Fascism is On the Left (Graph)
- Thread starter RenaissanceMan
- Start date
Yeah, it's equal parts hilarious and facepalm. I assume you've seen the blog it came from (as far as I can tell)?
http://freedom4america.wordpress.com/57/
The accompanying copy is almost as entertaining as the graph itself. A sample:
"In order to properly understand the political parties, their policies, and the ensuing results we use the linear political spectrum 2-dimensional graph to accurately plot and define the attributes of each and the differences between them."
The whole turn of phrase "linear political spectrum 2-dimensional graph" makes me chuckle every time I read it. There's also some classic stuff about how liberals plan to enshrine an all-powerful, oppressive, dictatorial government by (drumroll please) gutting the military. Such blatant flim-flammery, and yet...
Response to bolded text: You will probably not see it but that line of reasoning doesn't really defend your point. As I wrote earlier arguments of specific doesn't mean generalization.
Response to italicized text: No, most of the elements are not rooted in right wing ideology, once again you use a linear term while arguing the simplicity of it. If right wing means more individual freedom, then you are totally and undeniably wrong. Its that simple. If your argument is that capitalism is right wing and that fascism holds those principles, you are wrong again. Fascism first and foremost is about the state. It uses capital and by extension capitalism as a means to an end, but it doesn't use the principles of capitalism individual freedom and liberty.
It is also worth mentioning that most definitions of fascism doesn't say a word about tradition, nor does the term tradition connote political views. Yet, somehow or another you have managed to conflate in both instances.
And the crux of the problem lies in your assertion that fascism is about corporate power and against labor power, which by extension is what you think capitalism is about. I would ask you how much Alinsky you read, but that would defeat the purpose. These things are not what capitalism is about. Those words are a myth perpetrated by marxists apologists seeking favoritism with the masses. One cannot deny the influence it has had, especially with unformed minds.
But alas there is a huge difference between what you perceive to be real and what is real. The fact is lefties have purposely changed meanings and intentions so as to gather a following. This notion that capitalism is about corporate power and against labor power is exhibit no.1.
Your simplistic linear politics point is another issue. Again, when you use spectrums and compasses you do all the abstracting you want and then you can come up with something assinine like anarcho-communist. However, the linear perspective forces one to place something somewhere. Additionally, it is the abstracts of an ideology that qualify its position on the line. In fact, its formulation requires considerably more thought than a compass or spectrum. It stresses differentiation and that requires thought.
Finally, I am not going to get into a urinating contest with you over whether or not I know what fascism is better than you. Again, fascism is first and foremost a statist ideology and therefore flows left.
That was probably hands down the best argument I have ever heard!
Wow, that just totally settled the argument. There is no point in continuing this discussion.
Do I detect sarcasm?
Traditional communism and Historical Communism. Different things.
Was Stalin a communist?
Traditional communism and Historical Communism. Different things.
Was Stalin a communist?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
This is similar to the Nolan Chart that we Libertarians use, but it has been relabeled. We label the top of the Y axis "Statism," the philosophy that a powerful state (i.e., government) is the best system.
Our point is that both left-liberals and conservatives tend to support ever-larger government and that if left unchecked their philosophies meet at the top. Our chart is a diamond, not a square, expressing the reality that as governments seize (or are naively given) more power, the differences among them tend to disappear.
The rabid right and the rabid left have the same ultimate goal: to deprive us of all freedom and leave us at the mercy of a government that they trust because they expect to be in control of it. The liberals want to take away our money first whereas the conservatives want to take away our rights first, but ultimately they both want to take away all of our money and all of our rights.
If you don't believe me, just take a cold hard look at the American left flirting with censorship (of any opinions that disagree with their own), while the American right is starting to chip away at freedom of religion (any religion but their own).
The bottom of the Y axis, which is also a point, is anarchy. Some libertarians claim to want anarchy, but only because they know it's impossible and will never happen. The majority of libertarians have their roots on the right and vote Republican when they don't vote for the Libertarian Party candidates, so they fall somewhere in the lower right quadrant. A handful of us came from the left so we fall somewhere in the lower left quadrant.
Very few people actually fall at the bottom of the chart and honestly advocate anarchy. Many people in power, on the other hand, happily advocate pure statism and fall at the top of the chart.
but someone is going to end up seizing power anyways so that's why a governmental body with less private ownership is better.
everyone is trying to get their interests at the forefront.
private ownership also can halt progress. what if the government wanted to build a mass transit system and had to plow through people's private property? with absolute private ownership, you'd have those who couldn't care less and balk or refuse.
You are simply denying the existence of the authoritarian/libertarian axis, and the existence of the left libertarian point of view.fraggle said:
This causes you to place "left-liberal" (?) on one side, and "conservative" on the other, the classic Fox News frame.
