Atlas / Comparisons / Apartheid Nationalism vs National Socialism
Apartheid Nationalism and National Socialism
Measured distance across six axes
The same broad family. They agree within three points on EC, CU, AU, SC, ID. No axis separates them by eight points or more.
Axis by axis
| Axis | National Party | NSDAP | Gap | Reading | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EC · Economic organisation | 00 | +02 | 2 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CU · Social and cultural order | +10 | +09 | 1 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| AU · Organisation of power | +07 | +10 | 3 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| SC · Scale of decision | +07 | +09 | 2 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| ID · Rule of membership | +10 | +10 | 0 | Agrees | Effectively the same position. Not what an argument between them is about. |
| CH · Method and tempo | +02 | +09 | 7 | Differs | Real difference, but not the dividing line. |
Each axis runs from −10 to +10; the distance is the straight-line separation across all six at once, out of a maximum of 49.0. How the scoring works →
The evidence behind the widest gaps
A distance figure is worth nothing unless the scores behind it can be checked. These are the artefacts supporting the axes that separate these two most.
National Party · CH +02
Coded slightly positive: an elected government imposing a radical reordering by statute.
- Documented act or statuteThe system was legislated over two decades after a normal electoral victory in 1948.
NSDAP · CH +09
The party came to office through a legal appointment and then abolished the mechanism that produced it, having already run a decade of paramilitary street violence.
- Documented act or statuteThe SA numbered in the hundreds of thousands and functioned as a standing political militia from 1921.
- Documented act or statuteNo competitive national election was held after March 1933.
What this comparison does not establish
Proximity means similarity of stated position. It carries no claim about competence, circumstance, scale of operation, or what either organisation actually did to the people under it. Two organisations can sit close together and produce entirely different histories, because those things are not on any axis and could not be.
Apartheid Nationalism
1948–1994 · South Africa
Permanent legal separation of racial groups with political rights reserved to one of them.
National Socialism
1920–1945 · Germany
A racially defined national community, hierarchy by blood, conquest of living space, extermination of designated enemies.
Distance is not the whole answer. Two organisations can sit the same distance apart for entirely different reasons, and the reason is the content of any claim about them. Open the comparison in the atlas to weight the axes yourself.
Open in the atlas