Recently, while musing on just why the Nazis forgot to flatten the Vatican ( they didn't need to cuz it was flattened spiritually already, and In On It) it occurred to me the stunt Hitler pulled. In a magical act of political prestidigitation, he linked left-leaning socialism to far right-wing ideology. We're still talking about it.
No one in the 1920s or 1930s would have thought the Nazis were "left wing." It is certainly true that both the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis were inspired by Marxism (class struggle) while reassigning the "classes" from purely economic to economic-social-racial. But given that we are talking about continentals, not Anglo-Americans, we must understand the difference between left-right in the Anglosphere and on the continent. On the continent, The left represented revolution, continual revolution, in many cases, revolution that eats its own, as you can see in the French Revolution and the Soviets under Lenin and Stalin. The right represents tradition, aristocracy/monarchy, and stasis. In the Anglosphere, the left represented a softer form of Marxism, based around unions, universal suffrage, feminism, etc.; whereas the right represented Burkean gradual reform while respecting institutions, in both the US and UK, the respective constitutions and the rights respected therein.
Individual rights, self-government ("democracy"), federalism, had no home outside of Switzerland on the continent. In Germany, in particular, the Weimar Republic was held in contempt by practically everyone, like the US ands UK governments are today, and for the same reasons. In Germany, beginning at the end of the war when a communist takeover of Bavaria was only barely overturned--not to mention the communist takeover of Hungary that was only thwarted by a Romanian invasion--the one question on every person's mind was whether communism was going to sweep through the continent.
On the one side were the communists, whether acting independently or as agents of Moscow. They agitated, infiltrated, and acted violently in the streets. The communists wanted revolution, continuous revolution. They wanted to tear everything down in the name of the proletariat. Read first-hand accounts of what they did in Saint Petersburg and Moscow (not to mention Ukraine and the Volga region) when they took over. Even though the European press was just as much on the side of the communists in the 20s and 30s as our modern press is on the side of the neo-communists, word from refugees from Russia leaked out, and it terrified everyone in Europe who were not communists or their patsies. The communists were on the LEFT since they wanted revolution.
In the middle was the corrupt and inept Weimar government, which did not have any civilizational confidence enough to put down the simmering communist agitation, and so did nothing, just as our current governments do nothing.
Standing for tradition, unity, and anti-communism were the Nazis, who fought the communists in the streets to a standstill. It's not a coincidence that no group who wishes to fight the neo-communists in the streets in modern America or Britain is allowed to form. Tommy Robinson (for all his flaws) had his life ruined by trying to fight back, as did the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers in the US. Anyone who fights communists MUST BE NAZIs according to the modern media because the only group who did in fact fight the communists in Weimar Germany were the Nazis. The Nazis stood for tradition, the German nation, and a strong Kaiser-like figure, not the discredited monarchy, but a new Führer of the people. Their economic principles were littered with Marxism, but the fight WAS NOT ECONOMIC in nature. Just like today's fight is not economic in nature. Tell me the difference in economic policy between Labour and Tory, between Republican and Democrat. There is none. Back in the 20s and 30s both the communists and the Nazis wanted the state to be in control of the economy (against the bourgeoisie for the communists; against the Jews for the Nazis). This similarity was not definitive. What was definitive was the political program: the communists wanted to overthrow everything in European civilization and the Nazis wanted to protect their idealized fanciful view of German civilization. The Nazis were thus ON THE RIGHT.
If you are to look at every person or group labeled "fascist" over the last century, from Black Shirts of Mussolini to Donald Trump, the one thing they all had in common (and it is the only thing) is that they were anti-communist. The term "fascist" now does not mean the political program Mussolini laid out in his 1932 tract "The Doctrine of Fascism", but simply a shorthand for anyone who fights back against communists (or now neo-communists). This is a great shorthand because it defines right and left in both the 1920s and 1930s as well as the 2020s and 2030s. Anyone supporting the communists is on the left. Anyone opposing the communists and fighting them is on the right.
