Sturmabteilung
The Sturmabteilung or SA or brownshirts or Hitler's youth league was Hitler's original paramilitary group and along with the German Worker's Party, a direct antecedent to the entire National Socialist German Workers' Party. Although the intent of the group changed, it always provided protection of Nazi rallies from protesters and was always a self-identified official part of the Nazi regime and it's antecedants. The German Workers Party added the word "socialist" to it's name ("NSDAP"), to Hitler's initial objectitions, to appeal to left-wingers.
Early brownshirts mainly concerned themselves with violently ejecting protesters from early NSDAP meetings.
Left-wing political commentators often allege that inceldom or ~congenital misogyny~ is causing young men to join modern Sturmabteilung-like groups. Young neo-nazis are frequently labeled as 'incels' by many leftist netizens in 2018/2019 America. These accusations may be overblown, or memed into existence, or at the very least an example of Godwin's Law to some degree. The author of this article admits the entire analogy is a bit cringy.
Sturmabteilung and society's unfortunate[edit | edit source]
The Sturmabteilung formed organizing pub fighters and ex-soldiers who protected the SA from protests from Social Democrats and Communists. In the late 1920s, Germany was suffering an economic crisis, and the SA recruited primarily form the unemployed or what Marx would call the lumpenproletariat of Germany. Left-wingers and socialists allege the SA gained from a propensity for the unemployed to be bribed from those who are hostile to working people and left-wing politics in general.
Sturmabteilung and incels[edit | edit source]
Around the time of the "Unite the Right" rally in the USA in 2017, and the emergence of the Proud Boys in 2017, some left-wing commentators noted that they thought they drew resemblence to the old German Sturmabteilung. Furthermore, these same left-wing commentators said that their drive to join far-right groups was due to being, among other things, incel. The reasons given for incels joining right-wing movements were varied. Angela Nagle, being the only person to write a book about 4chan, said this was mainly due to incels wanting to become, paraphrased, "masters of cruel hierarchies which oppress them". Other more tabloidy left-wing authors, asserted that incels were drawn to the far-right because of some congenital lack of moral character associated with hating women or some dumb shit like that.
Godwin's Law[edit | edit source]
The likening of incels to brownshirts may simply be an extension of Godwin's law, which states that the longer an internet discussion continues, the more likely the subjects (in this case incels) are likened to Nazis. There may be many other historical examples of mobilizing the unemployed or other hyper-marginilized people for political gain, which would make it odd for so many political commentators to focus on Nazis.