Where should one place, on the common-usage political left/right spectrum, a party that has a strong environmental platform (supports Greenpeace, opposes whaling and even the docking of dog’s tails), opposes any privatization of medical services or public sector institutions, supports the nationalization of important economic assets, calls for higher taxes on the rich, and sees its support coming primarily from members of the working class?
Why, the far right, of course. British blogger Simon Richards takes issue with this sleight of hand:
I lost track of the number of times the British National Socialist Party was referred to by BB journalits as ‘the right wing BNP’ on last night’s woeful Euro-election programme. The BBC has a track record on this. Whenever possible, it refers to groups it doesn’t like as ‘conservative’ or right-wing. It did this in the case of hard-line Communists in the Gorbachev era, who, in BBC-land, were always ‘conservatives’.
Many on the left will argue that being a racist makes you socially right – funny how that works – and that the BNP, despite their openly socialist policies, are on the opposite end of the spectrum from the left, over on the far, far right, alongside the National Socialist German Workers Party. This ongoing claim to the word “socialist” by parties whom the left insists on deeming the “far-right” remains a sticking/sore point: British blogger the Englishman noted “the perplex on BBC’s talking faces as ‘Far Right’ Andrew Brons’ extremist past was revealed to be founded on his membership of the National Socialist Movement.”
Let’s just call the BNP what they are: racist, authoritarian leftists. Anyone who would argue that the left cannot, by definition, be authoritarian, and that the term only applies to the right, must have slept through the last century.
“must have slept through the last century”
…either that or is still in his twenties. You know the old saying “If a man is not a socialist at twenty, there’s something wrong with his heart. If he’s still a socialist at forty, there’s something wrong with his head.”
It’s also important to note the assumption that the left cannot be racist, cannot be anything other than tolerant of all and any, embedded as it is within its postmodern relativism.
But this notion is pure fiction. The left is as racist and intolerant as any other utopian ideology. It sets up an ideal person – and anyone who doesn’t meet these criteria is essentially non-human.
So, the left considers anyone who rejects socialism, collectivism, cultural relativism and instead opts for individual responsibility, private enterprise and actually evaluates behaviour and belief – as unacceptable.
An unacceptable person, to the left, is deserving of vicious insults, scorn, constant denigration and essentially, being outcast from the society.
We can see how the left has treated Sarah Palin for one example. How about their treatment of Ms California, who supported the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman? The viciousness of the left’s attacks on her – quite something.
How about our own HRCs, and how they’ve maligned and attacked people who don’t subscribe to the views of the left, in marriage, in belief in religion, etc.
Actually, the only ideologies that are utopian are those of the left. For it is only the left who view people as ‘collectives’, and consider that there is a ‘best way’ for the entire population to live. And therefore, it is only the left that can be racist and authoritarian.
The right has a non-utopian perspective. The right focuses on the individual, and considers living a piecemeal, entrepreneurial and pragmatic task. There is no ‘best way’ for all to live; there is only the task that we do the best we can, for ourselves and each other, and do as little harm as possible.
When you started to ask, EBD, “where should one place, on the common-usage political left/right spectrum […]”, I stopped there. Oh the rest of your essay is quite fine, yet it remains the case that no one should use the common left/right spectrum, because it is or at least has become meaningless. As President Regan said:
At a minimum one should always use no less than the two-axis categorization shown in World’s Smallest Political Quiz, in which case the BNP should be characterized simply as authoritarian, very authoritarian, or totalitarian.
Vit:
As a student of Reagan, I found that quote very
profound.
Yup, the Nazis were National Socialists, and the Communists were/are International Socialists. Both used the techniques of Marxism and the Hegelian Dialectic to mind-screw the masses with relativism, and achieve their goals.
“The Right,” stands for individual freedom and personal responsibility… with moral relativism controlled by absolutes such as the Bible, (rather than gov’t intervention) or other such absolutes – such as mathematics, for those opposed to religion. (Think the law of averages being used to make absolute moral values). If the truth is relative, then who is to say that your truth is any more real than my truth? The only road moral relativism leads to is complete destruction.
