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Is Fascism Right Wing?

Is fascism left or right wing?

  • Left

    Votes: 18 20.2%
  • Right

    Votes: 46 51.7%
  • Neither

    Votes: 16 18.0%
  • Description sucks

    Votes: 9 10.1%

  • Total voters
    89
I would argue that "corporatism" is simply an output of far right economics. The accumulation of wealth and power into the hand of a minority is the logical outcome of Capitalism. It hasn't been messed around with all that much, the tenants are still the same: Profits, Markets, Private Ownership. I would argue that the corporatism is simply an output of this system that leads to this system.

I would argue that Corporatism is the coming toghether of business and government to work with one another. Capitalism to me means that government should stay out of corporations and corporations should stay out of the government. Therefore with its strong state and desire to make it stronger facists should love corporations working with them to make the state stronger. However yes the tenants are the same however Corporatism is a side product of the states interferance in the economy.
 
I would argue that "corporatism" is simply an output of far right economics. The accumulation of wealth and power into the hand of a minority is the logical outcome of Capitalism

No, that's the logical outcome of representative governance and the artificial monopolies it brings.

In a real free market, if any single company or organisation gets too big for the good of the people, the people can simply switch to using a different company or organisation. If monopoly occurs in a free market, it is the result of consumer choice and stupidity, not corporate governance. Wealth and power may well fall into the hands of a minority, but if consumers don't like it and stop buying their goods, the wealth and power will go to whoever else they choose instead.
 
I don't know why you think the world revolves around your definitions.

The world does not. This thread does. We are being asked to tell how we use certain words, and explain why.
 
Interesting response. I'm just really used to so many people screaming that fascism and conservatism are the same thing and then proceeding to equate me to Hitler, so a reasonable tempered response was almost unexpected.

The sad fact of life, when it comes to politics, most people are idiots.

Ultimately ideologies that seek to control your life share many of the same operating principles even if they do not share the same political principles.

Fascism and Communism have two very different political structures, one has massive power to the state, the other doesn't have a state. One stamps out the power of labor while the other is a democracy of the worker. In many ways, the ideas of the two are diametrically opposed, but when it comes to controlling people, they work in similar ways.
 
No one suffering under Stalin had those illusions, but as usual, this guilt by association is all you have for US liberals.

I am not talking about any "guilt by association". I am talking about ideological kinship and resulting absolute blindness in the face of overwhelming evidence of the Communist regime's criminality.

Elementary means basic...so yes, basic differences between the German fascist and German socialists/communists in 32. You just defeated your point..

Pray tell me, how did I just manage that? The 1920-30s. There you have a dirty wave of radical socialism sweeping Europe. They are "the wave of future". Absolute power is within reach. Competing ambitious leaders differentiate on trifles and accuse each other of all mortal sins. In Germany, the Soviet puppets (incidentally, led by German-Jewish intellectuals) compete with people of very similar views who use their Jewishness to whip up a very useful anti-Semitic hysteria. Both "antagonists" have nothing but unlimited hatred for liberals, conservatives and social democrats.



"Communism had no role in the Russian Revolution".......WOW, OK! ..

Yes, "wow". Because the Russian Revolution was done by the (classical) liberals, laborites and social democrats (Mensheviks). The Bolsheviks usurped power and destroyed the Revolution. As anyone not totally brainwashed by "liberal" college professors would know.

" LOL....of course Lenin was, except for the fact that he died before he could have any real totalitarian power......and of course Trotsky was...even though Stalin forced him out and eventually murdered him...before he could again display his totalitarian powers.

Nonsense. The Red Terror started immediately after the Bolsheviks took power, and continued, unimpeded, throughout the years when Lenin and Trotsky ruled as the all-powerful duumvirate. Stalin is perceived as The Monster only because he had more time to do exactly the same thing, with body count steadily going up.
 
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Now you are equating libertarianism to "Classical Liberalism", whatever bub, it becomes clear just how self centered your vocabulary is.).

I am equating things that are exactly the same, unless you accept the self-serving portrayal of every libertarian as an infantile radical wasting time on the far fringes of our political landscape. The liberal (classical liberal) political vector was always quite well defined, and in the modern American newspeak, we are forced to say "libertarian", when we mean "liberal". In Germany, or Poland, or Scandinavia, or France, and so on - they still say "liberal" and mean "liberal", not "socialist covering his arse and dodging unpleasant semantic associations"
 
Fascism and Communism have two very different political structures, one has massive power to the state, the other doesn't have a state.

