Re: spectrum of ideologies

I generally try to be very polite and civil on e-mail networks. But as I
mentioned in an earlier post, it is possible for someone to post something
so outrageous, insulting, and abusive, but do it in intellectual, calm
language as to appear civil. Then, more HONEST responses, that honestly
express their outrage can be made to appear "irrational." Abusive language
in a polite tone is a tactic that some men use against women, that some
older authority figures use against younger people in order to make the
abused appear to be irrational.  So if my response sounds like I've gone
over the line into hostile personal attacks, it is only because I regard
being accused of being a "Nazi", whether literally or metaphorically, to be
a provocation as hostile and abusive as anything I have ever read on WSN.

Kohler is using the pathetically superficial argument that fascist,
imperialist ruling class mouthpieces have used for decades -- equating the
Left with the Right. As if the heroic partisans, who rescued tens of
millions of people and destroyed the Nazi military could somehow be equated
to a capitalist ruling class,  the Nazis--(initially inspired and funded by
Henry Ford and other U.S. capitalists as a bulwark against the USSR)-- the
Nazis who threw children alive screaming into furnaces, who gassed millions,
who performed the most vicious medical experiments on children!

As if the Center, which Kohler seems so enamored of, has no blood on its
hands! How about the blood of the working class massacred during World War
I, as all the Center parties, INCLUDING THE LIBERAL SOCIALISTS, dropped all
their dishonest prattle about international unity, and proceeded to
slaughter each other by the millions. Perhaps the Center's support for
fascists like the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Phillipines, Pinochet, and the
Suharto regime (which killed a half million Indonesians)--perhaps that is
all "OKAY" because that support was given by the Center.  And the hundreds
and hundreds of millions murdered by U.S., British, French, Dutch, Italian,
Belgian, German imperialism, usually with the strong support of not only the
Center parties, but also many of the Liberal Socialists.  Even Pol Pot,
after all, was supported by the U.S. for a time.

Only fools or dishonest mouthpieces think that you can develop a serious
social scientific theory by drawing diagrams of horse shoes!  Sontheimer's
"very interesting" "discovery" is a very old, tired piece of stupid
propaganda. There is nothing new there, just as there is nothing new in
Kohler's discovery of the "Night of the Long Knives", a very well known
event in the history of the Nazi regime.

Making a point of principle of comparing the violence of revolutionaries
fighting against fascism to the violence of the fascists is like morally
equating a victim of rape who is fighting back to the rapist who is
attacking her! Of course some people who call themselves Leftists have
engaged in violence that has killed innocent people. No doubt some people
who CALL themselves "Leftists" or "revolutionaries" or "Marxists" or
"Leninists" have commited some crimes. If someone wants to assert that, they
should give specific examples and argue based on evidence.

But to assert a political theory which makes a principle out of equating
working class, defensive revolutionary violence with the fascist murder of
millions of children is the most stupid, abusive thing I have ever read on
WSN.

For those who think I'm being characteristically emotional and abusive,
consider again what it means to be equated to Nazis.

Sincerely,

Alan Spector





----- Original Message -----
From: g kohler <gkohler@accglobal.net>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 25, 1999 10:16 AM
Subject: spectrum of ideologies


> A political scientist who studied the ideological spectrum in the Germany
of
> the 1920s ("Weimar Republic"), Kurt Sontheimer, found something very
> interesting -- namely, the left-right spectrum of political ideologies is
> not a straight line but has the shape of a horseshoe or even a circle. He
> found that when you move from centrist positions to the left and then to
the
> far-left and when you move from a centrist position to the right and then
to
> the far-right you reach virtually the same point, just like moving along a
> horseshoe or along a circle either left or right will eventually get you
to
> approximately the same ideological location. In 1920's Germany the far
right
> were the national socialists (=Nazis), the far left were the national
> bolsheviks (similar to Pol Pot in Cambodia or one contemporary wsn
member).
> The ideological positions of the far right and the far left were both in
> favour of high degrees of violence and dictatorship. Another common
feature
> they had was that they were in favour of killing their own party
supporters
> if they were deemed "soft" in one way or another. (A little known
historical
> fact is that Hitler, long before he launched the war and the holocaust,
had
> about 1000 fellow Nazis murdered in the so-called "night of the long
knives"
> 1934. This is parallel to the Stalinist practice of killing fellow
leftists,
> like Trotsky and thousands of others.) I conclude from this that violence
is
> the mistake of 20th century socialism. Stalinists and some Leninists are
the
> Nazis of socialism and give socialism a bad name. A red-green world party
> must unequivocally reject that kind of bloody violence.
>
>
> Gert Kohler
> Oakville, Canada
>