(I posted this on lemmygrad but I want to get some discussion from here too.)
I’ve been meaning to ask about some stuff regarding parenti that I see come up on different places.
One of them being about parenti’s book blackshirts and reds. So I’ve run into specific people who have claimed and bought up that parenti is lying about : how social democrats in germany gave fascists a path and its actually fault of soviets.
To paraphrase them
Soviets gave kpd direction to be hostile and also it wasn’t just “socdems will ally with nazis”. It was cause soviets gave advice to be hostile to the spd.
To boil it down, they say that parenti is wrong about rise of fascism and he whitewashed soviet mistakes.
The other thing that’s bought up is the bombing of germany and american industrial ties. I see it brought up that parenti is just lying about bombing in cologne of ford factory. And its actually all lies and say the charlie higham “trading with the enemy” reference is bullshit. They go on to say that american industrialist involvement with german industry is not that deep. And that parenti (and other communists) lie about this to make a grand narrative of american involvement. They bring up nazi economy book by tooze and this site as a debunking lies material.
Now my post isn’t so much about parenti, I wanna broadly discuss about the whole notion that soviets or german communists were the reason nazis came to power and that socdems were really not at fault.
And also to discuss that american industrialists involved with germany is some bullshit conspiracy. Which it isn’t, given the lengths across the board they spread collaborating after and before the war. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on dulles, hw, and nazis spread across into different places for american interests. So I don’t think american involvement is some fake conspiracy.
What are your thoughts? (Sorry if this post is too long)
the Ford plant doesn’t disprove that US firms collaborated with the nazis or that the US government protected them, just that this specific factory wasn’t specifically protected from getting bombed. other US-owned factories were bombed, so it’s a reasonable conclusion. But those that were bombed got paid fucking damages by the US government & didn’t get any punishment! That’s the smoking gun!
But going further into the meaning & implications of US industrial collaboration with the Nazis, i think most people are just misaligned in temperament, not the basic facts. i’m personally more inclined to characterize yankee capital’s nazi interests as ‘not that deep’, because if you use much stronger rhetoric people start drawing absurd conclusions about the US being on the nazi’s ‘side’. however invested US firms were in germany, they were not powerful or enmeshed enough to change US policy that favored Anglo-French ties and a belligerent stance toward the nazis. you can characterize the actual capital involved it as a ‘lot’ or a ‘little’ depending on what you compare it to, i don’t really care if it doesn’t turn into “the US secretly wanted the Nazis to win”.
Yeah very high up figures similar to mountbatten or samuel hoare saw the use in these fascists. Their connections went a long way after the war for fascists across the board. Like they sure have financial ties. The actual larger ties came after the war with the west taking over. Soon they are flowing ghouls like stetsko or any other fascist to their programs. Dulles or singlaub or hw all these people knew what to do with them. I don’t think usa is on the nazis side as much as its contemporary colonial powers. They bought em to the west’s side.