[Maru]

I'm on the fence about this, especially since the left to right schema seems to be more relative than absolute... I mean if we can't in a stable way describe the middle, then it's not really that well-defined is it?

Anyway... the discussion has come up a couple of times and nobody seems willing to present an opposing argument for it being right-wing, so I'll present the arguments that I have read...

Click to see argument:

Spoiler:

Youtube video

Source: MYTH BUSTED : Actually, Yes, Hitler Was a Socialist Liberal
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/my...alist-liberal/

Also if you look at the far-right/far-left pages on Wikipedia... the far-left definitely omits the counter-argument entirely, but the far-right seems pretty fleshed out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-left_politics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics

I see it more as a grey area, that maybe Hitler started out far-left in policy and once he was entrenched, he went far-right in practice (dictator). And there's a good another example of this in North Korea... NK started as a democratic socialist regime, though from what we have seen, it's gone away from it's roots

Anyway, I find the left-right scheme needs improvement. I think the only legitimate reason we have things like far-* is to label people who go off the deep end... but in the end, does it matter which end we go off of? Both are still a cliff.

You can find a myriad of opinions at this site (most are for it being left-wing):
http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-fa...-right-wing-no

This one is interesting...

Is Fascism left-wing or right-wing?
I don't think its either one

Fascism is a social political ideology that has never fully been implemented. Societies (governments) that have tried get stuck in the communistic stage of development. When a dictator finally creates a totalitarian or oligarchy regime they don't want to give it over to the people to complete the theory. I would say in theory its more right but in practice its more left..Really neither one though.

Anyway I find the left-right schema is awful... the political compass thingy at least makes it a bit clearer, but still problematic...

I mean really? Trump is up there with Hitler in authoritarianism but more right?... He is high in authoritarianism, but as far as I'm aware he hasn't murdered any of his enemies yet.

But actually if it makes sense Hitler would be near the center if his views ended up cancelling each other out (see, ****ty schema)

[Toy Soldier]

Hitler supported BABY MURDER just like the LEFTIES!!!

Oh my... whoever wrote that quoted article needs a massage. It's not exactly balanced, is it...

I don't find the situation that difficult to understand really. Hitler used "socialism" (or more accurately, populism with agenda) to gain mass support from a dejected population in the wake of WW1, and used that support to begin a quest for right-of-center global fascism in WW2. I guess people forget (or don't want to remember) that Hitler was able to conquer most of Europe because he had the support of normal German people in doing so. Not "Nazis", not monsters, just the average German man and woman. So, if you understand that he had to gain that before switching to his true agenda, it's not difficult to see why he had so many socialist policies during that rise.

Also, much of his nationalisation was more linked to authoritarianism than leftism. Had far more to do with gaining state control of infrastructure and workforce (quite handy to have when waging a massive war) than it did genuine economic leftism.

[Kizzy]

So these are your sources a vlogger and wiki?... nice try.

[Maru]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Hitler supported BABY MURDER just like the LEFTIES!!!

Oh my... whoever wrote that quoted article needs a massage. It's not exactly balanced, is it...

@Bold I don't see that quote.

I don't find the situation that difficult to understand really. Hitler used "socialism" (or more accurately, populism with agenda) to gain mass support from a dejected population in the wake of WW1, and used that support to begin a quest for right-of-center global fascism in WW2. I guess people forget (or don't want to remember) that Hitler was able to conquer most of Europe because he had the support of normal German people in doing so. Not "Nazis", not monsters, just the average German man and woman. So, if you understand that he had to gain that before switching to his true agenda, it's not difficult to see why he had so many socialist policies during that rise.

Also, much of his nationalisation was more linked to authoritarianism than leftism. Had far more to do with gaining state control of infrastructure and workforce (quite handy to have when waging a massive war) than it did genuine economic leftism.

We know nationalism is linked to authoritarianism, but as you say, he enacted left-leaning policy to keep the public happy. So, while he himself is far-right, the enablers of his platform were more left-leaning, probably far left-leaning (I mean how much privilege would be needed to get you to support so much atrocity?...)..

That's where I think the left-right schema sort of leaves us to wander alone, because you can't say the movement is entirely right-leaning when you need left-leaning policies/agenda to hold it all together (to essentially keep support)...