Lenin and Mao - creators of the two most massively powerful totalitarian states in history are laughing and clinking glasses of - whatever they use in lieu of champagne in Hell: You can do whatever you want to these people - and they still will believe in your cheapest propaganda shots - the more illogical, the better.
 
Fascism and Communism have two very different political structures, one has massive power to the state, the other doesn't have anything but the state

Fixed your statement for you ;)
 
In other areas of the world, Fascism was a part of the right-wing. The United States has never known Fascism. The right-wing of our political arena is a proponent of small government. The left wing, however, is a proponent for big government. Fascism is massive government, therefore, Fascism in the US would be a left-wing idea.

This is not accurate. "Left" and "right" are extremely malleable terms (as several posters have correctly pointed out). In the end, "conservative" is what conservative does; same with liberal.

So we can look at what the right wing and left wing does in our (ie north American) arena; or we can play No True Scotsman.

So, if the political Right opposes Big government, they would of course oppose the death penalty, for starters...by far the most extreme manifestaiton of any statist government, and one of its organizing principles, at least de facto.

Some people mistake "big" or "small" government as being terms almost entirely to do with taxes, social programs, "entitlements" and so on. But these are only aspects, and not even the most important.

Authoritarianism and "big government" have a lot of different components.

so for example, there are some Westerners (including the late Ms. Thatcher) who have the unmitigated nerve to laud Pinochet (a right-winger) for his "small government" and "economic freedoms."

In other words, running a gigantic imprisonment, torture and murder regime is not "big government"; but raising taxes is!

:)
 
Of course it's Right Wing. What an odd question.
 
Fascism and Communism have two very different political structures, one has massive power to the state, the other doesn't have anything but a state

Fixed your statement for you ;)

Precisely. People keep quoting Engels, about " withering away of the state", without realizing what was actually meant: The mythical scientific - and perfectly coercive - management of every imaginable economic and social process is supposed to become so automatic at some point, there will be no difference between the State and the Society. A machine is a machine. In any approximation to reality, it is not the State that withers away - it is everything else.
 
Of course it's Right Wing. What an odd question.

Only if you accept popular labels without any attempt at allowing words to have some consistent meaning.
 
Only if you accept popular labels without any attempt at allowing words to have some consistent meaning.
Popular meaning conventional?

Were they unpopular, how likely is it that they'd be consistent?

I'm not down with the whole revisionism thing. It reeks of agenda and faddism.
 
National Socialism is indeed left wing. Hence the socialism portion of that identifier. Fascists are corporatists - they believe in the government controlling large, public utility like industries. Private ownership, but public control, of the means of production.

They might be able to blend in with conservatives in Europe, where conservatism can mean something very different. In American terms, however, Conservatives are closer to your 18th Century Liberals - a series of positions that Fascists would find anathema.
 
Precisely. People keep quoting Engels, about " withering away of the state", without realizing what was actually meant: The mythical scientific - and perfectly coercive - management of every imaginable economic and social process is supposed to become so automatic at some point, there will be no difference between the State and the Society. A machine is a machine. In any approximation to reality, it is not the State that withers away - it is everything else.

It's also worth pointing out that (as I recall) Engels split from Marx in this and a couple of other items. Marx was very much about the dictatorship of the proletariat - and you don't get a dictatorship without the state organs through which you can do your dictating.
 
National Socialism is indeed left wing. Hence the socialism portion of that identifier. Fascists are corporatists - they believe in the government controlling large, public utility like industries. Private ownership, but public control, of the means of production.

They might be able to blend in with conservatives in Europe, where conservatism can mean something very different. In American terms, however, Conservatives are closer to your 18th Century Liberals - a series of positions that Fascists would find anathema.
Bold: There is no facepalm to ever do this statement justice.
 
Only if you accept popular labels without any attempt at allowing words to have some consistent meaning.

The only inconsistency is the American right's attempt to rewrite history. Their reinterpretation of fascism is unique.
 
Bold: There is no facepalm to ever do this statement justice.

:) is that your way of saying that you have no actual method of response?

I realize it's popular to identify Fascism as right wing. After all, there wasn't really a conservative movement in America in the end of the 40's, so it was safe to associate them with it. Just like no one had ever been a eugenicist after 1944, suddenly no one had ever admired fascism, either.

Unfortunately, all those records are still around. Progressives in this country were very much on the same ideological wavelength as the fascists in Europe. It was and remains a left-wing ideology. The one poster on these forums honest enough to identify himself as a fascist is pretty much clear on this point - which is why his actual identifier reads "progressive".
 
