Harry's Place

“…..but Goldberg’s tottering Heath-Robinson thesis that modern day liberals are fascist in nature by their willingness to use the state to control society was a step too far”.

Just ‘a step’? Are you sure?

It’s “Jonah” Goldberg.

I’m mystified by why people feel the need to impose ownership of these extremes on either side. None of the mainstream parties in the UK or the US come even close to an extreme at either end of the political spectrum.

Goldberg is quite clear in his book, repeating ad nauseum that no, he did not think modern liberals are fascists. His book was a reaction to the almost reflexive use of the Nazi smear by American liberals. And in the process he covers.

Nick Cohen provided a much fairer review that Chait, who is something of a partisan hysteric.

http://nickcohen.net/2009/02/08/a-right-hook-to-the-left/

The impetus to assign fascism and totalitarianism exclusively to the far left, or the far left, is a fairly transparent tactic, carried out by pots and kettles who think only one of us can be black, and it isn’t going to be me.

.. or the far right, I meant to say.

I kinda trailed off in the first graph. I don’t have a clue what I meant to say.

It’s “Jonah” Goldberg.

Fixed.

a) this is a very good film

b) the point made by my German supervisor, who was at university at the time, is that a lot of the old Nazis were still in power and authority when those that became B-M or RAF were students. It was partly against these that they were rebelling. Admittedly in a very misguided and misdirected way.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this movie.

Wasn’t Jurgen Habermas the first to use the term “left-wing fascism” (Linksfaschistnus) to describe the violent tactics of the most radical 68′ers?

I remember a passage from Alan Bloom’s The Closing Of The American Mind in which a professor playfully reads an exhortation to “action” before cheering students, then reveals that the author was Benito Mussolini.

Those who wish to revolt against the people are so pathetically lost. When you hate your own people and the democracy they participate in, what can you possibly offer as an alternative?

People who aren’t insane try to change society by popularizing ideas and winning elections, not by blowing up shopping malls, or, even worse, by having gangs intimidate the populace the way everyone’s favorite Islamists do where ever they can.

Mostly, but not completely, OT: lan Pappe, booed as a Jew by Israeli Arabs:

“A bitter dispute broke out between Hadash [Communists], who invited a Jewish speaker, and the Islamic Movement and Balad, who refused to hear of it. Finally they settled on Dr. Ilan Pappe, who delivered an enthusiastic speech against Zionism (’the problem began with settlers 120 years ago’). But he was drowned out by boos, some against his Jewishness, some against the ‘takeover’ by Hadash.”

http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1118364.html

I am curious does Goldberg point out that when Hitler offered the Enabling Act of March, 1933, the basis for the Nazi consolidation of
power, it was supported by the Catholic Center Party in the Reichstag?

Wasn’t Jurgen Habermas…

I don’t know, was he?

More disturbing than the over-use of the fascist boo-word for me is the way that dedicated social interventionists like Neil D present their views as mainstream. At least there’s no pretence at PP or LC that the majority of views expressed there are anything but absurd, divorced from any objective reality nonsense.

Yeah yeah whatever, but to argue that Hitler was a creature of anything but the far right is revisionism to the point of fantasy. His little “German Worker’s Party” was one of many right wing fringe groups in early weimar germany. He and Ludendorff, an extreme right wing former general, spearheaded the Munich putsch attempt in 1923. His financial support came from German industrialists. His political support came from other right wing and far right wing parties. His most stalwart enemies were the social democrats, whom he persecuted as relentlessly as he did Communists.
Anybody who argues otherwise is purposefully revising history for ideological purposes. end of story.

vildechaye,

I am sure they will say next Franco and the Ustaša in Croatia were really Trotskyites in denial

vildechaye,
your comment would be more illuminating as well as more verifiable if you provided a definition of what you mean by “right”: “the far right”, “right wing fringe groups”, “extreme right wing”, “other right wing and far right wing parties”. What are the specific characteristics of the far right that distinguish it from both the right and the far left and the extreme far left?

Trotsky was the most stalwart enemy of Hitler’s ally, Stalin, and Stalin persecuted him as relentlessly as he did the social democrats. Does that mean Stalin was on the right or the left?

Perhaps categories such as “extreme right” “right” and “left-wing” are no more absolute or mutually exclusive than categories such as “heterosexual” “bi-curious” and “homosexual”, like what I am, darling. Are you a fruit too? And is a tomato one or a vegetable? One is an odd number but what about zero? One of the defining characteristics of birds is that they can fly, so a bird with a broken wing is not a bird, right? I’m confused. How can “the day” be both the opposite of “the night” and a unit of time that contains “the night”? Is Moscow in Europe? Why is Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest? If the definition of island is a piece of land surrounded by water, does that mean Europe and Asia are an island? If the Suez Canal didn’t exist would Zimbabwer be part of that island too? What about a beach in China that is covered with water when the tide comes in, is that part of the same island? Nazis identified as socialists. Does that mean they weren’t?

