smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
For those who are firmly ensconced in the Lunatic Fringe, the journey between Left and Right is a very short one!
.
.
Posted By: jimbob
Last edited by a moderator:
Split Thread Similarities & differences between extreme right & left
- Thread starter smartcooky
- Start date
For those who are firmly ensconced in the Lunatic Fringe, the journey between Left and Right is a very short one!
.
.
There's an actual circle! And it has actual colors!
Well, that is obviously so well-researched that it should convince everybody.
ETA: Maybe there's something wrong with my screen, but I can't find a place in the circle for this lunatic fringe liberal: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Well, that is obviously so well-researched that it should convince everybody.
ETA: Maybe there's something wrong with my screen, but I can't find a place in the circle for this lunatic fringe liberal: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Last edited:
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
There's an actual circle! And it has actual colors!
Well, that is obviously so well-researched that it should convince everybody.
ETA: Maybe there's something wrong with my screen, but I can't find a place in the circle for this lunatic fringe liberal: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Firstly, that diagram is merely illustrative - so there's the first point that whizzed right over your head.
Secondly, there is much truth to the assertion that the lunatic fringes of the far right and the far left are both philosophically and functionally lot closer to each other that you imagine.
Lets start with a nice, easy primer shall we... Nazi Germany under Hitler, National Socialism (far right) and the USSR under Stalin, Communism (far left).
Both preferred to solve political problems by resorting to violence.
Both had a driving force in the form of a Party organization.
Both had a strong, authoritarian leader at the top (Hitler v Stalin).
Both had a secret police. (Gestapo v NKGB/NKVD).
Both had the head of the secret police as the second most powerful man after Dear Leader (Goebbels v Malenkov).
Both had an official youth organization (Hitler Jugend v Pioneers).
Both built Empires.
Both installed puppet government leaders in the conquered lands (Quisling, Ryti , Reihl, Petain v Pavelich, Ulbricht, Rakosi).
Both had an organization offering free holidays for deserving workers and their families.
Both had rallies and parades (Nuremberg v May Day) .
Both had their "bibles", (Mein Kampf v The Brief History of the Communist Party).
Both had a penchant for burning books they disliked.
Both had an elaborate set of camps to which undesirables were sent (Concentration Camps and Death Camps v "The Gulag Archipelago".
Both adopted mass starvation as official policy.
Both had their martyrs.
Both had a total disregard for truth.
Both had a vast and elaborate range of informers.
Both demanded that children denounce their parents if they deviated from the true and narrow path.
Both signed treaties they never considered to be bound by.
Both had an arch-enemy (Jews v Capitalists).
Edited by jimbob:
bickering reference to another thread removed
Last edited by a moderator:
There's an actual circle! And it has actual colors!
Well, that is obviously so well-researched that it should convince everybody.
ETA: Maybe there's something wrong with my screen, but I can't find a place in the circle for this lunatic fringe liberal: Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Probably because covid and antivaccination views aren't fundamentally political, but that's what you seem to be bothered about with RFK Jr. Not that it has anything to do with defacing synagogues.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Indeed. Anti-vaxx comes in two main flavors.
1. The oldest is left wing; anti-globalism, suspicion of big pharma, left-wing and libertarian suspicion of routine government overreach, belief in woo woo cures for viral infections that would be routinely prevented by vaccination.
2. The newest is right wing; anti-Democrat, triggering the libs, personal rights, etc.
Before the recent pandemic, anti-vaxxers were far more prevalent in the left wing than the right. Since the onset of the pandemic, anti-vaxxism on the right exploded - especially in the USA, for little other reason than Democrats were proponents, with Republicans were opponents.
If you want to put RFK jr on the chart, you could put him 3/4 of the way down the green bit on the left. You can balance that by putting Alex Berenson in the the same position on the orange bit on the right!
TurkeysGhost
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Apr 2, 2018
- Messages
- 35,043
This is incredibly reductionist. Ideology cannot be summed on in such a simplistic, linear way. Political ideologies contain multiple vectors of thought. If you really wanted to plot it out you'd need many dimensions, and even that would probably be a fool's errand. Political thought is a complicated mess of ideology and psychology that doesn't always make coherent sense.
I would concede that there does seem to be a phenomena where some people with more extreme beliefs seem to be more comfortable switching to diametrically opposite extreme beliefs rather than relating to more moderate positions, but this is not always the case. Seems far more likely that those on the extremes are far more ardent in their revulsion of their opposite than friendly.
In the case of red-brown types, I suspect it has more to do with people who prioritize being opposed to the current established powers above all else, in which case an extreme lefty might feel more akin to an extreme righty than the moderate center (and vice versa). But there are also extreme lefties in which anti-fascism or other understandings of their ideology makes such friendship totally impossible. It's complicated.
