Originally published at: http://timeghost.tv/why-the-nazis-werent-socialists/
The Nazi economy appears to do well during the 1930s. But this is largely myth, as the German economy under Hitler is based on a self destructive, ideologically or selfishly fuelled irrationality driven by conquest and criminal practice. Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory Subscribe to our World War Two series: https://www.youtube.com/c/worldwartwo?sub_confirmation=1 Like TimeGhost on Facebook:…
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Will things fly off the handle in the comment section on this one.
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TIK argued that they were socialists.
The sources he used:
- Brown, A. How ‘socialist’ was National Socialism? Kindle, 2015.
- Geyer, M. & Fitzpatrick, S. Beyond Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared. Cambridge University Press, Kindle 2009.
- Grand, A. Italian Fascism: It’s Origins and & Development. University of Nebraska Press, 2000.
- Evans, R. In Defence of History. Granta Books, Kindle.
- Hitler, A. Mein Kampf. Jaico Publishing House, 2017.
- Hobsbawm, E. The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991. Abacus, 1995.
- Kershaw, I. Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison. Cambridge University Press, Kindle 2003.
- Tooze, A. Wages of Destruction: The Making & Breaking of The Nazi Economy. Penguin Books, 2007.
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And that was the moment I unsubscribed from him with the biggest disappointment i had felt for quite some time.
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From TIK? If there’s anyone you ought to keep subscribing to someone on YouTube, it’ll be the person you disagree with in terms of history (at least not the obnoxious ones, cough KB cough).
TIK himself explained a bit in the comments:
First of all, the National Socialist economy and society in Germany was absolutely not capitalist (no matter how much people scream at me that it is). After crushing imports and exports in 1933-1934 in order to promote Autarky and rearmament, party officials were basically in every shop and business, providing them with goods or foreign currency, and dictating policy etc. On top of this, Autarky crushed imports and exports, causing the end of trade, helping to isolate Germany from the globalized economy. All this caused a massive economic crisis in 1934, but to quote Tooze’s Wages of Destruction -
“…in practice the Reichsbank and the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs had no intention of allowing the radical activists of the SA, the shopfloor militants of the Nazi party or Gauleiter commissioners to dictate the course of events. Under the slogan of the ‘strong state’, the ministerial bureaucracy fashioned a new national structure of economic regulation.” - P112
“It would be absurd to deny the reality of this shift. The crisis of corporate capitalism in the course of the Great Depression did permanently alter the balance of power. Never again was big business to influence the course of government in German as directly as it did between the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the onset of the Depression in 1929. The Reich’s economic administration, for its part, accumulated unprecedented powers of national economic control.” - P113
And this was 1934. So this was absolutely not capitalism. And if it’s heavy state intervention, with a planned centralized economy, without being capitalism, what could it be?
A commenter critical of what I was saying (Adrian Mahon) said that my definition of socialism was wrong, and that - “It’s about power relationships and shifting these to the workers”
Ok, I absolutely agree with what he’s saying there. From an ideological perspective of what was defined by Marx, that’s a fair assessment. And I don’t disagree - I never have done. But, there’s an issue with this definition historically. And people have given other definitions (revolutionary vs non-revolutionary, “seizing the means of production” etc). In fact, socialism doesn’t have “one” definition because as Evans wrote -
“When an intellectual historian reads Hobbes’s Leviathan or Marx’s Das Kapital, it is not in order to use their writings to reconstruct something outside them, but in order to construct an interpretation of what they mean or meant. There are indeed many interpretations of these thinkers’ ideas, not least because the systems of thought Hobbes and Marx established were so wide-ranging that they never became completely closed.” - Evans, R. “In Defence of History.” Granta Books, Kindle.
So, let’s not pretend that socialism is a fixed definition. Now, some of you also have this concern -
“We are seeing a rise of fascism; to ‘revise’ the meaning of socialism plays to a particular audience that (I’m hoping) you don’t want.” - Adrian Mahon.