Agreed, ET. The left is, if not always authoritarian to the extreme in those societies where it may be freely opposed by non-leftists, always pointed in that direction, because the left’s policies view people as a non-volitional collective.
The BNP wishes for a non-volitional, “whites only” collective in which whites who are friends with, who love and interact with people without regard to their race would be prevented from doing so. This non-volitional collective is the opposite of the non-utopian view of the right, who believe in freedom of opportunity, and not in top-down, imposed, outcomes.
Well, Vitruvius, I’m glad you stopped there.
Once, it was easy for the Nazis to distinguish the lesser races from the Aryan. They built up a whole pseudo-science on how to tell if someone qualified as superior or inferior. Then they made an alliance with the Japanese. This required the definition of “Aryan” to be extended to include Japanese, but still exclude Chinese or Koreans or others in the general area. Much hilarity ensued.
Similarly, branding someone “left” or “right” used to be easy. Then came those pesky Nazis. They were virtually indistinguishable from the Bolsheviks, but both Nazi and Bolshevik insisted they couldn’t be any more different. So, all sorts of logical gymnastics had to twist and contort reality to give the illusion that they were somehow opposite when in fact they were twins.
Both Nazism and Bolshevism are now gone, but their dead hands still work the puppet-mouths of today’s leftists.
“Let’s just call the BNP what they are: racist, authoritarian leftists. ”
and they are even channeling Hitler and his National Socialists right down to the environmental policy
Defining what the BNP are or aren’t is about as useful as picking cashews out of a can of mixed nuts. It doesn’t matter as to the particular flavour, they are still all nuts.
Thus we have the BNSDAP given as:
British National Socialist Democratic Arbiters Party
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
Perhaps I should have said “paused”, EBD, as I did not mean that I did not continue, which is indeed deductively obvious since I did note that I thought your whole essay was fine. Yet it remains the case that, traditionally, the left were against economic freedoms and for social freedoms, while the right were against social freedoms and for economic freedoms.
In other words, the traditional left says you’re free to spend your money on what ever you want, you’re just not allowed to have any money, whereas traditionally the right says you’re free to have all the money you can legitimately acquire, you just can’t spend it on what you want.
The obvious problems are that (1) a single-axis categorization allows no place for both and neither, which means I’m homeless, as are my enemy the authoritarians, and (2) people who are responsibly both socially and economically freedom-loving and yet unaware of the single-axis model inadequacy end up trying to shoe-horn themselves into either right or left, depending on their marginal leanings, resulting in at least slightly silly behaviour, as we can see in discussions like this one.
Just call the left for what it is … an alliance of utopian, totalitarian, big government, smarter-than-you control freaks.
The BNP totally are Britain’s version of National Socialists, right down to the master race rhetoric.
Just like the Holocaust Museum killer, whose hatred was of ‘neo-con Jews,’ was another leftist nutbar.
This fragmentation of the loony left into its identifiable parts is a good thing.
One thing they seem to have in common is hatred of humanity and a diminshment of human life, other than their own.
It has always seemed to me that this tendency to call parties and persons that are of a clear socialist bent “Right-Wing” comes from the Second World War. How else to describe the difference between a party like the Communists (USSR – clearly on the far far left) to a party like the National Socialists (Nazi Germany – on the far left.) Both have the State run your life. In order to explain to the populace at large in the western democracies why we are fighting one dictator on the left by forming an alliance with another dictator on the left could be problematic.
Hence, the Nazi’s are Right, the Communists are Left. Pure nonsense of course, but perfectly acceptable to the intellectually lazy.
The further to the right you go, the less and less government you get. I always thought pure anarchy would be extreme right, while more and more state control moves you to the left.
Pretty simplistic, but just a thought.
Those who refer to the inadequacy and error of “single-axis categorization” are, of course, entirely right, Vitruvius, in the taxonomical sense. It’s just that the refined taxonomical debate isn’t the issue in this case, which actually deals with actual, real-world, common usage and its political implications.
