Australian law professor Augusto Zimmermann, in his chapter in Wokeshevism that he and Joshua Forrester edited (Connor Court, 2023), discusses the Marxist roots of Nazi-Fascism. “There are, therefore, important commonalities between Nazism and Marxism. It is patently wrong to assume the Marxism is the polar opposite of Communism, or that the Nazis were “reactionary capitalist counter-revolutionaries”.  As a matter of fact, the Nazis were committed socialists…”

One common feature of tyrannical governments is state ownership and confiscatory powers. This is a hallmark of both communist states and fascist states. I will explore this in more detail in a moment, but in order to show that this is not just a theoretical discussion, let me mention a frightening case of this actually happening here in Australia.
In the leftist, socialist ACT, the statists there have decided they will take over a Catholic hospital. It has various cheap excuses for this, but it is really because the hospital thinks healthcare does not include murder – whether of the unborn or the elderly. So the government, led by chief minister Andrew Barr, has decided to nationalise Calvary Public Hospital with almost no discussion or consultation.
The Archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn Christopher Prowse said this about the Soviet-style capture: “It’s a very sad day when governments can simply decide to mount a take-over of any enterprise they like without any justification.” Yes, and we have seen all this before.
While leftists try to tell us that Hitler and the Nazis were a bunch of conservatives, capitalists and probably even Christians, better minds know that the National Socialists were just that: socialists, who had modelled themselves on the secular Communist tyranny that preceded it.
Many authorities can be appealed to here. Let me start with political science professor, Waller Newell. His Cambridge University Press volume Tyrants: Power, Justice and Terror (2016, 2019), makes it clear that Nazism was a socialist movement, and not some capitalist right-wing affair. That claim he says was invented by leftists in the 1940s, and it “persists to this day.” Instead, National Socialism “was above all a millenarian revolutionary movement like Bolshevism.” He continues:
Thinking people recognized that they were two variants of the same movement, “the revolution of nihilism” to use Rauschning’s term, and people in both movements also recognized this about each other. (Recall Von Ribbentrop’s feeling right at home among Stalin’s henchmen). But many people on the Left were embarrassed by this similarity, just as they were embarrassed by the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Their response was to convince themselves (who can say with what degree of sincerity?) that there was no resemblance whatever between these two in fact closely kindred movements, claiming instead that Nazism equaled the naked face of capitalism stripped of its pretensions to democracy. That way, they could paint the Hitler-Stalin Pact as the Soviet Union’s morally justified need to fend off the Nazi threat so as to safeguard the gains of socialism, instead of what it really was – two wolves agreeing to devour the sheep before turning on each other for the final showdown between their two totalitarian world-views. In reality, the Nazis detested capitalism every bit as much as they did Bolshevism, equating both with the “Jewish world conspiracy” that could don either hat at its convenience in its mission to destroy the wholeness of the people with its materialistic values….
The Nazis regarded Bolshevism as a false version of socialism, which they believed should be nationalistic and patriotic, not international. But they themselves believed in a “classless society” (as Hitler’s speeches in The Triumph of the Will stress repeatedly) and central planning (aping Soviet vocabulary, they had their own “five-year plan”)….
Nazism’s mission was based on the mobilization of mass hatred and the destruction of all traditional social, religious, and cultural bonds. In its drive to complete the collectivization of all social forces within “the community of destiny” – a process they called “coordination” (Gleichschaltung) – National Socialism’s true forbear was the Jacobin Terror and its true counterpart was Bolshevism’s similar agenda for destruction in Russia.
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If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness.  However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God.  

