@Walter Hinteler,
Walter Hinteler wrote:
okie wrote:
Insteresting opinion. Can you also explain what the difference is between a left-Fascist and a right-Fascist, and why the difference defines them left or right?
Well, I really don't know what you've learnt in history at school and how and where you've been taught about pokitical sciences.
Quoting from Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Chicago, 2011:
Quote:[...]fascist parties and movements differed significantly from each other, they had many characteristics in common, including extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people's community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.
And when you've read this, okie, you may get that these ideas may be either (but rarely in history) following more left or more right (what was more common in history) ideas and ideology.
Okay, maybe we are getting somewhere in this debate? Let us take the common characteristics as given by Encyclopaedia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite, Chicago, 2011.
1. - extreme militaristic nationalism - I do not think this is necessarily indicative of either left or right, especially not right, because we know about the militaristic nature of the old Soviet Union, also North Korea, etc.
2. - contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites - This one I believe you would have a very tough time assigning to a right leaning philosophy. It correlates more with the idea that a democratic republic and parliamentism is inefficient and that a strong central state is more efficient. Such implies that if you belong to the party and work your way up within the political ruling class, you can be part of some kind of dictatorship, that is the way I would interpret that, Walter, and that is no way a conservative or right leaning philosophy at all.
3. - the desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people's community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. - This is the clincher in my opinion, Walter, as this is unquestionably left leaning, definitely not conservative or right leaning at all. Conservatism clearly believes in individual rights and interests, not to be taken from us in the supposed interest of common good, or some such belief that the State should be the arbitor of what is good for the people or community, such as wealth redistribution, outlawing any income that does not arise from "work," the outlawing of trusts, and the confiscation of property and businesses when it suits the good of the whole instead of the individual, which is of course determined by the ruling class and or a dictator.