So let's finally put to rest this ahistorical nonsense that the Nazis were leftists. They were not.
Thanks for the long and very interesting reply Ed. I have no problem with 90% of that. Your awareness of the history is obvious, and you put it forward very persuasively. I don't dispute anything you say on the difference between Continental Europe and the Anglosphere (see my other article on English Liberty where I say exactly what you are saying here).
BUT I dispute the conclusion you reach from all this evidence that you know just as well as me, if not better. Because the Nazi support for tradition against Communism was a front, a lie. They were a radical revolutionary movement, not traditionalists. And you show this yourself-they wanted a NEW type of Great Leader, not a monarchical restoration. Both their economic accommodation of the established interests of the business class (the deal they did with business of the IG Farben types) and their nationalist assumption of a war for Germany against Communists are poor proofs of rightwing credentials. They SOLD themselves as defenders of Germany, and Europe, from Communism. It doesn't mean they actually were defenders of tradition or love of nation, does it? Any more than the reasons NATO gives for its continued existence now are real or a Free World alignment against Putin is real. Like true Marxists, the Nazis would say anything to get and keep total power. The revolutionary intent and the focus on absolute power and the Big State and the radical reordering of society and the construction of a New Man and the focus on technology and modernity and building a utopian future all cohere with Marxist leftism in the same way that Globalism does, just as Globalist support for race theories repeats the Nazi innovation of Communist aims through race rhetoric.
There's nothing ahistorical about realizing that there was far more SOCIALISM than NATIONALISM in National Socialism. As I discuss in the article, the hatred between Nazis and Soviets, between them and Communists, was real, but their similarities in both aims and methods were far MORE real. This is true even though many Nazis genuinely swallowed the Germanic racial mysticism they put in the cocktail.
It's certainly true that the Nazis were thoroughgoing liars about almost everything in their program. They claimed to be German nationalists, but they were in fact German imperialists. They claimed to represent tradition, but were in fact totalitarian revolutionaries who imposed a new Hitlerian system which was sold as a return to German-ness, but was more of a cult of personality with more in common with Stalin than the Kaiser or the Holy Roman Emperor. This is all true. But the one thing that is definitive to me is the fact that everyone back then was some form of "socialist", and it was the professed German nationalism and anti-communism that made everyone in Europe at the time believe the Nazis were a party of the right. The fact that in the end the Hitler dictatorship bore a striking resemblance to the Stalin dictatorship did not change any minds at the time. If the terms "right" and "left" are to mean anything at all, we should at least respect the judgement of the people at the time and not try to impose our anachronistic conceptual frameworks on them.
Insightful article! I've always considered myself to be a right wing nationalist in the proper definition of these terms.
Conservatives vs Leftists
How does demand for a small state differ from the north African Christians demand for non-violence against bloodthirsty Islam? These ancient Christians when faced with conversion or death lost because they wouldn't counter with equal violence.
How do peaceful conservatives defeat the violent left? Voting? There's no way to vote our way out of tyranny. Mass disobedience? I think the answer lies here but with 70% getting vaxxed and probably equal numbers submitting to wearing surgical masks, where are the men capable of disobedience?
Fortunately we know that Christianity was capable of evolving with Europe ultimately repelling the Muslim invasion. Are conservatives capable of evolving? The only thing which can stop a madman with a gun is a good man with a gun, but the good man must understand what's at stake and be willing to be as ruthlessly violent as the madman. Right now I don't see conservatives able to effectually counter the left.
Maybe the top 100 or so globalist leaders are vulnerable and if these are dealt with war, famine and another Dark Age could be avoided?
You are right, I think. The mainstream conservatives don't have the will to do good anymore, or the wisdom to see the extent of the threat and that it requires extreme response. The official Right is utterly compromised, corrupt, weak and useless. That's why populism is here.
