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That't the kind of argument that are frequently encountered in websites and internet forums, but which receives little attention from more serious political philosophers. Basically, one person claims that the ideology some other person adheres to "really" is the same as some other ideology, that both persons despise. The "argument" laid forth for this claim is that both ideologies share some abstract similarity.

A social conservative might thus claim that "libertarians are really marxists at heart (they both wants to re-design society from abstract blueprints, showing little respect for established social mores, etc.); leftists can claim that "libertarians and fascists are really the same (since they don't share the class-war analysis, etc.)", etc. Proponents of virtually any ideology can say that virtually any two other ideologies "share the same fundamental ideas".

The problem is, of course, that though one can point to similarities between any two ideologies, one can also point at differences. To take a closer look at one of the alleged "similarities" between FDR liberalism and nazism:



But nazis and FDR liberals disagree what counts as "favoured" and "disfavoured" groups, and what counts as "exploiting", as well as on many other issues. They are both similar (and so are also proponents most other political ideologies, like conservatives, social-demicrats, moderate libertarians, communists, etc.) that some state power is acceptable. But what state power, and what justification for this state power can be given, differ highly between the various ideologies. What one ideology counts as legitimate exercise of state power, may be regarded as illegitimate by another ideology. The similarities between the various ideologies thus boil down to that they don't think that a radical laissez-faire system (at least not always) is the most just political or economic system, and at least in some situations may render unwelcome results. But they may disagree highly on in what situations laissez-faire systems fail, which in turn follow from that the different ideologies may have very different ideas about justice, and what people are entitled to to begin with.

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constructedlanguages.net

Of course you can point out silly, superficial similarities and differences: Marxism and the american republican party both use the color red to identify themselves, but I don't think anyone would seriously claim that they're the same on these grounds alone. What needs to be decided is which aspects of an ideology are fundamental and worthy of attention, and which aspects are superficial and may be ignored. I think that race-war vs. class-war conceptions politics is a superficial and, thus, unimportant difference: That they view socio-economic interactions as inherently antagonistic is enough to reject both. The comparison won't convince anyone who doesn't already agree with that, but why should it?

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Maybe, maybe not. Proponents of marxism and racism of various kinds would probably claim there are important differences between the notions of 'class' and 'race', respectively. In fact, I think they would use very different arguments to justify their positions. The kind of argument that would justify 'class' as a fundamental socio-economic analysis would probably not justify 'race' as an equally important category (and vice versa; the kind of arguments that makes 'race' a fundamental notion, would not do so with 'class'). Both positions may be wrong (which I believe they are), but different arguments may be needed to refute them. Both marxists and racists would believe that a laissez-faire system is 'unfair', according to their respective conceptions of justice (=such a system would fail to give certain people what they are entitled to). But since they may have widely differing views about what people are entitled to in the first place, their shared belief that a laissez faire-system would fail to live up to their conceptions of justice or fairness, might be more of a negative trait they share.



If one aims to convince anyone else that the libertarian/anarcho-capitalist worldview is true, it would be unwise to use comparisons and analogies that presuppose the basic assumptions of the worldview.

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constructedlanguages.net

Of course. However, I'm not really trying to convince anyone of that.

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