Was Attila the Hun right-wing?
Not really
In my analysis of my own definition of the Far left, I mentioned Noam Chomsky having criticised Dr. Jordan Peterson on the grounds that “for him, the Left is anybody to the Left of Attila the Hun. In fact, universities are dominated by the Right. He’s so far on the Right, that that looks like the Left to him.” That got me thinking “Was Attila right-wing?”
The Leftist economist Paul Krugman would say no. Krugman responded to a Republican politician bragging she was to the right of Attila by tweeting “So Kelly Loeffler is boasting that she’s to the right of Attila the Hun. Tells you something about the modern GOP; but did anyone think to ask how right-wing Attila really was? As best I can tell, the Huns were if anything to the left of other societies of the times: compared with their [neighbours] they had relatively few slaves and treated them relatively well, and they offered considerably more freedom and power to women….Of course there was the whole sacking cities and slaughtering their inhabitants thing. And I guess that’s the part that appeals to modern Republicans.”
This argument presupposes that sexism and slavery are fundamentally right-wing institutions. I do not find this to be a fair claim at all. That said, the Huns had a more centralised political system than most of the other so-called barbarian tribes and Attila and his brother Bleda raised taxes upon the Eastern Romans through the Treaty of Margus. That’s not right-wing in the libertarian sense.
Likewise, Attila was willing to share power with Bleda for eleven years, after which he likely killed him, and was willing to grant certain powers to an Akatziri leader named Buridach to stave off a rebellion. That’s not right-wing in the authoritarian populist sense.
Furthermore, Attila had Huns, Scythians, some Goths, and even Roman deserters as part of his army so it doesn’t sound as if he were right-wing in the racist sense. I disagree with the notion that to be racist is to be right-wing but even if you buy into that Attila was still not right-wing. By the same token, if you view sexism as what makes someone right-wing then Attila wasn’t right-wing. Attila made one of Bleda’s widows governor over a village (presumably as blood money for killing her husband) such that she would rule over several men.
I also doubt that someone who proudly called himself the Scourge of G-d would be right-wing in the way that theocrats are right-wing. (The fact that Steve Bannon once compared himself to Satan says a lot more about Bannon than it does about Attila.)
As far as I can tell, the sole reason to consider Attila right-wing is that he was militaristic but that doesn’t work for me. Historically there have been left-wing leaders who were militarisitc (e.g. Stalin) and right-wing leaders who went out of their way to avoid being militaristic (e.g. Stanley Baldwin.)
In conclusion, no, Attila was not right-wing.