I agree, and I absolutely don’t want to see a rise in fascism or National Socialism. I cannot stress this enough. I’ve already said a couple videos back that I’m doing a Holocaust documentary because I’m sick to death of people preaching Holocaust (and Holodomor) denial. It’s sickening. So, do not think I’m at all promoting either ideology. Several people claimed I was ‘redefining socialism’ so I could deny the Holocaust. No idea where that came from. And actually, by saying that National Socialism wasn’t socialism - this actually plays into the National Socialist and denialist hands. Now, at first you might think - why? Well, let me explain with a bit of history -
Hitler genuinely believed in his version of ‘socialism’, and thought it was a form of ‘socialism’. It doesn’t matter if you think that it’s socialism or not at this point, just run with it. So, when Hitler comes to power in 1933, he ‘socialized’ the German economy by removing the Jewish influence from government etc and imposes his version of ‘socialism’. And this actually caused an economic crisis by 1934 as a result. This was due to Autarky and armaments spending (see the previous quotes in my above comment which are linked to this).
With the ‘socialization’ of the people, he removed Jews from society, and heavily restricted trade, ending capitalism. And he geared up for war. Military spending was less than 1% of the budget in 1933, and was 10% in 1935. This was “- a bigger and quicker increase than ever seen before in peacetime in a capitalist state.” from Rees, L. “The Holocaust: A New History.” Penguin Books, 2017. Page 92.
Now, why would he do this? Is it just for military conquest? Or is there some sort of underlying motive?
And yes, there’s an underlying motive. Going back to Mein Kampf, what he see is his version of Nationalism (which is entwined with his ‘socialism’). As a brief explanation - he thought that the species shouldn’t mix breeds. And that Aryan peoples built nations. However, the reason he thinks nations collapsed in the past had nothing to do with war etc; it was all because the Aryans interbred with the lesser races. In Hitler’s mind, the dilution of Aryan blood would weaken the race, and bring down the nation. Yes, complete lunacy, but there’s little doubt he thought this.
And he honestly thought that the Jews were the absolute worse race, and the fact they didn’t have a nation of their own (at the time) proved his theory right. In Mein Kampf, Hitler says that the Jews were like parasites who would latch onto Aryan nations and dilute Aryan blood with their own blood by interbreeding. Therefore Hitler thought that the Jews had to be removed from society to prevent the Aryan German blood from being diluted, and thus causing the downfall of the German race.
However, there’s the Marxist problem too. In Hitler’s mind, the Jews were championing Marxism. The reason was stated as: if they made everything equal and classless, this would give the Jews the best chance to interbreed with everyone and thus bring about the fall of humanity. Yes, it’s ridiculous, but that’s where he went with it.
So, you can see why he hated Bolshevism so much. He thought that international communism would allow the Jews to destroy the Aryan races. He therefore decided to take action and beat the Jews before they beat the Aryans. This is why he wanted to go East. He viewed the Slavs as slaves owned by the Jews. But if they conquered the Soviet Union, rid the Jews from society, the Slavs would serve the master German Aryans for a 1,000 years.
Now, Adrian Mahon said “Can we agree agree on what ‘socialist’ means (hint: it’s not state intervention). It’s about power relationships and shifting these to the workers” Ok, but let’s look at what Hitler thought for a moment.
Hitler thought that ‘socialism’ was about power relationships too. The difference was that he thought the way to solve the issue wasn’t by having the workers rise up. But actually by removing the Jews. (I know this isn’t socialism as Marx defined it, but stick with me for a bit longer) If he removed the Jews, then the power relationships wouldn’t happen. The Aryan race would all work together as a collective to better the German nation - the elites would help their fellow men, and the workers could rise to the top. Hitler does say that the ladder still exists because individuals should be able to climb up if they’re better than others. That would actually help the race because supposedly the better elements of the race would rise upwards. (And you do have quite a bit of social movement in the National Socialist era of Germany, so it’s not completely correct to say he was just saying this stuff.)
