Posted on 06/15/2009 10:18:46 AM PDT by yongin
An unfortunate tendency on the right these days is to attempt to win arguments through tendentious and shallow redefinitions of what constitutes “left” and “right.”
That tendency flared up in recent days with efforts to rebut any notion that the Holocaust Museum shooter was a right-wing extremist and, instead, to rebrand him as a leftist – or “vile leftist monster,” as Rand Simberg put it in one such creative feat of ideological legerdemain at Pajamas Media.
According to Simberg, there’s nothing in James von Brunn’s biography that qualifies as right-wing, “if by that you mean someone who adheres to individualism, the values of the enlightenment and limited government.”
That, however, is an absurdly limited and ahistorical view of what constitutes the right. Historically, “right” and “left” became political affiliations with the French Revolution, when those seeking continuity with the old regime sat on the legislature’s right side and those pressing for change sat on the left. Thus began the longstanding convention of labeling as “right” various efforts to preserve some earlier order (or idealized version of one), and as “left” efforts to bring about some new arrangement (typically presented as breaking away from a benighted past).
By that common understanding, the right includes advocates of limited government and the free market (key elements of the United States since its founding) as well as defenders of traditional religious morality (who may not be enthusiasts of the “enlightenment values” that Simberg doesn’t define). Being a libertarian-leaning conservative, I consider myself part of the right.
But right, like left, is also a broad term, one that includes all sorts of ideas outside the mainstream of American politics. Left-wing extremism would include, say, Maoists or anarchists (at least ones of a collectivist, anti-Starbucks persuasion). What might right-wing extremism include?
To ask such a question threatens to unleash a blog comments debate, heated to the point of sterility, about whether Nazism and fascism sprang from the right or left stretch of the political spectrum. It’s become a common theme of conservatives, particularly since the publication of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, to emphasize the socialistic aspects of putatively right-wing totalitarian ideologies. Similarly, quite a few conservatives these days like to use the term “fascist” to describe the direction that America is supposedly heading under the current administration.
Such redefinition comes in reaction to a facile and misguided left-wing tendency to throw around “fascist” and even “Nazi” as pejoratives for conservatives. But asserting that these ideologies were simply manifestations of the left is also facile and misguided. Nazism and fascism were very much about restoring an earlier, idealized order – the very definition of the right, as it has long been understood. Mussolini harkened back to the lost grandeur of the Roman Empire. Hitler sought to restore the mythical purity of the Aryan race. The nationalism of these totalitarians was far more extreme than their socialism, and their cultural predilections looked largely backward (build classical columns, ban “degenerate” art). Their appeal to their followers was in no small part that they would reestablish order against modern decay.
Latter-day admirers of the Nazis and fascists, such as James von Brunn, typically emphasize racial or national chauvinism over socialistic economics by a wide margin. They want to recapture a lost (and generally bogus) past, rather than remake the world according to a future vision. As such, they are on the extreme right. It does no credit to current-day conservatives, and adds nothing to understanding, to redefine the extreme right out of existence by claiming that it’s just another bunch of leftists.
First MSM makes the slander. Now moderate sites echo the charge.
LOL!
The left is going to rely on 200 year-old French tradition to classify modern leftists???
It has come forth that he is a registered Democrat....
One (Captialism) is past history; the other, WESTERN SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West... -James W. Von Brunn, Kill the Best Gentiles!
The effort has been to paint the Holocaust Museum alleged killer as “a right wing extremist” but James von Brunn was, in fact, a left wing extremist, a devotee of socialism mixed with a hatred of Jews and blacks. If one listened to the mainstream news media, the only extremists in America are right wingers.
The mainstream media have for decades striven heartily to avoid calling attention to the leftist orientation of the many environmental organizations at work in the nation. The political strife of the 1960s culminating in the attacks by the Weather Underground, a faction of the Students for a Democratic Society, acted upon their socialist beliefs. One of them, William Ayers, held the first political fund raiser for Barack Obama.
Lincoln said it best. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
Alan Caruba Sunday, June 14, 2009
What a farse. The tradition came from Greece, where we modeled our basic form of government. As did the French, who followed our lead after their revolution.
As to his assertion that von Brunn was "Right Wing", he is cosmically wrong. By definition, he was a socialist, as in National Socialist Workers Party. If that ain't "Left Wing", then there ain't no "Left Wing".
