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Oh no he didn't! Rothbard on Holocaust

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O_Brien Posted: Fri, Nov 6 2009 9:20 AM

But the Commies were able to use their extensive ideological and propaganda machine during that era to somehow link Nazi persecution of Jews to racism, and with doctrines of racial superiority and inferiority


RLY?

How can you trust this man with anything?  It's not about being racist, it's about being a liar.

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O_Brien:

But the Commies were able to use their extensive ideological and propaganda machine during that era to somehow link Nazi persecution of Jews to racism, and with doctrines of racial superiority and inferiority


RLY?

How can you trust this man with anything?  It's not about being racist, it's about being a liar.

You have openly called the joint founder member of the LvMI a liar and unless you provide any evidence of this the thread will remain graveyarded.

The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.

Yours sincerely,

Physiocrat

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 9:37 AM

Ok, here's the evidence:

Read my lips.

Holocaust was linked with racism.

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O_Brien:

Ok, here's the evidence:

Read my lips.

Holocaust was linked with racism.

Please show me where Rothbard denies this outright.

If you cannot do this in your next reply I will forever ignore you on this topic and the thread will be forever graveyarded.

The atoms tell the atoms so, for I never was or will but atoms forevermore be.

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Conza88 replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 9:43 AM

"Yo, can I get sum context and a source, up in dii hiz houuwse"

Thanks.

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O_Brien:

Ok, here's the evidence:

Read my lips.

Holocaust was linked with racism.

Ah, the impressive, "because I said so" argument, backed up with an implicit, "come on, everybody knows it!".

"the obligation to justice is founded entirely on the interests of society, which require mutual abstinence from property" -David Hume
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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 9:49 AM

He clearly says that racism and extermination of Jews were linked only by Communist propaganda. There is no other way one can interpret this sentence.

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DD5 replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 9:56 AM
Source??????????
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You DO realize that Rothbard himself was Jewish, correct?

Besides, can we get a source or some context?

Periodically the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

Thomas Jefferson

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 10:03 AM

I've took this sentence from "RACE! THAT MURRAY BOOK" at http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/ir/Ch75.html As far as I see it, if he considers Holocaust racist he should have no problem with any kind of propaganda "linking" them. But he talks in length about "fabrication", "Commies" etc. That means he doesn't think that "final solution" was somehow connected with views of racial superiority/inferiority.

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The quote does not make Rothbard dismisable when it comes to economics, but Rothbard is in the wrong in this case.  He writes:

In point of fact, however, it should be clear that Hitler and the Nazis did not persecute Jews because they believed Jews to be inferior in intelligence. And as for blacks, there were too few blacks residing in Europe for the Nazis to bother about, much less persecute. Where pre-World War II racialism was politically relevant was, e.g., in immigration-cutting policies in the United States, and in sterilization of welfare mothers as part of various state welfare programs. Both of these policies, however, could be and were supported on other than racialist grounds.

He is, to an extent, correct.  The Jews were not persecuted based on inferior intelligence, but he is incorrect in assuming that there were few or no racial factors involved.  Jews were perceived to be inferior just because (all one needs to do is read Mein Kampf).  There was an obvious hate of Jews within Hitler and the leading Nazi party members (not all of them).  A lot of the general hatred was "politically fueled" in the sense that it was fashionable at the time to hate Jews (because Hitler and leading Nazi party members did).

But the Commies were able to use their extensive ideological and propaganda machine during that era to somehow link Nazi persecution of Jews to racism, and with doctrines of racial superiority and inferiority. In that way, the Commies were able to bully or convert all manner of liberals and leftists, including those ex-Trotskyites and liberals who would much later become neoconservatives. This left the conservatives, who were the least amenable to Marxist influence, but who in turn were bullied into submission by being smeared savagely as "Hitlerite" for any expression of racialist views.

There is no doubt that the Soviets used Germany's racist war programs (including the mass murder of Soviet Jews and Soviet Non-Jews... or, were the massacres in Western Russia of hundreds of thousands of Soviets and Soviet Jews not racially motivated?), but I think the use of the word "somehow" is incorrect.  The deny that Germany's motives in its genocide of gypsies, homosexuals, Jews and Serbs had to do with racism and a general superiority complex is being intellectually dishonest and a poor historian.

Claiming that the Germans, as a people, hated them would be wrong.  But, there's no doubt that Hitler and his cronies did feel hate towards them for whatever reason (not just political), and that their programs were shaped around their beliefs.

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O_Brien:
hat means he doesn't think that "final solution" was somehow connected with views of racial superiority/inferiority.

And the problem with that, if true, is?

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what Mises thought :

The Nazis simply call everything that is contrary to their own doctrines and tenets Jewish and communist. When executing hostages in the occupied countries they always declare that they have punished Jews and communists. They call the President of the United States a Jew and a communist. He who is not prepared to surrender to them is by that token unmistakably a Jew. In the Nazi dictionary the terms Jew and communist are synonymous with non-Nazi.

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 10:24 AM

It's an unfact.

