Is Nazism left-wing?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

It's clear that Nazism had very little to do with the traditional right. It had very little to do with the traditional left either though.

From a more sociological view-point it was clearly more aligned with right-wing groups in German society, even though some workers voted for them too.

My opinion has always been that Nazism is a good example of the short-comings of the left-right spectrum as a tool to analyze politics.

While the rest is somewhat true the bolded bit is complete nonsense. Since when were the Freikorps, the Stab-in-the-back myth, fanatical anti-socialism etc not part of the Post-Weimar right? Not to mention how Nazis actually achieved power in the end....

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Traditionally the way of dividing the left-right political spectrum was by attitudes towards some imaginary concept of ´the enlightenment´ and ´revolution´. With the right most anti-enlightment and counter revolutionary (Didn´t Goebbels say he wanted to a pre-1789 world or something similiar?). Laissez-faire never really entered into it (if it did than many of the executioners of Louis XIV would have been the right of the king....) until American discourse of the 1970s or so - where debate was really about welfarism and the Cold War.

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... Which makes Nazism an Extreme-right ideology. Remind me of the Nazi policy on Einstenian Physics, Psychoanalysis (modern at the time) and ´Modernist literature´ then we can talk typefaces. Also my quote from Goebbels comes to mind.

...And Fascism less so in Germany (though not insignificant there either) but certainly true in nearly every other European situation where it took power was strongly connected to Monarchism. Would you describe the coalition of Monarchist, Carlists, Falangists, Extreme Catholics and Nationalists that made up Franco´s coalition a ´modernist´one? If so, I suggest you try and find out what ´Carlism´ was.

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Fascism did have a lot of roots in Italian futurism and German Romanticism, but that indicates what...

Personally I don´t think fascism was ever really intellectually coherent enough to be defined as an ideology however I´m posting this again because of so I´m tired of this smear. It has literally been debunked a million times on this forum.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

When the Bolsheviks took power in Russia, they promptly set to work purging all the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.  Does that mean they aren't left-wing`

No. Bolshevikism had definite roots in radical pre-1917 thought, not just Marxism but Russian Radicalism as well. Nazism had none of these things.

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Depends.

 

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Possibly. But this like the above point isn´t even relevant. On this you should probably Al´s post on the Marxist parties in Weimar Germany.

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But that proves nothing. One would more likely look at who was voting for the Nazis and who helped them into power and those overwhelming conservatives. And conservatives, whatever their personal distastes, rarely did anything of significance to topple the Nazi government until 1944 which probably tells you something...

[quoteFurthermore, the decline in real wages for workers can be explained by three rather obvious factors:

a. Far-left nutcase economic policies tend to depress real wages.[/quote]

Mind giving me an example of the Nazis´"far-left nutcase economic policies". One example. Please.

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Workers´wages went down during the period 1933-1939 which was supposedly the economic miracle period of the Nazi regime (read: massive bubble based on military spending) - that was already well passed the worst the depression. The United States started to grow again in 1933 (or was it 1934? One of those years anyway) for example. Obviously the war hardly helped workers conditions either. But Al´s point is significant, one of the first things the Nazis did in power was destroy all independent socialist organizations and trade unions. This follows the pattern of European fascism elsewhere (I can´t wait for "Was a Franco leftist?" thread) and like elsewhere this was backed by conservative organizations (@Gustaf: The post-weimar right was in part especially in the DNVP the party of the pre-Weimar conservatives.. and DNVP and Nazi votes iirc were pretty interchangable in large parts of Germany).

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This ´centrally-planned´economy was dominated by private interests. Exhibit A: IG Farben.

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Then for consistency we should describe the Nazis as extreme-right, no? As that keeps up with historical continuity.

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No. They didn´t borrow. They were.

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Yes because the previous one was infected socialists, communists, jews, the disabled, the racially inferior and other people which were responsible for the stab-in-the-back (ie. The reason Germany lost WWI). Now, If you wish to argue that the German Kaiserreich was a radical left-wing regime, well go ahead, I´m not going to stop you.

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That Opebo is reactionary has been long agreed upon by nearly everyone of sense on the boards for a long time...

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No. Not even close. How do you explain the strong connection between the Conservative vote and the Nazi vote? That the conservatives helped and then kept the Nazis into power[qm] That Nazism was clearly linked to conservative organizations in Germany such as, say, The Fatherland Party and so on. Oh, and you haven´t mentioned once any policy of the Nazis that could be described as extreme leftist - all we have had is smearing and arbitrary accusations.