No, Nazis were Not Leftists: Or, How to Debunk Right-Wing Propaganda

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It is generally considered good practice not to “feed the trolls”— that is, not to engage in commentary with strangers on the internet who thrive on aggressive verbal hate and cruelty. But when the president himself is little more than a troll and the entire right-wing media apparatus increasingly relies on weaponized trolling (as well as the overwhelming spread of misinformation) as a primary means of producing propaganda, it becomes necessary to occasionally step up and defend ideas and history from the perversion of alternate realities. 

That brings us to the inspiration for this piece: a recent article in the right-wing website The Federalist titled “Read a Pile of Top Nazis Talking about How they Love Leftist Marxism” by Paul Jossey. The subtitle is “From the moment they enter the political fray, young right-wingers are told, ‘You own the Nazis.’ Much of the historical record says exactly the opposite.” The article begins with this in-your-face provocation: “The Nazis were leftists.” I hope that most of our readers will instantly recognize the absurdity of the article from those few lines, but it warrants examining in closer detail to understand exactly what the author is trying to do and why.

First of all, what is The Federalist? It is clearly a right-wing website whose main driving force is to oppose gay marriage and whose main contributors are connected to those ubiquitous right-wing plutocrats, The Koch Brothers. The website itself strangely provides no information or mission statement in the form of an “About” page, but they do use this uncredited line as a footer: “Be lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray,”a quote that apparently comes from a 1918 speech by Calvin Coolidge, of all people. The Nazi article in question is categorized as “History,” and the author’s past publications all seem to be revolve around fake free speech grievances. 

The introduction concludes by stating “But evidence Adolf Hitler’s gang were men of the left, while debatable, is compelling.” It is interesting to note that the author does not go so far as to apologize directly for the Nazis, or to explain why they “weren’t really so bad.” Let’s stop for a moment and at least recognize and praise this author for not supporting or praising the Nazis. The fact that this has to be emphasized says something revealing about the toxic state of political discourse in this country.

Everything else the author does in his article, however, is part of a cynical ploy to rewrite history by cherry-picking isolated facts and fitting them into a false context. The author claims that his thesis, that the Nazis were actually Leftists, is debatable, but compelling. It is actually neither. No actual historian or political scientist maintains has gone on the record to claim that Nazis were Leftists. Accordingly, there is no citation given of any such person in the article because they don’t exist. This means that the author’s thesis is not actually debatable. It is settled history. I am not personally an academic specialist in the Nazi party, but I am an amateur historian with two history degrees who has read and thought much about World War Two over the course of my life. A very quick bit of research has led me to conclude with a high degree of certainty that there is basically universal consensus by scholars that the Nazis occupied territory on the far-right of the political spectrum. The few skeptics to the “far-right-wing Nazi consensus” seem to place more emphasis on the sui generis nature of the Nazi political beast by charaterizing it as neither right nor left, but a unique populist syncretic movement. Even such a rare opinion does not go so far as to characterize the Nazis as unequivocal members of “the Left”. That is because it is by definition an absurd and offensive statement. That is like saying that Nazis were secretly communists because of a short-lived and cynical peace treaty with Josef Stalin (Actually, the author does make that ridiculous point in the article). There is no new history to be written on the main, big picture history of World War Two and the Nazi party. There is no hitherto secret knowledge or conspiracy that the author has just revealed despite decades of settled history determining what everyone knew at the time and until now: the Nazis were a far-right party—as far right as a party could conceivably be on the political spectrum. Everything else in the article is merely lies and propaganda (which are usually the same thing) to further his own right-wing views.

