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this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Modern-day fascists are desperate to distance themselves from the nazis, despite the fact that the nazis are literally their idols.
Wait, do people really care if Nazis were left or right-wing?
Their leader was a racist mass murderer with superiority complex, who cares about his political views?
Let's say they were left-wing... Does that make the left wing Nazis? Mmm no. If a dictator is right-wing, does that make the right-wing dictators? No.
Do people understand these are two unrelated things? Imagine seeing a dog owner cheating on his wife and assuming all dog owners are cheaters.
The caveat is that being a "racist mass murderer with a superiority complex" is a very right-wing thing. It wouldn't be possible to fit that mold and be leftist because it's entirely incompatible with leftist ideology.
Did you just seriously say that there has never been a left wing racist mass murderer with a superiority complex?
There hasn't been.
Certainly been a few waving the flag of socialism/communism that have lead to those consequences.
It’s not uncommon for fascists to adopt socialist rhetoric to try and gain mass appeal. However that falls away under the lightest scrutiny of their actions and ideology. “National Socialism” is the most obvious example. I’d include Pol Pot in that bucket as well.
The USSR under Stalin and PRC under Mao are a bit different. The government in either case made decisions that led to unnecessary death, but there’s no evidence to suggest any of their missteps were motivated by racial animus.
Mao's Great Leap Forward was him trying to push Communist ideology onto nature. He had one hammer in his tool box and tried using it on everything.
Like who?
Pol Pot should be a uncontroversial pick.
Sure, but then so is Hitler by that standard. They just used leftist iconography on the surface for propaganda purposes, and did not commit their crimes in the name of any sort of left-wing ideology. Pol Pot in particular was supported by the US military and intelligence mechanisms (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge), and is fair to assume that his movement was used as a psy-op to hurt the communist cause in Cambodia and Vietnam.
Another cool pol pot fact: mao took him at face value and said “hey, it’s cool that you’re down but you’re kinda fuckin up, wanna read some of these books and get your shit right?” And pol pot was all “no, I’m fine.”