I think money is the vital area, control of State money, support of billionaires who can be turned to the good. The other side converted and seduced these people and that is ultimately how they captured society. But it can be done in reverse. And the template is there, it goes back much further than the leftist march through the institutions. It's what turned Christianity from an obscure Jewish sect to the dominant religion of the western world. Convert the ruling class, and they will impose their beliefs on everyone else.
I fear that the amoral ends-justfy-the-means globalists will ultimately unleash a mass round up/assassination of the most effective conservatives, think Andrew Breitbart times tens of thousands. The technological and legal framework is already here. Just as it was completely legal for the national socialists to detain Jews, New York state has just passed a law making it legal for government thugs to break down your door, detain you indefinitely without legal recourse and force any medical treatment onto you if they deem you a threat to public health as defined by them. Obviously Trump voters and gun owners are a threat to public health and will need to be placed on ventilators and administered Remdesivir or whatever the Zyklon-B equivalent is.
I have to travel to NY on business at some point and I fear getting in and out before this begins, like a Jew visiting Hitler's Germany.
The right has no plans to counter this which is just one manufactured crisis away from becoming reality.
There is. He’s a very sad case. Sounds just like Robert Reich these days. Establishment Republicans of his type really were exposed as worthless fakes by Trump, and it seems to have completely broken them mentally.
While the NAZI Party appeared to be Left Wing, you can't go by appearances.
Jack boots can march from either direction. They have the same goal in mind: subjugation of the governed. They take different paths to that goal though. A Left Wing dominates through governance (The USSR, China, North Korea, Etc.) while the Right Wing dominates using a Dictator (Duvalier, Somoza, Marcos, Suharto, Mobutu, Peron, etc.)
Adolf Hitler sneered at the concept of Marxist Class Warfare. He only needed the people of Germany for two things: To take over Germany and then fight in a war he started. Adolf Hitler had no Junta, Ruling Council, Troika or Committee. Had he been on the Left, he would have thrown in with the Communists, not kicked them out of governance and then attacked eastwards under Operation Barbarossa.
Adolf Hitler also received support from German Gentry; the sorts that Stalin and Mao would have had shot for profiteering.
Lastly, the NAZI Party was used to game Germany's Democracy (Proportional Representation). The more general votes you received, the bigger percentage of seats you would gain in the Reichstag. To facilitate this, you would need to increase the votes for your party or decrease the votes for other parties. Thus, the NAZI Party sought to appeal to as many people as possible (Nationalists, Socialists, and Workers). The Sturmabteilung were around to attack opposition members, threaten people at the polls and disrupt opposition meetings)
This just isn’t true. There are two possible extremes of the Right. Absolutist monarchy could be justified to some extent by rightwing thinking. But the more natural extreme of the Right is extreme Libertarianism. Rightwing thinking demands a small State, not an over mighty one.
Those who want absolute State power unless it’s monarchical can’t be rightwing, by definition. They contradict a core rightist principle. It’s a pretty uncomfortable fit even with the element of tradition and identity gained by monarchism.
As for Hitler’s accommodation with business interests. That’s the same as the accommodation Mussolini made with Italian fascism and corporatism. The Party could still destroy any capitalist individual if they needed to. The company still submitted to the State or ceased to exist. The company still becomes an extension of the State. And that same accommodation is perfectly possible in a Communist regime-that’s what China has done. It’s what wokeness has done with ESG and with Big Tech and Big Pharma working hand in globe with the Democrats. State power and corporate power in alliance, but essentially within a Marxist One Party State.
Hitler prefigured the Woke and CRT combination of race and Communism. Only he did it with Jews instead of whites. But all the language and logic is the same, and it’s all Communist. He also prefigured the Chinese Communist model of State and Business alliance.
