Were Nazis lefties?

[AmazonQueen]

Michael Burleigh described their support as being like a pot-bellied man. They had support in all classes but it was strongest among the lower middle-classes. It was stronger among workers outside the major industrial towns where the trade unions, socialists and communists were well-organised, stronger among workers in small enterprises, stronger among those who feared losing status like craftsmen/artisans, civil servants, small businessmen, stronger in rural and Protestant areas, and at least before coming to power weak in Bavaria which had its own right-wing parties and Bavarian nationalist and monarchist traditions.

edit: like some modern populists it appealed to those who felt squeezed by organised labour and big capital.

 

[HoloDoc]

The real irony of course being that Bavaria was where the party was strongest in its initial incarnation, until the stupidity of the Beer Hall Putsch.

 

[Enginseer]

It depends on your perspective on certain issues.

The Nazis advocated for animal welfare, anti-tobacco, fair minimum wage, equal opportunity, fair treatment under the law, better access to education, and a welfare state. But like a legal works, there are 3 primary elements to how legal writing worked: its context (in theory), its enforcement (in reality), and its interpretation (putting a theory into work).

Sure in these contexts, the Nazis were lefties, but however, these advocations were interpreted and enforced was definitely far to the right. The animal welfare was enforced in the right direction, but... sub-humans were ironically considered lower than animals and so laws concerning animal welfare arise contractions here. Anti-tobacco worked in the same way of denying access to those unworthy of tobacco and granting rations to those worthy. A fairer minimum wage mainly came from the government that decided it, not from labor unions that Nazi Germany outlawed and dismantled(fairness to the government may be different from fairness to the workers). Equal opportunity, fair treatment under the law, better education, and a welfare state were mainly for the "Germanic race" and not all of mankind.

 

[HoloDoc]

This is a really strange understanding of both the Nazis and what left-wing means. Being "anti-tobacco" is hardly left-wing. And the Nazis dramatically decreased access to education, as well as the subjects available and the people and methods used to teach them. And that's just the start really. The minimum wage, for example,was well above what would have been a livin wage under Wemar, but unofficial Nazi taxes - such as the virtual requirement to contribute to Hitler's favourite charities, like the Winter Appeal - made it worth far less than a similar wage under Weimar.

Your only really good points are on animal welfare and the creation of a welfare state. And the welfare state the Nazis built was a Frankenstein's monster of contradictions and paradoxes, like most this the Nazis did.

 

[Enginseer]

I like to define the left-right wing as "attempts to change-keep the status quo" since that really makes the most sense when comparing to a majority of a nation's history. So, you would have the left as progressive, central as reactionary, and the right as restorative.

But mainly the perception of today's world is that leftists are people that are trying to advocate for social reform theoretically beneficial for the people while rightists are people that try to advocate against these social reforms because they believe these same reforms theoretically hurt the people.

So you could argue anti-tobacco can be a left-wing cause similar to the U.S.'s Progressive Era of anti-alcohol where both causes for banning the substance was in the belief of being a harm to public society.

However, when discussing education, Hitler threw away the old status quo of teaching education (Scientific Method and the such) and introduced his new way of teaching education (which I don't personally agree with). Is this bad? Sure depending on what you think of the education (Eugenics and racial science aren't exactly popular now). But can we say the Nazis reduced the access education? Sure when we compare it to our own education, but the intent of Nazi Germany on expanding "their own" education was theoretically left-oriented.

 

[HoloDoc]

Literally neither of those definitions is remotely accurate.

You have a really weird understanding of what constitutes left or right wing. We can't really have a discussion of whether the Nazis were left or right wing if you don't understand what those terms mean, or are using an entirely subjective definition you just made up on your own.

 

[Enginseer]

If you don't want me to use a definition you don't like. I'll just use something online that everyone supposedly uses.

These are charts randomly grabbed off Google Images which you have to assume are all completely someone's opinions.

On all of these charts, if you use the center of reference for a Republican U.S. president or even a Democrat U.S. President, Hitler is basically a leftie. You could argue that Hitler is more authoritarians than these presidents, but he is nonetheless an authoritarian leftie.

