Hitler really was a socialist

[Rockstar]

Well Mapuc, like I said the ideas of socialism have been around much longer than Hitler and Marx. Being a socialist doesn’t make anyone into either of them or a Nazi. In my humble uneducated opinion socialism like any system of governance has its benefits and draw backs, it can be something good or bad it all I think depends on the leadership and the people submitting themselves to it.

After watching the entire video he makes a very good case that Hitler and his party were very much National Socialists. Everyone is free to make their own decision after watching it.

[Sean C]

Originally Posted by Catfish

So the name makes Kim Jong Un's "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" a democracy run and voted for by the people?

(Following not directed at Sean C)

That's a fair point.

[Skybird]

Socialism (capitalism) is not just a word, but a method. The method is old, the name is not. Millenia, not centuries. It either works, or it doesnt. What a modern theoreticist thinks it should, is not relevant. The historical record already is established. It speaks volumes.

[Catfish]

From the Washington post, link is here:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...re-socialists/

But since it is behind a paywall i quote the article:


"The right needs to stop falsely claiming that the Nazis were socialists

The Nazis hated socialists. It was the governments that rebuilt Europe that embraced social welfare programs.

By Ronald J. Granieri
Ronald J. Granieri is a Templeton Education Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and history professor at the U.S. Army War College. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
February 5, 2020




Did you know that “Nazi” is short for “National Socialist”? That means that Hitler and his henchmen were all socialists. Bernie Sanders calls himself a socialist, too. That means Bernie Sanders and his supporters are the same as Nazis … doesn’t it?

Anyone who has been on political Twitter in the past decade has seen a version of this syllogism. Conservatives, seeking to escape the “fascist” and “Nazi” labels tossed at them by leftist critics since the 1960s, have turned the tables. Books such as Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” have noted that many leading fascists, such as Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, started out as socialists, just as many early 20th-century “progressives” embraced eugenic ideas ultimately linked to Nazi racist genocide. This connection has become a silver bullet for voices on the right like Dinesh D’Souza and Candace Owens: Not only is the reviled left, embodied in 2020 by figures like Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren, a dangerous descendant of the Nazis, but anyone who opposes it can’t possibly have ties to the Nazis’ odious ideas.

There is only one problem: This argument is untrue. Although the Nazis did pursue a level of government intervention in the economy that would shock doctrinaire free marketeers, their “socialism” was at best a secondary element in their appeal. Indeed, most supporters of Nazism embraced the party precisely because they saw it as an enemy of and an alternative to the political left. A closer look at the connection between Nazism and socialism can help us better understand both ideologies in their historical contexts and their significance for contemporary politics.

The Nazi regime had little to do with socialism, despite it being prominently included in the name of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. The NSDAP, from Hitler on down, struggled with the political implications of having socialism in the party name. Some early Nazi leaders, such as Gregor and Otto Strasser, appealed to working-class resentments, hoping to wean German workers away from their attachment to existing socialist and communist parties. The NSDAP’s 1920 party program, the 25 points, included passages denouncing banks, department stores and “interest slavery,” which suggested a quasi-Marxist rejection of free markets. But these were also typical criticisms in the anti-Semitic playbook, which provided a clue that the party’s overriding ideological goal wasn’t a fundamental challenge to private property.

Instead of controlling the means of production or redistributing wealth to build a utopian society, the Nazis focused on safeguarding a social and racial hierarchy. They promised solidarity for members of the Volksgemeinschaft (“racial community”) even as they denied rights to those outside the charmed circle.

Additionally, while the Nazis tried to appeal to voters across the spectrum, the party’s founders and initial base were small-business men and artisans, not the industrial proletariat of Marxist lore. Their first notable electoral successes were in small towns and Protestant rural areas in present-day Thuringia and Saxony, among voters suspicious of cosmopolitan, secular cities who associated both “socialism” and “capitalism” with Jews and foreigners.



This fear of social revolution and a sense that democracy, with its cacophony of voices and the need for compromises, would threaten their preferred social hierarchy gave Nazism its appeal with these voters — even if it meant sacrificing democracy. While Communists abetted the destruction of German democracy, seeing it as a way to eventually produce the revolution they wanted, the only German political party that consistently resisted Nazi arguments, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), offered another sign of the discontinuity between socialism and Nazism.

