Left from Right and Nationalism too

It's a curious thing when you think about it.
Most people do not know or are confused about what is the political left and the political right but it is really simple.

Most people view nationalism, fascism and nazism as belonging to the political right. This is incorrect. In order to have totalitarian systems like fascism and nazism on the right of the political spectrum, said spectrum must be bent into a horseshoe or circle to mate them up with totalitarian communism.

This makes no sense whatsoever.

Looked at this way, if A. (nazism, fascism) = C. (totalitarian collectivist state)
                               and B. (communism) = C. (totalitarian collectivist state)
                             Then A. (nazism, fascism) = B. (communism)

Therefore all three systems belong on the left of the political spectrum where left is defined as centrally managed and controlled economic and social, collectivist states. Otherwise the political spectrum twisted into horseshoes, circles, pretzels and mobius strips can tell us nothing as they have no definable left or right nor a coherent definition thereof.

The purpose of this spectrum is to organize data into an easily readable form  and allow for new systems to be easily identified on the spectrum as any good graph or chart should do. Bad charts, graphs or spectrum lines are invariably the work of grifters and mountebanks working to deceive others.

This horseshoe, pretzel, multidimensional axis tesseract construct is usually the argument of leftists who at the political family function do not want to be seated at the same table with cousin Adolf and cousin Benito. Nobody likes losers, especially leftists who are obsessed with being "on the right side of history" but they are part of the left, or alt-left if you will, so suck it up, leftie.

An Aside: The Z-man, no leftist he, had a recent blog post podcast on this subject, buying into the fascism is on the right notion in a way which I found to be a bit obscurantist, in that he emphasized the economic aspect and totally ignored the social aspects of individual liberty and property rights. So by claiming the spectrum is not universally applicable, considered only economics, and can only be understood within some arbitrary frame of reference, he renders the entire concept irrelevant and it should logically be discarded in favor of "some guys who think one way" and "them other guys who think another way". Further conflating the bad rhetoric of "progressive liberals are the real Nazis" used by conservatives with the political spectrum itself and appeal to academic authority as support is a fallacy. Had he proposed that identity politics has now rendered the old left-right paradigm obsolete, then there is something to consider and debate.
Now I like the Z-man and read his blog daily and will continue to do so finding much to learn or better articulation of ideas I already had and usually agree with him but this time, I respectfully disagree.

So what is the political right?
Simply put, those who want smaller governments with more emphasis property and individual rights. This would make libertarian anarchists (not to be confused by leftist fake anarchists who want a totalitarian communist state) the extreme right and the diametric opposite communists.
Then the right is less based in an ideology to arguably none at all and is really more of an attitude or preference. What organizational ideology can describe "leave me alone"?

This is not to say that a right wing government cannot arguably be authoritarian as long as it is a one party system that practices laissez-faire social and economic policies and only controls political dissent. Such a government would be placed nearer the center right.

 However, Burnham's and Francis' works regarding the managerial state would predict that eventually the State apparatus will grow and move towards greater control over economics and social matters developing a more comprehensive governing ideology and thus morph into a left-wing state. Even minarchism faces this prospect over the long term unless the citizenry takes the effort to prevent it. The United States today faces this problem due to the long term apathy and complacency of its citizens.

So what is the political left?
The left can be said to be based on organizational ideologies as a necessary blueprint to create a centrally controlled and managed collectivist state. The collectivist state, in order to manage and control not only the economic system but the social system, must use the force of an authoritarian or totalitarian government apparatus to enforce the dogma of its governing ideology. Control can only be maintained by force to ensure complete compliance with the State.

Again, this is not to say all left-wing governments are necessarily totalitarian but some amount of force, be it government force of law or social pressure from the majority of citizens who desire this form of government with its attendant political and social controls. We must also recall that there is a center to the political spectrum with shading to the moderate left or moderate right is necessary.


Now we have an actual straight line left-right political spectrum that makes sense where the extreme opposite ends are in fact the opposite of each other: totalitarian collectivism opposite libertarian anarchy, with shadings in between. And so we can see that fascism and Nazism belong on the far left of the spectrum and just to the right of totalitarian government controlled communism at the extreme left.

That is unless National Socialism with the emphasis on Socialism wasn't your first clue and no, Mussolini and Hitler were not kidding when using it.

Now on to nationalism.
Nationalism is not an political ideology at all but a preference much like being a fan of a sports team. It does not belong on the left or the right as either can be a nationalist as much as a fan of, say, the NY Giants can be someone of the right or the left, Democrat or Republican or whatever.
Even Stalin pursued a policy of socialism in one country and blatantly appealed to Russian nationalism during the second world war or as the Soviets called it: "The Great Patriotic Struggle".

To call nationalism a right wing ideology and tie it to those two most serviceable villains, Hitler and Mussolini, is the result of the post World War II European left's attempt to smear nationalism and even today to make it a scare word in order to sell their globalist/internationalist snake oil.

Once you look at this logically, this way is simple, coherent and makes the most sense.

Donald Cavaioli