[UD]

There are innumerable historical instances of where the term 'fascist Left' has become a literal and not merely metaphorical description. Not only Mussolini, but the French statesman and arch-collaborator Pierre Laval was a pro-Lenin and anti-war socialist in 1914-18. Laval's compatriot the Communist leader Jacques Doriot founded a pro-Nazi and antisemitic party in the 1930s, and was the political mentor of John Amery, the British traitor (and son of the Cabinet Minister Leo Amery) hanged after the war. German Communists actively supported the Nazis in the Prussian referendum of 1931 and the transport strike of 1932. Between 1929 and 1933 the Japanese Communist Party (including members of the Central Committee of the Comintern) adopted en masse the doctrines of race and nation.

On the neo-Nazi ideology of the terrorist Left associated with the Red Army Fraction in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. There was one who bombed a Berlin synagogue on the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1969 in order to protest against Israeli policies, and another who supported the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games three years later.

The principal leftist spokesman who extolled the Munich massacre, Horst Mahler, is these days a spokesman for the far-Right party National Democratic Party.

Bringing the War Home - a study of the revolutionary violence in the US and Germany in this period - Mahler had another political incarnation before becoming an overt Nazi:

Horst Mahler broke with the [Red Army Fraction] in 1974 and affiliated with traditional Marxism-Leninism.... Mahler ultimately lumped terrorism with unemployment, alcoholism, drug addiction, and criminality as expressions of a society in crisis. Far from being the "cure" for capitalism's pathologies, the RAF was itself one of capitalism's pathologies.

[kami321]

what's the point?
Are you trying to prove that many former communists have switched to fascism?
That is true, however, if you count how many former communists have ended up as liberals and conservatives, you'll get a much bigger number.

[The Red Goblin]

kami321 is correct. Many people change their positions.........sometimes radically. People of more extremist positions are often the most unstable in the long run.

Your point is noted UD, but needs to be refined.

[Scourge]

It is true that the radical switch could happen. I was a commie before getting extremely desperated. Now see where I stand!

[Ideational Ontarian]

Turning from Stalinism to National Socialism isn't that big of a switch. Definitely not radical. They are just the two sides of the same collectivist statist coin.

[Eddier1]

Turning from Stalinism to National Socialism isn't that big of a switch. Definitely not radical. They are just the two sides of the same collectivist statist coin.

How would one who has identified oneself so often with Liberalism know about the far left as opposed to the far right? -- one who has no understanding of scientific socialism and none about fascism, supposedly. UNLESS that individual is a fraud, big time and is actually a neo con anarcho-fascist who hasn't the guts to identify as to what he really is!

He should use his ignorant muckraking on himself, unless he is forever incapable of knowing himself, and is only a stupid tool of the liberals. Useful fools seem always welcomed in the circles of liberalism and/or social libertarianism.

[kami321]

They are just the two sides of the same collectivist statist coin.

You are right, IO, but similarly libertarianism and fascism are sides of the same competetive inequality coin.
Truth to say i think the terms such as "anarcho-fascism" and "national boshevism" do not hold real meaning.

[Ideational Ontarian]

Quite possibly Kami. My point is that there is a fine line between oligarchy and socialism. Between democracy and elitism.

Say a baby is predisposed to think in a militant group-minded way. One only has to flip a coin to decide whether he winds up a fascist or a communist.

Even the most pro-worker revolutionary can become a ironfisted statist once he seizes autocratic control. In the face of received enemies, counter-revolutionaries and utter paranoia, any man can become a Stalin or Hitler.

Like I said, its easy as pie for two ideologies that look so different on paper to converge in reality.

[Maxim Litvinov]

Say a baby is predisposed to think in a militant group-minded way.

He sounds like he would turn up at the nearest recruitment office, more likely.

[kami321]

Say a baby is predisposed to think in a militant group-minded way. One only has to flip a coin to decide whether he winds up a fascist or a communist.

As far as I know stalinists aren't all militarists and nationalists. And if they are, then it's really a question of how much stalinism is a left-wing movement, because the left by definition solidly stands against militarism and nationalism.

[Thunderhawk]

because the left by definition solidly stands against militarism and nationalism.

Lets see that definition.

The leftwing here and now also largely hold that view, but I suspect it is not part of the defintion of "left wing" (assuming there is a proper defintion beyond some akin to "for the good of the many")