Is it true that Americans are to this day afraid of socialism?

[Bofferbrauer2]

ArnoldRimmer said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

That's fascism, not socialism. They just called themselves socialist to get the rather large vote share from socialist while they were hunting down the members

Sorry, that's just not true. Nowadays we think very different about them, but the Nazis did indeed consider themselves to be lefties and socialists.

For example, there's a famous quote by Goebbels "Der Idee der NSDAP entsprechend sind wir die deutsche Linke. Nichts ist uns verhasster als der rechtsstehende nationale Besitzbürgerblock." Some people in the german left are actually trying to make it illegal to even mention that quote.

And Hitler himself said "Wir sind Sozialisten, wir sind Feinde der heutigen kapitalistischen Wirtschaftsordnung für die Ausbeutung der wirtschaftlich Schwachen, mit seinen unlauteren Gehälter, mit seinen Auswertung eines Menschen nach Reichtum und Besitz, anstatt Verantwortung und Leistung, und wir alle sind entschlossen dieses System unter allen Bedingungen zu zerstören."

And one can find quite a number of such quotes by famous Nazis that sound like they were said by some present-day leftie.

Bofferbrauer2 said:

They even had a slur for those who actually believed they had any socialism in the party by calling them beefsteaks (brown on the outside, but red inside, as in the colors of the NSDAP and Socialism respectively)

That is the first time I've ever heard something like that. Despite coming from germany myself, where there's always at least one documentary about the Nazi regime running on TV, no matter when you switch on.

Since you made me curious, I just looked that term up. Because obviously, "Beefsteak Nazi" is not a german phrase. As it turns out, there's an entry about it in Wikipedia, but strangely, only in the english one, nowhere else. Which is strange, because there's like a million articles in the german Wikipedia just about anything that is even remotely Nazi-related.

The english Wikipedia claims that "Beefsteak Nazi" is a translation of the german "Rindersteak Nazi", which sounds plausible. But if one googles that german phrase, one basically doesn't find a single mention. Looking the term up in Google NGRAM (A page that creates charts showing how popular certain words or phrases were over time) doesn't yield a single entry as well (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content="Rindersteak+Nazi"&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&case_insensitive=on&corpus=31).

And looking at the references in the "Beefsteak Nazi" Wikipedia page, the only reference they mention from back in the Nazi days is a book by an author named Heiden (who wasn't even living in germany back then). All other references are from the 1990s or later. There doesn't seem to be a single clear proof of the Nazis having used that phrase. So even if Heiden did indeed once witness someone saying say something like that, it definitely wasn't a widespred slur and most definitely wasn't said by a high-ranking Nazi, otherwise there'd be more evidence.

I can't believe you fell for their Propaganda there. What Hitler said back then was to get the vote of the socialists, not what they actually believed. Hitler said himself in 1938 "unsere übernommene Bezeichnung des Sozialismus hat nichts mit Marxistischem Sozialismus in Gemein" (Our Adopted Term of Socialism has nothing to do with Marxist Socialism), pointing straight at the fact that they just used the term without believing or acting in it. They just called themselves socialists and a worker's party to attract votes.

Also, considering what Hitler and Goebbels said, they also always said they didn't want any war. And since you're German: "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!"

Don't look just what people say, look what they actually do. I thought in an era with a serial lier like Trump people would check if what they say is actually true, but apparently not. But hey, we can always do that now. For instance, Hitler and the NSDAP:

• Allied with the big Industrials like the Krupp family, promising them to reduce worker protection and wages, something no actual socialist would ever do or even just propose!
• Outlawed trade unions, again something no socialist would ever do.
• Lowered, then froze the wages, again something no real socialist would ever propose or do.
• Send the politicians from the socialist and the communist party straight to the concentration camps as soon as they gained the power. Before they got elected, they locked them up, making it impossible for them to show up for elections.

These actions are all tenants of autocratic right-wing politics and have absolutely zero to do with socialism in any form.

Röhm (and by extension the entire Sturmabteilung) got not just killed because he was gay, but because most of them were recruited from the socialists they attracted with their branding. During the night of the long knives, the Nazis killed off any trace of socialism that they still might have had in them. Since many of the SA were recruited from socialists but none of the SS (which were fervent nationalists and "Völkisch", Himmler had no problems whatsoever to persuade Hitler killing of the entire branch and Hitler no qualms to do so in one fell swoop.

Otto and Gregor Strasser did much work trying to tie the Nationalist and Antisemitic views of Hitler and his supporters with the Socialism in their name, but it became apparent that the party was neither socialist of anything good for the workers, hence why Otto Strasser left the party in 1930 and why his brother Gregor got killed in 1934 during the Night of the long knives.

Long story short, the NSDAP might have started out as a socialist party, but once Hitler got involved after 1923, that quickly faded away and the last traces of socialism in the party were purged for good during the night of the long knives.