What Puts Nazism on the Right?

 

This is a sincere question to which I’ve never had a satisfactory answer. I may have even asked it here before. We all know what Nazism is, but I think we need to define what we mean by “Right,” and specifically the American Right. I know some people prefer the quadrant model of political ideology to the linear one. Libertarian to authoritarian on one axis and communism to free markets on the other. But, where’s the overlap between Hitler’s Germany and American conservatism?

Do law-and-order righties fall on the far right of the axis in opposition to the chaos-and-destruction (2020 summer of love) lefties? I don’t think law and order is all that authoritarian, at least in America. If laws are just and equally applied (increasingly not the case), that would appear to be in a sweet spot near the political middle.

Economically, I don’t see American conservatives as radically free-market fundamentalists, although there are some who seem to hold that position. Personally, I’m more of a fair trade kind of gal. I see tariffs as useful to counteract those who would exploit our entrepreneurial capitalism by dumping their products and putting our industries out of business (cough China cough). But economic fascism seems more related to the hand-in-glove state and corporate cooperation the Left adores (see Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Education, . . . ).

So where’s the overlap with Nazism? Here’s what I think. I think the Left uses the Nazi/fascist slander to suggest that American nationalism (sometimes associated with patriotism or love of homeland) is just like the poisonous ethnic nationalism of Nazi Germany — Hitler’s Aryanism. It’s the basis for charges of “inherently racist” and “white supremacist.”

It’s an absurd notion. Is all nationalism Nazism? Are the French Nazis for loving their culture and language? How about the Swedes or the Spanish? It’s particularly slanderous given that America has never been ethnically pure and hasn’t even aspired to it, except in pockets where Democrats and the KKK (but, I repeat) held sway.

None of which is to say that patriots are required to believe America is faultless. I happen to believe there’s a fatal flaw in our Constitution — a sin of omission that allows the federal government to buy votes by redistributing our tax dollars. That’s a limit on government power (the raison d’etre of our Constitution) I’d like to see, but I’m not an idealist on the matter.

When American right-wingers assent to the idea that Nazis and fascists are on the Right, they’re submitting to the notion that American patriots are racist white supremacists. I dissent. And don’t even get me started on how any form of moral, academic, or artistic excellence is now considered “white supremacy.” As if nonwhites are incapable of high achievement. Who’s the racist now?

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  1. GlenEisenhardt Member
    GlenEisenhardt
    @

    Nazism is on the right because they were a reaction to the left. Germany was a cesspool of people selling their children for food, beastiality, sex parties, poverty, and almost any perverse thing you can think of. The Nazis were a reaction to all of it. They were a weird reaction that took on the idea of scapegoating a population for Germany’s state of affairs and employed many weird cultural practices going back to German pagan days. There can be reactions to the left that look nothing like this. 

    The left’s reaction to American institutions and America in general resembles fascism more than the American right’s reaction to anything the left does. The left scapegoats a race for the nations ills and employs violent tactics and police state persecution where they are able to do so and get away with it. The right’s reaction has been to generally take it and promote libertarian crap while wagging their fingers. The right in this country needs to have a serious reaction to what has happened politically and culturally. The reaction of the right to communism was to present itself as being the antithesis to communism such as free markets, small government, due process, free speech. That identity the modern right crafted for itself doesn’t work against this enemy. It empowers them. The right needs to have a new reaction to what the left has become and is currently doing. Reactions can take many forms. Because the form the fascists took doesn’t look like the form of the right wing anti communists of the West doesn’t mean they’re not right wing. And because the fascists were a reaction to German decay and leftist rot it doesn’t mean the left can’t employ the same tactics or some of the same ideas, which they currently do. 

    • #61
  2. Sisyphus Member
    Sisyphus
    @Sisyphus

    First things first. Hitler and Stalin were both considered men of the Left in Europe throughout the 1930s. Hitler and Stalin were rival ideologues competing for primacy on the Left and bickering over the merits of nationalist Socialism versus internationalist Socialism. The amusing part is that Hitler the ideologue was was waging all of this war and this unbridled stateism as a necessary process to achieving his Anarchy, his ideal paradise. On paper, Stalin was committed to the same but Stalin was a pragmatist through and through.

