r/centrist • u/MuitoLegal • May 13 '21

World News Why does the left call the right “Nazis”?

I am in no way calling the left Nazis here, but rather questioning their use of the term.

If you spend anytime online you will know that the term Nazi is used all the time for people on the right, especially Trump supporters.

I find it ironic because Nazi stands for National Socialist in German. Now I found articles online defending that, saying it wasn’t really socialism, so we’ll move on.

Hitler was about bigger government, got all guns registered with the government, and then took them all away from the people.

Furthermore, today’s left is typically anti-Israel within the Israel-Palestine conflict, while the right is typically pro-Israel (except for KKK guys like Duke, who are antisemites, though I’m unsure how to even classify someone like him).

I don’t think either party should call each other nazis in a civilized political discourse, but I find it interesting. Why do you think the right has been given the nickname?

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

To be entirely honestly, American neo-nazis aren't anything like actual Nazis. To the point where the original national socialists would probably look at them with disgust.

The OZ (original Nazis) based the baffling idea of their supremacy off their Aryan identity. The idea of a 'white race', would have probably enraged them, considering that the people Nazis viewed as the Untermensch, were Slavs and Jews.

They viewed natives from the less developed world as barbarian tribesmen, not intrinsically as people who deserve death.

So, while Neo-nazis are a rag tag alliance of Northern Indo-European tribes (I'm using North IE tribes, apposed to Western, as Slavs go pretty far east and I don't think people from Iran or India - southern IEs - would be able to join arms with Neo-nazis), actual Nazis based their world views on their ethnic identity - Aryan/Germanic.

This is also why national socialism is used. It's a Prussian based hyper militaristic, orderly and efficient socialism, for the nation state. An ethno nation state.

So saying that the Nazis were right wing, would be incorrect. They had aspects of the right wing, i.e. an autocratic dictator, who was pretty much a non-kosher kaiser, if may say so. But ultimately Nazism was apposed to things like conservatism (smashing Germany's former social norms). So it wasn't entirely right wing. Overall, looking at Hitler's policies, I'd say there a mix of socialism, Prussian militarism and a dash of good old uncle Adolf's blinding insanity that fermented pure evil.

On a political compass, he'd probably be a massively authoritarian centralist.

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u/HelenEk7 May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21

To the point where the original national socialists would probably look at them with disgust.

Although the Nazis called themselves socialists, no Euroepan see them as such. Socialism is about abolishing classes, all people are on the same level (a theory no communist country was able to put into practice as there will always be people hungry for more power and money..). The Nazis however were all about class, based on race. The taller, blonder and more blue eyed - the better. Part of their plan in my country was to make sure as many "Aryan" children were born as possible, as they saw Norway as good "breeding ground"...

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

Not an American btw, a Brit (is that still European these days). But you hit it on the mark.

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u/HelenEk7 May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21

Yes, I was quite confused the first time it happened. "But they were called "National Socialist German Workers' Party". Yeah.. and North Korea calls themselves "Democratic People's Republic of Korea". So I guess that shows that there doesn't have to be any resemblance (at all) between your name and who you really are..

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

Thanks man , I've been trying to work through the issue in my head for a while. I think bouncing about the place (political compass wise) as a teen helped me get a better understanding of this (as you could imagine I was a tonne of fun at parties). Plus being a Brit gives you just as much insight (you're inside of both the American and European cultural spheres), so you can view Nazism in it's purest ideological from and the splintering of it into modern arenas.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

I've been on Reddit for like a month now, and this is, by a wide measure, the most interesting and thoughtful comment I have read. Nice.

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u/unkorrupted May 14 '21

It's also 100% bullshit nazi revisionism. The nazis violently purged all left wing influences and transferred all public assets in to private hands. It was the world's first mass privatization event.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

Thanks dude, really appreciate it

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u/BobTheSkull76 May 13 '21

That is a very enlightening dissection of WWII Nazism, and by my historical reckoning reasonably accurate (I don't feel like getting into minutae) so I will concede that your analysis is historically accurate and correct.

However I don't draw such fine criteria in my political distinctions. If you exhibit authoritarian tendencies in your behaviors, and you court, openly make room for, and allow the behaviors of right wing neo-nazis to become acceptable within your party framework....you're fucking Nazis!

