When the left fights the left...with hammers...

[Tez3]

Yawn. Academics have theories, they argue them, disagree with each other. All you are doing is picking out the very few who happen to agree with you. If you say the world if flat you can find someone somewhere with academic qualifications who also said the world is flat in his opinion, it does not make it correct. They can write a PhD espeousing their view the world is flat, as long as it was set out correctly and followed the set criteria to satisfy the academic awarding body they will earn their PhD, it still doesn't mean the world is flat.

 

[Sukerkin]

Perhaps Sukerkin you are just jealous that someone made a rap video on Hayek and not on you...:angel:

Now that was one of the high spots of the past couple of years :tup:. It even made it into some Radio 4 economics discussions .

 

[Tez3]

One of my sources...

http://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2009/05/23/hitler-was-a-socialist/



yes, quite the intellectual slacker isn't he...

His contribution...
)

His opponent's contribution.....http://tallarmeniantale.com/GS-rummel.htm

 

[billc]

Here is Rummels chapter on Turkey...

http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP5.HTM

Finally, the table presents the many estimates of the overall genocide's toll during 1915 to 1918 (lines 151 to 186). These I order from the lowest to the highest figures. As can be seen, they vary from a low of 300,000 (lines 151 to 152) to a high of 2,000,000 (line 163), which anchor the consolidated range (line 187). Consistent with the estimates 1,000,000 dead (see lines 157, 160, 164 to 178) appears the most prudent mid-value.
Next I independently check this consolidation against the sum (line 188) of those Armenians murdered during the deportations (line 123) and otherwise (line 148). As can be seen, the alternative totals (lines 187 and 188) are divergent, the mid-value alone being off by 808,000 dead. To compensate for this, I give the final genocide range (line 189) the lowest low and highest high of the two and average their mid-values. Thus, given all these estimates, the Turks murdered most likely 300,000 to 2,686,000 Armenians, probably 1,404,000 of them. A critical question is then whether this is consistent with the Armenian population, itself a contentious estimate. This I will later consider.

The Young Turks did not confine their democide to Turkey. When they invaded Caucasia, their soldiers massacred Armenians and other Christians and also encouraged Kurds and Azerbaijanis to do so. Overall, Turks possibly killed (lines 212 to 220) 10,000 Christians, most of them probably Armenians--there were very few Greeks in Caucasia. (It is difficult to keep this number in perspective when other figures are in the tens and hundreds of thousands; but imagine the contemporary enraged and horrified outcry were the highest American, British, or French authorities to be responsible for the murder of 10,000 Moslem citizens--the responsible government would fall or be impeached.) For this genocide the table also lists some specific estimates (lines 224 to 227). These I consolidated (line 228) and then add (line 229) an assumed 4/5ths of the Christian dead determined above. The table then sums the two ranges (lines 228 and 229) to get the genocide (line 232).
As noted, the Turks also massacred Nestorian Christians, for which there are also a few estimates (lines 235 to 238). From my assumption that 1/5th of the Christian dead previously determined (line 218) were Nestorians, I calculate a final genocide (line 241).
Only one estimate of Moslem Azerbaijanis killed is available (line 244).
I now can calculate the overall foreign genocide (line 249), which probably ranges from 105,000 to 157,000 killed, most likely 131,000.
Turkey's Armenians also massacred Moslems. Claims that this may have amounted to at least 1,000,000, or even 1,500,000 Moslem dead (table 5.1A, lines 106b and 106e) however, have no substantiation beyond former Young Turks or their officials.

Finally, I can bring together these various totals (lines 268 to 271). Domestically and during their foreign military actions and occupations, the Young Turks probably murdered at least 743,000 and perhaps as many as 3,204,000 people, probably 1,883,000 Armenians, Greeks, Nestorians, and other Christians (line 273). Altogether, likely 3,947,000 died or were killed during the war (line 274). When I add this to the toll I will determine below for the next period, we will be able to test the overall total against the population deficit and unnatural death).

