Khross wrote:
RangerDave wrote:
If you read that, I highly recommend you read some critiques of it too. The author, Jonah Goldberg, is a polemicist with an agenda, not a scholarly historian or political scientist who at least aspires to honest analysis. There's a fad in conservative circles these days to pretend that "the Left" and "collectivism" are synonymous, so that collectivist ideologies traditionally associated with the Right (e.g. Fascism, Nazism, etc.) can be disowned by conservatives/rightists and blamed on liberals/leftists. Goldberg was just capitalizing on that to sell some books.
I mean, it's your conflation I'm working with here ... try not to be so careless when trying to out "logic" me.
Again, I suggest you read more carefully, Khross.
My point seems quite clear, but if you're honestly missing it, I'll clarify. Conservatism, Fascism, and Nazism are all traditionally viewed as being on the Right of the political spectrum. That association makes contemporary conservatives uncomfortable, so they want to convince people that Fascism and Nazism are actually on the Left, thus transferring the guilt-by-association to liberals. To do this, they are trying to argue that collectivism,
and collectivism alone, is the key factor in categorizing an ideology as Left or Right. In their formulation, any ideology that embraces collectivism is automatically on the Left, regardless of the reasons for the collectivism, the form it takes, or whatever other features the ideology in question may have. That is a ridiculous (and revisionist) oversimplification. With regards to Nazism and Fascism in particular, it completely ignores the fact that militant nationalism was the actual core organizing principle of both, which is vastly different than, and indeed totally contrary to, the internationalist, economic "justice" principles underlying Leftist ideologies.
The only reason that Facism and Nazisim are viewed as being ont he right is that Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union, which ended up being the most destructive theatre of WWII; 24 million dead for the USSR plus whatever percentage of Third Reich deaths can be attributed to that theater - and I would be surprised if that number were below 75% of their total losses given that Britain and the USA together suffered under 1 million dead.
That conflict, and Hitler's expressed hatred of Communism, is what gives the mistaken impression that National Socialism is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Marxism/Leninism. People just assume that because the two fought an implacable war, they must be opposites, right? Wrong. The USA and USSR were equally opposed for over 40 years and the main reasons that war didn't break out were simple weariness from the last one and later fear of the outcome of global thermonuclear war. By that logic, the USA and Britain must be far closer to Nazism than the USSR was - even though the USSR exhibited far more of the same facets of society. KGB meet Gestapo. Treblinka, meet GULAG, etc. (This is not to say that the USA/UK have never done anything bad, so lets not go off on that track.) The reason that the USA and UK allied with the USSR was simple convenience; the same reason that Finland, a liberal democracy, was forced to ally with Hitler to defend itself against the predations of the USSR; one of the most shameful and most forgotten aspects of WWII.
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
