Germany’s Weimar Republic may be the greatest ‘what if’ story in modern history. What would have happened in Europe had there been no Great Depression? England, France, Germany, and the United States, were all humming along between WWI and October of 1929, and though Germany was saddled by its war reparations, overall Germany was doing pretty well. Without the Great Depression, Adolf Hitler would have died in a ditch, as an aspiring and uninspiring artist. WWII would never have happened.
Behind the scenes there was turmoil. I don’t know the central-banking histories of Europe as well as I know those of the United States, but it was ours that caused the Great Depression, so it is our Federal Reserve I’ll discuss.
We went without a Central Bank from the time of Andrew Jackson, all the way up to 1913, and our Federal Reserve System was still in its infancy at the end of WWI. As WWI ended, the fed feared inflation, and over-tightened our supply of money. This caused a pretty bad recession. The Fed was afraid of causing another recession through the Roaring Twenties, so it made the opposite mistake, keeping the supply of money too loose (aka, ‘expansionary’). There was insufficient demand for all of the money the fed was creating, even in a boom, and so banks were borrowing from the fed at very low interest rates, investing extremely large sums of money into the booming stock market. Many others were doing the same thing – borrowing money and investing it in the stock market.
Long before the bottom came out, people (and banks) had been selling stock to cover the interest on their loans – that was how the boom was created in the first place. Lending rates were low, and stock growth was high, so investors could simply sell off a little of their winnings to cover the cost of their loans.
In 1929, stock market growth started to slow. At first this was considered a temporary slowdown, but eventually growth slowed to the point that people (and banks) could not cover the interest on the money they’d borrowed without selling enough stock to realize a loss. At the same time, interest rates started to rise, compounding this problem.
What happened next was predictable. Everyone and their brother was leveraged to the hilt, with borrowed money in the stock market, and everyone stood to lose their shirts unless they sold all their holdings before the stock market went down much further. Everyone tried to get out all at once, and the stock market crashed. More importantly, very few people (or banks) were able to get out quickly enough to pay their loans.
People, and banks, went bankrupt.
The Great Crash of 1929 caused a brief recession. Unemployment shot up over 9%, but by June of 1930 it was back down below 6%, and the recession was over. Unfortunately for the country, and the world, the fed had spent the recession afraid of causing another boom, and had not kept the money supply constant. The amount of money in circulation had retracted by 1/3 (reflected the number of banks that had closed).
In July, 1930, bank failures exploded, and the Great Depression began.
Yes – you read that right. Had the fed simply done it’s job, while some banks would have failed, it would not have become a flood, and there would have been no Great Depression. The Great Depression, as well as World War Two, was the fed’s fault.
As bad as the Great Depression was in the United States, it was ten times worse in Germany. The Great Depression brought the Weimar Republic to it’s knees, Germany teetering on the brink of becoming a failed state.
The Soviets had been active in Germany even before the end of WWI. Hitler himself had dabbled in Communism at the end of the war, where he was elected as a Commissar in the German Army Union – a communist group.
Very little is known about Hitler’s views of communism at the time, but after the war, Hitler stayed in the Army, becoming a propagandist for the Democratic Socialist Government of Bavaria, where he gave his first professional political speeches, in favor of Democratic Socialism, and against both Communism, as well as Capitalism.
Communism, Hitler said, was for the Slavic people, who ‘were not of sufficient stock’ to operate in any system other than one based on punishment and force. Capitalism, in the meantime, was according to Hitler, ‘created by the Jew to destroy the German people through profit and greed.’ Democratic Socialism, Hitler said, was the answer.
This history, incidentally, comes from ‘Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris’ by Ian Kershaw.
As Germany entered depression, the number of political parties in Germany exploded. Hitler, in turn, soured on Democracy. We complain about having only two viable parties. Germany, in the early 1930s, had tens of thousands of viable parties, which is to say that Germany had no viable parties. Politically as well as economically, Germany was ruined.
Right around this time, Hitler (still in the employment of the Democratic Socialist Government of Bavaria) was ordered to spy on the fledgling Nazi Party. Hitler discovered Fascism.
I wrote a dissertation on Fascism a few years ago, in which I showed how Fascism was designed as a Socialism 2.0. If you have not read that article, I urge you to do so. For this article, suffice it to say that Fascism took socialism and added state-controlled profit back into it, as an incentive system. Fascism is nothing more than applied Communism, using profit, rather than punishment, to keep the people working.
To a true Communist profit is evil, and Fascists are evil sellouts.
The Fascists and the Communists emerged as the two groups promising to end Germany’s depression, and with a Weimar Republic teetering on the brink of failed state status, both groups setup paramilitary forces to work as their own private police.
