01-16-2024, 08:22 PM
(01-16-2024, 07:44 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: 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.
A person will tend to ascribe positions that they disagree with as opposed to their ideology, left or right. In describing the USSR as essentially right leaning you are doing exactly that. This is not a criticism, just boiling down what I think you're getting at here. The way I see it is as I described earlier. The behavior of both ideologies when you reach the extremes is basically indistinguishable, the only difference is the justification for the behavior. That's why you're having a hard time labeling the extreme left leaning USSR as left leaning, because at the end of the day they so perfectly emulate the equally extreme right leaning Nazi government. The only difference, again, is the justification.
