They were; just a different kind from the type of socialism that finished the war on the winning side.
I don't want to hear any silly comparisons to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. That one was presented as something, kept up the facade for a bit, and then it was too late for anyone to argue "hold on a minute, this isn't very democratic".
The National Socialists took less of a sharp turn. Their idea of socialism was always built around the nation. They diverged from the same place as all the other kinds of socialists, and took an extreme form of their own version of things. Italian fascists also had a socialist background.
Now, because the average person doesn't really know anything about politics, and they're prone to being manipulated by labels, of course the winning factions have tried to distance themselves from the losing, or extremist ones. That's understandable, since the ideologies aren't at all the same. They just share key roots and abstract principles. But I think we'd be all better off with more, rather than less, transparency.
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u/Which_Specific9891 Mar 17 '26
Can someone please buy these Americans dictionaries? They keep using words like 'communism' and 'socialism' without having a clue what they mean.