[–] Hey_Sunshine 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago (edited ago)
I don't think any parallel can be drawn between modern American politics. NSDAP advocated for emigration instead of immigration (see the Havaara agreement), which is opposite most of today's Democrats. And yet, at the same time, Nazis were anti-war, choosing to spare British lives when Hitler allowed the Brits to escape at Dunkirk. Most unlike the neoconservative warhawks of the right.
[–] slwsnowman40 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
The Nazis were right-wing in Europe as it is my belief the political spectrum is further left. I'm not in Europe and this is from decades of looking at it from the USA, so this is probably an inaccurate assessment.
The Nazis would be to the right of today's leftists and leftists groups like antifa.
[–] downtownchinatown [S] ago
good point. it's, unlike gender, a fluid concept. left wing or right wing seem to mean different things to different people in the political spectrum.
[–] slwsnowman40 ago
I prefer to think of the political ideologies not being on a line or 2D graph, but as a solid sphere. Anarchy would be on the opposite side of totalitarianism (both on the surface), and everything else would be fit into the sphere surface and internal. That's really the only way you can get all these different ideas to fit together "neatly" because they all share so many different parts and pieces.
[–] Whitemail 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
National socialism is not communist socialism
The NSDAP did apply a lot of government controls, but it was generally for the benefit of the people since they were opposing every destructive, Jewish product and policy with an iron fist.
[–] downtownchinatown [S] ago
good point, and to be fair, that is one hell of a quote
[–] fastregister 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Hilter destroyed both the left and the right wing, and united the people into one party. early on he said his life goal is "to annihilate the 30 politcal parties in germany"
As a general rule, anybody who says Nazism/Hitler was left-wing should be dismissed as an idiot who lacks even the most basic understanding or grasp of history, politics, and economics.
As Professor Richard J. Evans (world renowned historian and expert on Nazi Germany) has summarised, "it would be wrong to see Nazism as a form of, or an outgrowth of, socialism". Yes, the Nazi Party itself was named the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Many top Nazi officials (including Hitler) made claims about the Party being "socialist", egalitarian, anti-business and anti-capitalism, especially in the 1920s when they were campaigning for the popular vote. Nazis gained power by promising to alleviate a German economy mired in depression. But they also promised to restore German cultural ‘values’, reverse the hated Versailles Treaty, turn back the Communists, put Germans back to work, and restore Germany to world power status.
The key word was not "socialism", but "national". Hitler and his party preached nationalism and excluded anyone who wasn't fully German or considered superior. Nazis argued that the "Aryan Race" were the superior type of humanity, of which true Germans represented. Aryan Germans were distinguished as superior to other racial types, such as Mediterraneans, Persians, Chinese and Japanese, Romani, Slavs, Jews, etc. The last few mentioned (Jews, Slavs, Romani) were deemed to be subhuman, inferior, undeserving of any rights, and fit only for enslavement and extermination.
This central dogma of German/Aryan racial superiority was espoused throughout the Nazi party and was its central ideology. As Evans has written, this ideology "was light years removed from the class-based ideology of socialism", and can even be seen as "an extreme counter-ideology to socialism, borrowing much of its rhetoric in the process, from its self-image as a movement rather than a party, to its much-vaunted contempt for bourgeois convention and conservative timidity".
Once the Nazis formally came to power, their real nature became readily apparent. Numerous socialists, communists, trade union leaders were arrested and murdered, all organised opposition to the regime was eliminated, and democracy was dead. The Nazis continued Weimar-era social welfare programmes, but they were only provided to those judged to be "racially worthy". Workers strikes were outlawed, trade unions were replaced, and a totalitarian police state was constructed.
Above all, Nazis were German white nationalists and what they really stood for was the ascendancy of the "Aryan" race and the German nation, by any means necessary. They co-opted the name, some rhetoric, and even some precepts of socialism. But they did so for cynical purposes with vastly different goals. In practice, they were fascists and the key tenets of Nazi ideology and thinking place them firmly on the extreme right.
The claim that the Nazis actually were leftists or socialists in any generally accepted sense of those terms flies in the face of historical reality.
[–] downtownchinatown [S] ago
Are you saying that the "socialist" in its name was a mere propaganda method? The people who argue about them being "left wing" say they were in economic terms and because of the totalitarian methods, not because of the race relations campaign. I mean, these people basically argue that fascism is "left wing".
I mean, Hitler was against capitalism. But did Germany have a stock exchange and trade in international markets? They reduced them from 23 to 9, and in 1936 Germany banned all citizens from trading in foreign stocks. That doesn't sound right wing. However maybe we could call it fascist or right wing authoritarian, for a lack of a better term.
Still, I have a feeling that most people in the USA qualify "right wing" as "free market capitalist" nowadays, rather than solely conservative or fascist or any of those ancien regime/heterodox names.
[–] [deleted] ago
[–] downtownchinatown [S] ago
It can't possibly be vice versa
Europe's left is US extreme left
Europe's right is US left
But
US left is Europe's right
but US right is not Europe's left, it is Europe's far right or something autoctonous to the US political scene
[–] matthew-- 0 points 5 points 5 points (+5|-0) ago
Yes.
Left and right changes depending on what you're talking about: economics, policy, etc. So some will say they were right wing because nationalism or some such bullshit.
The only that counts is economic policy. On the extreme left you have communism, and on the extreme right you have anarchy and no real government.
Nazis were left wing.
[–] downtownchinatown [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
That's what I thought. I mean their economic policy was to have more government control, not less.
[–] matthew-- 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Yup. More control over the money, including taxes, inflation, etc. Not right wing at all.