Before we answer that question, however, let us look at what the Left and Right in politics consist of at present. Consider this description by Edward Feser of someone who would have been a pretty good Presidential candidate for the modern-day U.S. Democratic party:
He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter. He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual. He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.
He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies. His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out.! This call will echo throughout the world!"
The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state. They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group...."
Interesting article, and a good one to show to acquaintances who think Hitler was a “right-wing Fascist”....
“Na zi” = “National Socialist”
If a nation is going to disregard Human Rights and disregard Property Rights (different sides of the same coin) they do not have any God given legitimacy.
But he got the trains to run on time.
Hitler was a piker compared to Stalin when it came to butchering his own people. He is estimated to have murdered between 20 and 50 million and that doesn’t count his abandoning Georgia and Ukraine during the war so the Nazis could slaughter/quell the uprising.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Hitler, truly progressive.
Nazi=NSDAP=national socialist German workers’ party
That doesn’t sound very right wing to me, but then again, in leftspeak, up is down, old is new, and black is white. The left uses definitions as they best suit them, the facts be darned.
Read most of the article. Verry long.
I think the author’s primary problem is with definitions.
For instance, he appears to define the “right,: conservatism, as roughly equivalent to libertarianism; while the “left” is defined as socialism and authoritarianism.
To understand why such a definition is inaccurate, you have to look at the origin of the Left/Right spectrum, which originated in the French Revolutionary assemblies. Those who were most conservative, supporters of King, Church and aristocracy, sat on the right of the hall. Those who were most anxious to overthrow the existing system and replace it with one of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity sat on the left. The wishy-washy guys sat in the middle.
This points out an immediate problem with applying the spectrum to American, and for that matter most other modern, political controversies. America never had a Right, in the sense of organized groups campaigning for King and established Church. The closest we came were the early Federalists, who had aristocratic tendencies. Had the South won the WBTS, it would probably have wound up with a pretty right-wing government. OTOH, in Europe true Rightists, in the original sense of the word, hung on till WWI and perhaps later.
The Left, meanwhile, in the original sense of the term, was focused primarily on Equality. This was originally political and social equality, but when these goals were largely achieved they started chasing the impossible dream of economic equality.
In the general use of the term, Socialist or Leftist today means Marxist, of one variety or another. The three primary distinguishing characteristics of Marxism are its obsession with economic equality, its opposition to nationalism and other dividers of people, and its belief that the State will eventually “wither away.”
The Nazis denied all three.
While they ran a massive welfare state, the had no particular problem with economic inequality as such, and even intended to impose it by force, with Aryans to be given much more economic power than inferior races.
The “Fraternity” the Nazis wanted glorified nationalism, with all Germans lined up together in opposition to the internationalist “Fraternity” of the socialist working class. In essence, the fraternity of the Nazis was divided vertically. (All Germans against everybody else). The “Fraternity” of the socialists was divided horizontally. (All members of the working class worldwide against everybody else.)
The Nazi ideal was a world dominated by Aryans, with all others enslaved and perhaps eventually exterminated. The socialist ideal was a world of peace, freedom, and equality; with little thought given (in pre-Revolution days) to what might be necessary to get there. What would happen to all those people who weren’t “class-concious proletatians” wasn’t discussed much. The Nazis, OTOH, gloried in the pain, blood and suffering they would inflict on their inferiors.
Perhaps the biggest difference between Nazis and socialists was their attitude towards the state. Before the Bolshevik Revolution socialist assumed the State would rapidly “wither away.” After the Rev it became obvious that this wasn’t going to happen anytime soon and the ideal got moved to the distant future, as the State got more powerful and oppressive. But the ideal never went away.
The Nazis, OTOH, glorified the State and intended for it to last forever.
To sum it up, the Nazis and socialists/communists shared many methods, and were both unalterably opposed to the liberal (original sense of the word), middle-class capitalism on which America has been built, but their goals were about as opposite as any two groups can be.
