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Ideology of the Anger Left in the USA | 67 comments (67 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (none / 1)
Good God! Are you really arguing that Fascism is not right wing? Did I fall into the NRO Corner by mistake?
by rootless2 on Sat Dec 19th, 2009 at 09:12:35 PM EST
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Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (4.00 / 2)
The issue is debatable...


En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 20th, 2009 at 04:16:57 AM EST
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Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (4.00 / 2)
Not seriously. After all, when the mask fell, Friedman was a supporter of Pinochet and Hayek even went there to tout "economic freedom" which is apparently compatible with police torture states. The "left" project is always centered on humanism and egalitarianism while the right's project is centered on some authoritarian system. Stalin's police state was naturally drawn to the same patriarchal authority laden emotional themes as the Czar and Hitler.
by rootless2 on Sun Dec 20th, 2009 at 05:19:30 AM EST
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Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (4.00 / 3)
I find the 'authoritarian' label much more useful than the label 'right-wing' and there is no shortage of authoritarian 'left-wing' examples.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Dec 20th, 2009 at 05:26:03 AM EST
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Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (none / 0)
To me, one of the problems of Marxism is that it eventually confused the mechanism (state control of production) with the goal of human liberation and put the first above the second. The attempt to distinguish left/right based on economic system is, I find, not helpful. Is China left or right? Does the US DOD, one of the largest economic planning organizations in the history of the world fit into capitalism or socialism? But one point I was attempting to make here is that the forms of authoritarian/right propaganda are not good vehicles for supposedly left-wing critique as they carry a message that cannot be separated from the form.
by rootless2 on Sun Dec 20th, 2009 at 06:30:05 AM EST
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Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (none / 0)
But isn't the real qualifier how the belief is arrived at?

Following your authoritarian model, it still needs some structural underpinning. People believe things through psychological mechanisms, and I tend to sort them into external authorities outside the psyche/genome/culture, or inside.

As time goes by, external authoritization through leaders' use of supernatural morality as bulwark for their pronouncements might be reduced. Or not.

I'm very wary of the current trends in propaganda, because all propaganda is based on authority. It hardly seems that propaganda that tells you to trust your own derivation of truth through observation and falsifiability is propaganda at all, but that's what it's being called now. viz, the climate change denial movement. discredit the scientists.

Trust Nothing is not the formula for social happiness.

Align culture with our nature. Ot else!

by ormondotvos (ormond.otvosnospamgmialcon) on Sun Dec 20th, 2009 at 09:26:44 PM EST
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Re: Any quotes that demonstrate your absurd (4.00 / 4)
You still have a difference between solidary vs. selfish on the one hand and authoritarian vs. libertarian on the other. Authoritarian enforcement of solidarity is not unheard of (just look at the "forced collectivizations" in the Republican rearguard during Spain's civil war, as well as the gradual Stalinist takeover of the Republican side). It is probably the case that there is a correlation between the two axes but there is enough variation in the other direction to make two axes necessary, both with selfish libertarians (Randian/Hayekian neoliberals, anarchocapitalists...) and "authoritarian solidarity" (assorted left movements from violent "liberation" movements to the Pol Pots, Stalins and Maos of this world).

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon Dec 21st, 2009 at 06:01:40 AM EST
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Ideology of the Anger Left in the USA | 67 comments (67 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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