 

[Tez3]

Does it make it correct because he said it? You obviously believe it does. Personally I don't know who is correct, I prefer to not believe someone just because they have an academic career, it doesn't make them any less politically biased or any the less ambition for fame and glory in their field. They are are likely to skew data as any politician for much the same reasons. Perhaps they genuinely believe something but it may still not be true. Merely parrotting what they say doesn't make it true anyway.

 

[billc]

Hmm...

Thus, given all these estimates, the Turks murdered most likely 300,000 to 2,686,000 Armenians, probably 1,404,000 of them. A critical question is then whether this is consistent with the Armenian population, itself a contentious estimate. This I will later consider.

some more numbers on the armenian genocide...

http://www.kaloustian.eu/Armeense Genocide/index The Armenian Genocide page.htm

There is a table here that shows one figure for the population of Armenians in 1914 and then in 1922.

A 2002 study by the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), a New York-based human rights organization, ruled that the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians fits into the internationally accepted definition of genocide. The study was commissioned by TARC - a group of Armenians and Turks set up by the US State Department.​

 

[Tez3]

The two 'sides' will pose counter arguments but how do we decide who is correct? We need to retain a critical frame of mind when reading these things, not just accept one side blindly because they say something you like the sound of. Don't be blinded just because you think the guy has 'good' qualification, if you think a qualification from a university means they are experts you then have to accept that Sukerkin knows what he's talking about! (which he does!)

This guy is a professor, does his academic career mean he's correct? http://www.rense.com/general54/fromm.htm you'll pardon me while I throw up however.

 

[billc]

My point is simply that there are people, who have experience in Economics, Political Science, Behavioral Science who disagree with the common portrayel of the nazis as "right wing" and not their not being socialists. The same people who told you they were right wing and weren't socialists are just as prone to error and mistakes as the people you are saying are prone to error and mistakes.

Well, my sources are a lot more main stream than the nut denying the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.

 

[billc]

I also have multiple sources from multiple fields of study. I even have the author of Monster Hunter International discussing this topic with an e-mailer.

http://larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2...-mail-and-i-godwin-the-hell-out-of-this-post/

In fact, in the comments section of the last Hate Mail post several of my readers went through a bunch of facts about how the Nazis were socialists, just like they said that they were. The response by Hanna was to link to Wikipedia where somebody said they were like totally not. Because if you read it some place on the internet then it totally must be true. Especially Wikipedia, which as everyone knows is never biased or wrong.
This Nazis are right wing is something that needs to get put to bed once and for all.
Okay, so let’s look at this Hanna cited Wiki article. It says that “a majority of scholars identify Nazism as being a far right form of politics” (Not that modern leftist academics would try to sweep the idea that their fellow travelers were embarrassing horrific murder machines under the rug or anything biased like that). Okay. So the academics agree!
So let’s take a look at some more things from this very same article.

