Facebook Follies of Friends and Families

[Valmy]

There both right wing and left wing anarchists, but generally most historical anarchists have been associated with the extreme left. People like Bakunin and Emma Goldman. So the claim that anarchism is an extreme form of right wing politics is weird.

Granted both right wing and left wing anarchism are terrible ideas so I guess there is that.

But the weird thing is is I think that chart is trying to show that somehow the US is in some kind of happy medium balancing the extremes on both sides, and should try to remain there. That is a take I rarely see from those kinds of leftwing = statist tyranny type deals. But maybe I don't get it fully.

Leftism may be tyranny but we all need a little tyranny in our lives to protect us from anarchy and mob rule 

[Habbaku]

Does it matter whether the Nazis were left or right?

If the goal is to understand the historical reality of the Nazi movement, yes it matters.  If you think Nazis were a far left-wing party you are going to have a very confused and wrong-headed understanding of Weimar politics.

My point isn't about understanding Weimar politics, but rather that it's not really interesting to classify the Nazis as left or right when the point is obviously to tie them to modern-day parties.

[The Minsky Moment]

Conservatism is not an intermediary step from "moderate" to Rothbardian "anarcho-capitalism"*. It is an entirely separate ideological package that privileges order, hierarchy and stability over maximizing individual liberty and claims for individual justice.  Liberals and socialists are not pro-"tyranny" because they e.g. support graduated income taxation.  Communism and Nazism are not identical. 


*A misnomer and contradiction in terms.  Any political system which recognizes and enforces property rights is not anarchic.  Just because you allow capitalists to shit in the water at will doesn't make your proposed political system an anarchy.

[The Minsky Moment]

My point isn't about understanding Weimar politics, but rather that it's not really interesting to classify the Nazis as left or right when the point is obviously to tie them to modern-day parties.

If the focus is on contemporary politics, then there are in fact fascist political movements alive today, a subset of which are openly or covertly neo-Nazi.  They are all on the right of the political spectrum and it confuses matters to claim otherwise.

[Habbaku]

Sorry, I should note "mainstream" modern-day parties. Though I suppose AfD and FN are getting there. 

[The Minsky Moment]

The FPO in Austria qualifies.  They have controlled regions and got a Vice-Chancellor position in the national government.  AfD is a mixed bag but the Hoecke wing looks to me to have crossed that line.

Fascists of any kind are not a good thing but it adds a little degree of nervousness when they crop up in Germany and Austria. Bad track record there.

[Razgovory]

Does it matter whether the Nazis were left or right?

Yes.  The necessity of knowing who the Nazis are was demonstrated at Charlottesville.  For several years American conservatives have been trying to push the "Nazis are really leftist!" narrative.  When actual Nazis starting marching for Trump and murdering people American conservatives did not and still don't know how to respond.

[Valmy]

Regardless of how one might try to classify Ernst Rohm and his thugs over there in 1920s and 1930s Germany, there is no doubt that Nazism has been a right-wing ideology when it has existed in the United States.

[Maximus]

I think 80 percent of the problem with political classifications comes from trying to cram them into one dimension.

[PDH]

All I know is that there are good people on both sides.

[Habbaku]

Very fine people.

[dps]

Regardless of how one might try to classify Ernst Rohm and his thugs over there in 1920s and 1930s Germany, there is no doubt that Nazism has been a right-wing ideology when it has existed in the United States.

Yeah, the historical origins of the Nazis were on the left, but Hitler himself was mostly concerned with taking and holding power, rather than ideology itself (other than persecuting Jews, which was and is a goal not limited to the right), and modern neo-Nazi movements are a far-right thing

[mongers]

Regardless of how one might try to classify Ernst Rohm and his thugs over there in 1920s and 1930s Germany, there is no doubt that Nazism has been a right-wing ideology when it has existed in the United States.

Yeah, the historical origins of the Nazis were on the left, but Hitler himself was mostly concerned with taking and holding power, rather than ideology itself (other than persecuting Jews, which was and is a goal not limited to the right), and modern neo-Nazi movements are a far-right thing

Was it, because the Nazis were in large part born out of the  Freikorps, who fought and won a near civil war against the leftists and internationalists looking towards the soviet union as an example to follow.

[Valmy]

I don't think the origins of the Nazis were historically leftist for the most part (though former leftists were everywhere in these kinds of reactionary movements back then). However they did use leftist language which was something the French right had been doing from the days of General Boulanger. That was all coded in a way that a Frenchman or a German would instantly recognize as being right wing. But you kind of have to understand shit like Boulanger, Action Française, and George Sorel and centuries of German and French political culture to really get that, so it is all kind of pointless. Because none of the shit is really relevant today. Today Nazism is a right wing thing.

If you go back and listen to some of the Nazis slogans and what they claimed to represent in the 1920s, and you weren't a European of that era, you might think they had leftist roots or ideology but they really didn't. If you are interested in how that worked watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9PYCxIyyF8

You have to remember the conservatives, reactionaries, and right-wingers in Europe hated the Liberals and considered them the destroyers of all that was good. The values we consider, or at least used to consider, right wing over here in the US were definitely centrist or center-left bourgeois middle class type values.

[The Minsky Moment]

The idea that the right = pro-capitalist is fairly new and more Anglo-American in origin.