Our leftie commentors’ response to yesterday’s post on this was interesting – by what they never said. First, only 2 showed up. (Not that we have many to begin with, but on something big and controversial, usually they’ll support each other a bit more.) Second, they made zero effort to address the post’s main points:
- that Nazis were/are socialists.
- that, in all of American history (including today), the Democrats/Left have been the side of racist thinking (or racial categories), racial segregation, so-called “eugenics”, etc.
- that there is nothing right-wing about the so-called Alt Right of 2017; excepting alone their choice to *claim* that they are somehow rightist.
- (In 2016 or earlier, some actual rightists did adopt the “Alt Right” label thinking it was kicky and fun, but discarded the label when the #WhiteLivesMatter racists took it over.)
- that, despite appearances, it’s ideologically and psychologically easy for white supremacists and hard leftists/Democrats to change into each other, pretend to be each other, etc.
- Because the essence of both sides is tribal collectivism and the desire to punish one’s dissenting or dissimilar neighbor.
By contrast – What is it, to be conservative or right-wing? I’m no expert but the answers usually given will boil down to:
- Standing up for tradition. E.g., Catholic or other Christian rightists (whom, by the way, the Nazis hated). In the UK, it could mean monarchists supporting the Queen.
- Standing up for Liberty under the Rule of Law. In America, this means a love of everyone’s constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.
Neither are what white supremacists stand for. What they stand for is their approximation of racism-with-socialism; in other words, left-wing politics.
When will we start labeling them, not on the basis of what they *claim* to be (for some horrible marketing purpose of their own), but on the basis of their actual views? “Alt Left” would be closer.
For dessert: Steven Crowder on The Top 3 Ways in which Antifa and white nationalists are the same. In brief:
- Both readily disregard the law and Constitution.
- Both promote identity politics and play the Victim card.
- Both support Big Government / left-liberal policies (e.g., both want nationalized / single-payer health care).
- Bonus round: Both hate Israel.
Also, V the K’s comment:
The other truth that must not be spoken: The left is absolutely thrilled and delighted with what happened in Charlottesville.
The only way it could have made them happier is if their Antifa protesters had been shot by an NRA member.
The alt-right are right. The alt-lite are cucks, and the alt-Reich are mostly racist.
Buried in this point is another point which causes us some difficulty. The political “left” in the structure of our form of government is: popular sovereignty in which the voters choose representatives to carry out the limited roles of governing for limited terms of power. Above all, the rule of law is written down and followed and the people obey the laws.
That is leftist government. To the left of that is direct democracy and to the left of that is Utopia and no government.
To the right of We the People and the Constitution are oligarchies, monarchies, theocracies, dictatorships, etc.
Unfortunately, the term “left” was usurped by the socialists and progressives and used to foster and promote a beneficent government which takes on the task of guaranteeing “rights” defined by gelatinous concepts such as “justice” and “equality” and “freedom” and “the American way.”
The “new” left claims to believe that everything is possible if we just join with the government power to tax and rule and make it happen.
To ILC’s point, the DemonizingRats have always demagogued for government power to suit their definitions of “justice” and “equality” and “freedom” and “the American way.”
The founders wrote the end of slave importation into the Constitution and named the date: 1807. It was silent on peonage, indentured people, apprenticeship, child labor, debtors, etc. but it was clear on ending the importation of slaves.
In 1857, Virginian George Fitzhugh, wrote a polemic defending slavery which was published under the tile: Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters. Mary Alice Kirkpatrick summarized the Fitzhugh thesis:
Old George Fitzhugh, unwittingly, wrote the script for DemonizingRat socialists and progressives who were to emerge 40-50 years later. Eugene V. Debs hardly did better. The founders of socialism and progressivism were bona fide racists. As late as 1964, the “solid South” Democrats in the Senate voted against ending segregation. 46 (of 67) Democrat senators voted for it along with 27 (of 33) Republican senators. That was the turning point for LBJ and DemonizingRats to suddenly champion “civil rights” and become the party of “inclusiveness.” Johnson not only dropped out of politics after one term, but the DemonizingRats pretended he never existed at the 1968 Chicago convention.
1968 marks the beginning: The Weather Underground Organization, Black Panthers, the Chicago Seven, Students for a Democratic Society, Revolutionary Youth Movement, Bill Ayres, Saul Alinsky, Progressive Labor Party, “urban guerrillas and white privilege”-Bernadine Dohrn), Che Guevara counterculture, Days of Rage, Black Liberation Army, etc.
