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int_19hlast Monday at 9:47 PM1 replyview on HN

It's impossible to use in a neutral way because all such parties are inevitably authoritarian brand of socialist, and any time you have authoritarian nationalism, crimes against humanity follow.

The point you're trying to make here is the difference between Hitler and the Strasser brothers, which is valid, but irrelevant in this context - if the latter had won, the pile of bodies they'd produce would still be immense.


Replies

hagbard_clast Monday at 10:33 PM

Socialism and authoritarianism go hand in glove so that is not the difficulty here. It is also not the combination of authoritarianism and nationalism which leads to crimes against humanity, for that any form of authoritarianism - nationalist, internationalist, religious, secular - is sufficient. Nor am I in any way relating to Hitler or Strasser, what I am referring to is an ideology which aims at implementing socialism at a national level, within the context of a nation state, without the aim of implementing socialism outside of the national borders. For that you do not need to refer to Hitler or Strasser or anyone related to the German party which ended up under the control of Hitler.

This is what I meant when I said it is close to impossible to use the term in a 'neutral' way, the nearly inevitable association with what happened in and around Germany when the NSDAP came into power.