The Leftist Nature of Fascism and National Socialism

[Henry IX]

How is authority right wing?
USSR, China, North Korea, Cuba and many other 'socialist' examples were more authoritarian than most regimes throughout history.
Liberalism started as a left wing attitude - French revolution etc - but now it's considered a policy of the center, which both the far left and far right despise.

In the early and middle 20th century franchise and representation were firmly left-wing ideals. It was only in the early part of the 20th century that franchise was extended to the whole of the adult population and even then not in all 'democratic' societies. Extension of the franchise was consistently pushed by the liberal and social parties and resisted by the conservative parties across the democratic world. With the exception of Communism authoritarian regimes were virtually all right-wing. Authoritarian vs Libertarian is a classic right-left divide. As I said at the beginning of my previous post very few parties are consistently right or left -wing across all the dimensions and the fact that a classic left wing party like communists are also authoritarian does not mean that authoritarianism is not a right-wing trait.

Capitalist is also internationalst, through globalisation and what not. Nationalism does not equate to right wing. Right wing used to mean aristocracy, which meant empire keeping, which essentially means potting a bunch of different people together to form an entity. How is nationalism right wing, other than the fact that Trotskyists and Leninists are internationalists? It's the same as saying Man Utd represents the city of Manchester, hence Man City cannot represent the city of Manchester.

The Labour party in Britain was internationalist, the Tories were nationalist. The Socialists in France were internationalists, the Conservatives were nationalist. The Republican party (the left wing party in the 1930s) was more internationalist than the Democratic party. In general, the socialists and the liberals in the early to mid twentieth century were more internationalist and pacifist than their conservative counterparts. Liberal capitalism with its free trade agenda WAS left-wing in the mid-twentieth century - protectionism and autarky were right wing ideals. The Nazis were clearly right wing in their trade policies.

The aristocratic empires did NOT treat all their subjects equally. There was always a governing ethnicity that had superior rights and opportunities. The fact that the empires subjugated other races does NOT make them internationalist, quite the reverse. The subject peoples were exploited to provide resources for the governing group, indeed the reason that the German right so resented the loss of colonies was that it denied them that beacon of right-wing economics, autarky.

This is the first situation where left/right can apply. in your paradigms They banned unions and replaced them with...unions. It's not as if they banned them altogether. The rest is true, but where do you draw the line and what weighting do you give to each? It's a mixture of both, you can't really say it was right wing or left wing because it was 60-40% or 40-60%.

No. They did not replace the unions that represented the needs and wishes of the workers with some other organisation that did the same job, they replaced them with a government organisation that represented the needs of the government. The 'union' they replaced the real unions with was a union in the same way the Democratic Republic of Germany was democratic.

Yet another example where left/right can apply, in the contemporary sese. This is a main trait of socialism. Hitler just rebranded it into a heated controversy against anyone 'non-Aryan'.

In this we largely agree. Nazi Germany was a meritocracy (albeit for a very odd definition of merit).

This is a classic example of late 20th century social liberalism vs conservatism. I'm not really sure there were many left wing political parties out there that accepted homosexuality and other "weird" groups in the 1930s. Those are 1960s and 70s movements, so yeah, be careful not to think in a 21st century way for policies applyng to earlier generations.

The key basis of liberalism from Locke onwards was the right of individuals to live their lives as they wish so long as they are not harming others. A key aspect of conservatism was that society had a right and duty to regulate the moral activities of others. Even in the 1930s liberal groups tended to tolerate homosexuality to a much greater extent than conservative groups, although the acceptance of homosexuality is certainly more modern politically. Compare the attitudes of a generally left-wing society such as Paris in the 1920s to a conservative society such as the American South and you can clearly see which society was more accepting of difference. Tolerance IS a left-wing trait and the Nazis were not tolerant.

 

[keynes2.0]

Things get messy if you wanna call Nazism "far right", because there are only a few actually right wing policies and shared ideology and most of them aren't really that extreme.

