There are various different definitions we can and could use of the “hard right”. Goosestepping through Nuremberg, or even desiring to, would be one useful enough such definition. Scrapbooks with detailed plans for invading Poland perhaps another. Advocating that consenting adults should be allowed to ingest as they wish, bonk as they wish and partake in voluntary exchange as they wish isn’t really a useful definition of that hard right.
Except it’s the one that is being used:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Former Tory MP Nick Boles, who quit the party over his colleagues’ failure to compromise on Brexit, tweeted: “The hard right has taken over the Conservative Party. Thatcherites, libertarians and No Deal Brexiters control it top to bottom.”[/perfectpullquote]
That from a self described progressive conservative which shows how confused Yer Man is.
Quite why libertarians are described as hard right is difficult to work out. They – we perhaps – are only a shading of classical liberals who historically have always been on the left. Just the left that hasn’t made the centralising, planning, mistake. The point being that markets work, they deliver those traditional liberal goals of greater freedom, greater liberty, make the poor rich and all that. The difference between classical liberals and progressive liberals really being that the former – us again – advocate policies which actually work, progressives not so much.
Certainly that’s how I see myself, as someone on the left. Just someone who argues for the policies which actually do deliver. Think on it a moment. The average inhabitant of a place which has been roughly capitalist and roughly free market for more than a couple of decades is very much better off than an inhabitant of a place which has never been either or both. We’ve also never had any form of governance which is other than roughly capitalist and roughly free market which has achieved that goal of making the average person that better off.
Thus, logically, if we share that traditionally lefty goal of making the average person better off then we must be roughly capitalist and roughly free market. It’s simple empiricism, isn’t it?
And quite why that makes us hard right I don’t know. I mean I’ve been to Russia and it’s really not worth invading.
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There you go again equating the actions of Mr H and his german mates as far right, when it wasn't. More like mere acquisitve imperialism with a racist dimension. Including a centralized control system which differs from communism only through the lack of need to own what was being controlled.
Germany kept invading other counties, that's why we went to war. Nothing to do with the fascism. And Germany had been building forces for the second half since the 20s.ot is
I still don't know what far right is, but what it is not is any variation of fascism.
‘Far right’ must be the antipode of Socialism, that is sovereignty of the individual, respect for private property, rule of law and laissez-faire economics.
Fascism certainly doesn’t do any of that.
In fact the McDonnell creature has just branded BoJo & Co as the ‘most right wing’ Cabinet, and really they are Socialist-lite ideologically, so some way to go still be on a right far, far away.
Amazing how the National Socialist German Workers Party gets described as right wing. That second word in their name is a bit of a giveaway. That this is widely overlooked seems to validate the idea that if you repeat a lie often enough...
As Hayek said, Socialism, Fascism, National Socialism share common roots, empowerment of the State over the individual, central economic planning and control. He also said Fascism and National Socialism were developments of Socialism.
Not easy to see how practitioners of the same root ideology and lineage can be polar opposites. It is like saying Roman Catholics and Anglicans cannot both be Christian and are opposites.
The other giveaway is that besides hating each other (a classic Left-wing internecine thing) they had the same enemies - classical Liberals, markets, capitalists, landowners, the church. A big part of the Nazi's hatred of Jews was their supposed dominant e if finance and banking, enemies of the working class.
This seems to be a rather weird definition of Left and Right. Surely the Left starts at a relatively big state with plenty of "social" planning and control and ends with the state being everything - everything in the state and nothing going outside the state, as Mussolini described fascism. The far right starts with minarchism and moves leftwards giving the state more power and control until we cross over a rather arbitrary threshold into being the Left.
Right and Left can branch in other dimensions such as nationalism versus internationalism and social conservatism versus social liberalism - the strange world view where consenting adults can do what they like with each other sexual but cannot buy and sell say a cheese to each other without the state regulating the transaction.