Those outside Germany who embraced Nazi ideas were also generally anti-leftists. When Frenchmen murmured “Better Hitler than [Socialist Party Leader and Prime Minister Léon] Blum,” they were well aware what National Socialism represented, and it was most emphatically not “socialism.” When many of those same Frenchmen set up the puppet Vichy government in 1940, they did so under the banner of “Travail, famille, patrie,” (Work, family fatherland), happy to use state resources to support their idea of authentic Frenchmen — even as they criticized capitalism for providing benefits to people they didn’t view as French.

Unlike much of the European left, many conservatives proved willing to work with Nazis — something they later regretted — an association that tainted postwar European conservatism. When it came time to rebuild European politics after the war, therefore, it fell to center-left parties such as Labour in Britain, the Socialists in France and the SPD in Germany, which abandoned rigid Marxist doctrines, alongside the new center-right movement of Christian Democracy, which rejected traditional nationalism, to take up the challenge. This was the hour of the welfare state, supported by social and Christian Democrats, which encouraged social solidarity within a democratic and capitalist framework.

Despite this reality, linking socialism and Nazism to critique leftist ideas became a political weapon in the post-World War II period, perhaps unsurprisingly given that the Cold War followed directly on the heels of World War II. Scholars as diverse as Zbigniew Brzezinski and Hannah Arendt used the larger concept of “totalitarianism” to fuse the two. This formula made it easier for Americans to slip comfortably from considering the Soviet Union a wartime ally to recognizing it as an existential threat. Totalitarianism emphasized the structural similarities and violent practices of Nazi and Stalinist regimes.

This concept, however, proved controversial as an explanation of the origins or subsequent appeal of either communism or Nazism/fascism. Although Hitler and Stalin had cooperated in an effort to conquer Eastern Europe in 1939 to 1941, this was more a marriage of convenience than a byproduct of ideological synergy. Indeed, the two sides eventually fought a genocidal war against each other.


Austrian economist and future Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek added an extra layer to the conversation about socialism and Nazism with his 1943 bestseller, “The Road to Serfdom.” As a staunch free marketeer, Hayek was appalled by the rise of economic planning in democratic states, embodied by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Hayek warned that any government intervention in the market eroded freedom, eventually leading to some form of dictatorship.

Hayek was enormously influential across the globe within the rising conservative movement during the second half of the 20th century. He advised future leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and his book became foundational for the right. Hayek’s assertion that all government interventions in the economy led to totalitarianism continues to animate popular works such as D’Souza’s “The Big Lie,” reinforcing the idea that the welfare state is a gateway drug to genocide.

But while these ideas may make sense to free market purists, the history shows that it was the parties that arose in reaction to the Nazi horrors that built such welfare states. Denouncing their programs as “socialism” or warning of a tie between the two is nothing less than historical and political sophistry that attempts to turn effect into cause and victim into victimizer.

Historical analogies have a useful purpose to simplify and clarify, but they work best when used carefully. As manifest problems with global capitalism, as well as political gridlock, encourage a new hunger for fundamental political transformation, it is especially important that we understand the tragic decisions of the 1930s and their consequences in their full context, rather than simply transposing words from the past onto the debates of the present.


National Socialism preserved private property, while also putting the entire resources of society at the service of an expansionist and racist national vision, which included the conquest and murderous subjugation of other peoples. It makes no sense to think that the sole, or even the primary, negative aspect of this regime was the fact that it used state power to allocate financial resources. It makes as little sense to suggest that using state power to allocate some financial resources today will automatically result in the same dire consequences.

Historical “gotcha” threatens to reduce our political conversations to meaninglessness, and we should resist it. Debates over the proper role of the state in protecting citizens against the negative exigencies of the market are necessarily complex. Finding the proper balance of interests within a democratic political order depends on the measurement of results, not on the power of magic words to devalue competing ideas."

