Talk:Nazism/Revolutionary not Reactionary

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This is a catalog of all references to the revolutionary character of Fascism and Nazism. Nazism is in no way reactionary. This is in preparation for removing the term "reactionary" from the Nazism article. Ernst Nolte wrote that Fascism is reactionary. Modern research has disputed Nolte’s thesis.

I know that this will cause a huge uproar that is why placing all the facts up front for this coming battle.

  • Adolf Hitler wanted to call his party The Social Revolutionary Party. See Nazi Party
  • Giovanni Gentile and Benito Mussolini attacked reactionary policies, particularly monarchism, in the Doctrine of Fascism of 1932. They wrote "History doesn't travel backwards. The fascist doctrine has not taken De Maistre as its prophet. Monarchical absolutism is of the past, and so is ecclesiolatry." They further elaborated in the Doctrine that fascism "is not reactionary but revolutionary" .
  • In Der Fuehrer, Konrad Heiden, the first biographer of Hitler and the National Socialist movement writes:
    • "Rohm coined the slogan that there must be a ‘second revolution’, this time , not against the Left, but against the Right; in his diary, Goebbels agreed with him. On April 18, he maintained that this second revolution was being discussed ‘everywhere among the people’; in reality, he said, this only meant that the first one was not yet ended. ‘Now we shall soon have to settle with the reaction. The revolution must nowhere call a halt." Pg 596.
  • Konrad Heiden also writes of the New of the Nazis
    • "The new claimants: A youth creating for itself a new state. A new species of man....pg 145.
    • "...Hitler seized on it in his own way. He led the uprooted proletarians and the uprooted intellectuals together. And this gives rise to a new man: "Neither of the two could exist without the other. Both belong together, and from these two a new man must crystallize--the man of the coming German Reich". pg 147
    • "He (AH) wants, once and forever, to do away with the old ruling caste; with petrified legitimists, and hollow dignitaries in gold-braided uniforms." pg 149.

This doesn't sound reactionary to me.

  • In their Nazi Songs they sing against "Reaction".
    • Flag high, ranks closed,

The S.A. marches with silent solid steps.
Comrades shot by the Red Front and reaction
march in spirit with us in our ranks

    • We are the army of the swastika,

Lift high the red banners!
We want to build German labour's
Road to liberty!
The Nazis did not call themselves at all reactionary but revolutionary and their songs are revolutionary in character.

  • In the Nazi 25-point program notice that they want to replace Roman Law with Germanic law. This is NOT reactionary but revolutionary
    • Before Austria became a republic, the DNSAP (Deutsche Nationalsozialistische Arbeiterpartei), proclaimed this program in May 1918:
...the German National Socialist Workers' Party is not a party exclusively for labourers; it stands for the interests of every decent and honest enterprise. It is a liberal (freiheitlich) and strictly folkic party fighting against all reactionary efforts, clerical, feudal and capitalistic privileges;...

The heritage and roots of Nazism was against Reaction. They knew what the meaning of the word was and they were not that.

  • Nazi writers in Germany saw in Napoleon a harbinger of national socialism. The Nazi writer Franz Kemper wrote in the introduction of the republication of Konstantin Frantz's book, Masse oder Volk of 1852, that "The rise of power of Louis Napoleon is the only historical parallel to the National Socialist revolution of our day". Another Nazi writer, Michael Freund, wrote that Napoleon was the only real revolutionist in 1848. Still another German National Socialist, K. H. Bremer, realized that Napoleon found the real motivating force of revolution in the social question rather than the constitutional question of the republicans of 1848. "His great aim was to establish a political system based upon the unity of all classes and of all interests in France". (10). This was the answer to marxist socialism. Napoleon was the first to develop a national socialism. From (and references are there too) User talk:WHEELER/National Socialism/draft

Look their own writers called it a Revolution.

