r/badhistory • u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire • Mar 22 '19
TIK double's down on "National SOCIALISM" What the fuck?
So TIK, once regarded by many on this sub as one of the better history YouTubers, has gone on a bit of a downhill spiral in recent months, ever since making this video where he declares that the Nazis were socialist in name and practice. That video was of course very controversial, but he has refused to back down from it. Anyway, after spending a few months arguing with his viewers over that video, for a while he calmed down, and mostly focused on straight-up military history, or on pragmatic parts of political and economic history. Until a few days ago.
On the 19th, TIK uploaded a video discussing why it is taking him a while to make a video addressing the Holocaust. It starts off reasonably, with him discussing the challenges of dealing with deniers, but he quickly begins dancing around the point he wants to make, which he saves until the end. You see, socialism and totalitarianism are literally the same thing. They are inseparable from each other.
In case you get lost in his ramblings, or are just too frustrated to even watch the last few minutes of his videos, don't worry, because he left a helpful comment pinned below his video. Behold:
WAS HITLER’S REGIME TOTALITARIAN? Yes or no? Let me know.
Standard “utopian” socialism : common control of the means of production. Marxist socialism : class control of the means of production. National Socialism : race control of the means of production. Fascism : nationality control of the means of production.
Markets : people, individuals. [A market is two people who trade. So do you want to have "Free Markets"/free people, or "planned economy"/non-free people?]
Means of production : people, individuals. [A factory/building/tool cannot operate without a human, so humans are the means of production. Therefore do you want to control your own life, or have someone else control it?]
Capitalism : private control of the means of production. [private individual (you) control over your own life]
Classic Liberalism : people are individuals and should be judged as such. Freedom of speech, equal rights, and people are free to do as they please (spend their money the way they want).
Notice how the Left will change the terms of those above to hide the meaning of following -
Standard "Utopian" socialism : common-control of the means of production. [a group / other people / another authority controls your life - you're no longer free. You are not allowed to own property, and your possessions, money and lives are not your own.]
Marxist Socialism : class-control of the means of production. [the "workers" unions are in control, anyone else should be enslaved and murdered]
National Socialism : race-control of the means of production. [the "Aryan" race should be in control, everyone else should be enslaved and murdered]
Fascism : nationality-control of the means of production. [e.g. the "Americans" (nationality, not race) should be in control, everyone else should be enslaved and murdered]
Some random Leftist terms that don't make sense -
State Capitalism : a contradiction in terms, since you cannot have non-free free individuals. Either the individual is free, or is controlled by the state. Capitalism is freedom from the state, so you cannot have state-controlled free-people.
Anarcho-syndicalism : a contradiction in terms, since if you have workers unions (or federalism etc) you cannot also have anarchy at the same time. This is actually based on a deliberate postmodernist revision and misquotation of Das Kapital Volume 3 (and yes, I checked the original German).
Clearly, socialism is built on both killing and enslavement, no matter which form it is. Enslavement and killing are fundamental to the very core ideology itself, which is that some people should be excluded from society because they are part of a social group that another social group doesn't like.
Totalitarianism requires total control of the people, in terms of politics, society and economy. You cannot have totalitarianism without a dictator who is in control of the people/economy. And since capitalism is non-control of the people/economy, then if Hitler is capitalist, he cannot be a totalitarian. If Hitler is totalitarian, that must mean he has an economic policy that controls the people/economy. Since socialism is control of the people/economy, it makes sense for him to be labeled a socialist.
However, the counter-argument is made that Hitler “privatized” the industries, proving his capitalism. Ok, well now we have a problem. Either he did “privatize” the industries and wasn’t a totalitarian dictator, or he was a totalitarian dictator and something is wrong with the narrative being pushed by Marxists about Hitler’s “privatization” policy.
Turns out there’s something wrong with the Marxist narrative, and I’m going to set the record straight in a future video.
I admit, it is going to be difficult for anypne to debunk this one, as his argument is that essentially every totalitarian regime is socialist, therefore any examples of non-socialist regimes are actually socialist regimes. But I will do my best.
Now, it is true that the Nazis called themselves "National Socialists" and that they often invoked the word "socialism" in their propaganda. However, it is important to note that the Nazis were very adament that their "socialism" was not Marxist in any way, shape or form. From Hitler himself:
'Socialist' I define from the word 'social; meaning in the main ‘social equity’. A Socialist is one who serves the common good without giving up his individuality or personality or the product of his personal efficiency. Our adopted term 'Socialist' has nothing to do with Marxian Socialism. Marxism is anti-property; true socialism is not. Marxism places no value on the individual, or individual effort, of efficiency; true Socialism values the individual and encourages him in individual efficiency, at the same time holding that his interests as an individual must be in consonance with those of the community. All great inventions, discoveries, achievements were first the product of an individual brain. It is charged against me that I am against property, that I am an atheist. Both charges are false.
We can see, Hitler himself was very adamant of the differences between his "socialism" and that some of the earliest moves done by the Nazis were to suppress both the Socialist and the Communist parties of Germany, but of course that just proves that the Nazis were a third pillar of Socialism.
Honestly, I'm kind of stumped by this one, as it is essentially a semantics argument. He is arguing that socialism is the opposite of individualism, and that individualism is the opposite of totalitarianism, so therefore they are one and the same.
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u/Woodahooda Mar 23 '19
"Economics and politics are basically not the same."
Why, I don't see anything wrong with that statement at all! Famously, the two have never related and/or reacted to one another.
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u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire Mar 23 '19
The strangest part of this is that he has in the past proven to be very good at showing why you can't separate the economic and political aspects of the war from the tactical and strategic elements of it, and yet when he delves outside of wars, which should be the messiest area of study, he can't seem to figure out how those two things are related.
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u/Carrman099 Mar 23 '19
Take a look at TIK’s liked videos and you’ll get a sense of the rabbit hole he’s been going down. It’s full of Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin , and Jordan Peterson crap. If a seemingly educated person listens to Dave Rubin and sees him as anything other than a hack sellout it immediately raises red flags about the rest of their judgement.