Now, this Hitler-version of ‘socialism’ is actually mixed with his Nationalism. Hitler redefined this to mean that the state was the absolute embodiment of the race (his ‘Nationalism’). However, the two are intermixed. You can’t have one without the other. The state/people need to remove the Jews, and the state/people need to work together. Now, if you keep this idea in mind - that the Nationalism and the Socialism element are equal and the same - look what happens when we consider the history of the time:
When you think of the trains taking people to the forced labour camps, the concentration camps, the death camps etc, what you have to remember is that, this absolutely wasn’t free-market forces doing this. This was a systematic industrial mass-killing, controlled by the state (hence my “intervention in economy and society” bit), and I would absolutely argue that this could not have happened to this extent in a free-market capitalist economy. How would a business market “Murder of Racial Minorities on a Mass Scale” in any capitalist society? It just wouldn’t happen to this extent. Yeah, you have persecutions and murder during wartime etc, but not mass-industrial-scale-murder.
This is why I’m not backing down on this issue. By being a state-controlled racist-socialist entity, events like the Holocaust can absolutely be explained. A racist free-market-capitalist entity actually gives the Holocaust deniers more room to deny the event, because they can say “there’s no way they systematically murdered this many Jews”. Under the traditional ‘let’s see National Socialism as a capitalist regime’ mentality, you can’t explain it because the markets wouldn’t create it, and no individual human being could possible murder people like that. So in this scenario, the denier-argument reasoning sparks as true (at least, to those who haven’t done research).
But if you turn around and say, actually it does make sense because these guys weren’t just racists in a free-market society, but they believed in different collective groups, and that (in this outlook) individual human beings have no meaning (since we’re all a collective of groups), so murdering groups is alright. And then you realise that these National Socialists didn’t think for themselves because they were part of a collective group. So if they’re ordered to kill, they will! Because who are they to question anything? Why would they go against their Aryan group? And if they don’t view other human beings as individuals but as ants to be crushed, or just pure numbers, or even barcodes… then it’s much easier to see why, in a state controlled collectivist society, why systematic industrial murder is actually possible. At that point, it becomes much harder to deny the events in question.
Now, onto what socialism was by people’s definitions in the comments. The ‘socialism’ they’re championing never actually happened in practice. They talk about ‘real’ socialism, often saying that “well, ‘real’ socialism never happened”. But looking back on history, the theory of socialism as Marx said it was never happened, but numerous attempts to create socialism did occur. To say they’re not socialism is not fair to history.
The Soviet Union wasn’t a ‘socialist revolution’. The Bolshevik Party seized the means of production; the workers didn’t. They didn’t solve class conflict - the Party or the state employees became the new upper classes of society - and there was definitely not equality. They also introduced the New Economic Plan (limited capitalism), but also, even when they attempted to ‘socialize’ the people in the collectivisation of the 1930s (inside the famine that was a direct consequence of the state ‘taxing’ the produce off the peasants in the fields) the state was the controller of the economy and society, not the workers. You also have a slave economy in the Gulag system, which is similar in some ways to the forced labour camps and the concentration camps of National Socialist Germany, which clearly indicates that the equality and liberty that Marx was aiming for wasn’t a reality. So, by the definition used by everyone else ‘in theory’, the Soviet Union wasn’t socialist.
When you consider that Venezuela was socialist - again people say this wasn’t ‘real’ socialism. But it existed. When you consider the socialist policies of the Labour Party in Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Western Europe, Cambodia, China and so on, you can certainly make the case that these weren’t ‘real’ socialist countries or policies. However they existed, and they tried to implement the ‘theory’ of socialism, and they instead created a version of socialism that is very much real in history. You can say these weren’t ‘real’ socialisms, and that’s great for a political debate, but from a historical debate, these were real and they were socialisms - by the historical viewpoint of history. And, since I’m looking at history not theory, I’m interested in defining socialism as what actually happened, not discussing the theory of it.
Hitler’s version of socialism isn’t Marxist Socialism, and I’m not saying it is, but it is (by historical standards) a version of socialism. Hitler’s socialism variant is: directly influenced by what Marx said; he changes this to come to a different conclusion; he implements it in history; it is not capitalism; it shares many of the same traits as the other ‘socialisms’ that existed in history; and it supports the Holocaust and other National Socialist policies that, on the surface, don’t make much sense because they’re being viewed from the ‘they’re capitalist’ viewpoint.
Is the National Socialist Party left-wing or right-wing? That’s up to you to decide. I would suggested they’re a mix between the two sides, and I avoided creating a different political spectrum in the videos for this reason (although I split it up into different categories). Did National Socialism ‘work’? Not really. As the two quotes I quoted from Tooze show, the economy by 1934 was in the gutter, which is another reason war was on the cards because they had to conquer more territory and resources, and enslave a lot of people, in order to make it work.
