It's the Far Left Who Are the Fascists
Does it ever occur to them?
Does it ever occur to the authoritarian far left that it's leftists who are the fascists?
A recent video showed why fascism is a far-left phenomenon, but leftists never fully understand this because they get only one side of the story.
Serious question: Do anti-liberty leftists ever look in the mirror or have a moment of self-reflection that maybe they're the threat to our constitutional republic?
Do they ever consider the possibility that they are the "baddies"?
Do they understand that we of the pro-freedom right really don't have a choice in being inundated with leftist propaganda 24/7? Even the radio stations that carry our favorite pro-freedom programming tend to lean toward the collectivist side of the spectrum.
Don't even mention National Propaganda Radio, funded by our tax dollars taken at gunpoint, where their idea of "balance" is a gaggle of leftists with an oh, so slightly different viewpoint on the definition of socialism.
Consider the video clip that Glenn Beck presented:
WATCH: 2 videos clearly show who America’s REAL fascists are
WATCH: 2 videos clearly show who America's REAL fascists are
VOICE: This means war. That is where we are. We are at war with these people. These folks are evil.
VOICE: There is an ultra-right MAGA contention and this country that wants to overthrow the U.S. government. ...
VOICE: The extremists that we're dealing with every single day, we have to kill and confront that movement. ...
VOICE: I see this as a party, a MAGA party that is no longer confident that they can win elections with votes. And so now they're seeking to enact their political will through violence.
VOICE: This is literally what conservative white folks do when they don't get their way. They turn violent. ...
VOICE: These crazed, deranged folks, who want to impart evil in every facet of our society.
VOICE: To the elite, you know, this is a — literally, a call to arms.
That is the far left saying those things, projecting their ideas on the pro-freedom right — "literally, a call to arms." Does it even sound as though they have a toehold on sanity?
We all know what would be the result if a few people from the pro-freedom right said one tenth of those comments. That would dominate the news cycle for days, with video of those statements on a tape loop constantly played in the background.
But instead, those incendiary remarks and more have been ignored because they originated with the anti-liberty far left. Why is that the case?
It's not just on the cable news programming, but online as well, with just a sampling of some headlines from the Washington Post: "The GOP's 'Commitment' is to total political warfare" and "Apocalypse now: Democrats embrace a dark midterm message." Then this political "commentary" referring to Republicans as terrorists, complaining that Democrats are treating Republicans like legitimate political actors, no matter how insane and dangerous they've become.
Do they ever look in the mirror and entertain the thought that maybe they are the problem?
Take a look at the rest of the video and the fact that the far left is shedding supporters. That should tell them something.
It should also tell them something that when they project their issues on the pro-freedom right, they never can quite come up with substantive proof that we're "fascists."
Why is that? They've had 80 years to make their case, and they've never done so.
Can they explain why their side seems to have only subjective accusations, while we have objective proof in a myriad of common traits between collectivists?
Their "literary" efforts on the subject certainly leave much to be desired. Most have a similar theme running through them, starting with a headline that presupposes the premise.
Then they came up with a brilliant scheme of a similar theme that they thought worked but doesn't.
The problem is that they keep on regurgitating the same old tired tropes over and over again. After trying to pretend that they've proved their point without any evidence in carefully crafted and fact-free headlines. They'll launch into meaningless diatribes about "cult-like leaders," "intolerance," or attacks against certain entities. The trouble is that we can just as easily say the same about their side, so the exercise proves nothing.
However, we can point to the fact that their side suppressed freedom of assembly and freedom of religion during the COVID "emergency." Their side is censoring the press, wants unlimited government, believes in the common good over the individual good (Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz in the original German) favoring collectivism, and wants people to be controlled. Their side is constantly working to destroy the sensible individual civil right of self-defense.
Those are just for starters. There are plenty more here, plus the anti-liberty authoritarians of the fascist far left are working all the time to add to the list, so that should put the matter to rest.
They are clearly the fascists. The facts clearly make the case.
But we suppose they can never be honest about this because that would destroy the authoritarian far left for a generation and beyond.
That must be why they put so much effort into denying logical reality and trying to maintain their lies. If they didn't, their whole "movement" would be kaput.
Originally published on the American Thinker
D Parker, I appreciate your overview here. I hope you keep this thread of thought alive.
One of the challenging questions is how exactly can left-liberals become self-critical? How can they see into how the early original insights and power of liberalism, the awareness and valuing of diversity, of individual differences, devolved into a Marxist influenced, intolerant, activist, collectivist, ‘progressive’ mindset?
