Cockwomble Watchdog

Yes Dan, the Nazis were socialists. Their actual name was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, literally the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. “Nazi” is simply the shortened form. And before anyone starts with the usual “but historians call them far right” response, Mussolini himself began as a committed socialist, preached Marxist socialism, edited Avanti!, the official newspaper of the Italian Socialist Party, and only later broke with the movement and developed fascism. The point you're missing is that nefarious and dangerous political movements nearly always rise under lovely sounding promises about “the workers”, “the people”, fairness, equality and liberation from nasty capitalism, while the people running them somehow never seem very keen on living the lives they prescribe for everyone else. Even Marx didnt put his own money where his mouth was. He spent much of his life in financial chaos, repeatedly relying on Engels to send him money, while Engels himself earned his living through the family business Marxist theory supposedly regarded as part of the capitalist system. Marx’s own correspondence is littered with requests for cash and complaints about debts. So your GDR example rather proves the point. Calling East Germany “democratic” didn’t make it democratic, any more than calling yourself socialist, communist, progressive or “for working people” means the people at the top intend to live by any of it. Look at Labour in 2026. How many MPs have ended up in investigations, expenses rows or questions over money while lecturing the rest of us about fairness, sacrifice and paying more tax? Only this week Perran Moon was suspended by Labour over the £50,000 taxpayer backed Covid Bounce Back Loan. The working class kept working, and Moon "man of the people" saw an opportunity to fleece furlough. But THAT is the point, Dan. History is full of people promising equality for everyone else while sitting on their arse spending somebody else’s money. Starting wars they have no intention of sending their own sons to fight. THATS LITERALLY THE POINT. Socialists/communists/Marxists say one thing and do another.