What we call today “right wing” is really derived from classic liberalism. The words left wing and right wing come from the National Assembly in France. The “progressive” classic liberals sat on the left wing. They believed in individual responsibility, smaller government, more “laissez faire policies”. They were generally opposed to collectivism except where absolutely necessary. The aristocracy and Royalty sat on the right wing. They were authoritarian, and thought that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were incapable of properly governing the state. One of the Royals, I think it was Louis XVI, said: “L’état? C’est moi”. This is why the terms “left wing” and “right wing” are no longer meaningful. A classic liberal today, an individualist, is classified as “right wing”. The authoritarian collectivists, Nazis, Communists and socialists have stolen the term “left wing”, but in fact, in denying true democracy and diversity of thought, are like the authoritarian right wing of the 18th century and earlier.
Yes, this is essentially why in recent years we have seen this shift where the ‘left’ abandon everything they once claimed defined them. The modern left are the parties of existing privilege, elitist anti democratic feeling, hatred of the working class, Big Business, censorship etc. BUT they retain revolutionary zeal for radical social change in everything that deepens rather than lessens their power. Essentially the Left took on everything they had claimed was rightwing as soon as they successfully became the Establishment, and their social policy and racial policy had to become ever more extremist/radical to disguise that. Conservatives are now a underclass and the ones with no power, which is why they genuinely align today with the working class (although I would say they often did more than the Left does even when the Right was the Establishment).
We can go too far in saying the terms are meaningless. The British Right abandoned monarchical absolutism when the French did not and had always had an idea of limits on royal power from Anglo-Saxon times which was unknown in most of Europe. Even the incredibly authoritarian Normans gradually grew to acknowledge some sense of ‘English liberty’. That was what was truly unique about the Anglosphere, the long inheritance of an idea of liberty that meant that such a thing as ‘conservative revolution extending rights’ was possible. That’s what the US Revolution was-a reclaiming of ancient liberty. And that’s why the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the US Revolution were not followed by a Terror as was the French Revolution. The thing reclaimed also restricted the people claiming it. Nothing restricts that way in nations with no deep ancestral ideas of liberty to draw on.
The forgetting of the idea of liberty as an ancestral thing, as the specifically Anglo gift to the world, is one of the things that allows woke leaderships in places like the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand to now act like Chinese Communists without any hint of shame in doing so.
Ps all this is further complicated by the existence of a controlled opposition or fake rightwing, which is fine with a giant State and anti national policies because they are personally enriching themselves from the resulting corruption. Fakeservatives confuse the labels even more than history does.
Right Wing focuses power in a single strong man or Dictator. Somoza, Duvalier, Marcos, Suharto; all of them were Right Wing. As I stated before, many of those bankrolling Hitler would have been shot by Communist/Marxists. Hitler did NOT support Class Warfare or any other tenets of The Communist Manifesto. He had no Ruling Council. Troika or Revolutionary Committee. If he is compared to Tito or Stalin or Chairman Mao or the North Korea Kim's, the differences are right there. Also... if Hitler was on the left, why did he kick out the Communists from the German government? Why also did he attack the Communists to the east?
I think you are confusing authoritarian collectivism with classic liberal individualism. The terms “left wing” and “right wing” are no longer meaningful. Hitler was opposed to Communism because he thought that it was internationalist, and he also thought that it was run by the Jews. Hitler also thought that the Jews were capitalist. Stalin also hated the Jews because he thought that they were capitalists at heart. Hitler’s socialism was nationalist, but it was still socialist. Reading “Mein Kampf” should clear this confusion up for you.
They are very imprecise terms today, and stem from the seating arrangements of the French Revolutionary National Assembly. Everything you say here is true except I think the terms still have some meaning and ultimately Hitler’s nationalism was fake-no real nationalist would wish a Gotterdamerung on his people for ‘failing him’.
Stalin was also a dictator. There was a pretence of a ruling council or Troika, but as we saw with the example he made of Trotsky, it wasn’t good for one’s health to oppose Stalin.
My goodness, such a long and thoughtful piece. You must not sleep.
Funnily enough I just had to stay up till 3.30 am in order to do a US interview! 😂
Recently, while musing on just why the Nazis forgot to flatten the Vatican ( they didn't need to cuz it was flattened spiritually already, and In On It) it occurred to me the stunt Hitler pulled. In a magical act of political prestidigitation, he linked left-leaning socialism to far right-wing ideology. We're still talking about it.