[derstosstrupp]

They were against what they called international socialism and advocated socialist policies for the nation. Socialism can wear many shirts, the concept is the same, management of the economy by the state to some degree or another, stressing service to the community, whatever that community might be, international or national, and the subjugation of the individual to the whole.

If you have the time and the patience (it’s a stream of consciousness mess at times), I suggest a readthrough of Mein Kampf. All doubt about this question will be gone. Hitler regarded advanced nations as those who are the least individualistic, and equated individualism with “Jewry” and primitive tribes. He also clearly states that he views capitalism as an individualistic ideology that is destined to fail.

His goal was to marry nationalism and socialism, because he felt the “reactionary”, national parties were not advocating for the worker enough, and he felt the socialists were not sufficiently national or proud to be German and prone to letting the nation slip into Bolshevism .He states it perfectly clear here in this appeal to the nation in 1932. Especially at five minutes where he basically explains this marriage of nationalism and socialism:

https://archive.org/details/Hitler_S...on_8m_10s.mp3#

“As long as nationalism and Socialism continue on as separate and distinct ideas, they will be beaten by their unified enemies. They become unbeatable the day both ideas merge into a single one.”

That said, they came to define capitalism as “international high finance” (as Hitler attacks it in that clip) and they looked at capitalism through that lens I believe mostly. Because national socialism stressed empowerment of the individual to an extent, rewarding individual initiative. For example, they valued the small business owner’s leadership and initiative, and so yes there was some small element of capitalistic initiative being rewarded on a very small scale. Remember that business owners still had to tow the line as I posted before. They liked their individual initiative, but that doesn’t mean they could do what they wanted, if that makes sense. Hence Hitler defined the individualism that he attacked as “doing what you want without regard for its effect on the community”. In other words, take the initiative to do some thing for the community that is beneficial, and you will be respected as a dynamic individual, but you had better not just think for yourself without putting the community first.

[Skybird]

My God, how easily can people's minds get caught by shallow views like this? Somehting is written and that already makes it the new reality?

I just said it before, I do not care for the name and term "socialism", but the functional principles in which state and society organise interactions and trade, bartering that is, property, the relation between individual and collective. And if you look at the economical structure of the Third Reich, the financial policy, the expropriation of the producers either by making them obedient party members so that they voluntarily put their potentials under the state's command, or: well, by exproriating them, the control of generating currency tokens, the organising of the communal collective of society to influence it better and educate and brainwash it by state-wanted ideological drill, then it is as socialist a collective and state and planned economy as something can become.

Von Mises did not invent a theory of how to put socialism artificially into Nationalsocialism, he just soberly observed and then described the principles in which the Nazis ran their state and system - and recognised it as what it was. The principles of last but not least power politics (thats what it always comes down to, doesn't it), of monetarian policy and economics that also are found in the conception that nowadays is called "socialism". But these were attempted time and again long before th word "socialism" was ever pronounced for the frst time by a human mouth.

Its as I said: that everybody today beleives that the Nazis were anythign but soiclaism and that Nazism and socialsim are totla antagonists is the biggets propaganda success in the histor of mankind. Almost EVERYBODY believes this bull. Mainstream media included - but is that really a surprise?


This has the quality standard of a leftist German political TV magazine on ARD. I'm out.

[derstosstrupp]

Originally Posted by Skybird

My God, how easily can people's minds get caught by shallow views like this? Somehting is written and that already makes it the new reality?

I just said it before, I do not care for the name and term "socialism", but the functional principles in which state and society organise interactions and trade, bartering that is, property, the relation between individual and collective. And if you look at the economical structure of the Third Reich, the financial policy, the expropriation of the producers either by making them obedient party members so that they voluntarily put their potentials under the state's command, or: well, by exproriating them, the control of generating currency tokens, the organising of the communal collective of society to influence it better and educate and brainwash it by state-wanted ideological drill, then it is as socialist a collective and state and planned economy as something can become.

Von Mises did not invent a theory of how to put socialism artificially into Nationalsocialism, he just soberly observed and then described the principles in which the Nazis ran their state and system - and recognised it as what it was. The principles of last but not least power politics (thats what it always comes down to, doesn't it), of monetarian policy and economics that also are found in the conception that nowadays is called "socialism". But these were attempted time and again long before th word "socialism" was ever pronounced for the frst time by a human mouth.

