Hardcore History On Fire

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Addendum: EP7 Hardcore History On Fire

"‘The base of the whole Nazi movement was built on nationalism and race, whereas traditionally the other extreme, you know, the communists were all about the more international, global perspective’

‘And class’

‘Exactly, you know, the one was about class, the other one was not. The other one, the focus was on race and nation. One was hierarchical. One was, at least theoretically, of course, not in reality, but at least theoretically, in favor of equality. One was heavily in bed with the traditional religious institutions. The other one was atheist or pushing a more liberation theology if they ever flirted with religious ideas. So I mean, when you look at it in those terms, they couldn't be more different, despite the fact that they were both totalitarians who wanted a strong state’…

‘The Nazis were taking donations from big business. I mean, the whole idea behind socialism is that the people own the means of production. Well, I mean, my goodness, the Germans of the 1940s had companies like Krupp and Messerschmitt and Porsche and Henschel and... IG Farben. And those guys didn't go away. That's not at all like what you would see in a communist country and look at the allies that the Germans had.

I mean, you mentioned the Italians, but let's look at the, the Japanese. I mean, you could never spin the Japanese as a left wing regime, right?... that's a divine Emperor system, right? And, you know, I mean, for these people that say that, that dictatorships and that kind of lack of freedom is, is left wing. Well, what was the Tsar of Russia before the Communists took over? I mean, that is the ultimate right wing regime by any stretch of the imagination. That's right wing by the French assembly definition of right wing. Right? Those are, those are authoritarian monarchists. The Japanese are not going to ally with a left wing regime...

There's a decent number of historians that think that Joseph Stalin wasn't really a communist, that he hid behind the communist sort of doctrine, but was, and I'm quoting here ‘an old style oriental despot’. In which case that makes him, yes, more like a Hitler or Mussolini but you can't call him a communist then, right? He's just an old style dictator. Right? Right, with a facade of communism, because communism for all its faults, was not supposed to be a dictatorship, there was going to be a dictatorship of the proletariat stage. But decisions weren't supposed to be in the hands of one guy who, like Hitler called every shot. Now, the fact that it actually works out that way in Soviet Union, in Red China, in the Khmer Rouge and Cambodia. Yeah, yeah, that's a different, that's an actual interesting point of its own. But that's not what it's supposed to be like. And so those who say that communism and Nazism are very similar, it might be less because Hitler's like a communist, and more because Stalin's like a Nazi...

‘The very things that Hitler is saying in Mein Kampf… how well that would play today’...

‘You know, it's like, there's a reason for it. These people, as much as it's not very popular thing to say, people like that stuff’...

‘In the 1990s… some Democrats who... had sort of rewritten the Bill of Rights in modern day English, so that it didn't look like the original and then submitted it, I forgot what this was, I want to say it was the House of Representatives, and a bunch of Republicans came forward and said that it was awful that it would destroy - iIn other words, we can't have this kind of stuff. And then, of course, they sprung the trap on him and said, oh, it's the Bill of Rights, and you would have voted against it... Having discussions with people along the lines that we used to consider to be normal, you know, 20, 30 years ago elicits responses that surprise me’...

I used to interview politicians all the time on the radio, and some of them became good friends of mine. And they were very upfront about how things work. I mean, for example, they would talk about the problem of fundraising when you would get between election. So when you would get to this dead zone that was quite a distance between, maybe call it an equal distance between two elections and it was hard to raise funds, they would go and agree, the Republicans and the Democrats, to bring up a bill affecting one of those issues that just gets money pouring into the coffers on both sides. Abortion or guns, or whatever, as long as, this was a bipartisan effort to fan and whip up the base so that they started, you know, so you had something to go back and ask for contributions for. That's not a conspiracy, that's politics. So I mean, if people get upset with that I understand the populist anger"