Honestly, I think fascism can manifest from both leftist and right wing points of view. Like a lot of fascists organizations started as workers organizations who gathered together for better working conditions, compensation, and security, and down the line were convinced that racial minorities, jews, and immigrants were the cause of their problems.
A lot of the formally left wing people turned fascist I’ve known started from the point of view of capitalism, globalization, and wealth inequality being the causes of their problems, and overtime were convinced that this meant immigrants, erasure of their culture (white/American/Christian) and evil cabals of jews/queer people/atheists/satanists/etc.
Basically if you rally behind strongmen, aim for religious/cultural/racial dominion, and aim for the elimination of a certain group of people as a means of achieving your goals, you might be a fascists, and the path towards that can start from anywhere.
edit: yeah, I think going to delete this post soon. Many people seem to have taken this post as an opportunity to point the finger and rip at each other, as well as construe any negative action as “fascism” when the whole point of my post was to be introspective. Seems like a lot of people simply read the first sentence and decided to go to town instead.
Fascism absolutely is both left and right. Fascism is defined as “extremely authoritarian, intolerant, or oppressive ideas or behaviour”.
Let’s have a look at the current “left”. Pro-censorship of any and all opinions that they don’t agree with. Trying to make laws that outlaw things they disagree with. Encouraging riots and harassment and violence against people they disagree with. Blame white people for all the problems in the world.
I’m not sure where you got your definition of fascism, but I think the more formal definitions of it would say otherwise. But! Your definition, I think, is more in-line with how we use that word in the modern times. So, I’ll stick with it.
I think the left side fascism is lot harder to spot whereas the right side fascism is very obvious.
The extreme rights literally go around waving the nazi flag. They’re obvious fascists.
The extreme left has a different approach to fascism. They’re like, “Oh what you say is offensive, and it’s not nice. You need to be nicer and say these things. You’re hurting people’s feelings.” But by doing that, they’re effectively taking away speech and enforcing their world views on others. They’re just as intolerant of opposing views and will happily snuff them out. The cancel culture that has become the main weapon of the extreme left is most certainly fascism.
I also don’t believe extreme left are for being actually nice, they only want to push their specific agendas in a fascistic manner since they happily ignore other marginalized population and will even make fun of them. They are not nice people. For example a straight white man (which I am not) could be struggling to live for any reason. Could be illness, could be abused, anything really. But just because he is in the category of the straight white man, they’ll just insult him and how he deserves what happened to him, all the while ignoring everything else about him. He isn’t the oppressor, he isn’t the one who did wrong. Does it matter? No. That’s prejudice. And no one will defend those people, because if you do, you’re also not a nice person and must be cancelled. Guess which group does defend them? The extreme right. I wonder which side he’ll pick then.
Yeah, I definitely felt the same. As a bona fide straight white male, I felt pushed to the right by the left, despite also being against prejudice, being pro-lgbt, supportive of minorities, and for preserving culture (that last one is actually very anti-left if you consider history). But I have learned that the things we hear are almost exclusively the extremists on one side opposing the extremists on the other side, and both feed each other. Everyone seems to forget there is a nice moderate just-left-of-centre position where people pay for healthcare with their taxes and aren’t royally fucked by corporations.
That meme that musk posted ages back where the left keep pushing further and further left, to the point where they claim that people that were moderate left and haven’t changed their position at all are now far right, is spot on.
A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
The emphasis on race and economic / social regimentation are the major break from the left.
That’s literally the whole American “MAGA” movement. They want Trump or someone like him as an absolute dictator and have no problem taking rights away from people.
Right. All the thousands of “god emperor” and “president for life” memes really make me confident in that…
Not to mention also the “helicopter ride” memes which were popular for a while. Face it. The right loves strongman populist authoritarians just as much as the tankies do.
Can anyone explain how fascism as defined above could apply to the right extreme? Apart from the Nazis? Its really descriptive of the far left. Although oppressing non-cis/het relations is stereotypically right
EDIT: kind of important, fascism was auto-corrected to racism, corrected now
@luthis@Whirlybird, Racism, xeno- and homophobia have nothing to do with political orientation, but with personal aversions, fears and problems. They tend to be people, either indoctrinated by religion or looking for a strong leader because they lack their own ideas or initiatives. For this reason they are aligned in their vast majority with the fascist ideology and to a very lesser extent in the leftist sphere.
@Whirlybird@Roundcat, Fascism is not a political system, but a system of oppression, in which a minority or a single person decides the rules for the rest, it doesn’t matter if it is called dictatorship, democracy or communism, which in these circumstances is always a mere label. In real communism and real democracy, it is always the vast majority that dictates the rules, not the other way around. This is why capitalism always favors fascism, it is money that dictates the rules, not people.
Fascism is Capitalism’s self defense mechanism during intense crisis. It does appropriate “left” sounding phraseology, but under fascism the labor movement, and all other independent class movements, are completely subordinated under a singular national interest. All independent movements which refuse to subordinate are crushed. The labor organizations which turn fascist are the ones succumb, or are forced to subordinate, to class collaboration. That is why any genuine socialist movement must be inherently internationalist and anti- class collaboration and must never give up these principles at any cost.
Because people who can’t make their own discussions need an authority to follow. In the US, they turn to fox news, AM radio, or manosphere podcasts. Most of them have serious daddy issues.
In the US, they turn to fox news, AM radio, or manosphere podcasts.
In the US, the “opposite” side turns to CNN/BBC, toxic feminist Instagrammers and virtue signalling YouTubers. I cannot agree with that either.
There is a lot of adulteration in “leftism”, just as there are some correct things about “rightism”. I am no centrist, but I would rather take one step back from leftism, and be 10 steps away from rightism, than swing fully in any direction. I think contextual rationale, and not necessary a “centrist” 50-50 both sides bullshit, is the correct path to take. Forging your own path as a mindhacker with no like minded company is the hardest thing.
What do you really want to say? You’re trying very hard to say both sides are wrong without being labeled as a centrist.
“Toxic left wing” pundits haven’t gotten their followers to storm the capital building or fly a plane into an irs biulding. If you’re really mad someone has opinions on video games, install a 3rd party channel blocker for firefox. The things the toxic femists/pick-me types are up to pale in comparison to the manosphere are up to.
I cannot agree to just treating and branding men’s spaces like that. Manosphere may be doing a bad job, but its not all redpillers and Tateists. I hate this attack on and absolutist “shit on men constantly” trope in society. Its almost like the very thing feminists become they swear to destroy. Society and life is more complex than “shit on men and worship women”.
When feminists say “all men bad” “kill all men” “men are dogs” “men are b***hes” “masculinity is fragile” and so on, the ignorance of men being oppressed throughout history is really telling, and the same strong “fragile” men have built this world. Putting the bourgeois royalties’ doings on “men” exclusively is incredibly fascistic of feminists, and is the reason why I have taken one step back from leftism, while maintaining 10 steps distance from rightism.
If you want to know how leftist I am, I have been a 1 year long dedicated member of Lemmygrad.
Manosphere is a very specific thing. They’re the Andrew Tate types. If it’s a legitimate form of mental health or self care thing, it isn’t Manosphere. Hell, if it’s mental health, it’s rarely branded as male orientated because it’s genderless advice.
You’re creating this weird narrative in your head. The feminists you have a problem with are a minority who are only visible because they’re gaming the algorithm. They have no effect on your daily life.
