It's important to clarify what is meant by "Right" and what ideological framework is being used. The Nazis (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) were not right-wing in the American or classical liberal sense—they were a form of authoritarian collectivism, far removed from limited government, individual rights, and free markets.
Historically, Fascism and Communism are ideological cousins—variations of the same closed system of authoritarian control. They share political DNA, functioning as two sides of the same totalitarian coin, despite their superficial differences. Just as traditional Republicans and Democrats both fall under Classical Liberalism, Fascists and Communists both stem from collectivist, state-dominated ideologies that reject individual liberty in favor of centralized power.
The very name 'National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party' makes it clear that Fascism embraced socialist economic policies, yet many in the U.S. still mislabel it as 'Far Right' by focusing solely on its nationalism rather than its centralized, state-controlled system of governance. The Nazis were explicitly socialist, though their socialism was nationalist rather than internationalist (unlike the Communists). The Nazi Party’s 25-Point Program (1920) called for state control of industry, wealth redistribution, price controls, and the abolition of interest on capital—all hallmarks of leftist economic policy. They heavily regulated businesses, suppressed free markets, and controlled speech and education, all of which align with leftist statism rather than right-wing free-market capitalism.
Nazism was right-wing only in relation to Communism, but left-wing relative to classical liberalism and the American constitutional system. Both Fascists and Communists despised classical liberalism because it emphasized individual rights, limited government, free markets, and separation of powers, making them two branches of the same authoritarian tree, rather than ideological opposites. In practice, Communism and Fascism were both totalitarian, single-party states that crushed dissent and controlled economies, differing mostly in rhetoric.
The real reason Communists (in Germany) distanced themselves from Fascism wasn’t because they opposed authoritarianism—it was because they were competing for power and needed to cast themselves as the sole legitimate alternative. By successfully branding Fascism as "Far Right", they controlled the historical narrative, even though both ideologies were totalitarian and rejected the classical liberal principles of limited government, free speech, and individual rights.
Historical Propaganda – After World War II, Communist propaganda portrayed Fascism as "Far Right" to distance itself from its similarities (authoritarian control, suppression of dissent, centralized economy). Western academia adopted this framing, making it the mainstream narrative.
What This Analysis Overlooks:
-- Big Government vs. Small Government – Fascism is centralized, state-controlled, and dictatorial—which is inherently left-wing in an American context, where the right-wing values decentralization and individual liberty.
-- Suppression of Rights – Like Communism, Fascism bans free speech, censors dissent, and persecutes political opponents—things completely opposed to the American right-wing tradition of constitutionalism and personal freedom.
-- State Control of Business – Fascism may allow nominal private ownership, but the state controls and directs the economy and industry—a structure that aligns with socialism, not capitalism.