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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
Your facts are wrong and your analysis is wrong. And then you go back to ad hominems.

???

No I don't. There was the intial one...then my apology...and then none subsequent.

Quote them.

Also see Burleigh, M. The Third Reich: A New History (New York, Hill and Wang, 2000) pp 131-133.


A direct quote woiuld have been helpful, and is de riguer on forums like this one. Nevertheless, I did some searching, read some precises and reviews and an interview. I didn't find what you imply I would (I"m not saying it's not there...I don't know, because you don't offer me direct evidence.) However, I did discover this in one review of the book you cite:

In the Third Reich, as he makes clear in a chapter entitled '' 'Miss Becker, Your Head Is at Stake, Your Head Is Wobbling,' ''Nazi terror from above and the demise of the rule of law started just a few days after Hitler's assumption of power in January 1933. Thenceforth the penalties of opposition became higher and higher. In the first nine months alone, at least 100,000 people, most of them leftist Germans, were thrown into hastily erected concentration camps. Others ended up in ordinary prisons and many died. Countless more were roughed up by rampaging brownshirts in broad daylight or taken into police custody on trumped-up political charges.

This rather contradicts what you said earlier..and it is derived from your source.

It is essential to understand this about the Nazis because it explains so much. Attempting to airbrush this out of history as left leaning historians have done is a crime against the truth.

Again, if you're claiming (and you are) that almost the entire scholarly history of fascism going back for many decades is false...worse, a "crime against the truth" (and this includes the work of the conservative Raul Hilberg, universally deemed "the father of Holocaust Studies")...it's a n enormous claim.

You have to provide substantial evidence and serious analysis for such a monumental declaration.


What makes me say that fascism is primarily leftist is its reliance on centralized state power, with all hands turned to the service of the state and the state taking care of everyone's needs, controlling everything. And one other thing which is now associated exclusively with the left these days, which is identity politics.


As I pointed out--and which no one has as of yet refuted--right-wing regimes do manifest in centralized state power; Pinochet, as I mentioned, was only able to adhere to the "Washington consensus"--that is, the dictates of his Master--through extreme centralized power. (Murder, torture, state terror are as extreme as statist power can get.) His sometimes lauded (I still can't believe it) adherence to "free market values" was in fact the opposite, as he used state terror and murder to retain the power of the rich elites.

The same is true for other rightist regimes...Indonesia's Suharto, for example, another great favourite of the West, and responsible for probably more killings than Saddam Hussein.

The examples are legion.

As for identity politics: the identity politics of the contemporary Left centre around race, gender, and sexual identity...but are never designed as agencies of superiority, as with the fascists' "identity politics" of race and nation.

In fact, this is yet another way in which they veer much closer to the right, as the myth demands continual fear and suspicion of the Foeign Other, with militarism deemed the primary way to solve such threats, whether real or imagined.
 
???

No I don't. There was the intial one...then my apology...and then none subsequent.

Quote them.

With no foundation whatsoever, you accuse me of not having read any scholarship on the Nazis. Why do you make this assumption? Because you think that if I had read it I wouldn't dare challenge it? How silly. What is there to say about analysis that doesn't comport with the facts? These are supposedly scholars, so where is the scholarship? I read these guys and find gaps about which there are no explanations. Either they are ignorant or, like Noam Chomsky, they are relying on the ignorance of their readers.

So most of those scholars are remarkably silent on the points I'm making. Like Chomsky, they simply leave out half of the important facts. What more is there to say except, "what about this?" and, "what about this?", and, "what about this?" Most of the time it is simply the characterization of Nazis as right wing without evidence or explanation, which, in the face of the contrary facts I've laid out, is like fingernails on a blackboard. Then there is the attempt to minimize facts that are obviously central to who the Nazis were. Yes, a few conservatives joined them, so all they will talk about is the fact that conservatives joined the Nazis, leaving out the origin of most of the members of that party, how the Nazis started, how they regarded themselves, and what they thought was important. Yes, capitalists cooperated with the Nazis, and so this is all the "scholars" talk about, as if it was capitalists directing the Nazis rather than the other way around, leaving out the fate that awaited the capitalist who refused to cooperate. Then there is the attempt to conflate left wing authoritarians with right wing authoritarians, as if it is nationalism, militarism, and racism that are the only important things about the Nazis.