If I sprinkle curry powder onto something, such as your head, that makes it a curry and anybody who argues otherwise is purposefully revising history for ideological purposes. end of story.

I’d like to see the movie, later

In fact the Communists in the UK supported the Nazis in Germany.

That Factions on the Left brutalized each other goes without saying.

Stalin and Trotsky.

Nazis and Communists.

Vietcong and Khmer Rogue.

So on and so forth.

I don’t think that the modern lefty/liberal types is a totalitarian at all but there is an unhealthy admiration of some or even most “resistance” movements. The liberal knows that he is only an office bound government worker or lawyer or whatever but deep down wishes he was in the vanguard of some sort of fight for the people. So when he or somebody he admires identifies a group of blood thirsty sociopaths as “the resistance” he feels himself drawn along in support or at least in a weaselly attempt at “contextualisation”. I think this is where the urge to support some of the following comes from:

Che/Castro
Baader Meinhof
Hamas
Taliban
Chavez

All these groups wear or wore the clothes of the “peoples resistance” while enthusiastically killing the people.

One alternative (not Fascist) take on what it means to be ‘far right’ might be the kind of highly self reliant, individualist and libertarian society depicted by Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

dedicated social interventionists like Neil D

Hmmm, I don’t think I am. I think there are a number of social issues that the current Labour government in the UK shouldn’t be interfering in – some of which they only find themselves interfering in due to overzealous use of laws by officials. I’m more of a left-wing libertarian.

Pat Buchanan IS a right-wing extremist.

“Is there such a thing as a right-wing extremist? … When you go past the right wing of the Republican Party, through Tom Tancredo and Pat Buchanan, what comes next? Is there anything there or just a gaping void?”

I think the Left in “The West” is much more likely to generate extremists because the Left has historically championed violent, radical revolution – due in no small part to their impatience with the pace of social change. The Right is more associated with conservatism – holding on to past traditions, morals and cultural modes.

The real right-wing extremists today are the Jihadists, who have declared war on modernity and declared their intention to drag the world back to the 8th century.

Nazis? Republicans? Obama?

Have some fun! Watch Hitler diss ObamaCare promoted by National Republican Congressional Committee.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1120809.html

Gene, FLAME ON!

(I recognise it as a new low, but funny!)

Goldberg’s tottering Heath-Robinson thesis that modern day liberals are fascist in nature by their willingness to use the state to control society was a step too far.</blockquote. To wit the insufferably smug ‘we know what’s best for the little poeple’ Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith ….Rather dangerous ‘liberal fascists’ to a tee.

Is there such a thing as a right-wing extremist?

Yes, the current Chinese Politburo. Also, some US Libertarians with their hyper laissez faire views are to my mind ‘extremist’…or rather simply barking mad.

The Nazis were pretty centerist on the Left-Right scale, they were extreme authoritarians, and just plain nasty. The British BNP are hard Left, most definitely not Right Wing. They have a nationalist hook but then nationalism is not the preserve of the Right, counter examples of Left wing nationalism would include Viet Nam and the Soviet Union.

‘Right Wing’ is often….even usually used as a general purpose pejorative for ’stuff we don’t like’ by all too many; it’s endemic at the BBC and amongst a certain kind of soft left nanny state authoritarian.

It helps to unpack teh left/right metaphor, which, IIRC, comes from the seating arrangements at teh French court, with the aristocracy (and the King’s men) sitting on his right hand side, and the bourgeoisie (his liberal opponents) on the left.

So the right begins as pro fuedalism, anti-democratic, etc. Pro-status quo (the key feature). When the liberals began to move to power, and discovered their status quo was being threatened by the new workers movement, many turned to the old ‘organic’ forces, became pro-supsrstition, authoritarianism, etc – anything to put the workers down.

As time has progressed, some liberals have made alliances with social democrats, and the radical nationalists, pro-aristocrats, etc. have been pushed into the margins and have began to strike inssurrectionist and anti-hegemonic poses (often consciously copying previous positions of the rising working class).

The key is thus not what precise noises/policies a movement makes, but who it represents, and on what basis.

The RAF may have been ‘Liberals with a bomb’, nevertheless they did not pose a threat to all independent democratic organization. On the other hand fascist movements have form on this. So it is worth a bit of effort distinguishing.