How about their gender laws, their race laws and their agrarian land laws?

I really am starting to wonder what exactly you consider a right wing policy? Everything seems to be left with you, I wonder what you consider the right to be? Not the radical right, just the right.

 

[IsadorBG]

If we are to apply a rigid and universal defintion of left wing then yess everything is left wing because all parties nowadays are Liberal or Socialist of some sort yes even the far-right.

The US for exemple under that definition pretty much never had a right wing.

 

[Sabotage13]

I'm not evading anything. I even said so earlier, it was more feasible to ally against the Left than with the Left against hte Church. There's no room for ideology when real life is live.

Also, which of these suggest that fascism was right wing? That was my original point. Alliances and all that mean nothing ideologically.

Then where is your evidence that Fascism was really a left wing ideology in the first place? Your only point in support so far appears to be some cobbled together nonsense about Hitler and Marx with no basis in facts.

There is no personal, ideological, or individual connection to either Marxism or Anarchism; Mussolini was literally the only notable leftist of the 1920s/30s who turned Fascist, and he had been a raging nationalist even while still a leftist nominally.

 

[diegosimeone]

Then where is your evidence that Fascism was really a left wing ideology in the first place? Your only point in support so far appears to be some cobbled together nonsense about Hitler and Marx with no basis in facts.

There is no personal, ideological, or individual connection to either Marxism or Anarchism; Mussolini was literally the only notable leftist of the 1920s/30s who turned Fascist, and he had been a raging nationalist even while still a leftist nominally.

I didn't say Fascism is left. I said Fascism is not exclusive to right wing. It's a mixture of many elements, including left wing. If anything, socially and economically, it's more left than right.

 

[diegosimeone]

With the exception of Communism authoritarian regimes were virtually all right-wing. Authoritarian vs Libertarian is a classic right-left divide.

Excluding Communism.. but why? That's the very definition of left wing authoritarianism.
What do we have when we sum up non-communist authoritarians. Fascists and Hitler? Then we have monarchies? It's very odd that you want to exclude communism from authoritarian regimes, because most authoritarian regimes in the past 2 centuries have been in fact communist!!!
Fascism and Nazism are the subject of this discussion, and they're definitely not right wing. Nor are they left wing. They're the odd ones out. Nationalists yet socialists or borderline socialists. Giving the 'nationalistic' trait to the right wing is a big mistake by the Left worldwide and they've no idea of what they've created (just look at neonazis all over the world, realistically most of those people belong to the 'folk' that the left tends to appeal, but they're also heavily patriotic/nationalistic. They're not really the bourgeois that appeal to these kinds of ideologies, but it's usually through populism).

We can agree that monarchies are conservative, hence right wing.

 

[Sabotage13]

I didn't say Fascism is left. I said Fascism is not exclusive to right wing. It's a mixture of many elements, including left wing.

Well, I say Fascism is a right-wing reaction to the success of leftist and Marxist ideas and politics around the fin de siècle, and its ideological positions are exclusively right wing. What now?

If anything, socially and economically, it's more left than right.

Corporatism, a core concept of 20th century Christian Conservative social theory, is "left wing" now?

 

[diegosimeone]

Coproratism: a system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest.

Sounds kinda Marxist, doesn't it?

 

[keynes2.0]

I want to repeat the question. What do you define the right to include? Right now, it seems to exclude everything.

Sounds kinda Marxist, doesn't it?

Marxist? Sounds antithetical. Revolutionary-marist or marxist-leninist sure.

 

[IsadorBG]

I want to repeat the question. What do you define the right to include? Right now, it seems to exclude everything.



Marxist? Sounds antithetical. Revolutionary-marist or marxist-leninist sure.

Old regime nostalgic.

Less than 1% of the population worldwide.

 

[keynes2.0]

I think libertarian is more likely but we wont know unless he tells us.