In 1968, the DemonizingRat Party had to absorb communist ideologues, black power ideologues, black nationalism ideologues, anti-imperialism ideologues, socialist ideologues, labor party ideologues, Students for a Democratic Society, and dump the DemonizingRat segregationist past. Lucky for them, their misguided and mis-managed war in Viet Nam and race riots helped to envelop the nation in a cloud of confusion and keep the focus off of what was happening within the DemonizingRat Party. Nixon was elected to bring a return to Law and Order and then went down in flames by acting unlawfully.
Ever since 1968, the DemocnizingRat socialist party has controlled the narrative of “truth, justice and The American Way.”
Also, America was “reeducated” about “left and right.” The new model moves “representative democracy way to the right and to the left is socialism and further left is Marxism and to the extreme left is Utopia. To the right of representative democracy is libertarianism and anarchy. There are no monarchies or dictatorships. But in truth, Marxism is state totalitarianism, but no socialist or Progressive with ever admit that. That is why Venezuela, Cuba, Maoism, Stalinism, etc. are just ignored by leftists and Progressives. Their leftward movement will leap over Marxism and land in the Utopian fields of full cooperation, peace, harmony and bliss.
Whether they planned this confusion between “right” and “left” is unclear. I suspect they wandered their way into it. But make no mistake, for DemonizingRats “right” = evil and “left” = heaven.
The Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Whatever, etc. are all crusades against inequality, injustice and subverting The American Way. Common sense is only common among the true-believers, all the others are deplorables.
And for more insights to the truth, generation-wise :
The Mind of the Left : The Continued Appeal of Socialism and Totalitarianism to the Young
“What is wrong with us that we are attracted to leftism when we are young?
Stanley Kurtz describes the leftist mind I know so well in Ireland.
Defending democracy and opposing tyranny “is just too obvious – too embarrassing” for the sophisticated modern mind.
The young modern leftist prefers to feel that only he understands the true state of the world – that the rest of the population is too “stupid” to see it.
The ordinary people don’t agree with him because they have their consent “manufactured” by the media – they do not think for themselves – but the leftist does.
He can see beyond the propaganda and realise that the poverty, famine and tyranny in the world is caused by the West (rather than, for example, by the moronic ideas of the non-western world).
Concepts like “The Free World” are the absurd and simple-minded propaganda of ignorant Americans who do not understand the world.
The ordinary people deal in concepts like “good” and “evil”. – Our leftist sophisticate understands how simplistic such ideas are, and how genocidal police states are just another culture, and not to be regarded simplistically as “inferior”.
The leftist liberates himself from the ideas of the “stupid” people around him, and feels vastly superior to them. In the extreme case he will quite literally end up defending tyranny and opposing democracy.
The ordinary people have no irony. They just say flat out that America is “superior” to some illiterate Islamic theocracy, or some famine-wracked totalitarian gulag state.
The leftist thinks they have never thought about it.
In reality, they are grown-ups who understand all too well how the world works.
The leftist understands nothing except the coffee-house world of safe, sheltered, protected, rich people.
Could this sum up why young people want to smash everything that is working perfectly fine, in favour of untried systems that won’t work?
Picture below: graffiti on a wall in a wealthy area of Glasgow.
http://imgur.com/a/IqbLn
Note the defacement of a beautiful old wall. Destruction of irreplaceable ancient beauty and heritage has been a main feature of modern socialism.
Of course the fools who believe this fail to grasp that for most ordinary people, the problem with capitalism isn’t that it’s boring; rather, it’s not boring enough.
[…]
This contempt can come from many sources, but it appeals to those who feel impotent, marginalized, excluded, or denigrated: the intellectual who feels unrecognized, the talentless art student in a city filled with brilliance, the time-serving everyman who disappears into any crowd, the young man from a third-world country who feels mocked by the indifference of a superior West; the list of possible recruits to a cult of death is potentially endless.
“The radical loser”, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, casts a cold eye on the violent revolutionary – whether Lenin, Hitler, IRA or jihadi :
“Neither poverty nor the experience of political repression alone seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for why young people actively seek out death in a grand bloody finale and aim to take as many people with them as possible.
Is there a phenotype that displays the same characteristics down the ages and across all classes and cultures?”
On self-appointed, unelected terrorists like the IRA, Shining Path, FSLN, FARC, ETA, PFLP, and so on:
“Each of these armed rabbles calls itself an army, boasts of brigades and commandos, self-importantly issuing bureaucratic communiqués and boastful claims of responsibility, acting as if they were the representatives of “the masses”.”
