And there are plenty of them. but they’re not alone.

It’s possible, for example, to note the subtleties of Nazism’s origins, ideological suppliers, political positioning relative to period and current issues, utopian revolutionary aims, and the degree to which “socialist” validly describes them, without screeching “The Nazis were socialists and environmentalists and hated smoking” everytime someone advocates public health care, concern for trees and animals, or that smoking is on the whole rather bad for one.

It’s also possible to notice that they were allied with many on the more trad right for all sorts of common assumption and goal reasons, made piece with capitalism, and advocated a sort of nationalism while noticing the many ways in which their agenda ultimately deviated from all these and observing that conservatives and nationalists ended up being among their more capable opponents [for various reasons, to be sure] and that these ideologies played a huge role in the opposition to them of other European nations [especially Britain and Poland]. Or indeed that nationalism motivated all sorts of stuff that I’m less critical of, like the liberal revolutions and [with nuances] imperialism.

[hey, I'd have wanted to revise Versailles too, and rub France's nose in it. C'mon.]

Instead, all one gets from internet people is variations on “Hitler was a socialist” or “Hitler was raised Catholic and the SS was modeled on the Jesuits” or “Hitler was a nationalist ergo…”

Still, I’m actually encouraged that in this end-of-history or post-historical, consumerist internet paradise, the eloi at least have started to think Stalin was almost as bad as Hitler.

For my part, I consider myself sometimes a one-man anthropological team from pre-postmodernity, representing all its accumulated mindsets to some degree, sent forward to struggle among the eloi. I’ve had the opportunity to converse amicably with Indian Trotskyites, Hindu supremacists, mildly fundamentalist Muslims, and relatively unreconstructed Italian communists, among others. All far more approachable and less annoying than some folks one meets in Canada.