OUT ON A LIMB: Adolf Hitler, Communist.
Of course, AfD is invariably described as “far right,” which is Eurospeak for opposed to mass third-world immigration. Beyond that, the other German parties denounce AfD as “neo-Nazi,” notwithstanding the fact that its platform is the polar opposite of Hitler’s national socialist ideology. This is the portion of today’s interview that I want to focus on:
Adolf Hitler was a communist and the “greatest success” of the postwar years was to rebrand him as far-right, a leading figure in the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has said.
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Asked by Musk about the frequent claims in Germany that the AfD is “Nazi-lite”, Weidel responded: “The National Socialists were socialists … Adolf Hitler was a communist. He considered himself a socialist … The biggest success after that terrible era in our history was to label Hitler as [far] right and conservative.”She added that the AfD was the “opposite” of the Nazis in its attitude towards the size and power of government: “We would like to free the people from the state.”
That is correct. Hitler always described himself as a man of the Left. He and his cohorts took over the German Workers’ Party, which was uniformly and correctly regarded as left-wing. They renamed it the National Socialist Party. Still left-wing, even more so. The Nazi regime vastly expanded the power of government–to put it mildly–raised taxes, essentially took over private industry from the top down, and, throughout World War II, assured Germans that they would have “real socialism” once the war was over.
Of course the Nazis battled the Communists in the streets in the 1930s; that was like the Crips and the Bloods fighting over turf. Bitter enemies who are in all respects relevant to outsiders, the same. And they soon became allies.
The great public relations coup of the Western Left was its success in branding both the Nazis and Italy’s Fascists as “right-wing.” In fact, they were big government–make that huge government–socialists: the opposite of Western conservatism. Hitler would have been astonished by the claim that he was somehow a free-market, limited government conservative. By any sane definition–including his own–he was a left-winger.
Well, they were socialists who were both nationalistic, and had some very international expansionist plans.
Hey, you know who else tried to form a union of European nations after first cancelling German elections…?