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Nazi'ism is a weird mix of everything, but has it's basis in Nationalism and is a reactionary movement by nature, which historically have always been hallmarks of rightest political movements.

I don't buy into this rather revisionist, linear scale based on economic freedom that for some reason has become so popular in modern American politics.
 

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Where does this come from?

Who came up with the idea that left=more government and right=less government?

For example, Anarchism has always been the most associated with radical-leftest movements, but somehow with this scale it becomes right-wing?

Political ideology isn't linear, and shouldn't be viewed as such.
 

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Actually, no.  At it's base, National Socialism was left wing.  Had Hitler been right-wing, he would have brought back the Kaiser.  And the Kirchenkampf would not have happened either, since the historical church (kirch) and the historical kaiser would have been seen as the bedrocks of traditional German society.  Instead, Hitler sought to replace the concept of Kaiser (a limited monarch) with the concept of Fuehrer (a single absolute dictator).  As an aside, the first time Bonhoeffer ran afoul of the Nazis, it was for giving a radio address critical of the concept of Fuehrer.  

Which leads us to the kirchenkampf, in which Bonhoeffer and others tried to retain the historic conservative Lutheran church of Germany against the attempts by the Nazis to turn the state church into a sort of nationalistic state religion, purged of all Jewish influences (i.e. the Old Testament, the Jewishness of Jesus, etc).

National Socialism was called National because it was distinct from international socialism, the dominate from of socialism at the time.  International socialism was basically Marxism.  It was revolutionary and global, believing in an eventual global revolution that would overthrow the capitalist order forever, which is one of the main tenets of Marx's philosophy.  Under this framework, nationalism was a characteristic of the evil capitalist system.

After WWI, some socialist thinkers began to abandon the internationalist assumption while retaining both the revolutionary view and the socialist view.  Among them was the primary thought leader Mussolini, who coined the term fascism to describe this kind of system.  These nationalist socialists didn't see socialism as incompatible with nationalism.  Rather, they saw nationalism as a means of bringing about revolutionary socialism.  As such, the fight between nationalist and internationalist socialists was not a fight between left and right, but a fight between left and left.

After WWII, communists actually embraced the nationalist concept as a means of creating an axis of communist countries to rival the west.  Thus, the Russians and the Chinese funded and backed socialist revolutions in a variety of countries that also included heavy doses of nationalism.  This was particularly potent in the Third World, where the natives could claim their socialist revolution was freeing the people from foreign (i.e. Western) imperialism that was running and ruining their countries.

Having stolen a card from their allegedly sworn enemies, the communist movement had to engage in a major re-definition of terms in order to avoid the obvious charges of hypocrisy.  As a result, they worked to redefine the term fascism in common use as 1) anything we don't like, and 2) anything that is right of center.  

There are interesting sources on this, but Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism goes into a lot of detail about the historical development of national socialism as a leftist ideology.

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Totalitarianism isn't a left-right political ideology.  You can have right wing totalitarianism or left wing totalitarianism.

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Doesn't really jive with its history.

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But, that "New Way" was still based on ethnic superiority and promotion of the ruling people, in Hitler's case, that would be the Germans. This would come at the expense of other groups and those viewed as inferior to those in power. Again, this is traditionally viewed as a product of right-wing ideology.

ETA: Hell, why do I bother?
 

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These questions, I have to admit, are ALWAYS VERY HARD for me to answer one way or the other.

I have just never had a good handle on this subject of right wing or left wing extremism ideologies.

This is an area where I am stupid............. I just can't grasp it.  

ETA:  It's almost as if they both "wrap around so much" that they are back at the same starting point if you get what I mean.

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Nationalism is rooted in the ideologies of the French Revolution; anything rooted in the French Revolution is far from the stuff from which Rightism is made.  The drive for sameness, the focus on identity, is among the hallmarks of Leftism.  One does not need to alter the Left-Right spectrum for this to be so.

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Serious question:  What was socialist about the Nazi's?

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Economically, one of the first things Hitler did upon coming to power was to nationalize all industry.  He eventually re-privatized it, but with severe regulation and state control.

Just for starters.

Hitler was very clear in writings and speeches about his hatred of capitalism and his desire to destroy it.    Here is one pertinent quote:



Of course, were you to confront academics with this quote, they would probably hem and haw about how it doesn't prove anything.  But most academics are leftists who want to retain the meme that conservatives/liberatarians = Nazis, while papering over the bloody history of their own ideology.

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Doesn't really jive with its history.

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I'd agree that the nazis governed from the left side of the spectrum.  However, they certainly gave lip service to both the monarchy and to restoring the German empire...which may contribute to some of the "nazis were right wing" talk.

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You are greatly oversimplifying things (especially when it comes to traditionalism; not really comparable to something like national socialism, which was radical at its core) while missing the fact that ideologies can be admixtures of Left and Right (while still being predominantly one or the other) and that patriotism and nationalism are not synonymous.

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http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Anarcho-communism.svg

Where's your God now?

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Doesn't really jive with its history.

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Anarcho-communists believe that society will organize in a communist fashion without a government. They are wrong, but regardless they still believe in no government.

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I subscribe to a two axis theory similar to those proposed by Nolan and Pournelle.

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There were some socialist aspects; government owned and propped up businesses, government sponsored vacations, etc.
 

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German National Socialism was founded in the 1800s.  Hitler did not have anything substantial to do with what it was called.

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The drive for sameness, the focus on identity, is among the hallmarks of Leftism.  One does not need to alter the Left-Right spectrum for this to be so.

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Anarcho-communists believe that society will organize in a communist fashion without a government. They are wrong, but regardless they still believe in no government.

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No, no it didn't.

For one exaple, like right there in red. Hitler wasn't fighting to spread socialism, nor was Mussolini. They were both waging war in order to bring more power to their own peoples, assert their people superiority and to stop what they saw as the impending threat of Bolshevism. All of those are hallmarks of the right.

In blue: Irony.
 

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He's right, remember the American Industrialists loved Hitler, especially Henry Ford

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yes that certainly is a simple way of looking at it. hilariously so.

authoritarianism is exclusive to the left? LOL.

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yes that certainly is a simple way of looking at it. hilariously so.

authoritarianism is exclusive to the left? LOL.

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Occam's Razor

You are trying to make something overly complicated and thus look like a fool.

The pseudo intellectuals that think they understand the left-right paradigm are hilarious, they fail to see all the flaws in something they are hopelessly ingrained in believing/defending.

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Nailed it