It is not hard to imagine why one wouldn’t want to share ideological real estate with the Nazis, and once again I do in fact applaud the author for not wanting to admit such. The fact remains though, that they were a hyper-right-wing party, and he is an ideologue in the far-right-wing American conservative movement. That is why he attempts to portray the Nazis as a Leftist party—to make himself and his likeminded peers feel better about themselves while simultaneously making the other guys look bad. He might as well just wave his arms and shout at the top of his lungs “I’m not a Nazi! You’re the Nazi!” This playground tactic is actually a well-known and useful tool of propaganda called “transference” or “projection.” It is one of the many techniques of propaganda I mentioned in my article of the same name (The Techniques of Propaganda). The current president famously does it nearly everytime he speaks, most famously in a debate with Hillary Clinton when he screamed “No Puppet! No Puppet! You’re the puppet!” The fact that he is, in fact, a puppet is secondary to the strategy of constantly maintaining a consistently aggressive and mendacious stance towards political foes in an attempt to smear them with your own crimes and faults. This is also a type of “whataboutism” which has long been used by Trump’s mentor, Putin. It’s like saying “Yeah, the Nazis were bad, but what about Stalin and Mao?! (or Native American genocide or slavery?!)” It shouldn’t be too hard to understand that such statements are intentionally intellectually dishonest distractions from the point, but the fact remains that for a lot of people, especially ones primed to follow right-wing talking points and emotionally based arguments, such propaganda is often quite effective.

The second paragraph of the article continues by citing the infamous right-wing polemicist and fake historian Dinesh D’Souza as one of the sources of recent alternative histories. The author then claims that “the vitriol and lack of candor [such “alternative histories] produces from supposedly fact-driven academics and media is disturbing, if unsurprising. They stifle dissent on touchy subjects to maintain their narrative and enforce cultural hegemony.” Lots of big words and academic-sounding language here, all in an effort to say “why do experts call us out when we make shit up?” D’Souza is a convicted felon, provocateur, and far-right hack who is popular with theocratic crowds for writing a ton of “history” books that completely make shit up and basically blame “liberals” for everything from slavery to 9/11. The fact that D’Souza is the only person cited in the article regarding such “alternative histories” is telling. He even appears to have written a trashy “history” book in 2017 called The Big Lie claiming contrary to all evidence that Hitler and his coterie were “secret leftists,” a dog-eared copy of which is no doubt on the author’s shelf. For real historians, fact-checking D’Souza is like playing Super Mario Brothers with the cheat codes on, and luckily for us there is a tireless history professor named Kevin Kruse who has taken up this challenge.

The author continues by saying that “alternative views of the Third Reich exist and were written by the finest minds of their time,” and claims that such opinions “perhaps carry more weight because they are unburdened by the aftermath of the uniquely heinous Nazi crimes.” Once again, props to the author for having the courage to admit that Nazi crimes were heinous, something becoming more difficult by the day for many of his fellow travelers. Even the president, famously even-minded and hesitant to draw hasty conclusions, wouldn’t want to go so far because there were probably many “good people” on the Nazi side. Anyway, the only “finest mind” that the author cites in the entire article is a certain Austrian economist, F.A. Hayek. Hayek does have the benefit of having actually rejected and fled the Nazi regime in real-time, which not every German-speaking intellectual could claim (looking at you, Martin Heidegger). He was also a life-long friend of liberal philosopher Karl Popper despite their many political differences, which reflects well on Hayek in my book (Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies was written in 1944, the same year as Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom was published. Here is my article on Popper explaining why I find him more convincing than Hayek). He has also been basically the main, and the only, inspiration for that always dubious and now-extinct animal known as the “reasonable, principled right-wing intellectual.” 