LOL “New Majority”. Bookmark that site and come back in a few years for good laughs.
Marx himself claimed that the earliest human civilizations were communist in economic structure, and that it was mercantilism and industrialization that had “dehumanized” us. Marx borrowed the idea from Rousseau that the “noble savage”, unlike the civilized man, was worthy of the highest approbation. So the left idealizes the past, in its own way.
This is nonsense! Anyone can make up a definition of anything and then say their opposition fits that mold. This writer’s definitions of “right” and “left” are extremely narrow. I guess this represents a good try at blaming conservatives, but facts are facts.
The left needs to own up to the fact that Hitler was one of their own.
The current left-right classification is misleading. Some liberals—though a shrinking number—do favor personal liberty in some areas—e.g. sex, drug use. And many conservatives favor limitations on personal liberty—e.g. sex, drug use.
A better classification is the libertarian-authoritarian with liberal and conservative wings. There are various versions of the test by which you can classify yourself, pioneered by Advocates for Self-Government http://www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html.
Here’s one I like: http://www.quiz2d.com/quiz/ .
"Most people know that you can disagree with a political issue without being disagreeable. We need to hold not only those people who use our free public airwaves accountable, but also our elected officials accountable. Some of the more vicious commentaries can validate those who live on the edge and who already have a propensity for violence and irrational thoughts.
How can we control some of the hate and fear-mongering we see and hear daily? First, we can turn off their programs. Second, we can contact the sponsors of these radio and TV programs and let them know that we will not buy their products as long as they sponsor shows that promote hate and name-calling. Third, we can vote against those elected officials who use name-calling and fear-mongering in their campaigns.
As Americans, we all have the moral responsibility to promote peace and civil disagreements, and to not accept those who choose hate and name-calling to try to win our support."
Wake up Prissy and smell reality... there are wacked out people in the world and they've got no one to blame but themselves &/or the families that rasied them.
So janitorial service is fundamentally a right-wing activity? Medical care is a right-wing activity? Repairing potholes?
Just because someone is trying to "restore" something that once existed doesn't imply bias to or against any particular political ideology. The fact is that the Nazis were "national socialists". Their economic (government control of business, etc.) and political (gun control, managing health care, strong centralized government, etc.) policies are barely distinguishable from the Left of today.
Come to think of it, their 'big lie' style of asserting falsehoods until they are accepted as the truth seem to have Nazi parallels as well.
That common understanding is wrong. Between nationalist socialism, fascism on the "right", and internationalist socialism, marxism on the "left", there is no middle ground on which liberty finds itself perched precariously.
On a continuum between two forms of totalitarian extremes, you will find variations on the theme, you will find more extreme or less extreme, murderous extremes versus stultifying conformist middles. But you will not find liberty, or the liberty philosophies.
"Classic liberalism", which is what American conservatism is, is no where on the continuum between two competing totalitarianisms. We are something else entirely. We are a different breed of cat.
I never really thought of “right” meaning “looking backwards to a glorious past”. I think of “right” meaning “correct”, as in the appropriate philosophy.
It was nice of the author to understand that the principles of limited government date back to the founding fathers, but everybody wanting to “go back” to another day isn’t “right-wing”. For example, the current Obama administration talks about getting America “back” to where we once were, as a respected and law-abiding nation. As rediculous as that is, by this person’s definition that would make Obama “right-wing”.
The key though is not whether to label this guy “right” or “left”. The key is to determine whose side he would feel most comfortable with.
And his rhetoric matches that of the current left much more than the current right, so much so that he hated what had become of the “right”, attacking our leaders and ideas.
And if any one thing has defined the “left-right” schism on foreign policy, it is the support for Israel, enshrined by the right but at best given lip service by the left. And on that issue, this man was far left.
Well, the fascist economic policy is based on government control of the economy while maintaining the facade of private ownership. The only arguments are about which of Obama's policies are fascist and which ones are outright socialist.
Imagine if the guy were a registered Republican. Boy, then they’d have a real case.
What a bunch of fags.
This guy should be prosecuted for torturing history and political science.
Another ignoramus with a computer.
Yep. He’s a right-wing registered DemocRAT dontcha know. LOL
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