Nazis and the left wing

[Crusader]

My apologies for the placement of this thread. I'm not really sure where it belongs.

Anyway, I've been doing some study on the use of "nazis" as a kind of forumic nuclear weapon by left-leaning webizens, and I'm wondering if anyone could give me a hand.

I've always been of the opinion that the Nazis were rather more socialistically-inclined then otherwise (hence their full title), but information regarding this particular facet of political history seems a little hard to come by, or at least it has been for me.

Does anyone have any reliable resources I could access?

Thanks.
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[Republican_Legion]

My apologies for the placement of this thread. I'm not really sure where it belongs.

Anyway, I've been doing some study on the use of "nazis" as a kind of forumic nuclear weapon by left-leaning webizens, and I'm wondering if anyone could give me a hand.

I've always been of the opinion that the Nazis were rather more socialistically-inclined then otherwise (hence their full title), but information regarding this particular facet of political history seems a little hard to come by, or at least it has been for me.

Does anyone have any reliable resources I could access?

Thanks.
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wikipedia.org , search there they got good stuff on alot of things .

p.s hitler legalised abortion in germany in the 1930's if thats a hint of what the nazis really were .

[Bluemoon_Rising]

My apologies for the placement of this thread. I'm not really sure where it belongs.

Anyway, I've been doing some study on the use of "nazis" as a kind of forumic nuclear weapon by left-leaning webizens, and I'm wondering if anyone could give me a hand.

I've always been of the opinion that the Nazis were rather more socialistically-inclined then otherwise (hence their full title), but information regarding this particular facet of political history seems a little hard to come by, or at least it has been for me.

Does anyone have any reliable resources I could access?

Thanks.
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The nazis were socialists, and placing fascism on the right side of the political spectrum, as if it were the extreme of American conservativism, is the work of "liberal" journalists, academics and politicians of the Marxist persuasion. In reality, Marxist socialists and fascist socialists are the kissing cousins of the extreme left.

[Portishead]

Does anyone have any reliable resources I could access?:blush:
According to the Political Compass (http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/analysis2.php):
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/images/axeswithnames.gif

In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarianism is necessarily "right wing", with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today's Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground.

They werent called National Socialists for nothing.

[DesertFox]

Look here (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?p=306645#post306645)

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Portishead: The only problem with your graph -- and it is a serious problem -- is that it places Thatcher way too high. She belongs lower down, at about the same distance above the "Collectivism-Libertarianism" bar as Friedman is below it, as Thatcher is essentially a proponent of the sort of free market economy envisaged by Victorian liberalism. In fact, it is only because she was the prime minister of a socialist democracy that some might reasonably perceive her to be any less a classical conservative-libertarian as Friedrich von Hayek, her ideological hero. And though she is not a libertarian purist, she is an admirer of Friedman's works and a hardy apologist of many of his ideas.

[Crusader]

Thanks guys. That'll make a nice start.:tank:

[Republican_Legion]

Portishead: The only problem with your graph -- and it is a serious problem -- is that it places Thatcher way too high. She belongs lower down, at about the same distance above the "Collectivism-Libertarianism" bar as Friedman is below it, as Thatcher is essentially a proponent of the sort of free market economy envisaged by Victorian liberalism. In fact, it is only because she was the prime minister of a socialist democracy that some might reasonably perceive her to be any less a classical conservative-libertarian as Friedrich von Hayek, her ideological hero. And though she is not a libertarian purist, she is an admirer of Friedman's works and a hardy apologist of many of his ideas.

also hitler is actualy more to the left on the economic scale , more so then mussolinnis fascists . hitler belongs on the left wing scale . and stalin belongs higher on the authoritarian scale . and gandhi belongs a little more to the middle on the authoritarian scale , he was hardcore anti-abortion .

[ConservativeYouthMovement]

My problem with the compass is it doesnt even measure how authoritarian you are with its questions. I scored like 1 or 2 blocks from the right edge of the compass but somehow got in the middle for authoritarian, I think its because of the answers for international apply to that and IMO you are not an authoritarian for defending your own nation. In other words, it was made be liberals.

[DesertFox]

Read my analysis at the link above. You can figure this out for yourself using it.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

also hitler is actualy more to the left on the economic scale , more so then mussolinnis fascists . hitler belongs on the left wing scale . and stalin belongs higher on the authoritarian scale . and gandhi belongs a little more to the middle on the authoritarian scale , he was hardcore anti-abortion .