The only important difference between Nazi-ism, Fascism, Communism, Socialism and Liberalism is the spelling, and that the last group hasn’t got the brains to figure it out.
- Bill Vance
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It’s really quite simple, and the historical truths are apparent in spite of the myths created among leftists in the west.
The Nazis stood for “national socialist”. They were socialists but they opposed the Commintern led by the Bolsheviks. Thus their true political cousins, the Communists, were among their opponents.
Unlike the “internationalists” associated with the Commintern, the Nazis were German nationalists in their international outlook - which, given the lopsided WWI treaties was not so strange, with or without a Hitler.
All across Europe, at the local level, Communists and Nazi sympathizers easily changed back and forth between their “red” shirts and their “brown” shirts, depending on which armies were succeeding in their area at the time.
They both stood for socialist dictatorships and tearing down Europe’s liberal, western traditions founded in Europe’s religious and philosophical history.
But the propaganda machine of the Marxists has been working constantly, since WWII, selling the myth that there was some grand “political” alliance between western democracy at the international Marxists, epitomized in the military alliance between the western allies and the Soviet Union.
But the fact is that the west would have been allied with Russia against Germany if Russia had still been Czarist Russia. The alliance with the Soviets was an alliance of convenience and nothing more, in spite of the left’s myths.
“I’m going to give you a list of characteristics that define an ideology and the founder of that ideology. There’s a quiz at the end of it so listen carefully:
1. A Socialist who believes all business should be run by the State and all profits made by business should be the property of the State.
2. Despises personal profit as greedy and against the good of the state.
3. Believes in a strong, state-run education system to instill the ideologies of “the party” counter to the teachings of parents and families.
4. Has full run of the media and used it exclusively to propagandize the views of the party.
5. When their economic system weakens, they seek to tighten regulations on business and to absorb the economies of others to compensate.
6. Anti gun and even implements and then enforces a national confiscation of firearms.
7. Pro abortion.
8. Pro euthanasia.
9. Pro eugenics.
10. Animal-rights activist.
11. Vegetarian.
12. Believes personal sexual fetishes are fine and a private matter, especially for politicians.
13. Hates Christianity and anti-religion in general, though tries to use the church for political support when needed.
14. Vehement anti-smoker who wants to ban all smoking nationally.
15. Believes in national healthcare as part of their Socialist platform.
16. Tries to enforce national exercise programs for both the physical and fiscal health of the State.
I’ve just highlighted some of the traits of Hitler and his Nazi party, which roughly translates as the ‘National Socialist Party.’ Here’s the quiz: Does this sound more like today’s American Christian conservative, or the left wing of the Democrat party?”
RE: View of Hitler today.... his policies still are highly respected by many of the radical Muslims today.
If somebody says "Hitler was a right-winger like Reagan or Bush" I object. Things were a lot more complicated than that.
The same applies if somebody says "Hitler was a socialist, like Norman Thomas or Olof Palme or Hillary Clinton." It's more complicated than that as well.
Hitler mixed the left-wing and right-wing ideas of his time and place. To make him out to be a simple right-winger or left-winger of our own day would be a mistake.
Left-wingers tend to think the left was always anti-racist, feminist, pacifist, and whatever they dream it is today. They're wrong. American Right-wingers assume that the right was always about capitalism and freedom. They don't know much about the old European right.
People who think that the left is and always was about hearts and flowers and loving-kindness are delusional, but those who think that because they follow Rand or Peikoff or Mises that they are somehow outside of the forces that make for evil in the world are likewise self-deceiving and annoying.
In both cases Hitler and the Nazis aren't seen in themselves, but are just used as sticks to beat the other side.
Hitler's thinking and Churchill's weren't poles apart when it came to things like the welfare state. That was the philosophy of the day. What counts are the differences between Hitler and Churchill, not the differences between Hitler and some fool of a Peikoff.
Hitler was an asshole. A very sick, sick living organism.
I knew there was something about Hitler that I despised.
Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin
The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.-Karl Marx