Let me start by noting that when I say “extreme,” I mean extreme, the Neo-Nazi, Fred Phelps type of extreme, the guys who make Pat Buchanan say, “whoa, they’re nuts.” Ordinary folks with actual sanity do not enter into this discussion.
This train of thought started because of this thread, where I noted how hard it seemed to be to find examples of the extreme left as bad as the examples of the extreme right that most folks know about (at the very least the KKK, to which you can add Fred, Jack Chick, and a host of others).
Why do you suppose that is? The theory I’m working with now is that the answer lies in the social arena. Social issues, such as race, gender, and sexuality, are those most likely to strike a nasty chord with people if your beliefs fall into the category scientifically identified as “looney.” These sorts of people tend to be extreme conservatives, for obvious reasons: their beliefs are ingrained from the past, and are heavily based in fundamentalist religion. This might explain why, for example, we have radical Muslims blowing up hotels, but generally not radical atheists.
I have this odd feeling that I haven’t expressed what I’m trying to say as clearly as I could have. I hope my point has been clear, here… What do you think of it?
Oh, and what do you think are examples of left-wing views that are as extreme and as odious as the guys who want to shove all the queers and liberal traitors into giant gas ovens?
There really is no left-wing eqivilent for the white supremacist/militia/ “Christian Identity” morons on the right.
We have tree-huggers and vegetarians. Sometimes you hear conservative rhetoric that attempts to portray groups like PETA as “terrorists” but that’s just demagoguery. PETA doesn’t kill anybody. There is nothing even on the most extreme left which comes even close to the evil on the right.
Communist come to mind - they are normally considered on the “left”
and the crimes of Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, and other communist dictators are far worse than even the most extreme right-wing dictatorships of the past century.
The “extremists” on both sides tend to be irrational beings, while the truth is that it’s quite possible to take either side of most issues while remaining completely rational.
For example, I’m pro-choice, but I certainly can understand a typical pro-lifer’s stance. It’s the “You’re a murderer, therefore it’s okay to murder you!” types that could stop breeding tomorrow without me being bothered.
By the same token, I’m all for the environment and conservation, but the ELF crew are a bunch of loonies that should also withhold contributions to the future gene pool.
Well, there are the idiots on the left who spike trees and kill folks that way, and the Greenpeace folks who do thinly-veiled terrorism to animal labs and the like. But they aren’t as bad as the extreme right.
…unless you count the 86 Communists currently in the State Department.
Oh, and it’s the “extreme” right and the “eXtreme (or X-treme)” left.
You weren’t around in the 60s were you? There were any number of radical lefty type organizations trying to violently overthrow “the establishment”. Weather Underground, for example.
Also, someone already mentioned the various Marxist/Leninist groups that were resonsible for 10s of millions of deaths in the last 100 yrs or so. Perhaps you need to look beyond the borders of the US if you are trying to draw some conlcusions about human nature and politics.
But I’m not sure there is really a continuity between these radical extreme groups and what we commonly call the left and right in mainstream politics in the US today.
The extreme left is rightly recognized as nutjobs by most of the populace, and tend to be ignored as a result. Examples: PETA, Earth Liberation Front, Anarchists.
The extreme right gets talk radio shows and are promoted as political pundits, trying to pass their extreme ideas as “mainstream” to gullible people. Examples: Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy
Ergo, the extreme right is more dangerous, because they’re not exposed as extremists.
The extreme right is more dangerous because they have successfully masqueraded themselves as “conservatives” and “patriots”, when they are in fact extremist wackos (Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Limbaugh, etc) .
The extreme left continues to be rightly pigeonholed as the wacko extremists they truly are, which has marginalized them and therefore made them not really dangerous, except maybe to some mink farms, and every now and then a random logging company.
Think of a globe… place two fingers at the top. I tell you to move one to the left and the other to the right. At this point the entire world lies between your fingers. If you continue moving them (extreme) then they meet at the pole.
Recall that many nationalist Guerilla-type “freedom” movements have their roots in Marxism/Maoism - e.g. Zapatista, Shining Path, Maoist rebels in Nepal; the Provisional IRA was also politically rooted in somewhat Marxist ideology. Then you’ve got the '70s Communist terrorist groups: Red Army, Baader Meinhof, November 17th, Symbianese Liberation Army, etc.
