Barrel Strength

A recent article in Gates of Vienna makes the point that the vast increase of German social spending under Hitler was based on the expropriation, and subsequent enslavement of Germany’s Jews.

The same point is made in Ian Kershaw’s biography of Hitler. The German state was running a huge deficit that could only be made up by pillaging its Jewish citizens. Robbery on a massive scale was an essential part of the national-socialist program.

“There was nothing irrational about the Holocaust. It was the only way Hitler could finance his social security. And that very same social security was the reason that the Germans got carried away with him, despite the hardships of war. They gained: the companies and houses of Jews were available for “nothing”. Jewish household goods and clothing went to those who lost their homes in the bombings. Money, jewels, and gold went to the state.”

It is no surprise to those who are politically literate that national-socialism is a leftist phenomenon, but it needs repeating.

I experienced tremendous emotional resistance, when arguing these facts, from those who believe that fascism is a right-wing phenomenon. It is not. Read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.

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Pensee d’escalier: Mr. Jonah Goldberg points out that the entire anti-semitic project of Hitler was madly irrational. I grant  this freely. But rationality, when considered instrumentally, is the coherence of methods in relation to one’s ends. So from that weaselly point of view, robbery of those whom you wish to destroy is “rational”. In the same way that heart sacrificies are “rational” if the Sun God will fail to shine unless fed with the hearts of enemies.