If we are to be generous and fair to Hayek, we must admit that he was apparently a relatively honorable person with some nuanced and well-considered positions on politics and economics. For the purposes of right-wing politicians, it has long been enough to cite him as the simplified intellectual basis for their dogma that free markets must always be unfettered and wealth must never be distributed by the government (by which they mean of course that it should never be distributed downwards; they have always been happy to distribute it upwards). This was the dogma of the Thatcher-Reagan axis, but it could have just as easily been Ayn Rand rather than Hayek providing the “philosophy.” In any case, the author here has used a few throwaway, out-of-context phrases from early Hayek to make his entire case that the Nazis were leftists. In addition, Hayek loved dictators and somehow made the case that authoritarianism (which he supported!) was different than totalitarianism (which he was against). He personally supported and sometimes collaborated and befriended right-wing dictators and war criminals like Pinochet (he claimed that Allende was totalitarian!) and Salazar (maybe let’s reconsider that thing I said about his being “honorable”). So that is a summary of the most intellectually important right-wing thinker of the century.

The official name of the Nazis was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. They didn’t like to be called Nazis. If you look carefully, you will even find the word “Socialist” (not to mention “Workers”) in the name of party. This must mean they were Socialist, and, tout court, Leftist. Case closed. I guess all this actually proves is that political parties choose names that do not always signify their actual ideology. This is more common outside of America, with the Polish Law and Justice party, the Brazilian Social Liberal Party, the French Socialist party, and the Australian Liberal party coming immediately to mind (not to mention the Russian United Russia party). The author goes on to give example after cherry-picked example of actual Nazis making quotes that make them appear friendly to what we think of as Socialism, or of denigrating the “western capitalists” of the time. He says, for example, “Hayek describes Nazism as a ‘genuine socialist movement’ and thus left-wing by modern American standards.” That’s a pretty big red herring, oversimplification, and non sequitur all in one short phrase (three techniques of propaganda! Go read my previous essay and learn them all by name). He goes on to say, “British elites regarded Nazism as a virulent capitalist reaction against enlightened socialism–a view that persists today.” Yeah, it persists because it’s the historical truth. By the way, that’s actually being far too gentle with Nazism—calling it a “virulent capitalist reaction” is probably the most unsuperlative thing you could truthfully say about it—and “British elites” (many of whom actually supported Hitler up to and, in some cases, during the war).

As the article continues, the author gives some ad hoc definitions of “right” and “left”, and their sloppiness illuminates the ways he probably thinks his is a logically sound argument. He says the “right” consists of “free-market capitalists, who think the individual is the primary political unit, believes in property rights, and are generally distrustful of government by unaccountable agencies and government solutions to social problems. They view family and civil institutions, such as church, as needed checks on state power.” He says the “left” consists of people who “distrust the excesses and inequality capitalism produces. They give primacy to group rights and identity. They believe factors like race, ethnicity, and sex compose the primary political unit. They don’t believe in strong property rights…They believe the free market has failed to solve issues like campaign finance, income inequality, minimum wage, access to health care, and righting past injustices. These people talk about ‘democracy’—the method of collective decisions.” He then claims that these definitions prove somehow that the Nazis were Leftists.

The only thing he didn’t say about the “left” is that they have a penchant for human sacrifice and cannibalism. If you think there is something just a bit made up, just a bit Fox-Newsy about his definitions, you are not wrong. Obviously it is not easy to portray all the nuance of the variagated “right-left” political spectrum with such facile definitions, especially considering the disconnect between economic and cultural perspectives. There is a convincing case to be made that from the “right” perspective, everything that they think is wrong with the world is de facto part of the “left.” If you define everything not you as bad, and everything bad as “left,” Nazis will by necessity become leftists. Much of today’s “right” also thinks of the “left” exclusively in terms of identity, as opposed to other political ideology. Thus, anything in history that used identity in bad, or deviant ways was therefore part of a leftist plot or conspiracy. It would be easier to list the key words and ideas generally associated with each camp. In political science, it is generally accepted that the “left” tends to emphasize ideas like freedom (!), equality, fraternity, rights, progress, reform, and internationalism, while the “right” tends to emphasize ideas like authority (!), hierarchy, order, duty, tradition, reaction, and nationalism. Any disputes here? I didn’t think so.

