Ideologies Left to Right, from Communism to Fascism

“Ideologies Left to Right, from Communism to Fascism”

The United States, long known for its political moderation, and its contests between Liberals and Conservatives, is seeing a re-alignment among its major political parties, the Democrats and Republicans. Different ideologies, like Populism, are rising to center stage, some of them extreme with accompanying violence. And there seems to be a lot of labeling in this election season without understanding what those labels mean. Keith St. Clair will spend an hour sorting out the various ideologies and what they actually mean during a live streaming on Wednesday October 7th from 12:00-1:00pm.

[lipperioss]

It is funny how liberal means completely different things in US and everywhere else.

[tirilis]

52:29 He said if you don't trust elections and you don't trust the media, you'll support an authoritarian. I'd like to hear the reasoning behind that. A lack of faith in the system doesn't mean I want to entrust it with absolute power... it's quite the opposite.

[Historia.Magistra.Vitae.]

Reminder that fascism was a totalitarian far-left, soci alist ideology based on national syndicalism. It was an outgrowth of Sorellian Syndicalism, which itself was an outgrowth from Marxist socialism. The idea was that society would be consolidated (i.e., incorporated) into syndicates (in the Italian context, fascio/fasci) which would be regulated by and serve as organs for the state, or "embody" the state (corpus = body). The purpose wasn't the promotion of private interest, but the centralization and synchronization of society under the state, as an end unto itself. To quote Mussolini's infamous aphorism: "All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."

[traceypierce]

I'm a libertarian and a Conservative. I think you're wrong about a lot here in this video.

Conservatives don't think half of that crap.

[yournumberonepal]

I think the issue is trying to group together 8 different groups together when they are undergirded with certain philosophical points which don't map well onto a grid.

[RiotHouseLP]

When i was a kid Fascism was placed on the center Left. Overtime i've seen professors (most Leftist), push it to the Right. There is a reason they did this, as a differentiation between Fascism and their own ideology. By saying something is on the opposite side of the political spectrum, it means that if yours is on the Left, then they are diametrically opposed and opposites, even though in reality the Communism of the Left, and the Fascism they put on the Right, are cousin ideologies, that come from the same tree of ideological thought. If anything they are side by side.

[martina]

The massive foundational error here is constructing this spectrum as a line, or arc. It's actually obviously a circle, with libertarians at the top and totalitarians at the bottom. Communists and Fascists become indistinguishable in the muck and mud, death, poverty and starvation at the bottom. And it's amusing to hear the word 'liberal' used these days for people who want the population suppressed and controlled by the state, rather than what a 'liberal' used to be, which was someone who wanted to be free and to grant freedom to others.

[Helldog]

Thank you for a very informative talk on political ideologies. I could see that it was a struggle because you were fully aware that the ideological biases of your audience made this a difficult subject to talk about.
Although your own bias was obvious near the end of the video, you should be forgiven due to the amount of effort and forethought that has to go into every word of your speech.
I viewed your speech in a purely non bias way to begin with, until the last part.
I do not identify with any ideology I have come across, because I believe if someone is to allow a belief system to direct their life choices then they better believe in 100% of it.

[patrickcollier]

Yeah this guy is definitely a progressive.

[lauraboatright]

Except that fascism is left.
Anarchy is right.

[Helldog]

One more thing I'd like to say though is, it is apparent which political biases you have yourself. I suppose it is impossible not to have a set of ideals, whether pre -formulated traditional ones or your own personalized set of views based on your own choice of core values. I am the latter but I feel you fall into a traditional belief system perhaps.
Any speaker talking of political belief systems will be biased and therefore will not represent each type accurately but you've really tried, I can see that.
But I think there needs to be a talk where people from each ideology represent their own school of thought and then let the audience or students decide how they view them. I would say though that they should only explain their belief system, there should be no communication between the speakers because they would only argue.
That seems fair.

[penwah]

Keith, this was great. It is difficult to maintain balance these days without sounding like you are taking a position, but you have managed to present a well rounded and informative set of facts.

[logosnomos]

Fascism and Nazism is nationalistic socialism where communism is internationalistic socialism.

[philip.morris]

Your Diagram should be a circle. Communism and Fascism are very close. Both call each othe comrades, both hate capitalists.

[sordteck]

When libertarians end up being centrists in the left-right spectrum, you should reevaluate the BS you where tough or spreading.

[taytecurrie]

In France a while ago the supporters of the monarchy sat to the right and the opposers sat to the left, this is where the terminology came from.

[EyeLean]

The terms left and right wing are actually older, coming from pre-revolutionary France.

[yankchef]

How can you possibly say that far right, the most far right is a monarchy. Then say free market capitalism is what "right wingers" believe in. How does a king play into that at all

[mwatkins]

interesting that fascism is born from worker unionism, and their symbology is all about the small guys standing together to be strong (bundles of sticks holding an axe, for example) but left wing authors and "educators" have been consistently labelling it as right wing for decades now. Interesting that right wing is the desire of minimal government intervention in economics but these left wing pundits love to categorize the ownership of a corporate monopoly by the government as right wing.

