[annatar1914]

Exactly. Americans, and even people in the West more broadly, always use 'muh authoritarianism' to justify some kind of horseshoe theory as though it isn't actually a complete historical anomaly that liberalism has comprehensively enveloped their society.

Thank you @Local Localist , sometimes I think I'm quite alone in my thinking among my peers in America. But again, I think sometimes too that there are more people who are Statists that aren't being heard in the USA.

[annatar1914]

We aren’t, we’re just recognizing that both the original Fascists and the original Nazis were socialist organizations, as much extremes of the Left as the Communists.

That unfortunately is not correct. Mussolini and his Fascists marched on Rome in 1919 at the behest of Italy's Capitalists, large landowners, and aristocracy, and King Victor Emmanuel made him Prime Minister. Nothing Mussolini did was against the Elites in Italy. He was once a Socialist, but switched during WWI, being paid by the British to help get Italy into WWI.

Pretty much the same with the Nazis, in both cases there was a understanding reached with big business and there was a wave of privatizations and union busting when the Fascists and Nazis came to power.

[Local Localist]

@Local Localist What do you mean by “corporatism”?

The original economic philosophy of fascism. It isn't socialism, but it shares some similarities, just as it shares some similarities with capitalism. It's like working in the interests of the proletariat, but instead of being the working class against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class, it's the whole country against other ones.

[ckaihatsu]

It's hard to bring Fascism/Nazism into a debate that involves a left-right liberal spectrum, because by very definition fascism is illiberal, and is hard to characterize on a liberal spectrum.

F.y.i., here's a political spectrum that I developed:


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

Spoiler: show

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They may not be better off under the radical right than they would be under communism, but it's conceivable that they might end up better off than they are under liberal-capitalism (so the whole thing might constitute an improvement over the present).

I think the key factor here is the *structure* of society, and whether it's hierarchical and *competitive*, or more *egalitarian* and cooperative. With this in mind your statement makes sense.

Not as working class, but nationals and citizens.

This means, then, that they decided to throw their fates in with the (bourgeois-nationalist) *state*, instead of with their own *class* -- classic 'false consciousness'.

They'd be given some monopolies on work, some welfare, and bribed with other gimmicks but it's all afforded by their own exploitation as is their oppression.

This kind of social behavior could also be called 'tribalist', or '(nationalist) groupthink'.

In that respect I don't think it's really possible for the far right to have a different relationship to the working class than the liberal-capitalists do.

Both of these two groups, liberals and fascists, are *rivals* and are vying for social hegemony within the nation-state.

Even considering the immense social spending that being illiberal allows, what else can a merger of state and corporate power be but more naked and awful?

Thus the 'democratic bourgeoisie' line was born

Yup -- I recently learned that the tea that was dumped in the Boston Harbor by the American Revolutionaries was from the British East India Company -- probably the quintessential *archetype* of state and corporate power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party

National cultures content is most only upper class culture from each region, while socialism is for working class, i would say socialism seeks to destroy all social classes, including nationalities.

Yup, I would say so as well.

Bourgeois culture, such as it is, belongs in *museums* and nowhere else for the working class, since it's so ruling-class-*propagandistic* / provocative, inherently.


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As we all know, socialism is considered to be on the left while capitalism is on the right.

Because in political theory, "left" means egalitarian, and "right" means elitist.

Right wing socialism is certainly possible, in fact some would argue it is inevitable as the political elite in a socialist regime use their power to administer "publicly" owned land and capital to their own advantage. Post-Maoist China, where the rich and Party cronies are almost identical sets, is an obvious example.

At the *geopolitical* level, though, such an 'independent' country like China, has been successfully *anti-imperialist*, which is impressive in and of itself since it's so rare in history. This anti-imperialist 'nation-building' aspect makes it nominally left-wing, at least geopolitically, which is what Maoism / Stalinism is.


Ideologies & Operations -- Fundamentals

Spoiler: show

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This absurd term is the result of mess between economical and political rightness. Those axis are orthogonal, they can be changed independently.