The radical Nazi Joseph Goebbels hated capitalism, viewing it as having Jews at its core and stressed the need for the party to emphasize both a proletarian and national character, these views were shared by Otto Strasser who later left the Nazi Party in the belief that Hitler had betrayed the party’s socialist goals by allegedly endorsing capitalism.[SUP][31][/SUP] Large segments of the Party staunchly supported its official socialist, revolutionary, and anti-capitalist positions and expected both a social and economic revolution upon the Party gaining power in Germany in 1933.[SUP][33][/SUP] Of the million members of the SA, many were committed to the Party’s official socialist program.[SUP][33][/SUP]The leader of the Party’s paramilitary organization the SA, Ernst Röhm, supported a “second revolution” (the “first revolution” being the Nazis’ seizure of power) that would entrench the Party’s official socialist program and demanded the replacement of the nonpolitical German army with a Nazi-led army.[SUP][33][/SUP]
Well. Huh. Ain’t that something?
But it says right there that Hitler changed his mind and decided to keep capitalism around! (surely that had nothing to do with the fact that socialism is a stupid economic failure and you can’t really build a super war machine with a broke *** economic system). I do believe I said repeatedly in that last post about how useful idiot idealist movements like OWS are always historically coopted by jerkoffs looking for more power.
Prior to becoming an anti-Semite and a Nazi, Adolf Hitler had previously served theBavarian Soviet Republic from 1918 to 1919 where Hitler was elected Deputy Battalion Representative of his communist-led battalion and attended the funeral of communist Kurt Eisner – who was a German Jew – where Hitler wore a black mourning armband on one arm and a red communist armband on his other arm.[SUP][34[/SUP]
Wait a second… The National Socialists aren’t supposed to be on the left! Liberal academics said so!
As a Nazi, Hitler both in public and in private, opposed capitalism, Hitler regarded capitalism as having Jewish origins and accused capitalism of holding nations ransom in the interests of a parasitic cosmopolitan rentier class.[SUP][36][/SUP]
Holy crap. That reads like an OWS manifesto. It’s like my hate mailers can’t even bother to check the links that they stick on here to show how smart they are!
However Hitler tactically took a pragmatic in-between position between the conservative and radical factions, in that he accepted private property and allowed capitalist private enterprises to exist as long as they obeyed the goals of the Nazi state but if a capitalist private enterprise resisted Nazi goals, he sought to destroy it.[SUP][31][/SUP]
Let’s see, a socialist leader that punishes business that goes against his wishes and rewards those that do his bidding. Hmmm… Sound familiar? Want to drill for oil? Go screw yourself. Oh? Solyndra? Here’s another half a billion dollars. How much did GE pay in taxes recently?
Hanna said something to the effect that the socialist part of National Socialists was just a name, and it didn’t have anything to do with what they actually did. She went so far as to use the Democratic People’s Republic, i.e. North Korea as an example that a name doesn’t always fit the reality… However that is one dumbass argument when you realize that she’s talking about a communist dictatorship of a country where the people have no say, as opposed to the name of a political party, that was ELECTED. So they named themselves socialist, ran as socialists, campaigned as socialists, in the birthplace of the philosophy of socialism, where the highly educated populace was familiar with socialism, won as socialists, and then implemented socialist policies. But they were sooooo not socialist.

All of those things sound eerily similar to things that my Hate Mailers post as being ideals.
To be fair, the Nazis had plenty of other points too, including a lot of crazy eugenic racist garbage. I’m sure the academics will cite that as the right wing part, ignoring that the eugenics movement was universally loved by left wing politicians around the world during the early part of the century. All of the pro-big government, total control types thought eugenics was awesome.
The eugenics movement was one of the most hideously evil things to ever exist. The communist/socialists/progressives ate it up. It gave them the “scientific” excuse they needed to implement controls on their populations. It was the global warming of the 1930s. But I digress.
So in conclusion the National Socialists totally weren’t socialists because modern socialist academics said they aren’t, even though their party platform and policies were distinctly socialist. Does that much cognitive dissonance hurt?

If you don't trust the author of the great book Monster Hunter International, I don't think you will trust anyone...:angel:

 

[Tez3]

My point is simply that there are people, who have experience in Economics, Political Science, Behavioral Science who disagree with the common portrayel of the nazis as "right wing" and not their not being socialists. The same people who told you they were right wing and weren't socialists are just as prone to error and mistakes as the people you are saying are prone to error and mistakes.

Well, my sources are a lot more main stream than the nut denying the Jewish Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.

Arrogance? If they aren't American they aren't mainstream? The French Prof is mainstream. He's not alone in his beliefs and his academic 'studies', you miss the point every time. Just because someone puts professor in front of their name doesn't make them correct in their assertations.