Democracy is not an achieved fact (e.g. We live in a democratic country) it is spectrum. Genuine fascists want to curtail all democracy, genuine socialists want to expand it (ultimately into the economic sphere).

Intersting to read of this film in connection with another – Stephen Poliakoff’s new one abiout those who advocated peace with Hitler

I havn’t seen it yet but assuming it is susceptible to such comparisons, it will be interstingto see whether the left’s bien pensants are as swift to draw comparisons with the present day as they are with literary and other works whose tenor suits their views.

This is a good film, and buffs can spot actors who were in ‘Downfall’ and ‘The Lives of Others’ (Bruno Ganz, Martina Gedeck, Alexandra Maria Lara).

Oh, one other fun fact. One of the key incidents in radicalising those who joined the Red Army Faction was the shooting of Benno Ohnesorg on 2nd June 1967 – a killing portrayed at the beginning of ‘The Baader-Meinhoff Complex’. Ohnesorg was killed by a plain-clothes police officer (Karl-Heinz Kurras) during a demonstration against the visiting Shah of Iran which turned into a riot. Kurras was only recently exposed as an agent of the Stasi:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,627342,00.html

Curiouser and curiouser.

God, I’ve been swamped by these They were called National Socialists, Leftards! types before. It’s a transparent and risible attempt by right wing reactionaries to paint their own politics as consisting of freedom, hot women with big hooters and golden retriever puppies and everyone else’s as some hippy’s sandal stamping on a human face, forever.

I would also argue the difference between red and brown is actually quite important. If we look at the latter 20th century history of eastern Europe for instance, we can see that its people suffered terribly under the oppression of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, had the Nazis won the war, the majority of those people would probably have been marched into the death camps and gassed by 1950. I would say that the difference between “brutally repressed” and “exterminated en masse” – the difference between red and brown, in other words – is pretty significant, historically.

There are those who support democratic forms of government (the overwhelming majority) and those that do not. Those that justify terrorism, violence, or offer to impose a totalitarian future of whatever shade are outside of acceptable politics and should be shunned; whether they are defined as red or brown is besides the point.

I would’ve thought it wouldn’t be necessary to point out that very large numbers of people have been brutally murdered in the name of “democracy and acceptable politics” over the last fifty years or so. For example the Vietnam War was, in large part, about standing up for (an appalling charade of) democracy and “acceptable politics” in the face of teh evul Commies, but it still wound up killing millions of people for no useful or sane purpose.

Secular democracy is the best system of government we’ve found yet, by light years. Still, I humbly suggest that this entire thesis explains our history and our current situation only if you are happy with comforting fairy tales. Get it down to brass tacks, then the issues involved are considerably murkier, filled with very difficult questions – questions that are so difficult that it’s not surprising that so many people are happier with the Cinderella version.

hitchens is wrong. it’s a (very) boring film that just chronicles a bunch of stuff that happened; it lacks a thesis. but surely the guy we’re meant to listen to is the feeble bruno ganz character: “if only we listened to them”, etc. hitchens thinks this is satirical, but i’m pretty sure it isn’t.

Kurras was only recently exposed as an agent of the Stasi:

Another interesting fact (as we were discussing East Germany last week) were the anti-semitic attacks carried out by East german agents in west Berlin and elsewhere during the early to mid sixties.

On the middle-class lefties in Germany being characterised as middle-class righties you can’t escape the context of the sixties running battle between the student protestors and the press – controlled for the most past by Axel Springer- which took to calling them proto-nazis at a very early stage and (for example) produced cartoons of student leaders in nazi uniform.

Link for stasi antisemitism:

http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/eastgermany/nazis1.html

Cinderella version.

Ha ha! I did it!

Left and right are devices created from the National assembly of 1789-91, not the French court. On the left we had anglophile Nobles, free marketeers, proto-republicans, many many Lawyers and a few populist cures. On the right were the more impoverished nobility, the court party, those who sought to strengthen the throne by very limited reform and batshit crazy woodsmen of various estates. The defining aspect of each was not the role of the state or markets. Rather, the left conceived of the need to emacipate and to break ‘chains’, the right were concerned with regeneration and the maintanance of the essential nature of the French monarchy.

It would be intersting to know how Flying Rodent classifes the millions of deaths caused in the USSR, China and Cambodia in the pursuit of “agricultural collectivisation” to give it what I think is the usual euphenism?

If we look at the latter 20th century history of eastern Europe for instance, we can see that its people suffered terribly under the oppression of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, had the Nazis won the war, the majority of those people would probably have been marched into the death camps and gassed by 1950.

