[freeflight]

> Any somewhat political article is extremely left leaning.

I've seen that same argument before to argue how the Nazis, and modern neo-Nazi groups are supposedly all "left wing", their categorization on Wikipedia as right wing and far right is allegedly only the result of that very same "left leaning" bias you are claiming.

Which, as a German, is just a tad bit weird, because it wasn't Wikipedia that defined these groups as such, those results come out of the political sciences. Nazis being right-wing, and neo-Nazis having moved further into the far-right is a very established fact in Germany.

[jasonfarnon]

Their name has "socialist" right in the middle of it. You might argue over definitions of socialism and whether it's left or right. But I don't think you can say "a group that calls itself socialist has at least this one left-leaning trait" isn't a position reasonable people can disagree on.

What I find worse than people going both ways on wether nazis are left or right leaning, is someone in a position of authority like wikipedia saying, one side is objectively right [about a question that isn't even rigorously posed] and will be treated as such.

[the_only_law]

I suppose you believe the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea is democratic then?

[jasonfarnon]

Oh, I don't think socialism is only in the name of nazis, I think their nationalization of many practices and aspects of culture is key. Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable people can take?

I didn't mean to suggest taking the name itself as the only evidence of socialism.

[danans]

> Do you think "nazis had socialist tendencies" is a position that no reasonable people can take?

Yes, because a socialism that benefits only members of the "Aryan race" while excluding, oppressing and murdering others in the same country is not socialism at all.

[jokethrowaway]

That can very well be socialism for a subgroup of your existing population.

I think the divergence in views is in the definition of socialism we have; I see it as an economical doctrine of state centralisation, you probably have other egalitarian ideals attached to it.

Economically, on a scale from free-market to socialism, where do you think nazis rank? I think they were closer to socialism that nowadays mainstream left wing parties

[freeflight]

> That can very well be socialism for a subgroup of your existing population.

Using that same line of reasoning one could frame the American slave trade as "socialist" in nature because the slave owners were "socialized" by the exploited slaves.

> Economically, on a scale from free-market to socialism, where do you think nazis rank?

Which is kinda meaningless, if you want to see were Nazis stood on what you gotta look at their actions past abstract economic theories and their own PR, you have to look at the people they oppressed, persecuted, killed and for what reasons they did it.

Or you could also look at what kind of people [0] and ideas [1] in large parts inspired them.

Those weren't socialist/communist ideals out of the East, that inspiration came nearly exclusively from the West, a lot of it from over the pond, straight down to originally coining the term "Untermensch" and the associated race theories [2]

[0] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/henry-ford-grand-cross-1938...

[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691172422/hi...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untermensch#Etymology

[danans]

> That can very well be socialism for a subgroup of your existing population.

This is like calling ancient Sparta - where the Spartans lived in an egalitarian structure while simultaneously oppressing their Helot slaves - socialism.

Or for a more a recent example, apartheid South Africa, where whites received a great deal of support via government policy that practically ensured their prosperity. That wasn't socialism, either.

Socialism is not about centralized state control. It's about whether the state plays a strong role in ensuring a standard of living for all it's citizens. In successful examples (like Social Security and Medicare in the US) it has accomplished this while the majority of the economy is not under state control.

[throwaway4china]

I'd say that's a staple of socialism/communism/marxism.

From Mao to Venezuela, the core idea depends upon excluding, oppressing, and murder of others in the same country based on class.

The only thing different about the Nazis is they targeted by race not class, though Communist China is targeting Uighur and other minorities in their country.

[danans]

> excluding, oppressing, and murder of others in the same country based on class.

> The only thing different about the Nazis is they targeted by race

The government excluding, oppressing, murdering based on race ... so the American south was socialist then right?

[freeflight]

> But I don't think you can say "a group that calls itself socialist has at least this one left-leaning trait" isn't a position reasonable people can disagree on.

It is to anybody actually familiar with the history of the NSDAP. The "socialism" in their name was mostly PR, what little socialist currents existed in the early NSDAP, represented by the Strasser brothers, was bloodily purged during the Night of the Long Knives.

It's for that reason the very first victims in the concentration camp Dachau were not just Jews, they where German leftist political opposition Jews: Communists, socialists, antifascists, killed as early as 1933. The very same reason why Nazis considered the communist USSR as their arch-nemesis.

> What I find worse than people going both ways on wether nazis are left or right leaning, is someone in a position of authority like wikipedia saying, one side is objectively right [about a question that isn't even rigorously posed] and will be treated as such.

All this information can be found on Wikipedia, not just there, but also local Wikipedias from the places it actually happened. Like the Fuerth Wikipedia being even more in-depth and detailed [0], which is the city next to Nuremberg, both very relevant places for the early rise of Nazism.

That's why it's really not this "open debate" you make it out to be. The only people who insist on that are usually US Americans, due to the caricature "atheist socialist leftist" boogeyman that's been peddled to them for decades and some Eastern Europeans with post-communism shock, to justify their ideological hard shift to the right into often straight up fascism.

[0] https://www.fuerthwiki.de/wiki/index.php/Rudolf_Benario

[jokethrowaway]

I've read extensively on the subject and I'm aware of the claims of using socialism as PR and I'm aware of the great purge.

At the same time, Hitler viewed Marxism not only as a philosophy close to its own, but also as a rival. I don't think the first victims of Dachau prove anything.

The only data I use to argue nazis were closer to socialism than free market capitalism is that their economy (despite having a semblance of a free economy) revolved around the state: prices, wages were fixed, members of the nazi party were put in control of private companies who disobeyed.

Hitler was definitely to the right of Stalin, but he was left of most modern left wing parties.

I also disagree with you that something is not open to debate, and I think it's worrying to hear people hold this view - especially on something so subjective as political categorisations.

Some more reading material:

https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-s...

https://fee.org/articles/anti-racists-should-think-twice-abo...

[jokethrowaway]

That's a well established fact everywhere. That's what every kid studies in school. I don't think it's correct.

The main problem is that left wing and right wing are meaningless terms. Left and right generally apply to the economical sphere which goes from communism (entirely state operated economy) to libertarianism (entirely de-regulated market). Usually when people talk about left wing vs right wing they attach some authoritarian / anarchic connotations. The politicalcompass.org (which is kind of left leaning) has a nice explanation of this problem.

Going back to nazis: if you look at their policies and how the economy operated in nazi Germany, nazis are closer to socialism than libertarianism. There is a nice analysis here: https://mises.org/library/why-nazism-was-socialism-and-why-s...

Sure, Hitler may have been to the right of Stalin, but he was much more left leaning than any of nowadays left wing parties.