Why Ann Coulter is great.

[aedrasteia]

Actually I'm curious as to why he keeps calling Hitler and Mussolini leftists despite massive evidence to the contrary.

Blade96

just a guess.

Neither of them appear to know/understand the term "authoritarian" regarding governments and social/political movements. There can be authoritarian-ism both of the right and of the left. The construct is rarely used in general discussions but its indispensible when analyzing political movements. As a political system in the Soviet Union or Mao's China, one finds hideous, bloody authoritarianism of the "left". In Franco's Spain or the generals' Argentina and Chile in the 20th century, one finds hideous, bloody authoritarianism of the right.

I notice when the perpetual argument occurs, as currently on MT, with significant verbal heat, little light and great confusion regarding social-ism, fasc-ism, marx-ism with no mention of authoritarianism and its cousin totalitarianism. Seems to always indicate poor thinking and inadequate undergraduate education.
A

 

[Blade96]

Absolutely. A leftist can be authoritarian (although then i have to question how 'leftist' are they really because they want you to submit to authority, not free people from oppressive rule) and no doubt ties into why Billcihak believes as he does about who's right and who's left.

But leftism and rightism do differ, especially in theory and as do fascism/Nazism, and communism/socialism. No matter how much different groups claiming to be leftist/rightist came to sometimes resemble each other especially later on.

 

[billc]

Adresteia, exactly what made hitler "right" when all of his beliefs mirror the beliefs of the left. Did you read the articles at the Rights and Lefts thread. there is a an explanation of the right, its association with the hispanic military dictators of Spain, Argentina and Chile and why hitler was a lefty. There is a nice rundown on the history of the "right" there as well.

The left is all about oppressive rule. The right about individual rights and limited government.

 

[Blade96]

Adresteia, exactly what made hitler "right" when all of his beliefs mirror the beliefs of the left. Did you read the articles at the Rights and Lefts thread. there is a an explanation of the right, its association with the hispanic military dictators of Spain, Argentina and Chile and why hitler was a lefty. There is a nice rundown on the history of the "right" there as well.

The left is all about oppressive rule. The right about individual rights and limited government.

Thats a good question. why is hitler considered 'right' when traditional right wing conservative views are about minimalizing the role of government and such. And Hitler had a huge government = very oppressive. I think Billcihak has asked a good question there.

These might help.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110109144106AA1jpTr

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics

http://jyte.com/cl/nazism-is-a-form-of-right-wing-extremism

http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html

 

[aedrasteia]

Thats a good question. why is hitler considered 'right' when traditional right wing conservative views are about minimalizing the role of government and such. And Hitler had a huge government = very oppressive. I think Billcihak has asked a good question there.

Blade

I did not place the Nazi political movement on the right, Billc, I believe did so. I would place that regime in a separate category, if that matters; it was such a hodge-podge of insanity, contradiction, cult, bureaucracy, militarism, hatred and efficiency. I think there is enormous confusion here. Authoritarian and totalitarian governments and movements both advocate regime controls, just over different aspects of life, social organization and institutions, dimensions of personal life, economics, business and trade, etc. Left and right denote more about which aspects are emphasized and to what degree.

Just as a thought experiment, temporarily suspend thinking in terms of right and left - those terms are thoroughly bolloxed up. Look at some helpful and wide-ranging definitions of authoritarian and totalitarian.

Two funnies: search 'playing the Hitler card' at Urban Dictionary and Google
Dave Barry - Hitler.

A long enough debate means that the probability of someone resorting to "Hitler" becomes 100%.

And at that point the discussion becomes irrational and worthless.

A

 

[Tez3]

Blade96

just a guess.

Neither of them appear to know/understand the term "authoritarian" regarding governments and social/political movements. There can be authoritarian-ism both of the right and of the left. The construct is rarely used in general discussions but its indispensible when analyzing political movements. As a political system in the Soviet Union or Mao's China, one finds hideous, bloody authoritarianism of the "left". In Franco's Spain or the generals' Argentina and Chile in the 20th century, one finds hideous, bloody authoritarianism of the right.

I notice when the perpetual argument occurs, as currently on MT, with significant verbal heat, little light and great confusion regarding social-ism, fasc-ism, marx-ism with no mention of authoritarianism and its cousin totalitarianism. Seems to always indicate poor thinking and inadequate undergraduate education.
A

A good post. It's hard however to get to authoritarianism when you can't get pass the 'Hitler was communist' argument. if we can't agree on the very basics we are never going to progress to the real nub of the discussions. There are such sweeping generalisations made that have to be addressed that we will never get to the meat of the discussion.

I agree that things aren't as clear cut as totally left and totally right but we have to agree broadly on terms that we can all understand to start our discussions off. Statements like 'all the left are violent and unhappy while the right are serene and peaceful' aren't going to get us anywhere. To be honest to get to where you are in the discussion we'd have to cover a lot of ground and frankly I've been trying to keep it simple. There has been so many sweeping statements made and opinions of media types quoted I fear we will never get to the point you are in the argument. It would be pleasant I must admit, to actually get to the meat of the discussion.

'The soft Anglo -Saxon approach to terrorism', well that's something I've never heard before considering some say Obama is blaming the British for the way they handled terrorism in Kenya, we've also dealt with it in Aden, Malaya, Cyprus as well as the more well known Northern Ireland terrorists, no one has ever accused us of being 'gentle' before.