Agree.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Bluemoon's political compass: Economic Left/Right: 6.13; Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.77.

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/questionnaire.php (scroll down)

It places me just one notch above the right-to-left bar, around the center of the right side.

Half the questions forced me to commit to ideas with which I neither necessarily agree or disagree. Also, the thing is rigged to accord an authoritarian attitude to positions that are in fact necessary for the stability of genuine liberty. This is merely a leftist bias, tied to a libertine attitude, a pagan value system that fails to account for the fact that the societies that generally adopt pagan values also tend to be less free (European societies) than those that don’t (America), and totalitarian/authoritarian states are the most deeply mired of all societies in pagan-like mythologies, demonstrating the very least respect for human life and dignity. If this compass took into account the actual socio-political effects that certain attitudes about human sexuality and reproduction have on societies -- and the freedom-loving reasons for prohibiting the state to officially bless them -- I would come in somewhere below the right-to-left bar on the right side of the graph.

Don't misunderstand me. I strongly agreed that the regulation of most pornographic material is detrimental to liberty, that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is none of the government's business in so far as no one‘s rights are violated. What I reject is the notion that liberty is enhanced when the government officially recognizes unnatural sexual unions or permits the unnecessary termination of human life in the womb. The latter are the stuff of civil rights imposed by the state against nature and inevitably at the expense of fundamental human liberties. Make no mistake about it.

[Republican_Legion]

i just did mine on that site: Economic Left/Right: 5.25
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 5.28

an easier URL for that site is political compass (http://politicalcompass.org/)

[markus3622]

p.s hitler legalised abortion in germany in the 1930's if thats a hint of what the nazis really were .

And Stalin made it illegal. Was Stalin a conservative then?

Of course not, it's always seemed a silly argument to look at individual policies, take them out of context and then try and say that someone was a liberal or conservative based on a little snippet.

I think most historians place Hitler on the extreme right because of his militaristic nationalism, his romanticism, his belief in traditional values and natural hierarchies and his hatred of socialists, communists, liberals, homosexuals and of course, jews

[PaulRevere]

Hitler hated communists more than the others. This was because their ideology included a preposterous world soviet that in fact meant subservience to the Russians. More, though, is that the Nazis competed with the communists for support from the far left totalitarian extremists.

Also, anyone who thinks that communists actually like homosexuals and Jews is naive.

What Hitler knew that the communists did not, however, is that communism is a bankrupt ideology that will lose support as soon as the masses discover that they support an oppressive totalitarian regime. Hitler harnessed nationalism to channel the support of the masses towards him. Even Stalin had to give up appealing to ideology and adopt nationalism as the rallying point from which Russians fought the Germans.

PS: read "The Road to Serfdom" by Van Hayek for details on how fascism is a collectivist (leftist) ideology.

[markus3622]

Stalin was certainly anti-semitic, and yes, very nationalistic. I agree there.

I think what comes out is that both communism and fascism are authoritarian ideologies, and that's far more important than where they lie on the left-right axis. It always seems a little petty for people to compare liberals or conservatives to any despised historical group. That was my point. Modern liberals are about as far from fascism as it is imaginable to be, and that they both support some government influence over the economy doesn't make them bedfellows.

I've always felt that the economic side of the political compass is a little defunct. To take an example, depending on the historical context, people described as "conservatives" have typically been anti-free-market, pro-free-market, then anti-free-market and currently pro-free-market. What's more important is the underlying values.

I really do need to read "Road to Serfdom" some time - thanks for the recommendation.

[PaulRevere]

Another indicator that liberals are closer to socialists of all flavors including fascism:

Liberals are ambivalent at best but more often hostile towards Christianity. Hitler and Stalin both suppressed or at least subordinated Christianity to their leftist ideologies. This is straight out of Marx.

[Pennville_Bill]

The Political Spectrum (http://pages.prodigy.net/krtq73aa/spectrum.htm)

[ConservativeYouthMovement]

Nationalism has nothing to do with right or left wing politics. Both factions have nationalism if they desire to survive and only the liberals in recent times in western countries have believed in not having nationalism. Hitler was a socialist who wanted control of everything, and whether there were strict economic control or not he still believed in big government which made him a lefty, reguardless of his nationalistic views which have nothing to do with economics and more to do with survival of a nation.

pennyvilles right left scale is accurate but I dont see why you would put such heavy emphasis on religion. Its not a matter of religion its a matter of how the government treats its citizens. A theocracy can be just as far left as any other government. (Iran)

[markus3622]

Iranian government, left wing??????