Most feminists and women brand men’s safe spaces as redpill, right wing, part of manosphere, horrible and so on. They absolutely have an effect on me, the way random transphobes have an effect on the existence of transgender people. Men are not treated like equal humans with compassion, just because 0.1% rich ultracapitalists or harassers or rapists have subjugated women in society. There is no desire for equity or equality, but gender superiority. Plenty women who distance themselves from feminist movement agree with this today.
Manosphere is a very vague term in itself, even though it started as simply redpillers and Tateists. Wikipedia defines it as a “collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.[1] Communities within the manosphere include men’s rights activists,[2] incels (involuntary celibates),[3] Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),[4] pick-up artists (PUA),[5] and fathers’ rights groups.[6]”
Its true that manosphere has misogyny, and that it has issues, but it provides an alternate point of view and is NOT all Tateists, even if there does exist misogyny, the same way misandry and vitriolic hatred for men exists in female safe spaces, which are abundant today. The world is not all black and white, and just as men treat women like a pair of breasts and a vagina, women treat men with the well known small dick hand gesture and other verbal slangs for degradingly equating us with penis. Women are more compassionate than men, and they have chosen to keep it all to themselves with their sisterhood. Men have no brotherhood today.
Every feminist I have met, no matter radical, communist or liberal, has always degraded and blamed all men, and downplayed issues with women while screaming “all men _____” the moment anything happens. And literally anything you say against this makes you a redpiller, woman hater, incel or any of the buzzwords they decide to cancel you with. I have a lot of grievances with it, and it affects all men, which includes me, so I will find solace in places that support men instead of supporting agendas aimed to hate men. Men have unheard grievances, and if feminists think they will win the battle against half the planet, their movement deserves to crash and doom. Feminism by the day is behaving less like a leftist movement for equality for both sexes, and more like a woman supremacist movement with right wing shades.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
Thats not the point, youre twisting the order. Every nazi is right-wing, by definition. Not every right-winger is a nazi and thats not what people are saying. A big part of nazi ideology is overlapping with general right-wing ideologies, they are separate but not unrelated at all.
You don’t understand. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t care about it. Do you care if the North Korean dictator is left-wing? No? Good, you shouldn’t. The same way you shouldn’t care if Nazis were right-wing.
I’d argue that you should very much care about the political alignment of extremist leaders, because it show you where an ideology can ultimately lead to if left unchecked. As the poster above said, it doesn’t mean that all right-wing people are nazis, but knowing the nazis were right-wing shows you where a right-wing government can end up if the wrong set of conditions happen to come along. This is important information, as you can spot the warning signs as they appear and (hopefully) nip it in the bud before it gets to that point.
You could literally replace all this with “left wing” and use “communism” incorrectly instead of fascism (which isn’t just dictatorship, it was also a set of economic and societal philosophies invented by the fascisti of Italy) because at the end of the day, both sides of the political aisle have the same tendency to go extremist authoritarian when allowed.
There has been no non-authoritarian state of existence of humans inside any civilisation. None. Liberals/centrists playing this bullshit trope of feudalism or anarchism or some dreamy impossible organisation of society with literally zero hierarchy, is impossible. Direct democracy works at best on a scale of a small village. If we go by Dunbar’s number, no bigger than a group of 148 people can have direct relations.
They are behaving like Nazis regardless of if the Nazis were right-wing or left-wing. Nazi behavior can happen in the left or the right. As I already said, discrimination, murder, superiority complex, racism and exploration has also happened in left-wing systems.
Of course bad things happen at the extremes of both sides, but I’m going to have to object to “regardless of if the Nazis were right-wing or left-wing.” I don’t think there’s really room to equivocate on that - nazism is right-wing.
It is. Just like fascism, these are terms associated with the right-wing. But that’s not my point… My point is that whatever affiliation the right or left had in the past does not necessarily represent the current affiliations. The fact that the US right-wing is turning to white supremacy is unrelated to Nazis being right wing. That is just a reflection of their systemic racism.
What I’m saying is that it is irrelevant if Republicans are trying to associate the left with Nazis, because even if such association existed, it is not a valid argument to say that the left today is ruled by Nazis, or that the right can’t behave like Nazis. That’s just a fallacy, the same fallacy that they use to point out that voting left will turn us into North Korea or an authoritarian left-wing dictatorship.
I can’t believe people aren’t getting this. It’s like they don’t understand I’m actually pro-left with this argument, somehow they think I’m protecting Nazis and Republicans because I’m not shouting “REPUBLICANS BAD!”
Going back and pointing out how Nazis were right-wing is something that will bite the left in the ass because there are plenty of examples of the left turning into shit too. So instead of comparing with past examples, just analyze their current positions. Is the right currently behaving like Nazis? Yes. Do you need WWII Nazis to be right wing for this to be a fact? No. So even if they convince people that Nazis were left wing, how does that disprove that RIGHT NOW they are the racists and white supremacists?
Do you care if the North Korean dictator is left-wing?
Kim Jong-Un is right wing. So were Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sung, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Xi, and Che Guevara. In fact, they were all moderate Republicans whose ideas are 100% in line with the current Republican Party platform. There’s no daylight at all between any of them and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Before you respond, remember that you don’t care what their politics are because it doesn’t matter.
Dafuq, North Korea is left wing. OK, so was the Soviet Union also right wing when they marginalized minorities through Russification?
“if it is bad, it is right-wing”.
And yes, my whole point is that the fact North Korea has a left-wing dictatorship doesn’t mean that all left-wing parties will become dictatorships. You finally got my point, damn, it took you so long.
North Korea is 100% a right wing country, right wing policies and a dictator. You can’t argue with that fact.
Stalin claimed his government was left wing and Marx based but it was revealed that he was right leaning, a dictator and instilled right wing policies.
Ah ok, as I said, “everything that is left wing is good and paradise. Everything right wing is pure evil”.
In a left-wing state the state always holds the power… So once that state becomes corrupted and uses that power to keep all workers equally poor, then it is suddenly right wing? Show me what were the capitalist principles in the Soviet Union? Was there a free market, private incentive, private property, competition, minimal state intervention, entrepreneurship, individual rights and freedoms? NOOO THERE WEREN’T. It wasn’t a right-wing state.
You guys are insane. Lemmy became an echo chamber for your delusions. It’s really sad to see people this radicalized.
A dictator is a dictator, who the fuck cares if they are right or left wing? A racist is a racist. A murderer is a murderer. They can be found in any side of the political spectrum, but you’re too biased to believe the left can be corrupted… You are too blinded by what is right and what is left and are totally unable to see there can be combinations of ideologies.
You say dictators are right wing because they don’t follow some left-wing principles? Then I could argue that all dictators are left-wing because by definition the right strives to minimize government controls, and a dictatorship is authoritarian, which goes against right-wing policies… But I’m done arguing. This is my last Lemmy comment. You are so blinded by the left vs right argument you can’t see beyond that. This degree of fanatism can’t be healthy, I don’t want to become radicalized like you people. This self imposed blindness is sad and pathetic. Good bye.
I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse. You’re right in that by itself trying to define the nazi party of the past in terms of present day left/right ideology is reductivist, and unproductive in discourse. But you’re ignoring two important facts in the present day right/left dynamic. First that literal modern day nazis have shown a distinct preference for right wing ideaology. Second is that fascism as an ideology is a chameleon that latches onto present day conflict to unite people through oppression of a weak other, which is the basis for present day right wing policy. As such the comparison becomes apt because the fascists of the past are a model for the fascists of the present.
