Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Nazism and The Political Spectrum

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In my comment on the other post I made this comment:

I used to think that is how [the bell curve eluted to by Peter] the political spectrum worked in the country.  Lately I have been thinking of it more as a horse shoe.  I say this for two reasons.  In some instances the far extremes are getting closure to each other then the majority of the people and they also appear to be moving further away from the majority of the people.  

The other problem I have been having with the whole right/left political spectrum is that it just doesn’t seem to be accurate enough.  By reducing things to either right or left many important issues and positions are marginalized.  

For instance where do you put Nazis on the political spectrum? They came from a socialist party but you wouldn’t group them in with say the green-rainbow party would you?  Same with Marxism.  

I’ve been using the political compass lately instead of the left/right.  On that I find myself in the south east, repubs in the northeast and dems in the northwest with some in the southwest.  I try and put candidates I would vote for on this compass and usually find myself having to choose between weather I economically or socially agree with a candidate.  I have yet to find a mainstream candidate that falls in the same quadrant as me.

Of course a debate ensued on where the Nazis belong on the political spectrum.

My position is that Nazism came from the political left since it started from a socialist worker party.  

Nazis were authoritarians, which can have both left and right economic beliefs.  

Nazis did believe in many socialist economic policies, such as capping profits on private corporations, nationalizing certain means of product,  increasing social benefits, etc.  The exception is that they wanted these things for only Germans to benefit.

However, the belief that one group of people is so sub-human that you can justify death camps, gas chambers, etc. is no where on the political spectrum.

So based on this, I think that Nazis had some left leaning tendencies, but generally do not fall any where on the traditional political spectrum.

As I said in that other post, the political compass is a better way to describe political leanings rather then the straight left/right spectrum.  In that case, Nazis would be Authoritarian with slight lean to the left.

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  1. they no longer exist as a political or military force, so they don’t fit anywhere in today’s political spectrum.

  2. as it would appear we trend towards the Biblical Tower of Babel in trying to explain to each other what X “means”.

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    p>I like to use assholianism to describe people who MUST exhibit the desire and passion to exert total absolute control over large numbers of other people, just to satisfy their own ego.  Their passion is parasitic in nature and they believe “it’s their way or the highway”.  They are found in both political denominations and the control mechanisms are equally Satanic.

    • The oldest group on that list for Germany is around the 1970s.

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      p>Also, some of the parties identified as far right also have left economic tendencies.  The NPD for instance is anti-capitalism.  You wouldn’t call that a right wing economic view.  Of course in doing this, they call it the “liberal-capitalist system” so it is hard to place this group on the left/right spectrum.  On the compass they may be north with people making arguments to give them a little lean to the left or the right.

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      p>On the other post you commented “The idea that a far right party could be socialist is just dizzingly weird. I think the burden of proof is on JK.”

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      p>Now I have given you my reasoning above.  I would appreciate if you would do so for the statement you have made or at least challenge me on my reasoning.

      • For policy.  In the 1930s, when Germany was in the crapper economically, a “National Socialist” party is exactly what you’d want your name to be.

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        p>In practice, we had unitary executive, military spending at the expense of domestic (guns, not butter), close partnership between the top echelons of major corporations and the government on national security..  those are all staples of the modern republican party.

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        p>I wouldn’t call the modern republican party nazi-ish because that’s stupid and just turns people off.  But I think if we’re going to insist on drawing comparisons to nazis, that’s what I’d start.  The only counter-examples I can think of rely more on Rush Limbaugh caricatures of liberals (socialists!) than what most liberals actually say and think.  Esp considering that neither most modern democrats nor most contemporary nazis were actual socialists.

      • See my comments below where I’ve “fulfilled” your “assignment”.

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        p>If you recall, the Nazi movement sprang up after the loss in WWI and the fall of the Kaiser. They owe a lot of their world view to the brethren on the right who were monarchists. Monarchists don’t like capitalism particularly either, but not because they are inflamed by the writings of Lenin.

        <

        p>Monarchism is a tendency on the right that disappeared from our soil after the Revolutionary War but it has had a long history in the European Right.