Now, what does this mean for ‘real’ socialism (Marxist Socialism)? Well, this is absolutely not an attack on socialism. Nothing I have said has been against socialism in general. Just because Hitler was a socialist, doesn’t make all socialism bad. That would be like saying “Hitler was a politician, therefore all politicians are bad”, which is clearly not a logical way of looking at it. And I’m absolutely not implying that socialism doesn’t ‘work’, by bringing up the ‘failed’ socialisms of the 20th Century. Looking to the future, there’s no reason to think that because socialism didn’t work so great in the 20th Century that it couldn’t work in the future.
Yes, some of what I said in the videos was wrong - the liberalism/conservatism bit in the 19th Century in the second video were flipped around (it’s been over a decade since I last studied that stuff and the video was off the cuff). I also mentioned Manstein as being a star general. This is true, but he was actually the exception, and was really the only “von” (aristocrat) that Hitler trusted (until 1944, when he was dismissed). Generals like Model and Zeitzler were favoured over the Prussian officers because these represented the new generation of ‘socialists’ that had worked their way up the ranks. But again, that was in the quick off-the cuff response video. Overall, the points I raised about National Socialism being a version of socialism still stand.
And, to those who say that “I’m not listening” or have gone out of their way to suggest that I shouldn’t cover politics again because I’m “ignorant” (which is a polite word compared to what some have used), you’re not being fair. When covering WW2, battles and the Holocaust etc, it’s impossible to stay out of politics, economics and society, since they’re all linked. Plus, I have studied this stuff, and will continue to do so. I’ve now re-read Das Kapital (after a decade) and it hasn’t changed my view on all this at all.
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One of the best episodes of B2W
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The problem I have with it is that he uses that thesis to argue that only the state is able to do horrible things as if a company wouldn’t be able to do that. He doesn’t seem to understand that a company can do terrible things and still make a profit for a long time, because it has happened before. not to mention that he focuses way too much on marxism when there a lot of other kinds of socialism.
Beside that the sources he uses on the video only talk about Nazi germany but not on the Soviet Union.
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But not to the point of systematic genocide, if I recall correctly. Yes, some companies did help in the Nazi terror machine, but it’s not like that was their main gateway to profit.
Under the traditional ‘let’s see National Socialism as a capitalist regime’ mentality, you can’t explain it because the markets wouldn’t create it, and no individual human being could possible murder people like that.
To quote his comment:
When you consider that Venezuela was socialist - again people say this wasn’t ‘real’ socialism. But it existed. When you consider the socialist policies of the Labour Party in Britain, the Scandinavian countries, Western Europe, Cambodia, China and so on, you can certainly make the case that these weren’t ‘real’ socialist countries or policies. However they existed, and they tried to implement the ‘theory’ of socialism, and they instead created a version of socialism that is very much real in history. You can say these weren’t ‘real’ socialisms, and that’s great for a political debate, but from a historical debate, these were real and they were socialisms - by the historical viewpoint of history. And, since I’m looking at history not theory, I’m interested in defining socialism as what actually happened, not discussing the theory of it.
Hitler’s version of socialism isn’t Marxist Socialism, and I’m not saying it is, but it is (by historical standards) a version of socialism. Hitler’s socialism variant is: directly influenced by what Marx said; he changes this to come to a different conclusion; he implements it in history; it is not capitalism; it shares many of the same traits as the other ‘socialisms’ that existed in history; and it supports the Holocaust and other National Socialist policies that, on the surface, don’t make much sense because they’re being viewed from the ‘they’re capitalist’ viewpoint.
That’s kinda the point. He’s arguing that the Nazis were socialists. A racialist kind, but socialists nonetheless.
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His response to the comments:
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I like his Stalingrad series, so far, very interesting (he uses Glantz a lot, can’t go wrong with that).
But he can argue all day and all night that the Nazis were socialists, yet it simply doesn’t make it so because they weren’t. This isn’t a case of “different opinion” but rather a case of being, as Trump would put it, WRONG!
