Are the Nazi Party extreme far right or extreme far left?

Handy Andy wrote:Busy over a keyboard produces a lot more than alt-right blogs in Tom's case. Sticky keys and a smeared screen

Ziz wrote:

Handy Andy wrote:Busy over a keyboard produces a lot more than alt-right blogs in Tom's case. Sticky keys and a smeared screen

Now, now - stay with the issue, not the poster.

Eilzel wrote:Yeah, since National Socialism never really worked in the interest of the common man but the 'state' it was never socialism in any real sense (though neither was the Soviet Union really). The disingenuous Right like to gloss over this, focusing their argument purely on the fact the word 'Socialism' exists in the full meaning of Nazism.

Of course, they do not make the same argument for the Democratic Republic of Korea being democratic...

eddie wrote:I was having this debate with my son the other night funnily enough. He was having this same debate in his history class  and the whole class came to the conclusion that the very far right was very close to the very far left....he made a pretty convincing argument.

Handy Andy wrote:Simple question

Jules wrote:There's a concerted drive on the right to retaliate with the same accusations that the left make, using the same words and descriptions.

Suddenly the people who made accusations of sexism were told that they were the sexist ones.
Those who made accusations of bigotry/racism were told they were the bigoted/racist ones
Those who accused others of misogyny were told they were the ones who hated the opposite sex.
People who accused nazis of nazism were told they were the nazis.

Anyone spotted the theme yet????

Boomeranging insults back at people is lazy, facile, simple-minded thinking.
It's blatant tit-for-tattery that involves no mental effort.
Nice try.

Jules wrote:

Handy Andy wrote:Simple question

No brainer!
Nazism has always been synonymous with the far right.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Jules wrote:
No brainer!
Nazism has always been synonymous with the far right.

No... Nazism has for a few decades been misrepresented as far right... but at the time nobody was in any doubt it was left wing and socialist rooted...

Eilzel wrote:Yeah, since National Socialism never really worked in the interest of the common man but the 'state' it was never socialism in any real sense (though neither was the Soviet Union really). The disingenuous Right like to gloss over this, focusing their argument purely on the fact the word 'Socialism' exists in the full meaning of Nazism.

Of course, they do not make the same argument for the Democratic Republic of Korea being democratic...

George Orwell wrote:"What then is Fascism?

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and - this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism - generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the ‘semi-apes’ as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery".

Original Quill wrote:

Jules wrote:There's a concerted drive on the right to retaliate with the same accusations that the left make, using the same words and descriptions.

Suddenly the people who made accusations of sexism were told that they were the sexist ones.
Those who made accusations of bigotry/racism were told they were the bigoted/racist ones
Those who accused others of misogyny were told they were the ones who hated the opposite sex.
People who accused nazis of nazism were told they were the nazis.

Anyone spotted the theme yet????

Boomeranging insults back at people is lazy, facile, simple-minded thinking.
It's blatant tit-for-tattery that involves no mental effort.
Nice try.

Yes, we've been discussing this for a matter of years now, actually.  It's called the 'mirror-image' form of argument.  Sometimes it's referred to as the reciprocal argument.

All argument (thinking, really, if you believe cognitive linguists) goes by way of metaphor.  See, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980).  The idea is that we extrapolate the logical import of an idea, and inject it into a different debate.  I call it metaphor-stealing.

In a mirror-image argument, the debater takes the exact opposite view on something, and works the structure of the metaphor into an argument in exact reverse.  This would be valid if the whole metaphor were embraced, but most of the time what is taken is the form, with the inconvenient entailments being discarded.

We see this in the term 'racism'.  Racism is a cultural phenomenon and requires a history not only to incubate, but to actually have meaning.  But, we see RW'rs crying out about white racism, where there has been nothing but privilege and wealth associated with the white race.  In this we see that the disputant has extrapolated the form of the immediate dialectic--one race presuming superiority over another--without the full history that gives it meaning.  Americans understand this example, particularly because they have lived the 2-300 years of slavery cum racism, while Europeans see only the math and structure of it.

We see the same metaphor-stealing in issues of socialism vs. capitalism, austerity vs. social programs, and millions of other political debates.  Mostly, it goes from left to right, because most original thinking takes place on the left and is borrowed by the right.  That is due to the fact that RW'rs are not committed to problem-solving in politics, while LW'rs are continually working at the edges in order to make life better for all....but that's another (related) point.

