Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

Tuesday’s New York Times front page roared “FOX NEWS OUSTS CARLSON, A VOICE OF THE FAR RIGHT.” But what is the “Far Right”? To the Times it is anyone who does not share their “enlightened”, read far left, views.  If you believe in federalism, oppose massive town-destroying immigration, or criminals burning down the neighborhood, or holding that DNA cannot change you are “far right”, want Nazi Germany back, and have no opinion worth listening to, which nevertheless must be suppressed.

It was thanks to the successful disinformation of “Uncle Joe” Stalin that the Nazis were labeled a rightist party at all. Nothing could be further from the truth; their own name tells you that. NAZI was short for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, Yes, socialist, Nazis were a party of the left, kissin’ cousins of the Bolsheviks. Their fights were intramural, a family scrap between monsters. 

The Nazis believed in state over family, that children belonged to the state and encouraged children to inform on wrong-thinking parents., just like the Soviets. The Hitler Youth were the German equivalent to the Soviet’s Young Pioneers where they were taught to worship the great guiding light of the people, Hitler or Stalin, take your pick.

Both Nazis and Soviets viewed Christianity as an enemy of the state. Hitler sent priests and religious off to concentration camps, Stalin did him one better, he murdered them by the score, some twenty million Christians by one count. Religious ceremonies were severely curtailed or forbidden and one could not be sure if the priest in the confessional was not an agent of the state. Unlike Stalin, Hitler did have a powerful and effective enemy in the Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Münster, the Graf (count) von Galen frustrated the Nazis at every turn by using their own acts and words against them so infuriating Hitler that the Fuhrer vowed to execute him at war’s end but did not dare to do so during it. Heading this enemy camp was none other than Pope Pius XII who was running an anti-Nazi spy operation out of the Vatican that had even penetrated the Abwehr (military-intelligence) whose chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was in league with the Pope. (That Pius was pro-Nazi is a canard, if he had been why would Israel Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome, convert to Catholicism after the war and take Pius’ given name Eugenio as his baptismal name?)

In economics one splits hairs, both were statist, but the Germans did it better. The Reich let industry remain in private hands but severely regulated and taxed it, although certain Nazis wanted to nationalize industry and kill the capitalists, just as the Soviets had. Being wiser, Hitler knew he needed the managerial class to direct industry. German industry ran well, the Soviets, had one failed plan after another. Hitler offered German workers better conditions, and vacations at state-owned resorts. Stalin offered the gulag, starvation, or a bullet in the head. Hitler was loved, Stalin hated.  Wonder why?

Both denounced hidden enemies, enemies of the state who had to be dealt with in the harshest manner. For Hitler it was exterminating Jews, for the Communists it was exterminating kulaks and Ukrainians.

There is another area where Nazis and Soviets were co-joined–murder of their original comrades. Stalin killed off the old Bolsheviks in show trials, Hitler did the same by judicially executing Rohm and the SA. 

Hitler and Stalin and their systems were evil incarnate, satanic in their workings. Given the facts of Hitler and Stalin, most ably chronicled in historian Allan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin Parallel Lives the NY Times chooses to ignore history, logic, and good taste and plain common sense. Adolph Ochs bought the NY Times in 1896 to make it “the newspaper of record”; today his ambition is a fading memory.

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William Layer

Lt. Colonel Civil Affairs, USAR (ret) served twenty-six years in the regular and reserve components of the US Army. He was civil military liaison for the 260th Military Police, DC National Guard, State Public Affairs Officer, Commander of the Public Affairs unit and a counter-drug intelligence analyst. Transferring to the 352 Civil Affairs Command as monuments and archives officer, he became the Command Public Affairs Officer in Iraq as well as liaison to local Iraqi leaders and acting Secretary to the General Staff. He was instrumental in recovering photographic artifacts of the Iraqi Royal family while in Baghdad. He was wounded in action in an ambush in Feb. 2004 for which he was awarded the Purple Heart.
In his civilian career he worked primarily in Army Public Affairs and for the Air Force as historian to the presidential wing in the early Reagan administration and later for Air Force Legislative Liaison covering congressional hearings and assisting in preparing testimony for senior leaders.
His essays and reviews have appeared in the scholarly and popular press including Asian Affairs and the Washington Times. He is co-author, with Ali Wahab, of The Iraqi Royal Family, a Collection of Photographs Recovered from The Ruins of the Zuhur Palace, 2004.
A native New Yorker, he holds a BA with honors in history from Findlay College (Ohio) and an MA in history from The Ohio State University. He is a graduate of the US Army Command & General Staff College and was graduated with distinction US Naval War College with a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies.

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