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nirgrahamUK:

The Nazis simply call everything that is contrary to their own doctrines and tenets Jewish and communist. When executing hostages in the occupied countries they always declare that they have punished Jews and communists. They call the President of the United States a Jew and a communist. He who is not prepared to surrender to them is by that token unmistakably a Jew. In the Nazi dictionary the terms Jew and communist are synonymous with non-Nazi.

This only goes to show that there was a connection between Jewish and "inferiority", not between Judaism and Nazism.  He termed them Jews because he felt, and knew that many Germans felt, that Jews were racially inferior to the Germans.

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O_Brien:

It's an unfact.

Is it an unfact, or a difference of opinion?

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the fact is that crazy nazi aryans desire racial superiority, they necessarily go about doing devlilish things to achieve it. do they seek to achieve it because without their action it is not 'achieved'? they may say to themselves 'the jews are inferior' but do they demonstrate that in their actions? really their actions are so as to make them inferior...

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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nirgrahamUK:

the fact is that crazy nazi aryans desire racial superiority, they necessarily go about doing devlilish things to achieve it. do they seek to achieve it because without their action it is not 'achieved'? they may say to themselves 'the jews are inferior' but do they demonstrate that in their actions? really their actions are so as to make them inferior...

I don't follow, sorry.  I'm not sure it's making sense.

____________________

 

In any case, I think that Rothbard misworded what he wrote.  It should be clear that the reason why Germany underwent the final solution was not just out of hate for Jews.  The Jews were persecuted because the hate existed before Hitler came to power.  Hitler harnessed this hate to create a common enemy to bring the German people behind him (and to justify war with the Soviets).  What I think Rothbard meant to claim was that the final solution was politically motivated in this sense.  I'm not sure that he is denying that there was hate involved.

The Soviets, obviously, used this to bring their own people behind them as to have a unified front against the Third Reich.  There was obviously a lot of Soviet-instilled hate within Red Army soldiers once they began to occupy German territory in 1944 and 1945.

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Jonathan M. F. Catalán:
This only goes to show that there was a connection between Jewish and "inferiority", not between Judaism and Nazism.

Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements, including Nazism.  This ideology stems from the great [sic] mutualist Proudhon, and later Marx.

Proudhon:
The Jew is the enemy of the human race. This race must be sent back to Asia, or exterminated.

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 10:35 AM

Unfact it is. All the lebensraum thing is based upon Aryan superiority. It's not 'separated but equal'.

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did the aryans see themselves in their present time as a master race, surrounded by inferiors?

or did they see themselves surrounded by others, their enemies, who they would render inferior?

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Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 10:38 AM

liberty student:
Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements

Are you talking about religion or nationality?

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liberty student:

Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements, including Nazism.  This ideology stems from the great [sic] mutualist Proudhon, and later Marx.

Well, the Jews were linked to socialist movements like Communism (largely because of Trotsky).  There was a widespread hatreds of Jews in Germany ever since the Crusades (largely because Jews made of the banking class, and so many crusaders who had borrowed money to fund their operations in the Holy Land were indebted to them), and especially during the early 20th century it is clear that there was a lot of hate directed towards the Jewish people by a good deal of German "intellectuals".  The Jews were linked as enemies of the Nazi socialist movement because the hatred of Jews already existed.  They made a convinient common enemy.  In that sense, like I said, Murray Rothbard is right.  But, there was an obvious racial link, even if the final solution was all-around politically motivated (I am not sure how true the idea that many Germans did not even know of the final solution until the end of the war is, though).

But, although the massacres were politically driven as a whole, individual massacres were carried out on a more inhumane basis (due to race).  I would suggest reading the book Hitler's Shadow War, by Donald McKale, and also Masters of Death by Richard Rhodes.  The latter focuses on the SS-Einsantzgruppen in Eastern Europe, and especially the Soviet Union, and it follows the patterns of the massacres which took place during the German invasion (mostly focusing on 1941 and 1942).

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nirgrahamUK:

did the aryans see themselves in their present time as a master race, surrounded by inferiors?

Yes.

or did they see themselves surrounded by others, their enemies, who they would render inferior?

Both, to an extent.  The Germans dehumanized their enemies because the hate towards certain people already existed.  They just harnessed that hate and magnified it.

 

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Jonathan M. F. Catalán:
In that sense, like I said, Murray Rothbard is right.  But, there was an obvious racial link

You keep posting, but I can't figure out what you are contributing.  The dispute is over what Rothbard is saying, and is he *guilty* of a sin of omission.

I appreciate the history lesson, but it is all just boilerplate to the actual discussion.

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O_Brien:

liberty student:
Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements

Are you talking about religion or nationality?

Don't understand the question.  Jews are not a nation.