 

[diegosimeone]

The right is always going to be conservative. It includes people who want monarchies, theocracies and/or a strong Church element, value law, security & order above any individual freedoms and welfare etc.

Internationalism vs nationalism shouldn't fall on the left/right issue. This is currently what tends to define 'right' and 'far right'. The first is internationalist (capitalist/pro globalization) while the second is nationalist. The fact that the old political right and conservatives have fused with some aspects of liberalism to form the new 'centre-right' doesn't mean that the right itself has become liberal, which is a left/centre-left ideology imo.
Libertarianism is a weird concept for me as as it's very close to anarchocapitalism and anything that has to do with anarchy, even if it's this example, is very hard to call purely right wing.

There also has to be defined line of how much social and how economical does this political axis gets. Which has more weighting? Because some ideologies are mixed up and don't follow the right/left on both ends. Fascism happens to be one of them.

 

[Imgran]

If we are to apply a rigid and universal defintion of left wing then yess everything is left wing because all parties nowadays are Liberal or Socialist of some sort yes even the far-right.

The US for exemple under that definition pretty much never had a right wing.

Well we actuall do have a right wing per se, but it's not called the Republican Party. if anything it might be one wing of the Republican Party, that has to share the big tent with other Republican ideas. The GOP itself is split down the middle between the idea of moral laws (a right wing ideal) and the idea of personal freedoms (a left wing ideal). And so in fact is the left wing, which frequently seeks to use relatively authoritarian methods (at least by American standards) to enforce their definition of tolerance while claiming to speak for their own version of personal freedoms.

by European standards neither of our political parties is an actual political party. Our parties are more like dueling "government" coalitions. Libertarians and moralists share a bed, capitalists and statists share a bed, pro military and anti government factions both vote for the same party, and so on the other side do environmentalists and labor Socialists. It makes no sense but there it is. And not a single legislator is bound to vote the way his party wants him to or the way his constituents beg him to. The freeform style of American politics is pretty much a thing unto itself.

 

[CruelDwarf]

For instance the Soviet block banned unions as well, replacing them with toothless "unions" of party apparatchiks. These unions also did a horrible job negotiating for their supposed members (with occasional interesting exceptions).

I completely disagree with that statement. Trade unions in USSR actually worked and worked well enough in a sphere of workers rights protection for the majority of the Soviet period.

The exception was of course 1940-46 period with its mobilization policies.

 

[Abdul Goatherd]

Coproratism: a system of social organization that has at its base the grouping of men according to the community of their natural interests and social functions, and as true and proper organs of the state they direct and coordinate labor and capital in matters of common interest.

Sounds kinda Marxist, doesn't it?

Nah. Sound more like feudalism.

Just because two things are opposed to a third (capitalism), doesn't mean they are related to each other.

 

[Henry IX]

Excluding Communism.. but why? That's the very definition of left wing authoritarianism.
What do we have when we sum up non-communist authoritarians. Fascists and Hitler? Then we have monarchies? It's very odd that you want to exclude communism from authoritarian regimes, because most authoritarian regimes in the past 2 centuries have been in fact communist!!!
Fascism and Nazism are the subject of this discussion, and they're definitely not right wing. Nor are they left wing. They're the odd ones out. Nationalists yet socialists or borderline socialists. Giving the 'nationalistic' trait to the right wing is a big mistake by the Left worldwide and they've no idea of what they've created (just look at neonazis all over the world, realistically most of those people belong to the 'folk' that the left tends to appeal, but they're also heavily patriotic/nationalistic. They're not really the bourgeois that appeal to these kinds of ideologies, but it's usually through populism).

We can agree that monarchies are conservative, hence right wing.