"We are a liberty-loving nationalistic party that fights energetically against reactionary tendencies as well as feudal, clerical, or capitalistic priviledges and all alien influences." (1)


  • The Conservative Revolutionaries were trying to develop a New Nationalism.
    • "New Nationalism" is used 10 times in the book The Conservative Revolution in the Weimar Republic.
    • "Once traditional models of nationalism had been discarded, the difficulty of establishing a new nationalism encouraged a flight into a distant mythical past." Pg 33.
    • "but it also contains the vision of a new order of values which casts aside moral values in favour of ‘naturalistic’ ones." Pg 42
    • "This state will be radically different not only from Weimar but also from the old Kaiserreich, for nationalism is not reactionary but revolutionary. Pg 76.
    • "…the nationalist’s path is revolutionary…" pg 81
    • "Both Conservative Revolutionaries and Nazis knew disputes over the meaning of socialism, and both claimed to have transcended reaction and traditional nationalism". Pg
  • A famous picture shows Hitler admiring a bust of Nietzsche at the Archive in Weimar. Conservative Revolution, Pg 131
  • A conservative revolutionary, Richard Oehler, "Nietzsche himself cleared the way for National Socialism, declares Oehler, and much of Oehler’s book is taken up with juxtapositions of quotations from Nietzsche and Hitler with the aim of showing that they both wanted the same things." Pg 131

Nietzsche wanted to destroy the Old Order and replace it all with a New Order. Clearly, Hitler and the rest were influenced greatly by Nietzsche. This is not reactionary. .

  • Hermann Rauschning’s definition of fascism, (This by a man who was there and saw it and talked with Hitler):
    • "National Socialism is an unquestionably genuine revolutionary movement in the sense of a final acheivement on a vaster scale of the "mass rising" dreamed of by Anarchists and Communists", Revolution of Nihilism, pg 19.

"It would be a great error to regard fascism as a counterrevolutionary movement directed against the communists, as was that of the reactionaries against the liberals during the first half of the nineteenth century. Fascism is something unique in modern history, in that it is a revolutionary movement of the middle class directed, on the one hand, against the great banks and big business and , on the other hand, against the revolutionary demands of the working class. It repudiates democracy as a political system in which the bankers, capitalists, and socialists find free scope for their activities, and it favors a dictatorship that will eliminate these elements from the life of the nation. Fascism proclaims a body of doctrines that are not entirely new; there are no "revelations" in history." ‘’Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism’’

  • In Fascism by Prof. Noel O’Sullivan writes that "Thus extreme nationalism, for example, is a characteristic of reactionary groups like the Action Francaise, which was in no sense a fascist movement." Pg 40.
    • He bases this and concurs concurs with H. W. Schneider, Making the Fascist State, 1928, ch 1, pp 13-14.

Ernst Nolte gets this wrong. Action Fransaise was reactionary and no way fascist or a precursor of fascism

  • Prof. Noel O’Sullivan writes that it is a Marxist definition to call Fascism reactionary.
    • "The Marxist analysis began with the definition of fascism laid down by Stalin’s Comintern in 1933. According to Comintern doctrine, 'Fascism is the open, terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chavinist and most imperialist elements of finance capital'." Pg 17.

Calling Fascism, "reactionary" is Marxist terminology which they called anybody that opposed them "reactionary" and "fascist". The facts do not bear out this out. Nazism is just as revolutionary as Communism was.

  • In Fascism by Noel O’Sullivan talks of Nolte’s work in pages 12-16 and points out his errors.
  • In Fascism by Noel O’Sullivan writes:
    • "He hoped, in particular, that Nazi institutions such as the Labour Service would reintegrate the physical and spiritual sides of human nature, in a way which would produce the 'new man' . Pg 142.
    • "The present mode of analysis, by contrast with those just mentioned, makes it possible not only to identify fascism as a a truly revolutionary development in western political experience, but also to provide a precise, non-ideological specification of what the vague word revolution means in the connection.
    • "Fascism was a revolutionary development, in the sense that it deliberately and explicitly set out to destroy the state concept upon which the western style of limited politics had been based for the previous five centuries and to replace it with something very different, viz. a ‘movement’. In this respect Mussolini and Hitler were alike. Both adopted and implemented a style of politics in which there was no intrinsic regard for legality; in which state and society were to be submerged in one all-pervasive movement; in which all constitutional restraints upon power were excluded, in principle at least; and in which the nation, as conceived of by fascism, was an essentially fluid entity whose territorial limits were to be determined solely by the ideological fanaticism of the fascist leaders." . Pg 39.
  • Alan Bullock in Hitler, a study in Tyranny, has in the index, the word New Order. He has ten references to both Hitler’s and Mussolini’s New Order.
    • …"the revolutionary impulse in Nazism was diverted into challenging the existing order outside Germany’s frontiers and the creation of a European New Order, in which the big jobs and the privileges would go to the Herrenvolk". Pg 313.
    • "What the New Order would mean in practice..." Pg 659.

