Is Nazism left-wing?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We've been over this territory enough. The answer is an extremely loud 'no'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you don't understand that 'the Left' in Weimar Germany meant 'the two 'Marxist' parties (the SPD and the KPD), their subcultures (which were, especially in the case of the SPD, astonishingly well-developed. During the early years of the Depression the SPD actually ran alternative welfare systems in some of their strongholds such as Leipzig, to say nothing of all the clubs and societies. Even funerals, at least early on) and the 'Marxist' trade unions, and that the Nazi party explicitly defined itself against these parties, subcultures and trade unions, then you have no business expecting your opinions on Nazism to be taken at all seriously by anyone with more than a basic grasp of the subject.

This deep hostility to the Left was also reflected in Nazi policies when they took power. The SPD, the KPD and the unions were persecuted relentlessly, many of their leading members were imprisoned in camps and many were eventually murdered. Meanwhile, Nazi economic policies actually resulted in a decline in working class wages and living standards, workers had effectively no rights, and various large industrial concerns did extremely well out of the Nazis. IG Farben is the poster boy of the mutually beneficial relationship between Party and Business (literally; as their profits swelled, so to did donations to the NSDAP... and government contracts), but there were others.

Arguing that the Nazis were 'left-wing' is about as wrong as you can be about German history during the period once Holocaust denial is ruled out of bounds.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

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.

Apart from the bit where the traditional right acted as the Nazis junior coalition partner? Which is why the post-war German right grew out of the what had been the centre before the catastrophe*.

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Yeah, that's true. Though most published stuff on electoral patterns in the Weimar Republic is seriously flawed, based on dubious statistical models that fail to understand that towns and cities are internally diverse!

*Insert remark about ex-Nazis finding their way in the Adenauer-era CDU here.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The thing to remember here is, of course, that not all workers voted for Socialist parties before 1918 or between 1918 and 1933 either.

And the areas where there was obvious large-scale electoral movement from the Left to the Nazis were not exactly typical. Many had also seen decent votes for right-wing protest parties in the past. Which is a bit of a 'so, yeah' moment.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You'd have to give us a good definition of "left wing" before we can answer the question "Is Nazism left-wing?" 

Left and Right are subjective concepts rather than objective reality. Well, mostly, anyway. I have already given what is basically the standard definition of 'Left' in Germany between industrialisation and 1933:

'the Left' in Weimar Germany meant 'the two 'Marxist' parties (the SPD and the KPD), their subcultures (which were, especially in the case of the SPD, astonishingly well-developed. During the early years of the Depression the SPD actually ran alternative welfare systems in some of their strongholds such as Leipzig, to say nothing of all the clubs and societies. Even funerals, at least early on) and the 'Marxist' trade unions

To be on the Right is to be against the Left. To be virulently against the Left is to be on the extreme Right. Or at least that was how things were traditionally defined in Europe.

The thing is, and this is why I hate these threads, no credible historian of this period thinks that the Nazis were anything other than on the extreme right. Not one. Hardly anyone at the time thought the Nazis were anything other than on the extreme right.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The problem there is with the definition of 'Communist'; it's more of an issue than with the definition of 'Nazi' which is quite clear-cut.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's no need to think of left and right as being part of a unified political spectrum (or whatever) at all. They can be used as descriptive terms and it is as descriptive terms that they're at their most useful. It also means that there's no 'problem' in categorising the Nazis.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The liberal (or as Americans would say, libertarian) tradition of the right is very far removed from the ideas of racial superiority or nationalistic anti-globalization ideals that you (rightly, imo) ascribe to Nazism.

I'm not sure if that's entirely true. A notion of racial superiority was of critical importance to liberal ideology in the nineteenth century; it could not have lived with itself without it. Of course that's a long way away from the specific type, virulence and intensity of that notion that Nazism was built around. And of course it certainly wasn't superior to some of the other notions of superiority that nineteenth century liberals was built around (class and gender in particular), while in Nazism it counted for far more than everything else combined. But I'm a pedant.

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Well it certainly didn't play the same role, but antisemitism was a hard to miss feature of 'classic conservatism' in Germany for as long as it existed as a mainstream ideology (that is, until the 1940s). Not that conservatism in Germany was alone in that regard.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

A belief in eugenics was pretty widespread in 'educated' circles from the birth of popular Darwinism until news emerged of what the Nazis were actually doing. It certainly wasn't the property of any single ideology; it certainly had its conservative advocates (including most of the many crypto-reactionary 'anti-politics' intellectual reactionaries of the inter war years; D.H Lawrence, say. Ah... why did one of the greatest writers in the English language have to be quite such a self-loathing sh!t at the same time...) and practitioners, but there was support from the bourgeois/crankish wing of socialism as well (infamously so in the case of Sweden where that type of socialist was unusually influential within the wider movement) and from liberals. Perhaps especially from liberals, at least in Britain. The sub-eugenicist fetish of 'national efficiency' was the driving force of the Asquith government, for example.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I disagree with both of you:  eugenics is the hallmark of neither the right nor of the left.

That's nice, but it's unfortunately wrong. Eugenics, and forced sterilization programs were not initiated by the left, but by conservative elements.

Certainly you're not talking about the modern, pro-life type of Conservatism that I'm part of.

Of course no one is talking about how things are now. Out damn presentism.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I note at least six indisputably false claims in one tiny little post. Impressive.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What defines a fabian socialist,

Presumably membership of the Fabian Society.

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He wasn't.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Was Churchill a Trotskyite-Yes. In America we call them neocons
Was Churchill for global governance under a socialist system- he was
Was Churchill for wealth redistribution- Yes

Seriously?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I am shocked at the poll results.  National Socialism is far left.

Oh for Christ's sake.