The far right in Europe is really the far left...

[billc]

I have a theory that the far right in Europe is really what we here in the states would consider the extreme left. Here is an article that discusses an alleged "far right" political party. However, the politicians the article discusses are in truth, people of the left...

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/special-report-france-far-capitalizes-euro-crisis-070601225.html

Fabien Engelmann, a 32-year old municipal plumber with tight-cropped hair, was an activist with France's leading trade union and a Trotskyist for many years. Later he joined the far-left "New Anticapitalist Party". This year he switched party again, but not on a leftist ticket.
He joined France's famed far-right National Front, and he was not the only one.
This year, five trade unionists have joined the minority party that made its name with the anti-immigrant rhetoric of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Since January, Le Pen's daughter Marine has been in charge of the party, and Engelmann says she is a magnet.
"It really is the arrival of Marine Le Pen that convinced me to join the National Front," Engelmann told Reuters. "She has an economic program that is much more geared to defending the little people, the workers, the popular classes of France."

To make things better, Le Pen is promising to pull France out of the euro, reinstate protectionist barriers, and reassert the state's supremacy over market forces.

A trade unionist and trotskyist who likes the national front because it is "much more geared to defending the little people, the workers, the popular classes of France."
That rhetoric doesn't exactly sound like a limited government, free market capitalist to me.

She wants to raise trade barriers, and reassert the supremacy of the state over market forces...once again, not sounding like a fan of limited government and free market capitalism.

 

[Monroe]

I'd say the US is the example of extremist Capitalist as opposed to most of the developed world being extreme left wing. Most countries politics don't revolve around limited government and free markets. They are discussed, but aren't a major focal point in right wing platforms.

I would agree that Obama is too conservative for my tastes.

 

[Tez3]

Bill, your extreme naivety and ignorance when it comes to European politics is breath taking.
Le Pen and that party are the most xenophobic, anti freedom, rascist and anti semitic bunch of thugs you could get. They are self proclaimed right wingers, they want 'non-believers' rounded up and detained, they are against free speech and free thought. whatever you think they represent you are very sadly mistaken, these are fascists of the worst kind, very definitely right wing. Statements about economics and big and little government hold no water here.
Your understanding of what is left and right is skewed when it comes to European politics, please just leave it to people who know what they are talking about, clearly you do not. Stick to pontificating about your own politics.

You have no understanding about the dangers of these 'National Front' parties, they are direct descendants of the Nazi party, often with the same supporters and don't give me that bollocks about Nazis being left, it's complete nonsense and you should really invest in some serious study if you insist on setting yourself as an expert in European history.

I wasn't going to post having just peeked on my phone to the internet but I can honestly say it makes me sick to my stomach to see the ultra right taken so lightly and almost in jest, you really have no idea what they are about. These are the people that will make blood flow throughout Europe if they ever get in power. They aren't socialist, they aren't left, they are fascist they are right wing. Accept it and move on.

 

[elder999]

I wasn't going to post having just peeked on my phone to the internet but I can honestly say it makes me sick to my stomach to see the ultra right taken so lightly and almost in jest, you really have no idea what they are about. These are the people that will make blood flow throughout Europe if they ever get in power. They aren't socialist, they aren't left, they are fascist they are right wing. Accept it and move on.

Ever wonder why something like this gets posted?

 

[billc]

they do sounda lot like the socialists of 1930's germany. Once again, socialists, facists and communists are all of the same type of movement, with slight differences based on the countries where they came to power.

 

[billc]

Why would a self proclaimed trotskyite, and union member all of a sudden go so against type? Once again, you may like to try to disassociate the left from the worst types of behavior but it just doesn't work. The anti-freedom, anti-free market, anti-immigrant and racist agenda sound too much like the national socialists of Germany, who were on the left and were honest to goodness socialists. In the end, the international socialists ended up doing the same things the Germans did, but they were able to escape the consequences of their actions.