    In America, the Democrats were the party of Segregation and the Ku Klux Klan, and racism was as strong in most of the country as it is today at the Democratic National Convention every four years, though it presents a little differently now. Joe Kennedy, Sr. liked Hitler, FDR leaned toward Stalin, any dark news from their regimes was dismissed as some necessity peculiar to their peoples. And Churchill, a man of the right and a non-apologetic Imperialist, was not attractive in his ideology. FDR would use their alliance to pry India loose from the British Empire, a running thread in their correspondence. 

    But before that alliance got beyond the flirty Lend-Lease phase, Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa because, well, he was Hitler. And Stalin would have done the reverse in the course of time. No tears for these monsters, abject weeping for their millions of victims. 

    The NYT was pro-Stalin. Stalin got a lot of unearned good press in this country before he became an ally. Hitler’s victims were cascading into Hollywood, New York, and London. And making and influencing movies, books, and journalism there. Stalin’s racism was distant and contested. Hitler’s was in the face of the West.

    Quick note about racism. Racism was mainstream before the colonization of North America. Prior to the discovery of the death camps and subsequent blow back, everyone cheerfully wrote on the yellow peril, the black problem, the whole gamut. The notion that it was improper conduct to do so was ivory tower foolishness in the public eye. The science was settled on these matter, anyway. Progressiveism, Margaret Sanger, American Eugenics, Teddy Roosevelt, the Tuskegee syphilis study, you know the history. I am old enough to have visited the South in the 1960s, it wasn’t over yet.

    So, once Hitler attacks Stalin, our men of the Left suddenly discerned a certain Rightness to Hitler and his policies, distancing themselves from the enemy and patriotically embracing their new ally, Stalin. It eventually became almost impossible to find a mainstream attribution placing Hitler on the Left. 

    In America, in the early 70s with the great Southern shift from the party of McGovern to the Law and Order edition of Nixon (I know, irony atop irony), the equation that Southern Conservatism was rooted in the sin of American racism, peculiar to the Right, became common wisdom. It’s not philosophy, it’s old-fashioned mud slinging.

    • #62
  3. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    Sisyphus (View Comment):
    Quick note about racism. Racism was mainstream before the colonization of North America.

    Slavery was mainstream and in some places still is. 

    • #63
  4. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Sisyphus (View Comment):

    First things first. Hitler and Stalin were both considered men of the Left in Europe throughout the 1930s. Hitler and Stalin were rival ideologues competing for primacy on the Left and bickering over the merits of nationalist Socialism versus internationalist Socialism. The amusing part is that Hitler the ideologue was was waging all of this war and this unbridled stateism as a necessary process to achieving his Anarchy, his ideal paradise. On paper, Stalin was committed to the same but Stalin was a pragmatist through and through.

    In America, the Democrats were the party of Segregation and the Ku Klux Klan, and racism was as strong in most of the country as it is today at the Democratic National Convention every four years, though it presents a little differently now. Joe Kennedy, Sr. liked Hitler, FDR leaned toward Stalin, any dark news from their regimes was dismissed as some necessity peculiar to their peoples. And Churchill, a man of the right and a non-apologetic Imperialist, was not attractive in his ideology. FDR would use their alliance to pry India loose from the British Empire, a running thread in their correspondence.

    But before that alliance got beyond the flirty Lend-Lease phase, Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa because, well, he was Hitler. And Stalin would have done the reverse in the course of time. No tears for these monsters, abject weeping for their millions of victims.

    The NYT was pro-Stalin. Stalin got a lot of unearned good press in this country before he became an ally. Hitler’s victims were cascading into Hollywood, New York, and London. And making and influencing movies, books, and journalism there. Stalin’s racism was distant and contested. Hitler’s was in the face of the West.

    Quick note about racism. Racism was mainstream before the colonization of North America. Prior to the discovery of the death camps and subsequent blow back, everyone cheerfully wrote on the yellow peril, the black problem, the whole gamut. The notion that it was improper conduct to do so was ivory tower foolishness in the public eye. The science was settled on these matter, anyway. Progressiveism, Margaret Sanger, American Eugenics, Teddy Roosevelt, the Tuskegee syphilis study, you know the history. I am old enough to have visited the South in the 1960s, it wasn’t over yet.