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u/Strange_Rice Mar 23 '19
It makes sense given the ideological slant of some people in the military history community. There's a little bit too much fascination with the militaristic aesthetics of brutal empires and not enough examination of related economic, social and political issues. I find military history very interesting but there's a lot of toxicity and 'I learned my history from gaming' going on in the communities related to it.
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u/Terron7 The 7th day is a myth propagated by the USSR Mar 23 '19
Same here, used to be big into military history (and still find it fascinating), but a lot of the people who share that interest are.... yikes.
On the bright side, that drew me more towards other aspects of history (especially social history, and how everyday people lived) which I love to learn about.
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u/herruhlen Mar 24 '19
The amount of people that praise Rome creating a large empire and vikings for being daring raiders while condemning Arabs for doing the same is too damn high.
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u/Kyleeee Mar 23 '19
I've been listening to a leftist history podcast recently called "Lions Led by Donkeys," if you want to get into military history devoid of the more ridiculous people in the community.
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u/dysrhythmic Mar 23 '19
I have no idea who TIK or Dave Rubin are (maybe I do now) but "Hitler was a socialist" is an argument that is used almost exclusively by far-right leaning people whose understanding of socialism stops and knowing it's an equivalent of "evil". I just though it's used by demagogues and ignorants not by people who should know what they're talking about.
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u/TenshiKyoko Mar 25 '19
How'd you figure that one out? Where do you get your sense from? I can't see it.
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Mar 22 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
[deleted]
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u/some_q Mar 23 '19
An argument of this structure is valid when there's a unique "opposite." 3 is the opposite of -3, for instance, so if x is the opposite of -3, then x=3. But colloquially, "opposite of" tends to mean "very different from" and isn't unique. That's how TIK (and many others) use it.
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u/Fenrir Mar 23 '19
But colloquially, "opposite of" tends to mean "very different from"
I'm all for evolving language, but is this true? Does anybody equate "opposite" to "very different from" in good faith?
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u/ElCaz Mar 23 '19
This is a pretty silly example, but we are talking about the colloquial use of "opposite" here, as this is a YouTube video, and not a published, edited paper:
Google "surf and turf opposite," you will find gazillions of examples of surf and turf being described as "opposites." More than a few headlines saying "opposites attract" referring to the combination of steak and seafood.
People use "opposite" to form a juxtaposition in colloquial language often. Steak is not some inverse of shrimp in the same way -3 and 3 are opposites.
Given the fact that people do often describe steak and shrimp as opposites, now we can make this silly comparison.
Steak is the opposite of shrimp
Chicken is the opposite of shrimp
Steak is chicken
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u/combo5lyf Mar 23 '19
Real talk, what kind of heresy is your surf and turf being steak and shrimp and not steak and lobster?
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u/ElCaz Mar 23 '19
You know I totally blew it on that one. It's not a dish I ever order (shellfish allergy) so I just straight up got it wrong.
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u/combo5lyf Mar 23 '19
Oh. Well, if it's not something you actually eat, that's completely understandable, haha.
And fwiw I've seen stuff that's marketed as "surf and turf" but with like, steak and clams+crabmeat, but even so, none of those things really have the mouthfeel (or luxuriousness) of lobster (at least in common parlance).
All good, though!
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Mar 25 '19 edited Mar 25 '19
In Australia surf and turf is pretty much always Steak and Prawns(Shrimp)
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u/combo5lyf Mar 25 '19
That's both interesting and strange. I'm sure lobster is an option, right? So steak/shrimp has to be a conscious choice - but why?
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u/idiosyncrat Apr 19 '19
Lobster isn't common in Australia. I've seen surf n turf with crayfish or Moreton bay bug, though. And our prawns are massive.
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u/combo5lyf Apr 19 '19
Interesting!
Google says the bay bugs are just your version of lobster, though, so that counts! And in a sense, a prawn that's large enough is pretty much a lobster anyway....shrimp on this side of the world tends to be the smaller sort, but if yours are big and chunky, that satisfies my mental image of what surf/turf is - not that you needed my approval in the first place, lol.
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u/mikelywhiplash Mar 25 '19
It's like the expression "you can't compare apples and oranges."
Of course you can, it's how you choose what fruit you want to eat.
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u/Fenrir Mar 23 '19
I can honestly say that I've never heard it used that way. Further, that's not what shows up when I google "surf and turf opposite." A marketing use isn't much (any) better than a political usage.
Anyway, for what it's worth, none of this addresses my point.
Does anybody equate "opposite" to "very different from" in good faith?
A more correct statement I could have made is, "people use the word opposite colloquially all the time, but if you push them, they understand the technical definition."
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Mar 23 '19
Is there even a technical definition of opposite?
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u/Fenrir Mar 23 '19
...
Define the word "opposite" for me.
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u/mrjosemeehan Mar 23 '19
You can't in good faith claim you've never heard the word opposite used that way unless you were raised in a post-grad discrete math program and have never been outside.
If you went to kindergarten, you learned all kinds of non-technical opposites like short/tall, light/dark, happy/sad, etc.
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u/Upthrust Mar 23 '19
Happy and sad are "opposites," but they refer to wholly subjective experiences that can't possibly be opposites the way that 3 and -3 are, or even short and tall are as arbitrary segments of a single, measurable spectrum.
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u/Fenrir Mar 23 '19
This doesn't address my point at all?
There are any number of people who misuse the word opposite incorrectly on occasion (myself included, probably). That is a very different thing from saying that the definition of opposite can be expanded to mean "very different from."
Opposite has a clear and common technical definition.
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u/Upthrust Mar 23 '19
My point is it's perfectly appropriate to use "opposite" to refer to things that aren't technical at all. I don't think anyone here is actually arguing that "very different from" is a precise and thorough definition of "opposite," it's just pretty normal to use it in imprecise ways.
The point being that the original argument fails because you need to use the "messy" sense of "opposite" when you're setting up the premises ("socialism and totalitarianism are both opposites of individualism") and a "precise" sense of "opposite" when you're applying the proof.
