<p>How are anarchists left-wing if they support NO government, when the left-wing traditionally supports BIG government?</p>
<p>How are fascists right-wing if the right-wing favors LESS government?</p>
<p>Also, weren’t the Nazis a left-wing group which advocated near-socialism? How is Hitler right-wing?..</p>
<p>Because the political spectrum isn’t a line, it’s more like a circle. When you get to the extreme ends, it doesn’t matter if you are conservative or liberal, your government views tend to get pretty similar.</p>
<p>Once you get out of democracy and into radical ideology things get weird.</p>
<p>Think of it this way: the right favors tradition, the left supports change. Taken to extremes, the left is revolutionary, the right is reactionary. This is all in relation to the Enlightenment ideas of natural rights, the consent of the governed, etc. Naziism/fascism advocates the divine right of an elite to rule, in this case the Aryan master race. Therefore it is traditional/reactionary/ultra-right-wing.</p>
<p>The Nazis weren’t really socialist; I’m not sure where you got that idea.</p>
<p>Anarchy has no political leanings at all because it’s not really a system of government, just chaos–or at least that’s my opinion. You could argue that it’s left-wing because it takes consent of the governed/“all men are created equal” to its extreme. You could also argue that it’s supersupersuper right-wing because really, we were all once anarchists 
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<p>Liberalism isn’t really about big government; rather, liberals see unfairness and inequity in the world and wish to use governmental powers to fix those inequities. Conservatives tend to favor the status quo, which naturally leads to less government.</p>
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<p>Because the left wing doesn’t traditionally support big government, it supports putting power in the hands of the people. In the case of anarchy, with no government the people have the power. In the case of current US politics, liberals see the democratically elected government as a tool people that should be used for the good of the people.
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<p>The right wing on the other hand generally favors the concentration of power for the good of all. In the case of fascists and the Nazis, that means an authoritarian government dictating most things. The weakness of the German economy did necessitate many socialist policies, but the Nazis also built up the army and obviously (to put it lightly) marginalized “lesser” peoples. In the case of current American politics, the right wing is generally the party of big business and favors military build up as a means of protection.</p>
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A major part of the Nazi agenda was hating on Communists and Socialists in the SPD and other groups of the Weimar Republic. Their name is somewhat of a misnomer</p>
<p>This only makes sense if you think with the framework of American politics or the social-democratic parties of Europe. The Democratic Party (which isn’t really leftist at all, it’s centrist at best) favors big government (so do the Republicans - Bush’s bailouts? Two wars? etc). Leftist theory views the state as an organ of class rule, and so-called “socialist states” are a transitory step, according to some Marxists, between capitalism and communism (stateless, classless society - i.e., anarchism).</p>