Timothy Birdnow

On Facebook a man named Gil Carvalho asked:

What's the difference between ultra far left and ultra far right?

I reply:

We labor under a delusion about left and right these days. A scale was created by those on the left that placed communism at the extreme left end and fascism on the extreme right and we were told these were opposites but that is patently untrue. There is no place for the libertarian or anarchist on such a spectrum.

The reality is left is any statist. Fascist, Nazi, are equally left-wing. Yes, the Communists are the extreme left wing of the socialist movement but the Nazis and Fascists are also socialists and fellow travelers. They just argue about how to implement socialism.

If you realize that you understand the differences between far left and far right are actually enormous. The far right believes in the rights of the individual while the left believes in collective rights. The right believes in natural law and a moral order that is derived thereof while the leftist believes rights are arbitrarily assigned by society and are derived from group consensus. The right believes liberty is allowing the individual to make his own moral choices and bear the consequences while the left sees it as allowing him to do as he pleases and then providing guardrails to protect him from the folly of his ways. The right sees rights as not obligating anyone to do anything for them while the left sees rights as being given by the group and requiring positive reinforcement and aid from the group.

The right believes in the sanctity of private property, that a person has a God-given right to own that which he has worked for and obtained legally. The left sees property as ultimately belonging to everyone and any private property owned is merely at the pleasure of the state (which is why fascism is socialist; it allows private individuals as custodians only, and it controls all property as it sees fit.)

The right generally believes in God and the left believes in Man.

The right believes in a concrete reality and the left believes reality is subjective and malleable and can be changed by an act of collective will.

The right generally believes in not throwing out the baby with the bathwater while the left wants to tear everything down and reinvent the wheel.

The right seeks to persuade with reason, the left seeks to persuade with emotion, and failing that, to suppress and strongarm opposition into silence.

The right believes in the wisdom of the group and the benefits of an informed public opinion while the left believes in the rule of experts and believe the masses must be "prepared" and "guided" by their betters.(Interestingly enough the left always promotes "democracy" which is NOT about the wisdom of the group in it's modern incarnation but about the power to demagogue using mass media and their control of the flow of information. When the public rejects their program they try to force it on them, whereas the right does not do such things except where there is an obvious moral imperative i.e. the right would ban euthanasia even if the public thought it wanted that because there are absolutes.

By these metric it's obvious fascism and naziism are solidly on the left. Shoot; Nazi stands for National Socialist. They weren't just kidding when they chose that name. And it must be remembered Benito Mussolini was the editor of Italy's socialist magazine before becoming a Fascist. He explained the difference as embracing a kind of spirituality that was excluded by most socialists. But that spirituality was the deification of the People and the State was their church. This comes straight out of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who advocated making the State supreme. Mussolini rightly called Fascism Totalitarian in that it is, as he pointed out, intimately involved in every aspect of life. That is not "right wing" at all. It is merely a competing socialist doctrine to Communism.

Rousseau was the father of socialism as everyone agrees - all forms.

I would add that the Communists had a slogan prior to Hitler's attack on them "first Brown then Red"; they believed Naziism was the final stage before Communism and were quite happy with it. As soon as Hitler betrayed Stalin their tune changed and they disavowed the Nazis and convinced a bunch of commie professors in college to teach the false dichotomy of left and right as we now believe it to be. Naziism and Fascism being evil makes anyone who champions civil liberties and individual rights suddenly a genocidist and oppressor by association. But it's a lie.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:20 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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