Comments by "" (@timogul) on "Was Nazism Right Wing or Left Wing? An Answer From History" video.

@ That's incorrect, in America, at least within the past few decades, racism has been almost universally on the political right.
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@angrytedtalks I did, you were the one spouting nonsense.
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@ That's incorrect. Patriotism is loving your country, period. Nationalism is believing that your country should dominate other countries. Patriotism is like being a sports fan. Nationalism is like being a football hooligan.
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@ That's close to correct, but "right" is not "keep things how they are," it's "return things to how I believe they used to be." Actually keeping things where they are would be closer to center-right.
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@angrytedtalks No, I have demonstrated that I at least have a better idea of what nationalism than you do. If you continue to be confused as to why the rest of the world uses it differently than you do, then you have only yourself to blame.
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I think that the issue is that too many nationalists consider themselves "patriots," when that is not the case. And too many people who are nationalist conflate their own race with their nation. Certainly nationalist movements are also quite racist.
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Libertarians are authoritarian when they don't get their way. They just don't want other people to be in charge. What they say and what they do are two completely different things.
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They probably got angry with you because of how wrong you were. The Nazi ideology obviously has very little to do with leftist ideology, and to claim otherwise only indicates a significant misunderstanding of one or both. I think both, in your case.
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It would be inaccurate to claim that are "as many" racists on the left. There are some, certainly, but FAR fewer, and the right builds their entire policy agendas around racism, while the left does not. It's not a "both sides" issue.
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@ If that's true, then why is the current US administration highly racist and implementing heavily racist policies? Are they also socialist?
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@desertrat9554 What about her?
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@BanditZRaver I think the important thing to keep in mind though is that while it's entirely possible for a liberal to be racist, it's far less common than on the right, and the policies of liberals are not as racist in nature.
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@MythicBoone Why would you think of that? What sense would that make?
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Yeah, like with Maga, they were entirely about identity politics.
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And yet, when the American right is in charge, they do all the things that the Nazis did. What they say and what they do are two different things.
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It's fair to say that all of the bad parts of the Nazis were firmly right-wing, at least.
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I wish that were true, but their politics do too strongly align with the American right to make that claim.
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@ That's not remotely true. Right wing authoritarianism is entirely state-ist. The difference between left and right on the concept of statism is that in a right-wing ideology the people exist to empower the state, while in a left-wing ideology the state exists to serve the people. The Nazis were never socialist, they were only using that term to undermine the actual socialists that were popular in Germany at the time. The Nazis were a far-right party by any rational examination of their polices.
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@matttk421 Nope, that's not how anything works. Besides, the end-state of anarchy is monarchy, because politics abhors a vacuum. Authoritarianism is a strictly right-wing concept, left-wing is democratic, cooperative, everyone working together toward a common good.
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@oriculom Nope, the soviets were right-wing authoritarians, they only co-opted communist economic theory, but never actually enacted it. If the soviets had truly been left wing, then they would have had a strong democratic process and all rules would be defined by what the people wanted, rather than a top-down oligarchical system. Authoritarianism is defined by the right, we're talking about politics here, not economics, don't get caught up in "capitalism vs communism."
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@Real_2Phase Because anarchy is a lack of government. It's at the zero point, if it's even on the spectrum. The spectrum does not include anarchy at either edge, the extremes of it are authoritarianism on one side, a single, unrepresentative leadership system, and then democracy on the other, a democratically elected representative system of government, in which the collective will of the people is accurately expressed. A democratically elected representative body cannot possibly be authoritarian, by definition (although it's possible for one to become authoritarian if they diverge too much from the public will after being elected). The soviets may have started out as left wing, because yes, the ideals of communism can align with left-wing beliefs, but in practice they turned hard right almost immediately, and the bulk of the soviet history was pure right-wing authoritarianism, with lip-service paid toward communist philosophy. Dictators very often attempt to mask their behavior behind pretty slogans, that does not mean that they are honestly representing that philosophy. Or do you believe that North Korea is a Democratic Republic?