Having a “New Order” is definitely NOT reactionary!

  • Stanley G. Payne in A History of Fascism, 1914-1945
    • "All of Hitler’s political ideas had their origin in the Enlightenment"
      • This is largely the thesis of Marcel Deat, in Revolution francaise and the German revolution referenced in A History of Fascism, pg 203.
    • "National Socialism in fact constituted a unique and radical kind of modern revolutionism." Pg 204
    • He quotes form Karl D. Bracher who wrote Zeitgeschichtliche Controversen um Faschismus Totalistarismus Demokratie (1976)
    1. A supreme new leadership cult of the Fuhrer as the artist genius
    2. The effort to develop a new Social Darwinist structure of government and society.
    3. The replacement of traditional nationalism by racial revolution.
    4. Development of the first new system of state-regulated national socialism in economics.
    5. Implementation of the organic status revolution for a new national Volksgemeinschaft.
    6. The goal of a completely new kind of racial imperialism on a world scale.
    7. Stress on new forms of advanced technology in the use of mass media and mass mobilization, a cult of new technological efficiency, new military tactics and technology and emphasis on aerial and automative technology.
    • Prof. Payne quotes from another prof. Jacques Ellul to wit:
"Informed observers of the period between the wars are convinced that National Socialism was an important and authentic revolution. De Rougemont points out how ‘’’the Hitler and the Jacobin regimes were identical at every level’’’. R. Labrousse, an authority on the French Revolution, confirms that, to cite only two opinions….
"The practise of 'classifying', and thus dismissing, Nazism should stop, for it represents a real Freudian repression on the part of intellectuals who refuse to recognize what it was. Others lump together Nazism, dictatorship, massacres, concentration camps, racism, and Hitler’s folly. That about covers the subject. ‘’’Nazism was a great revolution:’’’ against the bureaucracy, against senility, in behalf of youth; against the entrenched hierarchies, against capitalism, against the petit-bourgeios mentality, against comfort and security, against the consumer society, against traditional morality; for the liberation of instinct, desire, passions, hatred of cops (yes, indeed!), the will to power and the creation of a higher order of freedom." Pg 205.
  • The reactionary philosophers are NEVER referenced either by Mussolini, Hitler or their compatriots nor by the conservative revolutionaries. The ideas of the reactionary philosophers, Edmund Burke, de Maistre, de Bonald, and others are nowhere in any of the intellectual heritage of Nazism or Fascism.
  • Prof Zeev Sternhell writes in The Birth of Fascist Ideology,
    • "Fascism rebelled against modernity inasmuch as modernity was identified with the rationalism, optimism, and humanism of the eighteenth century, but it was not a reactionary or and anti revolutionary movement in the Maurrassian sense of the term. Fascism presented itself as a revolution of another kind, a revolution that sought to destroy the existing political order and to uproot its theoretical and moral foundations but that at the same time wished to preserve all the achievments of modern technology." pg 7.
  • Finally, Adolf Hitler said, We are the full counterpart of the French Revolution".
  • Goebbels, mirroring Katzanzakis, spoke that Naziism had another, more obvious and direct, function. In his radio broadcasts in the last days, he said:
"The bomb-terror spares the dwellings of neither rich nor poor; before the labor offices of total war the last class barriers have had to go down...Together with the monuments of culture there crumble also the last obstacles to the fulfillment of our revolutionary task. Now that everything is in ruins, we are forced to rebuild Europe. In the past, private possessions tied us to a bourgeois restraint. Now the bombs, instead of killing all Europeans, have only smashed the prison walls that kept them captive...In trying to destroy Europe's future, the enemy has only succeeded in smashing its past; and with that, everything old and outworn has gone." (Quoted in H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, New York, The MacMillan Co., 1947. pp 50-51 as quoted in Fr. Seraphim Rose Nihilism, The Root of the Revolution of the Modern Age, pg 77.)

Is it not funny that the word "revolutionary" appears nowhere in the articles of Fascism or Nazism. I tried to put the word in there and it has all been reverted. Funny, how Hitler and Mussolini both use the word to describe themselves.