“The 10 commandments of Multiculturalism” tries to summarise the main problems in thinking on the left, including:
Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans.
Differences between individuals or groups are unfair.
For Designated Victim Groups, strong feelings excuse all behavior.
We defend the right to free speech for ourselves, but anyone else whose speech hurts our feelings must be censored.
In any conflict between a third-world nation and a first-world nation, the third-world nation is always right.
All criticism or disagreement with any policy of a third-world nation, culture, or person is, by definition, racism.
Etc, etc.
The left do not understand the poor, and they do not understand criminals, and they do not understand what life is like in unfree states.
“Bomb Texas”: The psychological roots of anti-Americanism – Links the western left’s incomprehension of criminals and unfree countries to their life of luxury.
Insulated “from the age-old struggle to obtain food, shelter and physical security from enemies both natural and human”, vast numbers of pampered people form their views in a nice, safe, coffee-house world, “without firsthand and daily exposure to backbreaking physical labor, unrepentant bullies or unapologetically violent criminals.”
[…]
http://markhumphrys.com/mind.left.html
#Leftism_An_Affordable_Mental_Disorder_Until_It_Isnt
I mostly agree with everything Jeff says but the word “racist” needs to be abandoned.
Why? Because the term is overused and abused to the point where the description is irrelevant.
A racist can be a hardcore klansmen (how hardcore was Robert Byrd, I wonder) that believes blacks, Jews, Catholics, or whoever are subhuman and deserving of abuse. A racist can be Al Sharpton or Louis Farrakhan.
A racist can also be a scholar like Charles Murray or Jason Richwine (or James Watson) that dares to notice the slightest little difference between peoples or that notes something obvious to any sentient life form.
The “white lives matters” crowd looks diverse to me in that, yes, there are people that look like the locals from Deliverance and that possess the IQ of bubblegum but there are some that may simply have had a snootful of “hating whitey”.
A few years ago, I tried to read David Horowitz’s “Hating Whitey”. I couldn’t finish it because reading a catalog of anti-white hatred made me physically ill – I felt pangs of rage so I gave up.
As a conservative, my beliefs include what Jeff wrote and I’d add these:
As a corollary to #1: fences (traditions) often exist for good reason and those who would take them down should demonstrate that taking down the fence won’t cause harm using reasoning, not hysterical shouts of “Hitler”.
I’d add that conservatism is acceptance of reality: there are differences between the sexes; not all cultures are as good as others; and that there are objective truths.
Finally (and most importantly, IMHO) conservatives accept that man is deeply flawed and often motivated by base desires and selfishness. Society is a thin veneer by which we can exist in relative peace and harmony. If you take away the veneer, you have barbarism.
Maintaining the veneer requires genuine tolerance (find someone that wants to bake your cake), self-control (just ‘cuz you want something doesn’t mean you can have it), and humility: your grand schemes to change civilization has a risk of failure on a planetary scale so proceed cautiously (Angela Merkel, for one, seems not to have taking this into account).
Apologies for being so wordy this week.
@3: Cyril, the Spectator has a good piece on “Riot Chic”.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/riot-chic-how-violent-protest-became-fashionable/
For some, it’s a pose.
Luckovich at the Atlanta-Journal Constitution has a rabid political cartoon that goes deep into ideological malfeasance. He deems to name State Department official Miller, Trump advisor Bannon, and Trump advisor Gorka as Nazis.
As ILC pointed out, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (what we call Nazi Party) was founded to create state socialism. Not the least of its goals was to usurp the growth of Communism in Germany and to bleed that movement of members. It first made a pact with Stalin in order for it to grow in strength and numbers and to keep Stalin neutral to initial German expansion.
Wiki-sleaze makes a strong point of calling the Nazi Party “a far-right political party.” But in all ways, the NSDAP was a statist, totalitarian regime in which the people were the pawns of the government. That would be far-left, as “leftism” is defined today: to the left of popular sovereignty is socialist statism, no matter what the form. Statism controls the people through taxation and the power of the state and the people have little recourse save the overthrow of the state.
The leftists hate Trump because they insist on equating Make America Great Again with The Thousand Year Reich. The leftists believe in the Marxist beneficent dictatorship of the organizational period of socialism and the withering away of the iron hand of government as the people bloom and grow and become acolytes of sharing and equality, freedom from want, freedom from fear, worshipping properly, speaking correctly, being imbued with a dedication to justice and always, always obedient to The American Way.
If statism is in any way “cooperative” with the concept of popular sovereignty, then there must be a way for continued popular sovereignty to openly and honestly rubber stamp the actions of the state. That would be We the People-ism. And that concept is an impossibility in anything but theory. Whew!
