Comments on: Neiwert the Leftist intellectual lightweight http://www.bloggernews.net/113407 High-quality English language analysis and editorial writing on the news. Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:09:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: joe schmoe http://www.bloggernews.net/113407#comment-242701 joe schmoe Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:15:52 +0000 http://www.bloggernews.net/113407#comment-242701 There has been a recent stream of rhetoric from the revisionist right in the US to the effect that historical fascist movements - totalitarian cults of personality which glorified masculinity, the military, nationalism and traditional sexual roles, crushed or appropriate organized labor and disdained academia and the arts with the stated desire of returning to some sort of mythical past chartacterized by organic cultural and/or ethnic unity were actually leftist. That's definitely a counterintutive and humorous argument which appeals to a certain type of contrarian, but it exists parallel to (rather than inside) many decades of mainstream academic and political thought. Biology has "intelligent design"; cosmology has "flat earth"; now history has "Right wing totalitarianism is actually left." It seems to me you guys could save a lot of trouble by just being honest. It's not like there aren't words for left-wing totalitarianism too (e.g., Stalinism) so it really shouldn't be that tough to admit that the extremes of either style of political thought can lead to similar results (i.e., genocide), <i>even</i>while having very different premises. In short, it takes away nothing from the right to admit that there is such a thing as "W-A-Y too right," which is what it seems to me that this is really all about. Isn't it? There has been a recent stream of rhetoric from the revisionist right in the US to the effect that historical fascist movements - totalitarian cults of personality which glorified masculinity, the military, nationalism and traditional sexual roles, crushed or appropriate organized labor and disdained academia and the arts with the stated desire of returning to some sort of mythical past chartacterized by organic cultural and/or ethnic unity were actually leftist.

That’s definitely a counterintutive and humorous argument which appeals to a certain type of contrarian, but it exists parallel to (rather than inside) many decades of mainstream academic and political thought.

Biology has “intelligent design”; cosmology has “flat earth”; now history has “Right wing totalitarianism is actually left.”

It seems to me you guys could save a lot of trouble by just being honest. It’s not like there aren’t words for left-wing totalitarianism too (e.g., Stalinism) so it really shouldn’t be that tough to admit that the extremes of either style of political thought can lead to similar results (i.e., genocide), evenwhile having very different premises.

In short, it takes away nothing from the right to admit that there is such a thing as “W-A-Y too right,” which is what it seems to me that this is really all about.

Isn’t it?

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