What Are Leftists? By John J. Ray FrontPageMagazine.com Thursday, June 20, 2002
MOST ORDINARY PEOPLE
do not fit very neatly into any political category and may hold to a mix of views that include what would usually be seen as both Leftist and Rightist ideas. Among professional politicians and academics, however, there is generally a clearer polarization. So what is it that makes any given view "Rightist" or "Leftist"? In contemporary North American terms, what is it that makes one an archetypical "liberal" or an archetypical "conservative"? What is a Leftist or a Rightist position on any issue?
The division obviously is real and the demise of the great icon of Leftism -- the Soviet Union -- seems to have had little impact on its intensity. Leftists may no longer have Communism to point to as a possible alternative system but they remain Leftists all the same. The banner cause of Leftists since Karl Marx -- State ownership of the means of production or "socialism" no longer seems reasonable to all but a handful of diehards but Leftists are still Leftists and Rightists are still Rightists and never, it seems, the twain shall meet.
The great rubric of "conservative" long fastened on Rightists seems equally moribund. "Conservative" is generally amplified as meaning "opposed to change" or "favoring the status quo" but from the Reagan/Thatcher years onward, Rightists have been the great advocates and practitioners of social and political change. Rightists have been almost revolutionary in tearing down the proud edifices of the Left -- with privatization, deregulation, welfare cutbacks, tax reductions etc. Judging by the politics of the last 20 years, Rightists love change! Certainly, they have clearly and energetically changed what was once the status quo.
So what is going on? What is Leftism/liberalism and why are people Leftist/liberal? What, if anything, do people have in common who describe themselves (and are described by others) as "Leftists", "socialists", "social democrats", "Communists" and (in North America) "liberals"?
My answer may seem at first paradoxical but it is that attitude to the status quo defines Leftists rather than Rightists. It is not Rightists who are in favour of the status quo. They are in fact indifferent to it and may equally favour it or oppose it according to circumstances. It is Leftists, on the other hand, who are always against the status quo, no matter what. Whatever else the Leftist may be, the bedrock of Leftism is a strong desire or even a need for political change, often extreme change. This does not, of course, mean that Leftists will favour all sorts of change equally. What sort of change the Leftist favours will depend on the needs that drive his/her desire for change.
The Rightist, by contrast, generally has no need either for change or its converse. If anything, Rightists favour progress -- both material and social. So most Rightists are conservatives (cautious) not because of their attitude to change per se. On some occasions they may even agree with the particular policy outcomes that the Leftist claims to desire. They resist change, then, mainly when it appears incautious -- and they are cautious (skeptical of the net benefits of particular policies) generally because of their realism about the limitations (selfishness, folly, shortsightedness, aggressiveness etc.) of many of their fellow humans (Ray, 1972b, 1974 & 1981). So it is only vis a vis Leftists that the Right can on some occasions and in some eras appear conservative (cautious about proposals for social change).
Wanting to change the existing system is however the umbrella under which all Leftists at all times meet. Even at the height of British socialism, for instance, British Leftists still wanted more socialism. That permanent and corrosive dissatisfaction with the world they live in is alone what makes people Leftists. That is all they have in common. They are extremely fractious and even murderous towards one-another otherwise (e.g. Stalin versus Trotsky). It is in describing his fellow revolutionaries (Kautsky and others) that Lenin himself spoke swingeingly of "the full depth of their stupidity, pedantry, baseness and betrayal of working-class interests" (Lenin, 1952). He could hardly have spoken more contemptuously of the Tsar.