No, I respectfully disagree -- one can simply posit a left-right linear *overlap* of the political and economic continuums, *instead* of those two a-priori aspects being orthogonal to each other. The linear 'overlap' yields the leftward ideologies to be increasingly about *egalitarianism* (politically), and cooperation (economically), with the rightward ideologies being increasingly *hierarchical* (politically), and *competitive* (economically).


Anatomy of a Platform

Spoiler: show

The police state with fascist government, in other words, with ultra-right regime, can still lean to free market or planned economy.

I don't think so -- the increasing *stratification* of socio-*political* status rankings means that a 'free' market, or *any* market, becomes increasingly *untenable* as everyday political *favoritism* and elitism take over, yielding a clearer social *hierarchy*. Corporatism will prevail, then, implying social structuring of the economy, over anarchic-type market exchanges.

However, socialism per se is the left thing. And fascism must be called fascism. Nobody calls Libertarians as right-wing anarchists or left-wing capitalists. They are libertarians.

'Libertarians' are 'left nationalists', according to me and my first diagram up there.


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The Nazis were Socialists and the Communists were Socialists. Left, Right, either way, Socialism is always the fruit of evil and oppression and total government control.

[img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CS2aadEUEAAF-zo.jpg[img]

No, this is too facile -- socialism is *supposed* to be about workers-of-the-world control of social production, so ultra-nationalists and the far right *aren't* that because they prefer to use corporate-type *hierarchies* of power as the determining factor for economic functioning ('the winner takes the spoils') -- currently seen in the highly competitive and stratified *sports* industry, among professional athletes / players.

For context:


Components of Social Production

Spoiler: show

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Socialism is just an economic system, it is not a political system. Some Political systems that use socialist economics would include communism, Marxism, Stalinism, Trotskyism, Western Marxism, Eurocommunism, left communism, Sorelism, Christian Socialism, Zionist socialism, National Bolshevikism, or Democratic socialism.

You can be both a fascist and a socialist. A fascist can use socialist economics to reach some fascist ideas, such as National Glory, restoration of culture, or maintaining social order to prevent liberal social decay.

There are socialists that support a state, like myself. And then there are socialists that advocate anarchy, like some of the people on RevLeft. But a lot of socialists that support a fascist political system don't label themselves right wing, they label themselves Third Position.

By 'socialist economics' you mean 'Stalinism', or 'centralized state planning' -- such is *not* proletarian control of production, nor is it *international*, necessarily.

Genuine workers-of-the-world socialism would be *very* bottom-up, would be based on active liberated-work participation, and would be co-administrative overall, on that basis.

I have a treatment of this issue at another thread:

True workers-of-the-world socialism would just be an *expansion* of this basic corporate-like / Stalinist-state-like bureaucratic functioning, but it would better correspond to actual realities / facts, because the overall 'pyramid' (of relative individual social prestige, or reputation) would be much *flatter* than we're used to seeing, historically, due to historical *caste*-like bureaucratic *elitism*, or *top-down* administration of the workers themselves.

In the absence of caste / class / careerism / heredity / elitism, the 'base' of the 'pyramid' would be much, much *broader*, to enable a broad-based *bottom-up* dynamic of dynamic social planning, with far less institutional *rigidity*, if at all.

viewtopic.php?p=15095654#p15095654

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I honestly do not know why they constantly keep conflating the two, the only thing I've managed to come up with is that the entire American political spectrum is nearly Anarchistic in comparison with the rest of the world's ideologies, and that to American thinkers almost any expression of State power one way or another is both ''Totalitarian'' and without any meaningful distinction between Fascism and Socialism.

I think this mindset belies a very *status-quo*, nationalist *state-centric* political orientation.


Ideologies & Operations -- Left Centrifugalism

Spoiler: show

As for ''Right-Wing Socialism'', of course it exists, Engels identified it long ago as a tendency, and Oswald Spengler was a typical proponent of it.