I’ve seen liberals I talk with assume that a critique of current liberalism implies some immediate adoption or acceptance of conservatism. I take pains to make clear that that is not the case, that inquiry into ideology, a transcendence/awareness of the nature of ideology, is now in eclipse by the modern outlook that presumes to already know what man is and what the truth is. And why Pierre Manent’s question in his ‘The City of Man’ is so crucial: “How do we inquire into what we presuppose?” (We can transcend ordinary political opposition, how to do this would include reading the same classic works combined with contemplative reading, a process of inquiry, and a referring in discussion to classic works. We are fragmented, awash in ‘new’ reports everyday, deeper insights get displaced, media platforms do not in their structure retain a method for readers to follow to deepen their understanding).
Left-liberals speak of, and assume, any critique of liberalism, implicitly implies a ‘going back’ to an inferior, less advanced, time. The traditional time and culture, that believed in and sought universal knowledge, and sought a ‘standardization of life’, is believed irredeemably corrupt and false. And they believe there is NO value to be found there.
As the current internal failings within left-liberalism become more undeniable liberals are in a tough spot. Liberals have a left-liberal problem they neither admit nor understand. And so increasingly they NEED a demon, a negative, like Trump, that explains why their Utopia is not yet reality. And of course EVERYTHING associated becomes the many headed beast: the patriarchy, anything traditionally masculine, toxic masculinity, white racism, colonialism, capitalism, Republicans, MAGA, xenophobes, homophobes, trans-phobes, with Trump and MAGA as the largest heads focusing their sights for destruction and concentrating their “save the world from evil!” rhetoric.
Left liberals, and current so-called liberals, believe they have the ONLY correct answer. And they think they know, but in actuality do not know, how they arrived at their current left-liberal ‘truth and certainty’. Here is where true free thinking people can raise the question: what exactly, and fundamentally speaking, is this ‘answer’? And how exactly did it come about?
An indispensable classic, ‘The Great Chain of Being’ (1931), by Arthur Lovejoy can assist in penetrating to the ground of our current crisis, to the philosophic grounds of the left-right difference and opposition.
Lovejoy’s entire book is essential, but to get started I can suggest reading the introduction, chapters I, X, and XI.
We need an equivalent to the sign above Plato’s academy door, “Let no-one ignorant of geometry enter here”:
“Let no-one ignore Arthur Lovejoy’s ‘The Great Chain of Being’ as they enter upon the effort to defend and nurture Western civilization.
The parallel to geometry is fitting as Arthur Lovejoy’s classic work also deals with fundamentals. It is at once the study of the history of the idea, that the world is an ordered and intelligible whole, a ‘Great Chain of Being’, that dominated the West for two millennia, and it’s eventual collapse, and what arose in its place, and a revealing of the basic rational terms underlying this history which are forever relevant because they are coincident with reason itself.
Our ignorance of these elements of reason is always our starting point. If we are to avoid being footnotes, or footnotes to footnotes to Plato (GCB p.24) and repeat and cover the same ground, we need to return to inquiry into what is fundamental. We need to rely upon the best efforts made to penetrate the features that constitute our being as rational beings. Any effort at reform, for finding common ground in discussions and debates, should in it’s details have reference to the origin of our problems as based in consciousness, in the efforts to satisfy what reason requires. It will become clear that our problems are deeper than politics.
Arthur Lovejoy concludes his Chapter X of ‘The Great Chain of Being’ with homage to William James. Therein we can find instruction and hint for the remedy to our cultural ills and to the degradation of the university.
William James, Lovejoy writes, “was in himself an embodiment, in a just and sane balance, of the two elements in the ideal of which I have been speaking.” These two ideals (roughly) being ‘universality of mind’ (the belief in and pursuit of universal truth, universal standards) and “a constant sense that other people have, as he (William James) put it, “insides of their own,” often quite different from his”. The exploration and discovery in one’s self, and in others, of the ’two elements in the ideal’ Lovejoy wrote about, is what more elevated political discourse, and university culture, essentially should be fostering.
Renewal, and renewed efforts at inquiry, have to incorporate knowledge of our crisis and dysfunction. Lovejoy’s classic work illuminates the terms at work within us that also shape our world and culture and history. For those who make the effort to read and reread his book the meaning of illumination, as opposed to mere understanding of information, will be self evident.
References:
‘The Great Chain of Being’ (1931) by Arthur Lovejoy.
See the great 20th century moral and political philosopher Aurel Kolnai’s essay ‘High-Mindedness (1931) in his ‘Politics, Values, and National Socialism’.
See also his classic essay ‘The Meaning of the “Common Man”’ (1949) in his ‘Privilege and Liberty and Other Essays in Political Philosophy’. This essay reveals the collectivist, destructive, and stultifying effect of left-liberal ideology.
ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