Repeat After Me: "It Wasn't the Nationalism"

Last Redoubt -

Kate Paulk writes at Sarah’s place on “the ease of evil” and makes a familiar point:

The various Communist regimes can be dismissed as “not counting” because to the minds of those who do the dismissing, Russia, China, North Korea, and Eastern Europe “weren’t civilized”, and so Communism/Socialism would work just fine implemented by civilized people (they usually point to one of the Nordic nations when they do this). These same people are a big part of why the wrong lesson keeps being drawn from Nazi Germany.

The problem was not nationalism. It was not even the disgusting racial laws. Those laws could never have been passed, much less enforced, without the one big thing Socialism, Communism, and yes, Nazism have in common.
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The supremacy of the state.

I think I first made that point over ten years ago to a German engineer I knew while discussing why nationalism and patriotism were so feared in Germany. The problem with National Socialism wasn’t the nationalism they shared with everyone they fought against – it was the socialism.[It’s evil](http://thelastredoubt.com/2016/12/socialism-is-evi.html). Even as nasty as the streak of Prussian supremacy was, combined with their tendency to [ruthless thoroughness](http://thelastredoubt.com/2017/01/germans-being-germans.html), it would be helpless without the power of the many – the state – to crush the few.