Posted on 06/10/2009 6:25:51 PM PDT by Michael Eden
I agree that it takes more than racism to determine right or left wing nut. Most liberals are so racist it hurts, but they just don’t see, God bless their little brains. I blame a lot of this on Atticus Finch.
parsy, who is stll tryng to figure out how you do a non-violent citizens arrest with a sawed off shotgun?? Somebody’s PT Boat was missing a few torpedoes.
Good points all. The coverage of this is bizarre, but then, what would you expect. In addition, I think Obama’s disruptive and disturbing policies are stirring up the nuts in general.
Only Leftists need to generalize everyone into group associations. This guy acted on his own. Anyone who generalizes him across sixty million other law abiding citizens is only trying to create a political movement to criminalize those sixty million people - and history shows that’s exactly what the Left does.
Of course, if a Muslim, say, just starts shooting at some soldiers, then of course the Muslim acted on his own. But that’s an obvious exception, so Leftists don’t bother mentioning it.
I think conservatives really need to try to figure out what conservatism is
You answer your own issue in the former statement: one of the BIG ways we can know that both Marxism and fascism are leftists is because they are both for BIG GOVERNMENT POWER.
I'm not trying to "re-define" anything; what I'm trying to do is CORRECTLY define Nazism/fascism as it should always have been understood in the first place.
The latter statement I quote from you is spot-on. It is better to know what you stand for than what you oppose.
PS - I'm just starting to become increasingly fascinated with the Knights Templar.
I blame a lot of this on Atticus Finch.
No liberal would ever pick up a gun and shoot a rabid dog., nope the liberal would get Atticus to do it forhim.
I agree. Obama has been playing the politics of class warfare as I've never seen in my lifetime.
When you combine high unemployment with class-warfare, you are inviting nuts to come out and kill "the man."
Sort of like Obama's pal Bill Ayers.
NAZIs and fascists are socialists, from the left side of the spectrum. They want a strong centralized government.
Those on the right want a limited government.
True, but he was a white who was pro-white, if he was a white who was anti-white those opinions that would have made him left-wing.
Check out his website, he doesn't sound lefty. Of course he isn't in any sense a movement conservative (to the extent movement conservatives still exist.)
A lot of confusion goes back to the European (especially French) definitions, where the whole left/right terminology started. Right generally meant monarchist/statist/class based social tradition. Conservatism meant upholding that status quo. Left meant classic liberalism, social equality, seperation of church and state, etc.
In America the European style right were the Tories, and they left after the Revolution. The country was founded on the classic liberalism of Locke and Jefferson. Conservatism in America meant conserving the classic liberal values on which the country was founded.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the left in both Europe and America changed from libalism to Marxism and other forms of socialism. Classic liberals in Europe became the middle, and in America, conservatives ironically became the sole defenders of classic liberalism.
Fascicm in Europe became associated with the right because of it’s statist authoritarianism. So neo-fascists in America are generally lumped in with “the right” because of that. They really don’t have anything to do with either the mainstream right or the left in America though.
Yeah, but when Atticus walked in that courtroom and all the colored folk up on the second floor stood up with that hats in their hands. . . there went the civil rights movement. Millions of American liberals wanted that, to save the poor colored folk from injustice so they could get a standing ovation. I think for liberals it was never really about changing what was wrong—it was about personal glorification.
parsy, who gets cynical when drinks and pops valium (prescrbed-I use them when my shoulder or back seizes up.)
When you understand the history of progressivism, you see that being a white supremacist racist goes hand in hand with being a progressive.
Woodrow Wilson, “the father of progressivism,” was a profound racist, as an example.
What Wilson loved was accumulating massive federal power. And then using that power to pursue his agenda.
Until the 1960s, the Democratic Party stood for racism. And then all of a sudden they switched. Why? Cynical me, I think it was so they could exploit blacks as a political voting bloc.
When you look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964, you see a LOT of fierce Democratic opposition. Howard Smith (D-VA) kept it bottled up in committee and vowed to keep it that way. Richard Russell (D-GA) launched a filibuster against it. Senator Robert Byrd (D-W VA) spoke on the Senate floor for 14 hours opposing it. Two Republicans and two Democrats rewrote the bill so that Republicans would vote in enough numbers to overcome the Democrat’s filibuster.
And then all of a sudden Democrats - the original Ku Klux Klansmen - became the party dedicated to civil rights for blacks, and Republicans - the party of Lincoln founded to oppose slavery - became the villains.
