Worth unpicking a little of the Orwellian contortion of language that goes along with that. While “Nazi”'s generally will understood now, for what it historically is, what’s less well understood in some places, is that “Nazi”'s derived from “national socialism”, and from there we can critique what was (and what some still try to promote), was not (and is not) either nationalist, nor socialist. It was expansionist and domineering (among many other suitable descriptors (supremacist, jingoist, hegemonic, totalitarian, eugenicist, etc)). All quite the contrary to being nationalist, or socialist.
And, quite the example of the danger of the name changers. We’re fortunate to have seen Hitler for the rotter he was, and to have seen how rotten “Nazism” is, but I still wonder how much goodness (baby) got thrown out with the newspeak inversion and conflation (bathwater).
Similar to how Marx usurped the word “communist” (used by anarchists for at least 5 years before Marx took it) and handed it over to tankies and totalitarians, and the Cold War’s authoritarian Right, were only too eager to carry on the mislabeling of totalitarianism as communism, in their McCarthyian RedScare. One side of authoritarianism using “communism” as their pleasant sounding rebrand, the other side of authoritarianism happy to misuse the term too, to make “real communism” (anarcho-communism) unappealing, in being confused with the authoritarian ilk.
… How much of this then goes back to geography and crops… or secret societies and plots… There’s so many more cans of worms to explore.
I just thought that a good time to remind ourselves of the context. … & not all communists are totalitarians. (Arguably none are, if seeing through the Orwellian mislabelling.)
Worth unpicking a little of the Orwellian contortion of language that goes along with that. While “Nazi”'s generally will understood now, for what it historically is, what’s less well understood in some places, is that “Nazi”'s derived from “national socialism”, and from there we can critique what was (and what some still try to promote), was not (and is not) either nationalist, nor socialist. It was expansionist and domineering (among many other suitable descriptors (supremacist, jingoist, hegemonic, totalitarian, eugenicist, etc)). All quite the contrary to being nationalist, or socialist.
And, quite the example of the danger of the name changers. We’re fortunate to have seen Hitler for the rotter he was, and to have seen how rotten “Nazism” is, but I still wonder how much goodness (baby) got thrown out with the newspeak inversion and conflation (bathwater).
Similar to how Marx usurped the word “communist” (used by anarchists for at least 5 years before Marx took it) and handed it over to tankies and totalitarians, and the Cold War’s authoritarian Right, were only too eager to carry on the mislabeling of totalitarianism as communism, in their McCarthyian RedScare. One side of authoritarianism using “communism” as their pleasant sounding rebrand, the other side of authoritarianism happy to misuse the term too, to make “real communism” (anarcho-communism) unappealing, in being confused with the authoritarian ilk.
… How much of this then goes back to geography and crops… or secret societies and plots… There’s so many more cans of worms to explore.
I just thought that a good time to remind ourselves of the context. … & not all communists are totalitarians. (Arguably none are, if seeing through the Orwellian mislabelling.)