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@Real_2Phase Again, no, authoritarianism is at the furthest point to the right. This is why authoritarian parties are called "far right" parties. And again Anarchy makes sense in the middle because it is the opposite of any form of government, and therefore can't be at either end of the authoritarian/democratic spectrum. It is the lack of either of those things. To your second point, you completely misunderstand what "authoritarian" means. It does NOT mean "the government gets to make rules that everyone needs to live by. It's never meant that. That's just "government." Authoritarianism means that the people in charge of the government do not represent the will of the people, they are applying their own personal standards upon the people, in spite of them. Basically, say you have a tiny community of only six total people. Five of those people decide to have a big, noisy party, one of them opposes the party, and shuts it down. That is authoritarianism. Conversely, say that one of them decides to make a ton of noise and disrupt the community, and the other five want things more quiet, so they shut him down, that is not authoritarianism, because it represents the overall will of the community. Soviet communism does not reflect actual left wing principles because those at the top, making the decisions, were an authoritarian oligarchy that did not represent the will of the people. Countries like the ones you listed call themselves democratic, and they pretend to have elections, but since they do not in fact have valid elections, they are not in fact leftist. Also, in most cases, they were never voted in at all, they just seized power from previous governments, but even in cases where they did get voted in once, they used that authority to undermine the democratic institutions so that no future valid elections were held. Now IF the people could fairly vote for their representatives and those representatives had made those choices, then it could have been considered a left-wing organization, but they never had that. The closest thing to a true leftist government would be like Sweden at certain points, or other social democratic countries.
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@Real_2Phase So then why are "far right" parties all authoritarian and not about individual liberty? You have your own personal definition here, but it has nothing to do with the political spectrum that most people use. Again, "anarchy" is not on the spectrum because it is merely a lack of government. It would be the equivalent to "asexuality" on a sexuality spectrum. Your idea of the tyranny of the majority is flawed, because the alternative would be that the one person could do whatever he wants, even if it is harming other people's standard of living. Ultimately, when people come into conflict, there needs to be a method of resolving it to the satisfaction of the largest number of them. As they say, "democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones." It may not make everyone happy, but it is most likely to make most people happy. Also, your farming metaphor had nothing to do with socialism. The dangers you cited are not an outcome of collectivism, they are an outcome of ANY government that chooses not to provide reasonable respect for individual choice. The outcomes you propose would be just as likely to result from ANY governmental system that makes poor choices, regardless of whether they are democratic or authoritarian in structure. Democratic systems are just less likely to result in such outcomes, because larger groups of people have more checks and balances. You claim that I'm misguided because socialism masks authoritarian goals, but you are more misguided in applying all potential evils to "socialism," rather than reflecting on how they can apply to all forms of government, including anarchy. Just remember, the endgame of anarchy is always authoritarianism, because power abhors a vacuum. Pushing for anarchy is only an attempt to flip the board, in hopes of landing on a better square once it all settles back down.
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@Real_2Phase Again though a "far right" political party is, factually, authoritarian in nature. That is what the term means. You can choose to believe that this is not what the term means, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone else will use it differently than you do. Libertarians are mainly on the right because they oppose collective action, but are more toward the center of the political spectrum, not the far right. They are balanced against liberal democrats on the left. As for your definition of socialism, it was one invented by those on the right who want to associate socialism with the various self-described communist states, rather than with the more successful socialist policies. Any seriously political scholar understands that the soviet model failed at basic socialism. Again, your farm metaphor is only bad because in the end, those in power decided that the farmer should do what they want, instead of what he wanted. That is a problem of bad governance, not an issue of socialism. It would be equally bad whether the 5/6 decided that the one should farm what he does not want to, OR if 1/5 decided that the farmer should farm what he does not want to. The issue was not whether it was democratic or autocratic, the issue is that the governing system did not care about the desires of the individual in question. A "tyranny of the majority" may sound bad to you, but it is at the very least better than a "tyranny of a few," which is what far right parties aim for. The problem is the tyranny, not how it gets there. A democracy is less likely to result in tyranny than an autocracy is. Collectivism is less likely to result in tyranny than autocracy is. "The most people the most happy" is likely to lead to more people being happy than not, which is a better outcome, if perhaps not a perfect one. There is no reason to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And in practice, anarchy never continues to be anarchy. Some force, be it a strong individual (autocrat) or a strong group of people (oligarchy), will eventually seize power for themselves, and nothing can stop them doing so, because there are no institutions to do so. It's impossible to sustain actual anarchy when dealing with any population size larger than "one." This is why it's important to have a strong alternative government in place, and again, democracy is the best alternative proposed so far to hold that position, even if it doesn't always work out perfectly.
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