Nikki Haley-What was the cause of the Civil War

[CJD]

(01-16-2024, 03:10 PM)Dill Wrote: Actually C-Dawg, I'll have to disagree with you on this one. 

What made a regime "right" or "left" in the years leading to WW II was not whom it sided with, but the principles under which the regime claimed to be, or was, constituted. What made Germany and Italy "right wing" were fascist policies with their principled embrace of inequality and opposition to unions and Marxism.

The US, GB and France would be liberal democracies, and so more "centrist" on the political spectrum of that time. Not "leftist" by any stretch--except maybe to some far right Nazis. 

The Soviet Union established itself as a workers state, in principled opposition to the economic basis of liberal, fascist and traditional (aristocratic) governments of the time. It was radically different from the both Axis and other Allies in this respect. 

So the USSR may have signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, and agreed to divide Poland--for temporary advantage--but it's a stretch to infer from that that it was on the side of Germany and the Axis, and so became "right wing" for that stretch of time, even while it's long-term goal was still worldwide worker's revolution as Germany's long-term goal was the destruction of "Jewish Bolshevism."  

One could argue all regimes at that time were "mixtures" somewhat. E.g., the US was a segregated nation in ways that aligned with Nazi racial politics. But recognizing that does not oversimplify or negate the usefulness of terms like "right," "left" and "center" as they have been traditionally defined and used in political science/theory. 

It's a legacy of US anti-communism that, with the rise of the New Right, the term "leftist" has been broadly applied by the RWM to most all groups and politicians designated enemies by the far right effectively eliminating any "center." A fringe practice was thus mainstreamed, and now I see many younger folks are quite familiar, even comfortable, with that loose labeling. Though when neoliberals like the Clintons and Obama are repeatedly labelled "leftist," the term's descriptive or analytic power is evacuated. That doesn't mean terms like "right," "center," and "left" can't have that power, though, if effectively defined and deployed as something other than propaganda tools.

I am not an expert when it comes to determining what governments were left wing or right wing because, as I've said, those terms have become so nebulous and confusing, you can call anything "left wing" or "right wing" based on one small facet of the nation that is hard to verify or quantify. For example, some people genuinely claim the Nazis were left wing because they "nationalized" certain industries. That's the claim anyway. But how does a normie like myself verify that information? Every article you find on the Nazis nowadays serves one single purpose: To either associate or dissociate the Nazis from the author's personal view points. So even if the Nazis nationalized certain industries, all you'll be able to find on the internet are articles written about how that is not true (and therefore, they are not leftists) or how it is true (and therefore were technically leftists).

And that's not even getting into the discussion of...is leftism literally just nationalizing industries?

For me, I've tried to clarify what exactly I consider a good policy and that is, generally speaking, whether a policy helps those who need help the most and at what cost.

This typically makes me side with the left because, again generally speaking, the left is on the side of the "little guy," especially when it comes to people vs corporations or the needy vs the wealthy. 

And under that definition, I definitely do not like what was going on in the USSR. Does that technically make them right wing? I can't say because I feel that terminology is hard to understand at best and purposefully confusing at worst. They claimed to be communist state which should have the interest of the people at its heart, but then Stalin was a ruthless dictator that killed and imprisoned millions of people. That isn't the action of a state that I would consider "leftist" so I tend to think of the USSR as a "bad government" which I, in my own biases, tend to associate with the right, as a murderous dictator is definitively not something that is in the interest of the people/needy/vulnerable (as I believe left wing people are interested in protecting).

This may come out as gibberish, as I'm in a bit of stream of consciousness right now, but I instantly doubt any people who call themselves "leftists" who defend Stalin or anyone like him. 

I hope that makes sense, although I doubt it does.