There are many reasons why Nazism is NOT reactionary and never was. This is not original scholarship but the recognition of O’Sullivan and Payne and their scholarship. Hermann Rauschning and J. Salwyn Schapiro, Zeev Sternhell, and Erik von Kuehnelt back up this conclusion. I have professors across the political spectrum. Each confirming Fascist revolutionary character.

Nazism is NOT reactionary.

[edit] Nationalism

  • In 1789, Nationalism was a revolutionary tool of the French revolution. It was a sign of the left.
  • When revolutionary socialism, i.e. Marxism appeared which was "international socialism", in 1848, Nationalism became a rallying cry for the conservatives and reactionaries and became a sign of the right.
  • But under the Habsburg monarchy, nationalism reappeared as a revolutionary force to dismantle and breakaway from the Dual monarchy in 1898. Nationalism was a tool of revolution therefore it became leftist in character and method.
    • Confusion reigns because of the subtle shifts in the meaning and no one picked up on it because no one knows the whole general history of national socialism because we only concentrate on the most profound aspect of it.
    • Nationalism swung back and forth like a pendulum.
    • If it swang one way, it could also swing back. And no one recognizes this.
  • Nationalism has always existed. It is used by the left and the right. It is not the exclusive domain of the right. In modern times, it was first of all leftist in use.
  • As Zeev Sternhell pointed out that WWI "opened the eyes" of many to see the power that nationalism unleashes. Mussolini and Hitler used nationalism for revolutionary purposes.

[edit] An Elanchos on Nazism as Reactionary

The discussion is "Mussonili says fascism is reactionary"

"Fascism, which did not fear to call itself reactionary ...has not today any impediment against declaring itself illiberal and anti-liberal" (Gerarchia, March, 1923 quoted in George Seldes, Facts and Fascism, eigth edition, New York: In Fact, 1943, p. 277) AndyL 19:45, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. How does one square the fact that it is also very revolutionary?WHEELER 15:20, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How ironic that you are arguing with a direct Mussolini quotation when in the past you inisisted quotations were paramount.Since you claim to be an expert on what Mussolini thought why don't you try to reconcile his quotations yourself?AndyL 01:46, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In the Fascism article, they pull out where in the Doctrine of Fascism say that they are "anti-marxist" and point this out profusely, and then you delete all references to their Marxist heritage that I POINT out from Zeev Sternhell. It seems that you have a double standard. WHEELER 18:51, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying Zeev Sternhall knows more about fascism than Mussolini? If Mussolini says fascism is reactionary and anti-Marxist who are you to argue with him? After all, don't you believe that quotations from original sources matters more than anything else?AndyL 22:15, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Mussonili was biased, and an admitted propogandist. Maybe he's not the best source of info on himself and his politics ;) Sam [Spade] 22:30, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I'm just hoisting WHEELER on his own petard. Since he has insisted for months that we must hold original quotations as sarcrosanct I want to see if he'll stick to that when presented with a quotation that contradicts his pet opinion. AndyL 23:19, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Andy, it is that you lack understanding. You yourself has stated that your point of view is that Fascism and Nazism has nothing to do with socialism. You make it a point to revert all references of socialism within Fascism and Nazism. Even though "Socialism" is what makes up the word NAZI, you refuse to acknowledge that and seek to censor all information about the socialistic influences in Nazism/Fascism. Nazism and Fascism is a syncretic movement. This is what you don't understand. In this regard what Mussolini and Hitler will say will always be contrdictory because they are melding two things together and rejecting other parts of those "things". You want to define Fascism and Nazism according to your opinion and not to what they say. Hitler said many times that he is a socialist--but you will delete it. But words can either be used in a metaphorical sense or in a real sense. When Mussolini says in the Doctrine of Fascism that he is not reactionary that is the real sense--the essense of the word for he hated the church and the monarchy. He is reactionary in the metaphorical sense when he says it is anti-liberal. He hated democracy but was the head of a democratical (Oclocratic)movement. You really don't know what fascism and nazism is. Zeev Sternhell does. I do for I know what syncretism means and its effects and methodology and mentality. I am a Kretan, it is part of my natural thought processes. I know the beast. I have been trained as a philosopher. I have trained in rational thought. There is alot more out there than you think at the tender age of yourself.

