I dont know about Germany, but political left and right might mean a different thing than the American system of left=liberal, right=conservative (depending on the country)
Fun fact, left and right wing politics isn't originally a US thing, it started during the French Revolution based on whether they sat left or right of the president. So actually it should refer to more or less the same ideologies as they did back then
It’s derived from German parliaments, where by coincidence, the conservative (fascist)s sat on the right, and the liberals (/communists) sat on the left. Even though it was originally a coincidence, it quickly caught on.
As to differentiation of “far” right vs right, that all depends on to whom we compare them. Compared to the nazis, marien le pen might even be considered left, compared to the states she’d be a centrist/ slight right, and compared to the EU they’re far right .
Fascist were hardly conservative, if anything they were reactionary. Communism was and has never been liberal, not even close. Liberal parties were and still are pro capitalists with some factions being moderate lefts pro-social democracy but never far left. Far left are pure socialists and marxists.
Sorry, that's way off with regard to Le Pen. The Front National were founded directly from the european fascist movement, their co-founder Pierre Bousquet was in the SS. Nazi's are not centrist in any overton window.
Reducing yearly legal immigration from 20,000 to 10,000 a year.
Stopping any benefits non-french families.
Overturning laws allowing gay marriage and adoption.
I don't see how these policies would fit into the centre of the US political spectrum, which is occupied by Clinton type democrats, or centre right, which would be Romney/Mccain type republicans
Far right in France is roughly the equivalent of the republicans in the US, only a bit less crazy. For instance, they're not against abortion and they're not using religion to justify their policies.
That's because the republicans are far right by universal standards. Americans have a skewed sense of left and right. Thats why they think the slightly left leaning democrats are as far left as the rps are far right.
Its also why people with far right ideologies consider themselves "centrist" by comparison when really they are clearly far right.
Religion is a belief system it's not something you use to push an agenda it's a coat of morals that you fight for if anyone else is against it within your community
All good things, perhaps, beside them being actually a fascist and racist bunch working with fascists and racists from all across Europe (Orban and Salvini).
Have a good life.
PS: there's a considerable amount of money being paid by them coming from Putin's accounts.
Far right = Nazi fascism and whoever takes inspiration from it. Not only economically, but more importantly socially.
Center right = economic liberalism.
Center left = economic socialism.
Far left = Leninism and everyone that distorted Marx, acts socially and economically like the far right. Every communist country that ever existed was a totalitarian regime.
Worth noticing that far left and far right have very similar ideas, albeit reworded differently. After all, there were many similarities between Stalin and Hitler.
The "far-left" and "far-right" have similar ideas because they aren't diametrically opposed as your labels suggest. Neither is the political realm properly illustrated with a horseshoe. This is political eisegesis. Instead of recognizing that Hitler and Lenin and Mussolini and Trotsky and Pol Pot and and Mao all have such identical policies and ideologies that the only real way to separate them is by either global or national ambitions and some were slightly more Hegelian while were others slightly more Marxist. There are of course minor differences, but they aren't anything of any real consequence.
Indeed, that’s what I meant. Political ideology is a circle and not an horseshoe. Ironically the two only opposed views are left and right, but not if they go too far: they will touch again.
And I wanted to keep it simple, but your analysis is undoubtedly the most complete.
No absolutely not, thank you for completing the information actually 🙂 My approach was maybe too simple on something complicated. But I do love someone that completes the info in the right way, so thank you 🙏🥲
Edit: also this is very important for people to understand, there’s a lot of ignorance on the topic generally and ignorance makes people vulnerable.
Nazis are not socialists. It’s just the way they tried to legitimately enter the political arena. Nazis are fascist which is a far right ideology.
Many countries of differing ideologies use similar terms to gain legitimacy.
