It has been brought to my attention recently that there are still, and I imagine going on forever, people insisting that Nazis are actually socialists and by extension left wing politically. The arguments fail to convince me and I’ve laid out in other posts why I think the Nazi fall clearly on the right. What I find fascinating about this argument is contorted logics employed in services of preconceived conclusions; they are rationalizations and not reasons.

Back in 1985 I engaged in the strange habit of renting the worse movies I could possibly locate on VHS. A little mom-and-pop shop just around the corner from where I lived had the most interesting collection of odd movies with titles such as Hitchhike to Hell  and then one night the gem A Certain Sacrifice  appeared on the shelves. This micro-budgeted movie shot in 1979 and 1980 and looking as though the film stock was all of 8 mm wide included an unknown performer, Madonna. By the mid 1980s her stardom had exploded and the filmmaker capitalized on this by releasing his movie on home video. Thought Madonna attempt to stop the release she failed in the courts and I was treated to a truly terrible movie.

What does this have to do with the question if Nazis were or were not socialists?

After watching the film with my roommate one of the games I engaged in was arguing that A Certain Sacrifice  was not in fact a bad movie but a masterpiece of filmmaking rich with metaphor and symbolism. My arguments were artistically sound and of course utterly untrue. The fact that I could spin a consistent narrative that ‘explained’ all the bad film choices as something smart and creative did nothing to change the facts of the matter. The same is true in this political argument.

You can quote from the early years of the Nazi party to prove points, ignoring the uncomfortable truth that those elements were brutally eliminated during the night of long knives. You can construct logical arguments that proceed from a foundation that everything totalitarian is socialist and get to your preferred conclusions, but linguistic dexterity and slippery arguments do not change facts on the ground.

But how can we know the facts on the ground? How can we test this concept?

Easy, watch actual Nazis and see where they place themselves politically.

It is on the right.

People giving Nazi salutes election night 2016 were not bemoaning a loss.

People marching by torchlight and chanting ‘Jews will not Replace Us’ did not organize a ‘United the Left’ protest.

It was not the Democratic Party that found itself represented by an actual Nazi in the 2018 congressional elections.

Nazis nearly always self-sort to the right, their behavior betrays their natural placement on the ideological spectrum.