I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Ummm...
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
So why were their opponents the communists ?
This is a very silly debate.
People's Front of Judea...
Not really. This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Ummm...
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
So why were their opponents the communists ?
This is a very silly debate.
People's Front of Judea...
Not really. This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
What distinguished left-wing Mussolini from right-wing Mussolini?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Ummm...
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
So why were their opponents the communists ?
This is a very silly debate.
People's Front of Judea...
Not really. This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
What distinguished left-wing Mussolini from right-wing Mussolini?
Right wing Mussolini put left wing Gramsci in jail for 11 years which killed him.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Ummm...
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
So why were their opponents the communists ?
This is a very silly debate.
People's Front of Judea...
Not really. This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
What distinguished left-wing Mussolini from right-wing Mussolini?
Right wing Mussolini put left wing Gramsci in jail for 11 years which killed him.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Liberalism - people who can escape if everything falls apart Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
That’s a nice summary. We can probably add populist right to those who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart. Hence the “give it a whirl” tendency of some Brexit voters.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Liberalism - people who can escape if everything falls apart Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
That’s a nice summary. We can probably add populist right to those who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart. Hence the “give it a whirl” tendency of some Brexit voters.
Don't you think there is something fundamentally wrong with a system where so much of he population - probably the majority combining two of those groups - have nothing to lose if it all falls apart? That strikes me as a failed system
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Liberalism - people who can escape if everything falls apart Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
That’s a nice summary. We can probably add populist right to those who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart. Hence the “give it a whirl” tendency of some Brexit voters.
Don't you think there is something fundamentally wrong with a system where so much of he population - probably the majority combining two of those groups - have nothing to lose if it all falls apart? That strikes me as a failed system
I’m not sure it’s anywhere near a majority.
There’s probably 5% max for whom there really would be nothing to lose if things fall apart. There might be another 20% who don’t think they have anything to lose, but would soon discover they do. Then a further large group - no idea the number - who are a bit equivocal, torn between natural conservatism and a wish to preserve how things are, and the excitement of radical change.
I think it was ever thus. But we don’t have many of the preconditions for revolution and civil unrest - mass unemployment, or hyperinflation, or major ethnic tensions - and that probably explains why we have a conservative government in power. Lots of people, particularly the retired, who feel fairly comfortable.
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so."
If only Wikipedia had existed when I was 5 I wouldn’t have needed to go to school or university as it’s an absolutely flawless source of absolute facts compiled only by experts with impeccable credentials and not an open source depository of the opinions of anyone who can be arsed to update it.
I consider myself educated by an article on Wikipedia - fuck my qualifications I can just say to a potential employer that I have been educated by Wikipedia and therefore I am beyond criticism or nuance in any argument.
I appreciate it must be annoying for you to have made the stupid mistake of thinking Hitler was in any way not right-wing but I am glad to have helped with your education.
Ummm...
Weren't the Nazis National Socialists?
So why were their opponents the communists ?
This is a very silly debate.
People's Front of Judea...
Not really. This extreme left and extreme right have much in common (none if it good), but they are still left and right.
This is the important point and the reason why this argument is so daft. The Nazis were clearly extreme right wing and the communists extreme left wing. But in practical terms there was bugger all difference between them up to and including their penchant for genocide.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Liberalism - people who can escape if everything falls apart Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
That’s a nice summary. We can probably add populist right to those who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart. Hence the “give it a whirl” tendency of some Brexit voters.
Don't you think there is something fundamentally wrong with a system where so much of he population - probably the majority combining two of those groups - have nothing to lose if it all falls apart? That strikes me as a failed system
Or a flawed analysis. The idea that a majority to have nothing to lose if everything falls apart is not even vaguely logical. Though I can see it might be good propaganda.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
The far right is a different beast to that.
Yes its not right for a starter.
So fascists are not right-wing?
I beg to differ.
No they're not right wing.
They're authoritarian. What makes an authoritarian socialist "right wing"?
I appreciate for those of you on the right that it must be very uncomfortsble to have fascism as an extreme bedfellow but wishing it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Yeah that doesn't make it right wing.
Incidentally I'm a big believer in the "horseshoe theory" mentioned in the far right article you linked to.