Its as I said: that everybody today beleives that the Nazis were anythign but soiclaism and that Nazism and socialsim are totla antagonists is the biggets propaganda success in the histor of mankind. Almost EVERYBODY believes this bull. Mainstream media included - but is that really a surprise?


This has the quality standard of a leftist German political TV magazine on ARD. I'm out.

Yeah this is absolutely correct. People view socialism today through the lens of “international socialism”, social democracy etc., and forget what Hitler was trying to achieve, that is, a unified national body organized on socialistic principles.

Hitler was also largely pragmatic though, in that he did accept money from industrialists who would tow the line, so he wasn’t probably what many socialists would consider pure per se, but one thing is for sure, the average German during the regime experienced a socialist society and economy. The concept of “Volksgemeinschaft” was hammered into peoples heads constantly. And from the horses mouth as I posted before, the first clip being 1937 at the height of the four year plan, they had very definite ideas about price fixing and control of the national economy.

It was way more of a socialist society than any of us will ever experience in our lifetimes most likely.

[Skybird]

Yeah I agree, and for the record, if that was not already clear, I was answering to Catfish, not to you, Stosstrupp.

the average German during the regime experienced a socialist society and economy.

That nails it.

It was way more of a socialist society than any of us will ever experience in our lifetimes most likely.

Well, the politically correct (=self-denying, left) Gesinnungsdiktat is already hammered out mecilessly by certain parties, the Greens and lefts, the EU, and the media, universities, schools, even kindergardens, and the monetarian regime by the ECB and FED can only be decribed as 100% pure money socialism. The GDR 2.0 is alive and prospering. Never was socialism having such heydays like today. We will all become equal after the party is over. Equal in poverty.



Russia today, since short time, holds more reserves in pure gold than in dollars, and it still is dumping away the remaining few dollars it still has. Wer Ohren hat, der höre, wer Augen hat, der sehe. Reason is the emerging collapse of FIAT money, and the escape from financial sanctions imposed by the US that can not be uphold without the dollar ruling.

The financial repressions against Western populations enforced by the Western states and their vicarious agents the central banks, will become brutal. The massacre already has begun. Most people are still sleeping.

[Catfish]

I would not necessarily believe everything what Hitler said in his speeches, as i would not believe his party's slogans, nor the name of the "Bewegung".

I am open for ideas, but not for this kind of revisionism to please certain political movement in the USA. I have not heard one argument here that would convince me of the claim that the NSDAP or Hitler would have been "socialist", apart from the (empty) name. This has nothing to do whether i like communism or socialism or captitalism or x'ism, or none of them, it just is not true. So it was socialist, but i do not see equality in the third Reich, not even among the purest aryans (lmao), then cars for all (not really), same loans for the workers (ask Krupp, Heinkel, even Junkers what they thought about that). A nice trick to try to turn it all around, but sorry won't fall for it.

[derstosstrupp]

What’s interesting is that in 1933 the Social Democrats were pushing the narrative, “these guys aren’t really socialists”, as can be heard by Otto Wels, the prominent Social Democrat politician, in 1933 here in his famous debate with Hitler prior to the enactment of the enabling act. To be fair though, they hadn’t had the opportunity yet to see what the Nazis had in mind, but for that matter they probably didn’t listen to them or read what they wrote either, because the Nazis were clear about implementing socialism (especially in those days, when the Strasser element, the further-left element of the party was very strong):

https://archive.org/details/Hitler_S...Hitler_vs.mp3#

(I keep pushing these clips, but they are fascinating windows into history in my opinion.)

As an aside, this debate is also particularly interesting, because it’s really the last glimpse of the semblance of parliamentary democracy before the enabling act. Although with all the shouting back-and-forth and interrupting, quite different than what many of us are used to. It’s also scary/sad, in that Hitler is not wrong in it, he completely owns Wels. Hitler had the advantage here of socialist democrats doing nothing for over a decade, so he had the prime opportunity to rebrand socialism in his own image (and did).

