RE: Both fascism and nationalist socialism are left wing

Posted on: February 10, 2018 at 20:44:40 CT

The terms "left wing" and "right wing" generally indicate a cluster of philosophies, but because it originated as a Western term, usually it's associated with the idea of what the state is for, how its citizens are governed, who owns the resources, and the degree of celebration of military. (The latter has in the last 60 years or so come to be the least helpful.)

The original "center" can be viewed as Whig Liberalism: a philosophy which was developed in Western Europe, especially Great Britain, and became the basis for the rebellion of the American colonies. You can recognize this liberalism in the Declaration of Independence and in the preamble to the constitution.

Europe moved farther to the left with the development of Marxism, which is a materialist philosophy: it continued on the path of liberalism, with the assumption that the people as a whole should choose their own government and leaders, but added to that that workers are the center of what's important, and the wealthy and their industries exploit and harm the people as a whole. The workers should run the government, and all workers should ally around the world and overthrow their exploiters in order to make their own decisions.

In reactions, the right side expanded into the concept of fascism, that the best government has strong leaders who make all decisions for the people, allied with large businesses who can efficiently exploit resources. Fascism postulated that a strong government, a strong military, and strong industries would be best, and that conquering inferior (ie less strong) countries and peoples would improve the original country by increasing its strength and helping it continue to define itself against the rest of the world.

By these standards, Hitler and his party are easily identified as fascist, and therefore right wing. The term "national socialist" came about primarily because fascism is one of the newest of the successful political ideas, and after the first World War, Germany was politically torn between going left and going right (as were many other countries). But the party emphasis was on the "national," not the "socialist." Hitler refined the general idea of fascism to make it distinctly anti-semitic and racist, and by keeping a "them" always in front of and within the Germans , he found it easy to build an "us" willing to conquer an inferior world, believing themselves superior to any force which would stand against them.