Interesting article. Thanks!
My take: the European view of the American right is a psychological phenomenom.
The American right reveres above all else the constitutional system of governance created at our founding, a uniquely American achievement.
The American left has little respect for the founding principles, and considers them a form of false consciousness used as a tool of class oppression. Instead, they look to European thinkers like Rousseau, Marx and Sartre, which flatters Europeans.
The Europeans have an inferiority complex when it comes to the success of the American constitutional system, so they naturally embrace the American left which idolizes European thinkers and try to denigrate and distort the American right which is identified with the American constitutional system, as a way of discrediting the accomplishments of the latter.
My view, like here in the US Europeans are taught that the extreme right is Nazi’s and the extreme left are Communists. In reality the Nazi party was national socialists, thus making them leftists.
The real distinction is that the left favors big government, the right limited government, but this is not what they are taught.
Ah, Nazi are leftists. Small little fact there. Stalin was a leftist, Duh. The “right” in Europe is technically royalty/kingdom government.
Whenever I read about some right-wing regime that has cost tens of millions of lives, I always wonder which one that was, and how it stayed so well below the radar.
All of the regimes that I’ve heard about that cost so many lives were leftist: communist, socialist, or fascist.
I wish people would stop claiming that any of those are right-wing. I know the mischaracterization is deliberate...
Europeans have had no exposure to what we consider freedom, these are societies that regulate and keep tabs on everything, from what you name your child to where you live. They are also quite comfortable with the idea that there are “betters” in society, and continue to pay homage to them. I don’t think we could imagine referring to a physician for example, as Sir “Doctor”.
The caricatures they paint us with stem from their fear of lawlessness.
The Euro-elitists take their cues from the American left. They get their “knowledge” of American conservatives from people like Michael Moore and Oliver Stone. I have one Brit brother-in-law who believed everything he read in Moore’s book about the 2000 election including (among many outright lies) the one about police intimidating African-Americans from voting. I almost laughed in his face, he had practically memorized the entire book. I spent half an hour shooting it down, but I doubt I totally convinced him. Because they want to believe the lies Moore and Stone peddle. They love big government (even though they distrust quite a bit of it) just like our American lefties.
European = moron = disregard
Btt