Communism and Fascism: Two Socialist Peas In a Pod

From Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change :

Nazism’s one-nation politics by its very definition appealed to people from all walks of life. Professors, students, and civil servants were all disproportionately supportive of the Nazi cause. But it’s important to get a sense of the kind of person who served as the rank-and-file Nazi, the young, often thuggish true believers who fought in the streets and dedicated themselves to the revolution.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, a young Briton traveling in Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, met some of these men in a Rhineland workers’ pub, still wearing their night-shift overalls. One of his new drinking buddies offered to let Fermor crash at his house for the night. When Fermor climbed the ladder to the attic to sleep in a guest bed, he found “a shrine to Hitleriana”: The walls were covered with flags, photographs, posters, slogans and emblems. His SA uniforms hung neatly ironed on a hanger…

When I said that it must be rather claustrophobic with all that stuff on the walls, he laughed and sat down on the bed, and said: “Mensch! You should have seen it last year! You would have laughed! Then it was all red flags, stars, hammers, sickles, pictures of Lenin and Stalin and Workers of the World Unite!…Then, suddenly when Hitler came to power, I understood it was all nonsense and lies. I realized Adolf was the man for me. All of a sudden!” He snapped his fingers in the air. “And here I am!”…Had a lot of people done the same, then? “Millions! I tell you, I was astonished how easily they all changed sides!”

Comments

[Nick]

Frankly, I've always thought that Goldberg's book was just a rip off of the much better book by F.A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom". He made the same argument, only in the 1940's!