>>They were abandoning centrist parties and moving to the radical left and right, the Communists and Nazis.
That’s a European “left and right”, which has little to do with how Americans tend to view “left and right”.
See the third quote on my FR home page, the two paragraph one by Hayek, for comments on the German Communists and Nazis by a contemporaneous observer.
That's correct. European "right" is more leaning in favor of aristocracy and monarchy, which is the original meaning of the terms. From the wikipedia
The terms Left and Right have been used to refer to political affiliation since the early part of the French Revolutionary era. They originally referred to the seating arrangements in the various legislative bodies of France, specifically in the French Legislative Assembly of 1791, when the king was still the formal head of state, and the moderate royalist Feuillants sat on the right side of the chamber, while the radical Montagnards sat on the left.[14] This traditional seating arrangement continues to be observed by the Senate and National Assembly of the French Fifth Republic.In 1930's Germany, the Communists were backed by Stalinist Russia, while the Nazis got a good part of their funding from the industrialists. This does not mean that the Nazis were pro-free-enterprise -- the conglomerates backing Hitler would have desired a state-run economy which ensured their profits. The essential difference between the Communists and Nazis would have been who was to be in charge, a difference which would disappear over timeOriginally, the defining point on the ideological spectrum was attitudes towards the ancien régime ("old order"). "The Right" thus implied support for aristocratic, royal, or clerical interests, while "The Left" implied opposition to the same. At that time, support for laissez-faire capitalism and free markets were regarded as being on the left whereas today in most Western countries these views would be characterized as being on the Right; the earlier "left-wing" politicians were advocates of laissez faire capitalism[citation needed] and the "right-wing" politicians opposed it, until the early nineteenth century when
anti-capitalism gained favour among the leftists due to the rise of socialism. Despite this, the left-controlled French National Convention decreed numerous economic interventions during the Revolution, including price controls (enforced under penalty of death),[15] forced loans on those with incomes exceeding 1000 livres, and the abolishment of the Paris Stock Exchange and all joint-stock companies.[16]