At American Thinker, Andrea Widburg brings some historical clarity to the word “Nazi”
as it is being bandied about in the reporting on Russia and Ukraine:
The word “Nazi” is suddenly
everywhere. This isn’t the modern habit of calling everyone we don’t
like a “Nazi.” Instead, because of events in Ukraine, the word is
showing up in the news, where it has real-world ramifications. . . .
. . . Communism and fascism are the
two bastard children of the socialist ideology. Communism calls for the
destruction of private property, with the government owning and controlling the
means of production, ostensibly for the people’s benefit. Fascism allows
private property to exist, provided that the property owners understand that
they have no rights separate from the state. Both are totalitarian systems that
call themselves “democracies” because people are required to vote for
pre-approved chosen candidates. These governments are inevitably repressive.
Most of the world’s governments
today are fascist. All power rests in the government, which allows private
property to exist but subordinates that property to government control. In
China, the control is militaristic and obvious. In Europe, through the EU, it’s
bureaucratic and someone more subtle. The current American system—a dominant
political party disdainful of the Constitution working hand-in-glove with
massive corporate, technocratic interests—is increasingly fascist.
Not all fascists, though, are
Nazis. The National Socialist Party in Germany added a few twists to baseline
fascist totalitarianism: A quest for world domination and racial obsessions.
These two factors led Nazis to believe it was their right to enslave all
inferior races except for the Jews, whom they intended to exterminate entirely.
. . .
In the fight for control in
Ukraine, both governments are European-style right wing (i.e., totalitarian)
governments and both are nationalists. Putin is showing an unnerving yen for
regional domination. However, neither the governments nor their troops are
Nazis, although each has the potential to be.
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