A direct quote woiuld have been helpful, and is de riguer on forums like this one. Nevertheless, I did some searching, read some precises and reviews and an interview. I didn't find what you imply I would (I"m not saying it's not there...I don't know, because you don't offer me direct evidence.) However, I did discover this in one review of the book you cite:

You want me to reproduce 2 pages of text from the book? I can reproduce this much:

The author relates a story written by Patrick Fermor, a British lad traveling in Europe. Having been invited to crash at a German worker's apartment, Fermor found it stuffed with Hitleriana:

The walls were covered with flags, photographs, posters, slogans, and emblems. His SA uniforms hung neatly ironed on a hanger ... When I said that it must be rather claustrophobic with all that stuff on the walls he laughed and sat down on the bed and said: "Mensch! You should have seen it last year! You would have laughed! Then it was all red flags, stars, hammers, sickles, pictures of Lenin and Stalin and Workers of the World Unite! ... then, suddenly when Hitler came to power, I understood it was all nonsense and lies. I realized Adolf was the man for me. All of a sudden!" He snapped his fingers in the air. "And here I am!" ... Had a lot of people done the same, then? "Millions! I tell you. I was astonished how easily they all changed sides!"
(from the previously cited book)

The argument is straightforward: The claim is made that the Nazis are primarily right wing, yet most of their domestic policies outside of the nationalism, racism, and militarism (all of which Stalin shared to some extent) were not right wing at all but left wing. And these were serious policies that they followed through with all the while that they were in power. Nazis were drawn primarily from German leftists, but that doesn't mean that they didn't suppress other leftists like the communists who didn't join them. (And the reason for that is that the communists were anti-nationalist in Germany and undermined the war effort in WWI. Hitler despised them for that.) The only German right wingers on the scene, the capitalists and aristocrats, were well out of power and those useful to the Nazis were given the choice of cooperating or being hanged in Berlin. Aristocrats had already been stripped of their special privileges, and they further lost even the claim to any kind of prestige in German society under the Nazis. The same leveling of classes was also true vis a vis the capitalists.
 
No im not. Im saying capitalism leads to wealth in the hands of the few then those wealthy will use state forces to protect their wealth via corporatism.

That wouldn't be possible if the state didn't have favors to sell in the first place. Thus, it is statism that is the problem. In a capitalist system the state doesn't have favors to sell.
 
Since the racism came as much from the German left as from anywhere I reject the idea that that is a right wing idea.
So the idea of individual freedom, the removal of judgement of a human based on race, the liberating of a human, is not from liberal ideology....but from conservative/authoritarian structures?

Could you back up your claim in any way?

What makes me say that fascism is primarily leftist is its reliance on centralized state power, with all hands turned to the service of the state and the state taking care of everyone's needs, controlling everything. And one other thing which is now associated exclusively with the left these days, which is identity politics.

"Hitler and his associates claimed that the nation, or the people, was primary, and that the state was its instrument"
C. Cohen "Communism, Fascism and Democracy" p. 365
 
The walls were covered with flags, photographs, posters, slogans, and emblems. His SA uniforms hung neatly ironed on a hanger ... When I said that it must be rather claustrophobic with all that stuff on the walls he laughed and sat down on the bed and said: "Mensch! You should have seen it last year! You would have laughed! Then it was all red flags, stars, hammers, sickles, pictures of Lenin and Stalin and Workers of the World Unite! ... then, suddenly when Hitler came to power, I understood it was all nonsense and lies. I realized Adolf was the man for me. All of a sudden!" He snapped his fingers in the air. "And here I am!" ... Had a lot of people done the same, then? "Millions! I tell you. I was astonished how easily they all changed sides!"

Ah this explains a lot, this was cited in the neocon Jonah Goldberg's screed "Liberal Fascism". You decided to use the original citation rather than where you really read it. Well done, enough said.
 
Also see Burleigh, M. The Third Reich: A New History (New York, Hill and Wang, 2000)
Uh-huh, how about pp 186? Where he talks about the SD ( Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS), the intel arm of the SA.....?

Burleigh.jpg
 
So the idea of individual freedom, the removal of judgement of a human based on race, the liberating of a human, is not from liberal ideology....but from conservative/authoritarian structures?

Could you back up your claim in any way?

No, I'm not claiming that. Just because the left in Germany (and America) was racist in the 1920s and '30s doesn't mean conservatives were not. Nor does the left historically have any exclusive claim on the idea that people should not be judged by race. Far from it.

