I want to know if anyone out there knows who coined the term Right-Wing and why is it applied to leftist groups like Neo-NAZI’s when NAZIism is a socialist party?
'Cos in the French National Assembly of 1798, the liberals (democrats & extremists) sat on the left hand side, the moderates in the middle, and the reactionaries sat on the right and thus the custom was established - according to Brewster’s anyway.
Tes I heard that as well, but I heard that a leftist 20th century author used the term as we know it today.
Well, let’s take the historical segment first and then get into the political.
IIRC, the terms originated with the parliament of pre-revolutionary France. The National Assembly was seated around the King’s throne and was situated so that the feudal nobility and the Church functionaries, historically the conservative section of society, sat on the King’s right, while the emerging merchant class and whatever representatives of the lower classes His Highness deigned to allow into the chambers, generally of a more progressive bent, sat on the left. Hence the terms ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ in connection with general political views.
Now for the less well-informed section of your post… Nazis are not leftists or socialists. They were completely anti-working class, for one thing. And anti-Semitism has absolutely no place in a political philosophy that seeks to create equality out of abundance.
Having kept my reply as brief as possible, welcome to the board! On behalf of all of us at SDMB we hope you find all the answers you’re looking for here, or at least a good idea of where to look for them! 
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…
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The seating in the French legislature had conservatives on the right and liberals on the left.
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Actions speak louder than words. In both Russia and Japan, there are “Liberal Democratic” parties, which are both actually very conservative. But they both picked a name that would make them look more appealing. The “National Socialists” (aka Nazis) were the same.
Anyway, “nationalist” and “socialist” are a contridition in terms, so the party name didn’t make sense. My mother’s family had to flee Germany when the Nazis took over. As an exercise, I let you try to convince them that Nazis–neo or original flavor–were in any way real socialists or liberals.
In France, during the revolutionary period, the conservatives (status-preserving), clergy, and monarchists sat on the right side of the assembly. The radicals (proponents of radical change) and liberals (freedom-lovers) sat on the left.
Socialists, Communists, Fascists, and Nazis (National Socialists) do have a lot in common, all being authoritarian, all being anti-democratic, and all being suspicious of individualism. They are all Hegelian parties, which is to say derived from the writings of the German philosopher Hegel, the great-grandaddy of Marxism and Naziism. He lived during the American and French Revolutions, and opposed them vehemently in his writings.
Fascism and National Socialism are strongly nationalistic and Fascism at least is intimately associated with virulently conservative catholicism. Communism is generally not nationalistic (it is actively internationalist) and atheistic. This probably explains why they are classed as opposites on a one-dimensional scale (right-left) by some. This leads to some bizarre classifications, such as “radical Nazi,” and “conservative Communist”.
The libertarians use a more sophisticated model, using two axes (they are free-unfree and conservative-radical, if I recall.) Communists and Nazis would both be on the unfree side of the box, but communists in the radical corner and Nazis in the conservative corner. “Conservative communists” would likely be closer to the Nazis than to most communists.
By the way, “liberal” in the USA doesn’t mean the same thing it does in the rest of the world, or that it did in 19th century history. Modern liberalism in the US is usually associated with increased taxation and increased government spending. People who call themseles liberals in the rest of the world are (more or less) what we here would call libertarians, who generally favor smaller government.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)
I still never really got an answer to the question of why extremist hate groups are called Right-Wing when from a political standpoint they do not stand for conservative veiw points.
Nazis are not socialist and are anti-worker? Nazi is a clipped form of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German National Socialist Workers’ Party). How can a party with a name like that not be socialist? I agree that the Nazis were bad for German workers, but they pretended, at least, to be the workers’ saviors. Evidently enough of them bought it.
Bommer, you did get an answer, it is just disappearing behind our budding politico-philosophical debate.
The current loonies and mad-bombers are called right wing in this country because their stated goals superficially resemble the conservative agenda (right wing) more than the liberal agenda (left wing).