You might have noticed those key words of freedom, and authority. Despite the American right-wing appropriation of the word, they misunderstand and detest real freedom and always tend towards authority over liberty. Usually what they mean when they talk about freedom is that they support the freedom to think and act just like they do, which is obviously no kind of freedom at all. The centrality of sexual and religious politics in American right-wing ideology is enough to illustrate their primacy of authority over freedom. Some theorists maintain that there is a natural authoritarianism and oppression of the lower orders in conservatism in general; Corey Robin in The Reactionary Mind says that “Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left. Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom.” Authority is the main hallmark of not only authoritarian (obviously) and totalitarian systems, but also conservatism writ large. Jeffrey Herf in his book Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich, argues that the Nazis mixed enthusiam for technology with a total rejection of Enlightenment values as a radical alternative to liberal and socialist visions of modernity. Umberto Eco’s tour de force essay “Ur-Fascism” gives 14 characteristics of Wittgensteinian “family resemblance” that can be found in all forms of fascism. Nowhere in this exhaustive list can you find anything remotely “leftist.” Basically, the Nazi regime was reptilian, terroristic, totalitarian, and extremely right-wing.

For those who shout “What about Stalin?!”, the answer is that the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin, was also a right-wing terroristic totalitarian regime, despite the supposed “leftism” of Communist ideology that could be traced back to said Enlightenment values. The Soviet Union was never really Communist in anything but name, but from the beginning governed as just another kleptocratic oligarachy much more authoritarian than any Tsar ever dreamed of. Vladimir Nabokov, in his memoirs, calls the Bolsheviks (who assassinated his father, by the way) “fascists.” So the answer is that the Nazis weren’t “leftist,” but that the Soviet Union was actually “rightist.” You might ask if I’m being serious here or just engaging in my own propagandistic sophistry, a la the author of that hideous article. Reader, do you own research and make up your own mind. Don’t believe anything you read on the internet. Especially on websites like The Federalist. Read history.

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David James

David James served as a Fire Support Officer in the 173d Airborne in Afghanistan from 2005-2006 and 2007-2008. He now teaches History in Italy where he lives with his wife and twin daughters. His hobbies include reading, writing, and rock climbing. He agrees with Borges that "reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual".

21 Comments
  1. How does one title an article with the usage of ‘debunk’ and not go on to debunk ANYTHING?
    Unfortunately, I did read this article. There’s a lot of slanderous finger pointing and if it weren’t so anticlimactic I would commend you on a well written and thought out piece.
    You never got to a point. In the entire 9448482345+1 paragraphs. Not once. There was all this build up that you thought would amount to something substantial but it always fell, short; to a note that left the reader questioning, ok? Then what? And before you know it…on to another point of pointlessness.
    Who are you?
    What on earth is the “wrath bearing tree”?
    I’d like to know this; Is the current state of South Africa right wing? Is it Nationalist? Is the confiscation of property with no reimbursement and then awarded to someone wholly unqualified to then have it based only on the color of their skin and where they are from right wing? Lots of conflicting evidence, right?
    This was eloquently worded bullshit. Nothing more. I’ll wait for more thrilling articles of the nonsensical, David.

  2. Oh lol. No comments yet even after I just did. I suppose they need to be ran through the censor machine before they get approval.

    Well at least there are not other morons from the left raging at their applause for your “article”.
    Enjoy your rock climbing in Italy. Say hi to Salvini for me.

    1. Comments are blocked automatically if they might be spam or trolls. I can’t imagine why yours didn’t go through. Thanks again for your participation.