I like that theory too... but no way were the Nazis on the 'far-left' of that horseshoe, any more than Stalin was on the far-right.
I stand by my original assertion: the fascists were right-wing.
It’s kind of meaningless though.
The definition of “far-right” in your link is anti-communist, authoritarian, ultranationalist and with nativist tendencies.
There’s no particular connection with “right wing” parties such as the Conservatives or the Christian Democrats. Not “anti-communist” by definition, some elements of authoritarianism but plenty of liberals/libertarians, certainly not ultranationalist and barely nativist.
And yet people try to connect the two, primarily as an attack on the centre right.
The counter-argument is that you have a blind spot that mirrors those of quite left wing people who cannot see that communism has any connection with their own beliefs. Yet everyone else who isn’t left wing can see that communism is simply regular left wing beliefs in a powerful state, loyalty to the party line, redistribution of wealth and mistrust of private capital, taken to the extreme.
Similarly it doesn’t take genius to join the dots from the regular right-wing promotion of family, religion, strong leadership, nationalistic patriotism, support for business, immigration controls, the armed forces, etc. and project such views to the extreme. Just imagine HY in charge of the country and you are well on the way there.
What both extremes share is a disregard for individual liberty, interest in outcomes over process, and obsession with ideological purity.
There is a difference: communism is - simplifying - more socialism with more violence and force; social democracy is watered down socialism. They all exist on a spectrum.
The far right has some elements - patriotism converted to nationalism - which exist on a spectrum with the centre right. However the centre right has many elements of liberalism, especially on economics but also individual liberty which is diametrically opposed to what the the far right believes in (they have the state is supremacy to the individual)
The way I see it:
- Liberalism is the belief system of the urban elites - Socialism is the belief system of the urban poor - Conservatism is the belief system of the rural elite and the rural poor
Most political divides around the world these days seem to be some version of town mouse vs country mouse.
Liberalism - people who can escape if everything falls apart Socialism - people who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart Conservatism - people who lose out if everything falls apart
That’s a nice summary. We can probably add populist right to those who have nothing to lose if everything falls apart. Hence the “give it a whirl” tendency of some Brexit voters.
Don't you think there is something fundamentally wrong with a system where so much of he population - probably the majority combining two of those groups - have nothing to lose if it all falls apart? That strikes me as a failed system
Or a flawed analysis. The idea that a majority to have nothing to lose if everything falls apart is not even vaguely logical. Though I can see it might be good propaganda.
Lovers of media stats. GB News has a feature on cooper apprenticeships. It is reporting a 500% increase. From 1 to 6. This is the Brexit dividend right here. Look. 500% is a big number! Fulminating about metal barrels. Being a Cooper Matters says Neil Oliver. With feeling. Well it does actually. But there is a wistful sadness which pervades the segment. And channel. Yes. The world has moved on. Is that for the best? Well maybe.Or maybe not. But it has.
"Well quite often people have blind spots on specific issues, including [anti-Semitism]. While obviously wrong, it doesn't cancel them completely in my eyes. To restrict politics to those of some impossible standard of being perfect on all measures would make it very difficult to populate Parliaments."
This after he said that it was only anti-Semitism after all.
Time to roll out David Baddiel's book again:
Jews Don’t Count is a searing look at why anti-Semitism is often seen as a lesser form of racism, with a particular focus on the political left. To be Jewish, explains Baddiel, is to be subject to the contradictory belief that “Jews are somehow both sub-human and humanity’s secret masters”. Anti-semitic tropes are everywhere – yet, he argues, few of those who consider themselves alert to racism notice, let alone care.
That's unfair. The Modern Left have nearly no one left they are allowed to express hatred of. You have to leave them *something*. Otherwise they might burst.....
The left are allowed to hate: Western culture, all traditional art forms, excellence in universities, equality before the law, private property, the family, Tories, capitalism except the Chinese sort, the concept of objectivity, each other, all western based religious culture, the House of Lords, freedom of thought, enterprise, the correspondence theory of truth, John Stuart Mill, the hereditary principle... the list is endless.
But that kind of hate has no joy in it. For your proper, visceral hate, from the dark side of the brain (the serious stuff) you need an ethnic group, really.
