re: Openly Communist Democrats are winning primaries all over the place.

Then the US won't be 50 states any longer. I know of several that aren't going to tolerate that outcome.

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For starters you could look up what nazi stands for

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Other than putting the word in their name to make the party sound more appealing, something history is full of, what did the Nazis actually do that made them socialist in practice rather than just in branding?

And before answering, which definition are you using: traditional socialism, Nordic-style social democracy, or the message-board definition where any government spending or involvement in the economy automatically counts as socialism?

For my argument, I’m using the traditional political definition.

The usual arguments for calling them socialist go something like this:

They called themselves National Socialists. Fine, but a party name doesn’t prove what the party actually did, especially when it later purged its anti-capitalist wing and went after existing socialist movements.

They built roads and funded major public works. So have capitalist democracies, monarchies, dictatorships, and pretty much every other modern government. Building infrastructure does not make a country socialist.

They created welfare, recreation, and employment programs. Capitalist countries do that too. Nazi benefits were also tied to race, loyalty, and usefulness to the regime, not equality or worker control.

They imposed price controls, wage controls, and heavy economic regulation. That still isn’t socialism. Capitalist countries at war have also controlled prices, wages, production, and strategic materials without getting rid of private ownership.

They ordered private companies to serve national goals. That shows authoritarian control of the economy, not social ownership of it. The companies mostly stayed privately owned, the executives stayed in charge, and the owners kept making profits.

They constantly talked about putting the community above the individual. That was nationalist and racial collectivism, not economic socialism. Their “community” meant a racially defined German nation under a dictator, not workers democratically controlling the economy.

My reasons for saying they weren’t socialists are pretty simple: they kept private ownership and private profit, worked closely with major corporations, abolished independent unions, banned strikes, crushed socialist and communist parties, imprisoned or murdered actual socialists, and gave workers no democratic control over production.

A government can heavily control a privately owned economy and still be fascist, corporatist, or authoritarian. It doesn’t become socialist just because the government has its hands in everything.

I’m open to hearing the argument, but there has to be more to it than, “They put it in the name, bro.” And again, which definition of socialism are you actually using?