Anyway, I shall come back to this, my new cross trainer has been just delivered ( at 0715 in the morn ugh) so I'm off to put it together!

 

[Blade96]

Thats a good question. why is hitler considered 'right' when traditional right wing conservative views are about minimalizing the role of government and such. And Hitler had a huge government = very oppressive. I think Billcihak has asked a good question there.

Blade

I did not place the Nazi political movement on the right, Billc, I believe did so. I would place that regime in a separate category, if that matters; it was such a hodge-podge of insanity, contradiction, cult, bureaucracy, militarism, hatred and efficiency. I think there is enormous confusion here. Authoritarian and totalitarian governments and movements both advocate regime controls, just over different aspects of life, social organization and institutions, dimensions of personal life, economics, business and trade, etc. Left and right denote more about which aspects are emphasized and to what degree.

Just as a thought experiment, temporarily suspend thinking in terms of right and left - those terms are thoroughly bolloxed up. Look at some helpful and wide-ranging definitions of authoritarian and totalitarian.

Two funnies: search 'playing the Hitler card' at Urban Dictionary and Google
Dave Barry - Hitler.

A long enough debate means that the probability of someone resorting to "Hitler" becomes 100%.

And at that point the discussion becomes irrational and worthless.

A

A good post. It's hard however to get to authoritarianism when you can't get pass the 'Hitler was communist' argument. if we can't agree on the very basics we are never going to progress to the real nub of the discussions. There are such sweeping generalisations made that have to be addressed that we will never get to the meat of the discussion.

I agree that things aren't as clear cut as totally left and totally right but we have to agree broadly on terms that we can all understand to start our discussions off. Statements like 'all the left are violent and unhappy while the right are serene and peaceful' aren't going to get us anywhere. To be honest to get to where you are in the discussion we'd have to cover a lot of ground and frankly I've been trying to keep it simple. There has been so many sweeping statements made and opinions of media types quoted I fear we will never get to the point you are in the argument. It would be pleasant I must admit, to actually get to the meat of the discussion.

'The soft Anglo -Saxon approach to terrorism', well that's something I've never heard before considering some say Obama is blaming the British for the way they handled terrorism in Kenya, we've also dealt with it in Aden, Malaya, Cyprus as well as the more well known Northern Ireland terrorists, no one has ever accused us of being 'gentle' before.

Anyway, I shall come back to this, my new cross trainer has been just delivered ( at 0715 in the morn ugh) so I'm off to put it together!

Interesting and thoughtful too.

 

[Tez3]

My son is going to have to put my cross trainer together far too many bits and bobs for me lol.

Okay, to have a meaningful political discussion we have to agree on what we are talking about and to get rid of absolutes, like 'all conservatives/right wingers' are good people, all 'socialists/leftwingers are bad'. We can agree terms first such as socialism is broadly left and conservatism is broadly right. We'd probably had better agree on what liberals are because they are very different beasts in the States from what they are here.

In the UK we don't seem to have such a vast difference between political views as the States, we certainly don't have such vitriol in either our media or our politics, we have arguments of course but I think the politicians worked out a while back that name calling and dirty tactics turned the electorate off all parties. All our parties with exception of the National Front are broadly central with the Conservatives/Tories on the right of centre and the Labour/socialists on the left of centre. That's the accepted description here of the parties and how they describe themselves. The Liberal Democrats are bang in the middle so much so that most think they sit on the fence lol. The government at the moment is a Conservative and Lib Dem coalition.

Accepting this description of our political parties enables us to discuss politics on the same level. You can look at the Labour Party and the Labour movement and understand where they come from, you can investigate the various thoughts on socialism and communism but if you have a closed mind and all socialism is 'bad' it's going to make a frustrating discussion. The history of the Labour movement in the UK is an interesting one and to be honest we here have a lot to be thankful to the early pioneers of the movement.

We can't have a proper discussion if statements like socialism killed millions comes up, it's meaningless. It's as meaningless as saying 'the army killed millions', whose army? where? when? why? Nor can we go with the statements about conservatives being happy and socialists not, far too sweeping and doesn't contribute anything to a discussion on politics.


The subject of the Nazis is a complicated one but to insist the Nazis were communists through and through and nothing more, is just silly to my mind. Hitler didn't see himself or his party as such, there were many often terrifying ideas in there which can be explored but not if the discussion is going to be 'Hitler was a communist/socialist' end of subject. It can't be put aside with that much simplicity. You can't dismiss Nazi Germany, China, USSR either in one sentence saying that socialism kills millions.

This thread has been hugely frustrating right from the beginning, comments about Scrooge are meaningless unless one takes into account that Scrooge is cast as a Victorian Englishman in the time of the Empire whose ideas and beliefs were that of a man of his time. He and his real life contempories would have no idea of the meaning Americans put to the word 'liberal'. When Dickens wrote Christmas Carol, the country was in a very similiar state to it is now, a world recession and the country had a huge deficit. Dickens was part of a Victorian movement that felt the wealthy should be charitable and it was their duty to improve the lot of the workers and the poor. It was the age of the great reformers to whom we have much to be thankful for.
Look up Robert Owen, Thomas Wakely, George Dawson, Charles Trevelyan, Octavia Hill and Lady Henry Somerset for a start. To say Scrooge was a 'liberal' is to misunderstand so much and from there the thread has proved it carried on from where that started.

Look up the great reforming movement of the Victorians, it's an eye opener.