Let me put it this way, Vitruvius: to the exact extent that one is unable or unwilling to acknowledge the enormous possible downside — to liberty and to the never-ending struggle against socialist impositions — in the widespread, common-useage (i.e. by people in the actual, realpolitik world, including the British media in this case) attachment of the term “right” to every dangerous and vile leftist group, your argument stands.
I remember the last time an extremist National Socialist party took over a country with similar sentiments (not counting the Obama regime in the usa who has not problems with Muslim immigration, however, there are striking similarities) … t’was in Germany back in the thirties.
Like Obama, Adolph was the car salesman in chief and gave us the Volkswagen. I don’t see how Obama can improve on that. Coincidentally, Obama’s mentor recently complained about “Them Jews” blocking his access to the One. Perhaps the story is still unfolding. Obama is a fan of Iran since he recently stated they are entitled to ‘Nukular’ power.
Eventually we won’t know the difference between Left, Right or anything in between. It seems no one knows the difference between right and wrong anymore. It’s all a crap shoot nowadays.
But I digress.
Alas, Jeff, you haven’t accounted for anarcho-
syndicalists and anarcho-capitalists. That’s my
point, you see: left, right, right, left ~ bu1lshit.
People like simple answers, even when wrong.
I prefer correct answers, even when non-simple.
Now, EBD, I am completely able and willing to
acknowledge the enormous (for some value of
enormous) possible downside of all instances of
improperly labelled phenomena, by the left and
the right, as I am doing here.
well, regardless of left and right or up and down, we will always have a problem with what these terms symbolize. The collective vs the individual. The conflict between these two will always exist. Why?
Because we, as a species, necessarily function both as a collective and as an individual.
Since our knowledge is not stored genetically, we store it socially. That means that in order to ‘know how to live’, we must embed ourselves within the collective.
Since we cannot function as a self-reliant individual until at least a decade and more, this means that we embed ourselves within the collective.
The collective provides knowledge on how to live, it provides nurturance, shelter and protection. As such, the collective must be relatively stable.
However, the only way our species can deal with challenges from the environment (disease, food supply, water, etc) is by the use of reason. Groups don’t think. Only the individual thinks and reasons. And, to come up with adaptive solutions, requires dissent from the norm, requires ‘doubt’ about current knowledge, requires moving from the collective restraints.
Therefore, these two societal forces: the force of stability and the force of innovation must co-exist.
The utopian left/down focuses on only one force: the collective. The non-utopian right/up, in my view, focuses on BOTH forces. The individual freedom and the collective morality and restraints.
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” –Adolf Hitler
(Speech of May 1, 1927. Quoted by Toland, 1976, p. 306)
The fact is the “left” control education and the media so they have been very effective in defining what conservatism is. Lots of people are conservative in their personal lives, but don’t consider themselves conservative politically; and no, we can’t blame the “left”, the blame falls at our own feet. It’s ironic that the group of people that pride themselves on business sense and ingenuity are such dismal failures in marketing their own cause. This is a result of the individualistic tunnel vision conservatives seem to have. We all know what happens to a football team comprised of individuals when they butt heads with a football team comprised of team players. The individuals usually get their butts kicked, even if their stacked with stars.
So how did we get here? By always focusing on #1, never giving the collective a second thought.JMO
I agree, ET. If I may aphorize: humans are social individuals.
Vit:
You can distinguish Communists from National Socialists by the goose stepping.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2807734/goose_stepping/
This goose has got the ‘RIGHT STUFF’, so joining the collective means you won’t be “LEFT OUT”.
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
“Left, right, left, right — bullshit.”