"Hitler and his associates claimed that the nation, or the people, was primary, and that the state was its instrument"
C. Cohen "Communism, Fascism and Democracy" p. 365

How does this differ from what leftists say about the state? Seems to me to be similar to the Marxist "will of the people."
 
Ah this explains a lot, this was cited in the neocon Jonah Goldberg's screed "Liberal Fascism". You decided to use the original citation rather than where you really read it. Well done, enough said.

This is interesting. How does the fact that Goldberg cited the quote change its meaning?
 
Uh-huh, how about pp 186? Where he talks about the SD ( Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS), the intel arm of the SA.....?

View attachment 67148028

Does this mean Burleigh was just kidding when he indicated that a lot of the Nazi party came from the German left? Do you deny that, in fact, most of the members of the Nazi Party came from the German left?

I take the quote you so painstakingly copied to mean that they were attracted by the rightist elements of the Nazi Party, particularly, I guess, the authoritarianism and nationalism. As I've already alluded to, this puts the Nazis more to the right than communists, but that doesn't mean that the Nazis are on the right. Taking everything into account this is clearly not the case.
 
On a left / right scale - an economics scale - fascism is centrist.

On an authoritarian / libertarian scale, fascist states are extremely authoritarian.

Being authoritarian does not make a government rightist. Stalinist USSR was also extremely authoritarian, and I defy anyone to tell me it was not representative of the extreme economic left...
 
Only in America would the question even be asked. Such is the power of the rightwing propaganda machine.

There's a German comedian, talking about the (notoriously rightwng) British Daily Mail, and how often they crowbar in a reference to WW2 to completely unrelated subjects, even today. His throwaway line was that the Daily Mail is more fascist than the Nazis at their worst!
 
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No, I'm not claiming that. Just because the left in Germany (and America) was racist in the 1920s and '30s doesn't mean conservatives were not.
Again, another baseless claim.

Nor does the left historically have any exclusive claim on the idea that people should not be judged by race. Far from it.
Filler, all fluff.



How does this differ from what leftists say about the state? Seems to me to be similar to the Marxist "will of the people."
LOL...first you claim that the fascist/left say:

"is its reliance on centralized state power, with all hands turned to the service of the state and the state taking care of everyone's needs, controlling everything."

Which is the people serving the state......but that is not how NAZI propaganda framed the state/volk relation, they viewed the state serving the people, the opposite of what you thought......which you now say IS a "leftist" viewpoint, coming full circle but without the "fascist" connotation.

You have no idea what any of ideologies actually said, you just make it up as you go along.
 
Only in America would the question even be asked.

The popular Political Compass quiz is made by some (fairly obviously left-leaning) British dudes.

Guess where they put Hitler? :p (Hint: it's exactly where I said he was.)
 
This is interesting. How does the fact that Goldberg cited the quote change its meaning?
It doesn't change the meaning of the single point anecdote, it just highlights were you get your references. You view of poli-sci is as jumbled as Goldberg's.
 
Nazi's, socialists, communists...all collectivists.
You are a serf of the state.
 
Does this mean Burleigh was just kidding when he indicated that a lot of the Nazi party came from the German left? Do you deny that, in fact, most of the members of the Nazi Party came from the German left?
The German left, the left socialists (Weimar SPD) and Communists (KDP:Thälmann) were battling NAZI's in the Berlin streets in 1932.
I suppose you are referencing your Goldberg cited politically shallow "young German", but as I showed, the high members of the NAZI inteligencia were right wing, as was the Party.

I take the quote you so painstakingly copied to mean that they were attracted by the rightist elements of the Nazi Party, particularly, I guess, the authoritarianism and nationalism. As I've already alluded to, this puts the Nazis more to the right than communists, but that doesn't mean that the Nazis are on the right. Taking everything into account this is clearly not the case.
So let's review, the NAZI intelligentsia was rightist, the Party was authoritarian, nationalistic, anticommunist, extremely racist.....but that doesn't make the NAZI's rightist?

LOL....yup...Goldberg!
 
Again, another baseless claim.

You think that progressives in the 1930s were not racist? How ignorant. Your self image as a progressive is based on your own self deception. Read something of the history of your own ideology.

Filler. All Fluff

No, bluster on your part.

