Sargon of Akkad

Title says it all.

General Michael Collins

It's like a question on QI ... and I'm going to fall into the QI trap and say "Right!".

Solidaire

As far right as it can get.

Kevinmeath

Really depends if you accept the Nazi’s as fascists, Fascism was a neither right nor left (IMO) but a mix of the two. It was a third way opposed to the extreme left such as communism but also rejecting capitalist free market that had seemingly exploited so many people, it even rejected democracy.
It had ideas and elements from both.

srb7677

Hitler was undoubtedly right wing. The fact that the Nazi Party incorporated the word "socialism" into its` title was just a disingenuous ploy to try and gain working class support.

Hitler hated socialism and communism and soon destroyed both in Germany, outlawing all socialist parties and imprisoning thousands of socialists in concentration camps. He later tried to destroy socialism throughout Europe. His hatred of communism was a major motivating factor in his decision to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.

Hitler hated socialist internationalism and was instead an extreme nationalist, a typically right wing political stance. He was also a race supremacist, a stance associated far more with extreme right wing politics than with the left.

Hitler was also a social and national Darwinist, believing in the survival of the strongest both amongst nations and amongst individuals in the Reich. This social Darwinism economically lent itself much more to free market capitalism than it did to anything left wing. Hitler in fact hated the welfare state, and the Nazis quickly destroyed the German welfare system. So averse was Hitler to the left wing concept of helping the weak and vulnerable that he actually approved orders to gas the sick and disabled to death! And Hitler gave carte blanche to German big business to exploit foreign labour to such an extent that actual slavery was instituted: no left wing ideas about the rights of workers here.

Hitler was not only right wing, he was extreme right wing. No way could any reasonable person conclude that he was left wing.

CIowa

I was once a dumbass who believed Hitler was in favor of national gun control.

And if one reads an individual Nazi legislation on gun control it looks like they are restricting ownership for the masses.

How ever after WWI gun ownership was outlawed in Germany so the laws being passed actually increased who could own guns.

In all fairness my memory is that the laxed gun control laws never applied to Jews.

Sargon of Akkad

Interesting answers so far.

Kevinmeath

The Nazi’s and Fascism (assuming they are the same thing—open to debate) were certainly completely opposed to the left and many German/Austrians found themselves condemned for their political beliefs.

However I would argue that in principle the Nazi’s would be opposed to the traditional values of the ‘right’ they did not believe in the free market and certainly not in small government and limited state control in life, in fact the opposite. The party and the centre were to control all in the name of the ‘volk’ or people.

They opposed large landowners and promoted the small peasant farmer as the German ideal.
The 'common' German worker was idealised and the capitalist (a Jew naturally) despised.
The party were to control the levers of industrial and economic power (Goring’s five year plans etc).

The rule of the volk was continually emphasised e.g. the Volkswagen or ‘peoples car’,
Trade unions were banned but because there was no need for them because the party would look after all such matters.
There were state holiday camps ---‘strength through joy’. The state controlled everything the individual was unimportant the 'people' ruled.

In reality business did very nicely out of the Nazi’s but a great deal of that was good old corruption which (IMO) is neither right nor left.

spellbanisher

The political Compass



Where does Hitler fall? He is either authoritarian right, or authoritarian left.

CIowa

Wasn't that chart put together by a libertarian?