by Rand Paul
So, we see that the facts (and the Nazis themselves) argue that Nazism was a branch of socialism. The only reason this debate continues is that today’s socialists only want to admit to a lineage of “kinder, more gentle” socialists like the Danish (who are not socialist and utterly reject the description). Today’s socialists have seen it in their best interest to arbitrarily assign the Nazis to the “right wing.”
This debate still matters as each generation chooses the government and economic system they think will best provide prosperity. So, if you want to be an American socialist, by all means, learn of your forebears, including socialists like the Nazis, who decided to animate their socialism with racial hatred in order to implement it more quickly.18
Chapter 23
Socialism Encourages Eugenics
Some on the left still argue that when a government begins committing genocide they shouldn’t continue to be referred to as socialist. George Watson argues otherwise. He writes: “[T]here were still, in Marx’s view, races that would have to be exterminated. That is a view he published in January–February 1849 in an article by Engels called ‘The Hungarian Struggle’ in Marx’s journal the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and the point was recalled by socialists down to the rise of Hitler.”1
Watson continues: “The Marxist theory of history required and demanded genocide for reasons implicit in its claim that feudalism was already giving place to capitalism, which must in its turn be superseded by socialism. Entire races would be left behind after a workers’ revolution, feudal remnants in a socialist age; and since they could not advance two steps at a time, they would have to be killed. They were racial trash, as Engels called them, and fit only for the dung-heap of history.”2
Was that simply a dated, one-off view limited to Engels? Disturbingly, decades before Hitler’s deadly “eugenics” camps, many prominent socialists were quite open in their support for government-directed eugenics.3
The socialist George Bernard Shaw infamously claimed that “the only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialization of the selective breeding of Man.” Shaw went on to recommend that certain people be eliminated by “lethal chamber,” a sinister forewarning of Hitler’s camps.
As Jonathan Freedland writes, “Such thinking was not alien to the great Liberal titan and mastermind of the welfare state, William Beveridge, who argued that those with ‘general defects’ should be denied not only the vote, but ‘civil freedom and fatherhood.’”4
Marie Stopes, a pioneer in birth control, was, as Freedland reports, “a hardline eugenicist, determined that the ‘hordes of defectives’ be reduced in number, thereby placing less of a burden on ‘the fit.’ Stopes later disinherited her son because he had married a short-sighted woman, thereby risking a less-than-perfect grandchild.”5
Likewise, Margaret Sanger, another birth control crusader and socialist, also advocated for eugenics. The same year Hitler ran for the presidency, Sanger gave a speech titled “My Way to Peace.”
Sanger argued: “The second step would be to take an inventory of the second group, such as illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends; classify them in special departments under government medical protection and segregate them on farms and open spaces.”6 Sanger’s list of “deplorables” would be allowed to leave the camps if they agreed to sterilization. Never one to worry too much about civil liberties, Sanger thought only about 15 million to 20 million Americans would need to be interned in these camps.
Father John J. Conley tells us, “The centerpiece of the [Sanger’s eugenics] program is vigorous state use of compulsory sterilization and segregation. The first class of persons targeted for sterilization is made up of people with mental or physical disability. . . . A much larger class of undesirables would be forced to choose either sterilization or placement in state work camps.”7
Makes one wonder if Hitler heard her speech. In an era where Confederate statues are seemingly taken down daily, it’s amazing that the “liberal” icon and socialist Margaret Sanger is still proudly promoted and lionized as the founder of Planned Parenthood.
The socialist advocates for eugenics were nothing if not blunt. Another prominent socialist, Britain’s Harold Laski, predicted the eugenics of the future: “The time is surely coming . . . when society will look upon the production of a weakling as a crime against itself.”8
The scientist J. B. S. Haldane, known for his socialism, channeled his inner Nietzsche to opine that “Civilisation stands in real danger from over-production of ‘undermen.’”9 Haldane was also unapologetic in his support of Stalin, declaring in 1962 that Stalin was “a very great man who did a very good job.”10
The eugenicists were not only worried about undesirable genetic traits; they wrongly believed that behavioral traits were inherited. So, if you were poor or lazy, the eugenicists wanted to prevent you from reproducing. As Freedland puts it, “it was not poverty that had to be reduced or even eliminated: it was the poor.”11
Even the godfather of big-government debt and inflation, John Maynard Keynes, was, as Freedland notes, the director of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944. Keynes advocated for contraception to keep down the numbers of the working class, who were too “drunken and ignorant” to control their production of children.
Today’s left would have us forget that the pseudoscience of eugenics was once all the rage among socialists. When reminded of the repugnant views of their fellow travelers, today’s socialists might respond that their forebears were simply products of their time, that it’s not fair to hold them to our current standards.
But Freedland argues that socialists’ support for eugenics was no accident: “The Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb and their ilk were not attracted to eugenics because they briefly forgot their leftwing principles. The harder truth is that they were drawn to eugenics for what were then good, leftwing reasons.”12
These same socialists believed unreservedly in state planning of the economy. It was not much of a stretch for them to believe in the state planning of families. As Freedland asks, “If the state was going to plan the production of motor cars in the national interest, why should it not do the same for the production of babies?”13
To these socialists, individual wants and needs were secondary to society’s interests. As Freedland explains, if the “aim was to do what was best for society, society would clearly be better off if there were more of the strong to carry fewer of the weak.”14
You can excuse these socialists all you want “as men and women of their times,” but never forget that they were socialists and that they saw state planning of the family as no different than state planning of the economy or a rancher’s planning for his cattle breeding.
As Mises put it: “It is vain for the champions of eugenics to protest that they did not mean what the Nazis executed. Eugenics aims at placing some men, backed by the police power, in complete control of human reproduction. It suggests that the methods applied to domestic animals be applied to men. This is precisely what the Nazis tried to do.”15
Once the truth of the Holocaust became apparent, Freedland tells us, “eugenics went into steep decline . . . most recoiled from it once they saw where it led—to the gates of Auschwitz. The infatuation with an idea horribly close to Nazism was steadily forgotten.”16
What should not be forgotten is that the central idea of collectivism, that the individual is less important than the whole, is entirely consistent with allowing the state to eliminate individuals that are a burden to society.
Socialism and eugenics are not a historical anomaly but a historical symbiosis that we risk any time we are tempted to accept an “ism” that elevates the collective over the individual.17
Watson writes, “since the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 socialists have been eager to forget” their association with state elimination of undesirables. He maintains that “there is plenty of evidence in the writings of H. G. Wells, Jack London, Havelock Ellis, the Webbs and other
s to the effect that socialist commentators did not flinch from drastic measures. The idea of ethnic cleansing was orthodox socialism for a century and more.”18
The argument that Hitler’s racial animus and ultimate extermination policies somehow disqualify him as a socialist are not justified. As Watson puts it, “Only socialists in that age advocated or practised genocide, at least in Europe, and from the first years of his political career Hitler was proudly aware of the fact.”19
The socialist intelligentsia, at the time, remained committed to defending the idea that creating a socialist paradise, as Beatrice Webb put it, is like making an omelet: “you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.”
Chapter 24
Your Degree of Enthusiasm for Socialism May Decide Whether You Live or Die
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the famous author and Russian dissident, spent eight years in the Soviet gulag. His books The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich brought the horrors of Stalin to the world, although these books were, of course, banned in the Soviet Union.
In The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn tells the stories of those who were arrested or went missing. The stories are culled from the firsthand reports of 227 prisoners. It is in some ways miraculous that the text was published at all. Solzhenitsyn was still in the Soviet Union. The secretary who had typed the manuscript was arrested and days later killed herself, prompting Solzhenitsyn to quickly get the manuscript to Paris. The Gulag Archipelago was finally published in 1973 but was banned for another sixteen years in Russia.
The book contains a particular anecdote about applauding—or not applauding—Stalin to illustrate the frivolousness and consequences of the arrests. (This anecdote also incidentally connects with my own personal experience of the consequences of unenthusiastic clapping . . . more on that later.)
Solzhenitsyn paints the scene.
At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). . . . For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the stormy applause, rising to an ovation, continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin.
However, who would dare to be the first to stop? . . . After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first! And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on—six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly—but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?
The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter. . . .
Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved!
The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel. That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:
“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”1
How, pray tell, am I connected to the factory director arrested for unenthusiastic applause? Well, in 2013, Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech to a joint session of Congress. Just as in presidential State of the Union orations, today’s partisan politicians can’t contain their enthusiasm and insist on giving a standing ovation to every utterance. It becomes tiresome and ridiculous even if you agree with the sentiment expressed.
The typical State of the Union speech is a twenty-five-minute address turned into a ninety-minute marathon by endless standing ovations. Instead of awe over the great privilege of being present for a joint session of Congress and hearing the president firsthand, you wind up feeling as drained and insincere as if you were attending an overwrought junior high pep rally.