LOL...first you claim that the fascist/left say:

"is its reliance on centralized state power, with all hands turned to the service of the state and the state taking care of everyone's needs, controlling everything."

Which is the people serving the state......but that is not how NAZI propaganda framed the state/volk relation, they viewed the state serving the people, the opposite of what you thought......which you now say IS a "leftist" viewpoint, coming full circle but without the "fascist" connotation.

You have no idea what any of ideologies actually said, you just make it up as you go along.

No, you are deeply ignorant of the history here. With the fascists it went both ways -- the state serving the people and the people serving the state. Is this not the leftist ideal? Of course it is. It is essentially leftist.

You are attempting to disrupt this thread and render it useless to other readers with your comments made in bad faith.
 
The German left, the left socialists (Weimar SPD) and Communists (KDP:Thälmann) were battling NAZI's in the Berlin streets in 1932.
I suppose you are referencing your Goldberg cited politically shallow "young German", but as I showed, the high members of the NAZI inteligencia were right wing, as was the Party.

More bad faith on your part. Instead of dealing with the facts you want to demonize Goldberg, a Jew. How telling.

Was Hitler, who gravitated to the German Workers Party, right wing? Was Hitler right wing when he called for a socialist program as one of the very first political agendas he subscribed to? How prescient of him to come up with this just to attract leftists to his cause! Except, of course, he demonstrated allegiance to this socialist agenda all through his tenure as Nazi party leader, put that agenda into effect, and won the hearts of ethnic Germans until the very end as a result.

So let's review, the NAZI intelligentsia was rightist, the Party was authoritarian, nationalistic, anticommunist, extremely racist.....but that doesn't make the NAZI's rightist?

No, as a matter of fact, it does not. Authoritarianism and nationalism was shared by the Stalinists. So was racism. "Anticommunism" is, of course, nothing more than a tautology. The Nazis and the Communists were in competition for members from the same group of leftists.
 
More bad faith on your part. Instead of dealing with the facts you want to demonize Goldberg, a Jew. How telling.
I was demonizing his Jewishness? Really? And I am operating on bad faith? Wow, take a look in the mirror...go ahead, I'll wait.

Was Hitler, who gravitated to the German Workers Party, right wing? Was Hitler right wing when he called for a socialist program as one of the very first political agendas he subscribed to? How prescient of him to come up with this just to attract leftists to his cause! Except, of course, he demonstrated allegiance to this socialist agenda all through his tenure as Nazi party leader, put that agenda into effect, and won the hearts of ethnic Germans until the very end as a result.
Was Hitler right wing? That has been answered throughout this thread, the quote from Burleigh applies to Hitler as well as the rest of SA intelligentsia.



No, as a matter of fact, it does not. Authoritarianism and nationalism was shared by the Stalinists.
And as I pointed out before, Stalin was seen as the Red Fascist, he broke far from Marx.



So was racism.
All you are doing is reducing everything into meaninglessness. Everyone has noses, including fascists. I was not making it the determinate of fascism, The US south is not fascist....but they are right wing, and racism is a general characteristic of rw/authoritarianism.


"Anticommunism" is, of course, nothing more than a tautology.
To what? Of what?
The Nazis and the Communists were in competition for members from the same group of leftists.
The GOP and Dems are in competition for the same US voters....so?
 
You think that progressives in the 1930s were not racist? How ignorant. Your self image as a progressive is based on your own self deception. Read something of the history of your own ideology.
Oh...I see....if a small number of members hold racist views.....then the "ideology" becomes racist, it is a bottom up, guilt by association thingy.



No, bluster on your part.
Yes, conservative/authoritarian ideology is responsible for individual liberties! Of course!



No, you are deeply ignorant of the history here. With the fascists it went both ways -- the state serving the people and the people serving the state.
You are talking out of both sides of your mouth, you have no idea what their ideology was.

Is this not the leftist ideal?
You can make it anything you want since it has no meaning, you made it that way.
Of course it is. It is essentially leftist.
Again, you made it meaningless.

You are attempting to disrupt this thread and render it useless to other readers with your comments made in bad faith.
Tell me again, the guy who is a liberal, that I'm a racist.
 
You think that progressives in the 1930s were not racist? How ignorant. Your self image as a progressive is based on your own self deception. Read something of the history of your own ideology.

I concur.

President Woodward Wilson was a progressive and an extreme racist to the max.