Racism
One thing that Leftists will not allow themselves to be seen as is racist. Leftists can grudgingly be Nationalists -- Gough Whitlam, the great hero of the Australian Left, certainly was an unashamed nationalist, as were those great champions of the Argentinean "descamisados", Juan and Eva Peron, and as is the Communist Kim dynasty in North Korea with their catastrophic doctrine of "juche" (national self-reliance) -- but Leftists cannot admit any significance for race. If they do, they are immediately relabeled as Rightist. Being racist is enough in the Left lexicon to make you Rightist regardless of anything else you might believe or advocate. They even managed to ignore the huge example of Hitler’s extreme socialism (income leveling, worker advocacy, heavy government control of industry and everything else) and call him Rightist. He was a Nationalist (that can be allowed) but he was a racist (not allowed). So people like Adolf Hitler and Pim Fortuyn (the homosexual Dutch political leader assassinated by a Green activist in May, 2002) are Rightist only by arbitrary definition. What they advocated was generally Leftist (The full name of Hitler’s political party -- generally abbreviated as "Nazi" -- says it all: The National Socialist German Worker’s Party). So Left-wing racism does not exist only because it is defined out of existence.
As Australian anthropologist Ron Brunton points out, the late Pim Fortuyn advocated gay marriage, gender equality, liberalized drug laws and criticized a religion which he saw as intolerant and homophobic -- which sounds an awful lot like the Leftists of his era -- but because he also wanted to stop further immigration into his already densely populated country he became, "Hey presto!", a "Right-wing extremist"! Brunton also points out that there is much in the rhetoric of prominent French anti-immigrant politician Jean-Marie Le Pen which would get him described as a Leftist were it not for his racial views.
It might be argued that, whatever their motivations, Leftists do some good by their vocal condemnation of "racism" -- and that may well be so. But group loyalty is -- as Brown (1986) concluded from his summary of the mass of research on the question -- a "ineradicable, universal human attribute" so the risk is that Leftists can characterize as racist almost anyone who is honest about his feelings of group identity -- however harmless and non-malevolent those feelings may be. In other words, Leftists too often carry their condemnation of racism to a ridiculous and unfair degree. They do so because it is in fact just a ploy for them -- a ploy to obtain kudos. The reality that we all like our own kind best is simply of no interest to them.
Leftist Racism
There are exceptions to every rule, however, and there is one form of racism that Leftists do allow themselves. A great Leftist cause for the last 30 or more years has been "affirmative action" -- which normally translates into deliberate discrimination against whites -- which is as blatantly racist as any policy could be. The policy is normally justified as needed in order to restore "balance" and reverse the discrimination of the past but if that were the motive such a policy would also be used to restore political balance in the social science and humanities schools of Western-world universities -- given the huge preponderance of Leftists teaching in such schools and the virtual barring of Rightists there (Kramer, 1999; Horowitz, 1999; Redding, 2001; Sommer, 2002). Needless to say, no affirmative action policy leading to the preferential hiring of conservatives exists in any major Western university. Clearly, then, affirmative action is a claim of righteousness and moral superiority for Leftists, nothing more. A Leftist will happily be racist if it enables him to make that claim.
Another perhaps amusing exception for the poor old Leftist is that one of the many hatreds he is allowed is almost racist: He is allowed to be anti-American. It might be objected that anti-Americanism is not racist because Americans are not a race but the essential point surely is that prejudice and hatred is prejudice and hatred, however the target group is defined. And the events of September 11, 2001 surely show that hatred of America (whether by Leftists or others) can be as malign, mindless and dangerous as any other form of prejudice.
The reason behind Leftist anti-Americanism is that America sits at the pinnacle of the existing world power structure and a desire to tear down existing power structures -- for whatever reason -- is indisputably at the core of what Leftism is about. Americans are offensively un-equal. And even Americans can be anti-American. Many US liberals are routinely critical of almost everything about their country -- a country in which untold millions of people from around the world would love to settle, given half a chance. Some American liberals even seem to see American society as rotten to the core, which, in a generally patriotic world, is fairly surprising. It is however explicable as envy and frustration at the vast influence that American society and the American common culture undoubtedly wield over both individual Americans and the world at large. The American way of life and thinking must be a frustrating behemoth indeed for those who would wish to change it.
Leftist Doctrine
Even a Leftist realizes that it is pretty vacant simply to be against the status quo. He has to have something a bit more substantial to say than that in order to get any attention at all. But his best attempt at finding something substantial to say is still pretty pathetic. What he says is: "All men are equal" and "The government should fix it". The proverbial Blind Frederick could see that all men are not equal and anybody who thinks that governments are good at doing things can only be pitied. Nonetheless, "Equality" is the Leftist’s claimed ideal and government action is the way he proposes to bring it about.