  3. This article is oozing with liberal bias, the kind you expect from somebody who says the National Socialists were “right wing,” or that the various forms of hate and bigotry are all “right wing.” Firstly, right and left wing ideologies are divided on what we perceive the role of government to be, and in particular, how we balance the authority of government with the rights of the individual. The “left wing” sees a larger governing body regulating various aspects of our lives and the “right wing” believes that the larger the government, the smaller the citizen. How somebody feels about another person based on color of skin has nothing to do with these notions. As far as gay marriage, LGBT issues, etc., both of the major parties in America ever supported gay marriage or cared at all about gay issues before the past 10 years because NEITHER party’s constituents supported such ideas. Even liberal California voted down gay marriage, and it had to be won in the courts. The left embraced LGBT issues because the working class began to see through its lies during the Bush years, and they decided to start building a “victim coalition” in the hopes of outnumbering the small-government self-sufficiency advocates (which they sometimes manage to do!). The problem with liberals like this author is that they too readily entitle themselves to define both sides’ ideologies and motives. It’s funny that liberals, who very largely vote Democrat, twist themselves (and history) into pretzels on points like the KKK being founded by Democrats, Democrats being pro-slavery through the Civil War, Democrats enforcing Jim Crow and segregation even into the modern era, etc., and the National Socialists (because they also hated Jews) were somehow “right wing”. Before Hitler turned on the Jews, he and Mussolini were the darlings of the leftist media in the United States. That’s an “inconvenient truth” for you. But since the left has decided to bang this 24/7/365 drum that hate was invented by those who want small government, we’ll just have to keep reminding them and their readers what a whopper it all is.

  4. My comments also did not get through. Easy to win the day when you control who speaks I guess.

  5. Nazi = National SOCIALIST German Workers’ Party. Bernie has proudly announced that he is a socialist on many occasions. Bernie ran as a Democrat and had many supporters, Democrats support places like Venezuela, Cuba, etc which are socialists and borderline fascist at this point…. Democrats are left, THEREFORE, Nazi=Left. It’s pretty simple if you look at the facts and not your feelings.

  6. So if we accept your contention that Nazis had the word ” socialist ” in their name by either accident or decoration, how do you explain the 25 point nazi party platform which is loaded with nothing but socialist policies. I couldn’t find one point that was even remotely Rightwing.
    Has anyone on the Left actually read the Nazi 25 point platform which remained from the beginning of the party to the end of the War.

    Do you know who has really engaged in whataboutism, Leftists, whenever Stalin was raised in the last 50 years, they instantly said ‘ whatabout hitler ‘. I’ve always answered ” what about him ? ”

    Find me limited government, free market, individual liberty, free press, freedom of expression, or any Rightwing value in the 25 point nazi platform.

    I have won all 8 debates I have had on this subject by overwhelming margins, even against so called ” historians “.

    It’s a joke to call hitler Rightwing, he was a hardcore leftist.

  7. I read your article only to further solidify my opinion on liberals. You did not disappoint. Lots of big words and no substance. I lost all faith in facts assoon as you said Fox newsy. Most of us don’t even read or watch Fox news. I want all my news slanted left. This way I can more easily pick out the stuff that’s obviously garbage. If the news source is too much on my side, I can get lost in spin. And enough with the insults. It comes off as childish. Otherwise it was a good article.

  8. If Hitler was such a leftist, why do so many far rights in this country worship him? Their use of Nazi flags, paraphernalia and salutes. Their Sieg Heil chants at their get togethers by and for people such as Spencer, McGinnis, et al. Are they just letting out their leftist side?

  9. Your arguments all fell under typical logical fallacies.

    1-Ad Hominem: For some reason every time I read an article that “debunks” some right-wing individual or group, the article starts with some obscure quote from a few years ago with little to no context provided. It may look like, “Mr. ______ who is known to have once said, .” This is an attempt to discredit them as if they are not an expert so their arguments are not valid because of this. You employed this argument when you wrote, “First of all, what is The Federalist? It is clearly a right-wing website whose main driving force is to oppose gay marriage and whose main contributors are connected to those ubiquitous right-wing plutocrats, The Koch Brothers.” The publications stance (not even the authors) on gay marriage does not have anything to do with historical arguments.