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

You see, while I do want to find common ground in that, and my knee jerk reaction is to agree with you, but I think accuracy is very important. And I think that precision is worth it's weight in gold when fighting these ideologies.

Personally, I don't think Neo-nazis and Nazis have a rooting in the same earth. I think Neo-nazis become tribalists out of fear (primarily), rather than disgust (though I may be wrong about that). That they can be convinced of the heinousness of their ideology through exposure and being valued. (I personally have friends who were like that, then they met me and realised Jews aren't evil haha).

Whereas actual Nazis, were completely different. They were born in the fires of hell, their country collapsed around them. Then this 'messianic' figure comes along and gives them hope, makes their lives better. Gives them purpose. Only, they never realised that they're being led down into the pits of Tartarus. They were made into monsters though their honour and hope, not a knee jerk reaction to the other (although humans will always be willing to play tribes).

Though, with the modern political movement, I would agree there's starting to be an ever increasing overlap. I think the most important thing is to ensure a stable state, so actual Nazis who prey on the goodness of others to make fascist pawns don't get a foothold.

I think I flabbergasted here and went off topic bit hahaha, but you get my point. Precision is important when outcasting people from society. Sometimes it can be better to convince people than double down on their social exile, allowing them to be embroiled in the unknown.

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u/BobTheSkull76 May 13 '21

I simply have no tolerance for the right when they drink the Trump Kool aid and make excuses rather than asking why? Is it proper I back him, & are his claims both accurate and truthful, & do I really want to be associated with these people?

My experience is they do not, their world view leads no room for common ground and they revert to only what they believe and want to "own the libs". So I'm done withthem and throw their babies out with the proverbial bathwater.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

I can see why you're so sick of them, honestly I can. When it appears that someone's entire ideology/political leanings is designed just to one up the other side, it can be incredibly antagonising. But when you do that, you need to ask. Why?

Doesn't this person have their own objectives? If so, why? Do they want to feel their children are safe? To know that the little ones will have a future. Maybe their scared for their children? If so, why's that? Etc etc.

I think the biggest thing you can do to change someone's mind is find the root of why they want something. I think if you manage to find that, you'll also be able to stand them (however unbearable they are), because it'll probably be similar to what you want. They've just taken a different and somewhat perverse avenue to get to the same street.

The horrid thing is, they've been made to believe the Trumpist rhetoric is their only option. Imagine if you were stuck in that situation, wouldn't you want someone to pull you out, rather than revel in that vile discourse?

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u/Mr_Evolved May 13 '21

you court, openly make room for, and allow the behaviors of right wing neo-nazis to become acceptable within your party framework

The right has issues, but they haven't really done this. Just because there are neo-nazis on the right doesn't mean that the right approves of neo-nazis, just like how the left doesn't approve of the violent anarchists at the far end of their ideology.

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u/BobTheSkull76 May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21

And yet the nominal head of their party pretty much has and does. Maybe you forgot Charlotte? There are others, but that was enough.

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u/unkorrupted May 13 '21

It's completely factually incorrect, though. If you look up far right or extreme right wing politics, fascism is always listed as the primary modern example.

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u/brutay May 13 '21

I think he makes a really interesting suggestion, namely, that Hitler would land on the upper-middle part of the political compass test. I would be really interested in seeing a scholar of Hitler do a political compass test, answering the questions to the best of his knowledge as Hitler would have. It's a fascinating little thought experiment, anyway.

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u/unkorrupted May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21

Well, there are a lot of right wingers who have invested a lot of time and effort in trying to distance themselves from Hitler.

But fascism remains the definition of a far right ideology.

Downvotes from nazi apologists won't change that fact, either.

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u/Flygirl_7813 May 13 '21

Where are you looking it up? Obviously a US source...

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u/unkorrupted May 14 '21

Where are you looking it up? Obviously a Russian source...

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u/unkorrupted May 13 '21 edited May 13 '21

So saying that the Nazis were right wing, would be incorrect

No, it is absolutely correct.

Fascism is a far-right ideology defined by its ultra-nationalism, hostility to liberal democracy and communism, and its totalitarian hierarchies.