It's that sort of self-hatred that leads to the anti-semitism. That is, they are closer to us than the countries surrounding them, so they become a good vessel for the self-hatred described in hating western values. I don't think I've ever heard a single "criticism of israel," that can't be applied, and worse, to the islamic middle-east. Certainly, if the problem that the left might pick out in the West as sexual and gender inequality, Israel is more in line with their views on that than, say Syria, or Jordan.
Yes, I think Israel is the only country in the Middle East that I could live in. For all its faults it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim.
OK Foxy, this is what i cannot get at all with "the left". you have it bang on "it is the only country in the region in which it is safe to be politically outspoken against the government, feminist, gay, transgender, atheist, Christian, Jew, Bahai or even the wrong sort of Muslim".
so why the fuck is it that people of "the left" have such a hatred of israel? i am absolutely certain that the majority of the left who aren't hard core islamists, if they had to live under a sharia/islamic state would absolutely hate it and be the biggest victims of it. trans, gay, women who want to drive a frigging car, marry who they want.....
so they absolutely hate israel/ its apparently not because they are anti-semitic..... its some weird inbuilt bollocks.
i'm nominally a catholic, don't give a crap about religion but weirdly if i had to choose a religion and culture other than what i've grown up with it would be Judaism. close enough to Christianity with the same "moral base" but also frankly apart from pork products not overly proscriptive over life and enjoying life. drink, dance, be happy, shag beautiful women in Eilat! would you seriously live in a muslim?sharia country?
so please explain what it is that the left finds so awful about Israel? i mean if its just about occupying contested land then every country western, catholic, muslim, asian has problems if being rational.
People like Jeremy Corbyn conflate the expansionist tendencies of politicians like Benjamin Netanyahu with the faith of now former members like Luciana Berger.
Please don't make the mistake yourself of conflating Jeremy Corbyn with everyone on the centre left and beyond who aren't lost in Jeremy Corbyn's Hamas/IRA fog.
Granted there are rather a lot of SWP/ Corbynista types of the anti Semitic mindset, however there are vastly significantly more people on the political left who are not.
I seem to recall a man of the right (with a small moustache) was also an anti- Semite.
Do you mean recalling a national socialist with a small moustache? Not sure which part of the right - small govt, low taxes, free market he was a fan of as opposed to centralised state control?
Hitler somehow presided over an incredible economic boom. I doubt anything to do with his facial hair was the key.
Unsustainable though. Without the war, Germany would have been in serious economic trouble in the 1940’s.
Ok. I don't know if that's true or not.
My sources are mainly William Shirer, and some other picked up stuff.
I don't think it is true though. My hunch is that Germany would have thrived no matter what.
Read Kershaw and Ulrich as a minimum. Shirer is a great source as he was present in Germany for much of the third Reich, but much greater depth is found elsewhere.
I've read both. Thanks to others (@malmsbury, @ydoethur ) for sugestions too.
Shirer as you suggest is the best source because he was there.
Richard Evans' Third Reich Trilogy is a very accessible read for a non-specialist.
And for the specialist?
A specialist wouldn’t need the material made accessible as they would know most of it already.
Comments
Did the Nazis believe in a free market?
Did the Nazis believe in a free anything?
The left tend to devour each other.
Or have I missed it?
There’s probably 5% max for whom there really would be nothing to lose if things fall apart. There might be another 20% who don’t think they have anything to lose, but would soon discover they do. Then a further large group - no idea the number - who are a bit equivocal, torn between natural conservatism and a wish to preserve how things are, and the excitement of radical change.
I think it was ever thus. But we don’t have many of the preconditions for revolution and civil unrest - mass unemployment, or hyperinflation, or major ethnic tensions - and that probably explains why we have a conservative government in power. Lots of people, particularly the retired, who feel fairly comfortable.
The idea that a majority to have nothing to lose if everything falls apart is not even vaguely logical. Though I can see it might be good propaganda.
GB News has a feature on cooper apprenticeships. It is reporting a 500% increase. From 1 to 6. This is the Brexit dividend right here. Look. 500% is a big number! Fulminating about metal barrels.
Being a Cooper Matters says Neil Oliver. With feeling.
Well it does actually. But there is a wistful sadness which pervades the segment. And channel.
Yes. The world has moved on.
Is that for the best? Well maybe.Or maybe not.
But it has.