"From 1914 onward, there arose from the ranks of Marxist socialism one teacher after another who led, not the conservatives and reactionaries, but the hard-working labourer and idealist youth into the National Socialist fold. It was only thereafter that the rise of nationalist socialism attained major importance and rapidly grew into the Hitlerian doctrine."
F. A. Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom: The Socialist Roots of Naziism."
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If you watched "V for Vendetta", then you know that it was a right-wing politician who rises to become Big Brother of a futuristic England.
The movie got it wrong. This is not how Big Brothers rise to power in real-life totalitarian governments.
Nobel economist F. A. Hayek studied the rise of Marxist dictators in The Road to Serfdom. In Chapter 12 ("The Socialist Roots of Naziism"), he demonstrates that liberals and the liberal traditions of Germany are what made Adolph Hitler’s rise to power possible.
At first, Hayek’s position might seem counterintuitive. But it’s not if you really think about it. To get people to live their lives under the doctrine of Karl Marx, you have to apply force. Once the vogue of equality wears off, people will want creature comforts and privileges that only a capitalistic system can deliver.
If Conservatives are truly the builders of evil empires, then the enactment of the Patriot Act would have already turned America into a police state. But that has not come to pass. Even Jay Leno has given up writing jokes about the government reading his mail.
Conservatives do deserve their share of criticism. Conservatives decry the Miranda decision and blame its restrictions for allowing criminals to go free on a technicality. Conservatives should know better.
Miranda was an important case. But let’s make an important distinction about its application. It was a very liberal U. S. Supreme Court that empowered the police to read a suspect his rights. I have always maintained that police officers are the last people you want telling you what your rights are under the law. But liberals cannot understand the danger of entrusting that authority to the state’s armed police force.
This is how the fabric of a free society unravels. Liberals invariably appoint the government and its agents to control everyone’s lives.
We are fortunate to have a modern example of how liberals would apply your legal rights if they controlled the government-the Duke lacrosse players rape case. We are also fortunate that this civics experiment took place in a test tube and not across the breadth of our society.
As soon as the news broke that a young black woman had accused three white Duke lacrosse players of raping her, the liberal community on the Duke campus and its surrounds demanded swift justice, which in this case was a euphemism for a lynch party.
In Hitler’s Germany, Jews were not persecuted because they were Jews per se. Their crimes were twofold. First, they were foreigners in the sense that they had not assimilated into the German mainstream. And second, but more important, Jews were cast as the controllers of the capitalistic system. The money ills of the post-WWI German economy were blamed on Jews, the convenient scapegoats.
In the aftermath of the Duke rape allegations, you can easily see that a group of privileged white boys fit nicely into Hitler’s model. These boys were athletes who lived in unassimilated fashion with the rest of the campus. And being white boys of privilege, they quickly became the metaphor for controllers of the capitalistic system.
German Jews wore fine leather shoes.
Duke athletes preferred their Nikes.
The spats were not about the shoes,
But instead about the Piggies.
Mike Nifong, the Durham prosecutor, saw his opportunity to seize power. He threw fuel on the fire and denied the accused athletes their legal rights. He even hid exculpatory evidence from the defense. Nifong won election by a slim plurality, a victory made possible only by the hideous frenzy that he created.
Perhaps the saddest story of this affair was the response of the "Gang of 88"-the 88 Duke faculty members who published an ad (some would call it a manifesto) proclaiming the alleged rape "a social disaster." Their condemnation of Duke society came two weeks after the news broke.
The Gang of 88 used this incarnation of Tawana Brawley to repaint Blue Devils as white devils. But their motives in doing so had nothing to do with race. Their goal had everything to do with instilling class warfare to promote the extreme socialism that they ascribe to.
If you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler came to power, then read The Road to Serfdom. And then study the Duke rape case. Once the gangs of 88 elected enough Mike Nifongs as prosecutors, Hitler was unstoppable.
