9/20/2023 0 Comments Left wing or right im pro violenceIts release in 2007 opened many eyes and minds to the truth. While they weren’t expunged as right-wing extremist symbols with the publication of Jonah Goldberg’s first book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change, they should have been. There is a solid conceptual argument backed by a body of evidence that Naziism, fascism and even white supremacy aren’t “right wing” at all, that they are creatures of the left and have been from the beginning. And for every president or prime minister so labelled, there have been innumerable lesser politicians, journalists, academics and other public figures.īut what if the basic underlying assumption isn’t even valid? What if fascism, as an ideology and method of practising politics, does not belong in its assigned location on the political spectrum? Bush was called “Bushitler,” and in Canada, former prime minister Stephen Harper was often accused of harbouring fascist tendencies or a sinister, ultra-right-wing hidden agenda. Before Trump, previous Republican President George W. Indeed, the logic of labelling any conservative as potentially extremist or proto-fascist depends on it. While not everyone goes that far, the essential point regarding this ideological continuum goes virtually unquestioned throughout society. Puskar, (right) Dpa Dena/DPA via ZUMA Press) Bush (left) was often called “Bushitler” by his opponents, a wholly unsupportable claim based on the historical record of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler (right). This view permeates intellectual circles, the news media and the cultural industries, which spent the years prior to Biden’s election working themselves into a lather about the apprehended rise of right-wing extremism or even, as one put it, “1930s-style European fascism,” often attributed to the focal point of their fears, Donald Trump. The left has no involvement in any of it. These and innumerable other instances have a common conceptual basis: middle-of-the-road conservatives, doctrinaire conservatives, harder-core right-wingers, the so-called “alt-right,” extremists and ultimately fascists (along with racists and white supremacists) all coexist on an ideological continuum on the right half of the political spectrum, separated only by degrees. During last summer’s election campaign, he accused the pugnaciously populist Rebel Media (which this newspaper account helpfully characterized as a “far-right group” rather than a journalistic organization) of spreading “disinformation and misinformation,” even holding Rebel responsible for fomenting nationwide “polarization.” More recently, Trudeau explicitly denounced Canadians who choose not to get the Covid-19 vaccine as “very often misogynistic and racist.” Prime Minister Trudeau in late 2020, for example, declared that “Islamophobia and right-wing extremism have no place in our country,” implicitly equating the two. (Source of bottom images: The Canadian Press)Ĭanada has its own though somewhat milder version of this phenomenon. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (bottom left) and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (bottom right). President Donald Trump in San Francisco in 2017 (top), U.S. Depicted, protesters at a rally against former U.S. Seeing fascists everywhere: The left frequently insinuates that all who oppose it are bordering on or actually fascist. One headline proclaimed Biden “not wrong” to use the fascist label. President, Biden’s words and policies reflect the view prevailing throughout the ideological left, which dominates today’s Democratic Party and swathes of the media. While such rhetoric is outrageous for any sitting U.S. Perhaps this wasn’t so surprising, for Biden had previously accused his predecessor of being a “fascist” who, if not actually another Hitler, was “sort of like Goebbels,” the Nazi propaganda minister. The hunt for radical right-wingers was also made a main focus of the U.S. Biden’s new Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, “vowed to root out white supremacy and right-wing radicalism in the ranks” and soon ordered every military branch to stand down for a “deeper conversation” about racism. A military facing defeat in Afghanistan and a long-term strategic threat from China was ordered to fixate upon the personal beliefs of its own troops. Among the earliest promises of Joe Biden’s Administration was to “Purge the Military of White Supremacists,” as a prominent headline put it. To hear certain political leaders tell it, one might think there were fascists and racists lurking under every second bed across the continent.
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