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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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It is also a fact that the nazis were far right

I'll dispute that. There's a reason PoliticalCompassMemes classes them as AuthCenter. Nazism is weird, and very clearly a mutation off of socialism. There is definitely a reasonable argument that they shed core elementals of socialist thought (like class abolition) during that mutation, but they kept others (like the framework of being a revolutionary ideology to remake all society in their own image), and that leaves in them a weird position compared to other types of "right-wing" ideologies. If just being racist and homophobic is enough, then Marx, Engels and Guevera are "far-right". If we're going to ignore the distinctions and categories enough to group Brandon Sanderson with the Nazis, then everyone to the left of Joe Manchin is Stalinist - and apparently it doesn't matter if they never sent anyone to the gulag.

They sort of had class abolition. There was volksgemeinschaft, no class divisions here we're all Germans! But they weren't in favor of class struggle, which is a key Marxist concept.

It depends upon how you interpret the meaning of class abolition I suppose, whether it's killing enough kulaks that the class is liquidated or whether you just remove the category of kulak and consider them to be farmers.

I'm happy to join in disputing the "fact that the nazis were far right" but I would emphasize the worthlessness of the left/right spectrum.

Reactionaries, those throne and altar guys like the Hapsburgs and the Romanovs, are right wing. Florian Geyer had "no crown, no cross" scratched on his sword, the sword that he used to fight for peasants during the Peasants Revolt; not right wing. Hitler thought Florian Geyer a hero and was happy to have an SS regiment named after him. I'm thinking that Hitler and Stalin had rival takes on how to stick it to the Kings and Priests, but both thought of themselves as acting on behalf of the workers and the common man.

If one really wants to have Hilter->right and Stalin->left, then one gets into trouble with reactionaries, monarchists, and integralists. All the classic right-wing positions have to be kicked off the spectrum to make room for Hitler. You even have to horse-shoe Florian Geyer and get him to the right to have Hitler think him a hero.

I would emphasize the worthlessness of the left/right spectrum.

and I would disagree, as much as the terms get abused these days I think that the underlying ideas about human nature being bound vs unbound and "on which side would one fall in the French Revolution" is still very relevant and useful no matter how much blue-tribe academics like to assert otherwise. Heck I would go so far as to say that half the reason academic left keep asserting that it's worthless is precisely because they don't want to bite the bullet on the implications.

Some of the difficulty is probably also due to political views not truly being one-dimensional, even though people often treat it like it is.

Nazis were textbook socially right-wing. Anschluss, lebensraum, ethnic nationalism is categorically opposed to cosmopolitan liberalism. (Cue jokes about modern woke racial grievances…) I’ve definitely seen Stalin up there on authcenter, too, when the poster correctly observed Soviets placing party over ideology.

I think it’s more clear in the old-school political compass where the two axes are “social” and “fiscal.” The “auth” axis leaves it hard to separate different varieties of statism.

Nazis were textbook socially right-wing. Anschluss, lebensraum, ethnic nationalism is categorically opposed to cosmopolitan liberalism.

*presses X to doubt* Magic A is Magic A, and socialist infused Id-Pol is socialist infused Id-Pol.

If the Nazis were right wing, so where the Bolsheviks, Benito Mussolini, Margaret Sanger, and Woodrow Wilson and I'm not buying it.

Edit: see my earlier comment about "implications"

like the framework of being a revolutionary ideology to remake all society in their own image

The libertarians are the same, so they are some kind of socialists?

If just being racist and homophobic is enough, then Marx, Engels and Guevera are "far-right"

Racism and homophobia weren't particularly important in their politics. That is what matters.

If we're going to ignore the distinctions and categories enough to group Brandon Sanderson with the Nazis

I never said you should group Brandon Sanderson with the nazis because I don't know him and I'm not interested in fantasy authors anyway. That is not my point, and that is certainly not the point of the wikipedia article either.

The libertarians are the same, so they are some kind of socialists?

There is no similarity there. Let me know if you ever find a self-professed libertarian group that wants to forcibly split children from their families to indoctrinate them into a new Year Zero totalizing ideology, so I can start repudiating them.

Racism and homophobia weren't particularly important in their politics. That is what matters.

That seems like a very isolated standard that I have never seen applied to anyone before, and doesn't hold besides. Guevara had gay men sent to camps to work the gay out of them; that seems like a much more central example of political ideology and power than waffling about gay marriage.

That is not my point, and that is certainly not the point of the wikipedia article either.

What did you think the point of the wiki article was, if not offering institutional support to a wildly expansive definition of "far right"?

That seems like a very isolated standard that I have never seen applied to anyone before, and doesn't hold besides.

The fact that you have seen it applied or not is not very relevant. You can write an abstract of Marx writings without ever mentionning race or homosexuality and you wouldn't miss much. The same cannot be said about far right leaders or thinkers. On guevara, you are probably right, I don't know. Anyway as I stated before those things cannot be taken in isolation. Just because you are homophobic does not mean you are far right. For example, I don't think the distinction between gender and sex makes any sense (at least not as it is applied in liberal ideology). Some people would call me transphobic. But as I'm not racist and homophobic, I don't think I would qualify as far right by any reasonable standard.

What did you think the point of the wiki article was, if not offering institutional support to a wildly expansive definition of "far right"?

As it is an article about the far right, I'd say its purpose is to inform people about what is called far right by most people in our society. I'd be very interested to read your version of a definition of the far right...

I'd be very interested to read your version of a definition of the far right...

I think it's difficult to give a coherent answer. The right/left dichotomy is an imprecise arrangement at the best of times, and the right side is harder to define than the left side, especially if we're defining the right as anything other than "not leftist". The article in question seems like an absolute dumpster fire written for partisan purposes, focusing narrowly on certain social topics. Compare it to the page for far-left politics, which exclusively mentions economic topics, and doesn't even pretend to explain anything about the ideology-space, while trying to flatter their image where it can. If you dig into the talk page, you can even see editors acknowledging that "far right" is a propaganda term in use by leftist academics, while there is no comparable "wiki appropriate" propaganda source for "far left".

Far left do focus on economy because that is what far left is about. Das Kapital speaks a lot about economy, Mein Kampf not so much. It's precisely the nature of the far left ideologies to think that everything is about making the rich richer.