I don't know how these things play out in the UK, but in the US, most young people wouldn't know what socialism is, even when they support it. If you ask them what it means. Most would know what a Nazi is, and they would only associate it to the far right because of the media... so they don't maybe understand enough to know how two very different platforms could lead to essentially the same thing.

[Denver]

Same as Corbyn i guess

[Maru]

Originally Posted by Adam.

Same as Corbyn i guess

Que?

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Maru

@Bold I don't see that quote.



We know nationalism is linked to authoritarianism, but as you say, he enacted left-leaning policy to keep the public happy. So, while he himself is far-right, the enablers of his platform were more left-leaning, probably far left-leaning (I mean how much privilege would be needed to get you to support so much atrocity?...)..

That's where I think the left-right schema sort of leaves us to wander alone, because you can't say the movement is entirely right-leaning when you need left-leaning policies/agenda to hold it all together (to essentially keep support)...


I don't know how these things play out in the UK, but in the US, most young people wouldn't know what socialism is, even when they support it. If you ask them what it means. Most would know what a Nazi is, and they would only associate it to the far right because of the media... so they don't maybe understand enough to know how two very different platforms could lead to essentially the same thing.

It was propaganda based alongside rallies specifically constructed to appeal to the public to gain power.

'Hitler used his own skills of oratory to appeal to the patriotism of the German people by promising to break free of the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. His aim of ending the payment of reparations was especially popular.'

How very odd...

https://www.theholocaustexplained.or...-and-promises/

[Tom4784]

Dictatorships and the philosophies of the left are too irreconcilably different to try to make that argument make sense. Just more demonisation from a dying way of thinking.

[Maru]

Originally Posted by Dezzy

Dictatorships and the philosophies left are too irreconcilably different to try to make that argument make sense. Just more demonisation from a dying way of thinking.

I don't agree with that assessment. The left and right kinda need each other I think to keep either ideology(s) from becoming too extreme. (That's actually the biggest benefit of the left/right scale is seeing the edge) (edit)

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Maru

@Bold I don't see that quote.

"The great sacrament of the left, abortion. You'll be pleased to know that Hitler was pro-choice."

It goes on to talk more specifically about genetic selection / Aryan breeding but the choice of language here is very telling about the author, I would say. This is someone who had their opinion long ago and has gone in search of information to bolster their prejudice - "Aha! Here's a juicy one I can use..." - rather than someone who has gone into this with a genuine sense of curiosity for history. That makes the entire article suspect, for me.

We know nationalism is linked to authoritarianism, but as you say, he enacted left-leaning policy to keep the public happy. So, while he himself is far-right, the enablers of his platform were more left-leaning, probably far left-leaning (I mean how much privilege would be needed to get you to support so much atrocity?...)..

That's where I think the left-right schema sort of leaves us to wander alone, because you can't say the movement is entirely right-leaning when you need left-leaning policies/agenda to hold it all together (to essentially keep support)...


I don't know how these things play out in the UK, but in the US, most young people wouldn't know what socialism is, even when they support it. If you ask them what it means. Most would know what a Nazi is, and they would only associate it to the far right because of the media... so they don't maybe understand enough to know how two very different platforms could lead to essentially the same thing.

He wasn't far right, the political compass in the original post is pretty accurate; he was highly authoritarian, and economically just right-of-centre.

But personally I think the four point compass illustrates perfectly the general misunderstanding that people have about political leanings these days; the Y axis is much more relevant to understanding a regime like the Nazis than the X axis. Right and Left are largely irrelevant; he used economics as a tool to further his extreme authoritarianism, and would have (and potentially did) go back and forth over that line depending on what best suited his goals at the time. In other words... His ideology was authoritarianism and racial supremacy, with left/right leanings being an afterthought.

These days people seem to think that it's a flat scale from left to right, and that this describes all political leanings and ideologies. Hence terms like "lefties" and "alt-right" when there is barely any similarity at all between a far left liberal and a far left authoritarian. In fact, if anything, a left leaning liberal will have FAR more in common with a right leaning liberal than they will with a left leaning authoritarian.

Then of course, these days it's just a total mess because of the added element of selfishness. Which basically means that people want liberalism for THEMSELVES, whilst similtaneously wanting authoritarianism for EVERYONE ELSE.

[DemolitionRed]

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Nazi_Party#/Etymology

The National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: About this sound Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (abbreviated NSDAP), commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party, was a far-right political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945 and practised the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920.