  5. However, the belief that one group of people is so sub-human that you can justify death camps, gas chambers, etc. is no where on the political spectrum.

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    p>Part of that was trying to wipe out a culture they didn’t like, but part of it was a belief that some people are sub-human genetically, and the killing was just one aspect of many methods to “improve” or “purify” the genetics of the world’s population.  Eugenics is going stronger than ever now, with so-called “liberal eugenics” having replaced authoritarian state-compelled eugenics after the Nazis messed it up for Sanger and Watson.  But it’s interesting that, in spite of its name, even liberal eugenics is “nowhere” on the political spectrum.  It is based on free-market principles and right wingers approve of the business potential, but it is also desired by social planners and reproductive rights advocates on the left.  Many people with Christian values conclude that we should be trying to fix and cure genetic disorders, but so do many (most?) atheists.    

  6. what is the name of that theory that if any discussion of politics goes on long enough one side will use Nazis as an example?

    Godwin’s Law.  (The oft-quoted corollary, which is often, mistakenly, referred to as itself being Godwin’s Law, that the first one to do so has lost the debate, should be understood as descriptive, not prescriptive — it’s not a rule of debate, but an observation that to resort to comparisons to Nazis is a de facto admission that one has no legitimate arguments left.  Of course, under certain circumstances, that corollary ceases to hold, because there are comparisons of particular contemporary groups, individuals or policies, to the Nazi party which are appropriate and accurate, but typically our discourse is insufficiently sophisticated to recognize distinctions between legitimate comparisons, and calling someone a Nazi because you don’t agree with him.)

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    p>As to the more substantive question of your post, it’s astonishing you would even need to ask, and a sad commentary on how effective people like Jonah Goldberg have been at hopelessly muddling the public’s understanding.  The Nazis, like all fascist movements, were a pathological expression of extreme-right-wing ideologies.  Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has done a huge amount of very good research and writing on just this subject, so for any further elaboration, you should really just go read his stuff.

    • … Alterman had some things to say about the book in The Nation the other day:

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      p>

      I’m tempted to call the publication of Liberal Fascism an intellectual scandal, but I remember that I live in a country where White House press secretary Dana Perino can admit to having no idea what the Cuban missile crisis was. (“Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?”) And it thrives in a culture where Ann Coulter not only rules bestseller lists but has found herself, according to the nonprofit Media Matters, interviewed nearly 200 times on at least thirteen programs on MSNBC, CNBC and NBC, not including the period she worked there. True, Goldberg does not call people “faggots” in public or speculate merrily on the joys of mass murder, but his scholarly method is most definitely Coulterian. Like Coulter, he’s got a bunch of footnotes. And for all I know, they check out. But they are put in the service of an argument that no one with any knowledge of the topic would take seriously. “The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed, I learn from Susan Jacoby’s excellent book The Age of American Unreason. (I wonder if Emerson was tempted to call his work Conservative Cannibalism.) Where, oh where, are the Friedmans of yesteryear?

    • Before I begin, thank you for reminding me it was Godwin’s Law.

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      p>As to my first point regarding your post, Dave Neiwert’s blog.  I have read portions of this blog before and really enjoy his writings even though I often don’t agree with his positions.

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      p>His main premise about the socialist beginnings of the Nazi party is basically, yes they did publicly adopt socialist ideas like capping corporate profits, increasing social benefits, strengthening unions, etc. but Hitler was lying.  

      <

      p>

      Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living. But these were empty promises; privately, he was reassuring wealthy German businessmen that he would crack down on labor once he achieved power. Historian William Shirer describes the Nazi’s dual strategy:

         “The party had to play both sides of the tracks. It had to allow [Nazi officials] Strasser, Goebbels and the crank Feder to beguile the masses with the cry that the National Socialists were truly ‘socialists’ and against the money barons. On the other hand, money to keep the party going had to be wheedled out of those who had an ample supply of it.”

      Once in power, Hitler showed his true colors by promptly breaking all his promises to workers.