So given his slender intellectual and rhetorical resources, the Leftist has to make up for their emptiness by advocating them both blindly and vigorously. If all men are equal, then all races must be equal too, mustn’t they? So the Leftist cannot allow any form of race awareness unless he gives up one of the two slender straws that he clutches at in order to give himself something to say.
Why do Leftists rely so heavily on their two particular vacuous slogans? It is because they are not really interested in solving any problems at all. They are only interested in stirring up change. Really solving social and economic problems in our complex society requires thought, detailed enquiry, in-depth understanding of the problem, creative thinking and patience -- and the typical Leftist is simply not interested in all that. All he or she wants is change. "Get the government to pass a law" is the Leftist’s simplistic "solution."
"Government" as a Solution
One hardly needs to give examples of government inability to solve problems but, if an example is needed, the way Argentina’s Juan Peron proposed to deal with rising prices is at least amusing: He threatened to shoot any shopkeeper who put his prices up. Needless to say this was a good way of getting shopkeepers to shut their doors and turn Argentina into one big black market -- thus driving prices up -- but it was not a solution to anything. Risible though Peron’s ideas may have been, however, the reliance on coercion by Communist regimes was not dissimilar and was equally counterproductive and impoverishing. Coercion of any sort or degree -- whether by governments or anybody else -- is generally a poor and ineffective way of doing things.
Furthermore, governments everywhere remove large slices of the workforce out of productive activity and into paper-shuffling so are principally successful at impoverishing their communities but Leftists in some way manage not to care about that despite their vocal claim to be concerned about poverty. If they really were concerned about poverty, they would want to reduce the number of things government did! That they do not shows the hollowness of their "concern".
The now worldwide trend towards privatization and deregulation, however, shows that even governments themselves eventually have to admit that their cures are often worse than the disease. When governments as diverse as the "Communists" of China and the Hindu nationalists of India have now embraced deregulation and privatization (with great success), the continuing Left/liberal infatuation with government exposes them as the dinosaurs in the world of ideas.
Not that old ideas need be wrong: The seminal conservative political philosopher, Edmund Burke (1907), was a great advocate of limited power for government and saw in the 18th century that government attempts at "compulsory equalizations," would lead to "equal want, equal wretchedness, equal beggary" -- and 20th century Socialist and Communist governments amply validated that prophecy.
Equality?
And "all men are equal" (to the extent to which it is seriously meant rather than being merely a rhetorical ploy) is perhaps even more vacant an idea than the idea of relying on government -- since almost our entire social arrangements are predicated on all men (and women) not being equal: We don’t regard criminals and honest people as the same, men and women as the same, sane people and mentally ill people as the same, kind people and unkind people as the same, attractive and unattractive people as the same, clever and dumb people as the same, athletic and unathletic people as the same, scientists and roadworkers as the same etc., etc. And there is no doubt that tall men and busty women have an easier time with the opposite sex. There is fierce discrimination rather than equality in the mating game. So why are Leftists so enamoured of their absurd "equality" idea? Because if the Leftist is right and all men (and women) are really equal then everything in our society is wrong and in need of change. It is a way for the Leftist to say (paradoxically) to others: "You are all wrong and I am better and wiser and kinder than you".
That the "all men are equal" maxim appears to have arisen out of Christian idealism and that a form of it is enshrined in the American Declaration of Independence does not make it any less risible today. A common attempt to make it less risible for the non-religious is to add "before the law" to it. But that too is thoroughly counterfactual. Our treatment before the law is very unequal and seems destined to remain so. Most of us cannot afford the law at all. Clearly both the very rich and the very poor (who get legal aid in most advanced countries) are very much at an advantage before the law. This is not to deny that equality before the law is a worthy ideal: In a democracy it is obviously important for governments to be seen to be as fair and as impartial as possible in dealing with all their citizens -- but the imperative for that does not have to come from a quasi-religious myth.