OK, by that same logic the left-wing dictators and collapsed systems of the past are a model for the present. So is the right justified to push fear with those past examples to show how bad the left is?
Do you see that’s just the same flawed logic they use to scare people away from the left?
The caveat is that being a “racist mass murderer with a superiority complex” is a very right-wing thing. It wouldn’t be possible to fit that mold and be leftist because it’s entirely incompatible with leftist ideology.
Hilarious how people who know exactly one “racist mass murderer with a superiority complex” assume that it is a right-wing thing. Try humanities most famous left-winger ever.
Im not saying that nazis and right-wing are unrelated, but you picked exactly those characteristics in Hitler that actually arent related to political views at all.
It’s not uncommon for fascists to adopt socialist rhetoric to try and gain mass appeal. However that falls away under the lightest scrutiny of their actions and ideology. “National Socialism” is the most obvious example. I’d include Pol Pot in that bucket as well.
The USSR under Stalin and PRC under Mao are a bit different. The government in either case made decisions that led to unnecessary death, but there’s no evidence to suggest any of their missteps were motivated by racial animus.
So you’re saying that racism and mass murder did not exist under communist China?
What about Russification in the Soviet Union? Minorities were marginalized.
Why would it be a problem if the Nazis were actually left-wing? You’re not realizing you’re actually a victim of a fallacy. And even more concerning, you’re trying to use the same fallacy to attack back. It’s just flawed logic all over the place.
As I understand it the keystone between left and right is that:
The left belief is that all people are created equal and should have equal authority to point out wrong doing.
The right belief is that people should be in a hierarchy with people at the top exerting control downward.
I think they are actually just saying if you really believe everyone is equal you can’t pick a group to target for mass murder. But if you are at the top of a pyramid tge people below you naturally look expendable.
Correct, and my point was that they can’t. If you view everyone as equal you can’t make yourself a dictator. You can lie to yourself about your value, most people do for better or worse. But if everyone is equal you can’t decide to boost one group over another. Or if you do decide that is better and you deserve to be in charge, then your views have shifted right. That is my understanding of left vs right in it’s most basic form.
I said it doesn’t matter if the Nazis were right wing or left wing, what matters is that they were criminals. Then that person said that mass murder and racism is only aligned with the right, so I showed him/her that that is wrong, murder and racism can also happen on the left.
The point being that just because in the past there were rotten apples in the left/right, it doesn’t mean that being in the left/right makes you a rotten apple.
Let me clarify. To be crystal clear, we’re talking about “left” and right on the political compass. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the most well known one. Overall, “left” and “right” are bizarre terminologies with aqueous meanings deeply embedded in history.
You are technically correct if you are talking about the political compass. we call “authoritarian left” “Stalinism” and we call “libertarian right” “anarcho-capitalism” or just “libertarianism” in the US.
The problem is that all philosophy founding “leftist ideology” has consistently been “libertarian left”, focusing on collapsing hierarchies, dividing power into many hands, and dismantling power structures (such as currency). Anarchism is basically the prime example.
With Marx’s communism, his end game is a system without any government, where people simply exchange services and collaborate to create only what they want or need (not to endlessly proliferate waste for profit). Even his “dictatorship of the proletariat”, one of the stepping stones to communism, is a democratic system. It is called a “dictatorship” because it revokes the voting rights of the rich.
To boot, the ideologies which exist in the “authoritarian left” and “libertarian right” are full of contradictions and mental gymnastics. They all swear they’re communist but make no attempts to actually disseminate power, or gear towards a more democratic system, directly going against Marx’s ideals.
Because of this, pretty much every leftist agrees that the “authoritarian left” are not leftist, because they directly betray the philosophy which founds leftist beliefs.
SO to conclude, there is literally no world where someone can genuinely believe the various philosophies within leftism while at the same time starting a campaign alienating minorities, appealing to the general population with populism and returning the state to a former glory, and embarking on a Nazi take-over. This is why Nazism and leftism are completely incompatible, and why literally no Authoritarian can be considered a leftist.
Most Americans have no idea what socialism is. You’re not supposed to think about it here. They just hear that socialism is bad and it’s in the name of the nazi party which is also bad, so that tracks.
Most Americans think that “liberal” is someone on the left, while most European nations (as well as what little political theory I had) place them somewhere in the center, usually fiscally progressive but socially conservative.
Most Americans don’t know what capitalism is either. We’ve been so brainwashed into believing capitalism and simple commerce are the same thing that people think any system that isn’t capitalism is some authoritarian hellscape where the government forces you at gunpoint to share your toothbrush with everyone else in the neighborhood because personal property will be outlawed somehow.
Yeah, that’s literally their whole reasoning. I’ve had to deal with a number of those all the way back in 2014, “national sOcIaLiSm”
Of course, whenever I pointed to The Guardian’s interview with Hitler in 1923 (and republished in 1932), where he energetically complains about marxists (marxians, as he calls them) “stealing” the socialist term from “real germans” and actively calls for the end of bolshevism, I was completely ignored.
“Why,” I asked Hitler, “do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?”
“Socialism,” he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
Wait, but what did he even mean by “socialism” here? I get call what was happening in Russia not socialism, but what was the un-Marxist form of socialism Hitler was talking about? Also, wasn’t Marx also German, did Hitler see him as not a “real german”?
He didn’t mean anything at all. That was the brilliance of the Nazi propaganda machine. They stole words that referred to popular things and said them enough times in relation to themselves that they lost all meaning.
Its exactly the same as how the modern day right wing say anything that supports them is “patriotic” and anything that doesn’t is “anti-[country]”. If they say the word “patriotic” enough times, it loses all meaning & makes it impossible for opponents to argue against, because you can’t have a rational debate when language is meaningless.
That depends, in Germany, the federal republic part is fairly regularly used in news when talking about international affairs, basically using it so they don’t have to say Germany as often.
Maybe in English it is not used as often. In Germany it is used as just Bundesrepublik in News etc to don’t repeat oneself too much or in historic context to differentiate from the German Democratic Republic (where the naming is again ironic, but it’s the Democratic party)
The argument can at the very best be very loosely made about the early NAZI party before the Night of the Long Knives. There were some incredibly loose planks in the platform up to that point that could be described as progressive/socialist. Not that any of the leaders with the possible exception of Röhm actually believed it. It was just a tactic of throwing out anything that would garner support to the movement. In this case to bolster interest among poor workers that would have been more inclined to side with the parties on the left.
This. And of course one way to interpret “socialist” is the same way many fascist parties use “people’s” in their name now == “populist”
Some socialism can be populism, fascism can wrap itself in populism at the beginning, but there is no relationship between populism and socialism. Not unless you believe government, like corporations, should only serve wealthy shareholders and nothing that serves the people is both populist and socialist.
Case in point - look at the modern day US fascism distracting the plebes with juicy culture war while stealing from their plates and banks and dismantling the government.
When a small but dedicated group of vocal people started unironically and emphatically believing the planet was a pancake, I lost a significant portion of my lingering reserves of hope for the future of mankind.
Extremist politics and all the associated mindsets have long since jumped a row of sharks in my mind by comparison.
From my limited understanding, it mostly seems like misattribution of all the very obvious chaos and uncertainty about “grand” events like climate change, economical strife, etc.