I’d agree with that, but still murdering millions of people on a class basis, rather than ethnic basis is hardly much of an advert for Red politics over Brown. And Mussolini was undeniably a fascist, and did not institute Nazi-like policies in Italy.

Stuart –

Che/Castro
Baader Meinhof
Hamas
Taliban
Chavez

All these groups wear or wore the clothes of the “peoples resistance” while enthusiastically killing the people.

Well, that is quite a mixed bag, isn’t it? With respect to the RAF — as opposed to, say, Hamas — it can hardly be said that ‘they enthusiastically killed the people’. They targeted leading figures — political and economical — within the power structure of the German society, many of them old Nazis. They would never have set off a bomb in a crowded bus, indescriminatley killing people. Not that this justifies their action, but it clearly sets them apart from Hamas et. al. A difference well worth making, I think.

It would be intersting to know how Flying Rodent classifes the millions of deaths caused in the USSR, China and Cambodia in the pursuit of “agricultural collectivisation” to give it what I think is the usual euphenism?

FlyingFuckface will be all bluster like collectivists usually are when their crimes are pointed out.

I watched this recently and can heartily recommend it. It manages to work as a thriller (which I guess is why some of the group’s victims find it very offensive), a critique of terrorism and an interesting snapshot of German society in the late Sixties and Seventies. The scenes in the prison when the group finally implode are particularly powerful, and the film also manages to convey the punky counter-cultural glamour of the group (one reason why such a high proportion of young people found themselves in misguided sympathy with them) without glorifying them.

And Mussolini was undeniably a fascist, and did not institute Nazi-like policies in Italy.

And the British Imperial Fascist league were undeniably fascists and not nazis in that there was no “socialist” element at all in their policies.

Yet it was their leader who was the first in the world to call for the “extermination” of a people.

“They would never have set off a bomb in a crowded bus, indescriminatley killing people.”

The idea that the Red Army Fraction never targeted innocent civilians is nonsense. How would you characterize the proofreaders at the Springer press building, some of whom were critically wounded in the RAF bombing in MaY, 1972, or the passengers aboard the Lufthansa plane hi-jacked and diverted to Mogadishu in 1977 – whose lives were saved not by the goodwill of the RAF and Palestinian captors, but rather by the superior skills of GSG-9, or the three US rank and file soldiers killed in the bombing of the US army headquarters in Heidelberg etc etc etc.

Having got that off my chest, I fully second those who have recommended this movie. Unlike previous German cinematic attempts to portray the RAF, this one seems to have been made by people outside of the circles of the German left, and hence avoids the pitfall of to some degree taking the RAF at their own estimation. This has hurt even the better previous efforts, such as Schlondorff’s ‘The legend of Rita’ and Margarethe Von Trotta’s ‘Marianne and Julianne.’ The former of which sentimentalised the RAF and their Stasi handlers and the latter of which took a weird and very German view of Gudrun Ensslin as an iconic figure of uncompromising purity (without overtly agreeing with her deeds).

This new movie portrays the leading RAF figures as a bunch of naive and hysterical assholes, which seems to be what they were.

I agree that the Horst Herrold figure is annoying and the references to Israel particularly so. ‘Herrold’ at one point depicts the Palestinian organizations in 1972 as wanting ‘land’ from Israel ‘but nobody’s listening’. He’s wrong. We were listening very carefully, which is why we knew that in 1972 the Palestinian organizations wanted the destruction of Israel, and there was nothing to talk about.

Other tan this, a very good movie, I think.

murdering millions of people on a class basis, rather than ethnic basis is hardly much of an advert for Red politics over Brown.

Well, nobody said it was an advert. I was pointing out that the question of whether Nazis or communists occupied their lands was a rather vital and life-threatening question for eastern Europeans, which implies that there may yet be differences between the two that are worth drawing.

I think my point is more that failing to distinguish between differing forms of totalitarianism – such as for instance, failing to distinguish between the brutal persecution of the Kulaks and a Commie-led nationalist revolt against French imperial rule – is more or less how people with good intentions wind up wading kneedeep into hideous, ultraviolent bloodbaths.

I would suggest that the argument that ideologies which share similar traits must therefore be essentially identical is obviously flawed in itself, before you even get to defining what it is you’re talking about. Adopted as a worldview, attempts to apply this mistaken philosophy to real world situations invites unexpected results, if not catastrophic disaster.

It would be intersting to know how Flying Rodent classifes the millions of deaths caused in the USSR, China and Cambodia in the pursuit of “agricultural collectivisation”

A series of inhuman genocides/democides committed with varying levels of insanity and cruelty, I think.