Nope -- he was a *nationalist*, including all that that implies:

In his view, correct socialism has a much more "national" spirit.[34]

At the same time as he rejects any social democratic provisions, Spengler celebrates private property, competition, imperialism, capital accumulation, and "wealth, collected in few hands and among the ruling classes."[36] Landa describes Spengler's "Prussian Socialism" as "working a whole lot, for the absolute minimum, but – and this is a vital aspect – being happy about it."[36]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Sp ... West_(1918)

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We aren’t, we’re just recognizing that both the original Fascists and the original Nazis were socialist organizations, as much extremes of the Left as the Communists.

Nope -- genuine socialism implies *egalitarianism*, even through to labor roles and the material-*economy*, while the far right, of all flavors, prefers a corporatist *power hierarchy* of personified positions / titles.

[Hellas me ponas]

GUYS!

Fascism isn't an ideology, it literally means racism, but in Italian.
Fazza =face. And the political opponents of Mussolini called his supporters fascists in a mooing way, because the Italian Nationalist Socialists were really into racism.

Now when it comes to Hitlers party the Nationalsozialistische deutsche Arbeiterpartei
Or in short NSDAP aka Nazi parti, it literally is the definition of right wing socialism.
It means National Socialist party of Germany.

German Nazism and Communism as ways of life and ways of governing are actually siblings. State controlled economy (in Germany it wasn't officially state controlled but the system they used ended up being state controlled economy).
Nazism combines the two most popular ideas of that period (and that's why all Germans liked it) nationalism and socialism, all classes could relate either aristocrats either peasants, because this party was the voice of all . And if Hitlers government didn't burn and systematically cleanse all these poor Jews, then the nazi party would be nothing more to Germany than what kemal ataturk was to turkey, Washington to America and Alexander the Great to Greeks.

Thus you see this whole forum has no reason for existence. Nazism is literally right wing socialism.

PS I'm not talking about what happened in the field, I'm talking about the theory and claims of each party. Background schemes and deals don't matter, they're just proof that socialism can't work. But I'm only talking about what the parties officially claimed to be to the eyes of the masses.
Gutten tag!

[Hellas me ponas]

This modern right and left wing shit is stupid and ineffective, because it's absolute and very narrow.
Political ideas and views cannot be placed on a bypolar scale. Its not good and evil.
This thing is really European and it isn't working for rest of the world except for west Europe and America

[ckaihatsu]

all classes could relate either aristocrats either peasants, because this party was the voice of all .

'All classes', and then you only list the aristocrats and the peasants -- ?

This, btw, is called 'cross-class', meaning that one of the two classes *must* be betraying its own class interests, and I don't think that the *ruling* class is going to be making that kind of mistake.

I'm talking about the theory and claims of each party. Background schemes and deals don't matter, they're just proof that socialism can't work. But I'm only talking about what the parties officially claimed to be to the eyes of the masses.
Gutten tag!

It's good that you're differentiating between certain politics, and the *claims* to that politics made by certain parties *marketing* themselves as 'socialist' / 'Communist' / 'communist'.

This modern right and left wing shit is stupid and ineffective, because it's absolute and very narrow.
Political ideas and views cannot be placed on a bypolar scale. Its not good and evil.
This thing is really European and it isn't working for rest of the world except for west Europe and America

The left-right political spectrum isn't a *cultural* thing -- it's more like the spectrum of electromagnetic frequencies, with distinct definitions for *leftward*, versus rightward.

No, left versus right isn't 'good vs. evil', but I like to think of it as 'historically-progressive' vs. 'historically-backward' -- hence the current uproar over racist practices that should have ended during the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s, but here we are still mopping up today, as with the issue of police brutality / killings.

One can *secularize* 'good vs. evil', into 'constructive vs. deleterious', btw.

[Hellas me ponas]

By good vs evil, I mean this particular European way of thinking, in which there are only two poles, black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, left and right.
Paradise and heavens.
That stuff are only European, I don't know why we Europeans (and USA, they technically Europeans too) think this absolutistic way, but it is very narrow and definitive and can't express nor represent the wide variety of ideologies, political ideas and views.

