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Note: this article is currently getting dunked on social media for blatant historical factual errors, particularly "examples of socialist countries include Nazi

Note: this article is currently getting dunked on social media for blatant historical factual errors, particularly "examples of socialist countries include Nazi Germany". EDIT: Article was just deleted.

shiftingleft 6y ago
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210129191423/https://learn.robinhood.com/articles/7ugOBaabou2fY0bzAls2pP/what-is-socialism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210129191423/https://learn.rob...
AndrewBissell 6y ago
Their "What Is Communism?" is pretty funny too: https://learn.robinhood.com/articles/2VvHAZzhmlzTgx2KYKMZcI/what-is-communism/ https://learn.robinhood.com/articles/2VvHAZzhmlzTgx2KYKMZcI/...
mikestew 6y ago
Your comment is the only reason I even clicked the link (that, and idle curiosity of why Robinhood is posting links about economic systems). It strikes me as a high school term paper about socialism where someone got confused while they were copying-and-pasting from Wikipedia. Soviet Union was socialist? Mmm, I guess on some technicality, but I'm pretty sure they were the poster child (at least for posters produced in the U. S.) for communism. And the only fleshed-out example is Venezuela? Not more positive examples like, say, UK or France that could be argued to have at least some socialist elements to their governance? Anyway, I'm arguing with something that probably came from a content farm somewhere, best get back to fixing that bug.
ndiscussion 6y ago
Nazi is short for National Socialism??
- core-questions 6y ago
  Socialists deny any connection here because of optics concerns, of course; but considering the number of people killed by the USSR, they should probably just find new branding altogether.
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  They called themselves that because the Nazis were, in large part, a reaction against the threat of communism. It was becoming scarily popular, and what better way to pre-empt the revolution than become an early, sorta-kinda-but-not-really incarnation of it? As in: "yeah sure socialism is good but OUR kind, not that kind".
- filleduchaos 6y ago
  Ah yes, the famous beacon of democracy that is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
- mikestew 6y ago
  It is alleged that a journalist asked Abraham Lincoln why he didn't just declare the slaves free and be done with it. "If I called a lamb's tail a 'leg', how many legs would that lamb have?" "Five." "Four. Calling a 'tail' a 'leg' doesn't make it so." Probably-not-true anecdotes aside, National Socialism might have had elements of socialism to it, but best I can read, it wasn't anything like the primary plank of the platform. I think sibling comment's explanation of a reaction to the Communism(tm) at their door might be most reasonable to explain the naming.
  - throwaway09223 6y ago
    I think a lot of the confusion is around the difference between the party rhetoric, and the party actions. Rhetorically, the Nazis in large part did rise to power on the basis of socialist rhetoric. They did claim to be socialists, supporting socialist policies. This is how they obtained votes. In practice, not so much - and of course it turned into fascism. For many, the salient point regarding the Nazi party is that people believed they were voting socialist, even if this was not the system implemented in practice.
    - filleduchaos 6y ago
      They also famously brutalised, arrested, and exiled actual socialists (and other leftists) from pretty much the moment they came into power. Heck, Dachau (yes, that Dachau) - established 1933 - was initially intended to hold leftist political prisoners. When people cry "First they came for the socialists" when they feel their rights are being violated (or are on some slippery slope to being so), do they actually ever stop to think of what they are saying?
      - ndiscussion 6y ago
        Is that somehow different from how Real Socialists brutalized, arrested, and exiled people they didn't like? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

shiftingleft 6y ago

Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210129191423/https://learn.robinhood.com/articles/7ugOBaabou2fY0bzAls2pP/what-is-socialism/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210129191423/https://learn.rob...

AndrewBissell 6y ago

Their "What Is Communism?" is pretty funny too: https://learn.robinhood.com/articles/2VvHAZzhmlzTgx2KYKMZcI/what-is-communism/ https://learn.robinhood.com/articles/2VvHAZzhmlzTgx2KYKMZcI/...

mikestew 6y ago

Your comment is the only reason I even clicked the link (that, and idle curiosity of why Robinhood is posting links about economic systems). It strikes me as a high school term paper about socialism where someone got confused while they were copying-and-pasting from Wikipedia. Soviet Union was socialist? Mmm, I guess on some technicality, but I'm pretty sure they were the poster child (at least for posters produced in the U. S.) for communism. And the only fleshed-out example is Venezuela? Not more positive examples like, say, UK or France that could be argued to have at least some socialist elements to their governance? Anyway, I'm arguing with something that probably came from a content farm somewhere, best get back to fixing that bug.

ndiscussion 6y ago

Nazi is short for National Socialism??

core-questions 6y ago
Socialists deny any connection here because of optics concerns, of course; but considering the number of people killed by the USSR, they should probably just find new branding altogether.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
They called themselves that because the Nazis were, in large part, a reaction against the threat of communism. It was becoming scarily popular, and what better way to pre-empt the revolution than become an early, sorta-kinda-but-not-really incarnation of it? As in: "yeah sure socialism is good but OUR kind, not that kind".
filleduchaos 6y ago
Ah yes, the famous beacon of democracy that is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea
mikestew 6y ago
It is alleged that a journalist asked Abraham Lincoln why he didn't just declare the slaves free and be done with it. "If I called a lamb's tail a 'leg', how many legs would that lamb have?" "Five." "Four. Calling a 'tail' a 'leg' doesn't make it so." Probably-not-true anecdotes aside, National Socialism might have had elements of socialism to it, but best I can read, it wasn't anything like the primary plank of the platform. I think sibling comment's explanation of a reaction to the Communism(tm) at their door might be most reasonable to explain the naming.
- throwaway09223 6y ago
  I think a lot of the confusion is around the difference between the party rhetoric, and the party actions. Rhetorically, the Nazis in large part did rise to power on the basis of socialist rhetoric. They did claim to be socialists, supporting socialist policies. This is how they obtained votes. In practice, not so much - and of course it turned into fascism. For many, the salient point regarding the Nazi party is that people believed they were voting socialist, even if this was not the system implemented in practice.
  - filleduchaos 6y ago
    They also famously brutalised, arrested, and exiled actual socialists (and other leftists) from pretty much the moment they came into power. Heck, Dachau (yes, that Dachau) - established 1933 - was initially intended to hold leftist political prisoners. When people cry "First they came for the socialists" when they feel their rights are being violated (or are on some slippery slope to being so), do they actually ever stop to think of what they are saying?
    - ndiscussion 6y ago
      Is that somehow different from how Real Socialists brutalized, arrested, and exiled people they didn't like? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago