[adpirz]

I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought that seemed exactly backwards. Even with a cursory understanding of history, the extreme right wing regimes are considered fascist, aka extremely top down.

Considering the best faith argument here, I’m guessing he’s seeing the “right wing” being pro business as opposed to a pro government “left”, and in that view, business is considered “bottom up”. As you alluded to, though, this ignores a lot of actual historical and political context and seems more driven by punditry shorthand.

[lr1970]

> Even with a cursory understanding of history, the extreme right wing regimes are considered fascist, aka extremely top down.

IMHO the political spectrum has a circular topology where extreme left and extreme right merge into one point. As an illustration, consider Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union:

* Extremely brutal top-down dictatorship.

* Suppression of all dissent by means of secrete police (Gestapo vs NKVD).

* Single party rule (nazi party vs communist party)

* No meaningful elections.

Of course, there were many differences and nuances but the power structure was surprisingly similar.

EDIT: bullet formatting

[techbrobane]

You're describing authoritarianism which is inherently right-wing. Both Hitler and Stalin were anti-democratic right-wingers.

The left-wing has always been anti-authoritarian.

A better comparison would be like Hitler versus Emma Goldman.