    So, once Hitler attacks Stalin, our men of the Left suddenly discerned a certain Rightness to Hitler and his policies, distancing themselves from the enemy and patriotically embracing their new ally, Stalin. It eventually became almost impossible to find a mainstream attribution placing Hitler on the Left.

    In America, in the early 70s with the great Southern shift from the party of McGovern to the Law and Order edition of Nixon (I know, irony atop irony), the equation that Southern Conservatism was rooted in the sin of American racism, peculiar to the Right, became common wisdom. It’s not philosophy, it’s old-fashioned mud slinging.

    I think your account here is accurate, but I’m no expert, just a participant. I grew upon segregated Georgia and left when I was twenty, so I was never eligible to vote, but most all elections up until that time were decided in the Democrat primary since Republicans were hardly recognized as existing. There was racial prejudice but I have never been sure just how strong or widespread it actually was. My sense was that it was rather weak and, in actual practice, mostly among what we thought of as low class whites or white trash. I went all the way through 12 grades of segregated public school and 2 years at Georgia Tech and I don’t remember much to do on racism beyond what Martin Luther King and some others were doing which seemed right. My family taught us to stay away from white folks who acted with racial bigotry.  When the Republicans began gaining strength in the South I think a large percentage of conservative Democrats shifted their Party preference. But that left many Democrat politicians in a quandary since they needed votes so the pitch was to portray Republicans(mostly former Democrats) as racist. Following WWII there were big migrations both ways between the North and the South so it gets complicated. I think most of this is on the political leaders.

    • #64
  5. Dave of Barsham Member
    Dave of Barsham
    @LesserSonofBarsham

    I’m a little late to this party so this may have already been covered. The question you have to ask, as I understand it, is “to the right of what?”  From a European point of view they are on the “right” in comparison to Soviet Communism. These days I don’t think European Democracies would agree with that exactly as many of them (at least in terms of government  structure) are further right than that as they still have parliaments, elections, etc…  Still, in 1940 the scale would look like this I would think:

    Left: Soviet Communism——–Nazism——————————-American Right——-Anarchism     :Right   (obviously not to any precise scale).

    So “Nazism is on the right!” is kinda true so long as the scale starts in Moscow and stops at the Atlantic way back when.

    • #65
  6. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    Dave of Barsham (View Comment):

    I’m a little late to this party so this may have already been covered. The question you have to ask, as I understand it, is “to the right of what?” From a European point of view they are on the “right” in comparison to Soviet Communism. These days I don’t think European Democracies would agree with that exactly as many of them (at least in terms of government structure) are further right than that as they still have parliaments, elections, etc… Still, in 1940 the scale would look like this I would think:

    Left: Soviet Communism——–Nazism——————————-American Right——-Anarchism :Right (obviously not to any precise scale).

    So “Nazism is on the right!” is kinda true so long as the scale starts in Moscow and stops at the Atlantic way back when.

    And if one goes by this diagram today America is Left of Center in fact even though many might like to call it Right because we still spend a lot of time touted a competitive business environment, but just look at what we have in today’s business environment and you may change that view.

    • #66
  7. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    I don’t think the link is rational in any way. However, I think the link the academic Left has always tried to establish is to the German Nazis’ and Italian Fascists’ authoritarianism and racism and aversion to social change–that is, what they wrongfully accuse us of being.

    And the “academic” left really loves Antonio Gramsci.

    Of the “Frankfurt school”

    • #67
  8. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    Percival (View Comment):

    The current day brownshirts are anti-fascist because they identify as anti-fascist.

    It’s only fascist when we do it.

    Today’s “anti-fascists” are the same as the original communist activists that fought the brownshirts.   Anti-fa has the same colors, flags, and symbols as 100 years ago.  Again, communists view anyone that opposes communism as a fascist.

    • #68
  9. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    GlenEisenhardt (View Comment):
    Nazism is on the right because they were a reaction to the left.