The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-World War I Germany. The party was created as a means to draw workers away from communism and into völkisch nationalism. Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes.

Pseudo-scientific racism theories were central to Nazism. The Nazis propagated the idea of a "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft). Their aim was to unite "racially desirable" Germans as national comrades, while excluding those deemed either to be political dissidents, physically or intellectually inferior, or of a foreign race.

This article gives you a huge amount of information regarding the propaganda that went on behind the name 'socialist'. Why it wasn't socialist and why it was fascist.

[DemolitionRed]

Does America not have a state run military, public schools, welfare, social-security, housing assistance, low income housing, community health care? If any of these things are assisted by central or federal government, then they do have some socialist models still in place.

[Toy Soldier]

It's just used as a stick to prod people with though... "Hitler was on the right and u are 2!"... "Well Stalin was on the LEFT just like u!!"



Like I said before, these totalitarian regimes would use whatever economics best suited in pursuit of other unrelated goals of domination. They were not driven by left/right politics so while interesting to examine how they used politics as a tool - its not really that relevant when discussing modern day economics, or the outcomes of economic policy. I mean... Whichever way they swung... Hitler's economics were objectively ingenious, he took Germany from the mess of the WW1 aftermath to a war machine that almost conquered the entire world. Stalin's communism allowed him to raise armies on an unprecedented scale.

Its all largely irrelevant to the atrocities that each committed in the process, though. I mean, you could argue that if Hitler really believed his own rhetoric regarding the Jews, then his destruction of Jewish communities would have been a misguided attempt at wealth redistribution. However, given that his genocidal tendencies didn't stop there and included all sorts of groups of people it seems unlikely, and his quest had everything to do with ideas of genetic supremacy.

Stalin's "communism" on the other hand was more about him considering human life to be disposable / statistics with a complete disregard for the individual, other than presumably himself. He was a megalomaniac with zero regard for his citizens. Again it had nothing to do with economic ideology - if it had been in Stalin's best interests to shift hard right he would have done so.


But I get it. None of this makes for good weaponry to pick at each other's politics and where's the fun in that?

[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It's just used as a stick to prod people with though... "Hitler was on the right and u are 2!"... "Well Stalin was on the LEFT just like u!!"



Like I said before, these totalitarian regimes would use whatever economics best suited in pursuit of other unrelated goals of domination. They were not driven by left/right politics so while interesting to examine how they used politics as a tool - its not really that relevant when discussing modern day economics, or the outcomes of economic policy. I mean... Whichever way they swung... Hitler's economics were objectively ingenious, he took Germany from the mess of the WW1 aftermath to a war machine that almost conquered the entire world. Stalin's communism allowed him to raise armies on an unprecedented scale.

Its all largely irrelevant to the atrocities that each committed in the process, though. I mean, you could argue that if Hitler really believed his own rhetoric regarding the Jews, then his destruction of Jewish communities would have been a misguided attempt at wealth redistribution. However, given that his genocidal tendencies didn't stop there and included all sorts of groups of people it seems unlikely, and his quest had everything to do with ideas of genetic supremacy.

Stalin's "communism" on the other hand was more about him considering human life to be disposable / statistics with a complete disregard for the individual, other than presumably himself. He was a megalomaniac with zero regard for his citizens. Again it had nothing to do with economic ideology - if it had been in Stalin's best interests to shift hard right he would have done so.


But I get it. None of this makes for good weaponry to pick at each other's politics and where's the fun in that?

...jeez TS, I leave the forum for 5 minutes and then when I come back you’re all reasonable, rational, balanced and sensible ...what on earth is the world all coming to...



...good post..

[Oliver_W]

He was fascist. Fascism is hard to place on the left-right scale as it has aspects of both. If you want to make the argument he was left wing, posting a political compass of him just right of centre isn't the best way to make the case, but his policies have more to do with the current left wing than right.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

He was fascist. Fascism is hard to place on the left-right scale as it has aspects of both. If you want to make the argument he was left wing, posting a political compass of him just right of centre isn't the best way to make the case, but his policies have more to do with the current left wing than right.