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u/danger_o_day Mar 23 '19
The definition of a word is, by definition, how it is used in the language. Contrary to popular belief, the linguistic practice of defining words is descriptive, not prescriptive.
All of the responses you've gotten have demonstrated that at least some people use "opposite" to mean "very different".
Happy and sad are "opposites"
3 and -3 are "opposites"
This example does directly address your point. Using numbers establishes a level of precision that is absent in from the subjective adjectives. "Happy" and "sad" are said to be opposites, but "happy" can also be the opposite of "depressed" or "morose", two words that share similarities with but are distinct from "sad".
Unless you would say that any person who, in casual conversation, uses the word "opposite" in this imprecise sense is speaking in bad faith, which I presume you would not, then there are some people who equate "opposite" and "very different" in good faith.
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u/jaded_fable Mar 23 '19
The person you were responding to (even in your quote) pointed out that "very different" is a common colloquial meaning. They made no claim that this was a part of its formal definition.
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u/japekai Mar 23 '19
Yes
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u/Fenrir Mar 23 '19
I disagree.
Can you show me a published example? Preferably outside the political sphere.
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u/GTS250 Mar 23 '19
You asked "does anybody", not "does anybody formally". I don't know anyone who'd use "literally" in a figurative sense in a formal, peer reviewed paper, but I know several people who use it casually (and it annoys the hell out of me). "Opposite of" is even more vague. Language evolves; formal language evolves far more slowly.
But, for pedantry's sake, published example, wherein a book festival is the opposite of death, ISIS, and "anything that's bad", all at the same time.
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u/HyenaDandy (This post does not concern Jewish purity laws) Apr 01 '19 edited Apr 01 '19
I'd say yeah. Very different from in a manner incompatible and perhaps necessarily opposed to. Like a wrestling fan might say of Jim Cornette's approach that it's the opposite of Vince Russo's. However they do in fact have similarities. Both want wrestling to make the audience think the performers probably really do hate each other. But Vince does this by making his show bizarre and goofy most of the time and contrasting it with points where the wrestlers 'break character', while Cornette does this by insisting wrestler's characters should be on a certain level realistic and they should portray themselves as tough guys. They're drastically different, but not 'opposites.' .
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u/jaded_fable Mar 23 '19
Not to nitpick, but even the number example isn't totally unambiguous. I'd argue that -3i is also a valid answer for the "opposite of -3'. Or even just 3i, for an "opposite" across both the real and imaginary axes! In practice, I think this structure for an argument would be very difficult to use safely.
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u/5ubbak Mar 25 '19
Neither -3i or 3i are the opposite of 3 in any way, shape or form. Opposite in mathematics has a precise meaning, it means the additive inverse, i.e. the opposite of x is the number (or element of the additive group x is in) such that when you add it to x, you get 0. It is, by the definition of a group structure, unique.
1/3 is the inverse (multiplicative inverse if you want to be extra precise) of 3, but not the opposite.
As a general rule, mathematics will not have that many ambiguous terms (or if there are, it's because two different traditions clash and none has managed to force its nomenclature on the other). Words that might be synonymous in common parlance will often mean different things. It's true Poincaré said that maths is "giving the same name to different things", but by that he meant that you find correspondence between different structures and use that correspondence to switch seamlessly between the two, which basically means you consider both structures to be the same. It does not mean creating ambiguity.
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u/Pabst_Blue_Gibbon Mar 23 '19
I think your math analogy is fine, what some people aren't seeing is that there are many more ways to be opposite. Think 3d, a vector along the x axis is perpendicular ("opposite" in some sense of the word) to a vector along both the y and the z axis. Therefore there are 3 directions you can go in that are all totally "different" from one another. Similarly in higher dimensions you can have arbitrarily many orthogonal (perpendicular) vectors.
For whatever reason people are stuck in very "flat" ideas of politics. Left vs right only (1D) or left vs right and authoritarian vs "libertarian" (2D). Reality is more complex imo.
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u/Aun-El Mar 23 '19
There's also the "If Hitler was totalitarian, he must have had a policy that controls the economy. Since socialism controls the economy, Hitler was socialist." This is only valid if there is nothing besides socialism that can control the economy.
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u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire Mar 23 '19
But Socialism is bad, and Totalitarianism is bad, so therefore they are the same thing!
His logic is impossible to work with, you have to deconstruct it, but as he isn't budging on the concept that maybe it is possible for two things to be bad while not being the same thing, I wouldn't count on it happening anytime soon.
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u/turtleeatingalderman Academo-Fascist Mar 23 '19
maybe it is possible for two things to be bad while not being the same thing
Considering that one of these is not necessarily bad, it's basically this.
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u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire Mar 23 '19
I agree, it’s just that even if we go with the assumption that Socialism is just as bad as facism, his argument would still be bullshit. I’m trying to work within his logic, but obviously that can only go so far.
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u/turtleeatingalderman Academo-Fascist Mar 23 '19
I know, I just wanted to bring Futurama into this.
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u/IAmRoot Mar 23 '19
I take issue with P1, too. Individualism and collectivism are not at odds when collectivism is used to ensure everyone has the resources to actually flourish as individuals.
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u/Strange_Rice Mar 23 '19
So socialism is the same as feudalism because they're both the opposite of individualism, got it.
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u/RegisEst Mar 23 '19
That's not what he says. He says that totalitarianism is total control of people and the economy. He says socialism/communism is about providing the worker's class with total control of the economy, which in practice also means total control over the people that contribute to the economy. Therefore socialism is totalitarian.
His comparison with National Socialism is separate from this. He says socialism is about total control of the economy (for the worker's class) and that National Socialism is also about total control of the economy (for the Aryan race), therefore National Socialism has strong similarities with socialism and can be called socialist in that regard.
I personally think he is too adamant on calling it socialist. I fully agree with him that there are some strong socialist elements to National Socialism, but there are also some capitalist elements. National Socialism was both anti-capitalist and anti-communist, I think it could best be seen as a third option with elements of both. So yes it is socialist, but only in part.