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DD5 replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 11:01 AM
liberty student:
Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements, including Nazism
How then do you contemplate on the fact that the entire Zionist movement at that time was ideologically rooted in socialism? The State of Israel was itself founded on socialist ideals, although it never adopted full socialism.
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you are correct DD5. no 'all' but 'almost all'.

anyhow. back to the topic.

some more Mises

The laws promulgated by the Nazis for discrimination against

Jews and the offspring of Jews have nothing at all to do with racial

considerations proper. A law discriminating against people of a

certain race would first have to enumerate with biological and

physiological exactitude the characteristic features of the race con-

cerned. It would then have to decree the legal procedure and

proper formalities by which the presence or absence of these char-

acteristics could be duly established for every individual. The val-

dly executed final decisions of such procedures would then have

to form the basis of the discrimination in each case. The Nazis have

chosen a different way. They say, it is true, that they want to dis-

criminate not against people professing the Jewish religion but

against people belonging to the Jewish race. Yet they define the

members of the Jewish race as people professing the Jewish religion

or descended from people professing the Jewish religion. The char-

acteristic legal feature of the .Jewish race is, in the so-called racial

legislation of Nuremberg, the membership of the individual con-

cerned or of his ancestors in the religious community of Judaism.

If a law pretends that it tends toward a discrimination against the

shortsighted but defines shortsightedness as the quality of being

bald, people using the generally accepted terminology would not

call it a law to the disadvantage of the shortsighted but of the bald.

If Americans want to discriminate against Negroes, they do not go

to the archives in order to study the racial affiliation of the people

concerned; they search the individual's body for traces of Negro

descent. Negroes and whites differ in racial-i.e., bodily-features;

but it is impossible to tell a Jewish German from a non-Jewish one

by any racial characteristic.

 

 

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John Ess replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 11:07 AM

DD5:
liberty student:
Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements, including Nazism
How then do you contemplate on the fact that the entire Zionist movement at that time was ideologically rooted in socialism? The State of Israel was itself founded on socialist ideals, although it never adopted full socialism.

Also... Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were Jews.  As were a disproportionate number of officials in the Soviet Union.

 

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DD5:
How then do you contemplate on the fact that the entire Zionist movement at that time was ideologically rooted in socialism? The State of Israel was itself founded on socialist ideals, although it never adopted full socialism.

The state of Israel is not the Jewish race.  It is a state.  States employ socialism full or in part.

 

 

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 11:52 AM

nirgrahamUK:

They say, it is true, that they want to dis-

criminate not against people professing the Jewish religion but

against people belonging to the Jewish race.

I don't think there were lots of converts back then.

 

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so what? i dont follow your point....

Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid

Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring

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O_Brien replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 11:56 AM

So discrimination against practitioners of Judaism was effective discrimination against Jewish nation. It wasn't 'bald and shortsighted' case.

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More histrionic whining about Rothbard.

Yawn.

Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...

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O_Brien:
So discrimination against practitioners of Judaism was effective discrimination against Jewish nation. It wasn't 'bald and shortsighted' case.

except that it was, if an aryan started praying at a synagogue. JEW.

if a baldman went to the opticians, SHORTSIGHTED.

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Arvin replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 2:55 PM

There is a difference between the actual prosecution (which might or might not have been racially motivated) and the popular opinion in germany at the time (which might or might not have been racist). I'm no expert on the topic, so I'm not going to say anything, but I just wanted to say that Rothbard might have meant that the prosecution (by the state) had other motivations than race.

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The point that Rothbard is making is that the Nazis, whom many were Jews themselves, didn't go after the Jews because the Jews were Jews. They went after the Jews because they blamed the Jews for the wrongs of society and the economy, and because the Jews, they believed, had taken over industry unjustly. In other words, the Nazis used the Jews as scapegoats for the problems that the state had created. Hell, even academia now admits that Hitler was part Jew. But according to the Left, Jews, blacks, and other minorities cannot be racist. They certainly cannot be racist against themselves. And any discrimination against whites is called "reverse racism." Thus, it doesn't make any sense that Nazis were racist, although they used racist propaganda for their own purposes.

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I remember what my grade 10 history teacher said.  He had read Mein Kampf and concluded that the NAZI Party hated jews for the simple reason that they were wealthy and commercial and association with or birth from such people implies an adoption or inheritance of these qualities.  Prudhon was as surely as the sun shines the same.  Hence, Mises' and Rothbard are easily understood.

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liberty student:
Jews were considered the enemies of all socialist movements, including Nazism.  This ideology stems from the great [sic] mutualist Proudhon, and later Marx.

Marx didn't hate jews. In his work On the Jewish Question, he believes that Judaism is a devolution of religion in accordance with the coming revolution. Christians are more intuned with socialist values but yet still cling to religion in many European countries [ America being an exception due to its state and religion divide ] So in order for the Jews to be apart of the communist revolution they are going to have to go through Christianity then onto a 'state worship'

'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael

 

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Marko replied on Fri, Nov 6 2009 5:51 PM

The Nazis indeed never thought of Jews as inferior. Indeed quite the contrary. According to the Nazi doctrine the Jews were so dangerous because they were so capable. They were the insidious evil geniuses one always has to be at guard against. It was the Slavs and the Gypsies the Nazis considered inferior. In fact according to their narrative the Slavs only ever achieved anything when ruled by Germans or by Jews. So in a sense the Jews were given parity with the Aryan master race. Albeit as its twisted and corrupt nemessis. But certainly not inferior by mental capacity.

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