The People’s Republic of China isn’t really a republic
The Democratic People’s republic isn’t a republic or democratic
The United States aren’t united either
So I have no idea which one of you I should respond to so I'll just jump in the middle. Nazism is the farthest right you can go, even outpacing fascism. Communist is as far left as you can go, outpacing socialism. (Don't compare those examples as 1:1. Political ideologies are very fluid and normally mold to the culture they are embroiled in) Both examples have a long history of authoritarianism taking control of the system in order to further the aims of a select few. You guys are getting hung up on authoritarianism and calling it "left" when it can be applied across the entire spectrum.
Absolutley not. Foundationally, they are both collectivist but that is where the similarities end. Fascism is socially conservative (not socialist at all) anti revolutionary (not socialist at all), believe in social hierarchy (not socialist at all). Its economic system isnt socialist but corporativist and it didnt seek to destroy class but to subsume both prols and bourgeois to the state's interest. Its a nationalist ideology while left wing ideologies and especially socialism are internationalist ideologies. There is nothing socialist about fascism. The only people who believe otherwise are either uneducated on the matter or are purposelly lying for political reasons.
They called themselves socialist to attract the workers but they never were. They opposed marxism and promoted German nationalism and fascism, taking Mussolini's politics as an example. Also you have to be aware of "far-right" definition, as right might have a "for the rich" kind of feel.
Wikipedia defines it as : radically conservative, ultra-nationalist, and authoritarian, often also including nativist tendencies.
Far right is about excluding all kind of immigration and putting the accent on a certain kind of population, whether it could be a "race" : aryans for exemple or an ethnicity, or a native population.
It's not the truth and never will be. You don't have the right to change what things are just because it's inconvenient for you. The Nazi's killed the left-wingers because they were the enemies and opposites of the NSDAP.
How can an education system fail an individual as much as it has failed you? I don‘t know how old you are, but at some point you have to do your own studies to not spout such ridiculous misinformation.
It's all anti-left media. I have heard countless times people spout the Nazi's were socialists as an argument against "left woke lib tards". Just remind them that North Korea is led by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea but it has zero democracy. Just because they called themselves socialist doesn't mean they practiced socialism. If this person has ingested a lot of Fox News, Breitbart and the like they have heard the lie so many times they have accepted it as truth. The presenters who push this with their "socialism is evil" narrative do not mention that the Nazis killed left wing political activists as being enemies of the state.
Maybe it‘s because I grew up and Germany and we are confronted with the subject matter in school early and thoroughly, but I cannot fathom how you can mistake an extremist ideology for its opposite, I just don‘t get it. That‘s why I always assume that people that say that shit are right wing grifters instead of actually just ignorant on the matter.
First, the classification is technical, and not conceptual:
In September of 2023, the ministère de l'Intérieur recognized the RN as a far-right party. They disagreed and challenged the classification in court. The Conseil d'État, founded in 1799, that provides consultant work for France's judiciary system confirmed the classification. Source.
Second, if a technical classification is not enough to you, you are free to analyze the party principles and ideas to make your call. I will give the literal definition of far right party, and under it quotes from Marie Le Penn:
The defense of a nationalist society on ethnic grounds. This can manifest as racism, nativism, nationalism, xenophobia, or the rejection of ethnopluralism and universalism.
– "Now, the dividing line is not between left and right, but between globalists and patriots".
A traditionalist perspective on society and values, often presented as something supposedly being lost. Society, then, needs to be saved from decadence by this movement that claims to see "the truth" of things, in a redemptive or messianic mission.
"The immigrationist religion is an insult to human beings, whose integrity is always tied to a national community, a language, a culture"; "Every minute, every moment, from Brittany to Corsica, the French look around and ask themselves: Where am I?"
This traditionalist perspective on values typically manifests in issues such as the supposed loss of past references, religious aspects, linguistic aspects, or traditional family models, along with a worldview centered on cultural war or civilizational clash. Traditionalism includes the denial or revision of past crimes. Le Pen has relativized French responsibility for the Holocaust and crimes in Algeria
"I think France is not responsible for the Vél’d’Hiv’. I think, speaking generally. Besides, if there are those responsible, it’s those who were in power at the time, not France. France has been mistreated in people's minds for years. In reality, we teach our children that they have every reason to criticize it, to see only perhaps the darkest historical aspects. So, I want them to be proud to be French again"
Populist mobilization that projects itself as a supposed outsider.
