The Old Question: ”Varför Adolf Hitler?”

In Hbl of må 20.07. it was Carl Appelberg who was asking the above question in his headline for a kåseri, and he ended his piece with the statement ”Jag vill inte ha ett tredje världskrig!” And yes, who would now wish for such …

Thinking about the question ”Varför Adolf Hitler?” I began to see a logical connection to what I recently wrote about borgerliga berättelser (or rather the absence, or at least simplicity, of those): a borgare sees it as good and honourable to earn money, to have money, to defend money, and is somehow not really able to consider anybody who has (lots of) money as bad – criticism of anybody rich, or demands for a more equal (or ”just”) distribution of money are usually ascribed to envy, which in turn is considered as morally bad, and borgerliga political propaganda tends to stress that prestation deserves to be rewarded (while not mentioning that even skillful tax avoidance is certainly a prestation). And the advice of the Finnish government to anybody unemployed is, as we know, that one should become an entrepreneur – should one call it the moral way out of a problem (an entrepreneur, after all, CANNOT be bad, at least according to the borgerliga ideology) … .

Now to Adolf Hitler: the Capitalist system, as Marx said so very correctly, tends to accumulate the money in the pockets of (ever fewer) members of the borgerliga class – the less successful members of this class desperately trying also to get rich (and certainly not giving up the borgerliga ideology and its ideas of what is ”good” and what not). The development produces an ever larger proportion of the population which has reasons to feel ”left behind” and neglected. And the borgerliga class is certainly too busy defending its money against the greedy fingers of those losers, already by that not inclined to help them, on top of which comes of course the ideological claim that being a loser will be the logical result of being somehow deficient. This latter claim also very useful against people of different skin colour, etc. . And to stress ANY differences between those losers and the extremely respectable members of the borgerliga class is of course also heart-warmingly flattering for this ”better” class.

With time there results a small class of relatively rich people who concentrate on meking money and defending it against the many losers and a growing proportion of the population which feels neglected. Which in turn gives any politician who is promising to take better care of those ”losers” good possibilities. Hitler made this promise to a population which was definitely suffering (he also DID care for them), the Perussuomalaiset managed to convince rather many (especially among those living outside Kehä III) that they would take better care of them than those Helsinki politicians who have thoughts just for Brussels and Washington. Those things which we think rather ridiculous about Hitler (such as his way of keeping speeches) were in fact politically rather useful at his time (to an audience which felt unjustly förnedrad and oppressed by the Versailles treaty he demonstrated roaring defiance against those oppressors and his determination to put an end to the humiliation – things which would be less necessary to demonstrate in the present political situation …). And also what is going on right now in the USA fits the pattern: the Democrats trying to mobilize the neglected masses against a Republican party which is the instrument of the moneyed class.

One should not overlook the fact that especially in the Anglo-Saxon world (but to quite some degree also elsewhere) also the instruments of opinion making are in the hands of the moneyed class, and are accordingly used to make losers feel morally inferior and/or politically hopeless/depressed (though, of course, still much better than those ”racially inferior” people in the Third World, who do not even try to cultivate the borgerliga ways of civilization, and against whose ambitions one has of course to defend what little even a loser in the developed world might own …).

And what about Hitler’s hatred of Jews? Well, that is, I think, the result of a neurosis in his family (plus the Catholic tradition). But to explain that in detail (as I in fact did already years ago in Ny Tid) would be material enough for another (LONG) text. But anyway I do at present see less of a need for a Third World War: most of Europe is NOT humilated by something like the Versailles treaty (which would produce a wish for retaliation), and the cult of strength (which was typical for fascism) is celebrated by the Republican party of the USA, but up to now not very much in Europe. And those in the Third World who would have EVERY reason to feel neglected and humiliated do up to now not have the technical means to conduct a World War.