I'm not sure I understand that one

[DesertFox]

Excellent point about nationalism, CYM.

Anent religion: It matters because only religion imbues morality. Morality can be a scary thing, as when the mullahs use it to promote their skewed version of reality; but without morality there is no concept of human rights endowed by God, no sense of humility that restrains man's will to power, no notion of treating each individual person as sacred.

Morality is the only thing that addresses human spirituality. Neglected, the spirit withers and evil dominates it.

Individual atheists may or may not be decent human beings, but it's more likely they'll be vicious, small-minded punks on the order of Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Ceaucescu, Pol Pot, Walter Ulbricht, the Kims, etc. It's no accident that all these thugs' murderous regimes were atheistic, with no spiritual component and no morality.

[Federal Farmer]

Hitler used bankers, industrialists, and military leaders to gain power. It can be debated how "conservative" these were given that they were willing to use Hitler to advance their causes. Regardless, Hitler only saw them as a means to his own end. When Hitler was through with them, they were to be strung up along with his political enemies. Under Hitler the State took control of the economy, and the police state was bolstered, following the Stalin model of using terror to control.

Because Hitler used so-called "conservatives" says nothing about what Hitler's Nazi Germany really was: a totalitarian police state. The appearance Hitler had of being "conservative" was a sham, perpetrated to gain power. As Hannah Arendt wrote, "Only if Germany had won the war would she have known a fully developed totalitarian rulership, and the sacrifices this would have entailed not only for the "inferior races" but for the Germans themselves can be gleaned and evaluated from the legacy of Hitler's plans. In any event it was only during the war, after the conquests in the East furnished large masses of people and made the extermination camps possible, that Germany was able to establish a truly totalitarian rule."

Raymond Aron wrote, "In its identification of the Party with the State, in its Gleichschaltung of independent bodies, in its transformation of a minority doctrine into a national orthodoxy, in the violence of its methods and the unlimited power of the police, the Hitlerite regime surely has more in common with Bolshevik Russia than with the daydreams of the counter-revolutionaries."

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Nationalism has nothing to do with right or left wing politics. Both factions have nationalism if they desire to survive and only the liberals in recent times in western countries have believed in not having nationalism. Hitler was a socialist who wanted control of everything, and whether there were strict economic control or not he still believed in big government which made him a lefty, reguardless of his nationalistic views which have nothing to do with economics and more to do with survival of a nation.

pennyvilles right left scale is accurate but I dont see why you would put such heavy emphasis on religion. Its not a matter of religion its a matter of how the government treats its citizens. A theocracy can be just as far left as any other government. (Iran)

Good observations about nationalism, Movement. However, Christianity, for example, does not lend itself to theocratic oppression. It must be grossly distorted in order to accommodate tyranny and, therefore, twisted into something it's not. And you can mark the nature of any state -- know without looking the extent of the freedoms it affords its citizens -- by its attitude toward Christianity and its principles. Islam, on the other hand, readily lends itself to authoritarianism, as it denies the actuality of human free will and demands universal approbation. Hence, pennyville's emphasis on religion.

[Bob_Arctor]

I took the test.

Economic left/right was -5.50
social was -6.41

I was at basically the same spot on the grid as Gandhi! Hehe...

Many of the questions were hard to answer, I found - they were too 'blanket' on way or the other. 'Punishment is always better than rehabilitation', 'corporations can never be trusted not to harm the environment' etc, all have too many exceptions. Often I erred on the side of anarcho-communism, it seems!

[Bluemoon_Rising]

I took the test.

Economic left/right was -5.50
social was -6.41

I was at basically the same spot on the grid as Gandhi! Hehe...

Many of the questions were hard to answer, I found - they were too 'blanket' on way or the other. 'Punishment is always better than rehabilitation', 'corporations can never be trusted not to harm the environment' etc, all have too many exceptions. Often I erred on the side of anarcho-communism, it seems!

Just so, Bob. Most of the questions are too broad, forcing you to err on one side or the other when neither is satisfactory. Gandhi, eh? I hope your physic is not as unsightly as his. :grin:

[Bob_Arctor]

Just so, Bob. Most of the questions are too broad, forcing you to err on one side or the other when neither is satisfactory. Gandhi, eh? I hope your physic is not as unsightly as his. :grin:
It would have been nice had they offered a scale of 1 through five rather than just the yes or no - I would have gone with the extremes a few times, but not all the times. I'm sure that would have brought me back from the brink of anarcho-communism!