Once again a quote about their policies:

Nostalgia and identity are still core National Front concerns, but Le Pen has moved beyond immigration. The new Front rejects all the ideas that have driven European economic growth in the past two decades: globalization, free trade and the dominance of services and the financial industry.

This is a left agenda. You can hear this stuff down on wallstreet preached by the socialists, greenies, communists and union thugs.

 

[billc]

Some more quotes about Le Pen:

Most of the authors are not known to have Front sympathies, and some are emphatically left-wing. But Le Pen has borrowed their ideas all the same.
Jacques Sapir, a leading eurosceptic French economist, has supported a Communist-backed party in previous elections and has no links with or affinities to Le Pen. He said he had heard from friends that she was quoting him and discovered the Front's website carried links to his work.

"The real fault line is between nationalists and globalists, between economic patriots and those who believe that nations and borders must disappear and that there should be no obstacles whatsoever to commerce, that everything is for sale and everything can be bought, and that there should be no controls on the flows of capital, products and people," she says.

Le Pen's willingness to cross traditional left-right divides prompted the starkest shift in the Front's economic thinking. In Jean-Marie's day, the platform was 'less government', in line with U.S. president Ronald Reagan's Reaganomics. Now the party wants a strong state, a regulated economy.
Sulzer, the man in charge of the Front's economic program, says it wants a state that protects France's internal markets from foreign competition: "We cannot compete with exporting countries that do not respect any social or environmental norms."
The Front also wants to regulate the financial industry and inculcate it with moral values. It favors separating retail and investment banking. Sulzer said Le Pen would have no qualms about nationalizing financial institutions that are in trouble, returning them to the market later. "We do not want to recreate the Soviet Union," he said.
At home, he said, the Front wants freedom of commerce and industry, free competition and no cartels, monopolies or social abuse.

The more you read about these guys the more left wing they become.

Now the party wants a strong state, a regulated economy.

Socialist Segolene Royal, currently third behind Francois Hollande and Martine Aubry in polls of Socialist candidates, has called for more protectionism and last month took a swipe at the banking industry that sounded very Marine Le Pen, saying bankers must "obey, not command".

Sulzer said Le Pen would have no qualms about nationalizing financial institutions that are in trouble, returning them to the market later.

The party offers a radical alternative. To restore French competitiveness it will quit the euro; to boost employment it will close French borders to cheap Chinese imports, reindustrialize and empower the state's regulatory role. And it will bring the banks to heel.

What part of this isn't something you would here from the American left?

 

[billc]

She sounds like she is attempting the approach Hitler used in the 1930's. That would make her a 1) a socialist and 2) a hard lefty.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Bill, your extreme naivety and ignorance when it comes to European politics is breath taking.Le Pen and that party are the most xenophobic, anti freedom, rascist and anti semitic bunch of thugs you could get. They are self proclaimed right wingers, they want 'non-believers' rounded up and detained, they are against free speech and free thought. whatever you think they represent you are very sadly mistaken, these are fascists of the worst kind, very definitely right wing. Statements about economics and big and little government hold no water here.Your understanding of what is left and right is skewed when it comes to European politics, please just leave it to people who know what they are talking about, clearly you do not. Stick to pontificating about your own politics.You have no understanding about the dangers of these 'National Front' parties, they are direct descendants of the Nazi party, often with the same supporters and don't give me that bollocks about Nazis being left, it's complete nonsense and you should really invest in some serious study if you insist on setting yourself as an expert in European history. I wasn't going to post having just peeked on my phone to the internet but I can honestly say it makes me sick to my stomach to see the ultra right taken so lightly and almost in jest, you really have no idea what they are about. These are the people that will make blood flow throughout Europe if they ever get in power. They aren't socialist, they aren't left, they are fascist they are right wing. Accept it and move on.

