The Left & the Right of the Political Spectrum

 For years we've heard of the Left vs the Right on the political Spectrum and even the Left, Centre and Right within each Party. The latest term to front up is "Sensible Centre" or "Centrist" which everyone seemed to claim for a while but it lost steam in Australia. Well it seemed to when the Independent MPs prior to the last Federal election claimed to be Centrists, Dr Phelps et al & running for election Zali Steggals. They weren't any compromise between Left & Right, they weren't any middle ground. They were trying to create a unique marketing brand whilst remaining leftists. It largely flopped.

The sort of traditional view of the political spectrum is somewhere like the following linear idea.

That's kinda roughly the current view of what the traditional political spectrum is. The Conservatives on the right of whatever the real dead centre is, the Progressives (or in America the Liberals) to the left. That may not be very accurate, but among many people thats the current view of what the traditional spectrum is.
Between Conservative & Hard Right there's Alt Right and other groups or ideologies with gradually changes towards the Hard Right. Between Progressives and the Hard Left will be gradual increases in ideology like the Antifa etc until you get Communism.

Its not the only view and some of the other views might be contentious to some, but they do have support and some supporting history on their side. Then there's this...

Now how on earth would this even be an idea that people might even consider being accurate. One reaction is you cannot lump Fascism/Nazis in with Marxist Ideologies like Communism, Socialism. They're thought to be polar opposities, one extreme right, one extreme left. They were enemies during the war & share no common traits.

Well ok, thing is that's the argument, except they do share a lot in common. Communism/Socialism has a Father in Karl Marx. Fascism has a Father in the Italian Philospher Giovanni Gentile who was a close ally of Mussonlini. Here's the thing, do your research on Gentile and his work and it soon becomes apparent he started out a strident Socialist then created Fascism which is an offshoot of Socialism because Gentile himself said Fascism is the ultimate form of Socialism. Both took away individual rights, individual ownership of the means of production, both vested decisions on how the individual lived into the State. Both had the State as the supreme goal, aim and governor but Socialism is based on getting rid of class, fascism is too that but more Nationalistic and expansionist. Both required full totalitarian regimes who were ruthless and prone to killing anyone who stood in their way. 

Hitler and the Nazis regime can never be trivialised nor over looked in their rank brutality that made them rightly considered by any religious or non religious worldview judgement as being totally evil.
Well, Stalin's Communist/Socialist regime actually shared many traits with the Nazis and over time they killed or rather ruthlessly murdered more innocent people. No Communism/Socialism isn't worse, they're both supremely evil by any measure. Nazism was lost & destroyed as a regime at the end of World War 2 and the Russian regime continued on. They were competing with one another and both wanted to crush and take over the other. (Before marching onto Capitlist countries and conquering them)

But don't forget the West opposed Socialism/Communism/Fascism during the War & after. With Nazism gone, we had the Cold War. The West versus "the East" and had the Nazis defeated Stalin, the East would have been Germany and every country it conquered or annexed.

Pick a conservative country during the War...or before or after. It would have fought both totalitarian regimes, it would not have set up gulags or concertration camps in the West.

Now somewhere on that second line graph is the Alt-Right. Now considering the Right is over there on the right, the Alt Right must be to the left of the Conservatives. Why? Because they're not of the right. They are "Alternative right". They're considered far right, but they're regarded as White Supremist Nationalists. They often tend as a group to relate to Nazis & be anti Communists. They're quite correct in being an alternative to the right. They are often over there by the Fascists & Nazis. They are not conservatives. Most religious conservatives consider all people are God's children, racism is wrong. Alt Right is not conservative at all. It like all other hard right are not conservatives and share more in common with the Hard Left.
Even Antifa, Anti Facist are not of the right, their followers are generally of one of the Marxist stripes. Oddly though they are very communist like, some are very racist and prone to violence to get their way like fascists and many communists.

This is probably why we see some sets of Antifa clashing with some sets of Alt-Right...meanwhile Conservatives are not a fan or connected to either & oppose both Antifa & Alt-Right. Both Antifa & Alt-Right oppose the West, capitalism, individual rights & want the State to rule the people, not serve them. Every that is the very opposite of Conservatism.
This is why it sure looks not to be simple linear spectrum, Conservatives & wise Progressives are not really of the left or the right. That linear distinction only applies to seperate those that support authoratarian rule & equal division of assets, money & the State owning the means of production & distributing wealth evenly amongst all.

Yes its very uncomfortable for some who wish to demonise conservatives by creating the illusion that Fascism and Nazism is of the right, but they're not. They're of the right compared only to Communists & Socialists. The Communists are of the left, but only to the left of Nazis & Fascism. For Nazis the clue is in the name "National Socialist" and they were brutal totalistarian regimes...that is not from the conservatives any more than Communism is.
If its in favour of authoratarian rule, loss of individual rights, control of all manner of lifes aspects its the Left/Right alright...but not of & opposed by conservatism & real progressivism.

Now progressives...they're looking to change things for the better, Conservatives looking to conserve things for the better. Having them both in a society is not only admirable, its desireable as long as they don't go to far into removing individual rights, over taxing, over legislating the people and not changing from the goevrnment serving the people to pushing the people to serve the government. Real progressives won't support authoratarian rule, loss of individual rights, private property rights, individuals freedom of speech, worship etc.

Yes, I think the second representation of the political spectrum is more correct than the first.
But the first one whilst being intellectually corrupt, morally bankrupt & unsupported by actual history...yes it will live on. Usually by those that will try to not mention progressives but need to condemn conservatives to help falsely bolster any level of Marxist or Fascist validation.
Desperates being desperate.