For example, a current rallying cry of the conservatives includes a call to reduce government, reduce taxes, get the government out of our lives. This casual statement, made without explanation or nuance, can be heartily embraced by the various people holed up in the back country of Idaho and Montana.
The loonies and mad bombers of the late 60’s and early 70’s, by contrast, were left wing because they superficially favored the agenda of the liberal or left wing. The redistribution of wealth away from the rich and powerful to “free” people from the shackles of capitalism was a popular cry of that period.
Ironically, the one group in the United States in the last 50 years that actively espoused a philosophy that, when studied from the outside, could be truly defined as fascism was always called a left-wing group: the Black Panther Party. Fascism includes a national identity based on racial or ethnic identity, an association of that ethnic identity with “the land” (the Black Panthers espoused a new black nation carved out of several southern states), a modified form of capitalism in which small entrepeneurship was encouraged, but large industry was nationalized, etc.
Tom~
Okay, so modern American conservatives consider socialists to be inherently anti-democratic, and Fascists to be left-wingers. Big surprise. No one wants to be associated with Hitler or Mussolini or those guys. I don’t blame you.
None of this has any relevance to the discussion. There are strong historical reasons why Nazis were not considered leftists in Germany. Nazis hunted down and murdered tons of Communists and Social Democrats in the 1930s. Communists would have done the same to the Nazis and the German National People’s Party except that they lost. I wouldn’t make too much of the names of these parties. “A starfish is neither a star, nor is it a fish.” - Matt Groening
Why is a left-wing liberal like Pat Buchanan called a right-winger? Cause he’s a right-winger. Other right-wingers don’t have to like him. I’ve been called a right-winger, and I don’t. (I’ve also been called a left-winger, and I don’t much like Jesse Jackson.) If you want to make the case that a single axis is far too simplistic a way to categorize our political culture, I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Right-wing does not mean conservative, and conservatism is a pretty useless way to categorize someone. Someone who wants to conserve the status quo? Which part of the status quo? I’m sure we could all find parts of the status quo we like, which makes us all conservatives, and parts we want to change, which makes us all reformers.
What I’m saying is, “right-wing” and “left-wing” are certainly not perfect ways of dividing up the political spectrum, but they are preferable to a lot of other ones, especially the tacit one being floated by some people on this thread, to wit: Nazis are bad and I don’t like left-wingers, so Nazis must be left-wingers.
The Nazis, like the Soviets, called themselves “socialist” because it was not considered a controversial term until quite recently (and mostly in the US). “Socialist” was one of those terms like “democratic” or “freedom” or “liberty” which have a general enough meaning that almost any political group can appropriate them.
And like it or not, the “right wing” is clearly closer to the traditional conservative platform than to the traditional liberal one. The American Nazi Party will endorse George Bush, the American Communist Party will endorse Al Gore, and both of them will repudiate the endorsements.
The same way that any country with the word “Democratic” in its name is always a dictatorship.
…And any People’s Democratic Republic is a Communist dictatorship.
No matter what the Nazis called themselves, they subscribed to a right-wing, nationalistic, anti-worker platform - i.e., they were fascists.
Bommer - extremist hate groups are right-wing because they take conservative agendas to… well, extremes. An example or two:
Nationalism. Conservatives more or less take the stand “my country, right or wrong” and argue that the welfare of their native geopolitical unit comes before all other considerations. Hence they support tariffs on imports, isolationism, anything that would promote a healthy environment for the growth of business and their own economy.
Extremists go further and argue that the only healthy society is a society in which only the people most like themselves have any say in things. Other groups don’t have many, if any, basic rights - whether they differ because of skin color, sexual orientation, or even gender. (Political differences are a given here.)
Economics. Conservatives love free enterprise. As long as the money flows and the market is unimpeded, life is good. Poverty and other social ills are the problems of the individual and not really a product of the way the economy functions. Nevertheless a good dose of social discontent can get them to change their minds, or at least quiet down a bit.
