Call it the Covid crazies I suppose, I don’t know for sure. Perhaps the vaccine nano-particles are channelling through the microwave across the room to some circling spacecraft returning me subliminal messages, but I find myself dog-tired at 2pm and awake at 2am, a relatively slow time for news and current affairs, leaving my under-nourished curiosity in search of sustenance and, ultimately, to stray.
I went a-fishing, trawling really, across the web world and came across quite a spectacular cat-fight which caught my interest in terms of pure nastiness and vitriol. These were not keyboard-warriors or illiterate filth-spouting grammarless social-media goons, these were academics of the fairer sex which made it all the more intriguing, and delightful.
They were scrapping about this:
For those that haven’t seen it before, it tends to get removed smartly following complaints from shouty-types offended by it, not that the image is offensive, but the content of the caption on the plinth is what makes some see red. Some, the red of anger, others, the red of embarrassment, but it sure does get a reaction.
The plinth carries a quote signed off by a rather dark and controversial personality saying:
“I am a socialist because it seems incomprehensible to me that a machine should be cared for and treated with care, but that the noblest representative of the work, man himself, should be allowed to degenerate.”
The historical background isn’t actually important; some claim the entire photo is faked (it’s not) but for those interested, it’s from Dortmund and the year is 1935. The object is a dedication to the DAF, the party-run all-encompassing trades union.
As you can well imagine, it’s that opening that launches the spittle to flight, the insults to run, and the hair-pulling to begin. “Ich bin sozialist…I am a socialist” It really does get some people’s bits in a tangle and their tempers up. Unfortunately, much of the heated debates sprouted wherever the picture turns up are based on ignorance and supposition, pure guesswork.
In the interests of stemming inter-web bloodshed I thought, even in my suffering, I should help clear this up. So: is the quote genuine? And was the crazy Corporal a Socialist? Well: yes, and yes, and no, and no. In that order.
The German presidential election of March 1932 had been inconclusive with no candidate achieving a majority, so the highest-polling candidates including Herr’s Hindenburg and Hitler were to run off against each other to determine a winner on April 10th. The election carried more weight than usual because of the split, a multi-party, stalemate in the German parliament which meant much law-making being authorised by Presidential Decree, much in the same way presidents Obama and Trump signed many Executive Orders to move legislation in the face of US Senate/Congress stalemate.
Mrs Hitler’s boy took to his typewriter. He knew many people were looking for a home for their vote and he needed to broaden his appeal. His efforts resulted in a long document, his ‘Program’ published in the party newspaper just five days before the election. It spelt out his background, beliefs, vision, his views for greater Germany and Aryan supremacy, his loathing for Marxist, Bolshevik, and Communist shades of Socialism but promoting his National Socialism where capital and labour both submit to the greater State for the greater purpose: his People’s Movement Volksgemeinschaft.
It is from that Program statement the quote on the plinth is lifted, word for word, so yes, it is literally a ‘genuine’ quote of his and it’s also a ruse to appeal to the traditionalist class-war left. That’s not new or unique; politicians have always, and will always, pull voters’ legs that way for votes.
In fact, the cunning rat used the same scarlet red that had become imbued with communist, Marxist imagery in propaganda for exactly the same reason, to tease interest among the working class trade-union oriented and communist-inclined, to agitate and to annoy, to get noticed in a deliberate ploy:
“We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation, our intention being to irritate the Left, so as to arouse their attention and tempt them to come to our meetings— if only in order to break them up— so that in this way we got a chance of talking to the people.”
Note, importantly, he says “to irritate the Left”, which he clearly does not see his party as belonging alongside, nor does he align his movement with the freedom, individualism and enterprise of the Right. Instead, as Brittanica quite correctly notes:
“Volksgemeinschaft, (German: “people’s community”) in Nazi Germany, a racially unified and hierarchically organized body in which the interests of individuals would be strictly subordinate to those of the nation, or Volk.”
The reason tempers rage so over the picture is the blatant theft and long-term use of Nazi imagery by the Left to propagandise the worst of the Right, as they are wont to depict them; it is quite dishonest, as dishonest as, well, Hitler really. This image, more than almost any other confronts that dishonesty, and that is why the feathers fly wherever it lands.