Posted on 08/03/2016 8:30:16 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
When the history of the West is written it will say: they educated themselves to hate themselves and love what they hate about themselves in the other.
On a fairly consistent basis people in the West embrace values abroad that they shun at home.
This is particularly odd and contradictory among those who self-identify as Left and liberal and then embrace movements, leaders, ideologies and religions that are manifestly illiberal and right- wing extremist abroad. For instance American philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler said in 2006 that understanding Hamas [and] Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the left, that are part of the global left, is extremely important.
That contradictory view is emblematic of a phenomenon spanning everything from Michel Foucaults embrace of the Islamic Revolution in Iran to those anti-war activists in the UK who support Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russias bombing of civilians.
Why do people who support womens rights in the US or France excuse the Iranian regime? Why do those who dislike militarism view as romantic people in uniform in Pakistan or Moscow?
Why do those who dislike US presidential candidate Donald Trump find bombastic populists like Venezualas Hugo Chavez so endearing?
Why is Assads war on terror so good, but George W. Bushs so bad?
Large numbers of commentators and intellectuals associated with the Left in the West have, for over 100 years, continually allied themselves with totalitarian, extremist, thuggish, populist, militarist, extreme right-wing, religious fanatical regimes and movements abroad.
Whether it was George Bernard Shaw touring and apologizing for Stalins Russia, or Noam Chomsky claiming refugees from the Cambodian genocide were unreliable and that massacre reports were false, there is a long tradition of mitigating the kinds of crimes abroad people would never excuse at home.
To understand this phenomenon we have to unpack what it means to be left-wing in the West. To be on the Left is to be good, to be progressive, to be for womens rights, gay rights, environmentalism, social justice, workers rights, and to be against racism and discrimination, perhaps against nuclear energy, against war.
It didnt always mean that.
Before the defeat of Nazism, to be left-wing was largely an ideological choice to be part of a global Left of various movements.
Although ostensibly for workers rights, right- and left-wing populist movements of the 1920s were essentially the same in their totalitarian fantasies. Since being Left was self-defined, its not clear what made the Khmer Rouge and its genocide any more left-wing than the Hutu genociders in Rwanda.
What made Arab nationalists of one variety, such as Palestinians, left-wing whereas those of another variety, such as the Lebanese Forces, right-wing?
Loyalty to these left-wing movements was largely ideological, if not contradictory. So Stalin was supported simply because some left-wingers in the West accepted the Soviet Communist Partys line; others liked comrade Trotsky and therefore did not like Stalin. Not because they were liberals, but because the party told them so.
In those days the ideological Left wanted the West to look like the Soviet Union: a one-party state they would control.
When we get to the 1990s and the fall of Communism, the need to be loyal to a declining and dying official Left abroad was eroded.
But what to do about the void inside, the need to be loyal to fanatical, violent, extremist movements abroad? Where was the romance of revolution, as they called the genocide in Cambodia, the revolution of the peasants and masses and the lioniz- ing of mass murder in the name of populism?
To understand the blind and contradictory loyalty of people who call themselves progressive but embrace manifestly reactionary policies abroad is to understand that humans need to fill the void of rage within.
For the self-declared Right in the West that void is filled through home-grown nationalism. But the Left eschews nationalism at home. Yet the nationalism of the other is authentic and palatable. Discarding ones own flag is de rigueur but filling oneself up with the nationalism of the other is acceptable.
Thus the post-1990s embrace of religious fanaticism and right-wing nationalist extremism abroad has filled the void left by the fall of communism for the intellectual Left in the West.
Look at Chavez as a perfect example; a bloated, bullying, uniformed militarist and former coup leader turned into a revolutionary internationalist and praised. He had uncompromising anti-imperialism and mobilized global unity against the main enemy.
His grassroots communal councils were engaging masses and building meaningful democracy. Alan Woods in the London Progressive Journal warned of sabotage and the lumpenproletariat riffraff who were causing mayhem against poor Chavez.
Listen to how the Westerner describes the great leader: Chavez always drew inspiration from contact with the revolutionary masses. So why dont they have Chavez in the UK or America? Men in uniform parading, the presidents voice booming on all channels, searching for enemies, sabotage?
A bit like Donald Trump, but more so.
Because the Westerner wants their great leader in Venezuala, not London, religious police to harass immodest women in Aceh, not Denmark. Nationalism abroad, pragmatism at home. Bolivarian Revolution abroad, internationalism at home.
Because Venezuelans pay the price now with mass hunger, as a recent BBC report noted, empty shelves, people unable to breastfeed because the country was destroyed by this populist, militarist nonsense.
Chavez was not a progressive, he was a right-wing militarist who passed himself off as left-wing in much the same way Hezbollah and Hamas, Bashar Assad and the ayatollahs are all left-wing.
WHEN LOOKING at the love and adoration some in the West have for the extreme Right abroad, one notices how people embrace diametric opposite values abroad and at home. They dont like Jerry Falwell, but if he was Ayatollah Jerry al-Falwell, hed be beloved and honored.
Rabbi Brant Rosen, who supports social justice in Chicago, went to Iran in 2008 and met men in robes with beards who represent the opposite of social justice. He wrote glowingly of the ethno-nationalism of Persia, a country with a proud and venerable history...all Iranians young and old identify deeply with their ancient history....united in their reverence for Persian history.
What about the Iranian minorities being brutally suppressed by the Persians, such as Kurds, Arabs, Azeris and Baluch? The American rabbi didnt mention them, in fact his blog seems to indicate that they dont exist.
In America social justice means acknowledging minorities, but those preaching social justice at home embrace rabid religious extremism abroad. No one would accept a law forcing women to cover their hair in Chicago, but in Iran they laugh and enjoy the forced religious observance.
Why is Persian nationalism or other foreign nationalism so enticing to some in the West? Because American, French or German nationalism is not.
Abroad is a place to pour ones love of proud nations. Its where one can openly worship verile, powerful men; nationalism, religious extremism, war, caning and hanging in public, beheadings, stonings let out all that aggression that living in the West has cooped up.
The love of foreign nation and religion one finds in the writings of so many on the Left who ostensibly oppose nationalism is always interesting. The love of pride, faith, dignity and roots in the soil, of brawn and flag, of sword and gun, points to a nationalist yearning that the Western self-defined Left cannot allow them- selves at home.
The same values in Trump or Brexit, Le Pen or Lega Nord that the progressives find objectionable in the West, when expressed in Venezuala, Syria, Iran or among Palestinians are admirable.
Dont kid yourselves and pretend these progressives simply dont hear their friends in Iran call abortion satanic or hear them say homosexuals are a cancer, or hear their chauvinist friends in the Muslim Brotherhood say a womans place is in the home.
They hear it, and they support it. When the overweight, bearded religious leaders in Iran say women and men are different; women are driven by their emotions, the same people who speak of gender neutrality in the West widen their eyes and say yes I agree, such an insight, not where is the transgender bathroom?
When Hugo Chavez said he couldnt be a homosexual because he was sufficiently macho to pulverize any accusation along those lines, gay rights advocates didnt bat an eye. Homophobia is cool only abroad, not at home.
If you took an average progressive lover of Hezbollah and told them to dunk in a fountain and be born again in Texas theyd mock ignorant religion but take them to the Bekaa valley and tell them to whip them- selves for Ashura and theyll find it beautiful.
This entire phenomenon is what should be known as locational liberalism.
Locational liberalism means you support liberalism only in one place, and support its diametric opposite somewhere else. The result is that there are basically two right-wing forces at war with each other in the West. One supports right-wing religious nationalist forces abroad, the other supports them at home.
The Wests fragile liberal values which took 1,000 years to achieve by eroding the power of religion, nationalism, racism, xenophobia and chauvinism stand no chance against the competing forces of the foreign right wing, the internal right wing and the internal locational liberal who betrays them at home and supports them abroad.
When the history of the West is written it will say: they educated themselves to hate themselves and love what they hate about themselves in the other.
Fascists try to keep their own kind in power, wealth and privilege while trying to drive everyone else to exposure, starvation and violent deaths. Fascists in every political party secretly agree while pretending to be on opposite sides. Here are the policies of fascists and the truth about their motives.
Immigration for their own kind regardless of where their national loyalties lie (”professionals,” rich foreign terrorists).
Businesses for their own kind (regulations, fees, arbitrary regulator discretion, harassment).
Housing for their own kind (regulations, fees, arbitrary regulator discretion, harassment), decline of vocational/technical programs and domestic production.
Rights for their own kind: rights to own firearms for example.
Higher education for their own kind (certain groups of government employees more relieved from student loans).
One commenter recently wrote, “They are not conservatives. Heck, they arent even public servants.”
And many more examples... So the socialists in both political parties look for a “strongman” as a leader in hopes that they will get the policies they want with the use of force instead of democracy.
“NOW—”Western Leftists” want to turn their own countries into puffs while supporting and having sexual fantasies about ultra-nationalist military strongmen in other cultures. They’re hippies but they cheer when Non-Western Left countries murder their own “hippies.” They’re freaking hypocrites, just like they are when they idolize Black Fundamentalist Protestants who speak sub-standard English but hate the guts of white Fundamentalist Protestants who speak sub-standard English.”
I am sure there are plenty of useful idiots (or double-thinking party loyalists) who fit the above description.
But the party leaders tend to be Machiavellian power seekers who see allies abroad and enemies at home. They have no problem with totalitarian regimes abroad, especially those that oppose the current order in the US, because they intend to overthrow that order and impose their own totalitarian regime. There is no contradiction there. There is only power seeking, hatred of the existing order, and a willful, malicious desire to destroy.
Those things do not contradict one another.
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