This is dangerous, because it jigs the delusion that government is the only source of tyranny - that by reducing the power of government, individuals necessarily become more free. This plays into the hands of the authoritarian right (your term "rabid" misleads), by allowing their chosen tyranny - corporate and economic - to wax unmolested.
Your diamond chart is a lie.
I'm still confused how any intelligent person could think fascism is left wing. it doesn't really have any of the hall marks of left wing thought but is packed with the hall marks of right wing thought. this thread seems like always an attempt by the right to not deal with its demons and like its pure.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Huh??? The Y axis on the Nolan Chart is the authoritarian/libertarian axis. You can call it statism/anarchy, there are various different terms that more-or-less fit.
Again, huh??? I'm one of a handful of left-leaning libertarians, an actual former member of the Peace and Freedom Party. Most libertarians are former Republicans and lean right. The Libertarian Party always "steals" votes from Republican candidates, as they did in 2006 when they threw the Senate election in Montana to the Democratic candidate by siphoning off votes from the Republican. The Green Party does the same thing to the Democrats, as they did in 2000 when Ralph Nader "stole" so many Democratic votes that Bush won the election.
We use that term because originally the word "liberal" was used to mean what "libertarian" means today. We are "classic liberals" on the Jeffersonian model, but the leftists stole our name.
Well it's just a model and the utility of all models is limited. But it's a good one for 20th century politics. Hitler, the archetypal right-winger, and Stalin, the archetypal left-winger, both dragged their countries to the same place from different directions: statist authoritarianism, the upper corner of the diamond chart.
I suppose you could label the right corner "Fascism" and the left corner "Progressivism." Fascism has been defined as "resistance to transcendence," which puts it in perfect opposition to the social engineers of the Progressive movement.
Libertarians like to label the bottom corner "Libertarian," but that's because, outside of Ayn Rand's ridiculous fictional community in which friends paid rent to borrow each other's cars, they've never seen that corner. It's better to call it "Anarchy."
no one stole the name liberal. if anything the modern political definition puts it more in line with its non political usage. and the whole 2 axis systems I have seen are always done by libertarians trying to make out libertarianism as some sort of utopian ideal its not. if anything its the worst system because it more than any other ignores what power can do.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Libertarianism does not ignore what power can do. It knows very well what power can do, and therefore strives to avoid concentrating it.
wrong it prevents the concentration of power through politics and to a small degree religion. it completely ignores economic power. I have yet to see a libertarian idea that addresses the concentration of power through economic means. if anything libertarian ideas make it easier to achieve heavy concentration of economic power.
It is labeled so, but the chart itself forms a diamond shape - so it is clearly not charted on any such axis.fraggle said:
It is a lie. It assumes a correlation that it purports to demonstrate - that's an early chapter in the book "How To Lie With Statistics".fraggle said:
The leftists had nothing to do with the recent loss of meaning in the word "liberal". The rightwing propaganda operation that set out to accomplish that degradation, and succeeded, was not a creation of leftists.fraggle said:
Your chart purports to be of ideologies, not "places".fraggle said:
Stalin is not an archetypal leftwinger, and Hitler is not an archetypal rightwinger.
And so forth. The whole picture there is just a mess - an icon of confusion.
The existence of those corners - all four of them - is a major problem with that chart. You can't label them at all, without creating confusion and/or asserting falsehood.fraggle said:
Consider: Do you really want to chart "Fascism" (capital letter, even) at the middle, 0 point on the authoritarian/libertarian axis? "Progressivism" on the extreme left end of economic ideology?
Consider:
Are you really willing to place an ideology favoring complete state ownership and control of every economic asset (including people) in the same place on your chart as one favoring complete corporate ownership and control of every economic asset (including people)? Do you regard that as informative, cogent depiction of reality - a useful guide to political action?
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Only when the power in question is state power. Hence the construction of screwy political charts like the ones at issue here, which operate basically by conflating "freedom" with "freedom from state control."
Okay, sure, there is the rare libertarian that takes a wider view, but they're the exception that proves the rule. The rule being: "libertarian" is a label that Social Darwinists like to apply to themselves. A libertarian that truly deserved the label would be concerned with all manifestations of power hierarchy, such as church, corporation, race, gender, etc. and appreciate that they exist in tension with one another (and so, as a corollary, the unchecked dimunition of state power would imply a corresponding advance in other forms of control, which may well amount to a negative gain in actual liberty, holistically understood).