The one thing they’re definitely not is a trite and childish lesson to explain why whatever system of government it is you’re pimping is inherently superior to someone else’s slightly different version of the same thing. The major mass murders of the C20th certainly didn’t happen so that internet ballbags could justify their annoying and predictable habit of concern-trolling anyone to their left as genocidaires-in-waiting.

I was pointing out that the question of whether Nazis or communists occupied their lands was a rather vital and life-threatening question for eastern Europeans, which implies that there may yet be differences between the two that are worth drawing.

Indeed it was, but it is also worth noting that even Stalin had to resort to nationalism to motivate the troops, rather than communism. No-one can deny that there were differences between communism and National Socialism, but they were both in the final analysis totalitarian systems that ground up a lot of people. And the differences become less when you compare non-Nazi fascists to other communist regimes.

predictable habit of concern-trolling anyone to their left as genocidaires-in-waiting.

And the same goes for calling people to the right fascists.

Neil D, thanks for this: interesting post, link and film.

On the Jonah Goldberg book, and re FR’s nicely written (but wrong) comment, I agree his argument is basically incoherent, and ends up struggling to fill the book (leaving some readers, including me, struggling to finish it).

But he does have a point in relation to the shared left and fascist ideas of “progress”, and that many progressives were and are drawn towards fascism because it shares many progressive goals and shares in the leftist method of achieving those goals through radical state action.

Moreover, looking at the practical outcome of extreme ideologies of “left” and “right”, the common use and appreciation of:

- political violence

- abuse of law and due process

- state-sanctioned torture and murder

by extremists of all kinds, whether Communist, Nazi or Islamist, shows that painting the Nazis as the extreme opposites of the Communists (and thus implying something good and pure about the extreme left) is nothing but a political confidence trick. It just isn’t true.

I wonder if Margarete Buber-Neumann, a German communist who was imprisoned in Stalin’s show trials and then handed over (in totalitarian friendship) to the Nazis in 1940 would have thought differently?

Paul Frenkel
“The idea that the Red Army Fraction never targeted innocent civilians is nonsense. How would you characterize the proofreaders at the Springer press building, some of whom were critically wounded in the RAF bombing in MaY, 1972, or the passengers aboard the Lufthansa plane hi-jacked and diverted to Mogadishu in 1977.”
True, although in the movie, these events are shown as a part of the degeneration of the group’s ostensible idealism, and in the case of Springer, a topic of heated debate.
“This new movie portrays the leading RAF figures as a bunch of naive and hysterical assholes, which seems to be what they were.”
I think you see both sides – the naive idealists corrupted and the thugs self-ennobled in this movie. There is a traditional apologism for terrorism which is to see those involved in it as people who in a functioning society would be altruistic and civic-minded, and are defgraded by violence. More often it is the folks who would be common criminals who are given a spurious, limited legitimacy by such groups.
There’s an excellent book on the Irish National Liberation Army called Deadly Divisions which I think explains the degenerative phases that such groups go through. First the State is the enemy, then innocent people drift into view and finally each other, as the group finally collapses into internecine warfare.

‘Jurgen Habermas’

I know of Jurgen Habermaster.

The problem in a nutshell is that the so-called “new left” of the late sixties though ostensibly opposed to the wrongs of Stalinism etc always clung to (and used) the language of the old Marxists even while supposedly campaigning for greater freedoms in the west. The eventually realised contradictions of this position produced both the Baader-Meinhoff group and the wishy-washy sixties wannabe left(overs) who we now get in the comments boxes here trying to explain that there is a qualitative difference between fascist inspired genocides and Marxist-inspired ones.

I know of Jurgen Habermaster.

Wonderful stuff:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAlxNNvfvJs

‘or the passengers aboard the Lufthansa plane hi-jacked and diverted to Mogadishu in 1977′

Paul, the hijackers were all PLFP – not West Germans – but your point is sound. After all, when the RAF took Hanns-Martin Schleyer they killed his driver along with his bodyguards.

Yeah, Graham, classic. Also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OSQOz3W0u4

“Paul, the hijackers were all PLFP – not West Germans – but your point is sound.”

Yeah, Meinhoff’s antisemitism is only alluded to as something that Baader censors from her writings. Nor does Entebbe appear (although it wasn’t them, there were Germans involved). But it does show Munich.

The depiction of the Germans in Libya is very good. They come off very badly in their relation to the Palestinian cause. There is a message in the film to understand the alleged causes of terrorism, which is a bit heavy handed but not unreasonable. It’s not an anti-Israel film, I think.

