Re: spectrum of ideologies (fwd)

yeah, alan, unfortunately. it is a disease to associate fascism with
socialism nowadays.. shame on leftists that they use neo-conservative
right-wing slogans...

thanks for your nice comments. as a Marxist woman, i especially support
the part of your post that emphasizes the "patriarchal language" of some
men in the list.

Mine

>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
>