    Not in America.  Here, both commies and socialists are on the Left.   In America, being on the Right means supporting limited government and subsidiarity plus free-markets and capitalism.

    • #69
  10. Red Herring Coolidge
    Red Herring
    @EHerring

    Each totalitarian iteration had its own name, communism, Fascism, Naziism, Maoism. We are in the end stages of a Marxist cultural revolution. None of the other names apply totally. At some point, historians will give our authoritarian government a name. 

    • #70
  11. EDISONPARKS Member
    EDISONPARKS
    @user_54742

    DaveSchmidt (View Comment):

    EDISONPARKS (View Comment):

    People of all ideologies may hate Trump but it is telling how Trump brought out all the inner Nazi impulses in his enemies, particularly on the Left.

    That would make a great debate topic. I’d pay real money to attend one.

    And I use “Nazi” when the adherents of an ideology accepts abandoning constitutional standards, accepting encroachments on civil liberties, creating the tribal group acceptance of hating the “other” (ie: MAGA Republicans) …. which could also apply followers of other totalitarian regimes, not just “Nazis”.

    …..  a perfect example as to the corruption (ie: abandonment of journalistic standards and with it civil liberties, etc.) of the  MSM/BigTech by the DeepState ….. and why David Strom of HotAir is my new favorite guy:

    https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/04/28/what-really-makes-me-angry-about-the-hunter-biden-stories-n546870

    • #71
  12. Dave of Barsham Member
    Dave of Barsham
    @LesserSonofBarsham

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):

    Dave of Barsham (View Comment):

    I’m a little late to this party so this may have already been covered. The question you have to ask, as I understand it, is “to the right of what?” From a European point of view they are on the “right” in comparison to Soviet Communism. These days I don’t think European Democracies would agree with that exactly as many of them (at least in terms of government structure) are further right than that as they still have parliaments, elections, etc… Still, in 1940 the scale would look like this I would think:

    Left: Soviet Communism——–Nazism——————————-American Right——-Anarchism :Right (obviously not to any precise scale).

    So “Nazism is on the right!” is kinda true so long as the scale starts in Moscow and stops at the Atlantic way back when.

    And if one goes by this diagram today America is Left of Center in fact even though many might like to call it Right because we still spend a lot of time touted a competitive business environment, but just look at what we have in today’s business environment and you may change that view.

    Yeah, we’re not the America of the 1940’s anymore, that’s for sure.

    • #72
  13. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    Congrats on big league promo. 

    • #73
  14. CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill Coolidge
    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill
    @CarolJoy

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    The racism. Racism is considered right-wing. If the Nazis hadn’t been so overtly racist they would have been counted as left-wing.

    (Left-wing racism gets a pass because it’s couched in euphemism and “good-intentions” or simply just denied outright.)

    That is an excellent observation.

    It does seem racism is considered to be right-wing. Of course, this viewpoint is bolstered by the fact that no person of color has ever been intolerant of whites, right?

    Or if some person of color is intolerant, we can’t point that out: because to point out the sins of some minority is considered an extremely  racist thing to do.

    Plus in our current age of DEI, when an individual is opposed to immigration, they are immediately labelled a racist by  those on The Left.

    • #74
  15. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    philo (View Comment):

    Congrats on big league promo.

    Woo hoo! Thanks for the heads up! Only my second time on Instapundit. 

    • #75
  16. OmegaPaladin Moderator
    OmegaPaladin
    @OmegaPaladin

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    philo (View Comment):

    Congrats on big league promo.

    Woo hoo! Thanks for the heads up! Only my second time on Instapundit.

    https://instapundit.com/581584/

    Nice work, @westernchauvinist  !  Your invitation to the Instalanche club is waiting

    https://ricochet.com/groups/the-instalanche-club/

    • #76
  17. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    The racism. Racism is considered right-wing. If the Nazis hadn’t been so overtly racist they would have been counted as left-wing.

    (Left-wing racism gets a pass because it’s couched in euphemism and “good-intentions” or simply just denied outright.)

    That is an excellent observation.