But then you might say what about the origin of the political chart? Hitler is clearly not a leftie. Well, that's the thing. There has been no one to put exactly at the origin(unless you direct the origin to someone else), so you can't say Hitler isn't a leftie until you start comparing people who are further to the left like Stalin or Gandhi. If you are a devout believer in these figures, then you can argue Hitler and his Nazis were righties and not lefties.

So, ultimately it depends on what your views align to. Based on the pinpoints of U.S. presidents are on, Hitler(and presumably his followers) is overall a leftie in the U.S. according to the creators of the graphs.

 

[HoloDoc]

Hitler is literally to the right in every single one of those charts you posted. Don't get your panties in a twist just because I pointed out some rather glaring flaws in your argument.

 

[sophie]

Appeal to political compass.org

That post...doesn't refute anything he said...?

 

[HoloDoc]

That post...doesn't refute anything he said...?

Worse. It actually helps my argument.

 

[Wastl]

These are charts randomly grabbed off Google Images which you have to assume are all completely someone's opinions.

On all of these charts, if you use the center of reference for a Republican U.S. president or even a Democrat U.S. President, Hitler is basically a leftie. You could argue that Hitler is more authoritarians than these presidents, but he is nonetheless an authoritarian leftie.

But then you might say what about the origin of the political chart? Hitler is clearly not a leftie. Well, that's the thing. There has been no one to put exactly at the origin(unless you direct the origin to someone else), so you can't say Hitler isn't a leftie until you start comparing people who are further to the left like Stalin or Gandhi. If you are a devout believer in these figures, then you can argue Hitler and his Nazis were righties and not lefties.

So, ultimately it depends on what your views align to. Based on the pinpoints of U.S. presidents are on, Hitler(and presumably his followers) is overall a leftie in the U.S. according to the creators of the graphs.

Um, you do realize that they made the graph have two axes on purpose, yes?
You can't just randomly remove one axis, because that makes the whole graph useless. By doing so, you are grossly distorting what the graph is saying, and thus what the creators of the graph are saying.

These graphs combine two different parts, the economic and the social one. Neither on their own defines where someone is on the right or left, even if they used the words left and right for one of them for a completely unknown reason. The whole things was made up to get away from the simple left/right split that some people were using, because that didn't always paint the whole picture. By simply throwing out everything the graph tries to represent, you are invalidating the whole thing, rendering your entire argument void.

Even if you could take just one axis from the graph and keep it working - which again, you can't, because that ruins the purpose of that graph - the whole idea of being to the left/right of someone else making the person left/right would still be absurd. Kim Jong Il was a hardcore-communist, yet he is firmly to the right of Stalin on that graph, that doesn't somehow put him on the right.

None of the american presidents of the recent past were even approaching Hitler's far-rightness when discussing a purely left-right scale.

All of that doesn't even include that these kind of graphs tend to take a rather interesting approach when it comes to judging politics. In many ways they are trying to force everyone into a specific setting, regardless of whether the person actually fits in there. This includes declaring certain policies to be something they truly aren't, just so you have something to put in there.

 

[Enginseer]

Hitler is literally to the right in every single one of those charts you posted. Don't get your panties in a twist just because I pointed out some rather glaring flaws in your argument.

When you are comparing to who? The origin of the chart doesn't point to someone that you can compare to which is why you have to and that's one of the flaws of the chart is that you have no one to compare to at the origin of a chart. You can't say Hitler is just a rightie if there's no one to compare it to at the direct center

Referring to the 1st Chart, comparing Hitler to anyone in the yellow area can say Hitler was a rightie. If you tried comparing Hitler to anyone in the red area, you can say Hitler was a leftie.

Um, you do realize that they made the graph have two axes on purpose, yes?
You can't just randomly remove one axis, because that makes the whole graph useless. By doing so, you are grossly distorting what the graph is saying, and thus what the creators of the graph are saying.

These graphs combine two different parts, the economic and the social one. Neither on their own defines where someone is on the right or left, even if they used the words left and right for one of them for a completely unknown reason. The whole things was made up to get away from the simple left/right split that some people were using, because that didn't always paint the whole picture. By simply throwing out everything the graph tries to represent, you are invalidating the whole thing, rendering your entire argument void.