English transcript of the speeches (Wels, then Hitler) here page 119. I don’t know what this website is or what it supports, but at any rate:
http://www.nommeraadio.ee/meedia/pdf...01922-1945.pdf

[derstosstrupp]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I would not necessarily believe everything what Hitler said in his speeches, as i would not believe his party's slogans, nor the name of the "Bewegung".

I am open for ideas, but not for this kind of revisionism to please certain political movement in the USA. I have not heard one argument here that would convince me of the claim that the NSDAP or Hitler would have been "socialist", apart from the (empty) name. This has nothing to do whether i like communism or socialism or captitalism or x'ism, or none of them, it just is not true. So it was socialist, but i do not see equality in the third Reich, not even among the purest aryans (lmao), then cars for all (not really), same loans for the workers (ask Krupp, Heinkel, even Junkers what they thought about that). A nice trick to try to turn it all around, but sorry won't fall for it.

People can say what they want about the Nazis, but one thing is for sure, at least with inner policy, they absolutely did what they said they were going to do. The four year plan, the establishment of state owned and run unions for workers, the KdF program, the wage reforms, the constant holding of the individual German beholden to the Volksgemeinschaft, the compulsory labor and Wehrmacht service in the name of said Gemeinschaft etc etc.

These are all things I would consider and most would consider socialist. They are not wrong per se, don’t get me wrong, the evils of Nazism lie elsewhere, not per se in their socialism, that I want to be clear about. Just stating things as I have come to understand them to be based on research, not pushing any particular political agenda in the USA. And certainly not to attack socialism as a concept, because for certain societies and peoples, it works for them if they choose to make the sacrifices. And if the members of those societies see the benefits of their sacrifices (higher taxes or whatever) in better government services, better healthcare, what have you, then it works.

So I think you may need to divorce the concept of Socialism from the emotional response that Nazism elicits. And strictly look at Socialism as a concept that was attempted to be implemented, maybe not perfectly, but certainly with intention, by the regime. And as an aside, “equality in everything” I don’t think is ever the intended practical outcome of socialism, that may be a goal of strict Marxism, but not socialism as most tend to understand it. Socialism as a concept simply seeks to implore (or compel) individuals to make sacrifices for the common good.

[Skybird]

https://www.aier.org/article/why-hay...ng-socialists/

Many socialisms in the house of collectivism.

Priceless.

But did any of these socialisms have anything to do with the nature and content of what became the National Socialist ideology and actual policies? Granieri insists that National Socialism could not be “socialist” because it did not pursue a “utopian” ideal for greater equality for all as a whole. But this presumes that the only legitimate utopian dream, and therefore benchmark for labeling something “socialist,” is the one that Granieri considers good and right.
In fact, the Nazis had a utopian vision for the future; it began with their notion of German race purity on the basis of which they rejected the older Prussian idea of aristocratic and class hierarchy. All “real” Germans were equal and were to be given opportunities for education, occupational and professional advancement as the means by which they could make their contribution to the high good of the German people as a whole.
That Nazi egalitarianism was limited to only those “real” Germans possessing the racial characteristics that guided their ideological thinking, with Jews classified as the lowest and most treacherous of race enemies, does not change the fact that they, too, were “utopians” with social equality goals, but only for those within the “in-group.” This was nothing but a variation of the Marxist theme that the world is divided into irreconcilable social classes, with the “capitalists” being the inescapable “class enemies” of “the workers.” And as in the Soviet practice, they and their children were stripped of all rights and opportunities, and made into permanent pariahs to be reeducated to serve “the building of socialism” or liquidated.

(...)
In 1936, Nazi educator Friedrich Alfred Beck said in Education in the Third Reich, a text meant as a guide for German teachers around the country:
“National Socialism has restored the concept of a people from its modern shallowness . . . By people we understand an entire living body which is racially uniform and which is held together by common history, common fate, a common mission, and common tasks . . . Education, from the standpoint of race and people, is the creation of a form of life in which the racial unity will be preserved through the totality of the people . . .
“Socialism is the direction of personal life through dependence on the community, consciousness of the community, nationalism is the elevation of individual life to a unique (microcosmic) expression of the community in the unity of the personality.”

