I saw the other parenti post from a while back. And I’ve been meaning to ask about some stuff 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 one 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)
See here.
David Swanson cites Weixelbaum’s response in his excellent book Leaving World War II Behind, chapter 7, so I believe that Parenti was indeed mistaken (but not ‘dishonest’) when he speculated that the failure to bomb a factory in Cologne was intentional. As Swanson noted, Parenti and others at least had reasonable grounds for their suspicions!
See here.
It’s typical victim blaming: the classic tale about how the Communist ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and let Fascism into the world. The Fascists came to power in Italy and Germany due to capitalism’s deficiencies, not because of us, nor even because of ordinary social democrats (as annoying as they may be). People did not simply shake their heads at us and promote the far right as a form of collective punishment. The ruling class instituted the far right in order to prevent capitalism from collapsing.
Thank you very much for all these great linked threads.
I did look at the weixelbaum article and what I gleaned as much about the bombing. I guess my contention with the article is with the way they talk of books about american capital in europe or gladio are conspiracy drivel. I read more on weixelbaum writing about higham saying his book is more for conspiracy feeders. I think weixelbaum doesn’t see capital and monopolies relations to western policy especially regarding dulles brothers. I disagree with weixelbaum there about that this stuff is all baseless conspiracy until some sealed records say otherwise. But that is another topic. I guess I can see why parenti made that inference.
As for fascists, yeah they are put to task by the ruling class as reaction to salvage collapse rather than let communists take reigns.