Come, come, Charley. You know perfectly well that the word "socialist" in the context of fascism was perfectly meaningless. Of course, you can say that Fascism was a left-wing phenomenon (after all, Mussolini HAD been a "genuine" socialist), but there is an awful lot of scholarship out there you are going to have to disprove.
Besides, if the terms "Right" and "Left" have any meaning at all, they can be understood only within a particular historical context. That is to say, their meaning changes with the context. "Right" and "Left" are not absolute terms, with an eternal, fixed content. And the first thing you always have to ask, in each individual case, is: right of what? and left of what?
The "Right" in post-revolutionary Catholic France, for example, was a very different animal than the self-described "Right" in post-Communist Russia. The "Union of Rightist Forces" running in today's Russian parliamentary elections is led by a bunch of Friedmanite economists. Not much in common there with Restorationists.
One of the characteristics of the "Right" in early 20th century continental Europe was the belief in the beneficent power of the Irrational, of the Blood, of the Folk, of the community vs. the alien, etc., etc. Hitler had all that in spades, and then some.
Bedtime...
Joan |