[Potemkin]

Nazism combines the two most popular ideas of that period (and that's why all Germans liked it) nationalism and socialism, all classes could relate either aristocrats either peasants, because this party was the voice of all . And if Hitlers government didn't burn and systematically cleanse all these poor Jews, then the nazi party would be nothing more to Germany than what kemal ataturk was to turkey, Washington to America and Alexander the Great to Greeks.

I have to disagree with this. Nazism purported to be a mixture of nationalism and socialism, but in practice it was mainly (a particularly vicious and racist version of) nationalism with a corporatist economic model, which favoured employers more than it favoured workers. In no meaningful sense was it 'socialist'. In fact, it was Hitler's lack of interest in real socialism which led to the split with the Strasser brothers, which Hitler 'resolved' (in his usual fashion) during the Night of the Long Knives.

Oh, and Nazism without anti-semitism would have been an empty shell of an ideology - the persecution of the Jews was the glue which held the Nazi regime together. Without the 'Other' to persecute, loot and ultimately exterminate, the loose alliance of interests which formed the Nazi regime would most likely have fallen apart.

[Hellas me ponas]

I have to disagree with this. Nazism purported to be a mixture of nationalism and socialism, but in practice it was mainly (a particularly vicious and racist version of) nationalism with a corporatist economic model, which favoured employers more than it favoured workers. In no meaningful sense was it 'socialist'. In fact, it was Hitler's lack of interest in real socialism which led to the split with the Strasser brothers, which Hitler 'resolved' (in his usual fashion) during the Night of the Long Knives.

Oh, and Nazism without anti-semitism would have been an empty shell of an ideology - the persecution of the Jews was the glue which held the Nazi regime together. Without the 'Other' to persecute, loot and ultimately exterminate, the loose alliance of interests which formed the Nazi regime would most likely have fallen apart.

Again, I think I made clear I am not talking about what happened in the field, I am only talking about the official party declarations and manifesto.
Anti semitism has nothing to do with nazism. Anti semitism was just a tool for the German goverment to guide the pleb anger towards everyone they want and keep them obeying and heartdreaded.
Do not confuse things and meanings please

[Local Localist]

Again, I think I made clear I am not talking about what happened in the field, I am only talking about the official party declarations and manifesto.
Anti semitism has nothing to do with nazism. Anti semitism was just a tool for the German goverment to guide the pleb anger towards everyone they want and keep them obeying and heartdreaded.
Do not confuse things and meanings please

Surely you would consider Mein Kampf to be highly important to understanding the political theory of Nazism, given who it was written by and the fact that it predates the manifestos of the Nazi Party, and I'm pretty sure that has a fair bit of open Antisemitism in it. Even if not, I haven't read the manifestos, but Hitler's 25-point Program definitely included an explicitly Anti-Jewish sentiment.

[Potemkin]

Anti semitism has nothing to do with nazism.

An interesting perspective, though not one with which I find myself in agreement. Lol.

[ckaihatsu]

By good vs evil, I mean this particular European way of thinking, in which there are only two poles, black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, left and right.
Paradise and heavens.
That stuff are only European, I don't know why we Europeans (and USA, they technically Europeans too) think this absolutistic way, but it is very narrow and definitive and can't express nor represent the wide variety of ideologies, political ideas and views.

Yup, I know what you're talking about -- it's basically *Western Civilization*, and the traditions of *religion*.

From what I can tell, I think people initially get into religion from seeking out some sense of *civility* and *order* in their own lives and social relations with others -- this is the kind of thing where one might easily say 'Why reinvent the wheel', meaning that human civilization *must* have figured this out long ago, before I was born, so I'll just tap into that.