One really has to define “extremist” though - even though I dislike her, I really don’t think it’s fair to compare Anne Coulter to Pol Pot.
yeah-- pol pot was kinda understated in comparison… of course he got results ( horrible ones) but Ann would go there if she could… thank goodness this ain’t Cambodia
Due to the inadequacy of the words “left” and “right” in meaningful political dialogue, one could say that the extremes would come full circle and meet up. Total 1984-style authoritarianism is little different to utter anarchy since, in both cases, Might is the ultimate Right. Similarly, on the economic axis of the political compass, ultra-marxism actually looks little different to total law-of-the-jungle economics since in both cases armed force must be exerted by a minority elite in order to prevent revolution.
I think it would be more fair to put Ann Coulter in a category with Chmosky and his ilk. It is ridiculous to compare her to Pol-Pot, and comments like this: “…but Ann would go there if she could” are just stupid.
Historical of course, the far left has been much more devastating and dangerous that the far right. But since the demise of the communist block, the radical left has been left somewhat in the cold. There are still groupings, at least in Europe, that pray to Marx, are opposed to democracy and piously wait for the workers to revolt; but they have been marginalized and ridiculed to such a degree that most people find them no more threatening than The Cult of Bob or something. However there are also a lot of groupings which are born of, or heavily inspired by, radical left ideas. Certain anti-globalization groupings perhaps, feminazis (all men are rapist), ideas of radical cultural relativism, extreme PC speak advocates, the idea that Europe and all things European is inherently evil and the root cause of everything bad in the world, etc. These groups and thoughts are not condemned as are the ideas emanating from the far right, on the contrary they have been widely accepted, internalized :), many places. And I think have much influence.
And it’s funny that you should put “Christian Identity” morons on the far left, we don’t have them here – but do have a fair number of Islamic fundamentalists. Far right wouldn’t do at all, since it’s mostly them that are most opposed to the fundamentalists. Far left is more fitting, since it’s traditionally the left that has cried fault every time the fundamentalist have been criticized. Also anarchist cannot really be considered left.
I think mostly any meaning of left and right break down and lose its meaning when we come to extreme ideas and groups.
Ted Kaszinski killed more people than all the anti-abortion bombers in America put together, and he did so in furtherance of a radical “environmentalist” agenda. And Unca Cecil has already pointed out that most of the greatest mass murderers of history were leftists. So if you want to keep score by body counts, the extreme Left is more dangerous than the Right.
But at the fringes, all extremists are alike. Hitler and Pol Pot are not on the same continuum as Bill Buckley and Howard Dean. They are off in a universe of their own.
[wuote]The extreme right gets talk radio shows and are promoted as political pundits, trying to pass their extreme ideas as “mainstream” to gullible people. Examples: Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy
[/quote]
Ahem
May I point out that these posts tend to tell me more about the politics of the posters than the truth of the matter.
You might want to put down the Coulter book. If you truly think Stalin was a lefty, start-up a thread about it and we can rehash the same old arguments. Stalin was more than happy to borrow plenty of ideas from any ideology that would keep him happy and in power. There were some radical lefties who supported him at one time, just as there were radical righties who supported Hitler, but that doesn’t make either of them representative of a particular ideology.
We’ve got the Religious Right and the Bleeding Heart Left. The Bleeding Hearts have little more than “Think of the children!” to justify their nuttiness, whereas the Religious Right believe that they have clearance from On High to do what they do. God tells 'em that they can do whatever they wanna… wasn’t it Fred Phelps who said that “God is perfect, so God’s hate must be perfect, too”?
'Course, that level of insanity, frankly, is beyond the bounds of the political spectrum. To call them “right-wing” is minimizing the issue… “dangerous” would be better.
Splitting hairs, DtC. A silly activity in and of itself.
I think it’s harder to find examples of extremism on the left because the extreme right of conservatism, Fascism, is authoritarian in nature, and it’s part of the philosophy of Fascism that violence and force are valid political tools.
At the extreme left, it circles back around to a similar kind of authoritarianism, but the overarching philosophy of the left is anti-authoritarian, so it seems to me that people who are more likely to want to violently force their views on others are more likely to be attracted to the right.
Well, according to this site, Kaczynski killed three people and wounded 23 others.
Eric Rudolph, however, has not been convicted of killing anyone. He is accused of killing two people and wounding about a hundred more.
I am not aware that there have been any other abortion clinic bombings in America that produced fatalities, but in the interest of accuracy, I will amend my statement to read “So far as has been proven in court, Ted Kaczynski has killed more people than all the anti-abortion bombers in America put together, and, if Eric Rudolph is guilty, this will still be true”.
Obviously, your objection that Kaczynski is just one person is the “No True Scotsman” argument. Kaczynski represented the fringe of the environmentalist movement, just as Rudolph (if he is guilty of the crimes with which he is charged) represents the fringe extremes of the anti-abortion movement.
And they have much more in common with each other than the mainstream.