Okay Vitruvius, you’ve already made clear the inadequacy of the simple left-right spectrum. This is your point, you’ve made it well, and you’ve made clear that it is the point. Well done, sir! But let’s find out the extent to which you’re arguing in good faith on the subject matter of the post, rather than on the inadequate taxonomy of the toothless proles who commonly use the terms, whose understanding falls short:
The NDP are referred to, in common usage, as being on the Left; it is beyond dispute that they are considered to be the left-most of the big three parties. While you consider such common-use terminology to be wholly inadequate as a description, certainly no one, including yourself, would describe the NDP as being the party of the right. Now, suppose some non-disputatious foreign visitor to Canada who you were fond of, and whom you understood was merely asking a simple question in good faith, woke you up from a deep sleep and asked you “which Canadian party is the furthest on the left, the NDP, the Conservatives or the Liberals?” I suggest — more hope, really — that you would say NDP, without batting an eye and without argument. (Note that I’m assuming here that, due to your sleepy state, and your interest in getting back to sleep, you wouldn’t at the moment launch into an explanation of the inadequacy of the left-right spectrum, and would save that for breakfast.) Similarly, if he/she asked you, out of sincere interest, “which party is the furthest right,” you would say “The Conservative Party of Canada.” Correct me if I’m wrong on that — G*d, I hope I’m not wrong.
Now, if a similar visitor who was less familiar with politics in a general sense didn’t understand the fundamental differences between the commonly-applied terms “left” and “right,” and had no idea what those terms meant — and again, assuming you would answer in good faith, and with a caring-sharing understanding of what, exactly, was being asked, what would your response be — and assuming here the same lack of time and/or inclination on your part to launch into a dissertation of the inadequate improper labeling of the terms — to this question:
“Would a party who believes in increased taxation of the rich, opposes private medical care and the privatization of crown corporations, and gets most of their support from unions and the working class be considered right, or left?”
The…left…have been very effective in defining what conservatism is.” — Indiana Homez
*Thank you*
Relax, EBD, it’s a lovely early-summer Friday night and I’m enjoying pretending to be a philosopher here at my favourite interwebothique nightclub, Small Dead Animals. If you’re looking for someone to get mad at, find someone worthy of it (I am not). I most certainly do not think that my thoughts are the point, I’m just enjoying sharing with y’all my thoughts on what are surely points at least related to the seed topic. Or was this a private one-man show and I didn’t get the memo 😉
I feel happy, and not even a bit angry.
/:>)>
I find it all quite entertaining, and in that spirit, I asked you an entirely sincere question in good faith.
If you mean the question that was the last paragraph of your 6:45, EBD, then since the four categorizations you used were all opposed to economic freedom, I would say you were categorizing something traditionally left. And if the categorizations were typically opposed to social freedoms, like sex, drugs, and rock and roll, then I would say traditionally right 😉
Yet the question remains, and maybe this is the point, how significant is the measure. Using the Smallest Political Quiz categorizations, the question is: how far below 0.5 are the two axes? Now let me ask you this, EBD: if you couldn’t choose upper-right, would you rather be in the upper left or the lower right?
Don’t worry Vit I’m the O/T Czar. That being said, you could lighten up a bit, there’s nothing wrong with a shot in the chops if it’s in good humor. And I did get a chuckle from the “sleepy state” analogy.
I liked the “sleepy state” analogy too, Homez. Though
if someone woke me up from a deep sleep and asked me
that question, I think that it is likely that I would say
It’s absurd that left spectrum morons keep trashing the right as racists when the biggest racists I know are part of the NDP voting block.
To be truly right you must also have the capacity to allow others their idiotic ideologies.
All that the left/right axis does is allow one to attack their political enemies through equivocation. You can declare something that is utterly repulsive (e.g. racism) as being “right-wing,” and then anything that you find politically threatening, such as free-enterprise, the right to bear arms, etc., you can automagically tie to racism by labeling those right-wing as well. Well fine, let’s play that game. Let’s arbitrarily decide rape is left-wing. Feel free now to associate anyone who wants more government regulation, higher taxes, or welfare programs with rapists. It might not be fair or conform to any kind of logic, but it’s not like the right = racist construct does, either.
The reason the BBC has always done this is because they exist as a state apparatus.
They are at the very heart willing disseminators of propaganda and disinformation in the mold of the Soviets.