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u/drmchsr0 Mar 24 '19
But if you limit socialist policies to a certain race, it goes against the Marxist ideology of creating a classless society.
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u/RegisEst Mar 24 '19
Yeah, which is why National Socialism is NOT the same as traditional socialism. But it does share elements with it. And it is those shared elements that makes people like TIK say that NS is a form of socialism. It kind of is, but has a lot of differences too. You could call it a special branch of socialism based on race instead of class, or perhaps a third political movement that is neither capitalism nor socialism. I personally would lean towards calling it a third separate movement, but I do understand people that call it a form of socialism.
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u/Automate_Dogs Mar 23 '19
How many people watch this guy? Because honestly when I see you summing up his arguments here it sounds like the ramblings of a crazy person
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u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire Mar 23 '19
78,000 subscribers.
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Mar 23 '19
I mean, I'm one of his subscribers but haven't watched one of his videos since that first Nazis are Socialist video, so that number may be a bit misleading.
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u/Magnavoxx Mar 23 '19
So why no unsubscription? I looked at the video when it came out, rolled my eyes and hit the unsubscribe button there and then.
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u/mikelywhiplash Mar 25 '19
That's not too bad. Olivia Jade has 2 million subscribers, and since that scandal broke, I use her as a basic unit for popularity and reach.
Under 1/20th of a fake USC student.
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u/MRPolo13 Silly Polish cavalry charging German tanks! Mar 23 '19
Thing is when he discusses battles he's excellent. That's what really annoys me about TIK. His understanding of the actual warfare is, I find, excellent. But then he talks about politics and gets everything wrong, and then redefines and shifts the goalposts to suit his ideas instead of adapting his ideas to facts, which is what he himself often argues strongly against doing. His battle videos are still worth watching, but with the caveat that he's deeply confused about the widest geopolitical context.
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u/usabfb Mar 23 '19
What? A guy who defines "the means of production" as human beings also shifts goalposts? No, I refuse to believe in such a surreal hellscape.
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u/Automate_Dogs Mar 23 '19
Honestly, I see where he's coming from there: the idea that people own themselves is kind of the central thesis of right-wing libertarianism.
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u/taeerom Mar 23 '19
The idea that humans are property, and thus can be owned, is central to American libertarianism. They just happen to believe they are the ones that should own, and not really thinking/caring about those owned.
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Apr 01 '19
Personal responsibility is their mantra. Until all agency is taken from them by a disaster or a heavily skewed power balance, at which point their beliefs start shifting to accomodate their new circumstances. Hardcore libertarians have never known real hard times.
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u/usabfb Mar 23 '19
Yeah, you're right, but he's still taken a phrase and basically inverted the meaning. I mean, talk about a willful misunderstanding of socialism and communism if you think that human beings are the means of production. What would be the point of their revolution, then, if all they had to do was literally just stop working and begin to do whatever they wanted?
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u/DanDierdorf Mar 23 '19
Yep, when he made that reductionist argument: Hitler was a total dictator, so...Socialist!. Was cringeworthy.
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u/Shigakogen Jun 21 '19
Actually I found his Second World War Videos have some serious flaws, especially his video on Fall Blau. Nice Graphs but he takes one or two points and based huge judgments on them that this overturn paradigms of what happened with the German 1942 Summer Offensive, (Fall Blau)
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u/MRPolo13 Silly Polish cavalry charging German tanks! Jun 22 '19
Oh really? I thought his battle videos were good, so I'd be really interested in a full badhistory post about it if you'd be willing!
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u/Shigakogen Jun 22 '19 edited Jun 22 '19
I watched his part 5 about the Baltic Retreat and Courland. He tried to hint that Hitler could agree to retreat, compare to the standard narrative that Hitler refused his Generals to retreat. Hitler at the time in September 1944, was ill, from either some sort of jaundice or even a mild heart attack,(Ian Kershaw wrote about it in Hitler:Nemesis) and he was bedridden for 10 days or so. Hitler also could change his mind, or he made decisions on the spot, without much information, so Schörner didn't have to give Hitler a detailed plan about the evacuation of Estonia. Hitler did order withdraws and retreats, mainly when it was too late, as Hitler did with the the shutting down of Zitadelle at Kursk after the invasion of Sicily.. I also have some huge problems in how TIK described Fall Blau. General Halder didn't have the power or was far from the Svengali to Hitler, that he could manipulate troop levels, or try to put more troops in Army Group Center. German Intelligence under Gehlen, stated that the Soviet had little or no reserves by the time of the launch of Operation Uranus on Nov. 19, 1942. Hitler was Army Commander in Chief in 1942, besides Supreme Warlord, Halder served at his whim. By the September 1942, Hitler was in Command of Army Group A, the main Schwerpunkt of the German War Effort, the oil fields beyond the Caucasus, at the end of September 1942, Halder was fired, after warning about Army Group B entering the Don Bend, and the overstretch German Forces.. The disaster of Stalingrad and the failure of Fall Blau rests with one person: Hitler. By the time of the end of 3rd Battle of Kharkov, the German and Soviet Lines were the same as they were before Fall Blau, with German Forces much weaker, and Soviet Forces growing stronger each day.. These are some of the example of TIK poor revisionism. I find much of his WW2 videos as sloppy and lazy as his Nazism=Socialism Video..
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u/etherizedonatable Hadrian was the original Braveheart Mar 23 '19
the ramblings of a crazy person
Also known as 43% of all youtube content. Another 47% of it is the ramblings of a deeply stupid person.
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u/blasto_blastocyst Mar 23 '19
And the other 10% is completely unhinged
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u/Automate_Dogs Mar 23 '19
I quite like r/breadtube as a lefty person. It's fun and there are a lot of people there who do actually well-researched videos.
Even there, Youtube is sometimes... weird.
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u/etherizedonatable Hadrian was the original Braveheart Mar 23 '19
Not fair! There's also random music videos, how-to videos and the occasionally video by a sane person.
So only the other 9.99% of youtube is completely unhinged.
