- jakeogh 7y agoother examples of socalisim also ended in large body counts, the "doing it wrong" excuse misses the lack of a positive feedback loop in the system.
- yorwba 7y agoHuh? I wasn't trying to excuse the body count of Socialist experiments or something like that. Pointing out that the Nazis were decidedly anti-Socialist is not a defense of Socialism any more than pointing out the SPD was decidedly anti-Communist is a defense of Communism. The Nazis weren't "doing Socialism wrong." They viewed Socialists as traitors who signed the Treaty of Versailles to further the agenda of the internationalist Jews.
- jakeogh 7y agoThanks. I appologise for writing it that way and appreciate the correction to my baked in assumption there.
- detaro 7y agoThe NSDAP was neither "the socialist party", nor really "a socialist party", at any time.