Excellent writeup on that topic!
🇨🇦
Thanks very much. Yes, in some ways the churches got in on this central lie even quicker than mainstream politicians and businessmen did.
Wow, that was great. Beautifully written.
Thanks, glad you liked it. 😀
No one in the 1920s or 1930s would have thought the Nazis were "left wing." It is certainly true that both the Italian Fascists and the German Nazis were inspired by Marxism (class struggle) while reassigning the "classes" from purely economic to economic-social-racial. But given that we are talking about continentals, not Anglo-Americans, we must understand the difference between left-right in the Anglosphere and on the continent. On the continent, The left represented revolution, continual revolution, in many cases, revolution that eats its own, as you can see in the French Revolution and the Soviets under Lenin and Stalin. The right represents tradition, aristocracy/monarchy, and stasis. In the Anglosphere, the left represented a softer form of Marxism, based around unions, universal suffrage, feminism, etc.; whereas the right represented Burkean gradual reform while respecting institutions, in both the US and UK, the respective constitutions and the rights respected therein.
Individual rights, self-government ("democracy"), federalism, had no home outside of Switzerland on the continent. In Germany, in particular, the Weimar Republic was held in contempt by practically everyone, like the US ands UK governments are today, and for the same reasons. In Germany, beginning at the end of the war when a communist takeover of Bavaria was only barely overturned--not to mention the communist takeover of Hungary that was only thwarted by a Romanian invasion--the one question on every person's mind was whether communism was going to sweep through the continent.
On the one side were the communists, whether acting independently or as agents of Moscow. They agitated, infiltrated, and acted violently in the streets. The communists wanted revolution, continuous revolution. They wanted to tear everything down in the name of the proletariat. Read first-hand accounts of what they did in Saint Petersburg and Moscow (not to mention Ukraine and the Volga region) when they took over. Even though the European press was just as much on the side of the communists in the 20s and 30s as our modern press is on the side of the neo-communists, word from refugees from Russia leaked out, and it terrified everyone in Europe who were not communists or their patsies. The communists were on the LEFT since they wanted revolution.
In the middle was the corrupt and inept Weimar government, which did not have any civilizational confidence enough to put down the simmering communist agitation, and so did nothing, just as our current governments do nothing.
Standing for tradition, unity, and anti-communism were the Nazis, who fought the communists in the streets to a standstill. It's not a coincidence that no group who wishes to fight the neo-communists in the streets in modern America or Britain is allowed to form. Tommy Robinson (for all his flaws) had his life ruined by trying to fight back, as did the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers in the US. Anyone who fights communists MUST BE NAZIs according to the modern media because the only group who did in fact fight the communists in Weimar Germany were the Nazis. The Nazis stood for tradition, the German nation, and a strong Kaiser-like figure, not the discredited monarchy, but a new Führer of the people. Their economic principles were littered with Marxism, but the fight WAS NOT ECONOMIC in nature. Just like today's fight is not economic in nature. Tell me the difference in economic policy between Labour and Tory, between Republican and Democrat. There is none. Back in the 20s and 30s both the communists and the Nazis wanted the state to be in control of the economy (against the bourgeoisie for the communists; against the Jews for the Nazis). This similarity was not definitive. What was definitive was the political program: the communists wanted to overthrow everything in European civilization and the Nazis wanted to protect their idealized fanciful view of German civilization. The Nazis were thus ON THE RIGHT.
If you are to look at every person or group labeled "fascist" over the last century, from Black Shirts of Mussolini to Donald Trump, the one thing they all had in common (and it is the only thing) is that they were anti-communist. The term "fascist" now does not mean the political program Mussolini laid out in his 1932 tract "The Doctrine of Fascism", but simply a shorthand for anyone who fights back against communists (or now neo-communists). This is a great shorthand because it defines right and left in both the 1920s and 1930s as well as the 2020s and 2030s. Anyone supporting the communists is on the left. Anyone opposing the communists and fighting them is on the right.
