“Hitler Was a Communist”: The Overton Window is a Funhouse Mirror Now
How an alternate history is being created to go with an alternate reality
The Overton Window is a term referring to the range of acceptable discourse in a society, from “left” to “right.”
Over the centuries, for example, the Overton Window shifted away from slavery as an acceptable subject, and it mostly left the N-word and other racist slurs behind. We stopped being comfortable with women not having the vote, and it’s generally not acceptable to be a misogynist in the open. Anti-LGBTQ hatred, while always present, has been at least marginalized to some extent.
No more. The Overton Window has not just been shifted right, or even shattered, it’s been turned into a funhouse mirror that reverses everything. This was Elon Musk’s project when he bought Twitter, and now that Trump has absconded with the presidency, Mark Zuckerberg has come out of the closet as the compromised broligarch he has always been — and will go along with the program. He put UFC wife-beater Dana White on the Board of Facebook and got rid of his fact-checkers.
As I’ve extensively reported, Elon Musk’s apartheid roots, the propaganda he constantly distributes, and his open interference in the election of numerous governments makes his Nazism clear. But there has perhaps never been a better example than this post where the richest man in the world validates an utterly backwards statement by the head of the German neo-Nazi party AfD.
This statement is a blatant attempt at reversing history. Hitler, of course, was infamously anti-communist. I wanted to find out what Elon Musk’s own AI would say if I asked the question. Grok gave me a pretty good answer, actually.
In Rachel Maddow’s podcast Ultra, which I urge you to listen to if you haven’t, she centers the pro-Hitler Nazi propagandist George Syvelster Viereck who was involved in a scheme to spread Nazism in America through Congress. Viereck interviewed Hitler in 1932. Here’s an excerpt, emphasis added:
‘When I take charge of Germany, I shall end tribute abroad and Bolshevism at home.’
Adolf Hitler drained his cup as if it contained not tea but the lifeblood of Bolshevism.
‘Bolshevism’, the chief of the Brown Shirts, the Fascists of Germany continued, ‘is our greatest menace. Kill Bolshevism in Germany and you restore 70 million people to power. France owes her strength not to her armies but to the forces of Bolshevism and dissension in our midst’…
I met Hitler not in his headquarters, the Brown House in Munich, but in a private home, the dwelling of a former admiral of the German Navy. We discussed the fate of Germany over the teacups.
‘Why’, I asked Hitler, ‘do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party program is the very anthesis of that commonly accredited to Socialism?’
‘Socialism’, he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, ‘is the science of dealing with the common weal [health or well-being]. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
‘Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality and, unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.
‘We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our Socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the State on the basis of race solidarity. To us, State and race are one…
‘We must retain our colonies and expand eastward...’”
Hitler, the year before he took power, in 1932, made it very clear what he meant by “socialist.” He wanted to “take Socialism away from the Socialists.” This is eerily similar to something Elon Musk said in 2018:
Elon Musk was saying that he’s a “national socialist” and that true “socialism” is, as Hitler said, “the science of dealing with the common weal.”
Like Hitler, Elon Musk is an expansionist, fascist demagogue who is pushing for The Big Trade, which would divide up the world into a Russian Empire and a North American Reich. So this is not just about creating an alternate reality, but creating an alternate history, a history that justifies his pathological greed and messianic narcissism. He bought a social media company and turned it into a Nazi House of Mirrors.
Our duty as Americans, as citizens of the world, and as human beings, is to never allow this distortion of reality, or this distortion of history, to go unchallenged. Hitler was not a communist or a socialist, he was, like his posthumous student Elon Musk, a genocidal psychopath who conned his way into power. My only hope is that we will collectively see Musk for what he truly is before we suffer a Second Holocaust at his hands. Right now, there is nothing to stop him.
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Jim, thank you for explaining "Overton Window!" I appreciate that. I agree with your observation that Hitler, Trump, and Musk were/are driven by a pathological quest for power over others. Their grandiose delusions are mapped onto and masked as geopolitical ideology. Socialism, National Socialism, and Communism, as named and implemented by these men all become power-over, hierarchical structures that might start out sounding as if they are "for the people," but they end in servitude, slavery, and subordination of the people because that's what the hidden motive was all along.
Yes. We must fight to keep history uncluttered by the right-wing re-interpreters. It will be a tough fight because interpreting history requires access to so many facts that when even one gets distorted, the effect can be widespread.
As for Communism. No one knows what the term refers to. It's a label applied to those with whom someone disagrees to weaken their arguments. Even Russia which was home to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is no longer following Leninism/Marxism but is still referred to as a hotbed of Communism.