We have the same ilk in our own public broadcaster.
The -real- problem here is granting any legitimacy at all, ever, to the BBC. AKA “The Voice Of Labour.”
They’re Labour Party touts, just as the CBC are Liberal shills here in Canukistan. Anything which argues against the Labour/Liberals/DemocRats policy ‘o the day is racistbigothomophobe right wingery.
They grow more shrill and desperate with every passing day, too. Must be the Invisible Hand of the market pinching their delicate chair polishing bottoms.
der BNP appears as the opportunistic leadweight to the muzzies. As racially horrible, market imbeciles and effing Awipes in general THEY are the result of gumnint buros with no backbone or a clue.
OMMAG, is there an echo in here? ~:D
Even moderate lib-lefties are racists to their core – they see race before they see a person. For example one of their favorite policies “affirmative action” means every person has to put their race on application forms whether for work, school or play. Instead of being color blind and looking at people for who they are and what they can do the average lib-lefty sees black, asian, arab, indian, etc.
Beer heated to room temp must have an effect, eventually, even tho the beernatpartei boils its brew with batwings and decals the total effect is the same.
reg dunlop :”Beer heated to room temp must have an effect”
Yeah, the effect is the consistency of urine. The obvious beverage of choice for those who have “left” their history books in the closet for too long a time.
Even moderate lib-lefties are racists to their core – they see race before they see a person. For example one of their favorite policies “affirmative action” means every person has to put their race on application forms whether for work, school or play. Instead of being color blind and looking at people for who they are and what they can do the average lib-lefty sees black, asian, arab, indian, etc.
Posted by: Fritz at June 12, 2009 8:58 PM
Amen, Fritz. The liberal-left has somehow turned bald-faced racism into a virtue, and that virtue turned into government-sanctioned policy with respect to legislated employment policy (i.e. affirmative action).
And Bam Bam has used the legitimized (but not legitimate) policy of affirmative action in his first Supreme Court appointment.
It’s appalling, really, how the left has somehow successfully cloaked itself as inclusive and tolerant. In fact, the diametric opposite is the reality.
Joel,
I was thinking more along the lines of a sedative or maybe a narcotic, who knows? But piss will do.
On the Glenn Beck show, philosopher Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute makes clear that the so-called Rightist shooter at the Holocaust museum is actually a Leftist:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMbSMdB7p3k
I disagree, Dare. I think that Beck, Binswanger, and the
other chap made it clear that they are all fear-mongers.
And what fear precisely, Vitruvius, is Dr. Binswanger mongering?
The only party that will confront Islam
People vote for them
I wonder why
“Many on the left will argue that being a racist makes you socially right – funny how that works – and that the BNP, despite their openly socialist policies, are on the opposite end of the spectrum from the left, over on the far, far right, alongside the National Socialist German Workers Party.”
Another daft comment revealing an utter lack of spectrums.
Political spectrum:
Left: Worldwide Utopia/ No nations
Right: Hypernationalism/ Xenophobia (hatred for all outsiders, in case you don’t understand the term)
The BNP is more xenophobic than racist. They don’t like White eastern Europeans either. They are hypernationalist hence the whole ‘British Nationalist’ bit. Comprendez?
Economic Spectrum:
Left: Socialist
Right: Free Market
Economic and Political Spectrums are distinct. If you are a xenophobic communist, it is possible to be both left and right wing at the same time. Same applies if you want a country-less world running on purely free markets.
The BNP is anti-immigrant across the board. They hate Romanians as much as they hate Pakistanis. The only difference is that they can’t identify a Romanian as easily as a Pakistani because of obvious visual characteristics. But when they do catch the Eastern Europeans who betray their ethnicity by accent, the BNP are no better.
Keep cheering them on. When they get rid of the colored outsiders, they’ll go after the white ones. They’re not racist per se. Just xenophobic.
So, the “whites only” party are “not racist per se.”
Thanks for stopping by!
I love the hairsplitters that try to nail the right with the fascists and the left with the marxists – the kinder, gentler fascist.