So let's finally put to rest this ahistorical nonsense that the Nazis were leftists. They were not.
Thanks for the long and very interesting reply Ed. I have no problem with 90% of that. Your awareness of the history is obvious, and you put it forward very persuasively. I don't dispute anything you say on the difference between Continental Europe and the Anglosphere (see my other article on English Liberty where I say exactly what you are saying here).
BUT I dispute the conclusion you reach from all this evidence that you know just as well as me, if not better. Because the Nazi support for tradition against Communism was a front, a lie. They were a radical revolutionary movement, not traditionalists. And you show this yourself-they wanted a NEW type of Great Leader, not a monarchical restoration. Both their economic accommodation of the established interests of the business class (the deal they did with business of the IG Farben types) and their nationalist assumption of a war for Germany against Communists are poor proofs of rightwing credentials. They SOLD themselves as defenders of Germany, and Europe, from Communism. It doesn't mean they actually were defenders of tradition or love of nation, does it? Any more than the reasons NATO gives for its continued existence now are real or a Free World alignment against Putin is real. Like true Marxists, the Nazis would say anything to get and keep total power. The revolutionary intent and the focus on absolute power and the Big State and the radical reordering of society and the construction of a New Man and the focus on technology and modernity and building a utopian future all cohere with Marxist leftism in the same way that Globalism does, just as Globalist support for race theories repeats the Nazi innovation of Communist aims through race rhetoric.
There's nothing ahistorical about realizing that there was far more SOCIALISM than NATIONALISM in National Socialism. As I discuss in the article, the hatred between Nazis and Soviets, between them and Communists, was real, but their similarities in both aims and methods were far MORE real. This is true even though many Nazis genuinely swallowed the Germanic racial mysticism they put in the cocktail.
It's certainly true that the Nazis were thoroughgoing liars about almost everything in their program. They claimed to be German nationalists, but they were in fact German imperialists. They claimed to represent tradition, but were in fact totalitarian revolutionaries who imposed a new Hitlerian system which was sold as a return to German-ness, but was more of a cult of personality with more in common with Stalin than the Kaiser or the Holy Roman Emperor. This is all true. But the one thing that is definitive to me is the fact that everyone back then was some form of "socialist", and it was the professed German nationalism and anti-communism that made everyone in Europe at the time believe the Nazis were a party of the right. The fact that in the end the Hitler dictatorship bore a striking resemblance to the Stalin dictatorship did not change any minds at the time. If the terms "right" and "left" are to mean anything at all, we should at least respect the judgement of the people at the time and not try to impose our anachronistic conceptual frameworks on them.
Insightful article! I've always considered myself to be a right wing nationalist in the proper definition of these terms.
Conservatives vs Leftists
How does demand for a small state differ from the north African Christians demand for non-violence against bloodthirsty Islam? These ancient Christians when faced with conversion or death lost because they wouldn't counter with equal violence.
How do peaceful conservatives defeat the violent left? Voting? There's no way to vote our way out of tyranny. Mass disobedience? I think the answer lies here but with 70% getting vaxxed and probably equal numbers submitting to wearing surgical masks, where are the men capable of disobedience?
Fortunately we know that Christianity was capable of evolving with Europe ultimately repelling the Muslim invasion. Are conservatives capable of evolving? The only thing which can stop a madman with a gun is a good man with a gun, but the good man must understand what's at stake and be willing to be as ruthlessly violent as the madman. Right now I don't see conservatives able to effectually counter the left.
Maybe the top 100 or so globalist leaders are vulnerable and if these are dealt with war, famine and another Dark Age could be avoided?
You are right, I think. The mainstream conservatives don't have the will to do good anymore, or the wisdom to see the extent of the threat and that it requires extreme response. The official Right is utterly compromised, corrupt, weak and useless. That's why populism is here.