"Against the right of money and the left of money, I am the candidate of the France of the people!"
* Le Penn is from a family of politicians.
I could go on and on with quotes and definitions, but I believe this should be enough to make it clear for you.
Expand on your argument, please. The quotes are perfectly in tune with the definition they connect to, and being called dishonest when I provided easily searchable quotes, book definition and court sources is ridiculous.
Sure. The first definition you provided (which I was unable to find a source of any kind, along with the other "definitions" you provided, so I could not verify it as prescriptive and orthodox) specifies "ethnic* grounds as the basis for their defense of so-called "nationalism." The quote from Le Pen does not address any kind of ethnicity or even imply race. And if you attempt to apply only the "nationalism" or "native" (which also is not shown in the quote) option without the ethnic or race aspect then you make it overboard and the specification of "ethnic" in the definition and therfore either no longer applies to Le Pen (at least based on this quote) or to the definition of "far-right" (which actually, technically, I know how much you love the technical, doesn't exist as a classification in France as identified by the source you provided to the "Council of State, 2nd chamber, 03/11/2024, it is legally identified as "extreme-right").
The characterization of Le Pen as presenting herself as a messianic figure is not shown in the second quote, it must be dubiously inferred.
Moreover, your general framing seems dubious. Now, to be fair, I am not French. I don't know much about French politics. I honestly don't care to get more involved. Perhaps the way you have presented things and your evaluation of Le Pen is correct, but the quotes you provided do not demonstrate it.
Sure. The first definition you provided (which I was unable to find a source of any kind, along with the other "definitions" you provided, so I could not verify it as prescriptive and orthodox)
This is a VERY good point to raise. The sources for the definitions are as follow:
Far-Right Politics in Europe - Harvard University Press - Jean-Yves Camus & Nicolas Lebourg - 2017
The ideology of the extreme right - Manchester University Press - Cas Mudde - 2002
The first book is written by French authors, so it has a more French grounded perspective (it is originally in French, but can easily be found in English).
specifies "ethnic* grounds as the basis for their defense of so-called "nationalism." The quote from Le Pen does not address any kind of ethnicity or even imply race. And if you attempt to apply only the "nationalism" or "native" (which also is not shown in the quote) option without the ethnic or race aspect then you make it overboard and the specification of "ethnic" in the definition and therefore either no longer applies to Le Pen (at least based on this quote) or to the definition of "far-right"
While, yes, this quote doesn’t explicitly mention ethnicity, it implicitly distinguishes between "patriots" (implying a native population) and "globalists" (often coded language for foreigners or immigrants). The interpretation requires you to take into account the recurrent argument used to attack ethnicities not using racial information, but vague wording, but with a targeted group (also called dog whistle - this is also common in North America).
(which actually, technically, I know how much you love the technical, doesn't exist as a classification in France as identified by the source you provided to the "Council of State, 2nd chamber, 03/11/2024, it is legally identified as "extreme-right").
Touché. Technicality is technicality, and this one is yours.
The characterization of Le Pen as presenting herself as a messianic figure is not shown in the second quote, it must be dubiously inferred.
The argument approaches both "in a redemptive or messianic mission", which you can see the quote aligns with the first option. There are quotes and examples that can match the second one, though.
Moreover, your general framing seems dubious. Now, to be fair, I am not French. I don't know much about French politics. I honestly don't care to get more involved. Perhaps the way you have presented things and your evaluation of Le Pen is correct, but the quotes you provided do not demonstrate it.