      <

      p>To that I answer that it was the socialist ideas that gained Hitler the support of the people.  So my premise that the Nazi party has it’s origins in the political left (even though as I have stated many times already I don’t like the left/right political spectrum) but what it morphed into after Hitler gained power does not fit anywhere on the political spectrum.

      <

      p>My second point on your post, and I have asked this of others, what are these right wing ideologies that the Nazi party exemplified.  They believed in things like large government, government control of certain means of production,  income and property redistribution (just from non-Germans to Germans instead of the more traditional poor to rich), anti-capitalist economic beliefs, etc.  

      <

      p>Other positions, such as dissolving personal rights and freedoms to strengthen the state’s power is neither right nor left.  It is authoritarian with can be found on both sides.

      <

      p>Some of the key things that define the Nazi party, most notably the belief that one group of people are so sub-human that it justifies death camps, gas chambers, etc., is not right or left. It’s the reflection of power hungry animals that have no distinct political ideology or philosophy.

      <

      p>In fact, Neiwert supports this:

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      p>

      not only were fascists prodigious liars and deceivers, they also were highly mutative and opportunistic. Because fascism is more in the way of a pathology than an ideology — a pathology centered around the crude acquisition of power — it would adopt and discard ideologies and ideas with great alacrity, depending on its needs in forming alliances and gaining access to the levers of state power.

      <

      p>So to try and but people like Mussolini or Hitler or the Nazi party on the political left or right is just simply in accurate.  There are somethings that just simply cannot be simplified to a left/right political argument.

      <

      p>Yet people on both sides try to slander the other with these parties or people.  You yourself said that the Nazi party and fascists “were a pathological expression of extreme-right-wing ideologies.”

  8. My position is that Nazism came from the political left since it started from a socialist worker party.

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    p>No, they didn’t. You didn’t prove that. Can I stop now?

    <

    p>Nazis were authoritarians, which can have both left and right economic beliefs.

    <

    p>Ideology is more embracing than collecting beliefs and totaling up their leftness or rightness.

    <

    p>Nazis did believe in many socialist economic policies, such as capping profits on private corporations, nationalizing certain means of product,  increasing social benefits, etc.  The exception is that they wanted these things for only Germans to benefit.

    <

    p>These positions are also held by monarchists. The Left has traditionally been an enemy of monarchists. Monarchists have never been described as leftists. This is not evidence of anything.

    <

    p>However, the belief that one group of people is so sub-human that you can justify death camps, gas chambers, etc. is no where on the political spectrum.

    <

    p>Sub-human: may I point at 1950s American conservatives and their “views” on Afro-Americans? The right has a very long history of talking about superiors and inferiors.

    <

    p>So based on this, I think that Nazis had some left leaning tendencies, but generally do not fall any where on the traditional political spectrum.

    <

    p>That’s what you think. Unfalsifiable. I won’t address it.

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    p>As I said in that other post, the political compass is a better way to describe political leanings rather then the straight left/right spectrum.  In that case, Nazis would be Authoritarian with slight lean to the left.

    <

    p>Better way? In what way?

    • Ideology is more embracing than collecting beliefs and totaling up their leftness or rightness.

      <

      p>Yes, and that is why I am saying that the left/right spectrum is not accurate.

      <

      p>

      Better way? In what way?

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      p>For precisely the reason you stated above.  Totaling up the “leftness or rightness” does not accurately represent a particular party or group.  The political compass looks at two key factors; economic policy and personal freedoms.  It gives more variability instead of just left/right.

      <

      p>

      No, they didn’t. You didn’t prove that. Can I stop now?

      <

      p>Please see post from 12:12 PM today.

      <

      p>

      These positions are also held by monarchists. The Left has traditionally been an enemy of monarchists. Monarchists have never been described as leftists. This is not evidence of anything.

      <

      p>Monarchists are authoritarians but they could have left leaning or right leaning economic and social views.

      <

      p>

      Sub-human: may I point at 1950s American conservatives and their “views” on Afro-Americans? The right has a very long history of talking about superiors and inferiors.

      <

      p>So that means only right leaning politicians were responsible for slavery or civil rights abuses.  Interesting.  Which party freed the slaves again?  What party did Charles Sumner and Ben Butler belong to?