It’s less that someone holds pancake planet as their sole belief but more a web of interconnected beliefs that would explain the true cause of these nebulous events if they were true.
Not that it makes the outcome any better that people choose a more palatable ideological narrative over reality but there is a part of me that recognizes ignorance would be more blissful.
As someone who is fairly into ideologies I can tell you, that national-socialism or nazism, which is a sub-ideology of fascism isn’t called that for no reason. If you look at it closely it does take a lot home from nationalism, but socialisim as well. These are right-wing (with some exceptions) and left-wing ideologies respectively and both can take extremes. This is why a lot of people in the sphere call the fusion of these two the “Third Way”, meaning it’s between the extreme left and extreme right and opposite to Centrism, which is between the calmer ends of the two sides. This means that nazis are neither right nor left-wing, at least as seen in european politics, in the exteremely polarized american political climate they (or at least their grossly dumbed-down interpretation) could be considered extremly right wing, but I think american politics are stupid anyway. And now to answer the question (pretending I didn’t just saw a question where there wasn’t any) anyone who calls nazis leftists just has a politcal bias against them and tries to make them appear even worse by blending them with those goddamn liberals. Okay but seriously, people really shouldn’t dumb down “old enemies” because that just means that they didn’t learn anything.
You’re “fairly into ideologies”, but you’re not well versed on political literacy. It seems like you got your idea of where Nazism sits on the political spectrum from the PoliticalCompassMemes subreddit (where “nAzIS ARe aUtHCENter” is the most commonly promoted talking point).
First and foremost, “third way” isn’t even the correct term to use here. You’re most likely referring to the term “third position”, which is an honest mistake in terminology, but that term refers to a different thing than third way entirely.
“Third way” refers to the more social liberal side of centrism. “Third position” is in reference to fascist tendencies to reject the binary notion of either standard socialist economics and/or laissez-faire free market capitalist economics. This comes with an important caveat: rejection of “typical socialism” and “typical capitalism” doesn’t mean you’re neither left-wing or right-wing, as we don’t really, in terminology, use your stance on socialism and capitalism as an inherent way of noting whether you’re left-wing or right-wing.
Some people might hear this reference to Nazism and assume this means it’ neither left-wing or right-wing, but this is a misinterpretation of definitions. Nazis most certainly were not free market capitalists, but they weren’t socialists either. However, the methods in which you run your economy are not necessarily the prime dictator of being left-wing and/or right-wing, like I said.
Nazis have historically been, and to this day still are, placed on the far-right end of the political spectrum due to upholding hierarchical doctrines within society because left and right are not “socialism vs. capitalism” as much as they are “egalitarianism vs hierarchy”. Nazis didn’t take hugely consistent economic positions, but they still were extremely hierarchical, and that serves as the basis of considering their ideology far-right.
Unless you want to argue that Nazis are not fans of rigid hierarchies (which would be foolish to do so), then you should, in some capacity, be able to acknowledge them sitting on the far-right end of the polspec.
Also, one more thing to mention. Leftists tend to be socialists because it’s an egalitarian mode of production. However, you can still support a less regulative corporatist economy like Nazis did while not being any degree of egalitarianism. Just stating this so people don’t misinterpret me as saying that “leftists aren’t inherently socialists”.
You are probably right about the third way/position thing, it’s just that I haven’t informed from english-speaking sources, so I’ve never been really sure of the correct translation. This might just have completly screwed up the meaning of my comment. As for the rest I don’t oppose the idea that nazis are more right than left, I just say they incorporate enough ideas of the left-wing, both cultural and economic to be called a blend of the two sides.
Nazis took nothing from the left wing other than some rhetoric they used to gain popular support from the working class. Their politics were more inspired by European colonialism than anything else. Lebensraum is basically just manifest destiny applied to Europe.
Nazis are right wing in a European political context, that is not really a discussion in academia. This has nothing to do with current American politics, this is established history.
The only people claiming that they are left wing are right wing fascists who tries to distance themselves from the term (while doing everything in their power to emulate them), and that is done by both European and American fascists.
They decided that the financial success of a certain group of people can be fully attributed to these people exploiting the rest of the populace, and therefore the world will only benefit if they get rid of these people.
Yup. Doesn’t sound like anything modern day leftists and socialists would say.
Wanting equality in the workplace alongside worker-owned production and supporting a hierarchical ultranationalistic society with totalitarian rule are the same coin?
You’re close, but socialism is like mid-left, and leads to many benefits. That’s the sweet spot. Go too far and you get fascism again under the guise of equality. Everyone is equal when everyone is dying of starvation and gulags.
They’re not the same. They’re not “the same coin”. Not even close. They’re not even each others opposites, they can’t be since they’re very different things.
I had typed a lengthy response but in the end I just advise you to read up before you use these words.
After doing that, you should also look at the Scandinavian states and decide for yourself if those are socialists, capitalist or something in between. And if you come to the conclusion that they’re leaning more to socialism(guided market) then anything else then look for signs of fascism in their government since you state “they’re the same coin” then there must be something.
Now look for those same signs in the recent history of the US. You should at least find: a wall, “America first” and a storming of the symbol of government and embodiment of democracy. Now look for signs of socialism in the US society.
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Honestly, I think fascism can manifest from both leftist and right wing points of view. Like a lot of fascists organizations started as workers organizations who gathered together for better working conditions, compensation, and security, and down the line were convinced that racial minorities, jews, and immigrants were the cause of their problems.
A lot of the formally left wing people turned fascist I’ve known started from the point of view of capitalism, globalization, and wealth inequality being the causes of their problems, and overtime were convinced that this meant immigrants, erasure of their culture (white/American/Christian) and evil cabals of jews/queer people/atheists/satanists/etc.
Basically if you rally behind strongmen, aim for religious/cultural/racial dominion, and aim for the elimination of a certain group of people as a means of achieving your goals, you might be a fascists, and the path towards that can start from anywhere.
edit: yeah, I think going to delete this post soon. Many people seem to have taken this post as an opportunity to point the finger and rip at each other, as well as construe any negative action as “fascism” when the whole point of my post was to be introspective. Seems like a lot of people simply read the first sentence and decided to go to town instead.
Fascism absolutely is both left and right. Fascism is defined as “extremely authoritarian, intolerant, or oppressive ideas or behaviour”.
Let’s have a look at the current “left”. Pro-censorship of any and all opinions that they don’t agree with. Trying to make laws that outlaw things they disagree with. Encouraging riots and harassment and violence against people they disagree with. Blame white people for all the problems in the world.
Thats…fascism.
(We’re all gonna get super downvoted anyway)
I’m not sure where you got your definition of fascism, but I think the more formal definitions of it would say otherwise. But! Your definition, I think, is more in-line with how we use that word in the modern times. So, I’ll stick with it.
I think the left side fascism is lot harder to spot whereas the right side fascism is very obvious.
The extreme rights literally go around waving the nazi flag. They’re obvious fascists.
The extreme left has a different approach to fascism. They’re like, “Oh what you say is offensive, and it’s not nice. You need to be nicer and say these things. You’re hurting people’s feelings.” But by doing that, they’re effectively taking away speech and enforcing their world views on others. They’re just as intolerant of opposing views and will happily snuff them out. The cancel culture that has become the main weapon of the extreme left is most certainly fascism.
