NYT Lauds Hitler's Stimulus Plan

This is old news, but I just came across it. In this New York Times article an economist uses the example of the works programs of Hitler to show how stimulus can work quite well indeed. As he says:

"But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment."

Now....this is the New York Times, and I don't mean to say the writer should be restricted from saying this if he believes it is important. But! Read in this Bloomberg article how the very same kind of statement is used to describe the late far-right politician of Austria, Jörg Haider.

(The article goes on to mention that Haider also visited former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Well....who are we kidding? Look who else did in the video below. )


My point is not to try to rehabilitate Haider, or make Haider seem more mainstream, but to demonstrate the contradictions within our own mainstream. Of course it is less 'scary' for Americans to know that the New York Times is praising Hitler and that Rumsfeld is shaking hands with dictators then to know that a 'far-right' son of a Nazi is doing this.

Because America would never embrace the 'son of a nazi.'


And he has even regaled himself with Nazi style decorations.