We call a horse, a horse and a dog, a dog, we understand those definitions, just because some learned chap who wants to make a name for himself writes a thesis on why a dog is a horse and a horse a dog doesn't make him correct, your reliance on other people's opinions and views is leading you to stop thinking for yourself and come up with inane utterances that actually make no sense. Just because you want to see the Right as perfection personified doesn't make it so I'm afraid.

 

[Sukerkin]

Come on now, Bill. If you want to have a prayer of anyone who doesn't have 'big ole ears' and plays a banjo agreeing with your stance you've got to do a whole lot better than that.

Anyhoo, didn't I smash this (the notion that the Nazi's were not republican's ) with hammers of my own the last time you brought it up? Or was that the time before the time before last? I think the general conclusion was that Fascism is not exclusively a Right Wing phenomenon but it tends to be that way.

I also seem to recall that another conclusion was that confusion arises because you (or rather the mode of political thinking you embrace) see Right Wing as meaning 'less' government whereas it can quite often mean 'more' government. I may be imagining that we covered this ground tho' as I might have gotten fed up with trying to help and put you on Ignore again .

The basic dividing line, in theory at least, is that Right Wing means top-down governance (by the elite) and Left Wing means bottom-up governance (by the masses).

Add Totalitarianism or Democracy into the mix and you get other flavours too. For example, the Soviet Union was an Elite lead Totalitarian regime that pretended it was Communist in it's rhetoric but was really Centrist. That is ever a recipe for economic disaster when writ over such a large mass and why I think socialism would not work well in America (other than maybe at the State level). Britain gives a really confused picture because we had a Democratic Right Wing and Left Wing mixed socialist-capitalist system (depending on whether the Toffs or the Oiks had power at the time). Sadly for us, we slid quickly into a Right-of-Centre, non-democratic, mode, where the plutocrats run the game and try to tell us it's a democracy.

 

[Sukerkin]

Just because you want to see the Right as perfection personified doesn't make it so I'm afraid.

That is the root of the past few years of wasted photons on this site I am sad to say. Fanaticism, whether religious or political is the inverse of reason. You have to be able to see the ill as well as the good in your ideology otherwise you are it's slave rather than it's master.

 

[billc]

I don't see the 'right' as perfect. I always simply point out that the left's desire for the government to control great swathes of peoples lives leads to really bad things. From the eugenics movement of the demorcatic socialists to the outright genocide of the totalitarian socialists, the lefts belief in government control over people heads down a really bad road.

As I have stated before, nazism, facism, and communism are different types of socialism, adjusted for the realities on the ground in the countries where they came about. The fabian socialists believed in eugenics, they were non nazi socialists, and were never able to implement their stated desires of population control. The nazis, and communists, on the other hand, were able to kill the people they didn't like. The realities on the ground hemmed in the one type of socialist and couldn't stop the other kind of socialists.

Hmmm...I believe the communist party represented the ruling elite. If you didn't belong to the party, your ability to advance was limited. Socialism is the intermediate step toward communism where the government controls the means of production until true communism can be achieved. The Italians, and Germans found that this international socialism didn't work for them, so they nationalised their socialism just for italians and just for germans. Government control in Germany meant you had a business but you only ran it at the pleasure of the nazis.

If you have a car, but your neighbor tells you what kind you can have, what color, make and model, when you can drive it, where you can drive it, who you can drive in it and if they don't like what you do with your car, they can arrest and even kill you, here is the question. Who really owns the car, you or your neighbor?

 

[Sukerkin]

If you truly think that the Right does not believe in control of the people from above for the benefit of a plutocratic elite, then there is no purpose in my wasting any more of my time with you. Enjoy your illusions for as long as you can.