Last edited:
shemp
a flimsy character...perfidious and despised
Both were led by a little man with a silly moustache.
Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
shemp
a flimsy character...perfidious and despised
Last edited:
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Like I told that other poster, it is merely indicative.
If you want something more nuanced and complicated, make your own diagram and draw your own conclusions. All I was pointing out is, if you are so far left or so far right on the political spectrum as to be on the lunatic fringe, its a very short journey to from left to right (and vice versa). The ends and ideologies might differ, but the means and functionalities are the same. I learned this 40+ years in Political Science class at Uni!
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
Thank you for the graphics. That's very close to what I was getting at.
Last edited:
Venom
Philosopher
The most reductionist possible:
Hierarchy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Egalitarianism
Hierarchy
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Egalitarianism
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Andrew Wakefield
Charlie Sheen
Alicia Silverstone
Rob Schneider
Robert De Niro
Jenna Elfman*
Esai Morales
Jim Carrey
Kirsty Alley*
Selma Blair
Erin Brockovich
Miranda Bailey
Danny Masterson*
Juliet Lewis*
None of these are/were anything close to Marxists.
ETA: * Scientologists. Well, colour me surprised!
Last edited:
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
Wrong. The oldest is ludditism, ie. resistance to change and new ideas. This is inherently right wing.
Before vaccination there was innoculation. It wasn't woo - it really worked, for those who didn't die from it. It had been used for centuries before being introduced into England by Lady Mary Wortley Montague in 1721 and approved by the royal family.
So you can imagine what the reaction to Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine in 1800 was from a populace practicing traditional innoculation. They didn't like it.
So we see that right from the start it was conservatives who rejected vaccination, while progressives eagerly supported it.
We must also remember that the British government in the early 19th century was progressive and libertarian, so 'left wingers' were more likely to support its policies than reject them.
That situation was similar to the current pandemic. The 'left wing' understood the benefits of vaccinition and supported mandates, while the 'right wing' didn't. The antivaxxers calling themselves libertarians were actually just afraid of something new, ie. conservative / right-wing.
Last edited:
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Well, yes, if you want to talk about ancient history.
I'm talking about modern times. Anti-vax was primarily a left wing thing until the pandemic.
Not in the UK. Modern antivaxers came about after Wakefield and his flawed science, it was pushed over here by the likes of the Daily Mail, Daily Express which are right leaning media with a right leaning audience. There was also up take by the chattering classes which in the UK would mean if not conservative then liberal, not left wing.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Remembering, of course, that what you call "Liberal" in the UK, would be considered left wing in the US. The whole of US politics is shifted to the right by both your standards and mine. What passes for centrist in the US, would be conservative in the UK, NZ and probably Australia.
Also keep in mind that the issue under discussion was an incident that happened in the US, so the politics of other countries are not really relevant.
Much like in DK - except that antivaxxers were fairly apolitical until the pandemic. They were the lunatic fringe of the purveyors of (and believers in) alt.med. For a short while it seemed as if a huge outbreak of mass psychogenic illness in HPV-vaccinated girls might give them a bigger audience, but they weren't able to gain much ground, and the panic died out soon after the media had reported on the health authorities' medical investigation of the HPV vaccines and examined the girls who feared that they had been harmed by them. I think that only the fringe media in DK bought into Wakefield's nonsense.
The antivaxxers gained some ground during the pandemic when members of the right-wing think tank CEPOS began to downplay the virulence of SARS-CoV-2, but it doesn't seem to have impacted the willingness of people to get their kids vaccinated against other diseases than COVID-19. However, the pandemic radicalized the lunatic fringe politically. Some of them were inspired by Trump and QAnon, but I don't think there are any QAnon believers in the Danish parliament.
In Denmark, the word liberal is also primarily used by conservative and center-right parties. Foreigners tend to be as confused by the full name of the Danish party Venstre, "Venstre, Danmarks Liberale Parti (English: Left, Denmark's Liberal Party)," as I was the first time I heard about blue and red states in the USA.
Last edited:
Spot on. The fringes are so blinded by zeal they're unable to recognize these glaring parallels.
quadraginta
Becoming Beth
An essential issue here is whether or not the Soviet Union under Stalin can accurately be described as communism or even leftist.
Certainly it was a totalitarian dictatorship, or possibly a totalitarian oligarchy at best, which better explains all of these commonalities you list. But whether it was actually a communism in any traditional economic sense is arguable. I think it was Communism in the same way that Australia's Liberal Party is actually liberal. I.e., in name only.
No true communism eh?
Norman Alexander
Penultimate Amazing
The closest would be North Korea. Prior to that, possibly Albania, but that got better.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Yep, it can.
It was Marxist/Leninist philosopy taken to the absolute extreme. That is about as radical left wing as it gets.
