To answer the questions if Nazis are "left" or "right", you first need to define "left" and "right". That's hard to do, but some models are more helpful and have more explanatory power than others.
Many Americans, especially on the right, seem to believe the spectrum is just one-dimensional, while "right" means small government and "left" means big government. By that definition, the Nazis were certainly "left". But I believe this model is deficient, cannot explain much if anything at all.
By all other meaningful models to define "left" or "right", the Nazis were clearly far-right. Pre-enlightened authoritarianism supposing humans don't have equal rights? Check. Rabid nationalism/rah rah patriotism? Check. Militarism? Check. Ethnic chauvinism and anti-Semitism? Check. Rejection of liberal democracy? Check. All of this had traditionally been elements of the monarchist conservative right.
In 19th century Germany, there was a monarchist authoritarian "big government" right against classic liberalism (along the lines of modern libertarianism) on the left. In Weimar Germany, "small government" was centrist - The monarchist conservatives were just as much "big government" as the far left commies. The "right" had always been traditionally anti-democratic and authoritarian in Germany and the Nazis just took this monarchist conservatism to the extreme.
The one-dimensional spectrum provides no means to explain political philosophies in Germany until 1945 accurately.
When American right-wingers try to view the situation in Germany pre-1945 through the glasses of modern day political buzzwords, desperately attempting to smear the "librulz", it makes them look silly.
Very very well said. With respect to liberlasim and the right's charge to "big government"; to use the term with that reference
assumes that it is true. The Democratic domestic policy has, since 1929, provided fail-safes and safety nets for people in need: the military is such a safety net and was used to help young men in trouble with law. The idea of these protections being "big government", in my view, is just silly right-wing propoganda.
The third Reich (empire) was the very definition of big government. It also, as you stated carrried all the elements of todays US right-wing. What we're dealing with here in the case of
vendur et al is simply attempts at revisionist history to draw attention away from today's right-wing tactics and ideology. Both the Third Reich and today's right-wing have far more in common with feudalism and fascism than anything the right may pretend to be. One of the first things Nazism embarked on was finding fault with and being the "victims" of some ubiquitous force outside of their patriotic vision for the country.
Anderson Cooper Debunks Michele Bachmann Claims Of 'Muslim Extremist' Infiltration Of US Government (VIDEO) Of course, like Himmler's SS, today's right-wing measures true patriotism through the criteria of blind obedience, patriotic "purity", and recognition with a fervent desire to
take care of the problems, be active in flushing out problems of course as defined by the right-wing leadership, to be active in supplanting the government with their own people, and keeping up a military front of which the juggernaught will be a proud part as a measure of his or her patriotism.
Today's corporate feudalism is only stimulated by this distemper with our military playing the part of that bastion of free enterprise in US foreign policy: there being no difference than the Great Plantation of Ulster, or journalist John L O'Sullivan's
Manifest Destiny: very much a part of Hitler's design as well.
The right-wing is of course attempting to redesign FDR as well with teh same ridiclous tactics as outlined above by Anderson Cooper.