All totalitarianism is leftist, but it is also vital to grasp that the ideological spectrum itself is simply a macabre and surreal fiction – a Jabberwocky for those familiar with Lewis Carroll – a term that describes nothing at all.  Politics does not conform to any artificial geometrical model. 

We believe in the existence of some geometrical model to describe politics because that nonsense has been as ubiquitous as Orwell's famous "War is Peace.  Freedom is Slavery.  Ignorance is Strength."   In 1984, Oceania is one day at war with Eurasia and allied with Eastasia (and has always been at war with Eurasia) and the next day is at war with Eastasia and allied with Eurasia (and has always been at war with Eastasia.)

Orwell based his rejection of all ideology – "all those nasty little isms" – upon the surreal switches in wartime policy of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, who were mortal enemies, then bosom buddies, then mortal enemies again, depending entirely upon the leader's whims. 

Conservatives – and the word "conservative" does have real meaning – will always lose, even when we "win," if we still used the rigged semantic game of our enemies, the totalitarians.  Once we grasp the surreal contortion of language that deprives us of the means of understanding anything about politics, then we can always win, because all totalitarianism is exactly the same.

The early Fascists were all Marxists.  Indeed, Mussolini was the most radical Marxist in Italy before the First World War, and Trotsky considered him one of the greatest Marxists in the world.  Fascism famously stood for nothing except action.  It was passionately philo-Semitic before 1938, when it adopted Nazi anti-Semitism.  It professed support for Catholicism, and yet it attacked high clergymen and confiscated the Vatican periodical and beat up Italians who vended it.

Nazism was founded by men who strongly opposed "Capitalism," a nonsensical term invented by Marxists that requires a tacit acceptance of the Marxist lexicon to use in thought or writing.  Many of the early Nazis were outright Marxists, and most of the powerful Nazis – Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann, and Ribbentrop – belonged to what was described at the time as the "left wing" of the Nazi Party.

Why does this matter still?  It matters because those who seek state power, which is to say leftists, invariably paint their opponents as "Nazis" who are "diametrically opposite" leftists, despite the fact that Nazis and Marxists have almost identical belief systems and because this false and macabre argument still persuades those Americans who have been stripped of the ability of individual thinking by the institutions of power.

As one example, those people who fear and loathe Marxism have tried to link Jews and Judaism to Marxism, a silly and dangerous belief.  The attempt to link Nazism to Christianity is just as pernicious. 

There is a grander reason for challenging the very idea of an ideological spectrum and for making it clear that Nazis (whom we all rightly see as monstrous evil) and Marxists are the same: once Americans accept this truth, the battle is over, and we have won.  Even the phony "moderate" label vanishes when that means a "moderate" Nazi or Marxist in comparison to an "extremist" free marketer or Judeo-Christian.

Liberty has no ideological tint except its argument for the absence of coercion and for a celebration of a Judeo-Christianity that has no particular bias except a bias in favor of the Blessed Creator and His Creation.  Both of these values are celebrated in the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, the Gettysburg Address, and the other expositions upon which our unique and great land was founded.

The antithesis of these good and noble values is that black and grim nihilism that is the soul of leftism and its offspring, totalitarianisms, Nazism, Marxism, Maoism, Fascism, and their diabolical siblings.  Once we make that argument clear, we will have begun to win the war that must be won.

Image: Louis P. Hirshman via Wikimedia Commons.