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
-Matthew 6:31-33, ESV
In Christian circles, we often talk extensively about trials and how to walk through them by faith.  This is the right emphasis, as our lives are filled with various trials.  There are numerous books, seminars, and other media to prepare people for suffering in various ways and teach them how to endure any number of trials.  But that emphasis can come at the expense of adequately preparing us for blessings.  At first we may think such preparation would be unnecessary.  After all, who really needs to know how to prepare for good times?  But blessings bring temptations that trials do not, so we are wise to prepare for them just as we prepare for trials.  In good times, we are tempted to rely on ourselves and neglect God (Proverbs 30:8-9), give into thinking that we deserve these blessings and therefore receive them without thankfulness (1 Corinthians 4:7), and let our guard down and thus leave ourselves susceptible to temptation to sin (2 Samuel 11).  I talk more about that last one my leadership paper when describing how successful people are more prone to compromise ethically in good times than hard times.  That alone should be enough to cause us to approach good times with caution.  Indeed blessings are often a test just like trials—and I would venture to say that more people fail tests of blessing than trials (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25).  When facing times of blessing, I want to focus on two opposite but serious temptations we face: claiming for ourselves what God has not given us and stiff-arming them out of fear of disappointment.
Don’t “Name it and Claim it”
On the one hand, it is tempting to think we deserve blessings from God, claiming any pleasant promise in Scripture for ourselves.  We read these passages and assume that God is promising to provide us with wealth, family, health, and a myriad of other blessings just because a verse refers to them.  In reality, many of these verses are not specific promises to everyone.  In some cases, they are not promises at all but general principles.  This is true of most of Proverbs and many blessings in the psalms.  Here are a few examples:
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers”
-Psalm 1:3, ESV
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart”
-Psalm 37:4, ESV
“For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me [wisdom] will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
-Proverbs 1:32-33, ESV
“Long life is in her [wisdom’s] right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.  Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”
-Proverbs 3:16-18, ESV
Other examples include Psalm 91:10 and Proverbs 12:21. All of these link righteousness and wisdom with blessings like wealth and long life, but we can all think of numerous examples where upright people suffer from poverty, disease, and early death.  These verses are general statements and thus are not promises for every person.  Additionally, there are promises that are for specific people, even if their subject is not immediately evident.  For example, Hillsong’s “You Said” includes a line about asking God to give us the nations, but that is from Psalm 2:8, which is a promise to Jesus not us.  Therefore, we cannot claim that promise since we are not Jesus.  God is not some cosmic vending machine where we insert our coins of faith or good works and thus compel Him to bless us.  This means that we must not view God’s blessings as somehow owed to us.  If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness.  However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God.  Then, when God takes away blessings or withholds them from us, we will not question Him but say with Job: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).
While we often avoid the temptation to openly claim God’s blessings as if we deserve them, the greater temptation lies in secret.  When we lack a certain blessing or when that blessing seems imminent, we can be given to fantasizing about that blessing.  In that sense, we are mentally claiming that blessing for ourselves and therefore displaying a lack of contentment with our current situation.  It is certainly true that God can give us earnest desires for these blessings.  It is also true that some level of imagination is often required in the godly process of discernment.  But if we allow those desires to take center stage and fail to rein in our imaginations, we can easily cross into the sin of covetousness.  Years ago when a friend was struggling with such thoughts about whether to pursue a romantic relationship, he came to a realization through study of Scripture that there are only two biblical was to think of women in the church: wife or sister.  There is no third category of “future wife”. She was not his wife, so the only biblical way he could view her was as his sister in Christ.  Later, he met and eventually married a different woman.  Looking back now, he can be thankful that God withheld the blessing of the relationship in that moment and helped him be content in his situation until God eventually did give him that blessing.
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This craving for uniqueness is a race to escape the reality of our human nature. You were made to mirror God’s glory as a free creature of a Sovereign God. To despise this truth is to despise your humanity, and to succumb to beast-hood; descending into the thoughtlessness of a herd creature. Every glory of art, science, literature, music, and mathematics accomplished by mankind is a borrowed glory.

There is a nefarious lust within us as humans. It’s a craving for uniqueness, originality, and innovation. This is seen clearly in how insistent modern man is on society’s unquestioned acceptance of every person’s supposedly unique identity. It also shows up the erasure of great men and women from history. We don’t want to be reminded of the glories of past generations because that would cast a shade on our lame livestream.
No matter how dearly we believe in our individuality and uniqueness, there’s a truth that haunts at every turn: absolutely everything you are and do is imitative. Peter tells us that we receive a “vain tradition” from our forefathers; a tradition of conformity to sin (1 Pt. 1:14,18). Solomon tells us there’s nothing new under the sun (Ecc. 1:9). Generations rise and fall, but they invariably follow each other’s footsteps of folly.
This craving for uniqueness is a race to escape the reality of our human nature. You were made to mirror God’s glory as a free creature of a Sovereign God.
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