Was Theodore Roosevelt, also a progressive a racist ? By the true definition not the PC definition, yes. Teddy Roosevelt was a American nationalist. But he despised those those using hyphenating - Americans. But he did looked upon non Europeans as being inferior.


But who are the biggest racist ? The political left. Socialist use minorities as pawns to advance their political agenda. Liberal Democrats believe that blacks and Latinos are inferior and aren't capable to compete in America and have to come under as being a protected group and given special protections, free stuff and special privileges (affirmative action) That sounds like racism.


If you were to list all of the avowed racist of today and in the past, the vast majority are or were on the political left. The KKK was the militant arm of the Democrat Party for a hundred years. Just the political left telling minorities that they need special privileges and protections is racist.

I know to many black Americans and Americans of Mexican decent who are very successful and never used their race or ethnicity or affirmative action policies to be successful.

In reality the political left holds down the minority from succeeding in America because the Democrat Party depends on poverty to exist.
 
I concur.

President Woodward Wilson was a progressive and an extreme racist to the max.


Was Theodore Roosevelt, also a progressive a racist ? By the true definition not the PC definition, yes. Teddy Roosevelt was a American nationalist. But he despised those those using hyphenating - Americans. But he did looked upon non Europeans as being inferior.


But who are the biggest racist ? The political left. Socialist use minorities as pawns to advance their political agenda. Liberal Democrats believe that blacks and Latinos are inferior and aren't capable to compete in America and have to come under as being a protected group and given special protections, free stuff and special privileges (affirmative action) That sounds like racism.


If you were to list all of the avowed racist of today and in the past, the vast majority are or were on the political left. The KKK was the militant arm of the Democrat Party for a hundred years. Just the political left telling minorities that they need special privileges and protections is racist.

I know to many black Americans and Americans of Mexican decent who are very successful and never used their race or ethnicity or affirmative action policies to be successful.

In reality the political left holds down the minority from succeeding in America because the Democrat Party depends on poverty to exist.
Premise A is a B
Premise A is also a C
Conclusion Therefore, all Bs are Cs
 
Low information types tend to confuse Fascism with Mercantilism and Militarism.

Fascism is a loosely defined political philosophy, bu it is definitely a Collectivist, and therefore Left Wing.
 
Premise A is a B
Premise A is also a C
Conclusion Therefore, all Bs are Cs

A + B + C = LSD mind warps or permanent brain damage.

Evidence seems to weigh that you have been reading to many "free" rags you find in front of Star Bucks or scattered on the street corners of urban America that are nothing but liberal bias propaganda that dumbs down those who read them. There are exceptions like the "L.A. Weekly " who have some excellent investigative reporters.
 
Oh...I see....if a small number of members hold racist views.....then the "ideology" becomes racist, it is a bottom up, guilt by association thingy.

No, they all believed the same things. And it wasn't by half measures -- they were full throated, committed racists. They really were racists in the precise and proper use of the term, and in formulating public policy they were true to their principles.

Where to start?

How about Woodrow Wilson?

He shared the conviction, dominant among Ivy League progressives, that blacks were inferior to whites. In government, he supported segregation of the civil service, with blacks working in menial jobs. He argued strongly for the policy, and it wasn't until the end of WWII that it was ended. Like many progressives, Wilson was an adherent of "scientific racism" and eugenics.

Thus perhaps the most systematic expression of progressive racism was in the eugenics movement which was all the rage among progressives from 1890 to the 1930s.

Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community. By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an academic institution, was established with money from the Carnegie Institute for the purpose of promoting eugenics. The Rockefeller Foundation contributed support.

Margaret Sanger, Theodore Roosevelt, J. Kellog, HG Wells, Woodrow Wilson, Clarence Darrow, Frank Babbott, Charles Davenport, Stanford President David Jordan, among others, were American progressives who promoted eugenics.

And we are talking here of a eugenics that sanctions forced sterilizations, euthanasia, etc., to remove "undesirable" blood lines from the gene pool.

It is an interesting and little known twist of history that Nazi Germany got their ideas about how to enforce racial purity from American eugenicists, not the other way around. German race laws of the 1930s were based on statutes then in force in California.

Eugenics and American social history, 1880-1950. [Genome. 1989] - PubMed - NCBI

History News Network

Eugenics in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Woodrow Wilson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Progressive Racism | National Review Online
 
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