Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Oct 9 2011, 03:53 PM) But to understand the argument that Nazism was an example of the far left you first must understand the political spectrum that is being measured against.
I do understand it. That is the problem.
QUOTE The people who argue that see the left-right spectrum in a much different way than most do. The Farthest Left is an absolute state, that is the government has all encompassing power over its citizens. The Furthest Right is the entire lack of a state (pure idealistic communism... or anarchy).[/quote]
I agree with your characterisation of what those people think they are talking about. The problem is that they they are totally $#@!ing wrong.
Left wing and right wing have explicit origins. The French National Assembly, created in 1789, seated the radicals on the left on the conservatives on the right. That meant the left wingers were pro democracy and right wingers were pro monarchy. And the same
relationship applies today, inasmuch as left wingers are engaged with trying to build a better society, and right wingers are engaged in trying to preserve the existing society.
Now Nazism, I will agree, was pretty radical, but at its root it had a loot of conservative ideas: "race" and "nation" and "blood and soil", aristocracy and nobility. Nazism is hyper-conservatism, conservatism stripped of its sentimentality and fuzziness. The left wing position was "workers of the world" - internationalism, the rights of the many against the few, democracy versus autocracy. Just as it had been in the French revolution.
Only in the US was this all collapsed into the issue of "the state". And even in the US it is confused, in that that conservatives who purport to claim independence of the state will be the first to "defend the flag" and "support our troops", despite the facts that they are the very essence of the coercive state. While a state that provides healthcare and so on is apparently evil. So, like the Nazi's, the "good state" is the one that is busy killing foreigners, and the "bad state" is the one providing services to citizens.
Right and Left mean what they have always meant - conservatism, tradition, stasis, authority versus radicalism, innovation, invention, democracy.
QUOTE In that regard, Nazi's were an extremely overbearing and oppressive political party that took many rights from their citizenry, much like how Soviet Communism was.[/quote]
Has it occurred to you that maybe what soviet "communism" became would be better of described as some sort of right wing blood--and-soil phenomenon? In other words, should you categorise the behaviour by what it is, rather than change the definition to accord to the label it tried to claim?
