I was using the recent example of the Greeks electing 25 members of what is essentially a Nazi-like party to the Greek Parliament in a conversation with CSGV, as further refutation of their notion that sometimes democratic republics fail. Here’s what they had to say:
I don’t know if Skippy the Intern is running the Twitter feed here, but there’s somewhere on the order of 50,000,000 people, and about 6 million jews, who would take exception to the notion that far-right participation in European governance has never lead to catastrophe. That is, they’d take exception if they were still alive. But they aren’t alive, because the far-right governance in Europe decided to kill them all in a bit of a catastrophe the rest of us call the Second World War. They continue digging:
Yes, and if only the Weimar government had instituted strict gun controls, perhaps World War II never would have happened, since we all know gun control is quite effective at stopping National Socialists from arming themselves.
Our opponents are poor students of history, and naive in regards to human nature. The perfectibility of man has always been a conceit of the left. The Judeo-Christian tradition of viewing mankind as fallen is probably the more accurate way to approach questions of human nature. Civilization is a very thin veneer, easily scratched off, and what’s under the veneer is very very ugly. The disarmed Germans found that out the hard way.
1) The German National Socialists of the 20s-40s were left wing, not right wing.
2) I’m still looking for more information on their actual platform. I’ve heard “mine the Turkish border” is there, but that is about it.
In the American left-right dichotomy, this is true. In Europe, nationalism is considered to be on the right. The European left-right dichotomy does fall the same way across issues as the American left-right dichotomy does.
I never understood the left-wing right-wing stuff either. Shouldn’t one end of the spectrum be total government control and the other be anarchy? Do either of these ‘wings’ in Europe push for less government or more personal freedom?
Once I had this argument with an European dutch over the inter-tube.
He thinks if one government is better than the other, they should be allowed to conquer it because they can do a better job. And if conquered-side refused to be conquered, then they are racist because they are rejecting a foreign but better government based on the fact that it’s “foreign.”
Yeah, I know, but he is REALLY serious about it.
And since he married an “Asian”, there’s no way he’s a racist.
So I asked him if it’s a good idea if USA conquers Iraq, he said no, because USA is not a better government than Iraqis.
Yeah, he is really really serious about this, too.
And then he called me a KKK, and I said, no, KKK was formed by democrats, and I am not a democrat.
I don’t know how wide spread this kind of idiocy really is in Europe, and I have no interest in knowing.
Well, think about it. Europe only had one large personal liberty movement which ended up with its own country.
We call it the American Revolution.
Every other moment is either towards communism or xenophobic nationalism.
Thanks for pointing this out, sir!
since when were the Nazi’s just a private militia?
They are not poor students of history, they are outright fabricators of history.
I don’t see any evidence that they are neo-Nazi. They are anti-immigrant, and they are apparently admirers of Metaxis, the Greek dictator who actually led the initial war against Mussolini and later Hitler, before his death in 1941.
I gotta go w/ Stew here…while US and European Right / Left don’t exactly match, Nazism is far closer to the what is defined as the American Left than the Right. National Socialism was still socialism and union based. It differed from Communism in that it was more of a crony capitalism where favored organizations / businesses flourished and rivals either towed the line or were crushed. Of note…it was at this time in Germany that members of the “Frankfurt School” fled the country to the US and other western nations. “Frankfurt School” members were hardcore Communists and therefore enemies.
All you have to do is look at all the love letters to National Socialism written by the original Progressives.
If our opponents were students of the Judeo-Christian tradition, they would also respect private property, and the God-given right to self defense!
That’s funny. History seems to say that Hitler worked his way up through the existing government through political maneuvering, and gained total power by using the central government’s forces to suppress enemies (i.e., outlawing the Communist party, and eventually all other political parties). The only (successful) violence he and the Nazi’s were involved in before gaining full control that I recall was the Reichstag Fire, and a little judicious voter intimidation right before the elections. In fact, the one violent coup attempt by the Nazis under Hitler failed miserably.
