This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I have some problems with that statement.
In the subtext, one of the defining features of the Golem is that it is a Jewish creation. If you want to imply that Hitler's rise was the result of him being backed by Jewish interests, please state so outright. Otherwise, a better metaphor might be 'a demon summoned' than 'a golem built'.
Before his rise to power, Hitler was definitely backed by German industrialists. They could see the specter of communism looming, and were seeing Hitler as the strong man who could defeat communism. Industrialists (at least the ones considered proper Germans by the Nazis) mostly fared much better under the Nazis than they would have under communist rule, especially once the anti-capitalist SA was out of the picture. (I guess they had more influence in the Weimar Republic, where they could not be arrested on a whim, but mostly they got to keep their riches as long as they were willing to build tanks when ordered.)
I am unsure how much international backing there was for Hitler in the Weimar time, outside of German expats. I mean, on the one hand he was likely seen as necessary against the commie threat, on the other hand the Western allies had fought a long and bloody war against an expansionist Germany.
Before Hitler became chancellor, communists were strictly anti-Nazi. While united in their disgust at parliamentary democracy, they both had very different and incompatible revolutions in mind for Germany, and both knew that the other side winning would result in their side getting purged and losing.
By contrast, in 1939, Stalin knew that a commie revolution in Germany was not in the cards. It is true that with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, he gave a ton of resource aid to Germany which enabled the Blitzkrieg. I am unsure how militarily sound that was as a strategy, in hindsight. I have a hard time imagining Western Allies to decide to enter a land war with Russia to rid the world of communism, so Hitlers defeat of France likely bought the USSR no security.
I am not sure if Nazi Germany ever got significant aid from the Western allies between 33 and 39. At the most, I think that the obligations under the Versailles treaty were not imposed, and he was allowed to amass troops about that treaties limitations.
Of course, both Western allies and the USSR were not in a position to fight a war against Germany in 1933, so Appeasement might have been the best strategy. As the old adage goes, diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice dog' while looking for a bigger stick.
This is true, but Marxists overstate its importance for obvious reasons, and this rubs off on normies who read textbooks written by people who read academic papers by Marxist historians. Germany was not a bourgeoisie-ruled society before WW1 - the Kaiserreich had a functional warrior-aristocracy of men who had von in their names, lived off inherited landed wealth, spent their youths as army officers, and if successful would move into the General Staff, politics or both. The pro-regime middle-class was what we would now call the PMC of civil servants, teachers, lawyers, doctors, Lutheran priests* etc. This PMC group plus rural voters were the base of the DNVP, which was the main right-wing party in the early Weimar Republic.
Hitler's key useful idiots were mostly aristocrats. von Papen had a classic aristocratic career of army followed by politics. von Schleicher and von Hindenberg were career generals. The others were PMC - Ludwig Kass (the Centre Party leader who convinced his party to vote for the Enabling Act) was a Catholic priest. You can argue about whether Hugenberg was PMC or an industrialist, but his background looks more PMC on balance - his father was a civil servant, he did a PhD in economics, worked as a civil servant for 17 years, worked as a salaried manager at Krupp's for 10 years (being made de facto CEO based on a personal intervention by the Kaiser), spent the money he made at Krupp's buying newspapers, and was a press baron by the time he became DNVP leader.
This is false. By 1928 the KPD reliably followed orders from Moscow, and whether Moscow wanted them to actually oppose the Nazis or not depended on the twists and turns of Stalin's foreign policy. During the critical period in 1932-3, Stalin was more worried about the democratic parties restoring a functional western-oriented Germany than he was about a Nazi takeover, so the KPD focussed on trying to take left-wing votes off the SPD and weakening the Weimar government by direct action (occasionally co-operating with Nazi SA or DNVP-aligned Stahlhelm to do so).
The KPD leadership had plans to flee to Moscow if it looked like they were losing. Most of them successfully got out, although party leader Ernst Thalmanm didn't.
More options
Context Copy link
It wasn't a wise strategy, but Stalin did not expect France to fall as quickly as it did -- nobody did.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link