NAZIs ( National SOCIALISTS) are only “the far right”, to you, if you share the same ideology as Joseph Stalin (an INTER-National SOCIALIST more often called Communist)
What Puts Nazism on the Right?
[nothing for the uninformed. It’s used leftists have run out of anything else to try and shut down their opponents]
This is a sincere question to which I’ve never had a satisfactory answer. I may have even asked it here before. We all know what Nazism is, but I think we need to define what we mean by “Right,” and specifically the American Right. I know some people prefer the quadrant model of political ideology to the linear one. Libertarian to authoritarian on one axis and communism to free markets on the other. But, where’s the overlap between Hitler’s Germany and American conservatism?
Do law-and-order righties fall on the far right of the axis in opposition to the chaos-and-destruction (2020 summer of love) lefties? I don’t think law and order is all that authoritarian, at least in America. If laws are just and equally applied (increasingly not the case), that would appear to be in a sweet spot near the political middle.
Economically, I don’t see American conservatives as radically free-market fundamentalists, although there are some who seem to hold that position. Personally, I’m more of a fair trade kind of gal. I see tariffs as useful to counteract those who would exploit our entrepreneurial capitalism by dumping their products and putting our industries out of business (cough China cough). But economic fascism seems more related to the hand-in-glove state and corporate cooperation the Left adores (see Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Education, . . . ).
So where’s the overlap with Nazism? Here’s what I think. I think the Left uses the Nazi/fascist slander to suggest that American nationalism (sometimes associated with patriotism or love of homeland) is just like the poisonous ethnic nationalism of Nazi Germany — Hitler’s Aryanism. It’s the basis for charges of “inherently racist” and “white supremacist.”
It’s an absurd notion. Is all nationalism Nazism? Are the French Nazis for loving their culture and language? How about the Swedes or the Spanish? It’s particularly slanderous given that America has never been ethnically pure and hasn’t even aspired to it, except in pockets where Democrats and the KKK (but, I repeat) held sway.
None of which is to say that patriots are required to believe America is faultless. I happen to believe there’s a fatal flaw in our Constitution — a sin of omission that allows the federal government to buy votes by redistributing our tax dollars. That’s a limit on government power (the raison d’etre of our Constitution) I’d like to see, but I’m not an idealist on the matter.
When American right-wingers assent to the idea that Nazis and fascists are on the Right, they’re submitting to the notion that American patriots are racist white supremacists. I dissent. And don’t even get me started on how any form of moral, academic, or artistic excellence is now considered “white supremacy.” As if nonwhites are incapable of high achievement. Who’s the racist now?