I suppose it’s like the whole evolution vs creation stuff, some people will keep argueing all day and night for creation and yet continue to fail at providing the most basic evidence that would hold up in scientific method.
There are things where you can have different opinions, different preferences and different ways of looking at it, but there are also things that simply are X and not Y and then argueing Y makes you wrong.
One of the things TIK and the likes of him keep repeating is “conservatism/right wing = small government”, and that has basically in history never really been the case, certainly not before 1950.
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The New Right and the libertarians would like to have a word, at least the ones from America. Their ideas may have never fully materialized, but they’re still influential (Barry Goldwater and, to a certain extent, Ronald Reagan, come to mind). Speaking of Reagan, this was from his inaugural address on January 20, 1981:
Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
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That’s why I mentioned 1950 at which time said ideas started to get more traction, and the overlap between (right) libertarianism and conservatism became somewhat greater.
But look at the European empires of the 19th century, such as Austro-Hungary and Russia, both reactionary conservative, autocratic and big government (to keep all those down who didn’t agree with reactionary conservatism and autocracy). And this was the case for many of the European monarchies for centuries on end, with few exceptions such as Britain.
That’s also why the advent of Napoleon spooked them so much, even if Napoleon wasn’t really a revolutionary (certainly not compared to Danton and Robespierre). Napoleon threatened the reactionary conservative continental order (and Britain feared for its trade dominance) and so they had to band together to prevent the spread of such ideas as abolishing feudalist principles and more freedom for ordinary peasants.
And as for Reagan, I personally think that having Reagan in the White House was the problem, not government itself.
Ah yes, Reagan, from the time where conservatives didn’t think that making deals with Iran was treason.
Back when conservatives didn’t think that secretly negotiating with a foreign government (which his campaign did in 1979-1980) was treason (and yet it actually is, if you do it without presidential authorization, and in 1968 Nixon did the same in South Vietnam).
Back when conservatives didn’t think that covertly selling weapons to Iran in order to fund right wing death squads in Latin America (whose funding Congress had expressly forbidden) was treason.
And also back when refusing to provide more security for the marines on their Beirut base was, as per conservatives, not a scandal that Congress should look into. After all, 250 marines (and 50 civilians) dying is not worth mentioning (in terms of death toll it was Benghazi x 75) and Reagan immediately wagged the dog by invading mighty Grenada.
And the AIDS crisis (Reagan did almost nothing), neoliberalism (workers wages flatlined since the early 80s, executive paychecks skyrocketed) and so on.
Reagan, in my opinion, was one of the worst presidents of all time, and should have been impeached, convicted and jailed for Iran-Contra alone, along with Oliver North and the rest of them.
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I won’t go that far. Reagan did admit to screwing up regarding Iran-Contra, though he still stood by his agenda.
There were calls to impeach him even then (I clearly remember seeing “IMPEACH REAGAN” signs in New York during New Years '87).
It seems to me that Oliver North bore the brunt for Iran-Contra. He was initially convicted on three felony charges, but the convictions were vacated and reversed and all charges against him dismissed in 1991.
Name one Congressional investigation proving that Reagan negotiated with the Iranians in 1979-80 (I know Iran-Contra happened, but in 1979? For hostages in different places, no less?)
Also:
in 1968 Nixon did the same in South Vietnam
It’s actually more complicated than that. What delayed any progress in 1968 were:
- President Johnson’s refusal of Hanoi’s demand to cease all bombing in the North without any reciprocal de-escalation of hostilities, on Hanoi’s part, in South Vietnam,
- President Johnson’s refusal to Hanoi’s demand to replace President Thieu with someone they liked better,
- South Vietnam and North Vietnam arguing over the shape of the conference table,
- The South Vietnamese government and Viet Cong’s refusal to recognize each other,
- Thieu’s hope that Nixon would be elected and change Johnson’s strategy towards the war.
Johnson only agreed, on Halloween 1968, to Hanoi’s demand to halt all bombing in the North as a political move to help VP Humphrey beat Nixon in the presidential election five days later. Johnson’s political bombing halt, effective November 1, 1968, allowed an extra 22,000 NVA a month to cross into South Vietnam to refill its own ranks and artificially fill the ranks of the Viet Cong after its mauling in the Tet Offensive.