I think money is the vital area, control of State money, support of billionaires who can be turned to the good. The other side converted and seduced these people and that is ultimately how they captured society. But it can be done in reverse. And the template is there, it goes back much further than the leftist march through the institutions. It's what turned Christianity from an obscure Jewish sect to the dominant religion of the western world. Convert the ruling class, and they will impose their beliefs on everyone else.
I fear that the amoral ends-justfy-the-means globalists will ultimately unleash a mass round up/assassination of the most effective conservatives, think Andrew Breitbart times tens of thousands. The technological and legal framework is already here. Just as it was completely legal for the national socialists to detain Jews, New York state has just passed a law making it legal for government thugs to break down your door, detain you indefinitely without legal recourse and force any medical treatment onto you if they deem you a threat to public health as defined by them. Obviously Trump voters and gun owners are a threat to public health and will need to be placed on ventilators and administered Remdesivir or whatever the Zyklon-B equivalent is.
I have to travel to NY on business at some point and I fear getting in and out before this begins, like a Jew visiting Hitler's Germany.
The right has no plans to counter this which is just one manufactured crisis away from becoming reality.
There’s a psychology course examining the head of Jonah Goldberg...
There is. He’s a very sad case. Sounds just like Robert Reich these days. Establishment Republicans of his type really were exposed as worthless fakes by Trump, and it seems to have completely broken them mentally.
While the NAZI Party appeared to be Left Wing, you can't go by appearances.
Jack boots can march from either direction. They have the same goal in mind: subjugation of the governed. They take different paths to that goal though. A Left Wing dominates through governance (The USSR, China, North Korea, Etc.) while the Right Wing dominates using a Dictator (Duvalier, Somoza, Marcos, Suharto, Mobutu, Peron, etc.)
Adolf Hitler sneered at the concept of Marxist Class Warfare. He only needed the people of Germany for two things: To take over Germany and then fight in a war he started. Adolf Hitler had no Junta, Ruling Council, Troika or Committee. Had he been on the Left, he would have thrown in with the Communists, not kicked them out of governance and then attacked eastwards under Operation Barbarossa.
Adolf Hitler also received support from German Gentry; the sorts that Stalin and Mao would have had shot for profiteering.
Lastly, the NAZI Party was used to game Germany's Democracy (Proportional Representation). The more general votes you received, the bigger percentage of seats you would gain in the Reichstag. To facilitate this, you would need to increase the votes for your party or decrease the votes for other parties. Thus, the NAZI Party sought to appeal to as many people as possible (Nationalists, Socialists, and Workers). The Sturmabteilung were around to attack opposition members, threaten people at the polls and disrupt opposition meetings)
Adolf Hitler ran Germany from the Far Right.
This just isn’t true. There are two possible extremes of the Right. Absolutist monarchy could be justified to some extent by rightwing thinking. But the more natural extreme of the Right is extreme Libertarianism. Rightwing thinking demands a small State, not an over mighty one.
Those who want absolute State power unless it’s monarchical can’t be rightwing, by definition. They contradict a core rightist principle. It’s a pretty uncomfortable fit even with the element of tradition and identity gained by monarchism.
As for Hitler’s accommodation with business interests. That’s the same as the accommodation Mussolini made with Italian fascism and corporatism. The Party could still destroy any capitalist individual if they needed to. The company still submitted to the State or ceased to exist. The company still becomes an extension of the State. And that same accommodation is perfectly possible in a Communist regime-that’s what China has done. It’s what wokeness has done with ESG and with Big Tech and Big Pharma working hand in globe with the Democrats. State power and corporate power in alliance, but essentially within a Marxist One Party State.
Hitler prefigured the Woke and CRT combination of race and Communism. Only he did it with Jews instead of whites. But all the language and logic is the same, and it’s all Communist. He also prefigured the Chinese Communist model of State and Business alliance.
