Right Acting Left, Fascism
Right can adapt left politics too, but they do not refer to it excessively. Did this happen in history before? Yes. By a party who called itself Nationalsozialistisch. National socialists of Germany.
"Well that's an old debate, later conservatives said 'look Nazis were also socialist to bash the left". Yes yes.. I know all the twists and turns of that polemic... But the fact remains, fascists did enact left policies sometimes. It should not be surprising, they are trying to help people! (then organize them to kill others, but that's later).
From Hitler's True Believers, "Insofar as Hitler had fixed ideas at the end of the Great War in 1918, high on the list was nationalism, in spite of the aspersions cast against it by mutinous sailors and rebellious soldiers tired of the fighting. Some aspects of what became his doctrine or ideology stemmed from the cluster of ideas, resentments, and passions widely shared in Germany at that time. His views and those of his comrades also reflected the fact that Germany was already a nation with a great deal of egalitarianism baked into its political culture. Almost without exception, the Nazis emphasized all kinds of socialist attitudes, to be sure a socialism 'cleansed' of international Marxism and communism. Indeed, when he looked back from 1941, Hitler said of the NSDAP in the 1920s that '90 ninety percent of it was made up by left-wing people.' He also thought it was 'decisive' that he had recognized early in his career that solving the social question was essential, and he insisted that he hated the closed world in which he grew up, where social origins determined a person’s chances in life.
That Germany on the eve of Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933 continued to have a socialist-oriented political culture can be illustrated by pointing to the last free elections of the Weimar Republic the previous November. No less than 71.6 percent of the vote went to parties with 'socialist' or 'communist' in their titles"
"Fascism developed the Italian social security system, aimed at a comprehensive restructuring of the relationships between factors of production in a 'corporatist' fashion, and nationalized banks and businesses. The second feature of the regime did not survive its end (though one may argue that its legacy has long impacted the Italian economy). But some version of social security and nationalized banks and companies did"
Here's how it works; shit goes bad. Existing structures fail to help. New leaders rise to fill the void, run the gamut around left and right, left bcz ppl need it, but ultimately the nationalist part which is incompatible spills over its borders, war ensues.
Nationalists do not use the L word bcz during 40s it is associated with internationalism, or [shudder], Jews! It's not used now, but they blow smoke up your ass with the word "populism" bcz Reaganism has been banging on the other word decades.
But action speaks louder than words. Trump did promise not to touch social security, Medicare, and promised to end wars during the 2016 campaign.
The moral of the story is existing parties, cover all bases, help as much as possible bcz if all fails, then you get national socialism.
Additions
People have the wrong idea abt how these fascists come to power. The expectation is President "Mountain Dew" Herbert Camacho shows up with a machine gun, talks tough, all the time. No. After WWI Germany was beaten down, economy in ruins, in a terrible state. You can't be like Camacho. Fascist then first says let me help you brother. Much later it's like let's kill some people over there.
Fascist is the "whatever it takes" guy basically... His people are beaten down and he wants to do whatever it takes to help. He'll take from left, he'll take from right. Anything goes. The problem is he sees himself as "firefighting" he'll mostly be dealing with symptoms rather than causes. You are being laid off, he tells the employer not to lay off, disregarding economic machinery. The country's culture is getting out of kilter, foreigners have not assimilated properly, instead of thinking better inclusion policy, he might say "let's just kill them". He is fixing the problem, u see, or rather its outward component, "doing whatever it takes" (while actually creating bigger problems). He's turned into locust from a mere grasshopper. Desparation did that to him.
This partly explains his authoritarinism, since the fascist is trying to whatever it takes to help, anyone who is objecting would be objecting this person's core being. "How can anyone doubt me, I am doing everything I can to help people". It's too personal you see, instead of deciding on a general approach, selling it and executing it once in power, he is "helping", right now, doing "whatever it takes".
In TR during the single-party rule and staunch nationalism one of its governors was known to have said "if communism was necessary for this country, we would surely import it". Sounds like a joke and it is told as such, but the guy was dead serious. There you go, nationalist talking about utilizing communism.. Or in China today, they are communists, but imported capitalism, and happily using it. Italian fascists created the social security system of the country.
That's why TR parties, coalitions are cesspools of proto-fascim, bunch of stuff thrown in some container beforehand, from get-go, either after coups, or in "parties" that live in the aftermath of those coups. Take 4 views, throw them in, done. Of course it is impossible to maintain incompatibilities for an extended period of time, that's where fascism comes in.
A by-product of the approach is whatever the mix happens to be, anything that is left out, is immediately deligitimized. This can be the left, sometimes the right (and almost always Kurds), but there is always the legitimate mix and "others".
Which and how the ideological parts get included can be completely arbitrary, the mix is all in the mind of the fascist.
The leaders of these parties, coalitions are effective schizophrenics, mental patients of DID (dissociative identity disorder). This is not surprising bcz the poor asshole has to maintain all that crud in a singular head. So one day he'll talk about his "pure race from the steppes of Central Asia", the next socialism-level state intervention, the one after that neoliberal market action. The followers clap nevertheless, too braindead to realize something is off, but sadly for the country, its media also suffer from the same condition who mistake this show for politics.
Intensely opposing ideologies cannot be held together under one roof in anything other than fascism.. A whatever-it-takes attitude usually accompanies the approach, 4 whatever reason said country falls into a state-of-emergency mentality from which they never emerge, so they keep on living in an hand-to-mouth existence, "I'll take from here, I'll take from there, whatever-it-takes, ends-justify-the-means", and on it goes..