Jules wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Yes, we've been discussing this for a matter of years now, actually.  It's called the 'mirror-image' form of argument.  Sometimes it's referred to as the reciprocal argument.

All argument (thinking, really, if you believe cognitive linguists) goes by way of metaphor.  See, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980).  The idea is that we extrapolate the logical import of an idea, and inject it into a different debate.  I call it metaphor-stealing.

In a mirror-image argument, the debater takes the exact opposite view on something, and works the structure of the metaphor into an argument in exact reverse.  This would be valid if the whole metaphor were embraced, but most of the time what is taken is the form, with the inconvenient entailments being discarded.

We see this in the term 'racism'.  Racism is a cultural phenomenon and requires a history not only to incubate, but to actually have meaning.  But, we see RW'rs crying out about white racism, where there has been nothing but privilege and wealth associated with the white race.  In this we see that the disputant has extrapolated the form of the immediate dialectic--one race presuming superiority over another--without the full history that gives it meaning.  Americans understand this example, particularly because they have lived the 2-300 years of slavery cum racism, while Europeans see only the math and structure of it.

We see the same metaphor-stealing in issues of socialism vs. capitalism, austerity vs. social programs, and millions of other political debates.  Mostly, it goes from left to right, because most original thinking takes place on the left and is borrowed by the right.  That is due to the fact that RW'rs are not committed to problem-solving in politics, while LW'rs are continually working at the edges in order to make life better for all....but that's another (related) point.

Thank you, Quill. x
I appreciate the time and effort you've put into explaining all this, to me.
And I rather like the expressions ''metaphor stealing, and mirror imaging". Succint descriptions, not come across them before!

eddie wrote:"Metaphor-stealing" is a good one....

Original Quill wrote:

eddie wrote:"Metaphor-stealing" is a good one....

Certain cognitive linguists argue that all ideological transition takes place by metaphor.  The structure of a metaphor conveys more that the denotative 'word', and conveys a number of what Lakoff and Johnson call 'entailments'.  However, in order to be valid a metaphor must transition with the same import as the original.  In other words, you can't twist the logic.

What 'metaphor-stealers' do is violate the entialments and reverse the meaning.  I think that is part of the barb of what they are doing...ha-ha, I can co-opt your term and use it against you!

Original Quill wrote:George Orwell shed some insight on this in "The Lion and the Unicorn" (1940):

George Orwell wrote:"What then is Fascism?

Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists and workers, and - this is the important point, and the real reason why rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism - generally speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.

But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world. Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent Nazi professors have ‘proved’ over and over again that only nordic man is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles, French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitler’s forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples, the ‘semi-apes’ as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly to slavery".

While socialism is ultimately a humanist philosophy, Nazism was a nationalist system, primarily aimed at xenophobic beliefs all leading to inequity and inequality.

Tommy Monk wrote:Even Orwell agrees that fascism is almost exactly the same as socialism...

But where he says fascism is capitalism that has borrowed bits of socialism... I would argue the opposite... fascism is socialism that has borrowed bits of capitalism...

As mises argues in the link I posted earlier... and Orwell also highlights... the Nazis did leave many businesses in what appeared to be private ownership... but they were so heavily state controlled that the 'owners' were little more than state employed 'managers'...

Then Orwell tries to paint the happy clappy ideal of socialism being about everyone in the world being free and equal... but also describes this as a 'world state'... or a world government in other words... where the whole world is controlled by one big world govt...

And this is much the same ideal that the Nazis had... to take over the world with object being one world govt...

So much the same really...

Tommy Monk wrote:Socialism does exactly the same... all in the name of equality mind...!!!

Locke, Second Treatise, (Of Property) wrote:Sec.27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

Tommy Monk wrote:Socialism/communism failed for reasons I gave... the do nothings expected the same as the do somethings... resulting in all doing as little as possible and expecting same rewards..

Tommy Monk wrote:How is Locke's vision of where a man is free to do and take what he wants from nature and solely owns what he labours to have/construct... anything like any socialist ideal where others have part claim/ownership or control over what he himself labours to have...?

Tommy Monk wrote:All I see here is more confirmation that nazis/fascism is of the left...

I have seen nothing to indicate they were in any way right wing with free market capitalism/small state/small state control/freedom of the individual/low taxation ideals...