Socialism is not Fascism (duh.)

For a bit of entertainment, this video provides a compendium of silliness from the RNC convention discussing their proposal to rename the Democratic party to the "Democrat Socialist party".

Full of lulz for sure, but a comment from an interviewee about 40 seconds in annoyed me with a historical misconception that I see all too often in the Republican ranks.

"One point of view is that calling them a Socialist party isn't quite accurate, they're more like a National Socialist party the way the Nazis were."

Uhm... yeah. The party we refer to as the Nazi party was officially called the National Socialist Party, but they were not socialists. They were Fascists. Fascists, in the left-right political spectrum, are the opposite of Socialists.

Brief historical reminder, Fascism versus Socialism was a common theme stemming from the Spanish Civil war (and before) and carried over to WWII. In that war the United States was allied with the USSR (and for the record, they were actually Socialists) fighting against Hitler and Mussolini, Fascists.

Far from being Socialists, these two were generally considered to be politically far-right and tended to whip crowds into frenzies with promises to wipe out the "godless communists". Sounds more like the modern day Republican party to me.