Its almost likely they are dying for reasons to slander right wing beliefs as racist.

[KrunoslavStifter]

In the same century, (18th century) four ideas swept through the West and shook the world. Liberalism, Conservatism, Nationalism and Socialism.

First to sweep through was the bright idea of, in the words of Adam Smith, "allowing every man to pursue his own interest in his own way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice.” In the first half of the 19th century, this idea became known as liberalism. Then, just as liberalism began to transform the world, two pernicious ideas began to vie with it. Nationalism and socialism began to capture the imaginations of intellectuals and would eventually displace liberalism completely in the hearts and minds of the West.

Liberalism unlocked humanity’s creative potential, yielding the first ever rise of widespread abundance through industrial mass production. Nationalism and socialism unleashed humanity’s capacity for destruction, unleashing the first ever rise of industrial-scale mass murder. The twin banes of nationalism and socialism followed the boon of liberalism remarkably quickly. To understand why, we must consider a fourth big idea that historically links the other three: the idea of the people’s state.

Anyone who says Fascism and Nazis is on the right, is full of shit. This dude is as about as accurate as reading Wikipedia. Socialism and Nationalism including National Socialism are product of the people's state which was and is left position. The right position the conservative according to the sitting arrangement was either constitutional monarchy or absolute monarchy. There was no concept of Nationalism or Socialism before the people's state. Think about it? It cannot be therefore right position, because everyone who sat at the French National Assembly was monarchists if they set to the right. It meant no people's state. Lefties are for people's state. So any ideology that followed like socialism and nationalism and liberalism depend on the concept of the people's state are by definition left positions.

When the French National Assembly was convened in 1791, the delegates were seated as follows relative to the Speaker’s Chair:

Right. Those who sat on the right side of the hall believed that reform had gone far enough; that the monarchy should be restored and things turned back to 1788 - before the revolution. They were opposed to change. (Monarchists, Loyalists, conservatives).

Middle. Those who sat in the middle of the hall supported moderate (mild) reform: the changes made so far to nobles’ rights and reduced power for the monarch, but no additional changes or loss of privileges. (moderates, centrists). Between the left and right sat a mass of deputies, known as the Plain, who did not belong to any particular faction.

Left. Those who sat on the left of the hall were the Jacobins and other republicans: they wanted to abolish the monarchy completely and make radical (dramatic) changes to French government and the social order. (leftists, radicals, Jacobins, etc.) They were to the left of the president’s chair on an elevated section called the Mountain.

This was not word-play on right/wrong, but simply identification of political views based on where they happened to be seated relative to each other.

The liberal universities put everything but communism to the right, because people don't read history, so they denounced everything except communism. That is why now lefties are ok calling themselves comrades, but call everyone else far right accusing them of being Fascist and Nazi. Pure fiction. All forms of people's state, Socialism and its derivatives which is everything based on Marxism, including communism (form of international socialism) and Fascism and Nazism and similar ideologies that are (form of National Socialism) all lefty positions.

“Progressivism simply cannot account for the easy traffic from socialism to fascism. Consequently, progressives typically maintain complete silence about this whole historical relationship which is deeply embarrassing to them.”

Only because so many were determined to label fascism right-wing that populism under Mussolini was redefined as such. After all, the notion that political power is and should be vested in the people was a classical liberal position. Populism was a more radical version of this position. It’s still a “power to the people” ideology, Fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left. This fact—an inconvenient truth if there ever was one—is obscured in our time by the equally mistaken belief that fascism and communism are opposites. In reality, they are closely related, historical competitors for the same constituents, seeking to dominate and control the same social space.

Fascism was a people state but not national socialism just yet, and national-socialism (Natzi) was. The fascism accepts the different social classes, the national-socialism rejects the social hierarchy (hence it is called socialism). However in practice both are controlled by a dictator. The main enemy of national-socialism are the capitalist, bankers (jews) and the international-socialists (communist). Communists are not a treat because of their methods of socialism, but because their doctrine does not put national pride of people ahead of economic model.

However. The Italian Social Republic was the second and last incarnation of the Italian Fascist state and was led by Duce Benito Mussolini and his reformed anti-monarchist Republican Fascist Party which tried to modernise and revise fascist doctrine into a more moderate and sophisticated direction. The state declared Rome its capital, but was de facto centered on Salò (hence its colloquial name), a small town on Lake Garda, near Brescia, where Mussolini and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were headquartered. The Italian Social Republic exercised nominal sovereignty in Northern and Central Italy, but was largely dependent on German troops to maintain control.

For the fascists the party is sacret, for the national-socialism the homogeneous society (no classes, one ethnic nation) is the ultimate goal. Both are totalitarian systems as well the communism. And this characteristic puts all three on the left of the political spectrum because they rely on people to rise to power and for people to submit to totalitarian rule.