Unless I’m mistaken, I don’t see anyone on the alt-right calling for the dismantling of all the MLK monuments and memorials. But the Antifa left is actively Talibanizing the statues and symbols of Confederate leaders.
They won’t stop there. They’ve already started going after the Founding Fathers. Because slaveowners.
“The only way it could have made them happier is if their Antifa protesters had been shot by an NRA member.”
It’s coming. Surprised it hasn’t happened.
The two sides remind me of the European football hooligans. Supposedly they care about their “team” but really only want to fight. The biggest difference is one political side has embraced one hooligan’s side. They do not call out or denounce it’s violence and downplay what it does. This has been going on for years and they will not change it.
When the main crux of your title post making grand gestures is partly supported by an article that has a sample size of five people and you discredit one of them (without even acknowledging that you’ve discredited them, but selectively use their comments to how it suits your argument), and then you end things with:
… And then revisit the matter the next day while referencing me …
I’m befuddled.
“I’m befuddled.”
No kidding.
This video was pretty telling.
Heliotrope, good comments, thanks.
Poor CCP, he wants attention! He wants me to talk to him! 😉
Never mind how I wrote this post to address that which *all* of our left-leaning commentors collectively *did not* say yesterday (or were silent about).
Missing the point: It’s how lefties roll.
CCP agrees the alt-right, BLM and Antifa are virtually exactly the same.
Actually no. I’d like your thoughts on relying on such a small sample size, especially when you’ve discredited 20% of it, to assert that it has representational significance.
That would be like saying that one leftie GP regular has very vocally come out against Eric Clanton and his deplorable actions from the very beginning, so most lefties who visit this site must think that way to a significant extent. Or have tendencies in that direction anyway.
Cray,Cray @ #12:
I am not a student of film, so I am a bit out of my element. But I know propaganda.
1) How quaint that the quintessential Aryan blonde fraulein with the NASDP braid should be the foil sent to interview the Nazi white supremacists. Many props to her. She did a fine job.
2) The white supremacists certainly laid out their bigotry in no uncertain terms. However, they did have a permit to “free speech” their vitriol.
3) The Tiki torch parade film from Friday Night was almost worthy of Helene Bertha Amalie “Leni” Riefenstahl but lacking in the attention to exaggeration by angle and lighting. That segment was fairly accurate. However, white supremacists and the those opposed to them skirmished and that was omitted. (To my knowledge, no one had a permit for the Friday night event.)
4) The producers of the film failed to explain that many of the white supremacists went to McIntire Park as they were directed by Charlottesville authorities. Instead, there is confusing footage showing a supremacist on the phone with authorities at Lee Park. What you can not know from this film is that the supremacists sent a “contingent” to Lee Park because that is where the citizens went. Had the full contingent of supremacists been at Lee Park, things could have been far worse. (I am still a bit confused about the whole complexity of no permit, court ordered permit, codicils added by non-court authorities, more court involvement, etc. A REAL journalist would have looked into this, but only one or two REAL journalists seem to exist anymore and they were out fishing.)
Entirely missing from the film is any footage or reference to Lee Park between 10:00 am and noon. At about 11:40 am, the order came down from Governor McAuliffe that a State of Emergency was in place. The police had been protecting the group of supremacists gathered in the park. But when the event was dismissed, the police herded the supremacists out onto the street where all of the “counter protesters” were gathered. That occurred at 11:40 am. The film did NOT note that no other group had a parade or speech permit.
The film jumps from 11:40 am in McIntire Park to 1:40 pm on 4th St SE and the speeding car incident. It totally ignores all of the back and forth that took place on Market Street between 11:40 am and 1:30 pm (nearly 2 hours) which is the bulk of the melee. I suspect that the film people were using the footage they had and ignored the huge gap because they had no footage, no coverage, no nothing.
I was particularly attentive to the angry black woman who screeched about having to live in a town looked down upon Thomas Jefferson. Nothing was made of that by the sensitive producers, but it is certainly something that liberals have failed exploit properly. Black people dragging around hating where they live because of Thomas Jefferson would really feed a lot liberal needy angst and sense of rage and righteousness. It would be another perfect fit for the DemonizingRats unless they already know that it doesn’t poll well.
What a great contrast was missed. The scene with the supremacist frothing over Trump’s pretty daughter being married to a Jew and that black soul living with the seething hate of Thomas Jefferson.
The film totally ignored Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the actual scuffles, and any interest whatsoever in those who wish to preserve history without attachment to some demonic supremacist ideology.