    It does seem racism is considered to be right-wing. Of course, this viewpoint is bolstered by the fact that no person of color has ever been intolerant of whites, right?

    Or if some person of color is intolerant, we can’t point that out: because to point out the sins of some minority is considered an extremely racist thing to do.

    Plus in our current age of DEI, when an individual is opposed to immigration, they are immediately labelled a racist by those on The Left.

    • #77
  18. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    kedavis (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    The racism. Racism is considered right-wing. If the Nazis hadn’t been so overtly racist they would have been counted as left-wing.

    (Left-wing racism gets a pass because it’s couched in euphemism and “good-intentions” or simply just denied outright.)

    That is an excellent observation.

    It does seem racism is considered to be right-wing. Of course, this viewpoint is bolstered by the fact that no person of color has ever been intolerant of whites, right?

    Or if some person of color is intolerant, we can’t point that out: because to point out the sins of some minority is considered an extremely racist thing to do.

    Plus in our current age of DEI, when an individual is opposed to immigration, they are immediately labelled a racist by those on The Left.

    Everything that they call “American’s Sins” are actually Democrat policies and actions. They’re diluting their guilt for historic actions.

    • #78
  19. Chowderhead Coolidge
    Chowderhead
    @Podunk

    Western, you’re not wrong. You absolutely need to read (or listen) to this book by Dinesh D’Souza, The Big Lie

    The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left

    What is “the big lie” of the Democratic Party? That conservatives—and President Donald Trump in particular—are fascists. Nazis, even. In a typical comment, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow says the Trump era is reminiscent of “what it was like when Hitler first became chancellor.”

    But in fact, this audacious lie is a complete inversion of the truth. Yes, there is a fascist threat in America—but that threat is from the Left and the Democratic Party. The Democratic left has an ideology virtually identical with fascism and routinely borrows tactics of intimidation and political terror from the Nazi Brownshirts.

    • #79
  20. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    OccupantCDN (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    CarolJoy, Not So Easy To Kill (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    The racism. Racism is considered right-wing. If the Nazis hadn’t been so overtly racist they would have been counted as left-wing.

    (Left-wing racism gets a pass because it’s couched in euphemism and “good-intentions” or simply just denied outright.)

    That is an excellent observation.

    It does seem racism is considered to be right-wing. Of course, this viewpoint is bolstered by the fact that no person of color has ever been intolerant of whites, right?

    Or if some person of color is intolerant, we can’t point that out: because to point out the sins of some minority is considered an extremely racist thing to do.

    Plus in our current age of DEI, when an individual is opposed to immigration, they are immediately labelled a racist by those on The Left.

    Everything that they call “American’s Sins” are actually Democrat policies and actions. They’re diluting their guilt for historic actions.

    But now, they bring us such wholesome fare as drag queen story hour, and transitioning kids who aren’t old enough to buy themselves a beer and a pack of Luckies.

    • #80
  21. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    What makes Nazi’s right wing?

    Back in the 1930s the German Nazi party and Communist party often had members going back and forth between the 2 organizations. In order to discourage this they agreed to pretend to be opposite polls on the political spectrum. Also if they force the voters to choose between fascism and communism, liberal capitalist democracy is off the spectrum entirely.

    Secondly democrats happened to be in power during the war, they conflate their opponents foreign and domestic. They oppose republicans and nazis therefore republicans are nazis. A democrat administration opposed the Iranian Hostage takers, therefore they conspired with republicans to steal the 1980 election from Jimmy Carter…

    Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals” stated that a radical should accuse others of who they are and what the do. Hillary Clinton is an Alinsky Acolyte so naturally she created the Steele Dossier to accuse Trump of doing (almost) exactly what she’s done.

    • #81
  22. OccupantCDN Coolidge
    OccupantCDN
    @OccupantCDN

    Percival (View Comment):
    But now, they bring us such wholesome fare as drag queen story hour, and transitioning kids who aren’t old enough to buy themselves a beer and a pack of Luckies.

    Or get a tattoo.

    In 20 years, when the de-transitioners start suing they’ll blame the entire episode on a social mania, like the Satanism outbreak in the 80s.