What we call today “right wing” is really derived from classic liberalism. The words left wing and right wing come from the National Assembly in France. The “progressive” classic liberals sat on the left wing. They believed in individual responsibility, smaller government, more “laissez faire policies”. They were generally opposed to collectivism except where absolutely necessary. The aristocracy and Royalty sat on the right wing. They were authoritarian, and thought that the bourgeoisie and the proletariat were incapable of properly governing the state. One of the Royals, I think it was Louis XVI, said: “L’état? C’est moi”. This is why the terms “left wing” and “right wing” are no longer meaningful. A classic liberal today, an individualist, is classified as “right wing”. The authoritarian collectivists, Nazis, Communists and socialists have stolen the term “left wing”, but in fact, in denying true democracy and diversity of thought, are like the authoritarian right wing of the 18th century and earlier.
Yes, this is essentially why in recent years we have seen this shift where the ‘left’ abandon everything they once claimed defined them. The modern left are the parties of existing privilege, elitist anti democratic feeling, hatred of the working class, Big Business, censorship etc. BUT they retain revolutionary zeal for radical social change in everything that deepens rather than lessens their power. Essentially the Left took on everything they had claimed was rightwing as soon as they successfully became the Establishment, and their social policy and racial policy had to become ever more extremist/radical to disguise that. Conservatives are now a underclass and the ones with no power, which is why they genuinely align today with the working class (although I would say they often did more than the Left does even when the Right was the Establishment).
We can go too far in saying the terms are meaningless. The British Right abandoned monarchical absolutism when the French did not and had always had an idea of limits on royal power from Anglo-Saxon times which was unknown in most of Europe. Even the incredibly authoritarian Normans gradually grew to acknowledge some sense of ‘English liberty’. That was what was truly unique about the Anglosphere, the long inheritance of an idea of liberty that meant that such a thing as ‘conservative revolution extending rights’ was possible. That’s what the US Revolution was-a reclaiming of ancient liberty. And that’s why the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the US Revolution were not followed by a Terror as was the French Revolution. The thing reclaimed also restricted the people claiming it. Nothing restricts that way in nations with no deep ancestral ideas of liberty to draw on.
The forgetting of the idea of liberty as an ancestral thing, as the specifically Anglo gift to the world, is one of the things that allows woke leaderships in places like the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand to now act like Chinese Communists without any hint of shame in doing so.
Ps all this is further complicated by the existence of a controlled opposition or fake rightwing, which is fine with a giant State and anti national policies because they are personally enriching themselves from the resulting corruption. Fakeservatives confuse the labels even more than history does.
Right Wing focuses power in a single strong man or Dictator. Somoza, Duvalier, Marcos, Suharto; all of them were Right Wing. As I stated before, many of those bankrolling Hitler would have been shot by Communist/Marxists. Hitler did NOT support Class Warfare or any other tenets of The Communist Manifesto. He had no Ruling Council. Troika or Revolutionary Committee. If he is compared to Tito or Stalin or Chairman Mao or the North Korea Kim's, the differences are right there. Also... if Hitler was on the left, why did he kick out the Communists from the German government? Why also did he attack the Communists to the east?
I think you are confusing authoritarian collectivism with classic liberal individualism. The terms “left wing” and “right wing” are no longer meaningful. Hitler was opposed to Communism because he thought that it was internationalist, and he also thought that it was run by the Jews. Hitler also thought that the Jews were capitalist. Stalin also hated the Jews because he thought that they were capitalists at heart. Hitler’s socialism was nationalist, but it was still socialist. Reading “Mein Kampf” should clear this confusion up for you.
They are very imprecise terms today, and stem from the seating arrangements of the French Revolutionary National Assembly. Everything you say here is true except I think the terms still have some meaning and ultimately Hitler’s nationalism was fake-no real nationalist would wish a Gotterdamerung on his people for ‘failing him’.
Stalin was also a dictator. There was a pretence of a ruling council or Troika, but as we saw with the example he made of Trotsky, it wasn’t good for one’s health to oppose Stalin.