So, Cray,Cray, if this bit of propaganda fed your soul, good on you. But understand, what took you 22 minutes watch what was primarily bullish*t that could have been done in less than 3 minutes of just playing the supremacists running their bigoted mouths.
Do you stand for free speech or only for free “non-hate” speech? That black woman was sure full of hate speech for T.J. Should Disney World yank the slave holding presidents out of the Hall of Presidents? Shall we replace G.W. on the one dollar bill and put Gloria Steinem on it instead? Or, Babs? Yeah, Babs.
The leftists absolutely refuse to allow the f-a-c-t that their darlings, Antifa, Black Lives Matter and others came primed and ready and battled the white supremacists.
The wimpy Governor McAuliffe whined that the white supremacists were better armed than his pitiful state police. OK, then why is it that in spite of the battling and tossed bottles and mace and pepper spray the supremacist over-armed troglodytes didn’t shred Antifa and Black Lives Matters with their firepower supremacy?
Question, Cray,Cray: Did the white supremacists have the right to defend themselves if the cops wouldn’t?
I have no idea who threw the first punch and neither do you. I doubt it will ever be known.
I know how the bigots on the left will tell the story. Demonizing and demagoguing are both a form of lying. That is how propaganda works.
So, I suppose that I have just rabidly sided with the white supremacist bigots. Or something.
Thanks for watching, Helio. I’m sure if it was your granddaughter, you’d be proud of her.
I don’t believe in violence, but I believe in defending oneself if attacked. I also try to exercise good judgment, such as not falsely crying “fire” in a movie theatre or showing up to be part of a gathering (legal or otherwise) that chants hateful messages like “Blood and soil” and “f&ck you f@gg0ts” in public (a form of intimidation and terror).
If the left-leaning groups were solely responsible for “provoking” the crowd who was threatening oppressed minorities in the community, then, the footage should be ample, and it shouldn’t take more than a reasonably capable citizen journalist with some editing, narrative skills, and a small band of support to clearly portray that for audiences to see.
Well, GP commenter Blair Ivey says:
Do you see what you did there?
That scenario is not any part of this. Nice try, but that is a total cop out.
Antifa came with clubs, helmets, pepper spray, etc. Why?
Why would anyone go to a “free speech” event prepared to fight? You are not required to go hear what you don’t want to hear. These Antifa “folks” were not out on a stroll with their urine filled bottles, pepper spray, clubs, etc. and – darn – they happenstanced right into a bunch of Nazi worshipping white supremacists. What a coinkydink. Good thing they were armed and came in huge numbers, right?
The left is playing so incredibly stupid and naive about this that it is giving me the willies. They have the willful suspension of common sense. Don’t look! If you don’t see it, it doesn’t exist.
And NO PERMIT, to an event that was not theirs to come to (as someone else had the permit). Double why?
(Part of the answer that no one wants to talk about, could easily be that George Soros or SEIU or DNC or Hillary paid many of them. As has happened before.)
For the record: On Saturday, I saw at least six different first-hand videos (might have been 8) of Antifa attacking different individuals first.
None of which excuses what happened to the car attack victims; James Alex Fields Jr. should fry, if he doesn’t have a damn solid insanity defense. (And yes, we need to wait while the justice system finds out.)
The white supremacists marching weren’t carrying candles or using their cell phones lighting features. Why?
If a group that shows up to “protest” is intimidating the community with racist and homophobic chants, they posit themselves as a threat to livelihood.
I like seeing Progressives dance and squirm when confronted with logic and truth.
Here is the truth : if the violent Antifa and BLM groups stayed away, this “protest”would have been like all the others, a nothing burger. This was not spontaneous, this was collusion between the media and the violent leftists. Obviously, putting many people in harm’s way is of no consequence to the violent leftists. For them, agenda trumps lives. CCP agrees.
Then hide up in the trees and when they come chanting under your righteous selves, drop cargo nets on them and then scamper down from the trees and and pull the nets tight around them and then beat them with pool noodles and yell “bad people, bad people” at them and then run away, run away and laugh and laugh as they try to get out of the cargo nets.
Or, go on TV and weep about safe places and demand that bad people be rounded up and made to scrub the street with toothbrushes and say “I won’t posit myself as a threat to livelihood, I won’t posit myself as a threat to livelihood, I won’t posit myself as a threat to livelihood, I won’t posit myself as a threat to livelihood” until their ears bleed.
Cray,Cray you never cease to underwhelm.
And you never check your privilege. What’s new?