I also don’t believe extreme left are for being actually nice, they only want to push their specific agendas in a fascistic manner since they happily ignore other marginalized population and will even make fun of them. They are not nice people. For example a straight white man (which I am not) could be struggling to live for any reason. Could be illness, could be abused, anything really. But just because he is in the category of the straight white man, they’ll just insult him and how he deserves what happened to him, all the while ignoring everything else about him. He isn’t the oppressor, he isn’t the one who did wrong. Does it matter? No. That’s prejudice. And no one will defend those people, because if you do, you’re also not a nice person and must be cancelled. Guess which group does defend them? The extreme right. I wonder which side he’ll pick then.
Edit: Grammar
Yeah, I definitely felt the same. As a bona fide straight white male, I felt pushed to the right by the left, despite also being against prejudice, being pro-lgbt, supportive of minorities, and for preserving culture (that last one is actually very anti-left if you consider history). But I have learned that the things we hear are almost exclusively the extremists on one side opposing the extremists on the other side, and both feed each other. Everyone seems to forget there is a nice moderate just-left-of-centre position where people pay for healthcare with their taxes and aren’t royally fucked by corporations.
That meme that musk posted ages back where the left keep pushing further and further left, to the point where they claim that people that were moderate left and haven’t changed their position at all are now far right, is spot on.
Fascism is a lot more intricate than that. There are tenets within fascist ideology that are entirely incompatible with leftism.
Totalitarianism and fascism are not the same thing.
Also, none of the things you mentioned were explicitly leftist even. Hell, not really even implicitly leftist.
Fascism as defined by Merriam-Webster says
The emphasis on race and economic / social regimentation are the major break from the left.
That doesn’t match the “right” either though.
That’s literally the whole American “MAGA” movement. They want Trump or someone like him as an absolute dictator and have no problem taking rights away from people.
No one is asking for trump to be a dictator lol
Right. All the thousands of “god emperor” and “president for life” memes really make me confident in that…
Not to mention also the “helicopter ride” memes which were popular for a while. Face it. The right loves strongman populist authoritarians just as much as the tankies do.
Literally never seen any of those. Guess I don’t hang around in enough “far right” places.
Can anyone explain how fascism as defined above could apply to the right extreme? Apart from the Nazis? Its really descriptive of the far left. Although oppressing non-cis/het relations is stereotypically right
EDIT: kind of important, fascism was auto-corrected to racism, corrected now
Racism and leftism go together like water and oil. There is nothing egalitarian about racism.
Yeah, actually I mean fascism but auto correct ruined it
@luthis @Whirlybird, Racism, xeno- and homophobia have nothing to do with political orientation, but with personal aversions, fears and problems. They tend to be people, either indoctrinated by religion or looking for a strong leader because they lack their own ideas or initiatives. For this reason they are aligned in their vast majority with the fascist ideology and to a very lesser extent in the leftist sphere.
I actually meant fascism but auto correct incorrected my comment
And once again we come around to the fact, that the basic understanding of nazis has been dumbed-down, to basically “bad”.
@Whirlybird @Roundcat, Fascism is not a political system, but a system of oppression, in which a minority or a single person decides the rules for the rest, it doesn’t matter if it is called dictatorship, democracy or communism, which in these circumstances is always a mere label. In real communism and real democracy, it is always the vast majority that dictates the rules, not the other way around. This is why capitalism always favors fascism, it is money that dictates the rules, not people.
Fascism is Capitalism’s self defense mechanism during intense crisis. It does appropriate “left” sounding phraseology, but under fascism the labor movement, and all other independent class movements, are completely subordinated under a singular national interest. All independent movements which refuse to subordinate are crushed. The labor organizations which turn fascist are the ones succumb, or are forced to subordinate, to class collaboration. That is why any genuine socialist movement must be inherently internationalist and anti- class collaboration and must never give up these principles at any cost.
Read Amadeo Bordiga’s report on fascism during Mussolini’s rise
Because people who can’t make their own discussions need an authority to follow. In the US, they turn to fox news, AM radio, or manosphere podcasts. Most of them have serious daddy issues.
In the US, the “opposite” side turns to CNN/BBC, toxic feminist Instagrammers and virtue signalling YouTubers. I cannot agree with that either.
There is a lot of adulteration in “leftism”, just as there are some correct things about “rightism”. I am no centrist, but I would rather take one step back from leftism, and be 10 steps away from rightism, than swing fully in any direction. I think contextual rationale, and not necessary a “centrist” 50-50 both sides bullshit, is the correct path to take. Forging your own path as a mindhacker with no like minded company is the hardest thing.
What do you really want to say? You’re trying very hard to say both sides are wrong without being labeled as a centrist.
“Toxic left wing” pundits haven’t gotten their followers to storm the capital building or fly a plane into an irs biulding. If you’re really mad someone has opinions on video games, install a 3rd party channel blocker for firefox. The things the toxic femists/pick-me types are up to pale in comparison to the manosphere are up to.
I cannot agree to just treating and branding men’s spaces like that. Manosphere may be doing a bad job, but its not all redpillers and Tateists. I hate this attack on and absolutist “shit on men constantly” trope in society. Its almost like the very thing feminists become they swear to destroy. Society and life is more complex than “shit on men and worship women”.
When feminists say “all men bad” “kill all men” “men are dogs” “men are b***hes” “masculinity is fragile” and so on, the ignorance of men being oppressed throughout history is really telling, and the same
strong“fragile” men have built this world. Putting the bourgeois royalties’ doings on “men” exclusively is incredibly fascistic of feminists, and is the reason why I have taken one step back from leftism, while maintaining 10 steps distance from rightism.If you want to know how leftist I am, I have been a 1 year long dedicated member of Lemmygrad.
Manosphere is a very specific thing. They’re the Andrew Tate types. If it’s a legitimate form of mental health or self care thing, it isn’t Manosphere. Hell, if it’s mental health, it’s rarely branded as male orientated because it’s genderless advice.
You’re creating this weird narrative in your head. The feminists you have a problem with are a minority who are only visible because they’re gaming the algorithm. They have no effect on your daily life.
Most feminists and women brand men’s safe spaces as redpill, right wing, part of manosphere, horrible and so on. They absolutely have an effect on me, the way random transphobes have an effect on the existence of transgender people. Men are not treated like equal humans with compassion, just because 0.1% rich ultracapitalists or harassers or rapists have subjugated women in society. There is no desire for equity or equality, but gender superiority. Plenty women who distance themselves from feminist movement agree with this today.
Manosphere is a very vague term in itself, even though it started as simply redpillers and Tateists. Wikipedia defines it as a “collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism.[1] Communities within the manosphere include men’s rights activists,[2] incels (involuntary celibates),[3] Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),[4] pick-up artists (PUA),[5] and fathers’ rights groups.[6]”
Its true that manosphere has misogyny, and that it has issues, but it provides an alternate point of view and is NOT all Tateists, even if there does exist misogyny, the same way misandry and vitriolic hatred for men exists in female safe spaces, which are abundant today. The world is not all black and white, and just as men treat women like a pair of breasts and a vagina, women treat men with the well known small dick hand gesture and other verbal slangs for degradingly equating us with penis. Women are more compassionate than men, and they have chosen to keep it all to themselves with their sisterhood. Men have no brotherhood today.
