From: zatavu-AT-excite.com
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 15:49:11 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: PLC: Plato/Marx/National Socialism



On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:25:59 -0400 (EDT),
phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu wrote:

>  
>  Woops. That subject heading should read "NationAL Socialism."
>  
>  On Mon, 17 Jul 2000, Ben B. Day wrote:
>  
>  > > On Mon, 17 Jul 2000 zatavu-AT-excite.com wrote:
>  > > ... from Raushning's book "The Voice of Destruction" (New York,
>  > > Putnam's, 1940) ...
>  > 
>  > Although it's not impossible that Hitler said this, this is a /very/
>  > suspect source (even though I believe it was sometimes relied on during
>  > the Nuremburg trials). Rauschning was a defector who fled Germany in
1935.
>  > His book was first published in French in 1939, and subsequently
>  > translated into English the next year. These are all supposedly
>  > conversations that Rauschning had personally with Hitler, which he was
>  > "recollecting."
>  > In short: these statements are completely unverifiable, and drawn up by
>  > a political opponent of Hitlers, claiming to quote, verbatum,
conversation
>  > held years prior.
>  > I think that, due to these circumstances, one would definitely have to
>  > produce independent corroborating evidence to support a claim as to
>  > Hitler's political influences (about which he would, presumably, not
>  > remain silent in public venues, i.e. outside of private conversation).
>  
>  Yes, Rauschning's Hitler was particularly pleasing to the
>  American right because it created links between "Bolshevism" and Nazism
>  apparently found nowhere else.   I am also pretty sure that Rauschning's 
>  book was published in the U.S. as a consequence of conservative influence
>  and funds, and I am not sure that his "letters" from Hitler are actually
>  archived anywhere, but I didn't want to get into all that without
>  going back into the library.
>  
>  Also, I could kick myself for forgetting to add, in my last post to Troy,
>  that whatever Rauschning says Hitler said, it is clear that the public
>  Hitler continually villified Marxism as a degenerate jewish materialism,
>  which deflected attention away from race conflict to class conflict. And
>  the manner in which the Nazi state was set up reflects this public view,
>  not any private admiration for Bolshevism as a source of National
>  socialism.

This is assuming public rhetoric used to move people toward a
certain end in any way actually
reflects the philosophical foundations of one's beliefs.

An example: Pat Buchanan is commonly seen as an ultra-conservative.
Certainly his public
rhetoric seems to indicate that (with the possible exception of his stance
on free trade). However,
(and this then goes back to the roots of his stance on free trade) I was
watching him talk to the
editors of USA Today a few years back, and I actually heard Pat Buchanan say
that he was
opposed to the free market system of economics. Buchanan instead favors some
form of
socialism, an economy controled by the federal government, in trade with
other countries as well
as within national borders. His economic policies sound more like
ultra-liberalism than
ultra-conservatism, even if his social policies are clearly
ultra-conservative. Buchanan has even
recently proudly proclaimed the support of Marxists. But we really don't
hear a lot about these
things. No. We hear instead the ultra-conservative things, like opposition
to abortion, etc. because
those are the things that will get people behind him; those are the things
that will move people. If
Hitler was nothing, he was a master rhetoritician. He knew what would get
people moving. He
knew if he could get people focused on some group as an "enemy" that he
could distract them
from other real problems. He attacked communists not because they were
communists, but
because those communists who had not become Nazis were threats to him, and
he opposed
anybody who was a threat to him, as any good dictator would.

Troy Camplin 





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