    • #82
  23. David C. Broussard Coolidge
    David C. Broussard
    @Dbroussa

    Bob Thompson (View Comment):
    I grew upon segregated Georgia and left when I was twenty, so I was never eligible to vote, but most all elections up until that time were decided in the Democrat primary since Republicans were hardly recognized as existing. There was racial prejudice but I have never been sure just how strong or widespread it actually was. My sense was that it was rather weak and, in actual practice, mostly among what we thought of as low class whites or white trash. I went all the way through 12 grades of segregated public school and 2 years at Georgia Tech and I don’t remember much to do on racism beyond what Martin Luther King and some others were doing which seemed right. My family taught us to stay away from white folks who acted with racial bigotry.

    As a child of the Georgia as well, and one who left GA when I was 17 to go to college in Texas, I think perhaps that you either lived in a different place, or missed the racism and prejudice that was open and overt.  My views are colored by the fact that I grew up Catholic in a state that was hostile to Catholics and where the casual prejudice against Catholics was prominent throughout my childhood.  The Klan by the mid to late 70s had devolved into almost exclusively a lower-class entity, but that was mostly because the racism of the middle and upper class had become more subtle.  I remember in 1990 my soon to be wife and I were thinking she might pursue her graduate degree at the UGA and were looking for a place to live.  I was calling about ads in the newspaper and found one that seemed promising to me.  The realtor I was talking to kept trying to warn me off the place saying that I needed to go look at the neighborhood and that it wouldn’t be right for us.  I wasn’t getting what she was telling me until she finally said, “It’s a Black neighborhood” and hung up. Visiting in the early 90s, my wife was struck at how submissive Blacks were to her as a White woman and was uncomfortable.  Thirty years later it is vastly different, but even in the 90s when GA was just starting to move towards electing Republicans, racism was still very deep.  Of course, that was only about 25 years from when the public schools in my hometown were finally integrated fully.  Prior to that they Black high school was kept Black by drawing its district to only include Black neighborhoods and enforcing via social power that segregation of where people lived that the Courts addressed in the 1968 Green decision.

    Anyway, while I loved growing up in Georgia, the racism and prejudice were certainly there well into the late 20th Century. 

    • #83
  24. DonG (CAGW is a Scam) Coolidge
    DonG (CAGW is a Scam)
    @DonG

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    The racism. Racism is considered right-wing. If the Nazis hadn’t been so overtly racist they would have been counted as left-wing.

    (Left-wing racism gets a pass because it’s couched in euphemism and “good-intentions” or simply just denied outright.)

    Nope.   The socialists opposed the communists, who labeled themselves as “left” and the socialists as “right”.   From an American perspective, they are both “left”.    Racism is not a factor in the American left-right scale.   We have seen it on both sides and the middle.    The American Left uses racial Marxism to achieve more power and anything that grows power is a good thing.

    • #84
  25. David C. Broussard Coolidge
    David C. Broussard
    @Dbroussa

    Western Chauvinist: But, where’s the overlap between Hitler’s Germany and American conservatism?

    There isn’t.  The problem with the terms of Right and Left in use in the US as opposed to Germany in the 1930s is that the fundamental definition of what is Right or Left has almost no relationship to each other.

    In Germany (and Europe) the idea of Right and Left was almost entirely related to the concept of how the gov’t was constructed.  The Left (especially since the advent of Marxism and International Socialism) was dedicated to the concept that the central gov’t of each country had to be abolished in favor of a larger international gov’t.  The Right tended towards a stronger national gov’t that often was focused on a monarchy.  Remember that in post WWI Germany, the monarchy of the Kaiser had been eradicated by the Treaty of Versailles.  The German Right of the 20s and 30s wanted a return to the monarchy, or at least to a strong central leader that would put an end to the economic failures and social depravity that plagued Germany.  They saw that as a rot that came from the degenerate Left who wanted to undermine and destroy Germany culture in favor of Communism with its atheism as workers unions.  

    In the US, the Right and Left debates in more modern times (post WWII) have been primarily around economic issues from central command of the economy on the Left, and market driven control on the Right, that wasn’t the case in Germany in the 30s.  In Germany, there were what we would call a US Right and Left, but the Communists and the Nazis were both on the Left by US terms.  