Every feminist I have met, no matter radical, communist or liberal, has always degraded and blamed all men, and downplayed issues with women while screaming “all men _____” the moment anything happens. And literally anything you say against this makes you a redpiller, woman hater, incel or any of the buzzwords they decide to cancel you with. I have a lot of grievances with it, and it affects all men, which includes me, so I will find solace in places that support men instead of supporting agendas aimed to hate men. Men have unheard grievances, and if feminists think they will win the battle against half the planet, their movement deserves to crash and doom. Feminism by the day is behaving less like a leftist movement for equality for both sexes, and more like a woman supremacist movement with right wing shades.
Oh, simple counterpoint to anyone making that claim: is Democratic People’s Republic of Korea democratic?
The GDR (German Democratic Republic) wasn’t democratic as well. Namen sind Schall und Rauch.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
It’s an argument made in bad faith and/or ignorance caused by same.
Modern-day fascists are desperate to distance themselves from the nazis, despite the fact that the nazis are literally their idols.
Wait, do people really care if Nazis were left or right-wing?
Their leader was a racist mass murderer with superiority complex, who cares about his political views?
Let’s say they were left-wing… Does that make the left wing Nazis? Mmm no. If a dictator is right-wing, does that make the right-wing dictators? No.
Do people understand these are two unrelated things? Imagine seeing a dog owner cheating on his wife and assuming all dog owners are cheaters.
Thats not the point, youre twisting the order. Every nazi is right-wing, by definition. Not every right-winger is a nazi and thats not what people are saying. A big part of nazi ideology is overlapping with general right-wing ideologies, they are separate but not unrelated at all.
You don’t understand. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t care about it. Do you care if the North Korean dictator is left-wing? No? Good, you shouldn’t. The same way you shouldn’t care if Nazis were right-wing.
I’d argue that you should very much care about the political alignment of extremist leaders, because it show you where an ideology can ultimately lead to if left unchecked. As the poster above said, it doesn’t mean that all right-wing people are nazis, but knowing the nazis were right-wing shows you where a right-wing government can end up if the wrong set of conditions happen to come along. This is important information, as you can spot the warning signs as they appear and (hopefully) nip it in the bud before it gets to that point.
You could literally replace all this with “left wing” and use “communism” incorrectly instead of fascism (which isn’t just dictatorship, it was also a set of economic and societal philosophies invented by the fascisti of Italy) because at the end of the day, both sides of the political aisle have the same tendency to go extremist authoritarian when allowed.
There has been no non-authoritarian state of existence of humans inside any civilisation. None. Liberals/centrists playing this bullshit trope of feudalism or anarchism or some dreamy impossible organisation of society with literally zero hierarchy, is impossible. Direct democracy works at best on a scale of a small village. If we go by Dunbar’s number, no bigger than a group of 148 people can have direct relations.
They are behaving like Nazis regardless of if the Nazis were right-wing or left-wing. Nazi behavior can happen in the left or the right. As I already said, discrimination, murder, superiority complex, racism and exploration has also happened in left-wing systems.
Of course bad things happen at the extremes of both sides, but I’m going to have to object to “regardless of if the Nazis were right-wing or left-wing.” I don’t think there’s really room to equivocate on that - nazism is right-wing.
It is. Just like fascism, these are terms associated with the right-wing. But that’s not my point… My point is that whatever affiliation the right or left had in the past does not necessarily represent the current affiliations. The fact that the US right-wing is turning to white supremacy is unrelated to Nazis being right wing. That is just a reflection of their systemic racism.
What I’m saying is that it is irrelevant if Republicans are trying to associate the left with Nazis, because even if such association existed, it is not a valid argument to say that the left today is ruled by Nazis, or that the right can’t behave like Nazis. That’s just a fallacy, the same fallacy that they use to point out that voting left will turn us into North Korea or an authoritarian left-wing dictatorship.
I can’t believe people aren’t getting this. It’s like they don’t understand I’m actually pro-left with this argument, somehow they think I’m protecting Nazis and Republicans because I’m not shouting “REPUBLICANS BAD!”
Going back and pointing out how Nazis were right-wing is something that will bite the left in the ass because there are plenty of examples of the left turning into shit too. So instead of comparing with past examples, just analyze their current positions. Is the right currently behaving like Nazis? Yes. Do you need WWII Nazis to be right wing for this to be a fact? No. So even if they convince people that Nazis were left wing, how does that disprove that RIGHT NOW they are the racists and white supremacists?
I’m just saying, don’t play their games.
Kim Jong-Un is right wing. So were Kim Jong Il, Kim Il Sung, Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Xi, and Che Guevara. In fact, they were all moderate Republicans whose ideas are 100% in line with the current Republican Party platform. There’s no daylight at all between any of them and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Before you respond, remember that you don’t care what their politics are because it doesn’t matter.
Dafuq, North Korea is left wing. OK, so was the Soviet Union also right wing when they marginalized minorities through Russification?
“if it is bad, it is right-wing”.
And yes, my whole point is that the fact North Korea has a left-wing dictatorship doesn’t mean that all left-wing parties will become dictatorships. You finally got my point, damn, it took you so long.
Now it matters. Now you care.
North Korea is 100% a right wing country, right wing policies and a dictator. You can’t argue with that fact.
Stalin claimed his government was left wing and Marx based but it was revealed that he was right leaning, a dictator and instilled right wing policies.
https://www.salon.com/2021/08/14/republicans-claim-to-fear-left-wing-authoritarianism--but-theres-no-such-thing/
Ah ok, as I said, “everything that is left wing is good and paradise. Everything right wing is pure evil”.
In a left-wing state the state always holds the power… So once that state becomes corrupted and uses that power to keep all workers equally poor, then it is suddenly right wing? Show me what were the capitalist principles in the Soviet Union? Was there a free market, private incentive, private property, competition, minimal state intervention, entrepreneurship, individual rights and freedoms? NOOO THERE WEREN’T. It wasn’t a right-wing state.
You guys are insane. Lemmy became an echo chamber for your delusions. It’s really sad to see people this radicalized.
A dictator is a dictator, who the fuck cares if they are right or left wing? A racist is a racist. A murderer is a murderer. They can be found in any side of the political spectrum, but you’re too biased to believe the left can be corrupted… You are too blinded by what is right and what is left and are totally unable to see there can be combinations of ideologies.
You say dictators are right wing because they don’t follow some left-wing principles? Then I could argue that all dictators are left-wing because by definition the right strives to minimize government controls, and a dictatorship is authoritarian, which goes against right-wing policies… But I’m done arguing. This is my last Lemmy comment. You are so blinded by the left vs right argument you can’t see beyond that. This degree of fanatism can’t be healthy, I don’t want to become radicalized like you people. This self imposed blindness is sad and pathetic. Good bye.
I feel like you’re being deliberately obtuse. You’re right in that by itself trying to define the nazi party of the past in terms of present day left/right ideology is reductivist, and unproductive in discourse. But you’re ignoring two important facts in the present day right/left dynamic. First that literal modern day nazis have shown a distinct preference for right wing ideaology. Second is that fascism as an ideology is a chameleon that latches onto present day conflict to unite people through oppression of a weak other, which is the basis for present day right wing policy. As such the comparison becomes apt because the fascists of the past are a model for the fascists of the present.
OK, by that same logic the left-wing dictators and collapsed systems of the past are a model for the present. So is the right justified to push fear with those past examples to show how bad the left is?
Do you see that’s just the same flawed logic they use to scare people away from the left?
