Reply #7: "Nazi's were about corporations" [View All]

I hear this a lot. It isn't terribly backed up with fact--or at least, it isn't any more backed up than the RW claims that Hitler was a lefty are. The German economic program was strongly centrally planned and controlled, there was effective state control of all means of production, and stability was prized over growth. Claiming Hitler was "about corporations" because he destroyed trade unions and workers' rights is a bit like claiming he was "about liberalism" because he had a centrally planned economy with state-funded public welfare programs. Sure, it works if you take one piece out and look at it in a vacuum, but it doesn't make much sense in the whole.

Nazi Germany tended economically rightist, in that it reinforced rather than redistributed wealth. However, it wasn't significantly more rightist than America is. The economic policies of Nazi Germany are mostly remarkable in the extent to which they became apparatuses of state power and of state ideological influence, as well as the extent to which massive military expansion was underneath economic growth.

In many ways, Rush's statement is correct: Obama's economic plan does look a bit like Hitler's, because both involve state spending on programs to provide jobs, with the theory that those newly employed will spend their paychecks, encouraging more production, encouraging the creation of more jobs, etc. However, that isn't saying a whole lot. Most every government in the modern era, when faced with economic problems, has resorted to the same playbook. The similarities between Obama's economic program and Hitler's are the same similarities you'd find between any two economic programs designed to stimulate a stalled economy.