    Is there an overlap?  Well, shmaybe…you have to sort of squint and tilt your head to see it though.  The Nazis opposed the eradication of Germany as a nation in favor of an international, stateless workers paradise.  The US Right also opposes the eradication of the US in favor of an international, stateless, workers paradise.  The Nazis favored a central command economy where you could own your own business as long as you built what they told you.  The current US Right seems to be OK with strong controls and supports of businesses that do what they want, but the reality is that it is the businesses that are writing the rules that are designed to stifle their competition as opposed to a truly command economy.  So…some things are similar and some are not.  

    Why then is Nazism always conflated with the right wing?  Well, because it was in the context of Germany of the 30s, oh, and it becomes extremely convenient for the US Left which has always flirted with Communism going back to the early 20th century to paint their opponents as the equivalent to literally Hitler.

    • #85
  26. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    OccupantCDN (View Comment):

    What makes Nazi’s right wing?

    Back in the 1930s the German Nazi party and Communist party often had members going back and forth between the 2 organizations. In order to discourage this they agreed to pretend to be opposite polls on the political spectrum. Also if they force the voters to choose between fascism and communism, liberal capitalist democracy is off the spectrum entirely.

    Secondly democrats happened to be in power during the war, they conflate their opponents foreign and domestic. They oppose republicans and nazis therefore republicans are nazis. A democrat administration opposed the Iranian Hostage takers, therefore they conspired with republicans to steal the 1980 election from Jimmy Carter…

    Saul Alinsky in “Rules for Radicals” stated that a radical should accuse others of who they are and what the do. Hillary Clinton is an Alinsky Acolyte so naturally she created the Steele Dossier to accuse Trump of doing (almost) exactly what she’s done.

    Fascinating observation. I had forgotten this part:

    A democrat administration opposed the Iranian Hostage takers, therefore they conspired with republicans to steal the 1980 election from Jimmy Carter…

    When the hostages were released the day of Reagan’s inauguration, I remember the delay being blamed on the Reagan campaign, ostensibly in order to make Reagan look like such a tough guy, even terrorists wouldn’t mess with him.

    • #86
  27. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    DonG (CAGW is a Scam) (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    The racism. Racism is considered right-wing. If the Nazis hadn’t been so overtly racist they would have been counted as left-wing.

    (Left-wing racism gets a pass because it’s couched in euphemism and “good-intentions” or simply just denied outright.)

    Nope. The socialists opposed the communists, who labeled themselves as “left” and the socialists as “right”. From an American perspective, they are both “left”. Racism is not a factor in the American left-right scale. We have seen it on both sides and the middle. The American Left uses racial Marxism to achieve more power and anything that grows power is a good thing.

    I won’t speak for Mis, but I’m talking about how the terms are used today, not in the early 20th century. As you say, the American Left has successfully used the Alinskyite method of accusing its opposition of what it is (a “threat to our democracy”) and what it does (violent extremism) in order to concentrate its power. It’s working.

    • #87
  28. Western Chauvinist Member
    Western Chauvinist
    @WesternChauvinist

    David C. Broussard (View Comment):
    The US Right also opposes the eradication of the US in favor of an international, stateless, workers paradise. 

    Yes, that’s the point I was making about right-wing US patriotism/nationalism being conflated with the ethnic nationalism of the Nazis. 

    And “yes” to the conflation being extremely convenient to the globalist Left.

    • #88
  29. Stad Coolidge
    Stad
    @Stad

    Nazism is a leftist theology.  The left talks only about the Nationalistic part of the theology, because most coservatives are strong supporters of their country.  However, the left conveniently ignores the Socialist part, which is the totalitarianism they so truly adore . . .

    • #89
  30. Raxxalan Member
    Raxxalan
    @Raxxalan

    Western Chauvinist (View Comment):

    Sisyphus (View Comment):
    Quick note about racism. Racism was mainstream before the colonization of North America.

    Slavery was mainstream and in some places still is.

    It still sadly exists in America aided and abetted by the Democratic party once again.

    • #90
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