From 1963 to 1973, the trends present in U.S. deaths in Vietnam indicate the logistical realities of escalation and de-escalation more than any plan by Nixon to prolong the war. Further, it’s an absurdity to ignore the Kennedy and Johnson administration’s escalation of the war and all of the commitments that went with that and pretend that Nixon could have just pulled all the troops out overnight.
What’s interesting is this standing ignorance that the South Vietnamese didn’t have their own visions of their country. In fact, the South Vietnamese resistance to doing things the American way was an important factor in the continuation of the war as well as the failure of the U.S. effort in Vietnam.
But then, there’s the big elephant in the room – the Chennault Affair:
http://www.lbjlibrary.org/mediakits/chennault/
Johnson knew about it…
Now, I’m reading their hand Everett. I don’t want this to get in the campaign. And they oughtn’t to be doing this. This is treason.
…and he never made it public, fearing damage to the Presidency as well as having to admit that he used government agencies to spy on Chennault and the South Vietnamese. In addition, Nixon denied involvement in the efforts.
Also, don’t forget that 1968 was a pretty close election and even more divisive than 2016 ever was.
| Nominee | Party | Home state | Electoral votes | States carried | Popular vote | Popular vote (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nixon/Agnew | Republican | New York | 301 | 32 | 31,783,783 | 43.4% |
| Humphrey/Muskie | Democratic | Minnesota | 191 | 13+DC | 31,271,839 | 42.7% |
| Wallace/LeMay | American Independent | Alabama | 46 | 5 | 9,901,118 | 13.5% |
I gotta ask, how is this comparable to Reagan’s actions regarding Iran-Contra? Did he screw over any peace talks? Was he campaigning for President? No, he was (illegally) supplying weapons to the Contras (in the fight against communism) by using the money he got from the Iranians by trading arms in exchange for the release of American hostages held in Lebanon.
Hell, Nixon’s actions could make a stronger case for treason than Reagan’s.
To fight communists funded by the Soviets and to release American hostages held in Lebanon. Yes, they were death squads (they were no better and often worse than the Sandinistas) and the Boland Amendment forbade supporting them. But treason?
The fact of the matter is that there’s nothing I can say that will make the situation right. I was stubborn in my pursuit of a policy that went astray.
A treasonous man would never admit to screwing up on this scale.
Wasn’t the Embassy in Beirut bombed months prior to that incident? Also:
The Long Commission Report found senior military officials responsible for security lapses and blamed the military chain of command for the disaster. It suggested that there might have been many fewer deaths if the barracks guards had carried loaded weapons and a barrier more substantial than the barbed wire the bomber drove over easily. The commission also noted that the “prevalent view” among U.S. commanders was that there was a direct link between the Navy shelling of the Muslims at Suq-al-Garb and the truck bomb attack.
The group responsible for the bombing was virtually unknown before these incidents. The bombings had such a negative effect on morale and Congressional support waned to the point where Reagan ordered the Marines to withdraw from Lebanon in early 1984.
…though I do agree that Grenada was somewhat of a distraction from Beirut (ignoring that it had been in the works for a few years, calling it “mighty Grenada” would be giving it too much credit, considering the mess that was Grenadian politics by 1983).
Yes, the United Nations condemned it along with America’s allies (Thatcher comes to mind), but you know who supported it and asked the U.S. for assistance? The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States.
Whatever one’s thoughts on the invasion were, the Grenadians certainly appreciated it. October 25 is a national holiday in Grenada (Thanksgiving Day) to commemorate the invasion. St. George’s University has a monument honoring the American servicemen killed during the invasion.
The reason for his inaction to AIDs (which is only half the story, BTW) was because AIDs was a new disease at the time. He would have to either (a) handle and address the spread of a new and contagious disease which at the time pretty much ensured death and the science wasn’t exactly concrete before 1983 or (b) risk being called out for anti-gay bias for lack of action due to AIDs being a (then) recent phenomenon.
How’s this for a change? – The Reagan administration increased AIDs funding requests from $8 million in 1982 to $26.5 million in 1983, which Congress bumped to $44 million.