But never mind history, the anti-Rights cultists are right because… well, because they are!
Remembering back to what I’ve read on the subject of the Nazi’s and violence in the late 20’s and early 30’s is that they were a party of thugs. Between picking fights with the communists and others, the Nazi party was marked by violence. The SA made a name for themselves agitating against the Communists.
Today the Nazis are viewed as the definition of Evil in hindsight.
But so many people were willing to look the other way when Hitler was marching people into the gas chambers and camps, and occupying nations when it was actually happening.
The same can be said about modern-day progressives looking the other way when it comes to the body count of Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao.
When the next Hitler-like mass-murderer assumes power (and there is no way of saying it hasn’t happened already) most people will be perfectly willing to look the other way.
Left vs Right is a false choice created by those who are opposed to liberty.
Love her or hate her,on this issue Ayn Rand said it best.
“For many decades, the leftists have been propagating the false dichotomy that the choice confronting the world is only: communism or fascism—a dictatorship of the left or of an alleged right—with the possibility of a free society, of capitalism, dismissed and obliterated, as if it had never existed.
[Some “moderates†are trying to] revive that old saw of pre-World War II vintage, the notion that the two political opposites confronting us, the two “extremes,†are: fascism versus communism.” Ayn Rand “The Objectivist” 1968
The political origin of that notion is more shameful than the “moderates†would care publicly to admit. Mussolini came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Italy. Hitler came to power by claiming that that was the only choice confronting Germany. It is a matter of record that in the German election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis—with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government.
It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of “Freedom or dictatorship?†into “Which kind of dictatorship?â€â€”thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice—according to the proponents of that fraud—is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism).
That fraud collapsed in the 1940’s, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory—that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state—that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders—that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique—that fascism is not the product of the political “right,†but of the “leftâ€â€”that the basic issue is not “rich versus poor,†but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government—which means: capitalism versus socialism.” Ayn Rand “Capitalism the Unknown Ideal” pg 180
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/fascism_and_communism-socialism.html
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It the only thing it was to the Right of Stalin’s Communism. The very word “Nazi” is a German abbreviation for “National Socialist” (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler’s political party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (The National Socialist German Workers’ Party).
I really have gotten tired of people straining to make the political spectrum one-dimensional, i.e., left/right, when there is no way it can be.
The two-dimensional “Nolan Chart” has probably been around for at least thirty years, but for some reason has never gotten traction. My theory is that Americans are just too into team sports to think of anything being other than Us and Them, or Pure Good versus Pure Evil.
The trouble with that is that when your issue gets categorized with one end of the one-dimensional spectrum (e.g., gun rights on the right of the laundry list) you necessarily become associated with everything else that gets thrown there, and ‘taint necessarily so.
I don’t really like it either, but it’s more difficult to use multi-directional rhetoric and have people understand what you’re talking about. People, unfortunately, are used to thinking two dimensionally politically.
Yeah I think it’s more important to make people think in terms of ‘more government’ and ‘less government’.
Left is left and right is right on both sides of the Atlantic. What is confusing is that what the Europeans call “liberal” is what we think of as laissez faire capitalist. In the US the lefties have hijacked the word so it means almost the exact opposite here.
“. . .it’s more difficult to use multi-directional rhetoric and have people understand what you’re talking about.”
I have found that true also, and have largely given up bemoaning the fact unless the audience is at least slightly more philosophically attuned than average — like here?
I like Pyrotek85’s “less/more government” idea, and have daydreamed about a one-dimensional political spectrum where pure anarchists would be on the extreme right and pure authoritarians on the far left. On that spectrum, someone like Emma Goldman would probably lie to the right of say, George W. Bush.
And most people would find that so offensive they’d start taking a look at the two-dimensional political spectrum for the first time. :-)
I found a good video on this subject for those interested, it supports the notion of total gov vs zero gov, spectrum wise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4r0VUybeXY
“Jews”, should be capitalized.