Nikki Haley-What was the cause of the Civil War

[Dill]

(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.

I'm headed for the airport so I don't have a lot of time to mull this over.

You are quite right that the terms "right" and "left" become nebulous and confusing if you poll their use on the internet, giving people who have actually studied history or political science and actual governments equal weight with people whose political education was largely set by hours of listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

But what if you don't do that? There is much less confusion about what is "left" and "right,"  once you start working with stable, social scientific definitions and examples. If you are doing that, then you would not be working to classify some government as right or left based on "one small facet" out of tune with the rest. Only people grinding ideological axes do that. That's why I say that segregation did not make WWII US a "right wing" regime in the sense that Mussolini's Italy was. The US was founded on and largely operated according to tenets of classical liberalism. That's its "core."

People who claim that Nazis were somehow "leftists" are deeply embedded in a right wing world view that tends to ignore traditional political typology and criteria for determining who fits where. Usually they claim "statism" as their criterion, claiming that is "leftist" and Nazis were statists, therefore . . . . The consensus of political scientists/theorists puts Nazis on the right of the spectrum because of their embrace/naturalization of race and gender hierarchies. They did not seek to "nationalize" industries; they worked with the big capitalists to control labor; though they tried to control arms production somewhat through incentive programs most historians deem unsuccessful. 

The USSR did nationalize industries to make them "the people's property" and embraced the principle of natural equality, including gender equality. They put women on the front line in WWII, some who became legendary snipers, while to the last Hitler would not allow women to fight. The USSR definitely and explicitly contested the conception of private property espoused by both liberal and fascist regimes. That's why they are typed "left." There can be "left-wing" dictatorships, though, and the USSR was one of those. Dictatorship might make a regime illiberal, but that alone cannot make it "right" or "left."  And I am a leftist who doesn't defend Stalin, but I don't claim that therefore the USSR was somehow not founded on leftist principles. 

Well gosh, got to run now.  It would be fun, though, to discuss how "Western" political typologies and definitions apply to a contemporary state like North Korea, which has Stalinist form but explicitly right wing, perhaps even fascist characteristics, which align very closely with the racial ideology of Imperial Japan. Test cases help clarify and fine tuen definitions.