[dfwgator]

Nazis and Communists are both Statists. Neither believes in small government.

[ek_hornbeck]

I'm not denying that both are statists and that both reject small government. My contention is that the size of government is not the defining issue of the left/right spectrum in other countries.

Case in point: neither Czar Nicholas nor the Bolsheviks who overthrew him were small government libertarians. That doesn't stop most rational people from characterizing the Bolsheviks as Left-wing and the Czarists as right-wing in that context. Similarly, neither LePen's supporters nor the EUcrats who run France are US-style libertarians. That doesn't change the fact that the nationalist anti-EU, anti-third world immigration faction represents the French Right, while the EU-crats and multiculturalists represent the Left.