Um... No. While I don't agree with bill on this one, you are mistaken about fascism. It is neither inherently conservative nor is it inherently liberal. Hell, Italian fascism was demonstrably anti-conservative AND anti-conservative. I am not saying that bill is RIGHT. His line of reasoning is fallacious. But NEITHER of you seem to understand the difference between the liberal-conservative continuum and the authoritarian-libertarian continuum. In effect, the two of you are having an argument devoid of any real thrust on either side because you are arguing about terms with no demonstrated-as-of-yet understanding about what these terms MEAN.Xenophobia, racism, and anti-semitism, in addition to being semantically redundant in the context of the conversation, are neither inherently conservative nor liberal standpoints. You will find racists on BOTH SIDES of that spectrum.Anti freedom is judged on the authorizarian-libertarian scale. It is entirely possible to be anti-freedom AND be either CONSERVATIVE or LIBERAL. The basis of bill's argument is flawed on the very same grounds that the basis of your criticism is flawed.

 

[Sukerkin]

Tez is correct, BillC, in her characterisation of the politics within the spectrum provided by European perspective and history. EDIT: Josh, I see your point and to a large extent agree that Fascism is somewhat of a political entity in it's own right. I have posted this before I think but I find this little 'characteristics' chart to be quite useful when trying to pin down where in the Left--Right tautology a particular ideology lies. http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~garfinkm/Spectrum.html

By all means play with your fantastical dreams where the Nazi's are representatives of some mythical Left and equally mythical Atheists kill more than religious fanatics. By all means post about them here, as long as you don't breach the rules or upset too many people. But for the last and final time, the Nazi's were the extreme representation of the totalitarian Right and the Communist regime of Soviet Russia might not have had a state religion but their state itself (especially it's Leader) was their divinity.

Both just go to prove that fanaticism in politics is a vile trait, whichever wing it flaps. That is the most important point.

I would also say that it might be wise to not for a second hold tight to the deceptive hope that you are convincing anyone of the rightness {yeah, nonsensical politics related pun attack !} of those views who does not already walk in those footsteps of dubious plausibility. Quite the reverse is more likely to be the outcome in almost any reasoning being, for much the same reasons that we all hate tele-sales of any kind.

That constitutes the end of what I have to say on the matter {everyone breathes a sigh of relief :lol:} --> bye now.

 

[billc]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/the_protocols_of_the_elders_of_liberalism.html

Perhaps Mr. Cohen was not taught that Nationalism was a liberal concept, having its genesis in Rousseauian ideas of popular sovereignty and the national will. Rousseau believed that a people and their nation were indivisible, and he welcomed a veneration of the People and the Nation as a way to better unify the State -- and as a way to weaken the power of the nobility and the Church, which he clearly viewed as an impediment to progress. Europe would adopt this concept of Nationalism (as opposed to Patriotism, love for one's country) and it would reach its ultimate expression in the Fascism of Italy and the Nazism of Germany. These were liberal ideas. It is no coincidence that the most virulently nationalistic system in history was also a socialist entity; the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

 

[billc]

For Josh:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/02/ther_persistent_practice_of_ty.html

 

[billc]

Do you mean this rethinking of the political spectrum:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/09/rethinking_the_political_spect.html

A More Accurate Spectrum

The mental framing device of a political spectrum is not a bad idea in itself. There are indeed relationships among tyranny, liberalism, conservatism, and other political phenomena that lend themselves to depiction on a spectrum. But the spectrum must reflect reality.

There is something nonsensical about a political spectrum that spans the range between tyranny and ... tyranny. If one end of the spectrum is the home of tyranny, then shouldn't the opposite end of the spectrum be the home of liberty, tyranny's opposite? The new spectrum is a rough measurement of liberty: very little liberty on the left end, quite a bit on the right end. At the left extreme reside the hard tyrannies of communism and fascism, as seen historically in such places as the Soviet Union, China, Germany, or North Korea. A bit to the right are the softer tyrannies of socialism, as commonly practiced in Western Europe. Liberalism comes next, then "moderation." Moving further along the spectrum toward greater liberty, one finds conservatism, and finally libertarianism.

there is also this:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/01/the_taming_of_the_masses.html