Most of the authoritarian regimes of the last two centuries (your timeframe) have been either monarchies or military juntas. In those numbers you have: The old monarchies of central and eastern Europe, the monarchies of China, Japan, Korea, Siam, Vietnam, Burma, Afghanistan, Tibet, much of Africa prior to colonisation, the various military dictatorships of South and Central America, the Russian Empire, the French under Napoleon and the restored monarchy, many of the states of Eastern Europe after the First World War such as Poland and Hungary, etc. Even if you remove the old style monarchies from this list you will find far more right-wing autocracies than communist nations. Even if you only consider the period from 1946-1989 there are still more right-wing authoritarian regimes than communist - most of South and Central America suffered under some form of military government at some time during that period (and except for Cuba none was communist), Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, South Korea, Taiwan, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan, the entire Middle East except Israel, North Africa except for Libya, Central Africa except for Tanzania, Southern Africa, Spain, Portugal, most of the independent sates of Oceania, etc. were all governed by authoritarian regimes that were not communist (or socialist).

 

[diegosimeone]

First of all, most of the African regimes aren't really politically tied. They don't tend to follow the political axis the same way the rest of the world does, as they're more tribe related. The same applies to Muslim countries, which are either militaristic or theocratic or monarchist. When you see how they work, you're more inclined to call them left wing than right wing, yet most know nothing of Karl Marx's work. I agree that most military dictatorships belong to the right, but the left wing dictatorships are also military-driven. So it's not really something to go by. And monarchies have existed before the whole left/right issues ever existed, so if you wanna include monarchies, you should mostly talk about restored monarchies. And those aren't really that frequent.

Second, Karl Marx should not be the only 'left wing' benchmark. The French Revolution was sparked by Liberals, who also were left wing at the time (and imo, still are to a large extent, more left wing than right). In fact, Marx was anti-liberal. That makes modern leftists, who think that Marx, Lenin and Trotsky are gospel, that liberalism is the opposite of communism when they both belong to the left some way or another. [and call everything they dislike: neoliberal]

Third, every revolution or movement to create a nation-state has been attributed to the right, which is not really true. Just because the international leftists haven't supported it, doesn't make it 'right wing'. I mean, the Latvian Farmer's party is considered 'right wing' by leftists, but they're really center-right at best, whilst being agrarian, which I doubt has anything to do with 'right wing values' such as aristocracy, the bourgeois etc. In more recent events, there's a lot of blame on the USA for supporting and usually installing as government people they trust and forming pro-US dictatorships. The Cold War in particular has messed up the world politically.

Fourth, I don't think there's even a discussion in relation to which 'ideology' has been more oppressive and has caused more damage to its people. Mao, Pot and Stalin take the plaudits, while we also have some lesser examples, the types of Hoxha, Ceaucescu and other usually central and eastern European (communist) dictators that have completely destroyed the people they ruled and most are still struggling to overcome those issues.

Fifth:
USSR
Yugoslavia
China
Vietnam
Laos
Cuba
North Korea
Venezuela
Romania
Albania
Czechoslovakia
Bulgaria
East Germany
DR Congo
Angola
Benin
Somalia
Ethiopia
Eritrea
Mozambique
Yemen
Mongolia
Cambodia
Afghanistan

I might be missing a few, but has there been any other ideology in the past 200 years that has created so many dictatorships, that usually were ruthless? If you wanna say 'right wing dictatorships', you have to use actual examples of how they have had shared ideology, instead of groupping them as anti-communist. Being anti-communist doesn't make one right wing.

 

[CruelDwarf]

North Korea is also known as Korean People's Democratic Republic. Can we call them democracy because of that? No? So why you call them a socialist or communist then?

 

[diegosimeone]

If you've read Marx and Engels, you'd see that most of the regimes called communists by everyone, other than leftists who claim that "it was not real communism", have been practising a lot of what the Communist doctrine has suggested.

Anyhow, the point remains. Authoritarianism doesn't belong to the right, or the left or the center or anywhere. It's universal.

 

[CruelDwarf]

And they are correct because there was no real communism ever. As communism was never achieved as an economical formation. There were some countries which were ruled by communists and far more countries which were ruled by people who called themselves communists but there was not a single communist country in history.