Leftists seem very often to be irreligious if not anti-religious (except insofar as Leftism itself is some sort of secular religion) so will often reject the notion that all men are "created" equal and will -- when pressed -- sometimes justify their endless and characteristic advocacy of equality by saying that what they really mean by their doctrine is that all men are of "equal value" or some such. But of equal value to whom? And how do we know? Short of resorting to religion again to answer such questions, the slogan then quickly reduces to a recommendation that all individuals be treated equally -- and that is something that no human or animal society has ever done or seems likely to do, so the doctrine remains a pious absurdity.
And the competing conservative doctrine that each person should be treated "fairly" -- i.e. according to his or her "desserts," however determined -- seems to remain anathema to most Leftists, at least in theory (in part, perhaps, because it requires more complex judgments and so is less suitable for propaganda purposes). Conservatives also normally see it as fair that all children be given "equal opportunity" by the educational system but that quite large ideal is usually still not nearly enough to satisfy Leftists.
The New Left
Largely because its intellectual resources were so slender, Leftist advocacy as we once knew it in the Western world clearly suffered a body blow from the collapse of its great "alternative" and alleged exemplar of equality -- The Soviet Union -- so most Leftists have had to find new directions for agitation in recent years. Criticizing our unequal capitalist society has become much less plausible now that capitalism seems to be the only show in town.
There have therefore arisen various new foci for Leftist discontent. One of these is the "political correctness" movement -- which is an attempt to move the focus of agitation away from economic reform towards social reform. This movement functions in two major ways: It attempts to change the way we think about less fortunate groups in the world by altering the words we use to describe them, and, in good Nazi book-burning fashion, it also attempts simply to suppress knowledge and debate. For example, it suppresses mention of any proposition that offers explanations of why some groups are less fortunate and are likely to remain so regardless of any amount of Leftist agitation -- the claim that blacks have an inherited lower average IQ than whites, for instance. For a quite recent and striking example of such a suppression effort, witness the recent pulping of Brand’s (1996) very scholarly book on IQ by his own publisher (Wiley of the US) when the political unpalatability (to Leftists) of his inheritance data became obvious. There is obviously no way that Leftists/liberals believe in such "bourgeois" ideals as freedom of speech. Ray (1972a) also pointed out long ago how not even the most overwhelming evidence on any question is ever deemed sufficient if it contradicts Leftist preconceptions.
How heavily the Leftist obsession with equality (and their consequent procrustean unwillingness to handle the complexities of the real world) influences the PC movement can perhaps be seen most clearly in the actions of a British welfare agency who banned a job advertisement because it discriminated against unfriendly people! A company placed the advertisement looking for a "friendly person" for a catering-related job but the local Job Centre rejected it because they said it "may discriminate against certain applicants". (See the Bolton Evening News of June 7, 2002.)
Censorship is however obviously not a dramatic enough pursuit for many Leftists so they have turned to such unlikely targets as globalization and the World Trade Organization as foci for their ire. The sole aim of the WTO is to increase co-operation and interdependence between nations and thus reduce barriers to the free movement of goods and people between nations, so one might naively have thought that the advocates of "all men are equal" would approve of it. That modern-day Western Leftists oppose the WTO and other summit organizations with broadly similar aims (such as the Davos World Economic Forum) is, then, an index of how desperate they have become for something to protest about in the post-Soviet world.
Globalization as a general concept too is a rather surprising target for the Left -- given that the United Nations was once a great icon and hope of Western Leftists and given that Leftists once prided themselves on being internationalists: "Workers of the world unite", the Comintern (Communist International) and the "international brigades" of Leftist volunteers who fought Generalissimo Franco in the Spain of the 1930s, for instance. Globalization has of course been doing its work of spreading prosperity throughout the world for well over a century (at least since Britain’s repeal of the corn laws) but only recently do Leftists seem to have discovered its "evils". Prince Albert, 19th century humanitarian and consort of Britain’s Queen Victoria, was one of the most prominent early advocates of globalization -- precisely because of its effects in reducing poverty. So the Leftist opponents of globalization would appear to have been missing the big game for a long time!