    2-Appeal to Authority: Bringing up consensus and or “professionals”. You employed this when you stated the claim made in the National Review Article and then said, “No actual historian or political scientist maintains has gone on the record to claim that Nazis were Leftists.” So? Authority is only as good as it’s evidence provided. If a historian gets 9/9 things right, it would be intellectually lazy of me to determine that the 10th thing said by that historian was true. The reason why historians have sway in the debate of historicity is because of their access to evidence. However, if no evidence is provided to support their conclusion, can their conclusion really be trusted? Or am I to blindly trust them?

    3-Argumentum Ad Absurdum: The rest of the article was some variation of this mixed with straw men. You employ this in it’s earliest iteration when you wrote, “I hope that most of our readers will instantly recognize the absurdity of the article from those few lines…” Already in your opening words you were literally telling your readers that the claim is absurd in the first place. Obviously arguments can be absurd, but before you provide a fair analysis or provide ANY evidence you tell them that the argument is absurd. Not because of close examination but because of it’s face value. Instead of taking on the best arguments of the article, you ignored them and tried to use the weakest points and frame them with the context that was convenient to your narrative you were trying to push. Never mind that you make claims (again without evidence) that Putin is Trump’s mentor. We’re supposed to take your word for it, because you’ve got 3 history degrees or whatever.

  10. The problem with this entire discussion is there are no clear definitions laid out of what constitutes “right-wing” and “left-wing”. There are many uses of the terms and few of them have anything to do with each other. It’s very easy to attribute things to groups that have an ambiguous meaning.

    From my many discussions with this, I’ve seen that the right defines the left differently than the left defines the left and vice versa. The right defines the left as supporting bigger government. The left defines the right as against change. The problem with this is that if the right is supposed to be the antithesis of the left, then the opposite of being against change will be FOR change. That has nothing to do with being big or small government.

    Most of the time I’ve heard those on the left frame this conversation like the Nazi party was fighting to make things the way they were pre-WWI. Much like conservatives tend to romanticize the past, or draw on the past as some sort of model that shape the future.

    Yet those on the right tend to frame the conversation by drawing comparisons between the Nazi policies on economics, education, and spending. They like to point out how the size of the government grew under Hitler and that for the most part, Leftist policies grow the size of the government in one way or another.

    If we were to draw a table of things that the Nazi party has in common with the contemporary political groups in the U.S. you will find that there will be similarities drawn to both parties. The right has similarities more along the lines of attitude while the left has similarities of practice in the form of policies. Forget anti-semitism, that is something that plagues both sides in the fringes.

    Obviously both parties want distance themselves as far away from the Nazi party as possible because history decided they are the most evil thing to happen. Yet I leave you with this question…IF Hitler is the example of a far right dictator, why is there more effort on the right to distance themselves from Hitler than there exists on the left with regards to distancing themselves from Stalin or Communism? Afterall…who is responsible for more deaths?

  11. David, this article should be taught in schools! Great work! It’s a near perfect compilation of fallacies. I was rooting for you too.

    You say that the fact that the author doesn’t praise the nazis says something about the state of the right’s politics. I think it says much more about the state of your beliefs about the right.

    You attack your opponent by questioning the publication he’s writing for and the people who fund him (ad hominem).

    You reject his categorization of the question as “debatable” by claiming that no professional historian contests this (an argument from authority).

    This is not a good way to conduct an argument.

    Your opponent was not the first to notice that the Nazis and socialists shared an intellectual heritage. Karl Popper, in “Open Society and Its Enemies,” notes that German romantic philosophy found its way into both belief systems. Hayek in “The Road to Serfdom” quotes Nazi officials discussing how socialists and Nazis were competing for the same minds, the same types of people. It’s not clear to me that there is absolutely nothing to the thesis of your opponent.

    The Nazis were anti-Liberal, as were the socialists. And Liberals were more or less opposed to all of the philosophy that formed the groundwork for both Nazis and socialists. Given that groups like libertarians are considered far-right, and given that they seem like the purist extant examples of those Liberal ideas, it’s not clear to me why it makes any more sense to associate the Nazis with them, than it does to associate the Nazis with the left.