Everyone calls the Nazi paramilitary police the ‘Brown Shirts,’ but the actual name was ‘Sturmabteilung,’ which translates to ‘Storm Detachment.’ Their mission was to bring a political storm to the Weimar Republic, and to ensure that the Nazis emerged from that storm victorious.
The Communist Party of Germany also had a paramilitary police force, with the mission of bringing a political storm to the Weimar Republic, and of ensuring that Communism emerged victorious. The Communists called their ‘Storm Detachment’ ANTIFA. The acronym ‘ANTIFA’ was intentionally misleading, as though it stands for ‘Anti Fascism,’ to the Communist Party of Germany, anyone who was not a communist was a fascist.
ANTIFA did not exist just in Germany either. The Soviets formed ANTIFA movements in all Western countries, and while we may today laugh about how juvenile America’s ANTIFA is, understand that they are becoming more organized, and better funded, every day.
America fell asleep at the switch in the 1990s, with the fall of the Soviet Union. We overlooked that there was another communist threat picking up where the Soviets left off – the Chinese Communist Party.
I wrote an article outlining how the CCP has declared a non-shooting war against the United States, and is fighting that war along two fronts: informational, and economical. As a part of this war, the CCP has traded access to the Chinese media market to our major media houses, in exchange for the power to censor. If you have not read that article, I encourage you to do so. For now, suffice it to say that any media house that does not allow the CCP to actively censor it, looses the ability to create media for the Chinese market. China uses this to steer American public opinion in whatever direction China wants, with the goal of usurping the United States as the world’s preeminent power.
The Soviets, and then the CCP, have been working to build a nucleus of Communist support in America since the 1920s. Today we are seeing this movement transitioning into the implementation stage.
The timing should be no surprise. Prior to Covid-19, China was reeling from the trade war with the United States, and was on the verge of capitulating. Suddenly, in an election year, the economy is taken down by a disease from China, we have rioting across the country, and the constant barrage of negative press against Trump has his approval ratings at the lowest they have been during his presidency. China wants Biden to win, and has thrown its cards on the table in a bid to make that happen. Not to be outdone by a foreign power, the DNC is gleefully burning our country to the ground in its bid to retake the Presidency.
The mainstream part of the modern American communist uprising is Black Lives Matter. The name Black Lives Matter is wonderful propaganda, as it allows communists to stoke racial discord in our nation, while simultaneously making communist demands, all while hiding under the claim that disagreeing with the movement takes the stance that black lives do not matter. In other words, if you don’t march with Black Lives Matter, you are a racist. ‘Silence is violence’, as the saying goes.
The vast majority of Americans just want to be good, moral people, living in a good, moral society. The media, thanks to the CCP, has been drilling into our heads that to be moral, we have to denounce our country – or at least that we have to denounce everything our country has ever stood for or done.
France had the same beliefs in 1940, which is why most French units either fled or surrendered upon first encountering German forces. Historians sometimes ask why France did not invade Germany in 1939, and the answer is that the French leadership knew much of the French military was not willing to defend France, much less invade Germany. On top of this, the French public by and large would not have supported a war. As a popular French saying at the time went: “It is better to kneel speaking German than to die speaking French.” The Germans invaded, and like Colin Kaepernick, the French took a knee.
When a people no longer view their nation as having a moral right to exist, it is ripe for invasion, and though we are not there yet, all it takes is a ground swell through the military ranks similar to that already endemic in the NFL, and all the advanced weaponry in the world will not save us.
Throw in a demoralized and shrinking police force that can no longer enforce the law, and a public that no longer views the law as worthy of enforcement..
…and open borders…
…and we have no longer have a nation.
Understand two things. One is that ANTIFA and BLM are the same movement. BLM is the political wing, and ANTIFA is the paramilitary ‘Storm Detachment’ wing. BLM holds pro-communist political rallies, and ANTIFA beats anyone who opposes communism senseless, protecting BLM rallies, taking the blame for BLM riots, and using violence to disrupt all political rallies by any groups opposed to communism.
True communism has never been implemented. Marx called for a temporary ‘dictatorship of the proletariat,’ that would work to setup the communist system, and that would then fade away. True communism is what emerges only after the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ goes away. True communism has no government.
The problem is that people are not ants. Human beings do not operate under a hive mind. We all, rather, have individual dreams and aspirations, all of which are incompatible with the communist system.
Communism is not about individuals. Communism is about the collective – the hive. Bees, like ants, operate in a natural communist state.
People do not operate that way.
