(no subject)

[fpb]

Anyone who thinks that I was too harsh about Jonah Goldberg's repulsive and politically motivated rewriting of my own country's history ought to read today's Thomas Sowell column, where it is taken entirely at its own valuation and highly recommended as summer reading for the children of conservatives. This unhistorical, culturally imperialistic propaganda, that distorts my country's and my continent's history in the service of provincial American concerns, is going to enter the bloodstream of a whole American party, If it has not already done so. This will increase further the mutual incomprehension between USA and Europe, because you cannot stand on your two hind legs and inform anyone who knows anything of continental history - France, Italy, Germany, etc. - that Nazism and Fascism were "left wing". This sort of rubbish, especially if spoken with the arrogance of Goldberg and Sowell, will increase European contempt for American viewpoints and culture. Do we really need this sort of trash further complicating our already difficult relationship, and all for the sake of a few Republican votes in the next election?

Comments

Re: The hard right and Fascism

[johncwright.livejournal.com]

"Anyway, you almost seem to be arguing as though I had said that Fascism was a variety of Republicanism. That would be obvious nonsense."

I think this is exactly Mr. Goldberg's objection, as it is mine. I am tired of being called Fascist and lumped among them, merely because you socialists had a falling out among yourselves, and can think of no criticism to level against a free society, except to liken it to a totalitarianism, when it is the stark opposite of a totalitarianism.

Now, you never made this mistake. You were careful enough to distinguish between the varieties of "Right" even though you continue with the arrant nonsense of pretending Nazism is an extreme form of Republicanism, which is the same as calling Republicanism mild Nazism.

Let me express an objection to that. In order for something to be an extreme of something, it has to have a quality in excess that the moderate form contains in moderation. The quality you have selected is "conservativeness" or "reaction", that is, whether the party is loyal to the regime and customs of antiquity, the class structure, the aristocracy, the monarchy, the established church.

Since republicanism preaches the radical curtailing of government power to the limited sphere, and a radical dismantling of class and church privilege, and radical equality before the law, to the utter abolition of any special laws based on birth, an extreme form the this would be, at best, some form of Libertarianism or even Anarchism. An extreme form of republicanism is not monarchy.

By the normal "right-left" classification system, Nazis are those who use violent totalitarian means to protect the ancient regime against the radical revolutionaries of communism. This classification is false-to-facts. Mussolini supported or opposed Victor Emmanuel III when it suited him, and, as you know better than I, eventually established a rival government in the North under Nazi auspices. I do not doubt the dictator used the Monarchy when it suited him, but I do doubt that Mussolini was a Monarchist, or believe the theory of the divine right of kings or any theory like that. His call was for egalitarian unity: the bundle of sticks bound together so that they could not separately be broken. Fascism was populist and nationalist.

But let us not argue that point: even if I grant that Mussolini was a devoted Monarchist and not a dictator trying to reduce the crown to a figurehead, even if I grant this, it cannot be maintained that monarchists favor limited government, universal suffrage, the Rights of Man, free trade and free markets, freedom and speech press and religion, and the other hallmarks of what is called "the Right" in America. Republicanism is the enemy of Monarchy and Aristocracy, the enemy of class privilege and inequality. (Even if the so-called Republican party in the USA is not the enemy of class privilege and inequality. I am talking about the founding theory here, not the modern corruption.)

So, by this logic, if Nazism is (somehow) taken as an extreme and violent form of reactionary defense of the monarchy and the established church, republicanism cannot be taken as a mild and nonviolent form of defense of the monarchy and the established church, since republicanism preaches the radical abolition of crowns and the disestablishment of churches.

The left-right spectrum is nothing but an awkward way for socialists to lump all of their opponents together. Everyone who is pro-socialists is "Left"; the law-abiding parliamentary socialists are "Middle Left" and the violent authoritarian socialists are "far Left": and then, somehow, all opposition to socialism is lumped indiscriminately together on what is called the "Right", whether the opposition comes from a national socialist, a dictator, a king, a tribal chief, an emperor, a pope, an industrialist, a republican, a democrat, a libertarian, an anarchist, a Guelph, a Ghibelline, a Tory, an Ulsterman, an Eskimo, or an Elf.

It is simply a ridiculous and misleading classification system.