Posted on 10/25/2010 12:53:38 PM PDT by Feline_AIDS
Periodically I come to this same conundrum when I encounter people who attach the terms "Nazis" and "rightwing."
I read Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, and from what I can gather, he is saying that the Nazis were socialists and nationalists at the same time, meaning they were nationalistic enough to be considered rightwing, even though they were on the left economically (and socially). A third way, not meeting in the middle--more like bending the spectrum backward so the two ends meet.
Could someone explain this curious part of the political spectrum? Because Goldberg explains that nationalism was mostly a leftie thing--"Moreover, historically, nationalism was a liberal-left phenomenon. The french Revolution was a nationalist revolution, but it was also seen as a left-liberal one for breaking with the Catholic Church and empowering the people" (71).
I just basically want to be able to explain this to myself and others more succinctly. This is something I think we probably should all be adept at, because the longer the left can say there were commies on the left and Nazis on the right, the longer they stall us from talking about real issues.
I get very frustrated when I can't articulate this. I'd appreciate any explanations of the political spectrum, though I'd hope nothing so simple and erroneous (?) as communism on the left, anarchism on the right.
“Galicia”
Cool. Great post. Thanks.
He may have hated them because they were Russians (non-Aryan slavs), or because they were a political threat to his power, or merely because Marxism wasn't his idea. He was single minded about his ideas being the only ones!
But, the end result was pretty similar in both Germany and Stalinist Russia... just the rhetoric and the route taken differed.
"Basically National Socialism and Marxism are the same." -Adolph Hitler, 1941, Bulletin of International News, vol 18, March 8, 1941, p. 269
"There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists.
I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will."
(Quoted in Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, London, T. Butterworth, 1940)
It is my understanding that Stalin tagged Hitler as "Right Wing".
And for an interesting view of what the other side looked like, I suggest George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". It will stand your hair on end.
Your point is what, exactly? The issue was about Nazis. I made the point that Nazism is leftist because it is socialist. It’s part of the name. What exactly does Franco have to do with this issue? Really? And now why the need to define socialism?
Nazism was leftist. Plain and simple. Franco was definitely a nationalist. But, if my memory serves, he was virulently anti-communist. I think that would make him anything but a socialist, right? He was a tyrant, an authoritarian and generally a bad dude. But I don’t see the point in the issue with whether or not Nazis were leftists.
Hoss
The Nazis were mostly socialists, the SA was full of ex-Communist street brawlers, and in essence they wanted the Nazi revolution to result in a state takeover of all industry, and to eliminate the German industrialist class.
Hitler knew better, he knew that he needed the industrialists support to build his war machine, and knew to get that support, he needed the SA removed, that was one reason the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ occurred.
Why would the Nazi’s align themselves with a dictator who is fighting leftists if they were leftists?
Socialism is a funny word. The UK, German, Sweden, Canada can all be called Socialist yet none of them are fascist.
A great hero who saved Spain from communism, saved hundreds of Jews from Nazi extermination, and turned his country over to a sane leader so that it could become a democracy.
A great hero who saved Spain from communism, saved hundreds of Jews from Nazi extermination, and turned his country over to a sane leader so that it could become a democracy.
I lived in Spain as a child during Franco. It was not nearly as poor as Italy was then. Spain before Franco was known as “the poor man of Europe.” After his reign it was a normal country.
I trust more the piece I read in Commentary, a Jewish publication, that documented how he took in and gave false papers to Jewish refugees.
Thank you! I tried to say the same thing, and just got bashed for “not reading”.
I think Hitler’s and the Nazis’ extreme enmity toward Communists (the Left) contributed to their being labeled on the Right; i.e., they must be the opposite of the Left. A bit simplistic, perhaps, but it makes sense to me.
Yeah but we are outside both those camps. It’s sort of like looking at Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Those groups have extreme enmity towards each other too but from the outside they are just varying flavours of Islam.
Also he is still dead.
Hitler had a sort of respect for Stalin, one dictator to another, just for the extent of his control and the fear and awe his name struck in his people, but the communists and the Nazis were street fighting rivals in the 1920s, and even before the Jews, the communists were wiped out. American communists hated the Nazis until they were suddenly told to love them.
In college I had a student job for a while acting as the office assistant to a guy who had been a mid-level functionary in the CPUSA in the 50s, and who had actually spent some time underground, hiding out from the FBI and a federal warrant until the Supreme Court overturned the Smith Act. Later, in the 60s, he became a concert and event producer and entertainment manager and eventually an arts policy guy. Nice little old Jewish man when I knew him. He's grown up in the 1920, the child of Eastern European Jewish Socialist types--a first generation red diaper baby.
Anyway, I asked him about the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact once and what he said was that "was the first lurch of the train, when a lot of people rolled off." For years the Nazis and the Soviets had been enemies, and when they suddenly announced they were friends some people saw through the hypocrisy. My guy, however, kept swallowing the party line as sent down from Moscow, and others did the same. More dropped out at the end of the war, and more during the McCarthy era. The real death death blow, however, was when the Kruschev speech exposing Stalin's crimes was published. That's when he and almost everyone but a tiny, irrelevant core quit.
Don’t worry about that. Some around here bash anyone who disagrees with them, often accusing them of RINOness or other apostasy, usually without bothering to show why their own opinion is correct.
Either ignore them or bash back.
Both nazism/fascism and communism can be traced in their ideological parentage back to various strands of the French Revolution. Neither can trace much of anything back to the American Revolution.
The “Right vs. Left” spectrum comes from placing attitudes towards the French Revolution along a scale. American conservatism doesn’t fit anywhere on that scale.
I would say the easiest way to understand the terms is in the context of the zeitgeist. For example in Jefferson’s day he was surely considered, and wished to be thought of, as Liberal. Where as today anyone who espouses Jeffersonian ideals is called a Conservative.
ping for later.
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