It is a stock-in-trade assumption among both eggheads and Joe the Plumber types that fascism is a right-wing phenomenon.
Among other similarly absurd yet just as widely and blindly held beliefs are "the United States played the lead in defeating Nazi Germany" or "American slavery was no different from the slavery practiced since time immemorial" or "Mahmoud Ahmedinejad runs Iran" or "George W. Bush won the 2000 election" or "the Democratic Party is the historic defender of African-Americans", and so forth.
The assumption about fascism being right-wing, however, and about how it should therefore be understood as the opposite of communism, is so profoundly wrong that it distorts the present even more than it distorts history. Communism is left-wing tyranny. That much is true. But so is fascism. Indeed, ALL tyranny is left-wing. Only anarchy is right-wing.
The battle between fascism and communism was not a battle of opposites. It was, instead, a civil war within leftism, and it serves to remind us that the narcissism of the small difference often leads to more brutal conflict than would otherwise be the case. Keep in mind, Stalin killed a lot of people, and he accused most of them of being heretical leftists rather than unrepentant rightists.
In other words, communism vs. fascism was not like crips vs. the salvation army, or vice versa; it was more like crips vs. bloods, with each side massacring each other over differences which prove remarkably opaque to the disinterested observer.
Any political system which operates under the premise that the state is the proper arbitrator of most or all aspects of a citizen's life is, by definition, left-wing. A system is only right-wing if it revolves around the premise that government governs best when it governs least. Each of these ideologies can be put to either good or ill ends, but that is irrelevant to the ideology itself.
Communism and fascism both empower the state over the individual. Whether this power is harnessed to eradicate illiteracy or to eradicate Jews is of course very relevant, but it is utterly inconsequential as pertains to whether said system is left-wing or not. ANY system that empowers the state over the individual is left-wing, and we, as individuals, are left to hope that the all-powerful state is benevolent.
A right-wing state empowers the citizen over the state. In such societies, government is for the people to control and manipulate, whereas in left-wing societies, the people are for the government to control and manipulate. A right-wing society, at its best, protects god-given liberty. At its worst, it stands impassive in the face of tragedy or abuse. Just as with left-wing regimes, there are both benefits and risks.
Fascism is left-wing. Need more proof? Look at the very name of Hitler's party: Nazi is an acronym for the German equivalent of "national socialism". Socialism! It's right there in the title! And so is "National", and therein lies the distinction between the communists and the fascists. The communists were internationalists. The fascists were nationalists. But they were ALL socialists.
The cry of the Communists was "workers of the world unite!" The cry of the Nazis was "Germans of the world unite!" Germans are, how shall we say?...pretty into nationalism. A German worker was much more likely to "unite" with a German aristocrat or a German peasant than with a foreigner of similar station.
So the communists and the fascists had identical views of the proper role of the state; they simply differed on what DEFINED the state. For communists, the state was defined by class. For fascists, the state was defined by race. But the state was always the God. And that is left-wing.
It is impolitic to point out that the Nazis "made the trains run on time" but they did not run (they WERE elected, let us not forget) on a platform of world war and genocide. They actually had close to a decade of peace in which they harnessed the German state to vastly improve life for most Germans.
In the perfectly crafted words of Jonah Goldberg: "So, we are supposed to see a party (the Nazis) in favor of universal education, guaranteed employment, increased entitlements for the aged, the nationalization of industry, the expansion of health care, and the abolition of child labor as objectively and obviously right-wing?" He made it a hot line, I made it a hot blog.
The point remains: the lessons learned from both fascism and communism are identical, and therefore singular: the consequences of exalting the state above all else, always with the best intentions of course, are always invigorating, often a net positive, but potentially catastrophic.
Yet we NEED the state to maintain the standards to which we are accustomed. Politics, therefore, is a delicate and endless dance between the relative exaltation accorded to man's twin idols: the state and himself.
2 comments:
The assumption of this post and of Goldberg's line is that the names "right-wing" and "left-wing" pertain only to the socioeconomic relationship between the state and the individual. There are, however, historical loyalties to consider. As the terms originally derive from the French Revolution, it would make sense to ask what the French meant. The left-wing French were those who believed that all of society's problems could be rectified through the curative effect of progressive (read: revolutionary) government. Thus was born the new calendar, the guillotine, and yet another regicide. The right-wing French were those who believed that while society did have problems, it made no sense to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Tradition should be upheld and change should happen organically. Therefore the terms were really interpretations of history. The leftists were seeking to realize society's potential to achieve a perfect state. The rightists were seeking to enshrine the good aspects of the past. (Interestingly, in the French case, the left-wingers often made the right-wingers' case for them...so you want to abolish the Church and you'll do what in its place? Hold mass meetings where you chant and eat bread and drink wine? But that almost sounds like...you get the picture). Therefore, while I agree that both Communism and Fascism are authoritarian and therefore have the same METHODS, I don't acknowledge that these methods were put to the same ends or that they had the same historical perspective in mind. Communists are leftists in the sense that they - like Marx - envisioned the capitalist world making the necessary and preferable transition to a better society. They are, after all, stadialists. Fascists are right-wing in the sense that Hitler & Co. sought to resuscitate a (albeit largely mythical) Teutonic past through the purgation of non-German culture and non-German cultural agents. Communism is all about the future. Fascism is all about the past. There's your left- and right-wing.
I get your point. It's so hard to tell the difference today between the left and right wing. We are all socialist it seems and we are all leftist. FISA, Patriot Act were meant to protect the State not the individual.
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