# Have conservatives historically most often been on the wrong side of history? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 7, 2012, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507 "2012-07-07T06:37:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2012, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/101 "2012-07-08T18:11:05Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Your clear and unambiguous impliciation is that the Nazis viewed Communists as “Left” parties and destroyed them because of differences. They fought the Left as competition, which is a rather different matter. That matter is not what I have seen that history is teaching us. > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > You learned poorly. The Nazis reigned in (but did not destroy) the hardline S.A., but more because they were rebelling against Hitler’s authority and possibly considering a coup attempt. The Nazis most definitely did not dispose of “the Nazi leadership that were mostly the coming from the worker side”. _Most_ Nazi leaders were relatively low-class men, of modest roots and moderate education - exactly the lower-middle class/upper worker class base they appealed to. More to the point, when they finally did get last-minute backing from industrial and mercantile leaders, it was after they had already become the largest and most powerful Party in Germany, and none of these group excercised any authority within the later Reich. > > Workers didn’t realize they were had at all. The regime held their loyalty all through the war, and even when some were abused believed Nazism was a good system. As I noticed before in reality I’m not the one that needs to take remedial history 🙂 the Nazis in the 1930s began to switch from a “people’s party” to gain the support of industrial owners, and it shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes, as pointed before it was the left elements in the Nazi party who wanted to keep the banks in state control but Hitler “convinced” them that that ship had passed. > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > You’re mixing two distinct definitions of _liberal_. > > Both American parties, including almost every Democrat and Republican\* would be a _classical liberal_ group, who believe in free market economics and private property, a free and more-or-less aglitarian society, democratic institutions, and republican constitutional government based on the consent of the governed. American politics twere ever thus. These kinds of groups (including some Socialists) were pushed aside by the Nazis, but were not especially repressed aside from no longer having a political say. I have no idea why the fact that most socialists or communists ended in concentration camps is not considered to be repression. Sorry, but I’m using the modern and more pertinent definitions, what I see is that you do want to use even the old definitions that the fascists used on the way up, many were indeed fooled by their early rhetoric, nowadays many do know what the real designs and the acts of the fascists were, it is mostly in the USA that we see a heavy effort into rewriting history to make it more in tune with current silly talking points that claim that the left in America are the fascists of today. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2012, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/102 "2012-07-08T18:42:21Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > That matter is not what I have seen that history is teaching us. I’m not entirely sure what you said there. For someone so certain he’s right, you can’t seem to type a coherent sentence. > [@](#): > > As I noticed before in reality I’m not the one that needs to take remedial history 🙂 _the Nazis in the 1930s began to switch from a “people’s party” to gain the support of industrial owners, and it shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes,_ as pointed before it was the left elements in the Nazi party who wanted to keep the banks in state control but Hitler “convinced” them that that ship had passed. Italics mine. This alone shows you do not understand the history of the Nazi party. At no time was it ever anything but a national socialist, anti-semitic party. The fact that their particular brand of socialism wasn’t identical to the Communists doesn’t make them Right-Wing. It never shifted to anything. > [@](#): > > I have no idea why the fact that most socialists or communists ended in concentration camps is not considered to be repression. I don’t recall saying any such thing. What I did say was that Nazi attacked the Communists and their political base in a very different way than they attacked real German conservative groups. The later were turned into puppers: the former were either absorbed or destroyed. Second, Socialists were not neccessarily going to concentration camps, and many Communsits didn’t either. Hard-left socialists were often treated as state enemies, but the democratic socliasts were usually not. Communists who abandoned the Red flag for the brown shirt were as Nazi as anyone. It was the hardliners who refused to join a nationalist movement who were repressed. > [@](#): > > Sorry, but I’m using the modern and more pertinent definitions, what I see is that you do want to use even the old definitions that the fascists used on the way up, many were indeed fooled by their early rhetoric, nowadays many do know what the real designs and the acts of the fascists were, it is mostly in the USA that we see a heavy effort into rewriting history to make it more in tune with current silly talking points that claim that the left in America are the fascists of today. What are you talking about? There’s a been a discussion of what exactly the word conservative means, and I tried to cover every variant as best I can. if you simply can’t accept that a radical group came form the left while still embracing nationalism, military expansionism, tyranny, and anti-semitism, then I don’t know much what to tell you. All I can say is that the Communist movement in every