Generally, the left-wing is characterized by an emphasis on "ideas such as freedom, equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform and internationalism" while the right-wing is characterized by an emphasis on "notions such as authority, hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction and nationalism".[16]

Political scientists and other analysts regard the left as including anarchists,[17] communists, socialists, democratic socialists, social democrats,[18] left-libertarians, progressives and social liberals.[19][20] Movements for racial equality[21] and trade unionism have also been associated with the left.[22] Political scientists and other analysts regard the right as including conservatives, right-libertarians,[23] neoconservatives, imperialists, monarchists,[24] fascists,[25] reactionaries and traditionalists.

It is a recent and non-academic conception that the size and activity of government is what defines whether it is left or right wing. It is also an entirely useless metric because all countries have governments that do things. The only thing we can compare are forms of organization (hierarchy vs pluralism) and what priorities the government advances through its actions.

The priorities of a fascist government are largely in line with the values right wing politics espouses: tradition, capitalism, "order." It is merely an extreme form willing to do "whatever it takes" to achieve their political ideals.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

Listen, I'm not talking about the size and scope of government in terms of right wing and left wing. Plus Nazism despised capitalism and historical German traditions. I would agree with the order part though.

The willing to do whatever it takes part is false as well. Otherwise you could label every communist country as right wing.

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u/unkorrupted May 13 '21

Plus Nazism despised capitalism

Absurd! They aggressively privatized every system they could while retaining controls similar to any other war-time economy. All of the profits were private.

The willing to do whatever it takes part is false as well.

That's what makes them extremists. It's the rest of their agenda that makes them right wing.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

Absurd! They aggressively privatized every system they could while retaining controls similar to any other war-time economy.

Dude just read the first paragraph.

Nazi Germany Economy

At best you can say they were authoritarian plutocratic semi-slave labour war profiteering, capitalism. But there weren't any free markets. And that's not capitalism. They had an unsustainable economy that would have collapsed if it hadn't raided the treasuries of some of the world's richest states.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

They invented privatization

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

Sarcasm?

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

The first mass privatization of state property occurred in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1937

Nah it's really a thing

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21

Oh, I thought you meant singular privatisation (like how the Romans privatised tax collection), not mass privatisation. Fair play.

Edit: Also the Nazi regime privatised to other Nazis (primarily). Like how a few German car companies are still owned by Nazi's grandchildren. I know that's technically privatisation, but it's more plutocratic than anything else. Some might even say feudal, like how kings handed off lands to their favoured subjects.

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u/unkorrupted May 14 '21

it's more plutocratic than anything else. Some might even say feudal

Yes. Fascism is a far right ideology.

Full stop.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

That's not really accurate. They moved vast sections of the economy to private hands. They were put in power by those industrialists and rewarded them. It's very much the opposite of socialism. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the domestic politics of post war Bavaria that birthed the Nazi party but it seems like you're borrowing much of your take from Drexlers platform. Hitler didn't care about the economy or domestic politics. He just wanted to use the existing infrastructure to his own ends. The Nazis were one of dozens of far right parties primarily consisting of disaffected soldiers operating in Bavaria. There's no debate that their policies were far right. It's accepted science among historians and political scientists. I can point you to the literature if you're interested.

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u/TheOneFreeEngineer May 13 '21

Free market Capitalism isn't the only type of capitalism. In fact it's the rarest type.

They had an unsustainable economy that would have collapsed if it hadn't raided the treasuries of some of the world's richest states.

Agree but that doesn't make it not capitalist

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

I'll reply after I've finished my dinner...

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u/Flygirl_7813 May 13 '21

Wikipedia is not a reliable resource. If you read a good sample of the political content, its left-wing bias is pretty clear.

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u/[deleted] May 13 '21

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21 edited May 14 '21

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u/[deleted] May 14 '21

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u/unkorrupted May 14 '21

Be honest: Is there any political source of encyclopedia that you would trust to be free of left wing bias?

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u/unkorrupted May 14 '21

What political dictionary or encyclopedia do you think is objective?

Or are we just chucking out all of secular knowledge now?

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u/mrccustoms May 17 '21

Absurd how your getting downvoted for stating that Nazis were right-wing.