All that said, it is very easy to be a white Democrat who views blacks as “monkey children” who need support and guidance from their superiors, and be a liberal Democrat in good standing.
Robert Byrd - former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan - is STILL a liberal Democrat in good standing.
I would first ask you how communism was NOT "statist authoritarianism."
I have a rather different take on how fascism came to be viewed as being rightwing.
Part of the problem in recognizing fascism has been the assumption that it is conservative. Zeev Sternhall (in "Fascist Ideology" in Fascism: A Reader's Guide, pg 316) observed how the study of fascist ideology has been obscured by "the official Marxist interpretation of fascism." The Marxists defined fascism as their polar opposite. If Marxism is progressivism, fascism became conservatism; If Marxism is leftwing, fascism became rightwing; if Marxism championed the proletariat, fascism championed the bourgeoisie; if Marxism is socialist, fascism became capitalist. The massive influence of Marxist scholarship (to this day Western universities continue to be dominated by Marxist thought) severely distorted the understanding of fascism.
But the fact remains, Marxism and fascism were both rival brands of the same thing (socialism). Where Marxist socialism is predicated on an international class struggle, fascist socialism promoted a socialism centered in national unity. Both communism and fascism opposed the bourgeoisie (remember "German WORKERS' Party." BOTH attacked the conservatives and destroyed them. Both were mass movements, which had special appeal for the intelligentsia, students, artists, workers - the normal leftist groups. Both demanded strong, centralized governments and rejected a free economy and the ideas and ideals of individual liberty.
When you study the history of American progressivism, you find they were HUGELY supportive of fascism until Stalin literally gave them different marching orders. Many of the top progressives of the 1920s and well into the 1930s were huge Mussolini and Hitler fans. American progressives went to Italy and particularly Germany to study this "wonderful" new form of government.
It is very easy to understand Theodore Roosevelt as a fascist-style progressive.
I would first ask you how communism was NOT "statist authoritarianism."
I have a rather different take on how fascism came to be viewed as being rightwing.
Part of the problem in recognizing fascism has been the assumption that it is conservative. Zeev Sternhall (in "Fascist Ideology" in Fascism: A Reader's Guide, pg 316) observed how the study of fascist ideology has been obscured by "the official Marxist interpretation of fascism." The Marxists defined fascism as their polar opposite. If Marxism is progressivism, fascism became conservatism; If Marxism is leftwing, fascism became rightwing; if Marxism championed the proletariat, fascism championed the bourgeoisie; if Marxism is socialist, fascism became capitalist. The massive influence of Marxist scholarship (to this day Western universities continue to be dominated by Marxist thought) severely distorted the understanding of fascism.
But the fact remains, Marxism and fascism were both rival brands of the same thing (socialism). Where Marxist socialism is predicated on an international class struggle, fascist socialism promoted a socialism centered in national unity. Both communism and fascism opposed the bourgeoisie (remember "German WORKERS' Party." BOTH attacked the conservatives and destroyed them. Both were mass movements, which had special appeal for the intelligentsia, students, artists, workers - the normal leftist groups. Both demanded strong, centralized governments and rejected a free economy and the ideas and ideals of individual liberty.
When you study the history of American progressivism, you find they were HUGELY supportive of fascism until Stalin literally gave them different marching orders. Many of the top progressives of the 1920s and well into the 1930s were huge Mussolini and Hitler fans. American progressives went to Italy and particularly Germany to study this "wonderful" new form of government.
It is very easy to understand Theodore Roosevelt as a fascist-style progressive.
Well said.
Anyone who doesn’t have Jonah Goldberg’s book should make it their next purchase.
It is INCREDIBLE. Goldberg massively interacts with original sources and writers of the period, and conclusively demonstrates his project. Liberals poo-pooh him merely because they don’t like what he documents and demonstrates.
That's ANOTHER great book to read.
Obviously it is. I never said it wasn't, at least in practice. The left adopted ststism implicitly when they became Marxist/socialist. Although in Marxist theory (as opposed to some other non-Marxist socialists) the state was supposed to "wither away" once Communism had taken over all the nations. Therefore nationalism wasn't glorified, except as an expediency, as in WWII when Soviet propganda abruptly changed from solidarity with the international working classes to fighting for Mother Russia. Fascism always promoted not just statism but hyper-nationalism for it's own ideological sake.
Great post, thank you. Hopefully more leftists will read things like this and think about what “leftwing” really stands for. As a former leftist I can attest that a lot of brainwshing is involved in subscribing to that belief system.
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