So what we've ended up with are vulgar libertarians - tools of other power hierarchies that are systematically manipulated into focussing solely on the power of the state, for the purpose of removing checks on competing power heirarchies and so advancing their control of society. People that take a holistic view of liberty and power tend to call themselves anarchists or minarchists. Libertarianism - as it exists today in the context of the USA - is a stalking horse for corporate power and not a champion of personal freedom.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The United States currently has a three-level government structure (state-local-federal) that in many aspects is of truly Orwellian proportions. Yet, in what way has it curtailed the power of the corporations? They are the biggest contributors to political campaigns, they employ the most artful and persuasive lobbyists, they control the media, and they can and do threaten to destroy the economy if the government does not bail them out of the results of their own ineptitude.
They rule with impunity. The FLSA has carefully never been updated for inflation so virtually every job that pays more than minimum wage is exempt from its controls. Corporations have virtually stamped out the union movement. President Nixon predicted that by now we'd have a 32-hour work week, but instead the average American now works 50 hours a week, just like your great-grandparents at the turn of the last century.
Every now and then there is a big WWF-style smackdown in which the government pretends to run roughshod over a corporation--especially one from another country like BP. And occasionally they actually do throw one of the capitalists in jail with great fanfare--one like Bernie Madoff, who had pissed off all the other capitalists.
The government is assaulting us in our own airports, telling us what we can eat and smoke, giving our children textbooks that have been rewritten to cast the Confederates in a better light, restarting the Crusades, letting the transportation infrastructure it built crumble, and saddling us with the expense of a sixteen-layer bureaucracy that does nothing except "administer" itself.
I'm sorry, but I have a hard time understanding A) how exactly the government is protecting us from corporate malfeasance, and B) what the corporations could be dreaming of doing that could be a whole lot worse than what the government is doing.
You obviously don't read the libertarian press or you'd see that we are concerned with all of those things. We just find that since the dawn of this endless Rooseveltian Era, power has shifted too far in the direction of government, and it's time to adjust the balance.
What tension? Even the so-called separation of powers within the government itself is no longer working. The Executive and Legislative Branches do whatever the hell they want, and the Supreme Court sits there like a cheerleading squad and lets them get away with it. For example, the government had to obey its own rules and amend the Constitution before they could start arresting people for drinking alcohol. Even if that amendment could be construed as a precedent for allowing the arrest of citizens for using other drugs, it has been repealed. Yet they're doing it anyway, and the Supreme Court sits on its butts.
So where did you conjure up the strawman of unchecked diminution of state power? Sure, there are a few anarchists out there calling themselves libertarians because then they get invited to our Christmas party. But we all understand that once a community becomes so large that people are required to live in harmony and cooperation with strangers and multi-party time-displaced business transactions become the norm (i.e., the Paradigm Shift from the early agricultural villages to true cities), some form of administration is inevitable.
We just find that government has gotten too goddamned big so it ends up accomplishing next to nothing. Like any species of organism that increases in size, it moves more slowly, reacts less often and less strongly to external stimuli, and devotes more of its resources to the management of its own internal metabolism rather than interacting with the outside world. In other words, we have become less important to the government than it is to itself. And I have spent the last eight years working in Washington, primarily on government projects, so I know whereof I speak. They just don't care about us. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it's the literal truth. All they want from us is our taxes. Oh yeah, and our children so they can send them off to be killed trying to stamp out Islam--as a favor to the energy companies.
The stalking horse for corporate power in today's USA is the government. I'll leave you with one illustration that is trivial in scope but annoying as hell: Why do they hand over millions of dollars of our tax money in farm subsidies to corporations that grow tobacco?
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It might have something to do with your assertions over what constitutes a right wing ideology.
Those assertions are basically generated from propaganda.
Frankly, I don't know how anyone who understands politics could ever conclude fascism to be on the right, unless they were discussing the right of socialism. And not right of center. At best fascism is center left, at best.
Again, freedom and tyranny are polar opposites. Fascism is full of tyranny, irrspective of the means it may use. Hence, fascism isn't about right or left except where it fits within the line. Fascism is about tyranny versus freedom.
What else would freedom mean?
Face it, freedom is about having control over your own life. If there were no state trying to control you, there would be no need for freedom. It would simply be a natural state of life.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
"Nature" has tremendous control over our lives. People in the Paleolithic Era, before government as we know it was invented, were hardly living in a state that I would call "free." They were never more than one bad season away from famine and starvation. Something like half of their children died before their first birthday, half of the survivors died before puberty, and a large percentage of the women died in childbirth. They were routinely "enslaved" and even "executed" by common illnesses. They had no choice of career: everyone had to be a full-time producer of food; a high-risk occupation since their primary food supply was wild animals. They were in a near-constant state of hostility with neighboring tribes, over the rights to their limited hunting and gathering territory. They had no division of labor so there were no expert artists, musicians or storytellers.
If this is your idea of "freedom," I would probably prefer both fascism and communism.