Well his ideology is all over the place really in every sense. He could also have been considered quite progressive in the sense that he believed that people should gain their positions based on merit and achievement and not family or social standing (and this was at a time when Britain was still heavily inclined to put the aristocracy in positions of command). But at the same time, he was an unflinching white supremacist who believed that the majority of the world's population was essentially worthless and in need of extermination. So that makes him someone who believes in the worth of the individual, but ONLY within a relatively small subset of individuals, with all others having zero worth.

The end game idea of the (never fully realised) Third Reich is heavily right wing in ideology, there's no question about that. And yet at the same time the domestic policies he was using to try to get there were authoritarian left.

Which is what makes me conclude that the answer to these questions - "was X, Y, Z left or right wing?" - is actually that it doesn't really matter. Their ideologies and goals were not rooted in normal politics, but in personal extremism... They were playing their own game by entirely different rules, with all of the politics in the middle being little more than a means to an end.

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

The end game idea of the (never fully realised) Third Reich is heavily right wing in ideology, there's no question about that.

What aspects of it were right wing, for those who don't know what the end game idea would have been?

[DemolitionRed]

The Nazi party were diehard nationalists, who called themselves the 'Nationalist Socialist Party' because they wanted to pull in the farmers and peasants.

It doesn't matter if your a social democrat or a capitalist, there are only two social structures that will ever be popular politics. One believes in equality, the other doesn't. If either of these ideals get exploited, if either become undemocratic, we could start heading towards communism or fascism.

[arista]

Hitler Left-wing or Right-wing?


Early Hitler sure
But then when older Right Wing
then Nazi.
Then Evil Mass Murder using Zyklon B powder gas


1942 Hitler taking over Europe

[arista]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

He was fascist. Fascism is hard to place on the left-right scale as it has aspects of both. If you want to make the argument he was left wing, posting a political compass of him just right of centre isn't the best way to make the case, but his policies have more to do with the current left wing than right.

Except his Early Days

[Tom4784]

Hitler was anything he needed to be to get into power.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

What aspects of it were right wing, for those who don't know what the end game idea would have been?

I feel like I shouldn't try to answer this too in-depth as I'm on my phone at work but basically, his ideologies weren't really rooted in what we would consider left/right politics today. He did have various socialist ideas when it came to free education, free health care, equality of opportunity etc. BUT as mentioned before - these things would have been for a very limited few (white people, basically, and not even all white people... His genetic supremacy thoughts were more limited than even that). But essentially the whole concept of Third Reich is literally "Third Empire" (First being the Holy Roman Empire, and second the earlier German empire) and basically, the socialist policies for the "chosen few" inside his "Aryan reich" would have been funded by hard right global exploitation and empire.

That said, I believe he did have eventual goals of total global domination / genocide, but I don't think we really know what his economic ideas would have been for such a world. Its full global totalitarianism, full control of all resources, so our understanding of left/right economics doesn't really apply... "money" doesn't really mean the same thing in that sort of economy. The concepts of debt and credit don't really exist, and so modern capitalism has no function, which distorts the traditional understanding of "right wing" beyond recognition.

[Alf]

Yes he was a leftie, it's plain to see when you compare him with todays lefties.

[Oliver_W]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Well his ideology is all over the place really in every sense. He could also have been considered quite progressive in the sense that he believed that people should gain their positions based on merit and achievement and not family or social standing (and this was at a time when Britain was still heavily inclined to put the aristocracy in positions of command).

It could be argued that people getting work or opportunities based on merit/experience/qualifications is a right wing thing, these days at least, because of things like minority only shortlists, and the "regressive left" think a meritocracy is a bad thing.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Oliver_W

It could be argued that people getting work or opportunities based on merit/experience/qualifications is a right wing thing, these days at least, because of things like minority only shortlists, and the "regressive left" think a meritocracy is a bad thing.

Possibly, although it gets complicated there, as in a full free market there isn't equality of opportunity and therefore those who end up with the best qualifications and experience are those who come from backgrounds who can afford to pay for those qualifications and experience, so you essentially end up with a type of aristocracy... Where it's not necessarily the most intelligent, able or creative people who end up in those high ranking positions. Basically, you need a high standard of universal education for all to have any chance of achieving any real merit based system. An example really of how a traditionally left-wing policy can actually be necessary for a right wing ideology. Modern far-left can get a little (or maybe, a lot) caught up in the idea of equality of outcome / equality of representation... But equality of opportunity is advantageous whichever way you lean.