Boortz called Hitler's Nazi party an actual "socialist" group

tl;dr but I feel like bitching about hate radio for a bit.

Neal Boortz is a syndicated hate-radio-bot and yesterday around 11:30a he reminds a caller that leftists are idiots because when they "call people Nazis" they forget that Hitler's party was socialist, and that leftists are also socialists (forget how many things are wrong with just that one sentence and let me keep going). Why were the Nazis socialist? Because, as we all learned in High School, they put the word "socialist" in their party name!!!

I don't know why I still get amazed by these people, but I do. Does anyone else cringe when these guys say facile things like this? "Lincoln was a Republikan", "Democrats were against civil rights", "DDT kills malaria" ... these things are true only on a one-dimensional, superficial level because they exclude any historical or "real world" context and instead offer the listener a simple "way out" and a means to "win an argument quickly" so as to make themselves feel better.

If we can't have a Fairness Doctrine can we at least get someone to check facts so that when a host says stupid shit like "Hitler was a socialist" a voice preempts the show and says "Hey, man, why did you just say that stupid shit?".

Thank you for letting me rant :) I hope it wasn't too boring.

What do conservatives fear?

- the fairness doctrine
- swearing to tell the truth
- a free and open debate

OMG thanks for that, I needed a good laugh today.

Yeah, Hitler was a socialist like the Healthy Forests Initiative is about saving trees.
'Course, they wouldn't get that either....
:dunce:

Too many left leaning parties at the time,maybe?

Like remember when O'Reilly advocated that a terrorist attack happen in San Fransisco last year? Or how about Ann Coulter first equating liberals with terrorists? Or when Michael Savage told a caller "I hope you go get AIDS and die". It's absolutely incredible some of the disturbing shit that these people say and are able to get away with!

Boortz is a fucking idiot, there's no question about that one. The hate-radio hosts don't like any opinions that differ from their own. In fact they use the NAZI comparison almost as much as we do (only ours has been proven to be true), they love it. It's fascinating and disturbing at the same time.

... when it should have been the end of his career. It's a new era now, you just don't go around talking that kind of shit anymore. Maybe 30 years ago, but not anymore. (Not that you ever should have been able to talk that way, you know what I mean)

I'm convinced Savage is a closet homosexual anyway. He really really hates gays way too much :P

because they have "feminists" in their name. It's stupid, a contradiction in terms. Of course, Boortz knows perfectly well that the first group of people Hitler killed in large numbers were the communists; he knows perfectly well that the nascent Nazi party, made up of the ultra right wing Freikorps, fought tooth and nail with the KPD. He just pretends not to know for rhetorical advantage. He's a demagogue, and his followers deserve him.

This is where I'm so torn. I agree with you, but I don't want to. I want to believe that the people that listen to him can be shown that it's all just silly, "wrestling-style" entertainment, but I know I'm wrong and that there's a reason that the type of person who is willing to believe that "The Nazis were socialist" gravitate towards people like Boortz, Hannity, et al.

After all, it's the People's Republic of China, right? :eyes:

Somebody should mobilize Saddam's Republican Guard. :shrug:

A few years ago, can't recall how many, but he got hold of something here on DU ... forgive me but I just can't recall why he got temporarily obsessed with the site ... but he instructed his listeners to come here and post about it and complain. This obviously affected the site as it was much smaller at the time and Skinner (I believe) turned registration off for a bit to deal with the issue. Boortz's response on his radio show (and I shit you not), "What happened to free speech".

Nothing he says makes sense.... unless one is insane.

HAHAHAHA, omg that's a creepy picture!

:hi: Dat's New Orleans Brooklynese for "hello, how are ya." :D

More here:
www.swamp-rat.com

:) Hi and how are you :toast:

QED: Boortz is a Nazi.

Of course it was better known as "East Germany".

There is something to the charge the the early Nazi party was 'socialistic' in many of its doctrines. They were trying to appeal to the German working class (the competition being socialists and communists).

Of course, its other doctrines (i.e. its racism, nationalism, elitism, etc.) conflicted with traditional socialist thought.

Literally wiped them out, in the "Night of the Long Knives."

By that time, I think there were only 3 real Socialists left at the leadership level of the Nazi Party.

Two were academic-theorist types, the brothers Gregor and Otto Strasser. The third was a lot more dangerous: Ernst Roehm, leader of Hitler's private army of street thugs, the SA, a/k/a Brownshirts. (Roehm was also a decorated war hero, former South American mercenary, and a very "out" homosexual who enjoyed showing off the Nazi pretty boys he had...cough...attached to his staff.)

Roehm frequently spoke out about smashing the hold of the bosses and giving more power to the working classes. After Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, Roehm constantly pushed him to live up to the "Socialist" part of the Party's name.

Of course, Hitler had no intention of doing that and never had, as his courtship of the German bankers and industrialists made clear. When someone very unwisely asked Goebbels once about the coming Rise Of The Workers, Goebbels responded that the idea was "nonsense" that needed to be "knocked right out of the head" of anyone thinking it.

Roehm and Gregor Strasser were both killed in the Night of the Long Knives. IIRC, Otto Strasser took the hint and fled Germany.

It figures that Boortz is reduced to stealing material from 13-yr-old Freepers.

And I've done it more than once.

Another one is "Isn't Abraham Lincoln to blame for the Civil War."

Oy.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Just like every other loudmouth right-winger out there.

In Germany, there is the socialist "Left Party," the socialist "Social Democrats," and the "Christian Socialist Union" on the right. Hitler was a "socialist," but not a progressive one. He was a "national socialist." His socialism was a fraud to dupe working people, many of whom fell for it. The purge of the SA in the "Night of Long Knives" was about purging the Nazi elements who actually intended to expropriate the German capitalists. But since this did not occur, the Nazis' "socialism" was just talk. The left should be clear that not all "socialism" is positive.

because he liked the ironic jab at he left, kind of his way of calling it "Fair and Balanced" in a spiteful way, he laid all this out in mein kampf about how using the left's own terminology against them will confuse the nature of the debate.

Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

A must read about the subject.