In refusing to see fascism/nazism as a syncretic movement you fail to see--and you fail to understand. You really don't know what Fascism or nazism is. J. Salwyn Schapiro rightly sees this coming out of the French Revolution. The whole process in France of revolution is one of Hegel's dialectic playing itself out. If you don't, can't or refuse to understand this, you are hopelessly lost. WHEELER 16:57, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Second point Andy. Evil is always contradictory because its basis is not truth but lies. You don't believe in Truth, or absolute truth. The only basis is Truth. Truth never contradicts itself. Hitler and Mussolini had no love of the Truth and didn't know the truth. You don't know what evil is and how it affects rational thought. Socrates says, "In order to speak the truth, one must be able to live the truth." Living and speaking go hand in hand. One can not speak the truth if one doesn't live it. If you can't live it, you don't know it.WHEELER 17:03, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)

The point remains that not only is there a wide consensus that Mussolini was an anti-liberal reactionary but he said it himself. As you know the Doctrine of Fascism was not actually written by Mussolini so if there is a contradiction between it and his speeches I would see his speeches as a better indication of what he actually thought. But yes, Sam is actually right, one can't necessarily take what an expert propagandists like Mussolini (or Hitler) say about their own politics which is why a term like "National Socialist" is a propaganda term meant to appeal to a certain population rather than an actual reflection of what the Nazis believed led alone what they did. AndyL 18:43, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Andy, National Socialism was a term coined by the CZECHS and not Adolf Hitler. That was his appeal. Eric von Kuenhelt is a reactionary and also says he is "arch-liberal". Christianity is reactionary and Protesant Christianity was very politically liberal. Mussolini wanted revolution. His march on Rome was Ochlocratic. Mussolini wanted a trasformation of society not a return. He was not reactionary in essence.
Andy did you study philosophy? Do you know the difference between "essences" and "attributes"? Both apply to the subject but one can change attributes without changing essences? This is the heart of definition--even in biology.WHEELER 18:40, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Who coined the term is absolutely irrelevent. The point is that Hitler used the term National Socialist for propaganda reasons, not because he was a socialist. AndyL 19:29, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

He was not a pure socialist. He was a "National Socialist". Zeev Sternhell writes that Italian Fascism is a "revision of Marxism". You still don't believe do you? Mussolini and Hitler were both nihilists. No law, whatever they wanted to do they did it. Do you see the connection between Proudhon and Mussolini and Hitler? None of them were reactionary. They denied the Catholic Church and its teachings. That is nihilism. Not reactionary.WHEELER 19:58, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hitler wasn't a socialist at all, he just appropriated the term for propaganda reasons - you have never given any examples of Hitler being a socialist. I'm sorry but the Catholic church is not the only base of reference in deciding these things (and if it was Mussolini's Concordat with the Vatican rather contradicts your thesis as does the Vatican's Concordat with Hitler (see the book Hitler's Pope). No, Mussolini wasn't a Catholic, he was trying to restore the Roman Empire which preceded Catholicism - so why do you think Mussolini called himself a reactionary? Try to actually *think* about it instead of quoting someone else. AndyL 22:11, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

AndyL, What Mussolini said in both instances are true statements. Why else say them? Words have meaning. I have studied philosophy. I know the difference between essences and characteristics/attributes.
  1. Mussolini said he was reactionary because he was illiberal. Of course this is true. The Soviet Union was illibral but it wasn't reactionary. Fidel Castro's regime was illiberal too but it wasn't reactionary. "Being illiberal" can be either reactionary or revolutionary. Being "illiberal" can be said to be an attribure of reactionaryism. But it is not its essence.
  2. The Founding Fathers were reactionary without being illiberal. Erik von Kuenhelt is an reactionary but liberal. Being illiberal is not the sign of being a reactionary.
  3. Being a Reactionary in essence is about being for Church and Aristocracy/monarchy. The Founding Fathers were just that. Mussolini, as said in the Doctrine of Facism is not reactionary and refutes the ideas of de Maistre but takes up being illiberal.

There is a significant difference between essence and attributes. One can't be reactionary if one refutes the Church and hates the aristocracy. If you were philosophically trained you would see the difference.WHEELER 01:12, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

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