county where it succeeded, and for that matter the French Revolution, was all of those, except not so anti-semitic. That was a unique feature of German culture of the era, but not particularly right or left. In short, I identified my terms and stated the facts as they apply. You may not like it, but which one of us is forcing language to mean what they like? You’re the one who made specific claims for history in vague and semi-unreadable prose. And yet, I’m not saying this taints all leftists of any stripe. Despite the Wilsonian era\* American progressives are usually big-hearted. I think they’re insane and bound to outmoded concepts which didn’t do all that well even when they were young, not evil. They don’t bear responsibility for the Nazis: that lies with the Nazis. At the same time, you can’t really pretend that Mussolini’s fascism was not directly inspired by Wilson, because Mussolini proudly proclaimed it, and AMerican progressives cheered him on. \*I’d point out how this kneecaps’ **fumster** “arguments,” but I don’t think he’d listen. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2012, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/103 "2012-07-08T18:58:57Z")
Guilty as charged on the grammar issue, so corrections are needed: The Nazis in the 1930s began to switch from a “people’s party” **into one that dropped those ideals** and this was done to gain the support of industrial owners, and it shifted into having even stronger anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2012, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/104 "2012-07-08T19:33:39Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > Guilty as charged on the grammar issue, so corrections are needed: > > The Nazis in the 1930s began to switch from a “people’s party” **into one that dropped those ideals** and this was done to gain the support of industrial owners, and it shifted into having even stronger anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes. More understandable, thank you. However, that’s factually incorrect. Hitler laid out (in his own twisted way) his plans right on the table well before he took power. At no point were the Nazis anything except anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist If you want to argue it wasn’t a Marxist party, I would agree. But Marxism is not the sum total of the Left. The Nazism became whatever they needed to be to take and keep power, true. They never forgot their overall national-socialist program in the process, and in this respect they were no different from any other totalitarian party. ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2012, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/105 "2012-07-08T19:34:32Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > The Nazis in the 1930s began to switch from a “people’s party” **into one that dropped those ideals** and this was done to gain the support of industrial owners, and it shifted into having even stronger anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes. I think I see the disconnect. The terms “liberal/leftist” includes **several** characteristics such as workers rights **and** state control of industry. You keep ignoring the 2nd characteristic (central planning) and remain hyperfocused on the 1st (workers unions) to the exclusion of all other data. It’s as if a conservative denies that modern Republicans **are not** conservative because it _“abandoned the ideas of fiscal conservatism and spent all their time arguing about pro-life instead balancing the budget.”_ No, that type of definition would be laughable to liberals. If you’re purposely cherry picking a single liberal bullet point to the exclusion of all else, you’re just playing semantic games and being obstinate. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 8, 2012, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/106 "2012-07-08T21:02:20Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > Abolishment of slavery, women’s right to vote, women’s rights in general, minority rights, interracial marriages, etc, were all things that, if you were a social conservative of the day, you would not have liked to see happen. > > Yet in the end, not only did they happen, but it’s now clearly faux pas to be or have been against them. > > In our lifetime, a similar thing is happening with gay rights, and definitely within a generation it will seem outdated to be against it. Be careful about drawing any parallels with abortion, however. I don’t expect that to go away as an issue for decades yet. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/107 "2012-07-09T02:58:20Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > I think I see the disconnect. > > The terms “liberal/leftist” includes **several** characteristics such as workers rights **and** state control of industry. You keep ignoring the 2nd characteristic (central planning) and remain hyperfocused on the 1st (workers unions) to the exclusion of all other data. > > It’s as if a conservative denies that modern Republicans **are not** conservative because it _“abandoned the ideas of fiscal conservatism and spent all their time arguing about pro-life instead balancing the budget.”_ No, that type of definition would be laughable to liberals. > > If you’re purposely cherry picking a single liberal bullet point to the exclusion of all else, you’re just playing semantic games and being obstinate. No, once again in the place these things took place, Europe, they will look at you weirdly if you insist fascism was liberal/leftist and it is not only just because of workers unions. > **[The Scholarly Flaws of "Liberal Fascism"](https://www.hnn.us/article/the-scholarly-flaws-of-liberal-fascism)** > > Jonah Goldberg tells us he wrote this book to get even.  The liberals started it by “insist\[ing\] that conservatism has connections with fascism” (p.  22).  