Extremists, like fascists for instance, have nothing but contempt for the “common man” and any attempts at dissent are ruthlessly crushed so that people grow afraid of even individual dissent becomes psychologically difficult.
I hope this helps a little bit!
bibliophage - Get your nose out of Atlas Shrugged and take a look at the real world for a while. I certainly am not defending someone like Stalin, who exhibited very strong parallels with Hitler on any number of levels, but your generalizations are way off the mark.
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…
Right, and the KKK and the American Nazi Party were bastions of free thinking and radical opinion.
All I wanna do is to thank you, even though I don’t know who you are…
Olentzero: Tom said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Seriously, the Black Panthers were no more than an armed criminal gang. They had no coherent philosophy and the only thing that united them was anti-white racism. Observe what happened to their leading members when their moment in the sun was over–H. Rap Brown, for example, was recently arrested for killing a cop and wounding another. As much as you may dislike David Horowitz, the parts of his books that deal with the Black Panthers are shocking. He details murders and drug trafficking, as well as plain old extortion and racketeering on their part.
I am reminded of the sunset of the Soviet era in which the more traditional power bloc, i.e., people with their roots in the Communist Party, sought to overturn the reformist government of Mikhail Gorvachev and his then-deputy Boris Yeltsin.
The revolutionaries, the communists, who were opposing the status quo party that was then in charge, were called…right-wing, conservative. This is the same political presence that was always considered to be the extreme of leftiness prior to Gorby–these were the REDS. Right-wing. Conservative.
Do we have a political terminology problem or what?
Disable Similes in this Post
Olentzero, the point of my statement had to do with the political theory of fascism. Beginning with Mussolini, borrowed by Peron and Franco, and expanded by Hitler, fascism is a specific political movement that includes a number of beliefs and goals. The Black Panther Party expressed their agenda in the same terms. The points I expressed in my earlier post are among the salient features of fascism and the original Black Panther Party expressed a formal agenda to carry out those sorts of goals. (They certainly did not identify themselves as fascists; that term was reserved for the government and the police. However, an examination of their goals makes a striking parallel to the goals of Mussolini.)
The KKK is basically a fear>hate>fear group with no genuine political agenda. They fear that their imaginary idea of a pure society is threatened, they express hatred for those whom they perceive as the threat, and they attempt to fight back by inspiring fear in those whom they fear. There is no actual political agenda. The KKK of the 1920’s was the Amway of hatred, with a few dealers in bedsheets selling hatred through an MLM. The KKK of the 1950’s to now are simply frightened white guys who don’t know where to turn to feel secure in themselves and so they gather in packs to snarl at other people, occasionally running out to snap or bite at someone.
The American Nazi party bought into Hitler’s racial rantings and put an American stamp on them. The pre-war Nazi party may have actually followed a true fascist agenda, I’m not sure. The American Nazi party that has arisen since the 1960’s has embraced the racism, but has not actually expressed an interest in the ideas of nationalizing the airlines, railways, and the steel and automotive industries. Their appeal to a “homeland” is weakened by the basic mobility of American culture. They have a rather disorganized political structure with multiple mini-fuerhers that runs counter to the whole notion of a coherent government.
I do not endorse any of their hatred or stupidity. My point was strictly from the perspective of the irony of noting that a specific “left wing” movement has provided the best example of the archetypal “right wing” political philosophy.
On the other hand, Lawrence, I would not characterize the Black Panthers (particularly in the early years) as mere thugs. They did, indeed, have a very carefully worked out political philosophy. Under the pressures of the times, they did not hold together very well and by the last years, the most visible members of the group had either left or turned to actual crime. At the beginning of their organization, however, they did put forth a very clear and provoking (and utterly unworkable) plan to establish a black North American nation.
Tom~
I am no fan of Ayn Rand. The fact is that Stalin and Hitler had more in common with each other than than I have in common with her.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes. (Oscar Wilde)