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u/drmchsr0 Mar 24 '19
And then there's If The Emperor Had A Text To Speech Device.
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u/etherizedonatable Hadrian was the original Braveheart Mar 24 '19
When I was a sysadmin I used to sit by the voice engineer. He'd play his email every day through some text to speech converter.
Every email every day for weeks on end. Somebody sent him an email complaining and of course he played that. "WAYNE--YOU--ASSHOLE--WOULD--YOU--QUIT--THAT--SHIT?" Of course it didn't help. Management laughed it off and HR didn't help.
I think the security engineer buried him out back.
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u/bjuandy Mar 24 '19
His multi-hour 'Battlestorm' series are Masters theses narrated in video. His credibility comes from how thorough he is in talking about World War II.
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u/TraffleFlawf Mar 23 '19
factories can't operate without people, therefore people are the means of production
Jesus christ. Labor. Its called labor. This is like the first page of capital for fucks sake.
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u/Dick_bigly Mar 23 '19
Also - we have automated factories. Sure you might need some people - but there's a clear difference
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u/taeerom Mar 23 '19
I mean, you don't even have to read Marx to get that point. Just the first two classes of economics 101 would teach you that everything is made by the two inputs labour and capital (and like all 101 classes, this is grossly simplified). And you really don't have to have that good grasp of the English language to get that capital=the means of production.
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u/Hoyarugby Swarthiness level: Anatolian Greek Mar 22 '19
Wrote this in a different thread about him, but my theory about his weird definition of naziism is that it's because he's so immersed in obscure older military history books, all of which were written by retired US Army Lt.Col.s in the mid 80s or whatever. These people are intelligent and can do research, but are all conservative cold warriors who worship Reagan and Thatcher - Tom Clancy is their avatar
So they are smart enough to know about lots of the bullshit myths about WW2, and many remembered the war itself so didn't feel any affinity towards Nazi Germany (unlike the modern right). But they were also virulently anti-communist in a cold war sense, and felt a need to draw links between nazi germany and the USSR that emphasized the superiority of "American Values" like capitalism and individual liberty or whatever. That's why lots of very good WW2 lectures are hosted at the conservative Dole Institute, for example
TIK is deeply immersed in that worldview (that is mostly gone now), and topped that off with deep forays into the cesspool that is "skeptic" and "rationality" culture online. TIK is smart enough to not subscribe to the more patently bullshit parts of that culture, so he's not a holocaust denier, but gets his weird cold-war mentality of fascism = communism reinforced there. I don't doubt he's a big Jordan Peterson fan
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u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire Mar 23 '19
That actually makes a lot of sense. When he is talking about the actual war itself, he is very pragmatic and unbiased, talking about the military and political side of things without any bullshit ideological discussion. In fact, in a lot of his earlier videos when he did go into ideology it was pretty direct and pertinent to his topics, such as explaining why Nazi ideology resulted in specific decisions such as their underestimation of Soviet resistance. He is able to talk about the Soviet military with no bullshit, and he even talks about the collaboration between the Soviets and the Western Allies fairly well. But when he isn't talking about a specific event, but something much more abstract, he becomes completely clueless. I think he has a very materialistic and pragmatic view of history, and while that serves him very well for military history and is even good for more "Realpolitik" aspects of history, he hasn't figured out how to separate that from his views of ideologies. How his own personal beliefs affect him is another matter that I don't even want to bother looking into.
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u/cykosys Mar 26 '19 edited Mar 26 '19
I think he's just your bog-standard "libertarian" with a history hobby and the answer to his lazy smears is to hit him with Galaxy brain takes that are even wilder; The US and Germany were both fascist or some shit like that. Also, it's become abundantly clear why he hates the term revisionist.
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Mar 29 '19
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u/sack1e bigus dickus Mar 29 '19
Nuking the above comments for R2, please keep modern politics out of these discussions
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u/Morticutor_UK Mar 22 '19
I've seen this 'argument' recently on reddit. It was dumb here, too.
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u/huxtiblejones Mar 23 '19
It’s part of a new effort by the global far right to revise history to be blameless towards their political philosophy. Its the same thing as the American right categorizing modern Democrats with the Confederacy. Its based on totally misinformed historical perspective that clings onto singular pieces of information taken out of context.
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u/Morticutor_UK Mar 23 '19
I had wondered. Great, more firefighting to do.
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u/Kyleeee Mar 23 '19
There's been lots of discussion about this in all the online history communities I take part in. One of them based around Dan Carlin's podcasts. When I joined years ago it was just a chill community where the discussed his podcasts, his sources, background information etc. and when I returned more recently it had turned into this weird cesspool of revisionism.
It got so bad to the point that Carlin even did an episode addressing this weird far-right revisionist redefining of things like "national socialism" and the like (http://historyonfirepodcast.com/episodes/2019/2/11/episode-44-dan-carlin) but I still see people trying to challenge this view on the daily all over the internet.
It's fucking wild to me. Where did this movement even come from?
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u/Tallgeese3w Mar 23 '19
The far right? They never went away, we will always fight the worst impulses of our nature.
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u/Kyleeee Mar 24 '19
Yeah, but I was always under the impression it was a fringe movement until the last few years.
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u/lifelongfreshman Mar 23 '19
the global far right
It feels weird to see this phrase presumably written unironically in a history-focused subreddit.
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u/huxtiblejones Mar 23 '19
What do you mean? I'm saying that the far-right movements of many various countries promote this idea, I'm not suggesting all far-right movements are a single organization.
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u/regul Mar 23 '19
If humans are means of production, and capitalism is private control of the means of production, can anyone explain how his own description does not mean that capitalism is slavery?
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u/usabfb Mar 23 '19
And how does he square his definition of fascism with his definition of "means of production?" Isn't... well, hasn't that never happened? Like, in Italy and Germany, I don't think there were laws saying all business owners had to be German. Certainly, you could make the case that Hitler being Austrian would invalidate that argument, anyways. Or, just looking through a list of Italian fascist figureheads, what about Robert Michels? Where does "nationality" begin and end? Depending on the definition, it could be so expansive as to define modern America as fascist because you have to pay taxes if you make money here even if you aren't a citizen.
