SIMILAR IDEOLOGIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 November 1939, Page 14

SIMILAR IDEOLOGIES

COMMUNISM AND NAZISM. • —.— Sir Frank Newnes, publisher, writes to the London “Times”:—Great surprise is expressed at the Russo-Ger-man Pact, on the grounds that the ideologies of the two countries are so different. In spite of what the left wing and others say, is there not more ideological sympathy between Communism and Nazism than between Communism and the democratic outlook of the British Empire, France, and the United States? The similarities between Communism and Nazism are many and important. Here is a list of some: —

(1) Both have a dictator neither of them freely elected by plebiscite of the people or by any elected assembly. (2) Both have a controlled as against a free Press.

(3 Both have a highly developed secret police which terrorises the country and deliberately prevents people expressing their real views.

(4) Both have concentration camps, to which anyone may be sent without trial and kept there indefinitely, and there is no writ of habeas corpus or other system to get people out. (5) Both believe in the right compulsorily to employ people on public works, if necessary far from the places frhere they live. Under this

system Russia has built a huge canal and worked. timber camps, and the Germans have built the Siegfried Line.

(6) The German treatment of the Jews and the Russian treatment of the aristocrats and middle classes is similar in principle. I understand that 3,000,000 Russians in the earlj' days of Bolshevism fled from Russia penniless and deprived of their property, and there were no funds raised to help them. Those who could not escape were murdered by the tens of thousands. (7) Both have a system of elections under which there is one candidate approved by the Government who gets 97 per cent, of the votes. (8) In either country the Nazi and Communist parties are minorities of 4,000,000 each, and in both countries

parties other than these are held to be illegal.

(9) With regard to trade unions—the Nazis have abolished them, but have organised a system of committees in every factory representing men and employers. The Russians have altered their trade union organisation so much that the English trade unions will not admit them to the international trade union congress, and they have a* Similar system

of committees for every factory. (10) Communism is anti-Christian and has practically suppressed the Greek Church. The Nazis have not

suppressed any form of organised Christianity yet, but theii’ attitude in many respects is hostile, as shown by their treatment, of Pastor Niemoller and others. (11) The Bolshevists started by socialising everything, but I understand have now modified that policy, and more private enterprise and private property are being allowed. The Nazies to begin with did not socialise everything, but they are moving more and more in that direction, and the time will obviously come soon when the differences in this respect will be very slight. There are, of course, many other similarities. Another correspondent finds comfort in the fact that “one war, at any

■irate, is no longer possible. The “War of Ideologies,” which has disrupted and disgraced civilisation for the past decade, if not from China to Peru, at least from Japan to Spain, is dead, killed by the spontaneous and reciprocal act—or pact—of “felo de se” of its protagonists. In consequence millions of sincere men and women, who felt themselves bound by their

consciences to fall in beneath one or the other banner, awake to find that they have been merely the dupes of mutually destructive tricksters.”