In response to your comment #99:
First of all, realize that the project of “Hitler: right or left” has been undertaken for DECADES by leftist scholars with the obvious conclusion. It was undertaken by the Communist Party itself (defining fascism as its polar opposite). Do you have any idea how many leftist academics have saddled conservatives with the comparison to fascism/Nazism?
Second, what exactly does “right wing socialism” look like? Can you point to OTHER “conservative socialists” to justify your view that the question as to whether Hitler was right or left wing is murky?
Third, the fact that the Nazi Party changed over time to accomodate Hitler becomes something of a red herring: as Hitler and the Party were rising to power, were he and they right or left wing? Rather than overcomplicate, let’s simplify: take a snapshot of the early 1930s when Hitler STILL had to appeal to a political base. Can you seriously argue to me that the Nazi Party platform (of which I previously enumerated several points) was “right wing”?
Fourth, take other fascist governments - such as Benito Mussolini’s Italy. Was IT “right wing”? Why did so many from the American political left express their affiliation with both Mussolini and (prior to the late 1930s) Adolf Hitler? And if those who are seeing the frightening parallels between Obama’s America and fascism, can we then argue - if “Nazism” and the “fascism” from which it sprang is “right wing” - that Barack Obama is actually a “far right winger” who cleverly disguised himself as a liberal?
Some other points: have you ever done a study of the worldview presuppositions underlying fascism? I have, and they most certainly do not come from the conservative, “right wing” sphere (If Hitler was a conservative, just what the hell was he trying to conserve?). How then can you have radical leftist presuppostions (virtually identical with communism - a later commenter correctly points out that Alexander Solschenizyn - in Gulag Archipelago - did not see any real difference between communism and Nazism ), and somehow end up with a right-wing government?
Once you really get to know Hitler you realize that he isn't a product of an ideology. He is a sociopath of demonic proportions. He had no plans for management except to enlarge himself and destroy anything that stood in his way.
That's why I said it is folly to try an place such a person at some point upon a political continuum when such person is basically apolitical.
In the Germany of his time, he was consider "extreme right" (by the definition of right v left of the time). In retrospect, he defies all such definition.
Certainly the contemporary left tries to say he is a product of right wing ideology. But that too is just a lie.
He transcends such political definition and trying to assign him to any is just a waster of time (which is why it is so intellectually frustrating and irresolvable).