His Department of Health and Human Services certainly did not ignore it. The HIV-1 virus was discovered by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team during his administration.
And I’m speaking as someone who argued for more action and research regarding AIDs (especially after Ryan White’s AIDs diagnosis) by the end of the decade.
On to the economy, regarding Reaganomics, I’ll quote John Cate here:
Supply-side economics is to Republicans what “stimulus packages” are to the Democrats. It’s their cure-all panacea to economic problems, and it works at first, but neither side knows when to quit.
I could go on, but you have to DM me in case this turns ugly (we’re talking about political matters still controversial decades later and I was a kid at the time).
On a lighter note, I’m curious as to your favorite and least-favorite Presidents (you already put Reagan in the latter category). You seem to have the idea that conservatives were always on the wrong side. The truth is politics is complicated and messy, no matter the time period and circumstances. I freely admit to being guilty of bias myself.
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Let’s keep it civilized, shall we 
I would certainly agree that politics are messy, and I do sometimes like to “exaggerate” my position on one thing or another even if I’m well aware that its almost never a black-white thing but instead a million shades of grey.
I do believe you caught on that Mr. Reagan was not my favorite president. In fact, none of his successors are or were what I would call ‘great’, they all have had at least a handful of major flaws that I can think of, from shamelessly breaking campaign promises to doubling down on failed policies and the endless lies.
I liked Clinton at first but his second term was ineffective. Same for Obama, like at first, disappointed later. I was a fan of Bush jr promising to not meddle in other countries’ affairs and frankly appalled at how they tried to make us believe that Saddam had anything to do with 9/11 (nevertheless, I do not miss Mr. Hussein and the world is better off without him and his ilk).
As for the current occupant of the WH, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone lie so frequently and shamelessly and double down when challenged on it. Though I do believe I understand to some degree why he was elected, which has partially to do with the simple fact that many workers never benefitted from the whole free trade/NAFTA/neoliberalism stuff from the 80s and 90s which successive presidents always doubled down on (Ross Perot’s “giant sucking sound” of jobs disappearing turned out to be on the mark).
For my favorite presidents I’d have to go back in time, even if they all also had their flaws (and who doesn’t have flaws, I certainly have them).
Lincoln, one of my favorites, didn’t start out as an abolitionist, probably didn’t believe in racial equality for most of his life like most of his contemporaries. But he was brilliant as president. Especially his use of legalese and lawyerese and firmly sticking to principles such as never even remotely recognizing the Confederate States as separate.
Lincoln’s “contraband” policy, though it was handed to him on a platter by Ben Butler was both simple and brilliant, simply a policy of non-interference when Butler took the South at its own words (if slaves are property, the US government can seize them in wartime as contraband).
Others: Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower. And like I said, each of these had their own flaws and even a scandal here or there. Nevertheless, those are my favorites.
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You did mention current politics in the middle and you could’ve just PM’d me when you reached that point. Still reading though.
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What did you think of Bush 41? You haven’t mentioned him when discussing Reagan’s successors.
Also, here’s my list (excluding the last three Presidents, including Trump, due to recency bias):
Least favorite:
- Wilson
- LBJ
- Buchanan
- A. Johnson
- Nixon
- Carter
And, here’s a surprising one for you: - FDR
Favorite:
- Truman
- Reagan
- Coolidge
- Eisenhower
- Jefferson
- Kennedy
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Considering my own experiences in college two decades ago, I disagree. It’s not Alex Jones crazy, but still, I’ve had neo-Stalinists and Marxists who justified North Vietnamese war crimes to my face when I was bringing attention to them.
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The sh*tstorm in the comments of this episode is by far the largest of any episode. Really, there are so many persons in this world with no idea about what is communism, socialism, nazism, they are mixing them with modern politics, you’re losing your faith in mankind… ignorance goes with arrogance
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I remember being pretty shocked that a segment of a TimeGhost episode ended up on a RazörFist video a few months ago (and I say that as a frequent viewer of his content because of his Michael Jackson and Hollywood-related rants). I considered unsubscribing from that guy for a moment before I just moved on.
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I just remember seeing various comments on the video tearing TIK a new one, I wouldn’t be surprised seeing a rift grow between him and the TG fanbase.
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