Conservatives “sit dumbfounded by the nastiness of the slander” (p. ... > [@](#): > > Goldberg simply omits those parts of fascist history that fit badly with his demonstration. His method is to examine fascist rhetoric, but to ignore how fascist movements functioned in practice. Since the Nazis recruited their first mass following among the economic and social losers of Weimar Germany, they could sound anti-capitalist at the beginning. Goldberg makes a big thing of the early programs of the Nazi and Italian Fascist Parties, and publishes the Nazi Twenty-five Points as an appendix. A closer look would show that the Nazis’ anti-capitalism was a selective affair, opposed to international capital and finance capital, department stores and Jewish businesses, but nowhere opposed to private property per se or favorable to a transfer of all the means of production to public ownership. > > A still closer look at how the fascist parties obtained power and then exercised power would show how little these early programs corresponded to fascist practice. Mussolini acquired powerful backing by hiring his black-shirted squadristi out to property owners for the destruction of socialist and Communist unions and parties. They destroyed the farm workers’ organizations in the Po Valley in 1921-1922 by violent nightly raids that made them the de facto government of northeastern Italy. Hitler’s brownshirts fought Communists for control of the streets of Berlin, and claimed to be Germany’s best bulwark against the revolutionary threat that still appeared to be growing in 1932. Goldberg prefers the abstractions of rhetoric to all this history, noting only that fascism and Communism were “rivals.” So his readers will not learn anything about how the Nazis and Italian Fascists got into power or exercised it. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/108 "2012-07-09T03:08:51Z")
Bill Buckley characterized the conservatives of his day as “standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’.” The description still holds true, except that instead of yelling “Stop!”, they’re mostly just yelling. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/109 "2012-07-09T04:00:05Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > Conservatives end up on the wrong side almost by definition. A conservative wants to preserve the status-quo. But for some centuries, our societies have constantly evolved. What was the norm yesterday is now considered as morally unacceptable, or outdated and unapplicable in the modern world. William F. Buckley once wrote that a conservative’s duty is “to stand athwart history and shout ‘Stop!’” But in fact he always seems to end up hanging on the tail-end of it dragging his heels. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/110 "2012-07-09T06:48:24Z")
> [@fumster](#): > > Except, of course, for the religious conservatives who were using the Bible to _support_ slavery. But I imagine you will come back with the list of religious liberals who supported slavery. Like those liberals who supported slavery in the USSR, China and other communist states… ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/111 "2012-07-09T06:50:30Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > It was religious conservatives who where a driving force for slavery. You would be lying…and not supporting your claim with any evidence. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/112 "2012-07-09T06:51:47Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > Total rewrite of 20th century American history. His picture is illustrating “hardline right-winger.” Goldwater was barely to his right. Scranton, Romney, Rockefeller, were all well to his left. Total ignorance of his positions and again not supported by any deeper examination of his policies. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/113 "2012-07-09T11:15:11Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > You would be lying…and not supporting your claim with any evidence. I don’t think it is proper to accuse others of lying, specially when there is support for what they say. [http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/why-non-slaveholding.html](http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/civil-war-overview/why-non-slaveholding.html) > [@](#): > > WHAT THE CHURCHES WERE SAYING > > With that backdrop, let’s take our trip back in time to hear what Southerners were hearing. What were they being told by their pastors, by their politicians, and their community leaders about slavery, Lincoln, and secession? > > Churches were the center of social and intellectual life in the south. That was where people congregated, where they learned about the world and their place in it, and where they received moral guidance. The clergy comprised the community’s cultural leaders and educators and carried tremendous influence with slaveholders and non-slaveholders alike. What were Southern pastors, preachers, and religious leaders telling their flock? > > Southern clergy defended the morality of slavery through an elaborate scriptural defense built on the infallibility of the Bible, which they held up as the universal and objective standard for moral issues. Religious messages from pulpit and from a growing religious press accounted in large part for the extreme, uncompromising, ideological atmosphere of the time. > > As Northern opposition to slavery grew, the three major protestant churches split into northern and southern factions. The Presbyterians divided in1837, the Methodists in 1844, and the Baptists in 1845. The segregation of the clergy into Northern and Southern camps was profound. It spelt an end to meaningful dialogue, leaving Southern preachers to talk to Southern audiences without contradiction. > > What were their arguments? The Presbyterian theologian Robert Lewis Dabney reminded his fellow Southern clergymen that the Bible was the best way to explain slavery to the masses. “We must go before the nation with the Bible as the text, and ‘thus sayeth the lord’ as the answer,” he wrote. “We know that on the Bible argument the abolition party will be driven to unveil their true infidel tendencies. The Bible being bound to stand on our side, they have to come out and array themselves