Perhaps I can match Gandhi's mighty appearance in about 50 years....:grin:

[DesertFox]

(I thought ribs-showing-scrawny and pig-dirty was "in")

[Warlady]

Fox I just posted to your other thread. Excellent. Stellar. Outstanding.

[Lazarus]

The Left today like to portray the Nazis as being the total opposite of the Left-wing, but nothing could be farther from the truth... In truth the Nazis were just slight modification of the same tyranny as Marxism and actually come rather close to Stalinist Marxism... In WW2 Hitler and Stalin were, for the most part, two sides of the same coin... Or rather I should say, rival yet identical gangs...

The Left today falsely portray the Nazis as far right because 1) they are dangerously close in practice and doctrine to the true Left, and 2) the Nazis are universally aclaimed as "the bad guys"... As with all Leftist propoganda they utilize the fact that the Nazis were in opposition to the Soviets in WW2, but that does not necessarily automatically put them on the opposite end of doctrinal spectrum any more than Al Capone was the opposite of O'bannon... Just two identical gangs fighting over the same turf...

Remove the uniforms and the labels and you'll see the same ends and the same means from both camps...

[Naturalized-Texan]

Iranian government, left wing??????

I'm not sure I understand that one
Simply stated, the further left, the greater the government control over the people; the further right, the less the government control over the people. The Iranian government is a dictatorship, i.e., it has complete control over the Iranian people. Consequently, the Iranian government is on the far left along with Nazis and Communists.

Modern liberals, socialists, and fascists are all on the left because they all believe in greater government control over the people. Conversely, classical liberals (e.g., the Framers of the American Constitution), conservatives, and libertarians are on the right because they (we) all believe in much less gvernment control over the people.

[Lazarus]

To put it simply, The Iranians and the Communists are both Tyrants, only driven by different religions...

[DesertFox]

I disagree with N-T. In my schema, Iran's govt is a right wing totalitarian govt.

[Naturalized-Texan]

I disagree with N-T. In my schema, Iran's govt is a right wing totalitarian govt.
It's impossible for right wingers to be totalitarian.

[DesertFox]

Not at all. The mullahs are very much totalitarian.

N-T, I think your Right-Left scheme is too simplistic. It doesn't allow for "conservatism" on both extremes, and it needs to. Neither does it differentiate between totalitarian theocracies and totalitarian atheistic states such as fascism and Communism. Neither does it have a natural middle position for what our Founders came up with. My scheme, to the thread (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?p=306645#post306645) of which you contributed but which you apparently don't agree with, does all these.

[Republican_Legion]

right wing is basicly a free market position , social authoritarian is neither left or right . the right wing is liberal on the economy (liberty of the market) , the left wing is authoritarian on the economy (state controled economy) . the up and down on the political compass is the social authoritarian scale . Iran is Left wing on the scale and all the way up on the social authoritarian scale .

[Naturalized-Texan]

Not at all. The mullahs are very much totalitarian.
Absolutely! They are clearly left-wingers and totalitarians.

N-T, I think your Right-Left scheme is too simplistic. It doesn't allow for "conservatism" on both extremes, and it needs to. Neither does it differentiate between totalitarian theocracies and totalitarian atheistic states such as fascism and Communism. Neither does it have a natural middle position for what our Founders came up with. My scheme, to the thread (http://www.freeconservatives.com/vb/showthread.php?p=306645#post306645) of which you contributed but which you apparently don't agree with, does all these.
Conservatives are for freedom. Freedom is completely incompatible with totalitarianism. Consequently, there is no way that there can be a conservative position on totalitarianism.

BTW, you praised my post in that thread where I quoted from LEFTISM: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn where he supports my position.

About 40 years ago, I attended a political seminar where the speaker presented the most logical description of the political spectrum I have seen (I know. I know. Liberals aren't logical, but no matter.):

Picture the political spectrum as a road running from left to right. The further to the right one travels on that road, the less the government controls over people's lives. The further to the left one travels on that road, the greater the government controls over people's lives.

As we travel along the road from the center to the right, towards less government controls, we first reach the Republican Party. Next we find the conservatives. Then we find the libertarians and finally, at the right edge of the political spectrum, the anarchists.

As we travel from the center to the left, towards greater government controls, we first reach the Democrat Party. Next we find the liberals. Traveling on, we find the fascists, and then the Socialists. As we reach the far-left edge of the political spectrum, we find the National Socialists (the Nazis) and lastly, the Communists.