Paul –

The idea that the Red Army Fraction never targeted innocent civilians is nonsense. How would you characterize the proofreaders at the Springer press building, some of whom were critically wounded in the RAF bombing in MaY, 1972, or the passengers aboard the Lufthansa plane hi-jacked and diverted to Mogadishu in 1977 – whose lives were saved not by the goodwill of the RAF and Palestinian captors, but rather by the superior skills of GSG-9, or the three US rank and file soldiers killed in the bombing of the US army headquarters in Heidelberg

I dont think you disputed anything I said. I did not claim that the RAF did not target innocent civilians. But when they did, this was — at least in their view — a ‘byproduct’ of targeting leading figures such as Schleyer or military institutions. This could hardly be said for Hamas. I’m am not saying that this makes the RAF less reprehensible. I am merely claiming that there is an important distinction between the way the RAF and groups like Hamas choose their targets and carry out their attacks — a distinction that is real and should be made, even if you think both kind of groups are made up of assholes.

(i) The bombing of the Springer building was accompanied by several warnings, despite which the building was not evacuated. Still not a good thing to do, but again: Hard to imagine Hamas giving a warning so as to enable people to clear a buidling they are going to attack. Quite the contrary.

(ii) Mogadishu; that wasn’t the RAF.

The post here about Hayek a week or two ago was more useful; collectivism is an important category for analysis. But keeping within the terms of reference of this post, if you see the left as historically opposing established and vested interests (inherited wealth, the clerical establishment, monarchy and aristocracy) and the right as representing these things, then there is a problem with respect to more modern political classification. The BNP would be more left wing and the current Labour government more right wing, with the Tories on the right and the Lib Dems straddling both positions. Libertarians would be on the left and many socialists on the right.

This might mean that left and right aren’t very useful terms any more (didn’t Marco Atilla Hoare argue this a while back?). A term like right wing, that appears to apply to the Tories and to the BNP although they have incompatible political platforms, isn’t very meaningful. Nor is a left wing that appears to include Galloway and Norm. In both cases, the fringe associations are used to smear the mainstream ones by their opponents – which is why people argue about these terms.

What weighs against this, and suggests the conventional uses of the terms left and right are reasonable, is the way that in terms of activists (as opposed to floating voters) there does seem to be more drift between the BNP and the Tories than BNP and Labour (Nick Griffin comes from a basically Tory family) and also between Communist and fringe socialist parties and Labour (viz the past associations of many Labour Ministers).

As the final paragraph of the post suggests, and as has been a theme on this site in the past, it is better to try to isolate extremists of all stripes, and to rest on ideas such as the support for democracy, for freedom of conscience and expression, for the rule of law. It’s also perhaps worth asking whether people wish for these things just for themselves, or for everyone. Do they want their own privileges maintained and enhanced, and sod anyone else, or do they apply the same criteria to other people too? And are they willing to help and support those who struggle for their own freedom elsewhere?

In other words, are people Liberals or not? That’s a term worth rescuing from the right/left morass.

Flying Rodent

“The major mass murders of the C20th certainly didn’t happen so that internet ballbags could justify their annoying and predictable habit of concern-trolling ….”

Motes and beams dear boy – motes and beams!

Respectfully, I think we do have a dispute. You said “They would never have set off a bomb in a crowded bus, indescriminatley killing people.” This is strictly true I suppose in that the RAF never committed a bus bombing. They had no problem with setting off a bomb in the Springer building, indiscriminately trying to kill people, for example, or executing their own members (Ingeborg Barz), or risking the lives of security guards in department stores or bank customers.

You described them in your post as ‘targeted leading figures — political and economical — within the power structure of the German society, many of them old Nazis.’ Dont think that really covers it, does it? It also doesnt cover setting fire to department stores, killing US personnel and helping to hijack passenger planes (we’ll get to that in a minute.)

Incidentally, I think the dispute in the movie between Baader/Ennslin and Meinhof regarding the ethics of the Springer bombing is made up. I dont recall it appearing in the Aust book on which the movie is based (any more than Herrold’s Israel comments do).

Regarding Mogadishu ‘not being the RAF.’ The hijacking was jointly planned by the RAF and the Wadi Haddad group, with the RAF involved at every stage. The terrorists on the plane did not include Germans, this is true. So the RAF were responsible, jointly with the Haddad group, for the operation and its nature.

Regarding the ‘assholes’ point, I’ve met a number of Hamas people who I didn’t think were assholes, whatever else I might have thought they were. Never met anyone from the RAF, thankfully, but I kind of bet that they all were ;). Hysterical ultra-left Europeans tend to be, I think.

