Not the final word- nor the perfect formulation- but we do need to hear
critical perspectives on the repackaging of Nazi type ideas:
Third positionism
Third Positionism is a peculiar subspecies of political wingnut movements which attempt to mix neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism, and far-right ultra-nationalism with whatever economic and social issues of the left they want to throw into their toxic stew, including anything from neo-paganism, feminism, animal rights, and radical environmentalism, all the way over to old-left ideologies such as anarchism and Marxism, and nearly-forgotten archaic economic ideas such as Distributism and Social Credit.
The name refers to their claim that they have an ideology that is beyond both capitalism and socialism and represents a third pole in international politics distinct from, and in opposition to, the U.S. and Soviet blocs during the Cold War. This is dubious and gives far too much importance to this fringe movement. Third Positionism is, essentially, nothing more than white nationalism with a economically leftist and/or countercultural spin.
One additional difference with other white nationalists is that Third Positionists tend toward a third-worldist view of foreign policy, viewing western imperialism as an agent of multiculturalism (or, more specifically for those given to overt anti-Semitism, of Zionism) that allows non-white cultural influences to creep from the colonies into white nations, and vice-versa. Third world ideologies such as Muammar al-Gaddafi's Green Book and North Korea's "Juche" are seen as sources of non-white racial nationalist resistance in the developing world, which they view as kindred spirits to white nationalist movements in the developed west. Some Third Positionists in the US have even sought common cause with Black Power groups like the Nation of Islam over racial separatism and anti-Semitism.[1] By contrast, more conventional white nationalists take a patriotic stance and rail against the "Yellow Peril" and Islam.
Groups
Groups that fall into this category include the Official National Front (now defunct) in the U.K. and its offshoots (still active), and the American Front (now defunct) in the U.S. Tom Metzger, despite his heavy use of crude racist cartoons and rhetoric that most Third Postionists would distance themselves from, has often been described as a Third Positionist. More recently, groups cut from the same stuff have started using terms like "national anarchism" and "national Bolshevism" to describe themselves. An American political party formed in 2010 calls itself American Third Position[2], though its stance is not really Third Positionism so much as it is producerist conservative meets white nationalism. Another example from the Internet, which is widely believed to be a stealth parody yet is a good illustration of what Third Positionism is, is a website purporting to be the "Libertarian National Socialist Green Party."
There are some regional differences. Continental European groups favor pagan and skinhead imagery and hearken to radical anti-civilization ideologues like Julius Evola and Pentti Linkola, as well as the writings of Francis Parker Yockey. By contrast, American Third Position presents itself as a professional and businesslike political party, even avoiding any of Third Positionism's usual leftist flirtations in favor of a middle class centrist-to-liberal veneer. Groups in the United Kingdom seem to favor radically traditionalist Catholicism and agrarianism.
Why?
This leaves open the question of why somebody would simultaneously mix up a stew of neo-Nazism with left-wing social and economic views.[3] This probably could be a subject for much psychological and sociological analysis, or perhaps these people are so alienated from society they are willing to believe in anything as long as it is way off the deep end. Or perhaps they're just plain nuts.
For a more nuanced political analysis of this phenomenon, look to the original National Socialist German Workers Party of the 1930s. One faction, led by Adolf Hitler, was merely interested in raw power, hatred, and putting their genocidal and militaristic fantasies into practice. The other faction, led by the Strasser brothers, took the "Socialist" part of the party's name seriously and espoused a left-wing working class revolutionary stance in addition to extreme nationalism. The Strasser faction was violently purged by the Hitler faction not long after Hitler's rise to power, in the "Night of the Long Knives".[4] Third Positionism, then, is more or less to neo-Nazism what Strasserism was to the original Nazism. Note the similarity of "national anarchism" and "national Bolshevism" to "national socialism".
Similar movements
There exist many syncretist political movements that mix left and right, such as libertarianism, the Hardline movement and some other hard greens, and some conspiracy theorists who simultaneously espouse conspiracy theories of the far left and far right. These are neither Third Positionist nor fascist and shouldn't be confused with such, but still illustrate how seemingly disparate political views can merge.
One curious footnote is the political cult of Lyndon LaRouche, which holds opposing views to Third Positionism in many ways but ended up evolving into a similar fusion of wingnuttery and moonbattery that, like Third Positionism, is often considered by critics to be a proto-fascist movement.
British right-wing ideologue Enoch Powell espoused many of the contrarian nationalist ideas that would later influence Third Positionism, often going against the conventional wisdom of the British right. Notably, he viewed the United States as a greater threat to Britain than the Soviet Union, feeling that the Americans had destroyed the British Empire for their own gain and wanted a united Ireland within NATO to combat communism (at the expense of British rule in Northern Ireland), and that Britain and Russia were "natural allies" in the European balance of power. However, his economic ideas were staunchly opposed to the left-wing populism of Third Positionism; he was a monetarist and one of the first major British politicians to call for large-scale privatization of state-owned industries, more than a decade before Margaret Thatcher took office and put such plans into action.
Paleoconservatism is a movement that can be described as an Americanized Third Positionism with a rooting in Christian fundamentalism. Unlike Third Positionism, it claims to be right-wing rather than left-wing, yet many of its critiques of globalization and modern capitalism are nearly identical to those used by Third Positionists (i.e. "they're vehicles of multiculturalism that are destroying Western civilization"), and like Third Positionism, it portrays itself as defending the West against swarthy foreign forces.[5] The two movements often draw influence from many of the same reactionary thinkers. The similarities between paleoconservatism and Third Positionism go to show that the line between the left and right wings is a lot blurrier than either side likes to make out or admit.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Third_positionism
