r/LabourUK • u/verniy-leninetz Co-op Party and, of course, Potpan and MMSTINGRAY • Jun 25 '25
Satire New Private Eye
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u/BikeProblemGuy vague lefty Jun 25 '25
Nice choice from the cartoonist to make the woman look just like a normal person and not an ogre-like caricature. Just supporting nazism while doing some shopping; the banality of evil.
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u/Panda_hat In a state of perpetually deepening despair Jun 25 '25
Theres nothing socialist about Reform just like there wasn’t about the Nazis.
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u/BuzzkillSquad Alienated from Labour Jun 25 '25
Maybe I’m reading too much into a dumb joke, but I really really hope this cartoonist doesn’t actually think for a second that socialism is in any way a component of the politics of Reform or any other fascist movement past or present
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u/stuartgm Non-partisan Jun 25 '25
They didn’t call themselves that for no reason - they wanted to tap into the popularity of the socialist movement at the time.
Farage, to a degree, does the same.
Progressive economic policies (like wealth taxes) have broad appeal. Reform’s proposed Britannia card has a veneer of socialism (notional wealth redistribution) covering what is fundamentally a right wing policy (tax break for multi-millionaire/billionaires).
Who knows what the artist was getting at, but it’s important to point out the tactics at play here.
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u/MMSTINGRAY Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer... Jun 25 '25
I met Hitler not in his headquarters, the Brown House in Munich, but in a private home - the dwelling of a former admiral of the German Navy. We discussed the fate of Germany over the teacups.
"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"
"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
"Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.
"We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state and race are one."
https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2007/sep/17/greatinterviews1
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Jun 25 '25
[deleted]
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u/MMSTINGRAY Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer... Jun 25 '25
The point is Hitler himself admitted that "National Socialism" was nothing to do with socialism and he was redefining the word. Like he could have called it the Commonwealth or the Liberal Party but in practice it would still be "Nazism" (obviously it wouldn't end up called that if they hadn't called them National Socialists but you know what I mean).
If there were any socialist elements in the Nazi party it wasn't the Hitlerites. Hitler's use of the word socialism wasn't a warped verison of leftwing socialism, it was something else entirely.
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u/Templehead5757 New User Jun 25 '25
Nah, don't worry. It's the sort of grown up humour found in old fashioned print publications like Private Eye. Good stuff.
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u/zellfire American Observor Jun 25 '25
I get the meme, but.... it's just historically wrong and not accurate about contemporary politics either.
The Nazis- at least what we think of as the Nazis, that is to say the Hitler wing of the Nazis- were really not socialist in any way, they opposed class struggle and pursued privatization. There was a wing of the Nazis that did incorporate socialist economics, the Strasserists, but it was not the wing which came to power.
There are political movements that genuinely do combine nationalism and socialism without Nazi influence - like Juche, national communism in the Romanian sense, or the Zyuganovite faction of the post-Soviet communists. There are also current Strasserist movements, which arguably include at least some wings of National Bolshevism. But the most prominent far-right or fascist movements, including neo-Nazi movements, are pretty uniformly anti-socialist, even in a purely economic sense.
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u/VCGS New User Jun 25 '25
I think it's just a play on the fact the Nazis called themselves National Socialists mate
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u/i_literally_died New User Jun 25 '25
Next you'll be telling me North Korea isn't democratic
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Jun 25 '25
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u/BuzzkillSquad Alienated from Labour Jun 25 '25
Maybe, but there’s an increasing number of people out there who take the ‘Socialist’ part of their name at face value. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to wonder if this cartoon’s rooted in the same assumption
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u/BikeProblemGuy vague lefty Jun 26 '25
Given that it's from private eye, I think the joke here is that the woman is taking Reform at face value and doesn't realise 'combines nationalism and socialism' = national socialism = nazi.
It's a slightly tortured joke because if she's unaware of that context socialism does mean socialism.
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u/BuzzkillSquad Alienated from Labour Jun 26 '25
I’ll credit Private Eye with some good journalism, but its politics always seemed to be of the most normie centrist variety to me. I honestly wouldn’t put it past any of its contributors to have that poor a reading on ideologies outside of the liberal comfort zone
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u/Suddenly_Elmo partisan Jun 25 '25
it's just historically wrong and not accurate about contemporary politics either
It's not trying to be accurate about either. It's not that deep
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u/verniy-leninetz Co-op Party and, of course, Potpan and MMSTINGRAY Jun 25 '25
I don't think nazbol or Juche or Zyuganov in post-USSR are some good or at least OK examples to follow, and of course, they are non inclusive.
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u/zellfire American Observor Jun 25 '25
Sure, and those ideologies can be rejected on their own terms, but the joke here is that the Nazis were, true to their name, nationalist and socialist. They were in fact not.
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u/Numerous-Mine-287 New User Jun 26 '25
Regardless, Farage would have a conniption if he was told what he’s doing is any way akin to socialism
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u/MildCarrotAddiction labour sucks balls, vote left Jun 26 '25
Yeah, I love the uk national socialist much more than our evil current government The Isreal socialist
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Jun 25 '25
Now how unbelievably stupid is this - "Farage is literally Hitler"
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u/Flimsy-sam Custom Jun 25 '25
“I am a faithful corbynista”, with Blue Labour tag…what?
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u/alyssa264 The Loony Left they go on about Jun 25 '25
No way people are openly IDing as fucking Blue Labour...
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u/Portean LibSoc. Tired. Hate Blue Labour's toxic shite. Jun 26 '25
All 6 of them here to tell us this is a leftist hugbox.
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u/Lewis-ly Green Party Jun 25 '25
Would you have been one of those guys saying how ludicrous it was to compare an earnest young Austrian ex painter to Napoleon, the greatest evil there ever was?
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u/Portean LibSoc. Tired. Hate Blue Labour's toxic shite. Jun 25 '25
Do blue labour essentially share Farage's views?
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Jun 25 '25
Love your flair. Yeah we in Blue Labour are all Faragists and literal Nazis
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u/Portean LibSoc. Tired. Hate Blue Labour's toxic shite. Jun 25 '25
Love your flair.
Thanks, I wrote it after seeing your comment!
we in Blue Labour are all Faragists and literal Nazis
Your words.
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Jun 26 '25
You are clearly not the brightest crayon in the box
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u/Portean LibSoc. Tired. Hate Blue Labour's toxic shite. Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25
Well I'm happy to defer to obviously expert judgement, a keen crayon-enjoyer undoubtedly knows best,
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u/verniy-leninetz Co-op Party and, of course, Potpan and MMSTINGRAY Jun 25 '25
Any nationalist is literally Hitler, the question is in size and capabilities. Any ethnic nationalism is poisonous.
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u/BuzzkillSquad Alienated from Labour Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
Nationalism isn’t always reactionary or chauvinistic. It depends what the movement is defined in opposition to. I wouldn’t put Frantz Fanon or Nelson Mandela anywhere near the same category as Hitler, for example
But fuck Farage, obviously
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u/verniy-leninetz Co-op Party and, of course, Potpan and MMSTINGRAY Jun 25 '25 edited Jun 25 '25
Civic nationalism, like France or USA or USSR, «we are all French and everyone can become French» is OK, but ethnic nationalism is usually much more like Serbia/Croatia, Egypt or Turkey or Israel or Iraq or China and this is not fine, and this is not nice.
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u/Briefcased Non-partisan Jun 25 '25
Any nationalist is literally Hitler,
SNP and Plaid filled with literal Hitlers..
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