To make communism work – true communism that is – we would have to completely suppress our individual needs and desires. The need for total suppression of individuality prevents the dictatorship of the proletariat from ever going away. It also makes communism the most brutal form of government in human history. Socialism has quite literally killed more people than smallpox.
Fascism was an attempt to modify communism in such a way as to make it sustainable. Giovanni Gentile reasoned that the dictatorship of the proletariat must be permanent, and that self interest must be controlled as a useful incentive, rather than crushed. Profit, he reasoned, was better than gulags.
Technically, fascism is defined as private ownership over the means of production, with government control and central planning. Effectively that is the same as communism with a profit incentive rather then a reliance on gulags.
China today is a hybrid of communism and fascism. We, in contrast, are a hybrid of free markets and fascism.
ANTIFA hates fascism, but only to the degree that they view profit as evil. Classical Liberals (aka small ‘l’ libertarians) also hate fascism, as we do not believe in central planning, or government control.
ANTIFA hates Classical Liberals for the same reason they hate fascists – Classical Liberals believe in private property and profit. To ANTIFA, ANYONE who believes in private property and profit, is a fascist, even if they hate fascism. Don’t let the name ‘Anti Fascism’ fool you – ANTIFA is not just against fascism. They are the Communist Storm Detachment.
The Republican Party is still, at least ideologically, the Classical Liberal party of free people and free markets. In practice, however, power corrupts, and elected Republicans are just as corrupt as everyone else in elected office. As such, while Republicans in office are for the principle of free markets, very few elected Republicans work to implement the principles upon which they run.
The Democrats of my youth were similar to Classical Liberals in a number of ways. They were also for free people and free markets, but they wanted a highly regulated free market to ensure that any excesses in free market mechanics were controlled. They also wanted a fairly generous social welfare state.
Democrats in office are just as corrupt as are Republicans in office, but whereas cronyism runs against the very philosophy Republicans run on, cronyism is part and parcel of government control, making cronyism a natural fit for the Democratic Party. Democratic voters don’t want control corrupted, but power corrupts, and cronyism is the result.
Classical Liberals, like old-school Democrats, want some regulatory oversight on the markets, and some social welfare spending, but we place a higher burden of proof on the necessity for such things. We do not view free markets as being naturally prone to excess, so we want regulations only where demonstrably needed, and we want welfare systems designed to return everyone to a state of self sufficiency.
The New Democrats do not believe in free markets at all, and are split into two camps: those who want a government controlled market, that uses profit only as an incentive system (Elizabeth Warren campaigned on this); and those who want government ownership and control of the means of production. Those two groups are fascists, and communists.
Fascists and Communists used to be enemies, in spite of the fact that they were also kissing-cousins, but the fall of the Soviet Union changed that. China saw the Soviet Union fall, and more importantly, China saw why the Soviet Union fell. China responded by giving up on Mao’s revolution. China started to play with fascism. China’s embrace of fascism, as a means of strengthening communism, was a full-force abdication of the true Marxist ideal. China, essentially, gave up on getting past the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, and embraced profit, not only as an incentive system, but also as a means to fund government. Most Chinese businesses are fully owned subsidiaries of the Chinese government, and/or the CCP. These companies operate for profit, and that profit goes to the state.
China, frankly, does not care whether we start out going full Trotsky Communism, Maoist Communism, or Fascism. At the end of the day, China is a hybrid of Communism and Fascism, and if the CCP gets its way, that is what they will make us as well.
Now – I’m not suggesting that China is going to invade. The days of invading great powers ended with the invention of the Atomic Bomb. The CCP understands that taking over the United States requires neither invasion, nor conflict. The CCP controls our media, and through it our sense of moral purpose. You might say that the CCP controls our social conscience.
China has no intention of invading the United States. China does want to weaken us militarily, so the notion of destroying the morale and the patriotism of our military is fully in play, but China is not going to invade the United States (and any notion that they could is absurd).
BLM and ANTIFA – they are the invading army. The CCP cannot destroy us, so they have us destroying ourselves.
Let me leave you with one final thought. Consider this a litmus test you can use to determine which side you are on.
Ask yourself the following question. What would happen to you, in your professional and personal circles, if you publicly reversed your political opinions?
I know what would happen to me: I’d have a much larger following if I changed sides.
Consider that if you are not free to change your opinions, you don’t really have opinions. What you have are programmed responses someone else put into you, that you are not allowed to reject. Similarly, if you are not free to say what you want (even if it is the political opposite of what you currently would say), you don’t really have a voice. What you have is a mouth others speak through.
Consider too that if you cannot argue in favor of the other side’s positions well enough to fool people into thinking you support the other side, you don’t really understand the argument, and are not free to change opinions.