[DesertFox]

Well, I don't buy that. It's just too simplistic. Lumping in atheists with fierce believers makes no sense; their animating premises are polar opposites of each other. And within a far Left or far Right camp you have conservatives of that persuasion against those more disposed to depart from the original line.

The item you contributed to the other thread was helpful in other ways than you apparently intended. I can't agree with a too-simplistic scheme that just has too few options for describing the plethora of political forms. We certainly agree that Nazism is on the Left.

It's not a biggie. It would be unheard-of if we agreed on everything. :D

[Bluemoon_Rising]

I think any schema that places the numerous and complex political forms along a spectrum that establishes Anglo-American classical liberalism as the ideal center can be logically supported. My reading of Fox's logic is that it integrates an appreciation for the theological and political aspects of the human experience that may be ideologically combined to create this or that sort of regime.

I myself have argued that the political egalitarianism and collectivism of the Continental European political Enlightenment constitute the left wing of classical liberalism, while the traditional concerns of the Anglo-American Enlightenment constitute the right wing. The foundational proposition of the former is secular. The foundational proposition of the latter is sacred. But what joins them is their shared loathing for absolute monarchy and state established religions. I still believe Anglo-American liberalism to be the ideal center relative to the entire gamut of political forms, but relative to the historical roots of liberalism, it makes sense to identify democratic collectivism and democratic capitalism as the most satisfactory of the opposing ideals near the left and right center of the spectrum in terms of their respective attitude and treatment of certain theological claims against the powers of the state.

Fox has convinced me. Hence, while I would still place Saddam's socialist regime -- essentially a secular despotism like Nazi Germany -- on the left side of the political spectrum, Iran's socialist theocracy belongs on the right side. Islam denies the actuality of an independent human will, and, therefore, there is to be no separation between “church” and state. There is but one will and one seamless authority, but that authority, at least in theory, is said to be the will of God, based on an objectively scrutable and universally accessible doctrine. On the other hand, personality-cult states are essentially atheistic regardless of what the personal religious views of the totalitarian head may be, as the only will of the people that matters -- subjective and capricious -- is his.

Fox’s schema resolves certain complexities and allows for a satisfactory way of thinking about the differences between the various political forms that are mildly to aggressively secular or theocratic: the difference between democratic collectivism and democratic capitalism; between totalitarianism and authoritarianism, the atheistic and theocratic extremes.

Yes, Fox’s schema places socialist states to the right of democratic capitalism, but it does so with the understanding that some socialist states are also based on theological propositions -- whether they be right or wrong -- as is the ideal Anglo-American Republic, which circumscribes certain limitations on majority rule, providing for the preservation of individual liberty and the protection of private property.

[DesertFox]

Moon puts his finger on it with "secular versus sacred." That's the primary agon of my schema, the extremes of the secular and the sacred. As I note in the Flame Wars Hitler thread, it allows "left-right" or "conservative-whatever" on both extremes, too, so you can have "conservative mullahs" and "moderate mullahs" and the like, and still make sense.

A whole 'nother reason I went to this way of thinking -- the main reason, in fact -- is that the problem of the world, from the beginning, has never been materialistic. It's been spiritual. That's why Christ came. He didn't come to show us how to plant corn, or how to save money, or how to set up a capitalist economy. He came to work on the more fundamental problem of the human spirit.

If we don't factor that in when we think of political systems, we're missing the main point and swatting at mosquitoes.

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Moon puts his finger on it with "secular versus sacred." That's the primary agon of my schema, the extremes of the secular and the sacred.

Perhaps so, but it's Fox who awakened Moon and put his finger on to it. Excellent job, Fox!

[Republican_Legion]

there is 2 types of freedom in most political scales : economic freedom and social freedom . democrats and liberaltarians are both for social freedom(abortion on demand) . republicans and constitutionists are both for a religious influenced goverment (NO abortions) . the name libertarian is interesting cause they are for both libertys economic and social so that makes them Right wing Liberals . while republicans are Right wing Conservatives and democrats are Leftwing Liberals . take the pope for example who is a Left wing Conservative who believes in Religous values but is a socialist nut . my theory is Liberals can be either Right or left , and conservatives can be left or right . conservatives can be authoritarian .

saying conservatives can't be authoritarian is implying that only libertarians are conservative . the framers of the constitution would be in the middle on the authoritarian scale (strong morals and bible influence) and far right on the economic scale . Libertarians are probally the closest to being anarchists because they want 100% social freedom and economic freedom which pretty much means there is no goverment at all .