against the Bible.” > [@](#): > > It was a corollary that to attack slavery was to attack the Bible and the word of God. If the Bible expressly ordained slave holding, to oppose the practice was a sin and an insult to God’s word. As the Baptist minister and author Thornton Stringfellow noted in his influential Biblical Defense of Slavery, “men from the north” demonstrated “palpable ignorance of the divine will.” > > The Southern Presbyterian of S.C observed that there was a “religious character to the present struggle. Anti-slavery is essentially infidel. It wars upon the Bible, on the Church of Christ, on the truth of God, on the souls of men.” A Georgia preacher denounced abolitionists as “diametrically opposed to the letter and spirit of the Bible, and as subversive of all sound morality, as the worst ravings of infidelity.” The prominent South Carolina Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell did not mince his words. “The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.” And once again, the rulers in the USSR, China and other communist nations do hate liberals. As Tony Benn, former leader of the populist left in the British Labour party would tell you, and it is because virtually all liberals support democracy among other things. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/114 "2012-07-09T11:29:59Z")
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned eugenics as a good example of where conservatives ended up being on the right side of history. Conservatives tend to lose when the issue is over freedom vs. traditional values. ---
**Author:** ![Maastricht](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@Maastricht](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maastricht)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/115 "2012-07-09T11:46:14Z")
I haven’t read the thread, but I can’t resist adding my two cents. It has little to do with conservationism and progressivism. I’d rather distinguish between realism and idealism. Idealism has almost always been a positive force when it came to the spreading of ideas and when it allowed societies and individuals to act on those ideas freely and in their own time (in othet words, when idealism allowed to be checked by realism). Idealism has almost NEVER been a good thing when it was forced on people, forcing them to ignore the realities of everyday life. Both communism and religion are good (or rather, bad) examples of that. Communism demonized economic and sociological realities; Many religions have demonized and failed to channel existing human urges. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/116 "2012-07-09T12:49:36Z")
> [@madsircool](#): > > Like those liberals who supported slavery in the USSR, China and other communist states… They weren’t liberals, obviously. > [@adaher](#): > > I’m surprised that no one has mentioned eugenics as a good example of where conservatives ended up being on the right side of history. Because they weren’t and aren’t? Eugenics is a _conservative_ ideal. It’s all about purifying society of the “unclean” and “unfit”; usually translating to people who are of the “wrong race” or who are poor. It’s conservatives who panic over the “genetically unfit” outbreeding the “fit”. ---
**Author:** ![Malden\_Capell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malden_capell/32/5274_2.png) [@Malden\_Capell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malden_Capell)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/117 "2012-07-09T13:02:10Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Because they weren’t and aren’t? Eugenics is a _conservative_ ideal. It’s all about purifying society of the “unclean” and “unfit”; usually translating to people who are of the “wrong race” or who are poor. It’s conservatives who panic over the “genetically unfit” outbreeding the “fit”. Not so. It’s neither conservative nor liberal. Famous left-wingers such as John Maynard Keynes, William Beveridge, George Bernard Shaw, and so on, were known for supporting eugenics. The left/right wing divide was based on _class_, not race; that’s the only difference. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/118 "2012-07-09T13:23:02Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Because they weren’t and aren’t? Eugenics is a _conservative_ ideal. It’s all about purifying society of the “unclean” and “unfit”; usually translating to people who are of the “wrong race” or who are poor. It’s conservatives who panic over the “genetically unfit” outbreeding the “fit”. Margaret Sanger and most of the scientific and college professor community were conservatives? Interesting. Malden added some big names that i hadn’t thought of. ---
**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/119 "2012-07-09T13:25:44Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > :rolleyes: If we are going to go that far back and to that extreme, then concentration camps, the Nazi genocide, eugenics, the Inquisition, and so on get credited to the conservative side. > > Fanatics tend to be ruthless and brutal regardless of their politics. Okay, one more time. “Progressives” killed from eighty to one hundred and twenty million people in Eurasia in the twentieth century. They chanted pretty much the same kind of mantras about social justice, equality, and all the rest of that noble sounding claptrap that progressives in the United States do. The radical left has butchered far more people than the radical right. The left should never be allowed to forget or ignore this. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 9, 2012, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507/120 "2012-07-09T13:34:37Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > “Progressives” killed from eighty to one hundred and twenty million people in Eurasia in the twentieth century. Nothing like a good laugh to go with my morning coffee. Thanks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-conservatives-historically-most-often-been-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/627507.md?page=7)