(...)
But what about National Socialist economics? Let us look at Gustav Stolper’s German Economy, 1870-1940 (1940). Stolper was the long-time editor of a German economic magazine oriented toward a classical liberal viewpoint. He was forced to leave Germany with Hitler’s rise to power due to his politics and his Jewish family background, and found refuge in the United States. Stolper explained some of the socialist aspects to Nazi ideology and policy:
“The National Socialist party was from the outset an anti-capitalist party. As such it was fighting and in competition with Marxism . . . National Socialism wooed the masses [from three angles]. The first angle was the moral principle, the second the financial system, the third the issue of ownership. The moral principle was ‘the commonwealth before self-interest.’ The financial promise was ‘breaking the bondage of interest slavery’. The industrial program was ‘nationalization of all big incorporated business [trusts]’.
“By accepting the principle ‘the commonwealth before self-interest,’ National Socialism simply emphasizes its antagonism to the spirit of a competitive society as represented supposedly by democratic capitalism . . . But to the Nazis this principle means also the complete subordination of the individual to the exigencies of the state. And in this sense National Socialism is unquestionably a Socialist system . . .
“The nationalization of big industry was never attempted after the Nazis came to power. But this was by no means a ‘betrayal’ of their program, as has been alleged by some of their opponents. The socialization of the entire German productive machinery, both agricultural and industrial, was achieved by methods other than expropriation, to a much larger extent and on an immeasurably more comprehensive scale than the authors of the party program in 1920 probably ever imagined. In fact, not only the big trusts were gradually but rapidly subjected to government control in Germany, but so was every sort of economic activity, leaving not much more than the title of private ownership.”

[Skybird]

https://fee.org/articles/hayek-on-th...ots-of-nazism/

He (Hayek) includes in this lineage the Nazi Party, who were in power at the time he wrote the book (Road to Serfdom).

The doctrines which had guided the ruling elements in Germany for the past generation were not opposed to the socialism in Marxism, but to the liberal elements contained in it, its internationalism and its democracy.


(...)

In Plenge’s book, 1789 and 1914: The Symbolic Years in the History of the Political Mind, 1789’s ideal was freedom, and the modern ideas of 1914 support the ideal of organization. Plenge asserts, correctly according to Hayek, that organization is the true essence of socialism. Hayek asserts that all socialists until Marx shared this understanding and that Marx tried in vain to make a place for freedom in this modern German idea of grand organization. Starting with the same liberal language as Marx, Plenge gradually abandoned usage of bourgeois liberal terms and moved into the shamelessly totalitarian realm that attracted so many Marxist leaders:

It is high time to recognise the fact that socialism must be power policy, because it is to be organisation. Socialism has to win power: it must never blindly destroy power.

Hayek then shows Social Democratic Party politician Paul Lensch apply a Marxist analysis to Otto Von Bismarck’s protectionism and planning in favor of certain industries:

The result of Bismarck’s decision of the year 1879 was that Germany took on the role of the revolutionary; that is to say, of a state whose position in relation to the rest of the world is that of a representative of a higher and more advanced economic system. Having realised this, we should perceive that in the present World Revolution Germany represents the revolutionary, and her greatest antagonist, England, the counter-revolutionary side.

This unity of the Prussian national identity and the revolutionary socialist project informs the thinking of figures important in the Nazi Party, like A. Moeller van den Bruck. Hayek quotes and paraphrases him from his Prussianism and Socialism:

“Old Prussian spirit and socialist conviction, which to-day hate each other with the hatred of brothers, are one and the same.” The representatives of Western civilisation in Germany, the German liberals, are “the invisible English army which after the battle of Jena, Napoleon left behind on German soil”

Hayek gives more support for this version of events before offering a warning to England; that the “conservative socialism” en vogue at the time was a German export, which for reasons he details throughout the book, will inevitably become totalitarian. Interestingly enough, this was written before the great crimes of the Holocaust were public knowledge and the Nazi regime had become as universally reviled as it soon was.