      <

      p>My “assignment”, as you put it, which you have again failed at, was to tell me why you think that Nazis belong on the political right instead of the political left.  But something tells me you won’t.  

          • In Europe, monarchism has certainly always been a movement on the Right. I certainly can’t vouch for Indian emperors.

            <

            p>To say that the monarchism is an ideology on the right is not to say that some monarchs haven’t done good things or never do things a liberal, social democrat, or socialist might do. However, pushing to establish republics has a long left-wing history. Think 1848. The disgust the Nazis had at the Weimar Republic was not unlike the disgust the old conservatives, who were monarchists (or kaiserists), had at the republic.

            <

            p>There may be a temptation to try to view all this stuff very, very abstractly — as if we were talking about mathematical abstractions. That’s to misuses these terms.

            <

            p>Generally, the left/right classification is useful for describing how ideas and political parties trace their roots. It’s also useful in describing ideologies or world views.

      • At which you have so far failed is to trace the Nazis to any kind of socialist movement whatever. So far you haven’t risen above sophistry, and the claim you are making, viz., that they were somehow “socialist”, runs against many years of standard opinion. If you wish to make an unusual and outrageous claim, you really must rise above sophistry and speculation about compasses and the like.

        • from that “right leaning” blog Dave Neiwert at Orcinus:

          <

          p>

          Prior to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, worker protests had spread all across Germany in response to the Great Depression. During his drive to power, Hitler exploited this social unrest by promising workers to strengthen their labor unions and increase their standard of living.

          <

          p>There is no dispute that Hitler used promises, that he later betrayed, to political left parties, such as the National Socialist German Workers Party, to gain the support of the German people.  Thus rising to power based on left leaning policies that he later betrayed.

          <

          p>Hitler then went on to go back on those promise and morph into something evil that does not fit on the political spectrum.

          <

          p>Further, as I have already said and will now elaborate on, Hitler had left leaning economic viewsSpecifically he subscribed to a [Keynesian economichttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian belief that calls for things like government intervention to stabilize the economy instead of allowing the market to stabilize the economy, deficit spending (I know this is wildly popular with repubs as of late but is traditionally a leftist economic policy), tax increases during prosperous times, fiscal policies directed to people of lower income rather then higher (i.e. demand side economics), profits should go to the workers rather then those who invested the capital, etc.

      • is that you are assuming that Nazism has any kind of consistent, meaningful intellectual underpinnings.  It does not.  It is a hodgepodge of ultranationalism, hyper-racism, militarism.

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        p>The Nazis who seized power for Hitler, Ernst Rohm and the Brown Shirts, were little more than thugs.  Not terribly different from your modern neo-Nazi. I guess it is fair to say that some of these guys bought into the concept of socialist revolution, but it would be more accurate to say that the movement, on the whole, wasn’t about much more than cracking skulls, especially Jewish skulls

        <

        p>Guess what happened to these second revolution socialist Brown Shirts?  They were summarily executed.  So, even if Nazism has roots in leftist socialism, it is also pretty fair to say that those roots were repudiated with extreme prejudice.

        <

        p>I guess you are right that toxic nationalism and racism don’t readily fit on the left-right spectrum.  But neither do they fit in any meaningful way on your compass thing.

        • Nazis are neither left wing or right wing.  (I don’t even think they played hockey)

          <

          p>On the political compass, they are way at the north and people could argue that they have a slight left or slight right economic view.  But in no means are they way over to either side.  

  9. While it’s true that the Right has a history of being much more authoritarian and into censureship (in fact, these originated on the right), and led up to the McCarthy-era witch hunts in t he 1950’s, as well as Hitler’s Nazi death/labor camps for people who were of the “wrong” religions or whatever, and the attitude towards African-Americans by Southern and Northern whites, which necessitated the Civil Rights Movement, there is, unfortunately, particularly right now, just as much rigidity and doctrinaire/ness in some circles on the Left.  There are leftwing sites too, that brook little or no dissent in differences.   So, I guess it cuts both ways to some degree or other.

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