Fascism is from the Right

Is the left-right spectrum still a useful framework for understanding our politics?

Recently Jonah Goldberg, a conservative writer and columnist, claimed via Twitter that fascism is not “right wing.” According to Goldberg, in the “Anglo-American tradition,” the right is characterized by “limited government, sovereignty of the individual, moral and religious traditionalism, and free-market economics.” Since arguably neither fascism nor Nazism favored these things, according to Goldberg’s logic they cannot be right wing. At least not in Britain or the United States.

Left and right are fraught terms. They are vague and ill-defined. Yet the fact that they are endlessly repeated and apparently understood suggests they do refer to something meaningful. The terms are also contested, otherwise there wouldn’t be a recurring meme, just expressed by Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, about whether Nazis were socialists or right-wingers. Humans like binary thinking, especially in politics. If the language of right and left is not going anywhere, and it seems the phrases will be with us a long time hence, we ought to nail down some meanings.

Although claiming fascism is a leftist phenomenon exculpates the American right for right-wing sins, Goldberg isn’t being disingenuous. He’s working within a conservative…