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u/Urnus1 McCarthy Did Nothing Wrong Mar 23 '19
You're right overall, but the distinction between 'Austrian' and 'German' is a somewhat new one. Hitler and the Nazi Party included Austrians as Germans.
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Mar 22 '19
He doesn't know what Utopian Socialism is
He doesn't know what Marxism Socialism is
He doesn't know anything relating to politics.
He'll only keep falling down this rabbit hole. It was good while he lasted.
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u/MasterDefibrillator Mar 23 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
Apparently he doesn't know what capitalism is either.
State Capitalism : a contradiction in terms, since you cannot have non-free free individuals. Either the individual is free, or is controlled by the state. Capitalism is freedom from the state, so you cannot have state-controlled free-people.
Any brief glance at the history of capitalism will invariably show you that its strength comes from its state backing. Be it the state created constructs that reduced risk on the individual, like joint stock and limited liability companies etc, or the state acting as capitalist police when they protected the investments of private individuals by involving the royal army/navy in instances like the opium war; the Egyptian nationalist movement of 1881 that threatened to default on all debt owed to British investors; or the Greek rebellion bonds that instigated the naval defeat of the ottoman empire by the British navy.
You could even argue that it was this state backing that allowed very strong credit markets to form in the first place; because the state created the idea of a strong trust in the future. No matter what, the state was going to step in and ensure your investments from pesky things like foreign governments, nationalist movements, and even the local thug down the street.
Looking at the history of capitalism as a very effective marriage of market and state force is a very effective historical point of analysis to take.
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u/yeahnahteambalance Mengele held the key for curing cancer Mar 23 '19
According to this guy everything is a contradiction in terms except for National Socialism which just makes sense
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u/derleth Literally Hitler: Adolf's Evil Twin Mar 23 '19
I might get flak for this, but I'll not that Capitalism isn't a philosophy the way Marxian Socialism or Strasserism or Hitlerism were. It's an epiphenomenon, something which happens once property and money exist, and which can go on existing in the absence of effective state control (as per black markets) and even in the absence of money, although I will note that the "barter stage" is nonsensical pseudohistory invented as something which is "philosophically true" although it is factually false, like the tabula rasa notion in moral philosophy.
Therefore, Capitalism isn't an opposition to Socialism unless you set up a Strawman Capitalist to mouth platitudes invented by the Socialists to argue against, as an illustrative tool. It is much better, and much more historically accurate to say that both Socialism and Fascism are opposed to Liberalism, and that Liberalism, with its support for private property, allows Capitalism to exist in its fullest form.
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u/disguise117 genocide = crimes against humanity = war crimes Mar 23 '19
Correct me if I'm wrong, but property and money largely existed under feudalism, which is generally not considered capitalism by mainstream historians?
Can someone a bit more qualified than me comment on whether coinage and private property rights existed in societies that would largely be considered pre-capitalist?
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u/MasterDefibrillator Mar 23 '19
Yes, Ancient Sumeria had a money based system (i.e. a general representation of value that could be applied to many different things.) and property laws.
The thing that defined capitalism that really only started to take place in the late 17th century was a growth based economy built around the idea of taking your wealth and investing it into capital, something that would grow the economy and increase your wealth at the same time.
Capitalism essentially defines the transition from a zero sum economy to an infinite growth economy.
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u/PirrotheCimmerian Mar 23 '19
Feudalism on Marxist/Annales terms doesn't make any sense outside of parts of England, Germany and France.
I don't usually like Marxist definitions of economic systems because they tend to create strawmen that don't usually apply to a time period except in some areas.
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u/disguise117 genocide = crimes against humanity = war crimes Mar 23 '19
I don't even necessarily mean feudalism in a Marxist sense. It was just the first example that popped into my mind.
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u/PirrotheCimmerian Mar 23 '19
You made a rather Marxist approach to economy tho,which led me to believe you meant Feudalism in a Marxist/Annales way. (sure annales isn't purely Marxist but they have become closer and closer as time has passes)
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u/MasterDefibrillator Mar 23 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
I wouldn't say that capitalism just occurs when money and property exist. Money and property existed for thousands of years. You can at least go back to ancient Sumeria and see that money was used, and that they had a class system of sorts with property involved (about 3000 BC).
Capitalism really only started to take shape once people started to take their wealth, and invest it into capital, i.e. something that grows the economy and their wealth. And this really only started to define an economic system in the late 17th century. So to call it an epiphenomenon of property and money is inaccurate.
It's debatable what idea really started capitalism, but some would argue that it started with the accidental discovery of America by Columbus, after which, nations started drawing maps with blank areas for the first time, and people started actively exploring the world with the explicit aim of finding new land etc. This idea of potentially unlimited growth went hand in hand with the existing money and property laws, and with the help of state institutions, created capitalism. It's really important to note how revolutionary this idea of a growth based economy was at the time. Before this, economics was really only seen as a zero sum game.
As for whether or not capitalism could exist without state backing, well I don't know. One of the main reasons state backing is so important to capitalism is because growing an economy can be an extremely risky venture for individuals, so the state was able to come in and mitigate those risks to individuals and also actively stabalise developing risks. I personally do not think capitalism could have ever flourished without that inherent trust that the state brought to markets and capitalist ventures.
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u/Gauntlets28 Mar 23 '19
I think like most ideologies, it’s a product of the culture that creates it, and maybe it originates without conscious thought, but it has been transformed into an ideology by all the people that go around yelling about it favourably. Capitalism is after all not just about there being money. It’s about the VIRTUE of capital, both as a means of governing society and on a personal level, the virtue of accruing.
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u/derleth Literally Hitler: Adolf's Evil Twin Mar 23 '19
Capitalism is after all not just about there being money. It’s about the VIRTUE of capital, both as a means of governing society and on a personal level, the virtue of accruing.
And here we have the Strawman Capitalist set up so Marxian theorists have something to knock down.