Little Green Footballs has a post very similar to SDA’s but they’ve gone way off their rocker in painting fascism as a disease of the extreme right and ignoring that besides the labels there’s nothing that really separates the two supposedly different “central control” idealogies.
LGF has been consumed with hatred of European fascist groups for the last couple of years and they’ve allowed those negative feelings to cloud their own identity as a conservative voice of reason. Now it seems LGF needs to sell the BNP as a product of rightwing extremism to its’ readership perhaps as an exercise to show everyone that extremism exists on the right too. Only problem is that LGF has it wrong – they’re really just talking about the same lefist social totalitarian extremism under a different name. The whole ongoing effort has LGF looking like a shadow of it’s former logical self.
If there’s right wing extremism, then it should be about those that believe in much more empowerment to individuals and tiny limited government. LGF seems to have forgotten or gotten confused what rightwing means. It doesn’t mean NAZI.
“Let’s just call the BNP what they are: racist, authoritarian leftists.”
EBD, as I see it, that’s just an ad Hominem attack on the BNP.
If you want to make an articulate argument against any of their stated policies, the BNP’s platform is spelled out quite clearly at their website, bnp.org.uk/ There’s the drop-down menu under “Policies”.
I especially look forward to reading something from you detailing why their stated party policies are racist. Their policies strike me as eminently reasonable and in the British people’s nation interest. Specifically, on immigration, law and order, foreign affairs and re-empowering the British people with all the rights they’ve lost in a half-century of Labour collectivist not-altogether-soft tyranny.
ET
“It’s also important to note the assumption that the left cannot be racist, cannot be anything other than tolerant of all and any, embedded as it is within its postmodern relativism.”
If you are politically left-wing, you are not going to be racist simply because your ideology divides the world into classes that are around the world. For a political left-winger, there is no distinction between the various ethnicities. What they seek is a worldwide nation-less utopia, and it would be counterproductive to distinguish between races. They are all the same. If you start distinguishing on the basis of race/creed/color/nationality, then you are probably don’t ascribe the ideology in anything more than name.
“The left is as racist and intolerant as any other utopian ideology.”
Again you are missing the difference between the political and economic left. The political left is incredibly intolerant of other political views, especially those that divide humanity, but it is not racist. The economic left on the other hand has no qualms about being racist or intolerance. However, the economic left does, more often than not, accept the supremacy of the right wing political notion of the nation-state, which no political left-winger would do. Therefore the economic left wing has none of the ideological qualms of the non-nation political left wing. It is purely economical insofar as it is trying to do whatever it is that left wing economic calls sane. These are nuanced differences that are worth keeping in mind.
Political Right wingers are xenophobes, insofar as they are ultranationalists who feel that outsiders are diluting the purity of their nation. Economic right wingers are just free market types. They see the world in very leftist terms – devoid of race/creed etc – merely markets to be tapped. The economic right and political left have a lot in common when it comes to appraoch towards race and xenophobia and national boundaries etc. You can, both theoretically and in reality, be politically left wing and economically right wing at the same time. There is a tendency to see them as two distinct points on the spectrum, but there are many points in between left and right. Both Canada’s political parties fall on the left side of the political spectrum, though one is more economically right wing than the other.
“An unacceptable person, to the left, is deserving of vicious insults, scorn, constant denigration and essentially, being outcast from the society.”
Absolutely. But the left is only vicious towards those who hold views different from their own. The right has shown a tendency to be vicious towards people on less substantial grounds like skin color. Therefor the left would be vicious towards a religious extremist because of ideology, but the right would be vicious towards a person on the basis of skin color/languate etc. Again, we are talking about far left and right, and traditionally most people fall in between, so these aren’t hard and fast rules that applies to eveyrone who describes themselves as such.
Jeff K,
You are confusing political and economic spectrums.
EBD asks…
“Would a party who believes in increased taxation of the rich, opposes private medical care and the privatization of crown corporations, and gets most of their support from unions and the working class be considered right, or left?”
Uhmmm …. left?