[risk]

Even internationally, the Nazi party is on the right. Nazis, Imperial Japanese nationalists, and Italian fascists were as against marxism as anyone here on FR is. In fact, the Tripartite agreement had some merit in the sense that their main professed goal was to neutralize communism. Of course it was a lie, they also wanted to take over the world, and they accused America of being controlled by Jewish marxists.

Just a few of the precepts among the three Axis political systems that put them on the right:

1. Nationalism (not internationalism).
2. Racism.
3. State encouragement for massive, private industrialism.

Just because a political party advocates big government does not put them on the left. The obvious reason for Americans on the right to fear the notion that Nazis were right-wingers is that we, too, are nationalists. I myself appreciate the Anglo-Saxon heritage of our country. Republicans are usually very pro-industry. So the left can easily accuse us of being "too far to the right."

Yes, it could happen. And people who support the idea that Nazis are leftists are either secretly afraid of those accusations, or their heads are in the sand.

[rustbucket]

I quite disagree with your assertions. Let's investigate some of the things the Nazis stood for. The Twenty-Five Points that Hitler helped write called for:

The nationalization of corporations and 'communalization' of large department stores
The expropriation of property without compensation
The suppression of newspapers that are 'damaging to the national welfare'
The abolition of interest on land mortgages and in income derived from interest payments

Know any Americans on the 'Right' that support these positions? Much of the Nazi philosphy also placed the good of the state above that of the individual.

Now let's look at John Toland's book Adolph Hitler.

On his own, Goebbels joined the Reds in a wildcat strike of Berlin transport workers asking for a pfennig or so an hour increase in pay. It was not the first time the two parties, with many goals in common, had fought together; and for the next few wet, raw days the Communists and the National Socialists ate communally on the picket line. Side by side they pelted rocks at strikebreakers, tore up streetcar tracks, and built barracades.

Many goals in common indeed. Goebbels is on record acknowledging that the Nazis were socialists. If it quacks like a duck, ...

Nazis, Imperial Japanese nationalists, and Italian fascists were as against marxism as anyone here on FR is.

I take it you are arguing that since these nationalistic parties were against international Marxism that they were therefore on the 'Right'. The political spectrum has more than two dimensions and more flavors than a quark. Nazism and communism are two parts of the socialist spectrum, both to the left of the mainstream American politics.

From the web site, Never Blame The Left, comes the following:

There is abundant evidence, what is more, that the Nazi leaders believed they were socialists and that anti-Nazi socialists often accepted that claim. In Mein Kampf (1926) Hitler accepted that National Socialism was a derivative of Marxism. The point was more bluntly made in private conversations. ``The whole of National Socialism is based on Marx,'' he told Hermann Rauschning. Rauschning later reported the remark in Hitler Speaks (1939), but by that time the world was at war and too busy to pay much attention to it. Goebbels too thought himself a socialist. Five days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, he confided in his diary that ``real socialism'' would be established in that country after a Nazi victory, in place of Bolshevism and Czarism.

Nationalism? Racism? Encouragement of private industrialism? These you hold out as proofs that the Nazis were on the 'Right'?

Nationalism? Heck, many early socialists did not want to be a part of an international socialist regime. On an absolute scale their positions were still basically socialist, regardless of whether a local party controlled it or some international organization. (Hint: Socialism is on the 'Left'.)

Racism? Where is it written that racists are only on the 'Right'? I can see someone on the left trying to argue this, but it doesn't wash.

Encouraging private industrialism? Hitler was in favor of nationalizing corporations but later discovered he could achieve the same ends through strict government control. Nazism was not what I would call pro-capitalist or for decisions by industry free of government control.