Beginning in the 1930s, at Stalin's direction, communists in the West publicly began to proclaim that they were on the opposite end of the sociopolitical spectrum from what we now call the "fascist" or "right-wing" movements of Europe. In fact, the Fascisti in Italy, the Nazis in Germany, and the Communists in the Soviet Union were all socialists. But the Soviet-backed communists in Europe became embroiled in a deadly power struggle over which socialist party was going to rule the European masses. So they decided to delegitimize the other socialist parties. This was expedited by the simple but effective Orwellian label "counter-revolutionary," which placed any number of socialist groups on the opposite end of the sociopolitical spectrum from the European communists, who by self-anointment became the "true" socialists. To cement this distinction, the Communists started calling themselves "left-wing" revolutionaries and labeled anyone who did not accept their claim to supremacy "right-wing" reactionaries.

also:

http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/fascclas.html

This comment from a detailed
history of the intellectual origins of Fascism is also very much to the
point:

"Leftists often imagine that Fascists were afraid of a revolutionary
working-class. Nothing could be more comically mistaken. Most of the early
Fascist leaders had spent years trying to get the workers to become
revolutionary. As late as June 1914, Mussolini took part enthusiastically, at
risk of his own life and limb, in the violent and confrontational "red week."
The initiators of Fascism were mostly seasoned anti-capitalist militants who had
time and again given the working class the benefit of the doubt. The working
class, by not becoming revolutionary, had let these revolutionaries down".
​

So Mussolini did eventually learn from experience and
offered the workers a much cosier form of Leftism: The "we will look after you"
promise that Leftists still dangle in front of people to this day -- combined
with a "aren't we great?" message that was bound to win broad agreement. And
that combination lay at the core of Fascism -- that was what the "one big happy
family" of Fascism offered.



Germany

The usual
Marxist claim that Nazism and Fascism were overwhelmingly "bourgeois"
(middle-class) and lacked appeal to the working-class has been a major stratagem
that Leftists use to deny that Nazism and Fascism were in fact "socialist

 

[billc]

Sukerkin, I know that no chart is ever going to be completely accurate or cover every aspect of a concept but there are some interesting flaws to the one you linked to.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Bill, to respond to BOTH posts, you missed the point. And the article you posted is flawed on the same grounds that you and tez are flawed in reasoning. Because all three have entirely focused on the x-axis while ignoring the y-axis. Sukerkin's link is pretty goodfor understanding what I am getting at.A similar model is the Nolan Chart: http://www.nolanchart.com/article7443-What-Do-The-Nolan-Chart-Categories-Mean.html , though there are other models that are similar, though divergent.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Sukerkin, I know that no chart is ever going to be completely accurate or cover every aspect of a concept but there are some interesting flaws to the one you linked to.

There are, but a 2 dimensional graph is generally more widely accepted for political classification than a 1 dimensional model.

 

[Josh Oakley]

Personally, I find the Friesian 3-dimensional model to be the most useful. It's three axes are social, economic, and governmental. I find it to be the most accurate, but getting people used to a 3-dimensional model generally requires they accept a 2-dimensional model first. Granted, as soon as you and tez accept a 3-dimensional model, this whole debate between the two of you becomes laughably meaningless and nonsensical.

 

[elder999]

I have a theory that the far right in Europe is really what we here in the states would consider the extreme left. Here is an article that discusses an alleged "far right" political party. However, the politicians the article discusses are in truth, people of the left...

The Far Right in Europe is Really Far Left- a poem, in the spirit of Make the Pie Higher
I have a theory
that the far right in Europe
is the extreme left.
here is an article
politicians in truth?
a trade unionist and trotskyist
doesn't sound like a limited government
raise trade barriers
state over market forces
that rhetoric
in truth, the extreme right
in truth, the extreme left
socialists, fascists, and communists
all the same
once again.