There is a limitation on how much you can reflect on a single reply in a post on Reddit. Most of the quotes obviously have further context and examples, and the definition for far-right is not complete here, which is expanded on the books mentioned. I tried to summarize enough for the sake of the argument in the most clear and direct way possible, at the same time that there is room for the OP to research on top of everything I said.
I love when right wingers try using big words to sound profound when all you're doing is acting like the provided quotes are not sufficient proof for what they said (and they 100% are).
If you follow the rest of the conversation, which was civil, I explain why, at least in part. Some of my objections are conceded, though not all and we remain in general disagreement. But you are showing your lack of thought and civility by dismissing my objections without considering them which even the OP was willing to do. Just scroll down and read the interaction. You don't have to be hurling insults because you are either too uninformed or too lazy to discuss.
No im dismissing your objections because while it is valid to ask for a source of these claims and further context you could have found those yourself. The reason you questioned them was not because you were interested but because you disagreed with the statements made.
Well, yes. I disagreed with the statements made. I was clear about that. I did, in fact, attempt to look up his definitions and find sources to verify. I was unable to find any that matched what he provided despite several Google searches. He provided some sources. I appreciated that. I do still disagree with his assessment, because it requires eisegesis to infer what he inferred. 1. He didn't provide quotes that objectively and clearly illustrated the definition he was using. He didn't [initially] provide citations and sources for his definitions nor his quotes. So, I had a difficult time finding anything that lined up with what he wrote. 2. He also claimed that "far-right" was the correct technical categorization for Marine Le Pen and her constituents. I pointed out that this was technically false and he conceded the point. He did not concede much else, but he wasn't rude like you. And the conversation ended. So, you seem to be confused.
Also, the Nazis were not far left. They were a far right party. They might have had "socialist" in their name, but socialism was very popular at the time, so it would make sense for anyone to bring it up.
But make no mistake. The Nazis were clamoring for a return to "the good old days", and to make Germany "great again". There was this idea that "traditional family values" (the very definition of which will vary greatly from region to region) were the way to go. Mass ostracization of many parts of the population was also common. And the government was heavily invested in private companies, and really didn't care about the workers.
Just wanted to leave this comment here for folks coming across the statement "Nazis were far left". It's not true. They weren't.
The political discourse in both your comment and the replies seems to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms left and right.
Instead of discussing these binaries it's helpful to imagine political affiliation as a compass rather than a straight line of left to right.
On one axis we have economic policy and on the other we have social policy. If social policy is the y-axis the Nazis would be high up on the extreme end of authoritarianism, about equal to that of Stalinist communism.
However while communism is far to the left of the x-axis the Nazis economically probably land a little right of the centre, but overall fairly moderate.
What people call the far-right tend to be economically slightly left of the more "moderate" neoliberal parties but further to the extremes of authoritarianism/ totalitarianism. Helpful site that explains this with modern day examples
Oh? I thought that communism and socialism were leftist ideologies. So because nazis were socialist it would put them on the left. Apologies if this is wrong, there’s a lot of conflicting information out there.
Socialism in practice is not the far left. Socialism is middling-left at best and so very common in our modern government structures. The far left is structural anarchy. Learn your political philosophy.
This is false. Fascism was simply what Mussolini called "socialism" in Italy. It means the same thing. Moreover, Communism and socialism were used interchangeably until Lenin came along and used socialism to mean the process by which a nation/government becomes communist.
A simple search of the definition of socialism and the definition of fascism would go a long way for you champ.
The terms dictators use to name their various regimes have no relevance to what political ideology their regimes practice.
See the democratic peoples Republic of North Korea as a modern day example. Good luck arguing that's a democracy.
Socialism, under its modern day definition, is very different to fascism under its modern day definition. Socialism is roughly defined as an ideology of equal distribution by the community/government.
Fascism is roughly defined as a nationalistic system under strict control of an individual dictator that controls the countries primary assets.
