Replies

This is why you see people saying idiotic things like "fascism (or Falangism, Nazism, etc) was a left-wing movement." They try to define the political spectrum in other cultures and other times in terms of the issues that define the Right and Left in America today. While they're at it, perhaps they can inform us whether Athenians or Spartans were Democrats or Republicans in the Peloponnesian war?

Thank you so much for saying that (I've often longed to but chickened out)! Yes, the John Birch Society's claim that "right" means small government individualism while "left" means big government collectivism applies only in our country, and sometimes not then. Plus, it was a ploy to dissassociate themselves from right wingers elsewhere who embarrassed them.

The JBS claim that "Nazism is left wing" is refuted by the very fact that so many American palaeoconservatives promote the very same ideas and sometimes the works of Fascist and Nazi writers. Implying that Spanish Falangism (of even the pre-Franco variety) was "left wing" simply serves to discredit us.

I admire your courage. Prepare to get piled on.

This whole "fascism is left wing" talking point goes far beyond the John Birch society and other fringe groups. It's become a very mainstream (though either naive or intellectually dishonest) tactic of the entire conservative spectrum. A good example of this is Goldberg's rather silly book Liberal Fascism, which everyone seems to quote as the final authority on the subject.

I had a debate with somebody on an earlier thread who said that Fascism was left wing movements because they were anti-individualist. I pointed out to this person that by this absurd reasoning, the military (and especially the Marine Corps) are the most "left wing" institutions in America because they are profoundly anti-individualist.

As you point out, laissez-faire capitalism and US/British style constitutional republicanism was perceived as a liberal (even radical) ideology by the aristocracy, the Church, the military, and the civil servant classes in continental Europe during the 19th and early 20th centuries. There were numerous reactions to both classical liberalism and to Marxist socialism from the traditional right, which American conservatives naively consider "leftist" because of their opposition to US style capitalism and Democracy.

With Nazis, the crux of the matter is this...even by American standards, conservatives must believe that there are certain qualities to human life which are transcendent and unchangeable whereas the Left believes that everything is ‘perfectible’ (changeable)...while the Nazis believed in strong centralized control (Left wing by American standards but Right wing by pre WW2 European standards) they also believed in certain unchangeable qualities (racial identity being primary among them) just different qualities from what the American conservatives believe...in this sense they were ‘Right wing’. Does that make sense?