Unfortunately religion was an *emergent* social institution, due to the appearance of the *class divide*:

Gordon Childe described the transformation which occurred in Mesopotamia between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago as people settled in the river valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates. They found land which was extremely fertile, but which could only be cultivated by ‘drainage and irrigation works’, which depended upon ‘cooperative effort’.48 More recently Maisels has suggested people discovered that by making small breaches in the banks between river channels they could irrigate wide areas of land and increase output considerably. But they could not afford to consume all the extra harvest immediately, so some was put aside to protect against harvest failure.49

Grain was stored in sizeable buildings which, standing out from the surrounding land, came to symbolise the continuity and preservation of social life. Those who supervised the granaries became the most prestigious group in society, overseeing the life of the rest of the population as they gathered in, stored and distributed the surplus. The storehouses and their controllers came to seem like powers over and above society, the key to its success, which demanded obedience and praise from the mass of people. They took on an almost supernatural aspect. The storehouses were the first temples, their superintendents the first priests.50

Harman, _People's History of the World_, p. 19

Monotheism came *later*, which I think is the thing / development that *cemented* the dualistic way of thinking that you're describing, for easier cognitive *focus*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism#Origins

[Hellas me ponas]

Surely you would consider Mein Kampf to be highly important to understanding the political theory of Nazism, given who it was written by and the fact that it predates the manifestos of the Nazi Party, and I'm pretty sure that has a fair bit of open Antisemitism in it. Even if not, I haven't read the manifestos, but Hitler's 25-point Program definitely included an explicitly Anti-Jewish sentiment.

National socialism has nothing against Jews specifically .
That's a thing that most people confuse.
The antisemitism of Hitler goverment wasn't because he was nazi, it was because he was German. In Germany, most Germans back then had a very huge anti semitic sentiment. Hitler just used this to achieve his political goals.
Nazism is an ideology, antisemitism is a fenomena of that particular era.
Even in Democratic countries there were antisemitic sentiments (not as strong as in Germany though).
Soviets also persecuted Jews many times (and not only Jews).
Thus you see antisemitism has nothing to do with Nazism, antisemitism was only a tool used by the German nazis to gain even more popularity and control over their country.

[Potemkin]

National socialism has nothing against Jews specifically .
That's a thing that most people confuse.
The antisemitism of Hitler goverment wasn't because he was nazi, it was because he was German. In Germany, most Germans back then had a very huge anti semitic sentiment. Hitler just used this to achieve his political goals.
Nazism is an ideology, antisemitism is a fenomena of that particular era.
Even in Democratic countries there were antisemitic sentiments (not as strong as in Germany though).
Soviets also persecuted Jews many times (and not only Jews).
Thus you see antisemitism has nothing to do with Nazism, antisemitism was only a tool used by the German nazis to gain even more popularity and control over their country.

If that were the case, then why would Hitler have felt that the Holocaust was necessary? After all, once all the Jews were dead, he would have robbed himself of a vital part of Nazism's appeal to the German people, no? And more to the point, why did Hitler try to keep the Holocaust a secret from the German people? Martin Bormann once castigated Himmler because he, Himmler, was starting to discuss the Final Solution over an open telephone line. Why did he do that? Because it was a state secret, that's why. Why was it a state secret? Because Hitler didn't want ordinary Germans finding out about it, because he knew they likely wouldn't approve of it. No, all the evidence suggests that Hitler was a sincere and devout anti-semite, much more so than your average Herr und Frau Schmidt in the street. I repeat: anti-semitism was the core of Nazism, both in theory as an ideology and in practice as a form of governance. Anti-semitism was, in fact, the glue which held the whole thing together, both as an ideology and as a regime. The Nazi regime's anti-semitism was not merely an electoral ploy or a cheap method of currying favour with the German people.

[Hellas me ponas]

If that were the case, then why would Hitler have felt that the Holocaust was necessary? After all, once all the Jews were dead, he would have robbed himself of a vital part of Nazism's appeal to the German people, no? And more to the point, why did Hitler try to keep the Holocaust a secret from the German people? Martin Bormann once castigated Himmler because he, Himmler, was starting to discuss the Final Solution over an open telephone line. Why did he do that? Because it was a state secret, that's why. Why was it a state secret? Because Hitler didn't want ordinary Germans finding out about it, because he knew they likely wouldn't approve of it. No, all the evidence suggests that Hitler was a sincere and devout anti-semite, much more so than your average Herr und Frau Schmidt in the street. I repeat: anti-semitism was the core of Nazism, both in theory as an ideology and in practice as a form of governance. Anti-semitism was, in fact, the glue which held the whole thing together, both as an ideology and as a regime. The Nazi regime's anti-semitism was not merely an electoral ploy or a cheap method of currying favour with the German people.