:lfao: :lfao: :lfao: :lfao:
:lfao: :lfao: :lfao: :lfao:
:lfao: :lfao: :lfao: :lfao:
:lfao: :lfao: :lfao: :lfao:
:lfao: :lfao: :lfao: :lfao:

 

[billc]

Another point of view:

http://www.brookesnews.com/091910hayeknazis.html

[h=2]Nazism is Socialism*
[/h]

Friedrich August
von Hayek
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 19 October 2009

Published in the spring of 1933

The persecution of the Marxists, and
of democrats in general, tends to obscure the fundamental fact that National
"Socialism" is a genuine socialist movement, whose leading ideas are the final
fruit of the anti-liberal tendencies which have been steadily gaining ground in
Germany since the later part of the Bismarckian era, and which led the majority
of the German intelligentsia first to "socialism of the chair" and later to
Marxism in its social-democratic or communist form.
One of the main reasons why the
socialist character of National Socialism has been quite generally unrecognized,
is, no doubt, its alliance with the nationalist groups which represent the great
industries and the great landowners. But this merely proves that these groups
too, as they have since learnt to their bitter disappointment, have, at least
partly, been mistaken as to the nature of the movement. But only partly
because, and this is the most characteristic feature of modern Germany, many
capitalists are themselves strongly influenced by socialistic ideas, and have
not sufficient belief in capitalism to defend it with a clear conscience.

and on mussolini:

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/musso.html

Mussolini the pragmatist

Although Mussolini never ceased
preaching socialism in some form, his actions when in power were like those of
most politicians: Many unrealistic promises were broken and policies were
adopted that in fact hurt the workers (such as wage cuts). The important point,
however, is that the policies he in fact adopted once in power were not adopted
for mere ideological reasons but because they were the policies that he thought
would work best for Italy and, thus, ultimately for all Italians. As
"Conservative" political parties tend to think in this way also (Gilmour, 1978),
it is presumably in part this that causes Mussolini to be referred to as a
Rightist. His appeal to Italians, however was as a socialist and a nationalist.


For all his pragmatism, however, it should also be recognized (contrary
to what many of his critics say) that Mussolini did have a well-publicized and
coherent economic strategy mapped out before he came to power and that policies
that are sometimes seen as merely "pragmatic" were also theoretically grounded
in his old Marxist ideas. He was well aware of both Italy's poverty and the
inefficiency of its bureaucrats and blamed much of the former on the latter.
Following the Marxist theory of developmental stages, he argued that the only
alternative to the bureaucrats that would mobilize Italy's limited resources was
the fostering of private enterprise and capitalism. He even advocated
privatization of telecommunications and the post office! This coincides, of
course, with the way modern-day Leftists (particularly in Britain) have
abandoned the idea of State-run enterprises and acknowledged the benefits of
privatization.

Mussolini was, however, far from being any sort of
free-marketeer. Just like most modern-day Leftist politicians, he advocated
private enterprise within a strict set of State controls designed, among other
things, to prevent abuse of monopoly power

 

[billc]

The next bit sounds remarkably like Le Pen:

Mussolini:

When he did gain power, he implemented economic policies that would endear
him to many of the Left today. His policies were basically protectionist. He
controlled the exchange-rate of the Italian currency and promoted that old
favourite of the economically illiterate -- autarky -- meaning that he tried to
get Italy to become wholly self-sufficient rather than rely on foreign trade. He
wanted to protect Italian products from competing foreign products. The Leftist
anti-globalizers of today would approve.

Le Pen:

Sulzer, the man in charge of the Front's economic program, says it wants a state that protects France's internal markets from foreign competition: "We cannot compete with exporting countries that do not respect any social or environmental norms."

Occupy Wall street:

This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs
on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field
for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are
dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and
environmental regulation advantages.

From wikipedia on the national front:

Under her leadership, Marine Le Pen has been more clear in her support for protectionism, while she has criticised globalism and capitalism. She has been a proponent of letting the government take care of health care, education, transportation, banking and energy.[SUP][127][/SUP]

Occupy Wallstreet:

They want universal single-payer health care, insisting that “private insurers must be banned from the health care market.”

Hmmm...