[Catfish]

I would be careful quoting Hayek or Mises, but especially something like the FEE
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.ph...omic_Education

"FEE is an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN).[1]

State Policy Network
SPN is a web of right-wing “think tanks” and tax-exempt organizations in 50 states, Washington, D.C., Canada, and the United Kingdom. As of January 2021, SPN's membership totals 163.

Today's SPN is the tip of the spear of far-right, nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party. SPN Executive Director Tracie Sharp told the Wall Street Journal in 2017 that the revenue of the combined groups was some $80 million, but a 2019 analysis of SPN's main members IRS filings by the Center for Media and Democracy shows that the combined revenue is over $120 million.[5]

Although SPN's member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, the Center for Media and Democracy's in-depth investigation, "EXPOSED: The State Policy Network -- The Powerful Right-Wing Network Helping to Hijack State Politics and Government," reveals that SPN and its member think tanks are major drivers of the right-wing, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.[6]"

[Skybird]

From your very own link, Catfish, the very first paragraph:

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is a right-wing 501(c)3 educational foundation based in Atlanta, Georgia. FEE is an associate member of the State Policy Network (SPN).[1]
Founded in 1946, FEE was the first modern think tank established in the United States specifically to promote, research and promulgate free market and libertarian ideas. It continues to do so through its monthly magazine, The Freeman, as well as through pamphlets, lectures, and academic sponsorship. It also publishes reprints of classic libertarian texts, and arranges seminars for American public figures. "Additionally, FEE supports and connects our alumni through the FEE Alumni Network, provides professional development opportunities through internships and networking, and recognizes our most extraordinary alumni leaders with the annual Leonard E. Read Distinguished Alumni Award."

And who the heck is mysterious Leonard Read?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Read

Leonard Edward Read (September 26, 1898 – May 14, 1983) was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), one of the first modern libertarian institutions in the United States. He wrote 29 books and numerous essays, including the well-known "I, Pencil" (1958).
After a stint in the United States Army Air Service during World War I, Read started a grocery wholesale business in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which was initially successful but eventually went out of business. He moved to California where he started a new career in the tiny Burlingame Chamber of Commerce near San Francisco. Read gradually moved up the hierarchy of the United States Chamber of Commerce, finally becoming general manager of the Los Angeles branch, America's largest, in 1939.

During this period his views became progressively more libertarian. Apparently, it was in 1933, during a meeting with William C. Mullendore, the executive vice president of Southern California Edison, that Read was finally convinced that the New Deal was completely inefficient and morally bankrupt. Read was also profoundly influenced by his religious beliefs. His pastor, Reverend James W. Fifield, was minister of the 4,000-member First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, of which Read was also a board member. Fifield ran a "resistance movement" against the "social gospel" of the New Deal, trying to convince ministers across the country to adopt libertarian "spiritual ideals". During the period when he worked for the Chamber of Commerce, Read was also deeply influenced by more secular figures, such as Albert Jay Nock, and later by Ayn Rand and the economists Ludwig von Mises and Henry Hazlitt.
In 1945, Virgil Jordan, the President of the National Industrial Conference Board (NICB) in New York, invited Read to become its executive vice president. Read realized he would have to leave the NICB to pursue full-time the promotion of free market, limited government principles. He resigned as a result.[1][2]
One donor from his short time at NICB, David M. Goodrich, encouraged Read to start his own organization. With Goodrich's aid, as well as financial aid from the William Volker Fund and from Harold Luhnow, Read and Hazlitt founded the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946, which, in turn, helped to inspire Friedrich Hayek to form the Mont Pelerin Society the following year. For a period in the 1940s, Rand was an important adviser, or "ghost", as they called it, to Read.[3]
In 1950, Read joined the board of directors for the newly founded periodical The Freeman, a free market magazine that was a forerunner of the conservative National Review, to which Read was also a contributor. In 1954, Read arranged for the struggling magazine to be transferred to a for-profit company owned by FEE. In 1956, FEE assumed direct control of the magazine, turning it into a non-profit outreach tool for the foundation.[4][5][6]
Read received an Honorary Doctoral Degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín in 1976. He continued to work with FEE until his death in 1983.

Nazis in disguise, everywhere!