They had no problem with setting off a bomb in the Springer building, indiscriminately trying to kill people

If their plan had been to ‘indescriminatley kill people’, why would they have called for the evacuation of the building via phone (several times, both to the Springer-Company and the police)?

You described them in your post as ‘targeted leading figures — political and economical — within the power structure of the German society, many of them old Nazis.’ Dont think that really covers it, does it? It also doesnt cover setting fire to department stores

I meant when they targeted people, as opposed to, say, buildings.

killing US personnel

Your right, that surely doesnt fit my claim of leading figures in Germany.

Regarding Mogadishu ‘not being the RAF.’ The hijacking was jointly planned by the RAF and the Wadi Haddad group, with the RAF involved at every stage.

That is true. But it was indeed a very controversial decision within the RAF, made by the ‘2nd generation’. The first generation — Baader, Meinhof et.al. — had previously often explicitly condemned attacks that targeted ‘the people’, as they did wrt a bombing of Hamburg central station in 75. And even if we classify Mogadishu as a RAF action, they still didnt simply blow up the plane to kill as many people as possible, as Hamas or alquaida might have.

Look, I am trying to make a very small point (maybe I’m still wrong in making it, but so far I can’t see where my mistake would be): That there is a real difference between the way that RAF acted and the way Hamas is acting. Not only did the RAF never in fact simply bomb a crowded bus — they never would have.

Have some fun! Watch Hitler diss ObamaCare promoted by National Republican Congressional Committee.

Gene, FLAME ON!

Attaching phony subtitles to that clip from “Downfall” is so two years ago.

Hey! What about the Japanese Red Army Faction in Lod? No targetting of civilians there?

Hey! What about the Japanese Red Army Faction in Lod? No targetting of civilians there?

I dont know whether this question is directed at me… if so: I was talking about the German RAF — as far as I know, there was no link between them and the JRAF.

Look, I hate to quibble. The main point of my post was to talk about the films made about the RAF. A couple of last things. If I understand you correctly, you no longer think that ‘targeted leading figures — political and economical — within the power structure of the German society, many of them old Nazis’ is a fair characterization of the RAF modus operandi, given the many examples of their behavior that cant be fitted into this description. but you think their modus operandi wasnt exactly the same as Hamas, because they didnt go in for indiscriminate killing of civilians.

Well – the plan on the plane at Mogadishu (coordinated from the start with the RAF, we remember), if the hijackers didnt receive their demands, was to blow up the plane with everyone in it. So the difference between this and Hamas/alQaida etc seems to me to be paper thin. Its also a fact that when it came to Israeli Jews, the RAF people were entirely in support of the Palestinian approach of indiscriminate killing (tho youre right that the Japanese red army was a different organization). Israeli Jews werent part of the ‘people,’ apparently – see Munich, Entebbe etc. When we get to the civilians killed in the RAF bombing of air bases and nato facilities in germany(without warnings, btw), and the US soldier executed to get his ID card, I dont think your attempt to differentiate has any moral content, tho as I said at the start, in a strictly technical sense, Hamas and the RAF did not have an identical modus operandi.

ac:
1-oh you sneaky devil you, focusing on one point (the last one, because it’s the weakest) and ignoring the others (industrialists, ludendorff, similar groups like the Freikorps etc. etc.). Of course, the fact that Hitler went after SDs and Communists doesn’t prove on its own he was on the extreme RIGHT — it’s just another bit of supporting evidence.
2-Interesting how categories like “extreme right” and “left-wing” suddenly lose their meaning when discussing the extreme right; meanwhile, liberals, social democrats and anybody to the left of conservatism are happily branded “the left” or worse by right-wingers.
3-I’m thrilled to know you have a sexual orientation, whatever it is. I’m not sure of its relevance in this discussion.
4-RE: “Is a tomato one or a vegetable? One is an odd number but what about zero? One of the defining characteristics of birds is that they can fly, so a bird with a broken wing is not a bird, right? I’m confused. How can “the day” be both the opposite of “the night” and a unit of time that contains “the night”? Is Moscow in Europe? Why is Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest? If the definition of island is a piece of land surrounded by water, does that mean Europe and Asia are an island? If the Suez Canal didn’t exist would Zimbabwer be part of that island too? What about a beach in China that is covered with water when the tide comes in, is that part of the same island? Nazis identified as socialists. Does that mean they weren’t? If I sprinkle curry powder onto something, such as your head, that makes it a curry and anybody who argues otherwise is purposefully revising history for ideological purposes. end of story.”

You’re off your nut. Have a nice day.

RE: In fact the Communists in the UK supported the Nazis in Germany.

