DENVER (AP) — A teenager suspected in a shooting attack at a suburban Denver high school that left two students in critical condition appeared fascinated with previous mass shootings including Columbine and expressed neo-Nazi views online, according to experts.
Since December, Desmond Holly, 16, had been active on an online forum where users watch videos of killings and violence, mixed in with content on white supremacism and antisemitism, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism said in a report.
Holly shot himself following Wednesday’s shooting at Evergreen High School in Jefferson County. He died of his injuries. It is still unclear how he selected his victims. The county was also the scene of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre that killed 14 people.
Holly’s TikTok accounts contained white supremacist symbols, the ADL said, and the name of his most recent account included a reference to a popular white supremacist slogan. The account was unavailable Friday. TikTok said accounts associated with Holly had been banned.
Holly’s family could not be reached. The Associated Press left a message at a telephone number associated with the house that police searched after the shooting.
Let me just start with my working definitions so that we are on the same page.
Socialism - the state controlling the means of production/distribution Communism - a stateless, moneyless, and classless society; as described by Marx/Engels Capitalism - privately controlled means of production/distribution, personal property, free markets, etc; as described by Adam Smith Authoritarianism - strict obedience to an authority at the expense of individual freedoms and democratic processes
In most of my interactions on the topic, these definitions are well accepted. These ‘-isms’ are ideological goals and never truly achievable. A system of governance will simply lean more towards one system or the other. There are capitalist policies inside of communist China. There are socialist policies inside capitalist USA. The world is messy.
The communism definition is the one that generally produces the most confusion due to some nations claiming to be communist, but having radically different social and economic policies from each other. Thankfully, we have the 10 planks from the ‘Communist Manifesto’ that we can always reference if we need to get into the weeds. Which, I don’t think we really need to get into for this. Obviously there are lots of different versions of these ‘-isms’ as well (i.e. democratic socialism, laissez-faire capitalism, stakeholder capitalism), but let’s just ignore all those for now.
Just to touch on unionization. This concept is something that I would put in a somewhat separate category. In theory you can have moderate to strong unions in most of the mentioned ‘-isms’ so long as government policies align to allow such things; I’m thinking of the ‘Nordic model’ as a good example of market based economies with strong unions and good social welfare programs. This is all an aside though.
Ok, so with those definitions in mind, let’s visit this idea of ‘authoritarian capitalism’ that you mentioned. I’ve heard this term before and find it frustrating. Let’s break these terms down via an analogy. Imagine a soccer game:
Maybe this isn’t a perfect analogy, but you get my point. Smashing these two words next to each other becomes oxymoronic. An authoritarian system cannot also be a capitalist system. The premise of each concept is in direct conflict with each other. In Adam Smith’s “The wealth of nations” he discusses the folly of a similarly centralized planning authority extensively. He was mostly talking about monarchs, but for our purposes they are close enough. The less a centralized authority is involved in the economy, the more capitalist it is. If you want to make the argument that the Nazis (the state) were an authoritarian regime AND heavily involved in the means of production/distribution, then we’re talking about a form of socialism.
In Richard J. Evans’ “The Coming of the Third Reich” he made a somewhat similar claim as you had about the Nazis ‘privatizing’ the industries after they came to power. Perhaps he had been working under a different set of definitions or understanding, but this choice of word left me baffled the first time I read it (btw, I have the utmost respect for Evans, he’s great). By Evans’ own account, the Nazis took over the government and became the state. Then they used their state powers to take control of businesses and industries to better accommodate their needs and provide the welfare programs they promised…the state took over the means of production/distribution…that’s the opposite of ‘privatizing’, it’s socialism.
You had also mentioned ‘welfare chauvinism’ which would still fall under the state controlling the means of distribution under the definitions I started with. It’s a shitty form of state controlled distribution, but still the state deciding who gets what resources. Aaaaaaaandddd I’m pretty sure the rest of the points you made are similarly addressed given the definitions. If I missed anything important to you let me know.
Also, I’m not alone in these thoughts about the Nazis being socialist, today I also randomly stumbled on historian Dr. Rainer Zitelmann echoing this sentiment. As I said yesterday though, I think we mostly just disagree on definitions. Where did you get your definition for socialism anyway?