We Europeans think it's just hilarious when some fringe political groups and/or people on the Right in America claim that Hitler was a socialist and ruled Germany by "left-wing politics"

Talk about ignorance!

What does that actually say about these people and the political group who actually claims this utter rubbish?

Well! it tells us that they themselves, stand to the RIGHT of the nazi's and that Nazism stands to the left of themselves - well that is how extreme these people say they really are, with their own words, to us, when they are claiming this garbage and are calling Hitler a socialist and that the nazi-party was a leftwing party!

They are very funny people in that way those Americans!

Seriously!...to have a fair view of politics in Europe in the 1930's one need to apply the political spectrum that was valid for Europe at that time - and on this political spectrum - Hitler & Mussolini and Franco were FAR RIGHT! and belonged to political parties on the far-right here in Europe!

Even if they were extreme far-right groups here in Europe, both the authoritarian right-wing movements of Fascism and National-Socialism are constructed with some nationalistic socio-economics treats in the core foundation of Fascism and they incorporated small elements of leftwing economic policies to attract the vote of the workers. but that didn't make them less far-right on the political spectrum in the 1930's here in Europe.

They promoted themselves as “The New Third Way” in politics

They wanted to be seen as an political alternative for all German workers, military, farmers and small shop owners - instead of having all these people voting for the Social Democrats and Socialists in the elections.

They snatched votes from the center-right and center-left parties - the highest proportion of Nazi voters were in Protestant farming communities who earlier voted for the nationalists, DNVP.

The Nazi Party was therefore without doubt a Volkspartei, recruiting its members and its voters across a broad range of social groups, from both sexes and from the older as well as the younger generation.

In fact! the Nazis recruited voters from a very very broad spectrum in the German society. More than any other party obviously.

Who voted for the Nazis?

Nazism (Nationalsozialismus, National Socialism), is the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany. It is a politically syncretic variety of fascism that incorporates policies, tactics and philosophies from right- and left-wing ideologies; in practice, Nazism is a far right form of politics.

In post–World War I Weimar Germany, the Nazis were among right-wing political parties defining their ideology as National Socialism. In 1920, the Nazi Party published their 25-point National Socialist Program, the key tenets being: anti-parliamentarism, pan-Germanism, racism, collectivism, social Darwinism, eugenics, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, totalitarianism, and opposition to economic and political liberalism. Yet, by the 1930s, despite such intellectual bases, Nazism was not a specific ideology, but a conflation of ideas, concepts, and philosophies meant to realise the mythic ethnostate of Großdeutschland (Greater Germany).

To rescue Germany from the socio-economic chaos established by the world-wide Great Depression, Nazism promoted a politico-economic “Third Way”

Series: Great interviews of the 20th century

This edited interview of Adolf Hitler by George Sylvester Viereck took place in 1923. It was republished in Liberty magazine in July 1932.

"When I take charge of Germany, I shall end tribute abroad and Bolshevism at home."
Adolf Hitler drained his cup as if it contained not tea, but the lifeblood of Bolshevism.

"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that commonly accredited to socialism?"

"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.

While multiple axes on the political spectrum had been postulated for a while, statistical analysis of survey data using principal component analysis to verify the theory and establish their existence, number and meaning was not done until recently. A 2003 study in the UK yielded two significant eigenvectors (that is, groups of questions that tend to be answered consistently), one less well-constrained than the other. If one examines the survey questions and tries to assign a meaning to the axes it turns out that one is like the familiar "left-right" axis that mixes economic and social issues, and the other indicates a degree of political pragmatism. The outcome of that study is that the UK political spectrum is most sensibly described with two axes.

In its January 4, 2003 issue, The Economist discussed a chart, proposed by Dr. Ronald Inglehart and supported by the World Values Survey (associated with the University of Michigan), to plot cultural ideology onto two dimensions. On the y-axis it covered issues of tradition and religion, like patriotism, abortion, euthanasia and the importance of obeying the law and authority figures. At the bottom of the chart is the traditionalist position on issues like these (with loyalty to country and family and respect for life considered important), while at the top is the secular position. The x-axis deals with self-expression, issues like everyday conduct and dress, acceptance of diversity (including foreigners) and innovation, and attitudes towards people with specific controversial lifestyles such as vegetarianism, as well as willingness to partake in political activism. At the right of the chart is the open self-expressionist position, while at the left is its opposite position, which Dr. Inglehart calls survivalist. This chart not only has the power to map the values of individuals, but also to compare the values of people in different countries. Placed on this chart, EU countries in continental Europe come out on the top right, Anglophone countries on the middle right, Latin American countries on the bottom right, African, Middle Eastern and South Asian countries on the bottom left, and ex-Communist countries on the top left.

In his book Eight Ways to Run the Country: A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right (ISBN 0275993582) Brian Patrick Mitchell identifies four main political traditions in Anglo-American history:

republican constitutionalism, libertarian individualism, progressive democracy, plutocratic nationalism.

These four have given rise to eight distinct political perspectives:

communitarian
progressive
radical
individualist
paleolibertarian
paleoconservative
theoconservative
neoconservative

A potential ninth perspective, in midst of the eight, is populism, which is vaguely defined and situation dependent, having no fixed character other than opposition to the prevailing power.

These perspectives vary according to their regard for kratos (the use of force) and arche (the recognition of rank). Mitchell roots his distinction of arche and kratos in the West's historical experience of church and state, crediting the collapse of the Christian consensus on church and state with the appearance of the four main traditions.

en.wikipedia.org...

Peace!


[edit on 9-3-2010 by Chevalerous]