Conservatives and centrists are so zealous in their attempts to make it seem as if the alleged "glaring parallels" between Hitler and Stalin are something that they don't have in common with politicians in democracies:
Both preferred to solve political problems by resorting to violence.
What is the point of issuing weapons to the armed (!) forces and the police in democracies?
Both had a driving force in the form of a Party organization.
Don't democratic politicians have party organizations?!
Both had a strong, authoritarian leader at the top (Hitler v Stalin).
Are leaders of democracies weak and anti-authoritarian? Is that what they are lauded for in speeches?
Both had a secret police. (Gestapo v NKGB/NKVD).
Are the secret services in democracies not secret?
Both had the head of the secret police as the second most powerful man after Dear Leader (Goebbels v Malenkov).
Wasn't J. Edgar Hoover pretty powerful? Aren't the current leaders of the FBI or the CIA powerful? Why do we even know the names of guys like Christopher Wray or William Burns?
Both had an official youth organization (Hitler Jugend v Pioneers).
Are there no such youth organizations in democracies?
Both built Empires.
Don't democratic states?
Both installed puppet government leaders in the conquered lands (Quisling, Ryti , Reihl, Petain v Pavelich, Ulbricht, Rakosi).
Didn't and don't the UK and the USA install puppet leaders in other countries? Ever heard of Reza Pahlavi? Pinochet? Or, more recently, Jeanine Áñez?
Both had an organization offering free holidays for deserving workers and their families.
Sounds good. What is wrong with free holidays for workers? Should holidays be exclusively for the propertied classes?
Both had rallies and parades (Nuremberg v May Day).
Are there no rallies and parades in democracies? Really?!
Both had their "bibles", (Mein Kampf v The Brief History of the Communist Party).
Are there no "bibles" in democracies?
Both had a penchant for burning books they disliked.
Aren't books burned in democracies? Book burnings seem to have become very popular recently.
Both had an elaborate set of camps to which undesirables were sent (Concentration Camps and Death Camps v "The Gulag Archipelago".
Aren't undesirables in democracies imprisoned? In skyrocketing numbers!) Are there no current plans to send homeless people to camps?
Both adopted mass starvation as official policy.
Is there no more hunger in the world ruled by democratic countries? And in those countries themselves?
Both had their martyrs.
Do democracies have no martyrs?
Both had a total disregard for truth.
Is truth valued in democracies? (I mean, other than in grandiloquent speeches!) Aren't posttruth, truthiness, and alternative facts in high regard in democracies?
Both had a vast and elaborate range of informers.
Don't democracies have those?
Both demanded that children denounce their parents if they deviated from the true and narrow path.
Are children in democracies discouraged from denouncing insurrectionist parents or other family members?
Both signed treaties they never considered to be bound by.
Do democracies never break treaties? (And if they are powerful enough, don't they simply refuse to be a part of treaties to save the world?)
Both had an arch-enemy (Jews v Capitalists).
Don't democracies have arch-enemies?
And finally, the addition to the list:
Both were led by a little man with a silly moustache.
Are democratic leaders never
(Hitler's height was actually above average.)
My post about this list with links was removed to AAH, but my point is (and so was shemp's, I imagine) that arbitrary things Stalin and Hitler might have in common is a weird way to prove the alleged truth of a colorful circle as an illustration of an alleged political principle. There is nothing glaring about it other than the colors themselves.
I can see why some people desire to see Stalin and Hitler as diametrically opposed to secular liberalism, but painting them at the opposite end of a scale or a circle really doesn't do anything other than illustrate people's favorite fantasy of what constitutes secular liberalism. The irony is that communism (and as mentioned in the removed post: Few people killed as many communists as Stalin, probably not even Hitler) and National Socialism are so conspicuously different that not even 'the politically closed loop' manages to unite them. Instead, they are supposed to be united as (or lead to?) anarchism and subservism to 'illustrate' that "the journey between Left and Right is a very short one."
In other words, we have seen no real argument for this idea or any fact to support it other than the zeal of some people to have their fantasy illustrated in this way.
And don't think that I am unaware that Nazi death camps were different from the U.S. penal system and served a different purpose, or that children's denunciation of their parents in Nazi Germany - Spying on Family and Friends (Facing History) - wasn't different from a son denouncing his insurrectionist father to the FBI:A son explains why he turned in his father over the Jan. 6 attack (NPR).
But it still seems to make a hell of a difference to some people whether violence is used in the service of 'our' system or in the service of the systems we despise. People tend to think that nationalism is great - as long as it's not the nationalism of our enemies. That's when it becomes apparent to everybody that nationalism is bad because their nationalism isn't our nationalism. Our nationalism is patriotic! And true patriots ignore the atrocities of their homelands and focus on the atrocities their enemies.
When do false flag attacks become despicable? When our enemies are the attackers. When our country is the attacker, false flag attacks are clever tactics meant to confuse the enemy.