Opposition to globalization is however too readily identified as a lunatic fringe activity to satisfy everyone on the Left so other things needing change have had to be found. And, in fact, even reactionary change has been embraced. "Reactionary" was once almost a swear-word to the Left but, if a reactionary is someone who wants to put social and economic change into reverse gear and return the world to some sort of idealized and simpler past, the major reactionary movement in the Western world today is undoubtedly the "Green" movement. One sometimes gets the impression that only the entire elimination of the human race would satisfy the Greens in their desire to return the world to a pristine state. Certainly no concession to their aims ever seems enough to satisfy them.
The wish for nature conservation and reclamation has a long and honourable past -- including among its advocates most English-language poets from at least the 18th century onwards (Who can forget William Blake’s "dark Satanic mills"?). And no one has ever set aside a greater area for nature conservation than US Republican President Theodore Roosevelt did -- and that was roughly a century ago. And while there are still some environmental causes that represent undramatic, largely uncontroversial and sensible improvements to our quality of life and the prospects for our future (e.g. control of farmland degradation), many others are quite fanciful, extreme and ill-founded (as the statistician Lomborg, 2001, has shown at length). Modern-day "Greenies" go well beyond mere nature conservation in what they seek and are very strong and relentless advocates of change to practically all of our existing arrangements and systems. And that suits change-hungry and drama-hungry Leftists down to the ground. So therefore many "Reds" have in recent times become "Greens" and Red-Green alliances spring up with some frequency
The fact that nature conservation and reclamation has never previously in its long past attracted much Leftist attention does suggest that their recent interest in it lies not in the cause itself but rather in the drama and disruption that modern day Greenies create in pursuit of their goals. Many Green advocacy groups -- such as Greenpeace -- provide opportunity for drama and self-advertisement aplenty.
Wow! We don't need all those words to describe a leftist.
A leftist believes in nothing. If it feels good, do it. If you don't want to work, the ones that do work need to spread the wealth around with them.
If two guys or gals want to marry, it's OK and should be allowed to happen. If they want to marry their dog, same thing.
If a women is pregnant and decides to abort it, she should be allowed to do so even if she's in her third tri-mester. Just kill the baby and move on.
If you believe in God and a leftist doesn't, you have to stop believing in God.
You should not be able to make any kind of decision unless it's approved by the government, whether it's business, pleasure, or in between.
You should not show patriotism of any kind. To a leftist, our country is not special. In fact, we should be ashamed of ourselves but the reason is vague.
Some are simply hiding their real hatred of their fellow man in a cloak of good intentions. They want to hurt their fellow man but need to change the system (a "revolution") to get the opportunity of doing so.
Quote: Olivia wrote in post #3Wow! We don't need all those words to describe a leftist.
A leftist believes in nothing. If it feels good, do it. If you don't want to work, the ones that do work need to spread the wealth around with them.
If two guys or gals want to marry, it's OK and should be allowed to happen. If they want to marry their dog, same thing.
If a women is pregnant and decides to abort it, she should be allowed to do so even if she's in her third tri-mester. Just kill the baby and move on.
If you believe in God and a leftist doesn't, you have to stop believing in God.
You should not be able to make any kind of decision unless it's approved by the government, whether it's business, pleasure, or in between.
You should not show patriotism of any kind. To a leftist, our country is not special. In fact, we should be ashamed of ourselves but the reason is vague.
This is all you need to know about a leftist.
Still reading the article and it's predecessor.
The basic proposition of the article seems to be:
ZitatMy basic proposal, then, is that most (but not all) Leftists/liberals are motivated by strong ego needs — needs for power, attention, praise and fame. And in the USA and other developed countries they satisfy this need by advocating large changes in the society around them — thus drawing attention to themselves and hopefully causing themselves to be seen as wise, innovative, caring etc. Rightists by contrast have no need either for change or its opposite and may oppose change if they see it as destructive or favour change if they see it as constructive
In short a leftist/statist/globalist sees them self as a superior human being who wants and deserves god like power over every aspect of the lives of the rest of us. They deny the concept of 'human nature' and believe all behavior can be modified by education and the proper social environment. All morals, ethical systems, and cultures are deemed equal. In addition they have a hypocritical obsession with racism and equal outcomes for all. s
ZitatMOST ORDINARY PEOPLE do not fit very neatly into any political category and may hold to a mix of views that include what would usually be seen as both Leftist and Rightist ideas. Among professional politicians and academics, however, there is generally a clearer polarization. So what is it that makes any given view "Rightist" or "Leftist"? In contemporary North American terms, what is it that makes one an archetypical "liberal" or an archetypical "conservative"? What is a Leftist or a Rightist position on any issue?
The division obviously is real and the demise of the great icon of Leftism -- the Soviet Union -- seems to have had little impact on its intensity. Leftists may no longer have Communism to point to ...
Do not get into pissing contests about whether or not "Right is Right". It is a rigged word game.
Describe what you believe in and forget about the labels. You will discover that the label of what you believe changes with time and/or geography.
Left Wing: “The Left” originally meant the anti-feudal faction of the French Estates General at the start of the French Revolution. This faction wanted to empower the “common man”. In 1789, the most radical “Leftist” country on Earth was the United States of America.
Right Wing: “The Right” originally meant the feudal faction of the French Estates General at the start of the French Revolution. This faction wanted to keep Mr. Big in power at the expense of Joe-Six Pack.
Centralist: The original Centralist was the King who wanted all power centered on himself. He did not want every region in the country ruled by five or six 400-pound gorillas (the localy powerful feudal lords). He wanted the entire country to be ruled, with absolute authority, by a single 800 pound gorilla: The King. After absolute monarchs became extinct, the Centralist role was replaced by the “Central Government” at Paris, Moscow, Berlin, Madrid or Washington.
Regionalist or Anti-Centralists: These individuals want to decrease Central power so that those in regional power have much greater autonomy. Note that this creates drastically different results depending upon whether the common folk are in democratic power or the local feudal warlord 400 pound gorilla (or local Mafia or local Boss runs the town and the economy.)
Those are the four basic dynamics and everything derives from a combination of them. Since the French Revolution, the meaning of “Left” and “Right” have been so perverted that applying 18th Century French terms, especially in a world-wide context, to 20th Century and 21st Century developments is rather silly.
So, what is a “Conservative”?
Conservative: Those who want to preserve things as they are or as they traditionally were.
Is that good or bad?
That depends on the “Goldilocks zone" (an astronomical description of a planet’s location that makes it “not too hot and not too cold but just right” to support life) of the politics involved. The concept of the “Goldilocks zone" can be used in everything from politics to your weight. If somebody is way outside of the “Goldilocks zone" and is a Conservative, then that person is an idiot (the 5'5", 380 pound man or the Soviet true-believer in 1989 that has been waiting for Paradise since 1917). Likewise, a person in the “Goldilocks zone" that wants to be "Progressive" and advocates drastic change for the sake of change is also an idiot.
What put the United States of America in the “Goldilocks zone" of politics was not a blind following of Left or Right or Centralism or Regionalism but, rather, the system of "Checks & Balances" and the respect of the "Rule of Law" that balanced all those forces to make things "just right".
With that in mind, let’s analyze what has been what:
Louis XVI: Right wing, feudal, Centralist conservative
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine: Left wing radicals. (In the Royal Navy’s Nore Mutiny, the radical, Left-wing literature that was being passed around was Thomas Paine’s “Rights of Man”.) Politically speaking, these gentlemen may have been the radicals of the Ancien Regime but they put the United States in the “Goldilocks zone" of politics. In the 21st Century, say “Conservative” in the U.S. and somebody in Texas thinks that means preserving the Golden Age of America. Say “Conservative” in Europe and that most likely means going back to some really bad times.
Jeffersonian Democracy: Left wing (for the little guy) and Anti-Centralist. This philosophy says what it means and means what is said. It was, however, more Centralist than the society at the time of the Articles of Confederation that were so Regionalist that the nation was just a herd of stray cats.