Even if you could take just one axis from the graph and keep it working - which again, you can't, because that ruins the purpose of that graph - the whole idea of being to the left/right of someone else making the person left/right would still be absurd. Kim Jong Il was a hardcore-communist, yet he is firmly to the right of Stalin on that graph, that doesn't somehow put him on the right.

...

"In our home page we demolished the myth that authoritarianism is necessarily “right wing”, with the examples of Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot and Stalin. Similarly Hitler, on an economic scale, was not an extreme right-winger. His economic policies were broadly Keynesian, and to the left of some of today’s Labour parties. If you could get Hitler and Stalin to sit down together and avoid economics, the two diehard authoritarians would find plenty of common ground."

(https://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis2, 7)

None of the american presidents of the recent past were even approaching Hitler's far-rightness when discussing a purely left-right scale.

Debateable on whom you ask about their thoughts on the recent past U.S. presidents.

All of that doesn't even include that these kind of graphs tend to take a rather interesting approach when it comes to judging politics. In many ways they are trying to force everyone into a specific setting, regardless of whether the person actually fits in there. This includes declaring certain policies to be something they truly aren't, just so you have something to put in there.

Ding. Ding. That's the ultimate answer to OP's question. There's no definite answer unless you put your bias into it. Because what makes

Being "anti-tobacco" is hardly left-wing...

this valid? By being left-wing on the economic side, you want to regulate the economy and being anti-tobacco means you want to regulate the commerce of tobacco already.

 

[HoloDoc]

You can't just arbitrarily decide what Left and Right are, then decide a person is Left or Right based on a completely arbitrary scale. Whilst Left and Right are not objective terms, they are part of a shared subjectivity. You are ignoring that shared subjectivity in favour of your own arbitrary definition, which is a load of crap really.

We're in the History sub-form, so look at it this way; most people say the Middle Ages ended with the Fall of Constantinople. This is hardly an objective timescale,but it is a commonly accepted shared one; a shared subjectivity. You can't just randomly decide you feel the Middle Ages actually end when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon, and claim NASA was a Medieval organisation.

That is what you're doing with this "Hitler was a leftie, because Stone Cold says so" argument. You have arbitrarily redefined a shared subjective term because you don't like it, and are placing Hitler where you want him to be based n this new, arbritrary scale. It's not just flawed, it's deceptive, and frankly just flat out stupid.

You also don't seem to understand how the political compass relates to Left and Right. Authoritarianism is not "not Right" just because the creators of the scale depicted it as a compass in order to be able to use one simple chart. The fact is that the Authoritrian-Libertarian scale is also a Left-Right scale; the social Left-Right scale. So one would say that Stalin was economically Left and socially Right. Hitler, having no defined set of economic principles, cannot be considered to be economically Left or Right - although certain members of his Party could be classified as one or the other, with Goebbels definitely being economically Left and Goering economically Right - but was definitely about as far to the Right as is possible on social issues.

 

[Enginseer]

You can't just arbitrarily decide what Left and Right are, then decide a person is Left or Right based on a completely arbitrary scale. Whilst Left and Right are not objective terms, they are part of a shared subjectivity. You are ignoring that shared subjectivity in favour of your own arbitrary definition, which is a load of crap really.

What is this shared subjectivity? You're not defining what it is. If I went to a major left-leaning forum and said Hitler was a leftie, people would object to the statement. If I went to a right-leaning forum and said Hitler was a leftie, people would support the statement. Now for Civfanatics, we have a somewhat balanced group of left-wingers and right-wingers, so I make my point that the Nazis being lefties varies on YOUR perspective and political background.

We're in the History sub-form, so look at it this way; most people say the Middle Ages ended with the Fall of Constantinople. This is hardly an objective timescale,but it is a commonly accepted shared one; a shared subjectivity. You can't just randomly decide you feel the Middle Ages actually end when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon, and claim NASA was a Medieval organisation.