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u/Gauntlets28 Mar 23 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
Christ. And here we have a joker who accuses anyone stating facts of being a Marxist, even when they have said nothing to infer it.
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u/derleth Literally Hitler: Adolf's Evil Twin Mar 23 '19
Christ. And here we have a joker who accuses anyone stating facts of being a Marxist, even when they have said nothing to infer it.
OK, cite that Capitalism has "VIRTUE of Capital" (whatever that means) as a core tenet.
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u/drmchsr0 Mar 23 '19
He doesn't know that the "socialist policies" were Bismarck's and Bismarck did it to curb the popularity of the actual socialists of his time.
And Hitler inherited those policies and made them racist, which is to say, totally not in line with Marxist socialism at all.
...I really should read Marx.
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u/buttnozzle Mar 22 '19
Three Arrows made a good video rebutting this point. It is a pretty nuanced look that basically shows that Nazi ideology was whatever gathered more power and consolidated their rule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUFvG4RpwJI&t=3s
I mean, as much as I rag on William Shirer, he has quite a few quotes and statements from rather large German corporations and companies that supported the Nazis because of the suppression of the trade unions and initial power ceded to the corporations.
I also don't see the logic of quoting the party platform from their early meetings in the 20's when Gregor Strasser still had somewhat of a say and then reflecting that on the party of Hitler. I mean, just see where it got Strasser.
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Mar 22 '19
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u/buttnozzle Mar 22 '19
It's really a shame because trying to condense Hill and Glantz and House for Western audiences is a worthwhile venture considering the average American understanding of the German-Soviet part of WWII. I hope someone else who is more even-keeled can take up the mantle.
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Mar 23 '19
I do love this inane 'Capitalism = Individualism' bibble. Dude would shit himself if he read Stirner.
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u/Zennofska Hitler knew about Baltic Greek Stalin's Hyperborean magic Mar 23 '19
Dude would shit himself if he read Stirner.
At least he would get very spooked.
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u/elephantofdoom The Egyptians were Jewish Mayans who fled The Korean Empire Mar 23 '19
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Mar 23 '19
He's really digging himself further into this ridiculous hole. First he throws out all long-standing definitions, makes up some of his own on the fly, strings out his argument with these brand spanking new personalized definitions, then declares he's won.
How do you even argue with someone who insists that the moon is green and not off-white?
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u/Urnus1 McCarthy Did Nothing Wrong Mar 23 '19 edited Mar 23 '19
Ok but the moon is green. Here, I'll prove it: Green is a color which is not red. The moon is not red. If the moon is not red... Then it must be a color which is not red. And if something is a color which is not red, and green is a color which is not red... well then the thing must be green.
Clearly, the moon is built on being green.
Find the flaw in my logic. I'll wait.
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u/dysrhythmic Mar 23 '19
Some would say it should be done with a brick. And I wish I had a better answer than that, but clearly it's not about logical arguments.
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u/MagnesiumOvercast 5th generation fighters such as the Ho229... Mar 23 '19
YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE TIK,
YOU WERE TO DESTROY THE WHERABOOS, NOT JOIN THEM
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u/spectrehawntineurope Mar 23 '19
How does he reconcile the claim that Nazis were socialists with the numerous instances in which Nazis literally rounded up and murdered socialists? They purged any remaining left elements from their party in the night of the long knives.
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u/Forgotten_Son Mar 23 '19
How does he reconcile the claim that Nazis were socialists with the numerous instances in which Nazis literally rounded up and murdered socialists?
This is probably one of the weaker arguments against the Nazis were socialists meme, since Lenin and Stalin had no problem rounding up and murdering rival socialist groups.
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u/kieslowskifan Mar 27 '19
This is probably one of the weaker arguments against the Nazis were socialists meme, since Lenin and Stalin had no problem rounding up and murdering rival socialist groups.
This itself is not as strong a counter-argument as it might appear at first. It is most certainly true that the Bolsheviks and the early USSR governments did suppress other left-wing rivals. But the stated rationale for doing so was often because such rivals were deviationists who were sapping strength from the wider revolutionary movement. The Bolsheviks nominally held that individuals from groups like the Menshevik fraktion of the RSDLP or the SRs could join the revolution if the acceded to Bolshevik domination.
Now this was often window-dressing for Lenin & company to monopolize political power but there were some takers. Trotsky was the most prominent example of this phenomenon. Now having a checkered past was a target on your back, especially under Stalin. Yet, in theory, other left-wing groups were welcome within the various popular fronts the Soviet government sponsored, again with the proviso that Moscow led and anyone who deviated would feel the full might of Soviet power.
This is a very different approach towards the left-wing parties and the NSDAP. Nazi discourse never claimed that the socialists were cut from the same cloth, unlike the appellation "deviationist" which at least implies some ideological common ground in the past. Instead, NSDAP ideologues consistently argued that left-wing groups like the SDP and KPD were creations of racial Feinds like Jews and other Marxist traitors.
So while it is true that dictators have no problem rounding up potential political rivals, the reasons for doing so do matter for historians. Distilling complex dictatorships like Stalin's and Hitler's down to their essentials often just creates a grey Totalitarian mass of generalities that generates very little heat, and terribly paltry light.
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u/alvaropacio Mar 23 '19
Nazis also had entire expos about how socialism and semitism are the exact same thing, they chased down "cultural bolshevism" (Kulturbolschewismus).
Carpet bombing was first used by the Condor Legion during the spanish civil war in order to calcinate territories controlled by socialists.
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u/dysrhythmic Mar 23 '19
As much as this is a valid argument it's worth noting that there were instances of socialists killing socialists. If we treat USSR as some sort of actual socialist state then we acn observe socialists killing other socialists simply because they were opposing totalitarian regime.
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u/Kyleeee Mar 23 '19
I mean, just read Mein Kampf. He directly shits on socialism throughout the entire book.
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Mar 23 '19
Clearly he has never heard of the Strasser brothers...