Point one) The holocaust wasn't a necessary part of Hitlers plan. The holocaust prevailed after a 2 month counsil in which the state would decide what would they do with all these jews they had imprisoned. There is a reason it's called the final solution.


2) Hating the Jews wasn't a state secret. Burning the Jews was of course tried to be kept secret, because the German goverment knew that not all normal Germans would agree with burning innocent people just because they were Jews.

3)Jews were and are literally everywhere. Trying to kill all the Jews is like a dog chasing its tail and the nazi top officials knew that. Thus it was an infinite source of distraction and "threat" for the plebs.

4) The thing that held toghether the Germans wasn't antisemitism, but the idea that they would become once again a great nation. It was the love for their fatherland. Antisemitism only became a thing because someone had to take the blame for all the problems Germans had (and obviously they couldn't blame themselves) thus they charged the Jews.

[Hellas me ponas]

And please stop saying Hitler did this Hitler did that.
Don't act like a single man was responsible for a chaos and destruction so huge and terrible such as ww2 and holocaust.
German people had gone nuts for those 20 years and its not bad to admit it because that's what happens when an empire suddenly turns into a failed state.
Holocaust isn't only for Hitler to blame, but all the Germans of that era.
Fortunately modern Germans have realised their mistakes and acknowledged the cruelty and animosity of their ancestors actions.
The world has forgiven the German people. But let's not illustrate history.

[Donna]

It is fascinating how the birthplace of the Reformation, the industrialized heart of Europe and the seat of continental philosophy became overtaken by a national cult of anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism masquerading as science and high culture while Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world looked on in passive horror. The casual confidence of German anti-Semites from this period has always astounded me because you can feel that the West was divided between two cosmos. Something went profoundly awry in Germany's historical development and the Nazis took this national religion of ressentiment to its logical conclusion.

It also makes you really appreciate the generation that sacrificed everything to put down the Hitlerian dragon, whether it was Soviet soldiers, US servicemen, British Commonwealth troopers, French partisans or the German communists and revolutionaries who gave the world Antifa.

I fear the massive human effort and personal sacrifice it took to defeat this hate cult will sadly (and dangerously) be forgotten soon if it hasn't already.

[Hellas me ponas]

It is fascinating how the birthplace of the Reformation, the industrialized heart of Europe and the seat of continental philosophy became overtaken by a national cult of anti-Semitism, an anti-Semitism masquerading as science and high culture while Western Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world looked on in passive horror. The casual confidence of German anti-Semites from this period has always astounded me because you can feel that the West was divided between two cosmos. Something went profoundly awry in Germany's historical development and the Nazis took this national religion of ressentiment to its logical conclusion.

It also makes you really appreciate the generation that sacrificed everything to put down the Hitlerian dragon, whether it was Soviet soldiers, US servicemen, British Commonwealth troopers, French partisans or the German communists and revolutionaries who gave the world Antifa.

I fear the massive human effort and personal sacrifice it took to defeat this hate cult will sadly (and dangerously) be forgotten soon if it hasn't already.

Don't worry. Today's dangers from West are way opposite than nazism. But can end up being as absolutist and fascistic as nazism.

[Hellas me ponas]

And I dont know about the rest of the world. But in Greece every year we do massive military parade and celebrations for the NO day, which is literally the day we said no to fascist occupation.
At least in Greece the war against Fascism is still very highly remembered and appreciated.
Also another great celebration of Greece is Polytechneio, 17 November. We celebrate the fall of the fascist dictatorship of Papadopoulos and the fight for democracy and liberty of the students of Greek applied physics etc Universities.