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.
Excellent post.
Prediction: You won’t get much response to it. You make too much sense. No fun at all.