Which again depends on the background you're coming from. If you try setting up a strawman argument that the Middle Age ended when Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the Moon, so be it for your argument then. If you're arguing from a cultural background, then you might instead say the upbringing of patronage in the Italian city-states in the late 13th century which caused the Age of Enlightenment. If you're studying from a theological background, you can argue the Protestant Reformation caused a new age of learning combined with the Printing Press encouraging new schools of thoughts alike. Or you could even argue that from a political background the Fall of Constantinople didn't jumpstart a new age until Christopher Columbus discovered a new land and jumpstarted the Age of Discovery (since European empires didn't radically change until realizing there were new lands to plant flags on).

You also don't seem to understand how the political compass relates to Left and Right. Authoritarianism is not "not Right" just because the creators of the scale depicted it as a compass in order to be able to use one simple chart. The fact is that the Authoritrian-Libertarian scale is also a Left-Right scale; the social Left-Right scale. So one would say that Stalin was economically Left and socially Right. Hitler, having no defined set of economic principles, cannot be considered to be economically Left or Right - although certain members of his Party could be classified as one or the other, with Goebbels definitely being economically Left and Goering economically Right - but was definitely about as far to the Right as is possible on social issues.

So part of the Nazis could be considered lefties? Because ultimately OP wants to understand how the Nazis can be perceived as lefties and evidence and support was presented on how the group could be perceived as lefties even by the Libertarians that OP stated lately he was getting these comments from. He's not asking if the Nazis were lefties with facts, unbias, and unopinionated thoughts. My overall thesis that I claim is

It depends on your perspective on certain issues.

And I've made arguments different from my own viewpoints on how the Nazis can be thus considered lefties or righties.

 

[HoloDoc]

Your overall thesis is wrong. I've tried explaining it in very simple language. You simply ignored everything you didn't like and continued to reiterate the same point over and over again with nothing to support it. I'm done here.

If anyone wants to have an ACTUAL discussion, I'm interested.

 

[Enginseer]

Your overall thesis is wrong.

Ok, I'll restate the thesis for you, so that I can be wrong since the thesis above couldn't be proven right or wrong.

So it doesn't depend on your perspective on certain issues?
So no matter what Nazis will never be lefties?
There will never be a man worse than Hitler in our future timeline?
There will never be a group worse than the Nazis in our future timeline?
--
If that's the premises there, then Nazis were and will never be considered lefties.

And the people from the previous century said the same for Napoleon and his Bonapartists... Oh well.

 

[HoloDoc]

Not in this instance.
Not Hitler. Some others might qualify.
Strawman.
Strawman.

Boom goes the dynamite.

 

[Enginseer]

Not in this instance.
Not Hitler. Some others might qualify.
Strawman.
Strawman.

Why not?
Something agreed on and can be removed now.
So it could still remain true that there could be someone worse than Hitler, but since we're not arguing for this person to be perceived as a leftie. We can remove this as well.
So it could still remain true that there will be a group of people that follow this someone.

For lurkers, the term worse is used here as the premise is to be more right-winged.

 

[HoloDoc]

Because it is based on a shared subjective viewpoint. The shared subjective can change, but it takes a lot more than just one guy on a message board saying so.

...

My ex wife.

Her family.

 

[Enginseer]

Why would it be a shared subjective viewpoint if OP just asked why do people(or a person to clarify) that he might argue with on his comment section claim Nazis were lefties? In America and even on the Internet, there are groups that have a shared subjective viewpoint that Nazis were lefties and might even claim extreme lefties. Thus I concluded it has to be an individual choice to decide whether the Nazis were lefties or righties in his or her own opinion. It's like the US Democratic Party saying they are liberal and lefties when the people in UK laughs at them by showing the UK Labour Party.
...
...
...
And just like that, the third and fourth points are already agreed on. In the American media, you might see Trump and his group of alt-rights are claimed to be worse than Hitler and Nazis. Is that saying if people had to be forced to choose between Trump and Hitler, they would choose Hitler because he's more left than Trump supposedly? I hope not, but that's the point I'm trying to make that there will be people be seen as the worst people in history and can never be perceived lefties.