Exactly. We need to be a movement in addition to a party. There’s already some media that’s Pirate related, but it needs to be nurtured, like a sapling which turns into a mighty oak. It’s slow going.
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Isn’t one of the major problem with branding as centrist in general is that you might attract the nazis?
Nazis in Australia? That seems far fetched. I didn’t think we considered that a possibility.
There are Nazis in Australia, and various other far-right nationalist and fascist groups. Why they would want to try and infiltrate us if we were to call ourselves radical centrist is a bit beyond me though. Nazis are right wing.
We won’t be calling ourselves radical centrists as far as I can tell anyway.
Yeh theres a group called Antipodean Resistance that is a Nazi group.
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I have no idea how you get from “centrist” to Nazi.
When I started this thread, I was exploring the possibility of taking the more orthogonal stance that we have taken in many of our policies, and branding it in a way that might have wider appeal. What I found is that people are too hung up on labels to do that, so meh.
To me, left/right stops making sense when it comes to Nazis. They were extreme nationalist, racist, authoritarians. They called themselves “National Socialists”, and many social programmes were included in their platform, but only if you were a white, German, non-jew, citizen.
By contrast, PPAU is none of those things, nor is it ever likely to, regardless of branding.
I see Nazis as being very centrist, even if they put Socialist in their name, anyone can name themselves whatever.
They were very illiberal and hierarchical (as opposed to the flat structure of the left) and as you said they were very discriminatory and had a religious bent (also attributes of the right), however they did have socialist goals too. IMO they were centrist right just authoritarian which places them kinda opposite to where i am in the green quadrant which im quite happy to be.
That’s an odd thing to say.
What makes you associate left with flat structure?
I’d believe an association between libertarian and flat structure.
What I mean is the left/communal/socialist ideology of economic and property equality is one of flattening the hierarchy of means of production and thus economic inequality present in capitalism, libertarians on the contrary believe in a natural hierarchy but less monopoly on authority, more like natural selection if you will, think ancaps, but green libertarians are more community focused and want better societal outcomes than ancaps so like mutualism and cooperation. Nazis had capitalist and social hierarchy structures and business and land ownership and capitalist investment, however still had socialist goals too like autobahn and some control over unions, but they were on authoritarian side. Georgists is particularly centrist libertarian down the middle as a hybrid of both decreasing “income tax is theft” whilst raising funds for a just minarchy via decreasing “land monopolisation is theft”.
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Take a look at the official Nazi platform: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program
Points 9 thru about 22 of 25, are clearly socialist though wildly authoritarian, but they also hated communists, so who knows.
Today, in a left-right single dimensional discussion, they get called far-right, leading to crazy notions like horseshoe theory, like if you go hard right enough, you end up back on the left.
I have memes for that too.
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As far as I’m concerned Nazis are far right.
Wikipedia agrees: Far right
From the wiki on Nazism:
National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsɪzəm, ˈnæt-/),[1] is the ideology and set of practices associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party, Nazi Germany and other far-right groups. Usually characterized as a form of fascism that incorporates scientific racism and antisemitism, Nazism’s development was influenced by German nationalism (especially Pan-Germanism), the Völkisch movement and the anti-communist Freikorps paramilitary groups that emerged during the Weimar Republic after Germany’s defeat in First World War.
I have no idea how they could possibly be centrist, they are authoritarian, corrupt and serve the powerful.
You guys are weird. You can’t just redefine the political spectrum, otherwise no-one can comprehend you.
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Consider that many on the right argue they were leftist since “they were socialist and had socialist policies”.
But at the same time he abolished unions and was hierarchical and elitist.
People tend to argue either way (left or right) depending on whether your on the left or right. I am centre-left-geolibertarian-georgist so makes sense that i will argue he was centre-right-authoritarian as i can see he combined ideologies from both sides. No matter what he was in reality, there is some belief/perception that the movement was at least centre-right, at least amongst some centrists, so if your target market includes attracting libertarian centrists, perhaps consider not calling it centrist…because it makes us nervous, is my argument, as a centrist… 
Got any citations for those claims?
We are a political party, we have to be able to converse with, and importantly make sense to the general public. We need to convince them to vote for us. We can’t waste energy on trying to redefine the political spectrum. People will rightly think we are mad. I have never heard of the Nazis being called left wing or centrist and I have been in politics for 20 years.
It is generally accepted by the general public and political academics that the Nazis were on the far right. We need to work with the general consensus on terminology if we wish to be able to convince people we are sane and worth voting for.
well perhaps it is just amongst the Youth!!!
Theres been many right leaning members in AYPS a facebook political group for youth (tends to range from 16-35yos but sometimes older too) that have claimed Hitler and Nazis are leftist/socialist! The common argument is mostly based on the parties name, and Autobahn, but they believe it! maybe it is just a minority, but i fear it might be a large number of people on the right…
Anyways, personally, regardless of that issue, i think Centrist Party sounds quite boring…
I would suggest another name like Freedom Party, if it were to be renamed. Or Freedom Australia Party (FAP)
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In the same Wikipedia page you quoted, that starts by labelling them far-right, there is an entire section dedicated to “Position within the political spectrum”. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism
Hitler himself apparently claimed they were neither left or right.
Linked from there, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program lists a platform loaded with socialist agenda items (points 9 to 22) as I mentioned earlier. Things like collectivism, eliminating debt slavery, pensions, nationalisation of industries (like in communism), public education, anti-child labour etc. That would all be great, if not for the racism, war and genocide.
It seems that if you have socialist policies, you are left, unless the reason you have them are authoritarian and genocidal, in which case you are far right. This is not me redefining anything. It’s just what the literature says, and it explains why people come out with things like horseshoe theory. They’re just trying to make sense of the contradictions.
IMHO, the problem is really just using too few dimensions to define politics.
The way i like to identify my libertarianism (is the way Cato Institute does) which is “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” which in itself is a hybrid of left and right if you take left and right to mean liberal and conservative which America mainly does. So the most of America, and even Australia in common dialogue are only using the one dimension. That description touches on the libertarian/authoritarian dimension abit at least.
However, the libertarian party in America, also attracts a lot of conservatives who either are ruthless because of idealogy (Rand etc) or just don’t like tax (which is funny if they’re Christian because the bible says give unto caesar what is caesars). However, many have no care about other people or society cohesiveness.
Similarly, one could argue that hitler’s nazism was “socially illiberal and fiscally non-conservative” because of his racial and superiority complex policies and he spent alot too (citation needed). So IMO Hitlers Nazism was pretty much opposite to Green quadrant or left of centre libertarian (reflected over both axises). And thats why i place it there on those models, but others have too, also based on looking at the hybrid of policies and structure (hierarchy) in itself. But your right, you could have like a 3 dimensional model or a 10 dimensional model like String Theory that would differentiate it more accurately.
I was going to say that I agree the two are not comparable.
So the case for not including that in the Bill of Rights has to be strong.
And your case there @MarkG is what i think and also probably what most pirates and most aussies think too…
However, looking at the wiki, its not all upfront.
In comparison, there are probably a decent amount of LDP supporters who were anti gay marriage, and yet i agree totally with Lleydonhjelms (pro SSM) view on that and he has that written up on the website.
So IMO it might be a good idea to take a “full disclosure” transparent approach to why we are for maintaining the current situation (as opposed to avoiding the issue), seems we are positioned as the libertarian left party and libertarian is often if not always connotated with gun freedoms even if incorrectly or naiively so.
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We are trying to avoid labels like libertarian left because words are easily tainted by other movements. We are just Pirate. Nothing to do with LDP.
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