Yeah, you’re a troll.
The caveat is that being a “racist mass murderer with a superiority complex” is a very right-wing thing. It wouldn’t be possible to fit that mold and be leftist because it’s entirely incompatible with leftist ideology.
Hilarious how people who know exactly one “racist mass murderer with a superiority complex” assume that it is a right-wing thing. Try humanities most famous left-winger ever.
Im not saying that nazis and right-wing are unrelated, but you picked exactly those characteristics in Hitler that actually arent related to political views at all.
State enforced racism and industrialized government implemented mass murder are central to nazis’ political views.
Who, exactly?
Did you just seriously say that there has never been a left wing racist mass murderer with a superiority complex?
There hasn’t been.
Certainly been a few waving the flag of socialism/communism that have lead to those consequences.
It’s not uncommon for fascists to adopt socialist rhetoric to try and gain mass appeal. However that falls away under the lightest scrutiny of their actions and ideology. “National Socialism” is the most obvious example. I’d include Pol Pot in that bucket as well.
The USSR under Stalin and PRC under Mao are a bit different. The government in either case made decisions that led to unnecessary death, but there’s no evidence to suggest any of their missteps were motivated by racial animus.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward was him trying to push Communist ideology onto nature. He had one hammer in his tool box and tried using it on everything.
Like who?
Pol Pot should be a uncontroversial pick.
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So you’re saying that racism and mass murder did not exist under communist China?
What about Russification in the Soviet Union? Minorities were marginalized.
Why would it be a problem if the Nazis were actually left-wing? You’re not realizing you’re actually a victim of a fallacy. And even more concerning, you’re trying to use the same fallacy to attack back. It’s just flawed logic all over the place.
As I understand it the keystone between left and right is that:
The left belief is that all people are created equal and should have equal authority to point out wrong doing. The right belief is that people should be in a hierarchy with people at the top exerting control downward.
I think they are actually just saying if you really believe everyone is equal you can’t pick a group to target for mass murder. But if you are at the top of a pyramid tge people below you naturally look expendable.
At least that is my reading of this debate.
And my point was that even in the left, murder, discrimination and racism can exist.
People just choose to think their position is ideal and the opposition is flawed. This type of brainwashing is disgusting.
Correct, and my point was that they can’t. If you view everyone as equal you can’t make yourself a dictator. You can lie to yourself about your value, most people do for better or worse. But if everyone is equal you can’t decide to boost one group over another. Or if you do decide that is better and you deserve to be in charge, then your views have shifted right. That is my understanding of left vs right in it’s most basic form.
Yeha, tell that to the North Korean God, Kim, who rises above everyone while keeping everyone else equal.
“I don’t like nazis”
“YEAH? Whatabout Commies?! Huh? HUH?”
What? I’m just saying that being racist or a murderer is totally unrelated to political views. Those can happen in both the left and right.
Guys, you’re smarter than this. For real.
The conversation is about nazis. You keep trying to talk about communists.
I said it doesn’t matter if the Nazis were right wing or left wing, what matters is that they were criminals. Then that person said that mass murder and racism is only aligned with the right, so I showed him/her that that is wrong, murder and racism can also happen on the left.
The point being that just because in the past there were rotten apples in the left/right, it doesn’t mean that being in the left/right makes you a rotten apple.
People who know that his political views included “we should use the state to enforce racism” and “mass murder is ok.”
Let me clarify. To be crystal clear, we’re talking about “left” and right on the political compass. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the most well known one. Overall, “left” and “right” are bizarre terminologies with aqueous meanings deeply embedded in history.
You are technically correct if you are talking about the political compass. we call “authoritarian left” “Stalinism” and we call “libertarian right” “anarcho-capitalism” or just “libertarianism” in the US.
The problem is that all philosophy founding “leftist ideology” has consistently been “libertarian left”, focusing on collapsing hierarchies, dividing power into many hands, and dismantling power structures (such as currency). Anarchism is basically the prime example.
With Marx’s communism, his end game is a system without any government, where people simply exchange services and collaborate to create only what they want or need (not to endlessly proliferate waste for profit). Even his “dictatorship of the proletariat”, one of the stepping stones to communism, is a democratic system. It is called a “dictatorship” because it revokes the voting rights of the rich.
To boot, the ideologies which exist in the “authoritarian left” and “libertarian right” are full of contradictions and mental gymnastics. They all swear they’re communist but make no attempts to actually disseminate power, or gear towards a more democratic system, directly going against Marx’s ideals.
Because of this, pretty much every leftist agrees that the “authoritarian left” are not leftist, because they directly betray the philosophy which founds leftist beliefs.
SO to conclude, there is literally no world where someone can genuinely believe the various philosophies within leftism while at the same time starting a campaign alienating minorities, appealing to the general population with populism and returning the state to a former glory, and embarking on a Nazi take-over. This is why Nazism and leftism are completely incompatible, and why literally no Authoritarian can be considered a leftist.
iTs In ThE nAmE.
Most Americans have no idea what socialism is. You’re not supposed to think about it here. They just hear that socialism is bad and it’s in the name of the nazi party which is also bad, so that tracks.
Most Americans think that “liberal” is someone on the left, while most European nations (as well as what little political theory I had) place them somewhere in the center, usually fiscally progressive but socially conservative.
yup, exactly
Most Americans don’t know what capitalism is either. We’ve been so brainwashed into believing capitalism and simple commerce are the same thing that people think any system that isn’t capitalism is some authoritarian hellscape where the government forces you at gunpoint to share your toothbrush with everyone else in the neighborhood because personal property will be outlawed somehow.
Yeah, that’s literally their whole reasoning. I’ve had to deal with a number of those all the way back in 2014, “national sOcIaLiSm”
Of course, whenever I pointed to The Guardian’s interview with Hitler in 1923 (and republished in 1932), where he energetically complains about marxists (marxians, as he calls them) “stealing” the socialist term from “real germans” and actively calls for the end of bolshevism, I was completely ignored.
Wait, but what did he even mean by “socialism” here? I get call what was happening in Russia not socialism, but what was the un-Marxist form of socialism Hitler was talking about? Also, wasn’t Marx also German, did Hitler see him as not a “real german”?
He didn’t mean anything at all. That was the brilliance of the Nazi propaganda machine. They stole words that referred to popular things and said them enough times in relation to themselves that they lost all meaning.
Its exactly the same as how the modern day right wing say anything that supports them is “patriotic” and anything that doesn’t is “anti-[country]”. If they say the word “patriotic” enough times, it loses all meaning & makes it impossible for opponents to argue against, because you can’t have a rational debate when language is meaningless.
Ah, oh… why did I expect the answer to not be kinda scary…
He’s opportunistcally envokning it as socialism is popular, but cares for nothing other than the political clout the label may bring.
Fascism exists to capture popular revolutionary sentiment, while preserving the old power structure.
Marx was famously also Jewish.
Ah, yeah, that’ll do it.
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea entered the chat
A country with republic and/or democratic in its official name is usually neither.
Most republics afaik have “Republic” in their name. I don’t think that’s the problem.
they don’t tend to actually use that name, no one says “the republic of finland”
Yes they do.
Source: Am Irish.
That’s true, though in that case it’s to disambiguate from northern ireland or the whole island.
Same deal as the Kingdom of Denmark, you only ever say that to emphasize that you mean greenland as well.
Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Federal republic of Germany)
Which is basically never used, everyone just says germany.
I thought us Americans had egos, but I’m not going to tell people they’re referencing their own countries by the wrong name.
That depends, in Germany, the federal republic part is fairly regularly used in news when talking about international affairs, basically using it so they don’t have to say Germany as often.
Maybe in English it is not used as often. In Germany it is used as just Bundesrepublik in News etc to don’t repeat oneself too much or in historic context to differentiate from the German Democratic Republic (where the naming is again ironic, but it’s the Democratic party)
It is used in Germany though lol
The argument can at the very best be very loosely made about the early NAZI party before the Night of the Long Knives. There were some incredibly loose planks in the platform up to that point that could be described as progressive/socialist. Not that any of the leaders with the possible exception of Röhm actually believed it. It was just a tactic of throwing out anything that would garner support to the movement. In this case to bolster interest among poor workers that would have been more inclined to side with the parties on the left.
This. And of course one way to interpret “socialist” is the same way many fascist parties use “people’s” in their name now == “populist”
Some socialism can be populism, fascism can wrap itself in populism at the beginning, but there is no relationship between populism and socialism. Not unless you believe government, like corporations, should only serve wealthy shareholders and nothing that serves the people is both populist and socialist.
Case in point - look at the modern day US fascism distracting the plebes with juicy culture war while stealing from their plates and banks and dismantling the government.
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You jest, but there are a lot code people who would like to see the US become a monarchy.
Aee those people are emergency fertalizer for the joshua trees.
I pledge allegiance to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
When a small but dedicated group of vocal people started unironically and emphatically believing the planet was a pancake, I lost a significant portion of my lingering reserves of hope for the future of mankind.
Extremist politics and all the associated mindsets have long since jumped a row of sharks in my mind by comparison.
From my limited understanding, it mostly seems like misattribution of all the very obvious chaos and uncertainty about “grand” events like climate change, economical strife, etc.
It’s less that someone holds pancake planet as their sole belief but more a web of interconnected beliefs that would explain the true cause of these nebulous events if they were true.
Not that it makes the outcome any better that people choose a more palatable ideological narrative over reality but there is a part of me that recognizes ignorance would be more blissful.
As someone who is fairly into ideologies I can tell you, that national-socialism or nazism, which is a sub-ideology of fascism isn’t called that for no reason. If you look at it closely it does take a lot home from nationalism, but socialisim as well. These are right-wing (with some exceptions) and left-wing ideologies respectively and both can take extremes. This is why a lot of people in the sphere call the fusion of these two the “Third Way”, meaning it’s between the extreme left and extreme right and opposite to Centrism, which is between the calmer ends of the two sides. This means that nazis are neither right nor left-wing, at least as seen in european politics, in the exteremely polarized american political climate they (or at least their grossly dumbed-down interpretation) could be considered extremly right wing, but I think american politics are stupid anyway. And now to answer the question (pretending I didn’t just saw a question where there wasn’t any) anyone who calls nazis leftists just has a politcal bias against them and tries to make them appear even worse by blending them with those goddamn liberals. Okay but seriously, people really shouldn’t dumb down “old enemies” because that just means that they didn’t learn anything.
You’re “fairly into ideologies”, but you’re not well versed on political literacy. It seems like you got your idea of where Nazism sits on the political spectrum from the PoliticalCompassMemes subreddit (where “nAzIS ARe aUtHCENter” is the most commonly promoted talking point).
First and foremost, “third way” isn’t even the correct term to use here. You’re most likely referring to the term “third position”, which is an honest mistake in terminology, but that term refers to a different thing than third way entirely.
“Third way” refers to the more social liberal side of centrism. “Third position” is in reference to fascist tendencies to reject the binary notion of either standard socialist economics and/or laissez-faire free market capitalist economics. This comes with an important caveat: rejection of “typical socialism” and “typical capitalism” doesn’t mean you’re neither left-wing or right-wing, as we don’t really, in terminology, use your stance on socialism and capitalism as an inherent way of noting whether you’re left-wing or right-wing.
Some people might hear this reference to Nazism and assume this means it’ neither left-wing or right-wing, but this is a misinterpretation of definitions. Nazis most certainly were not free market capitalists, but they weren’t socialists either. However, the methods in which you run your economy are not necessarily the prime dictator of being left-wing and/or right-wing, like I said.
Nazis have historically been, and to this day still are, placed on the far-right end of the political spectrum due to upholding hierarchical doctrines within society because left and right are not “socialism vs. capitalism” as much as they are “egalitarianism vs hierarchy”. Nazis didn’t take hugely consistent economic positions, but they still were extremely hierarchical, and that serves as the basis of considering their ideology far-right.
Unless you want to argue that Nazis are not fans of rigid hierarchies (which would be foolish to do so), then you should, in some capacity, be able to acknowledge them sitting on the far-right end of the polspec.
Also, one more thing to mention. Leftists tend to be socialists because it’s an egalitarian mode of production. However, you can still support a less regulative corporatist economy like Nazis did while not being any degree of egalitarianism. Just stating this so people don’t misinterpret me as saying that “leftists aren’t inherently socialists”.
You are probably right about the third way/position thing, it’s just that I haven’t informed from english-speaking sources, so I’ve never been really sure of the correct translation. This might just have completly screwed up the meaning of my comment. As for the rest I don’t oppose the idea that nazis are more right than left, I just say they incorporate enough ideas of the left-wing, both cultural and economic to be called a blend of the two sides.
Nazis took nothing from the left wing other than some rhetoric they used to gain popular support from the working class. Their politics were more inspired by European colonialism than anything else. Lebensraum is basically just manifest destiny applied to Europe.
Nazis are right wing in a European political context, that is not really a discussion in academia. This has nothing to do with current American politics, this is established history.
The only people claiming that they are left wing are right wing fascists who tries to distance themselves from the term (while doing everything in their power to emulate them), and that is done by both European and American fascists.
They decided that the financial success of a certain group of people can be fully attributed to these people exploiting the rest of the populace, and therefore the world will only benefit if they get rid of these people.
Yup. Doesn’t sound like anything modern day leftists and socialists would say.
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You know what else is Red?
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Tickle this you commie bastard!
First they came for the Communists …
Fascists, socialists are the same coin. The Nazi regime just had longer reaching effects. Tyranny still going strong too…
If you want a science fiction example, Cyberpunk - Star Wars.
Wanting equality in the workplace alongside worker-owned production and supporting a hierarchical ultranationalistic society with totalitarian rule are the same coin?
To be fair they gave fictional examples to back the claim up so it seems pretty solid.
You’re close, but socialism is like mid-left, and leads to many benefits. That’s the sweet spot. Go too far and you get fascism again under the guise of equality. Everyone is equal when everyone is dying of starvation and gulags.
They’re not the same. They’re not “the same coin”. Not even close. They’re not even each others opposites, they can’t be since they’re very different things.
I had typed a lengthy response but in the end I just advise you to read up before you use these words.
After doing that, you should also look at the Scandinavian states and decide for yourself if those are socialists, capitalist or something in between. And if you come to the conclusion that they’re leaning more to socialism(guided market) then anything else then look for signs of fascism in their government since you state “they’re the same coin” then there must be something.
Now look for those same signs in the recent history of the US. You should at least find: a wall, “America first” and a storming of the symbol of government and embodiment of democracy. Now look for signs of socialism in the US society.