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Originally Posted by Jay Random

*sigh*

The Nazis were ‘far-right’ in Germany in the 1930s. But they would have been left of centre in almost any other country. They believed in a centrally directed economy, a cradle-to-grave welfare state, the mass regimentation of society, the abolition of personal liberty, etc., etc. Business owners under the Nazis were not allowed to sell their businesses or withdraw profits beyond a nominal amount, and every business transaction had to be approved by a whole gamut of Reich Ministries, ostensibly because of the war effort (years before the war started). To get permission for a single export transaction, a business had to file over 40 official forms and wait for the bureaucracy to issue the permits. (There is an excellent book on this subject, called Vampire Economy, but I don't recall the author's name offhand.)

The biggest differences between the Nazis and the German Communist Party were (a) the Communists wanted to shoot the capitalist business owners, whereas the Nazis kept them on as high-salaried servants, and (b) the Communists wanted the world to be run from Moscow, where the Nazis wanted to run it from Berlin.

So what made the Nazis right-wing by German standards? This kind of massive state interference in every aspect of daily and economic life was routine in Germany, and had been since Bismarck unified the country in the 1870s. The German right wing wanted the system to be run by the Army with a restored Kaiser at the head, the left wing wanted it run by civilian bureaucrats (and the Communist Party wanted Stalin at the head). But they both wanted the same system. No party that would be called ‘right-wing’ in any Western European country had any significant following.

The Italian Fascists, on the other hand, were merely [name of bird used in Swiss clocks which is stupidly censored by the CP profanity filter]. Mussolini was an ex-Socialist who discovered during World War I that it was easier to stir people up with appeals to patriotism than with guff about the international proletariat. The Soviet propaganda machine labelled him ‘far-right’ because he did not take orders from Moscow, but they also called Trotsky ‘far-right’ for the same reason and actually labelled his followers ‘Trotsky-Fascists’. It was purely a propaganda exercise designed to keep Communist Party members and fellow-travellers from defecting to a different party.

OK, we now return you to your regularly scheduled virtual lynch mob.

Now do moral philosophy.