 

[Steve]

I think where I come down is that it's clear hitler and the nazis were a very bad idea. While I tend to think of fascism as extreme right wing and communism as extreme left wing, I also view it as just a simple model. Call it red and blue or infinite shades of gray and it's still just a aimplistic model. Ulyimately, it seems like a collossal waste of time going back through history and painting anyone evil as left only so you can draw meaningless but very insilting comparisons and anyone good as right, only so you can identify with them. The world is complicated, and I'd prefer to spend time thinking about other things. I don't need that kind of bs validation.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Tez3]

If you truly think that the Right does not believe in control of the people from above for the benefit of a plutocratic elite, then there is no purpose in my wasting any more of my time with you. Enjoy your illusions for as long as you can.

That goes for me too.

 

[Tez3]

I think where I come down is that it's clear hitler and the nazis were a very bad idea. While I tend to think of fascism as extreme right wing and communism as extreme left wing, I also view it as just a simple model. Call it red and blue or infinite shades of gray and it's still just a aimplistic model. Ulyimately, it seems like a collossal waste of time going back through history and painting anyone evil as left only so you can draw meaningless but very insilting comparisons and anyone good as right, only so you can identify with them. The world is complicated, and I'd prefer to spend time thinking about other things. I don't need that kind of bs validation.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I've had enough to be honest and now he's on ignore, as you say there's other things to do and think about. I enjoy a good political debate and can enjoy a good argument from someone who's views are the complete opposite to mine if it's well presented and gives you something to think about. A good debate should make you think about your own arguments, how you understand what you believe and why you believe it. A passionate well thought out pitch is a pleasure to argue against. You can't argue when there's only one rigid belief that right is everything good and left everything bad, human nature doesn't work that way. You can't argue against something when all you get are endless links to inane television 'personalities' and obscure professors. I wouldn't even mind but I'm not on the 'left'!

 

[WC_lun]

I am left of center and it is just as annoying, Tez

Intellectual arguement is a good thing, even when heated, because it makes us examine our beliefs. When someone is fanatical in thier beliefs, in this case to the point ofjust posting links and rarely submitting an arguement of thier own, it is frustrating.

As far as government being smaller under the right's rule, that isn't how things have worked out. If you don't think the right is for controlling people, just ask a gay person about governmental control of marriage. Or a Muslim in Kansas that would submitt to Sharia law to settle disputes before using the courts. Oh, or maybe a woman in a red state that believes she needs an abortion without government interferance. Both the left and right have thier issues they would like government to help control. The right just denies they do it.

 

[Tez3]

I am left of center and it is just as annoying, Tez

Intellectual arguement is a good thing, even when heated, because it makes us examine our beliefs. When someone is fanatical in thier beliefs, in this case to the point ofjust posting links and rarely submitting an arguement of thier own, it is frustrating.

As far as government being smaller under the right's rule, that isn't how things have worked out. If you don't think the right is for controlling people, just ask a gay person about governmental control of marriage. Or a Muslim in Kansas that would submitt to Sharia law to settle disputes before using the courts. Oh, or maybe a woman in a red state that believes she needs an abortion without government interferance. Both the left and right have thier issues they would like government to help control. The right just denies they do it.

That's it exactly, I'm an old fashioned British Liberal, that's probably a bit to the left of centre for some things, on the centre for others, perhaps even a bit right now and again, it depends on the issue. A lot of people make a lot of noise about not having government telling people what to do, what they actually mean is they don't want government telling them what to do but they are fine with being the government and telling other people what to do!

Lots of media friendly bite sized words have crept into politics these days, 'big government' is one, what on earth does that mean? It sounds like a description of something that some spin doctor has thought too difficult for the public to understand ( like using gee gee for horse when talking to kids), it uses the word 'big' to imply bad as in the big bad wolf is coming to get you. Their tactics are to scare the public into voting for them because they don't actually have any policies or manifesto so they have to make the other guy look worse than them so they don't wote for them!

The word I like best to describe politics most things in politics these days comes from a series here than uses swear words levery other word but is brilliantly satirical, they came up with 'omnishambles'! Here's a bit of it, a very big language warning! Many of us think this is how things are really run!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=0MSScBIopM8&NR=1

The plot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thick_of_It