So as Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was ending, cameras focused in on me standing and applauding—apparently too slowly applauding—the speech. The Internet went crazy with a GIF of me slow-clapping Netanyahu.
Michael Brendan Dougherty described the Internet reaction. “And that’s when people lost their minds. You see, Paul wasn’t clapping enthusiastically enough. It was a clap gap! How did he fail to catch the clap as it spread through Congress?”2
Neocon stutterers like Jennifer Rubin wrote that I was channeling my inner hatred for Israel and all Jews. Not true, of course, but that has never stopped Rubin from writing drivel. In one six-month period, this supposedly “conservative” voice of the Washington Post wrote dozens and dozens of articles attacking me. Her attacks, however, simply exposed her as the fake conservative that she is.
Seth Lipsky challenged one of her allegedly “conservative” attacks on me. I had introduced a bill to cut foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority. Rubin dubbed it a “phony pro-Israel bill.” The very definition of petty partisanship is when you oppose a bill that you actually agree with simply because you hate the author of the bill.3
I have to admit that I did enjoy these snarky keepers of “all-things-politically-correct-regarding-Israel” getting their due with comparisons to the gulag.
Dougherty wrote entertainingly: “Monitoring the relative enthusiasm of applause has an ugly history, mostly in dictatorships” and he recounted Solzhenitsyn’s anecdote about not being the first to stop clapping.
Dougherty goes on to remind the authoritarian Rubin, “In the nightmare prison-state of North Korea, Kim Jong Un’s own uncle (and the rest of his uncle’s family) were executed by the state for ‘thrice-cursed acts of treachery.’” Listed among the traitorous deeds: “half-heartedly clapping.”
To folks like Rubin, Dougherty wrote: “Foreign policy hawks don’t have the power to jail Rand Paul, but they should at least have the good sense to disagree with him like a normal human being.” Couldn’t have said it better myself.4
Matt Purple at Rare.com also came to my defense: “Senator Rand Paul was just convicted of a capital offense against America, Israel, decency, civilization, man, God, and the Occident. Paul attended Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress yesterday, and when the speech wrapped up, he was spotted clapping with what was promptly deemed insufficient enthusiasm.”
In reference to Orwell’s 1984, Purple wrote: “Among neoconservatives, this is the equivalent of not getting agitated enough during the Two Minutes Hate.”
I don’t recount this episode to compare myself in any way to the horrors of the real-life regimes that have and still do kill for the crime of insufficient clapping. I recount this story only to warn of what happens when everyone begins to think so much alike that any dissent, even unenthusiastic clapping, is crime enough to rally the politically correct police for an ostracization.5
I’ve always wondered if Bolsheviks exiled to Siberia by the czar were conscious of the irony, once in power, of sending their opp
onents to Siberian prisons. One such prisoner was Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of the dystopian novel We. We was written in 1924. Zamyatin joined the Bolsheviks because the czar had imprisoned him, put him through a sham execution, and banished his books. Ironically, We then became the first book banned by the Bolsheviks.
Part IV
Socialism Doesn’t Create Equality
Chapter 25
Socialism Promises Equality and Leads to Tyranny
Today’s socialists don’t want anything to do with Nazi socialism or for that matter Mao’s socialism. But the question remains—if Mao’s China is not representative of socialism, where are the differences? It is important to remember that the post–World War II revolution that brought Mao to power was fueled by the promises of socialism. Mao promised to redistribute wealth and abolish private property. Mao promised to abolish income inequality and create a more equal society. Anything sound familiar?
Modern socialists’ goals are not dissimilar, except for the gulag, the famines, the cultural revolution, oh . . . and the millions of victims, I suppose. But Mao and Stalin and Hitler didn’t come to power promising tyranny. They came to power promising equality. It is important to know something of the horrors of Maoism so that we can resist the same calls for government-enforced equality. We can see quite clearly that the more you destroy economic carrots, the more you have to resort to economic sticks. Not everyone wants equality of income, and those citizens must be penalized until they agree.
Richard Ebeling makes clear that “under a regime of comprehensive socialism the ordinary citizen would be confronted with the worst of all imaginable tyrannies.” Not by the accident of “thugs” taking over control of socialism but by socialism’s very nature, “the individual [is] totally and inescapably dependent on the political authority for his very existence.”1