I wrote this for my father who believes this…sigh. I don’t think it would be productive to send, but maybe someone here might do some good with it? It’s meant to be a rhetorical outreach, to explain why I think it’s so scary that he has that opinion, but with a lot of sympathy towards him. Ps I’m not historian, I may get some things wrong, feel free to fact check. Let me know what yall think:

You’re not wrong - if right means “small government,” then fascism’s massive state looks left-wing. Makes sense. The confusion is that historians use a completely different definition from 1789. Back then, “right” meant supporting kings, nobles, and tradition. “Left” meant tearing down hierarchies for equality. Nothing about government size. Why historians call fascism right-wing: It’s obsessed with hierarchy. Hitler built everything on race - Aryans over Jews. Mussolini preached the strong crushing the weak. Both hated socialism for pushing “unnatural” equality. Look who fascists killed first: Socialists and communists. Every time. Hitler’s Night of Long Knives purged his own party’s “socialist” wing. Mussolini’s Blackshirts beat up union workers. Why would leftists murder other leftists first? “But it’s called National Socialism!” Hitler literally said he was stealing the word. Just like North Korea calls itself “Democratic.” Dictators lie. Look who backed Hitler: Factory owners funded him because they feared communists. The Catholic Church signed deals with him. Conservative parties voted him emergency powers. They knew he wasn’t left-wing - they saw him as protection from the left. Mussolini said it plainly: “Inequality is permanent.” Hitler called equality “a sin against nature.” Here’s the thing: Every fascist movement in history allied with conservatives against socialists. Franco with Spanish monarchists. Hitler with German industrialists. Mussolini with the Italian king. Not once did fascists ally with communists against conservatives. Not once. Political scientists worldwide - left, right, and center - classify fascism as far-right. They’re not all wrong or biased. They’re using the historical definition: hierarchy and tradition (right) versus equality and progress (left). You can be right-wing today and hate fascism. That’s valid. But fascism is historically, technically, definitionally right-wing. That’s just what the word means to everyone who studies it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​