Yet another example of how blinkered ideology leads to diminished brain capacity. Yes, the Communists in the UK (and pretty much everywhere else, supported the Nazis (crappy way of putting it, but ok) from August 24, 1939 to June 22, 1941. They, too, were victims of their own blind adherence to ideology, ini this case, aping whatever Stalin did. However, they fiercely opposed the Nazis before August 24 1939 and after June 22 1941. So your point is in the finest tradition of the David Irving school of history, where you cherry pick the parts you like (in this case, that two year period) and ignore the rest of time. Nice work, yet again.

The terms “left wing” and “right wing” are redundant and meaningless. People form their own opinions from the giant political salad bar. Framed in the old left/right paradigm, contradictions and confusion will inevitably arise.

“Left wingers” would call me “right wing” for my views on Islamism. “Right wingers” would call me a “leftie” because of my views on justice and society.

If we are attempting to define modern politics in the West, only one model works:

People can range between “extremist” and “moderate” on various issues. These views are coloured by conservatism and liberalism.

RE: IThe liberal knows that he is only an office bound government worker or lawyer or whatever but deep down wishes he was in the vanguard of some sort of fight for the people. So when he or somebody he admires identifies a group of blood thirsty sociopaths as “the resistance” he feels himself drawn along in support or at least in a weaselly attempt at “contextualisation”. I think this is where the urge to support some of the following comes from: Che/Castro Baader Meinhof Hamas Taliban Chavez.”

1-When did you get your psychology degree?
2-I don’t know a single liberal or social democrat who supports any of the above. As usual, you’re operating on a dittohead liberal=social=democrat=Marxist=Commie paradumb.
3-

RE: FlyingFuckface will be all bluster like collectivists usually are when their crimes are pointed out.

And Morgoof, like all extreme righties, will bend himself into a pretzel trying to prove Hitler was a leftie.

Zing!

Yeah, I think this left=right thesis is crass, to put it mildly. I think one might do better to compare how fascism and popular marxism appealed to, informed and were expressed in certain sorts of youth culture and activism. But, as I said, German youth of the 1960s were also rebelling against certain repressed (and concealed) legacies of the Nazis. The wartime generation had by no means passed away.

It was also, of course, about asserting a kind of “Germanism” (for all denials to the contrary), an active/aggressive German cultural expression, against the state and authorities, at a time when all such expressions were vigorously suppressed, with the young generation, the least guilty, paying the greatest price.

The Nazis were identified with state totalitarianism, and, yes, perhaps ignored were the phase when the Nazis were vigorously opposed to the state. However, the Nazis, like the communists had, in the end, also “played the game” of the state. B-M and RAF were almost anarchists in that respect.

“The wartime generation had by no means passed away.”

And, to a degree, one would have to include Meinhoff in it.

I would venture to say that there is a difference between red army faction and hamas but it isn’t a humanitarian difference. They differ in that RAF operations were propelled by modern ideologies, nasty ones, but modern nonetheless, whereas Hamas operates under a medieval mindset that makes them and others like them much more difficult for those of us educated in the West to understand. That being said, the difference ain’t worth a hill of beans, once you get to the consequences of their actions.

The major mass murders of the C20th certainly didn’t happen so that internet ballbags could justify their annoying and predictable habit of concern-trolling anyone to their left as genocidaires-in-waiting.

Niel didn’t do that.

By the way I have never classified you as left nor as a “genocidaire” in waiting.

Personally I think of you as a silly isolationist troll who cares about no one and nothing but himself. Pure selfishness and selfish bigotry tend to be right wing politics and that’s where I place you. Not a Nazi, more like a Ron Paul follower.

“Fascism wasn’t of the Left” because it left control of the nation’s resources to individuals and not at the whim of the Dear Leader… Remind me what Mussolini’s politics were in WWI.

“Who are the Right Wing extremists” – Buchanan, some of the militia groups, the anti-abortion crazies. It gets rather hard to gin up a violent terrorist group to promote private property and free markets. I could see it in a totalitarian state, but not in the West.

The good point is that the Left owns and loves genocidaires: Stalin, Mao, Hamas, Hezbollah, Pot, Castro, every 3rd world leader making an anti-imperialist pose, Mugabe. You are a menace to the world and need to pay for your crimes.

RE: Mussolini. Extremists often change their stripes. Pointing to Mussolini during WWI is disingenuous — he wasn’t a fascist in wwi. he became a disillusioned socialist and drifted rightward, all the way to founding the fascist party. All these gymnastics will turn you into an Twister expert, but they won’t change the fact that Fascism and Nazism and creatures of the extreme RIGHT, not the left. End of story.