  12. You write of revisionist history and then try to revise history with nonsense. National…socialist….workers…party. How stupid can you be….

  13. Maybe centraling power required for socialist ideology requires a central body with strong authority which distorts individual freedom.

  14. Your article doesnt actually offer any facts that the national socialist german workers party was not a “leftist” party, just you saying hes cherry picking facts.

    Looks to me he cherry pick the shit out of the fact tree and theres really nothing left for you to counter with.

  15. I commend you on allowing comments, most lefty sights don’t…It’s also quite funny how almost everyone in the comment section disagrees with your absurd article.

  16. Read the Road to Serfdom by Hayek, rather than just mention it! He claims Nazi’s were Socialists, so not “no-one” as you state earlier in your article, and his book was contemporary, and he was Austrian. Try to remain consistent within a single article.

    Keynes was a big fan of “Keynesian Economics employed by Hitler”, saying his economic models may suit authoritarian states better, in the German Introduction to his book. Keynes’ economics are largely considered left wing. You mention Hayek and Conservative politicians, and then free markets. Are you claiming Hitler pursued a Laissez Faire economy… because….

    You could try to read the Nazi Manifesto, and pick out the Nationalist bits, the Socialist bits and the Right Wing bits… You may find the National Socialists were mainly (Surprise!) Nationalist, and Socialist!

    Does “The People’s Car” Volkswagon sound left or right? How about the people’s radio, or eugenics (championed by the left). The UK currently sees the anti-semitic problems with socialism very clearly. Nazi’s all called each other Comrade day to day. Right Wing Comrades, aye, Comrade.

    More than that, what are you actually suggesting points to Hitler as right wing, I have mentioned several reasons to think he was Nationalist and Socialist as the party claimed, but Free Market, Laissez Faire, individual before the collective, you have to think not!

    But if you think Stalin is Right Wing, where do you put the Khmer Rouge, Zimbabwe, China and North Korea. What a joke! My time is well wasted here.

  17. What do you make of mao-or the khmer rouge?–were they right wing aberations as stalin was?

  18. My little article must have got passed around on whatever websites right-wing trolls and nazi sympathizers surf. It’s been interesting, and funny, to see how they come out in force in comment sections and take themselves so seriously, and try to pretend like there are hordes of their like-minded, right-minded, pure brethren cheering them on.

    These right-wing, nazi-sympathizing revanchist internet trolls are attempting to rewrite history. The Nazis were not leftists. There was a part of the Nazi party that was very sympathetic to worker empowerment—the SA—heavy on what today we’d consider unionists, and veterans of WWI—they were aggressively purged in the early 30s. No serious scholar or academic will credibly claim that the Nazis had “leftism” (the egalitarian redistribution of wealth among class lines, and the empowerment of individuals through economy) at its heart. It was an ethno-nationalist movement based on pseudoscience and romanticism.

    The National Socialists were socialists, in that they were okay with the government directing the economy, but socialists for the white nation, and opportunistically capitalist when it needs to be, which betrays the spirit of the International and everything originally socialist. Feudalism is socialism in this interpretation. And so too Capitalist/Communist China. And every thing you want to be socialist if it suits you.

    The thing is this: these trolls do not care at all about about actual intellectual distinctions between groups, they only care that they are in a group, and that their group is the best and winning, and they will bend all facts and history to suit their ends.

    But it is worthwhile to contemplate how it’s been almost 75 years since the war, and that usually means the people involved are dead, and history is up for grabs. These people are grabbing.

    Comments are now disabled for this article. Let the above remain a good example of the typical right-wing troll operation, for which there is no real unified Leftist operation to combat it so far. Take heart, future readers, that the Nazis, based on what we still consider historical truth, were not Leftists.

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