I'm not down with the whole revisionism thing. It reeks of agenda and faddism.

Sure, but who started "the whole revisionism thing", and when?

Why, indeed, the socially conservative, totalitarian, anti-capitalist, nationalist, militarist police state of the Fascist Italy is "right wing", and the EVEN MORE socially conservative, totalitarian, anti-capitalist, nationalist, militarist police state of the Soviet Russia is "left wing"?
 
The only inconsistency is the American right's attempt to rewrite history. Their reinterpretation of fascism is unique.

You are very mistaken. Very few people who were actually exposed to Fascism - or, worse, Nazism - and Communism (like, most of the Eastern Europe) fail to recognize their near-identical nature.
 
It's also worth pointing out that (as I recall) Engels split from Marx in this and a couple of other items. Marx was very much about the dictatorship of the proletariat - and you don't get a dictatorship without the state organs through which you can do your dictating.

The "dictatorship of the proletariat" (translation: absolute power of the self-appointed State bureaucracies) was implied by Marx, but made into the central ideological point by Lenin - to the horror of the other Marxists - Mensheviks (they were put out of their misery soon enough), and especially grotesque in a country that was 90% peasant at the time.
 
National Socialism is indeed left wing.

No. That's just a residue of the Hate-the-Left Cold War nonsense.

Hence the socialism portion of that identifier.


Like the "People's Republic of China"?

:)

Tells us nothing.
 
The "dictatorship of the proletariat" (translation: absolute power of the self-appointed State bureaucracies) was implied by Marx, but made into the central ideological point by Lenin - to the horror of the other Marxists - Mensheviks (they were put out of their misery soon enough), and especially grotesque in a country that was 90% peasant at the time.

Yes, and it's odd that the internal animosity to Lenin is so little well-known, when the information is freely available. The revolutionaries despised Lenin, and there were dark forecasts about his dictatorial tendencies....forecasts that were plainly accurate.
 
So, if the political Right opposes Big government, they would of course oppose the death penalty, for starters...

I do. Totally. May I now continue to think of myself as (1) far right wing, (2) real (classical) liberal (aka libertarian), and (3) a consistent opponent of the extreme far-left ideologies, such as Communism, Nazism and Fascism?
 
In school, I was taught that fascism was not in fact right wing, but compared to American Government, it was very much left wing. Our history class taught that the Nazi party of Germany had a meeting with the Communist Party of Germany to discuss a number of things starting on what slogans would be and what category they would say they were. Fascists were very much left wing, but they looked like right wing extremists compared to the communists, so they decided to call the communists left wing and call the fascists right wing to avoid confusion.
Fascism is left wing because you cannot own a business or large home if you don't toe the line that the ruling party draws.. If you don't toe the line, they take your business and give it to someone who will. It is far right of either communism or socialism in that it allows private property at all. In socialism the government owns all the business and makes sure that everyone is paid equally, and in communism the gov't owns everything and makes sure that everyone has everything they need.
So fascism is far right of communism but still pretty far left of American conservatism. It's somewhere in the middle.

When considering whether or not fascism is right-wing, it's important to remember the ideals of communism, which is an extreme left-wing ideology.

Communism espouses a government that uses its power to enforce a population without economic classes by having a democratic government control all the means of production and resources to be allocated to the population according to needs. By doing away with economic inequalities, inequalities in other areas, such as class, race,and gender, will be done away with. In this way, the whole world may enjoy total equality with each other. This makes the ideals of communism an extremely inclusive ideology.

Fascism, on the other hand, espouses different ideologies. Fascism uses government power so that those in control of government may dictate to others. The reason for this is because only by having a strong government that mandates unity can a nation be strong enough to act, especially against national enemies. Fascism also holds that the population of their nation is of more importance than the populations of other nations. This makes fascism an extremely exclusive ideology. Fascism also tends to hold that others may be exploited for the benefit of that nation.

Those are the main differences between communism and fascism that characterizes communism as left-wing and fascism as right-wing.

Now, both ideologies are statist. But those two ideologies have different goals in how state power should be used.

Also, when people think "communist" they tend to think of Leninist and Stalinist communism, which is much closer to fascism because they were authoritarian dictators who used government power for their own ends and used it to exploit others. This is why most people who advocate the original ideals of communism - economic equality through a democratic government - often label themselves as socialists, especially democratic socialists, in order to make the distinction clear.
 
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