Theoretical Marxism: Super-Centralist and theoretically Leftist with emphasis on preaching “Equality”. Theoretically, the Centralism would disappear when True Communism was achieved. If you feel as if you were economically oppressed by Mr. Big and you just fell off the turnip truck, you will absolutely love this theory.
Marxism in Practice: Super-Centralist and Pseudo-Leftist while preaching “Equality” for those who are less equal than the Party elite. Marxism in Practice is the ”Bait & Switch” champion of political philosophy. What sounds absolutely fantastic on paper is absolutely horrible in practice. The claim is that it is “Left wing” (for the little guy) but, in actuality, it merely replaces the old Regional Right wing 400 pound gorillas with a new Centralist 800 pound gorilla in Moscow or Peking or Havana. Meet the New Boss, meaner and much more ruthless and better armed than the Old Boss. If the “little guy” speaks up, the “little guy” is terminated with extreme prejudice. Today, North Korea and Cuba are essentially 16th Century absolute monarchies with different trapping and B.S. lip service to “the People”. Super-Centralist, not Left or Right, is the defining characteristic.
Spanish Civil War Anarchists These guys were, essentially, Super-Libertarians with a homicidal streak. (George Orwell fought on their side as a volunteer.) They truly were Left-wingers (for the "little guy") and not just "lip service Left-wingers". They hated Centralists and believed that every economic enterprise should be self-governed by the workers without Central control. Most importantly, they actually put that theory into practice. (In practice {think TBL}, too much freedom ended up in, well, Anarchy, and the Anarchists decided that some Central control was needed to win the war instead of having the Zoot Cooperative feuding with the Quix Cooperative.) Still, they tried their very best to practice "small government". They hated and feared the Communists because the Communists preached Big Government and the Anarchists wanted as small a government as possible. The Communists hated them because the Anarchists refused to bow down to Big Government. In the end, there was a war within the Spanish Civil War where the Communists literally wiped out the Anarchist side. Orwell barely escaped alive.
National Socialism: Super-Centralist and Pseudo-Leftist without any pretense of “Equality”. While paying a little bit of lip service to “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”, everybody understood perfectly well that the Führer was the 800 pound gorilla. Super-Centralist, not Left or Right, is the defining characteristic.
21st Century American Progressive: Somebody who adores Theoretical Marxism but has never lived a year as the “little guy” under Marxism in Practice. As Red Diaper Babies, they heard European immigrant Grandpa talk about how fantastic the World will be when the True Communist stage is reached. Alternately, as a college student, they were taught by Red Diaper Baby faculty. If Grandpa had stayed in Eastern Europe, an idealist such as Grandpa would have been among the first ones to die in Soviet Purges. In "Comrades And Commissars: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War" by Cecil Eby, idealistic, young American Communists, raised in the adoration of Theoretical Marxism, come face to face with the tragic reality of Soviet Marxism in Practice. Any demonstration of American Communist "power to the People" was met by accusations of being a "Trotskyite", "Anarchist" or "Fascist" traitor with often fatal consequences.
21st Century American “Right-wing Conservative”: Somebody that was taught to admire and respect late 18th Century American Left-wing radicals.
So why does "Right" now mean "Left" and "Left" now mean "Right"?
For the same reason that, in 1983, "the Red States" meant the Soviet Union, Red China, Cuba and North Korea and, in 2013, "the Red States" now mean Texas, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina.
For the same reason that, in 1913, an "immigrant" meant somebody that passed his U.S. entry screening at Ellis Island and, in 2013, it means any Mexican national that illegally jumped the border fence 5 seconds ago.
The news media does that on purpose because the media understands the power of words. By focusing on labels instead of studying political dynamics, the Nazis are portrayed as "Right" when, in actuality, they were Super-Centralists, like the Soviets were. By focusing on labels instead of studying political dynamics, the news media uses the tern "Right" to paint American "small government" Jeffersonian democrats with the same brush as German National Socialism, neither one of which has a damn thing to do with maintaining French feudal power in the 18th Century.
As I said, do not get into pissing contests about whether or not "Right is Right". It is a shell game that is rigged against you.
RIGHT'S RIGHT 
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