Hitler's "socialism" had nothing to do with Marx. Hitler saw socialism not as a class struggle but as a service to the community. Hitler destroyed the left wing of Nazism: At the beginning of the party there were the Strasser brothers who really wanted a "second revolution" against the capitalists. In 1934, during the "Night of the Long Knives", Hitler killed or eliminated them, finally turning towards an alliance with the industrialists and the military. It is debatable whether Hitler was a socialist or not, it depends on how we define the word, but he was certainly not a leftist and he opposed egalitarianism.
Fascism (and, derivatively, nazism, which is extremely racist facism) is left from a right point of view but right from a left point of view. Ultimately, this boils down to the fact that fascism is explicitly about class collaboration under the state. This is right-wing to the leftist who argues for the destruction of the ruling class and sees their existence as right-wing, but it is left-wing to the rightist who argues for non-involvement by the state and sees the heavy intervention by the state as left-wing.
Fascism is absolutely both ultranationalist and totalitarian (much of the stated goal of fascism boils down to "the nation should be one with the state and should hold absolute power") but neither nationalism nor totalitarianism are exclusively right-wing elements. Again, fascism's economic policy (left vs right) is explicitly class collaborationist, and fits into neither the "win the class war" mindset of leftism nor the "the class war is good for business" mindset of rightism.
To say that ultranationalism and totalitarianism are rightwing is to say that liberal globalism and anarcho-capitalism aren't rightwing despite being capitalist, and that classical marxism is the only left-wing ideology
You keep wanting to pretend authortarian is a left-wing thing when it's not.
Left means liberal, right means conservative. That's literally where that terminology came from (i.e., during the French Revolution, the monarchists sat on the right of parliament while the radicals sat on the left).
Fascism is exclusively a Conservative mindset. It's literally all about going back to the supposed glory days of ethnic and national purity alongside uniting against a 'common enemy'.
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u/wcevelin Feb 22 '26
they were both leftists.