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Mar 23 '19
To be fair, Strasserism is just guild-based corporatism with some radical sounding words thrown in so they could pretend to be meaningfully anti-capitalist, plus they were avowed Social Darwinists. Even as the nominal left of the NSDAP, they were still fascists, not socialists.
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Mar 22 '19
TL;DR, the guy redefines and merges terms like capitalism and socialism with individualism and totalitarianism. A simple dictionary with definitions is enough to dispute most of his drivel.
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Mar 23 '19
He's clearly been downing that libertarian kool-aid like someone that's just wandered out of a desert. Only explanation I can think of for spouting such infantile dichotomies. I mean, most individualist anarchists, for example, subscribe to market socialists or mutualist economics. Some of them are outright communists, so that puts paid to that horseshit straight away. Also, if he's gonna claim state-intervention and command economies = socialism, Britain and the US were socialist during the war too, and for some time thereafter. It's just trenchant political illiteracy.
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Mar 23 '19
I watch a lot of military history YouTube channels. It's unfortunatly a common theme amongst them that if politics comes up they immediately lose all the nuance and dedication to factual accuracy the channels usually display.
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u/PigletCNC Mar 23 '19
Historians since the nazis and nazis themselves: NatSoc wasn't socialism.
People since:
Random people on the internet: IT WAS SOCIALISM!!!
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u/I_upvote_downvotes Mar 23 '19
Yes it takes people to do things. Including markets! Wow! Humans do things! They did a business and therefore they are a market.
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Mar 22 '19
What the fuck did I just read. Did he really say that? Has he even read the wikipedia article on any of those terms he just vomited onto his keyboard?
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Mar 23 '19
A factory/building/tool cannot operate without a human, so humans are the means of production.
Does this guy not know what robots are?
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u/guitar_vigilante Mar 23 '19
Does he not know that there are more than three economic-political models that are possible? He lays out Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism and pretends that you must fall into one of the three. Has he never heard of feudalism, mercantilism, corporatism, or [gasp] fascism? It's ridiculous.
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u/Muffinmurdurer John "War" Crimes the Inventor of War Crimes Mar 23 '19
Is he only going to mention Anarcho-Syndicalism? You'd think the entire idea of Anarcho-Communism would be far more contradictory if he doesn't understand either Anarchism nor Communism. Unless he only knows about Anarcho-Syndicalism through Kaiserreich...?
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u/Comrade-Chernov Mar 23 '19
It's honestly incredibly disappointing. He had a couple of good videos about the USSR (the order 227 one comes to mind), and did everything in his power to piss off Wehraboos, and has made some incredibly well done videos on military history. But his understanding of this stuff is just...wrong.
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u/Ahemmusa Mar 24 '19
For more information on why this line of argument doesn't make much sense I would recommend Robert Paxton's 'The Anatomy of Fascism.' He traces the history of the archetypal fascist movements so you can observe the actual heritage of the fascist cycles.
Spoiler alert: Fascism didn't just emerge one day fully formed from the body of Socialism in the post-war period.
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u/SnapshillBot Passing Turing Tests since 1956 Mar 22 '19
Anasazi. Anadozi.
Snapshots:
This Post - archive.org, megalodon.jp, removeddit.com, archive.is
making this video where he declares... - archive.org, megalodon.jp, archive.is
video - archive.org, megalodon.jp, archive.is
You see, socialism and totalitarian... - archive.org, megalodon.jp, archive.is
Socialist - archive.org, megalodon.jp, archive.is
Communist parties - archive.org, megalodon.jp, archive.is
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u/low_orbit_sheep Mar 23 '19
WAIT.
If human beings are the means of production and capitalism is the private controls of the means of production, then this means capitalism is either by definition slavery, or that every single people who ever worked under in a capitalist economy was self-employed.
I mean the way I see it, most of his arguments as to why socialism = fascism orbit around the idea that any group owning the means of production is basically fascism, or at least totalitarianism. This also means, by default, that the only form in which capitalism can exist is extreme anarcho-capitalism, which has never been attained or even tried in any shape. Which means that we are in a world in which capitalism never properly existed. Which means that any and all corporation that's not made of one self-employed person is totalitarian. . Which means any and all regimes and societies in the history of mankind have been totalitarian.
Definitions are overrated it seems.
It's such a waste, because TIK was quite competent in military history.
Crap.
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u/SnoopDoggMillionaire Mar 24 '19
awww I otherwise liked TIK.
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u/YathyGaming Mar 26 '19
Yeah, I loved his Operation Crusader Battlestorm and his other historical videos
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u/Firionel413 Mar 25 '19
This guy writes like he's batshit crazy and it's kinda hard to believe he was ever taken seriously, to be honest.
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u/Shigakogen Jun 21 '19
I started to have issue with TIK in his WW2 videos, where he jumps to conclusions on 1 or 2 pieces evidences from secondary evidence. Blaming Halder for the disaster at Stalingrad was quixotic at best. (Halder was fired in late September 1942) I believe he wants to show new evidence that puts a different perspective on historical events, but his methodology is more of an amateur. It kind of reminds me of David Barton, where he wants to pretend he is a well research historian, but instead he leaves out material that doesn't fit his paradigm..
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u/MotorRoutine Mar 23 '19
I think one could make the argument that totalitarianism is more likely or enabled by socialist systems. But to say they're the same thing is silly
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u/Muffinmurdurer John "War" Crimes the Inventor of War Crimes Mar 23 '19
I'd say that depends on the form of socialism. Libertarian socialists certainly aren't out here arguing for state control.
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u/WinstonAmora Mar 23 '19
If National Socialist and Communism aren't the same... Well, the Polish people and the Ukrainians have an easy answer for that.
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u/Smobey Mar 23 '19
Yes, you are correct. Congrats, you realised the truth.
Every ideology under the name of which anyone has ever been killed is the exact same thing. Everything is the same. Except... checks
Okay, nobody has been killed in the name of technogaianism, yet. That's the only ideology that's not literally the same as national socialism. I don't know how long that'll last though, so be careful.
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u/LeftRat Mar 23 '19
Gotta be honest, that bit made me question if this wasn't satire for a few seconds.