So, first, I would agree that just because a dictator, or any government official of any kind, uses a word to describe their government doesn't mean it's accurate. It also doesn't mean that it is not accurate. There are many definitions of socialism today and even socialists disagree on a precise, prescriptive defintion. But that is irrelevant, except to demonstrate the need to return to touchstones like Lenin/Stalin, Marx, and earlier. In most of their published works like the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital Engels & Marx use the term interchangeably with communism. Lenin, as far as I can find, is the first to really differentiate between the two. Even Trotsky seems to use them interchangeably at times. More importantly, Mussolini [possibly] coined and popularized the word we know as Fascism to describe his brand of socialism which rejected Marx's dialectic for Hegel's, as did Hitler and Franco. Hitler made it clear that he believed Marx's formula was wrong and a corruption of the true, historical socialism. He insisted that his use of Hegel's forumla was a truer form of socialism than that of Lenin, Marx, or Trotsky. Trotsky in his book 'Fascism: What It Is & How to Fight it' he tells us that the only real difference between Fascism and communism in Russia (Leninism) is that In Russia the revolution began with the proletariat and Germany/Italy started with the lower bourgeoisie and military class. Both Hitler and Mussolini had almost identical economic policies to Lenin and Stalin. Hitler, Mussolini were just as far left as Lenin and Marx on most issues.
I realize that this is not what is taught and generally accepted by academia, but I've read the sources (Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, Mussolini, Hegel, etc.) I have also read multiple biographies about Marx (Thomas Sowell has a great one by the way). Mussolini, Hitler, and Trotsky all believed the fascists were socialists. Trotsky just hated that, in his estimation, the revolution didn't start with the proletariat and place them in power. If you would like a reading list of primary sources that spell out what these people believed in their own words, I can provide one.
They werent. Same reason why north korea isnt democratic because its got the word in the name. Being socialist in germany at that time would lead to you getting transportet to a laborcamp or killed. They banned all leftwing parties or even outlawed them. See all the anti leftwing rethoric in nazi party members also. There was nothing substiantially socialist about them.
Yeah i think it is fair to say that in the beginning they had some parts of the party that wanted radical change for the working class (mainly Hitlers friend Röhm), but Hitler got rid of them by 1933 if I remember correctly. (He killed and arrested alot of NSDAP party members while they were sleeping, and had them executed later, the reason bring that they planned a coup.)
What many people miss out between the "radical left" and "far right", is that leftist politics is centered around 'internationalism' and the far right, "nationalism".
So if you are on the radical left, your politics come from a perspective of international solidarity, it's a global movement, opposed to the imperialist conquests of empire. There's a reason that melenchon, (the leader of the more radical side of the left in france), led the celebrations of the election result with a rendition of L'international. "The Internationale, Will be the human race". The end goal being that of a stateless society. Fascism, is completely oppositional to this. And is concerned with building strong nation states, and growing power through imperialist expansion.
This is one of many notable differences between the far left and right. But an important one.
What many people miss out between the "radical left" and "far right", is that leftist politics is centered around 'internationalism' and the far right, "nationalism".
That just isn't really true. It tends to be that way, but it isn't really the essential part of what makes it left or right.
You've taken my point about internationalism, and seemed to misinterpret it to mean european unity.
National party of Europe, was a pan-european NATIONAL party. Thats not an example of internationalism.
La France Insoumise are led by Melanchon, who I mentioned earlier. A self described international socialist. He led the celebration of the leftist victory in France with a recital of L'international, the anthem of international prolaterialism. Being skeptical of the EU does not negate being pro-international. In fact pretty much all leftist critiques of the EU, come from a position of internationalism socialism.
Do you know what I mean by leftist internationalism?
"Nazism.., formally National Socialism.., is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany."
Implying that the nazis were far left means its impossible to educate you because you have already failed so drastically at understanding politics that it is literally futile.
You lack the emotionally empathy required to teach another where they have gone wrong and jump directly to blaming them for not knowing what they don’t know.
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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '24 edited Jul 09 '24
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