politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Hitler and Thälmann lost to the center right Hindenburg who was backed by the social democrats. Hindenburg was already president since 1925, so he was seen as no direct threat to democracy. Then Germany had parliamentary elections in July 1932. Those had a Nazi + Communist majority, so they repeated the election in November as they did not have a majority to form a government as both the Communist and the Nazis were against democracy. That however although slightly better did not solve that problem. So Hindenburg used decrees to work with the Nazis so they could form a government.
So if the Communists and social democrats would have worked together and elected a left president. That might have been somebody from the social democrats or indeed Thälmann, then a minority centrist or left wing or a majority centrist and communist government would have been possible. The Communists however never tried to work with the democratic forces. The Nazis actually did exactly that, which they were able to use to gain total power.
Point should be obvious.
This is ridiculous, the Communists opposed the Weimar Republic, but they absolutely supported democracy. In their view, in fact, they supported a much more authentic form of democracy by extricating private interests from the process.
We keep glossing over this "liberals siding with Nazis" thing
I really think the word you're looking for here is "liberal"
You're making significant assumptions, such as any of the liberals actually being willing to work the with the Communists, which would be a hell of a change for the SPD after that business with the Freikorps. Otherwise, the argument is just "join the SPD" and assume that they can bring their voters with them while completely abandoning their revolutionary project and putting themselves under the discipline of a liberal party. I feel that this is something of a muddy issue that you're interpreting in a convenient way.
"Aren't you as well?" Fair question, and there's a lot about this situation that I can't speak to, but what I said before I am completely sure holds, which is that Hitler gained power, on the most proximate level, because of liberal collaborators.
The SPD initially prefered to work with further left forces. They worked together on the Reich Congress of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils however the SPD wanted a parliamentary democracy and the USPD wanted a council republic, so when they realized the most of the councils were not in fact communist and actually supported the SPD, that caused uprisings against the interim SPD lead government, which the USPD left. The USPD was also unwilling to work with the SPD in the national assembly, which was the parliament they set up and they were sitting in. Intresstingly the Weimar constituion has a few points which could have been easily turned to accomadate workers councils. Hence the more centrist forces worked with them and the consitution was born.
No it is democratic, which the KPD at this point was no longer. They were working on setting up a Stalinist dictatorship and no longer a council democracy.
I am looking at what we might want to learn from what happened back for the US election and other struggles against the far right. So pointing out that this was an option is imho extremely important. Obviously they did not do it, but that does not mean it is impossible to do it at least partly today, with different left wing groups considering different centrist groups not radical enough.
I was going to let it go, but this really bugs me. What are you even talking about here?
This is what I am talking about, especially the second half of the article:
https://jacobin.com/2016/08/ernst-thalmann-east-germany-stalin-nazis