Sorry but that is anything but correct. Any even superficial reading about communism will bring up the fact that it is meant to be stateless, that is the "absolute extreme" of communism. For example from the first couple of paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry:
.....A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour....
And as we all know the USSR was anything but stateless.
And yes there is the "no true communism" at play here because communism is an ideology, in other words a model of human behaviour at a societal scale and it is a crap model of human behaviour at the level of a society. So yes there have never been any successful implementations of communism at any kind of large scale, because it doesn't work.
There are of course many parallels and similarities between the USSR and the Nazi regimes - because they were both dictatorships , with the dictator controlling the entire state. (I am talking about the USSR when it was contemporary with Nazi Germany.) The similarities arise from them being dictatorships not the claimed political labels they both used.
All of which suggests that communism should be taken off the board completely and that anyone who continues to promote an unworkable ideology is either hopelessly naive or deliberately obtuse.
All the "communist" states we know of are/were just at the first stages of implementing communism, at which point it was found to be impossible to implement without totalitarianism, which stops it ever being communism.
I feel sure there could be a useful thread on this, but I don't think this is it.
Last edited:
You do know that no attempt at communism is allowed, don't you?
It is not as if even the least threatening attempts to establish an alternative to capitalism are met with the attitude, 'Well, that sure won't work! We'll leave them alone until they come to their senses. That will be a lesson for everybody. Let them fail on their own as proof that there is no viable alternative to market economies.'
For some reason, TPTB will go to any length to destroy such attempts.
Even though the Domino Theory was allegedly about democracy, the utter lack of anything resembling democracy never bothers TPTB - as long as it's capitalist: Saudi Arabia: Politics.
However, democratically elected communists ...
Yep. And it's the same for every single political ideology.
Pretty much agree.
Capitalism is just as shonky as communism is when used to describe a human society.
All political and economic ideologies end up being "if people behave the way I think they should then....". People will always disappoint the idealogues and be a thorn in their side of delivering utopia.
The Soviet Union after Lenin was never at any stage of implementing communism. I don't think China is either. You might as well say that Hitler was proof that capitalism can't be implemented without National Socialism.
Many threads devolve into this. I stay out of most of them. The last page has nothing to do with false-flag attacks on synagogues.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Sorry, I just completely disagree with this.
Soviet Russia under Joseph Stalin, particularly during the period of his leadership (1922 - 1953) is characterized as left-wing in terms of its political ideology. The Soviet Union was founded on the principles of Marxism-Leninism, a socialist ideology that aimed to establish a classless society and to eliminate private ownership of the means of production. His regime pursued policies that emphasized state control of the economy and collectivization of agriculture. The state took ownership of all key industries, with economic decision-making being controlled by the central government. He also implemented policies aimed at industrialization and rapid economic growth, often at the expense of individual rights and freedoms.
While it is true that Stalin's regime deviated from the original ideals of Marxism/Leninism and that its authoritarian nature and concentration of power in the hands of the ruling Communist Party led to a totalitarian system rather than a genuinely socialist one, the fact is that the Soviet Union under Stalin was clearly left-wing due to its adherence to a socialist ideology and the implementation of policies aimed at creating a centralized, planned economy.
Now you can argue this until the cows come home, but the fact remains that Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany were philosophically and ideologically on opposite sides of the political spectrum.
Last edited:
What you describe as "if people behave the way I think they should then....," was Marx's criticism of utopian socialists, which is why his own focus was on the workings of capitalism. The irony is that he is always criticized for not giving a detailed description of communism, i.e. an attempt at utopianism.
Capitalism is the market economy, not an ideology, even though capitalism has its own ideologues, from Adam Smith onwards.
After the word "production" in your quote above you have aptly described why the USSR was not communist. Every single thing you mention was not what Marx described.
Your claim remember was "It was Marxist/Leninist philosopy taken to the absolute extreme. ...snip...."
I replied to that claim.
It was a brutal dictatorship in which the dictator managed to grab complete control over a massive state to do whatever his addled mind thought up. There is no "left" nor "right" in dictatorships - there is simply the whim of the dictator no matter what propaganda they may put out. It was a "command economy" because Stalin wanted all the power in his hands, it was nothing to do with any socialist ideology, who lived and died was up to him and him alone. And it was even further away from your claim "It was Marxist/Leninist philosopy taken to the absolute extreme." then claiming the USA is socialist today because it has some redistribution of wealth.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
I find none of your arguments persuasive, so I'm afraid we will just have to agree to disagree.
Disagree strongly, it is an economic ideaology.
That's fine but are you willing to defend your claim: "It was Marxist/Leninist philosopy taken to the absolute extreme...."?
ETA: By that I mean show that the USSR under Stalin was:
.....A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour....
Last edited: