Oh come on 2Al, your position is regressing.
First of all on what basis do you propose to compare 1930s Germany with contemporary US conservatism? Wrong time, wrong place, wrong continent, wrong context -- and no one ever suggested that "Hitler = 2013 US conservatives". You're way off here; the question was putting Hitler on the left or right of the scale, or more correctly, off the scale. It's not a comparison with anyone living today. In fact the instigating factor was the presence of latter-day revisionism trying to put Hitler on the opposite side of the spectrum from where he's always lived. Trust me, if Hitler's contemporaries who saw and had to deal with his actions had the slightest inking that he was a leftist, we would have heard this theory looooong before enough time had passed that some wag thought he could get away with manipulating a fading memory.
Second -- "support for tradition, law-and-order, Christianity, anti-communism, and a defense of "Western civilization from the challenges of modernist culture and totalitarian governments", except for the last two words, very much applied to the NSDAP; that's part of the whole "social conservative" value system the Nazis hammered constantly that I mentioned before. It goes right in with hypernationalism/hyperpatriotism, the Fatherland, Kinder/Kirche/Kuche, a longing for past glory, and the strong military-- all right-wing and conservative ideals. You can't keep ignoring that; it's what defined the NSDAP. It's what they lived and breathed.
And third, this idea that there's some kind of cosmic scale on which we can place a given government to see how "big" it is, and if it's over a certain median it's left, and under, it's right -- is absurd. "Size of government" is a concept Ronald Reagan started selling in 1980. It has no meaning. And in the 1930s it had even less. Size, in this case, doesn't matter. I don't care what illusions are sold on the media in 2013, it's got nothing to do with a place on the left or right.
The political spectrum doesn't live in two dimensions; any government may be more or less authoritarian and simultaneously more or less left or right. They're in no way linked.
As Saigon noted, we've done these same points over, and over, and over, and over. It's like talking to a wall.
Well, that's exactly why we haven't been able to agree on anything so far.
All I've been arguing is that
Hitler's Nazi Germany is not synonymous or the extreme of modern American right-wing political ideology. Which many liberals here (and elsewhere) commonly imply.
I didn't specify it as I just assumed everyone was talking about the same thing.
Here's the problem: you're making an assumption (in bold) that puts the chicken before the egg. Nobody's implied that; it's actually more the reverse. And to suggest some historical figure is "extreme right wing" does not equate him with everyone and everything that is associated with that entire side of the spectrum. And this is important to understand the question the OP asks in the first place, i.e. "why the revision of history"?
Taking it chronologically: for the vast majority of history (since WWII), Adolf Hitler has been described by consensus as from the extreme right. Now, only very recently, and only seven decades later, and only
here, a continent away from the action, has the opposite theory been floated. The OP asks whence comes this new historical revision. This is a
reactive position, reactive to the revision; not an initiative attempt to paint Hitler Brown on anybody.
I'm more interested in the 'why' than the 'how' this revision has been drawn up; after all it's a pretty extreme revision to make. And I believe it has everything to do with the concept of
Eliminationism, which also explains why it's born and bred here in the US. Eliminationism is a recent tactic of the punditry of the extreme right
here in which the adversary ("them liberals") must be not debated or understood or negotiated with, but eliminated. Demonized and painted as a scourge on society. We see it in any number of signatures and commentary from posters in this forum and others; we hear it in the daily rhetoric of media gadflies like Rush Limbaugh; we read it in any number of partisan blogs from Breitbart, Brent Bozell, the Daily Caller, the Gateway Pundit, etc -- liberals/leftists aren't just "wrong', they're parasites; diseases; 'libtards'; mortal enemies; usurpers; communists; fascists (the latter two at the same time, as expressed in Doublethink), and ultimately traitors bent on destroying all that is America and God and Mom and apple pie.
This I believe is the basis behind the move to exhume Adolf Hitler and move him to the opposite side of the political spectrum; since we can still all concur that "Hitler = evil", he becomes less a historical figure and more a convenient costume to put on the adversary one would
eliminate, which is the ultimate goal. After all, nobody wants a Hitler around, right? So if you can dress up your adversary in a Hitler costume, you're that much closer to eliminating them. You just eliminate a Hitler-by-proxy.
So let's be honest;
that is why this revisionism comes up in the first place; that's why a hack like Jonah Goldberg writes his doublethink drivel; and that's why this revisionist history that "Hitler was a leftist" originates here in the US and nowhere else. Because
here is where that myth serves an ulterior motive. It doesn't serve anyone in Europe --where Hitler actually happened-- ergo it's unknown there. It's a rhetorical tactic of Eliminationism, which is a specific propaganda tactic of the extreme right
here.
And as with any kind of Doublethink, it will be resisted by logic.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; and most usefully,
Ignorance is Strength. And thus, Hitler "is' a leftist.
