As noted, your attempt to say that I misrepresented what the expert said was just a misrepresentation itself, you really told us that he was just spewing “verbal diarrhea” without noticing who he was.
Then it was noticed that just reading about the ways of a ruthless dictator does not automatically make one a leftist, specially when the dictator killed communists and leftists.
Webster on line insists that the term liberalism is synonymous with the ideas of a leftist. If you want to continue with ignorant points you should realize that the most current and pertinent definition of liberalismis:
Looking at the latest revolts in the Middle East one should conclude that the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties was not a priority of the governments that called themselves “leftist”
Tyrants like Stalin, if they existed today, would indeed be opposed also by the vast majority of leftists in the west, and in the Middle East too. The attempt of calling tyrants like that just plain leftist betrays the agenda of the accuser. It is indeed a variation of the “Nazis were leftists” canard.
Huh, I didn’t accuse him of spewing “verbal diarrhea” I said you did. As I pointed out, he never disputes that Saddam was left-winger and classifies him as a Stalinist.
Stalinists are left-wingers.
You’ve yet to present any evidence why the Ba’ath Party isn’t socialist so I’ll ask again for the millionth time.
Please explain why Havez Assad and Michel Aflaq weren’t left-wingers?
Ok, so now you’re insisting that the Soviet Union, East Germany and modern-day Cuba aren’t “left-wing”?:rolleyes:
Also, if the only defense you can must is “most left-wingers don’t like them” than by such a standard Hitler and Mussolini weren’t right-wingers because most modern day right-wingers hate them.
Anyway, at this point it seems absurd to keep arguing with you because you’re aggressively in denial of reality and refusing to answer the simple question as to why Aflaq, Assad, Nasser, and the Ba’ath Party shouldn’t be classified as left-wing.
I think the intent of this thread was to discuss Left Wing Antisemitism in Europe and the US. Might I suggest we drop the whole business of Antisemitism in the MENA region…?
Tap dance all you want, the reality is that you qualified the whole post as verbal diarrhea, and that included what the former assistant to Saddam Hussein said. I was referring on my post on what the Iraqi said. And as other noticed, your attempt at making Saddam a left-winger does miss a lot of items that shows that he was not.
As you keep missing it, liberalism is the last thing guys like Havez Assad has in mind.
Complain to the dictionaries.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winnar!!!
This is a demonstration that you did not pay attention, I already said that extremism does not lead people to say that current right wingers would support Hitler, never said that and I still insist that therefore one should not assign to liberalism or to right wingers what dictators are doing nowadays.
Keep repeating it, it would make it real some day, like some extreme right wingers said in the past… Not.
Your intent is admirable; however, you failed to notice that this thread features the word “Israel” in the OP, and therefore is required by law to be identical to every other thread featuring the word “Israel” in the OP.
And to that end I think it’s time we draw the curtain on this hijack. Ibn Warraq and GIGObuster, if you want to discuss where various regimes fall in terms of right and left, start a new thread. Meanwhile we’ll confine this topic to something closer to what the OP intended, which was a discussion of antisemitism on the left in the modern West.
The entire case for left wing antisemitism in the US rests solely on the trope that criticism of Israel is, in itself, antisemitic. Regardless of the validity of criticisms of Israel, they are still not antisemitic per se, and actual, racist antisemitism does not exist on the American political left, and not really even on the mainstream political right. It basically just exists as a fringe-right skinhead/Klan type thing. American conservatives are all about hating Muslims now, not Jews.
I think this is pretty close to the mark, although I don’t know enough about the European left (in its various incarnations in the various countries) to say whether it is true there, was well.
[QUOTE=CitizenPained]
I think it’s better to narrow down what ‘left’ is. Left on a domestic front is not the same as left on the IR front. I’m pretty liberal but not a socialist. I don’t want to call myself a neocon when it comes to foreign relations, but I’m not dove-ish, either.
I associate ‘left’ with libertie and ‘far-left’ with socialism (or a variant of) because I live in the U.S. Others may think otherwise. I don’t consider communist regimes, fascist regimes, or socialist nations to be ‘left’. But…again…these things are coming from my lens.
[/quote]
This is what I agree with. And I will leave it at that.
[QUOTE=CitizenPained]
I think that, yes, on the domestic front in the U.S., blaming a minority for economic duress is largely something that the “right” does. But liberals today seem more likely to blame Israel for the economic crisis because of ‘what Israel does to Palestinians’ re: 9/11 and economic fallout.
The typical “Jews are the reason for X” stuff is because [insert group here] see Jews as bankers, money changers, Christ-killers and all around jerks of humanity. Who knows. Maybe now that we’re in a global economy, it’s easier to blame Jews for the economic woes more than ever.
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I do think that right wing extremist groups (not all of them right wingers) are the ones that typically go for the “Jews as bankers, money changers and Christ-killers” there is IMHO some religious members of the left that do let religion control what they think about the Jews.
In my posts #7 and #41, before this ridiculous hijack (I should have known better than to try to bring cites and data into a GD thread), I actually did show some data for anti-semitism in Spain, the European country mentioned in the OP. According to one study, a roughly equal percentage of the self-identified “extreme right” and “center left” have unfavorable views of Jews (the question is asking about Jews, not Israel). It doesn’t particularly tie anti-semitism to the left, but does invalidate this silly meme that anti-semitism is a purely rightwing phenomenon. Given the available evidence, it seems the European left and right are anti-semitic in roughly equal numbers.
Well the labels seem to be self-applied, but I think this party would cover most center-left people. I assume it is the mainstream of people with more leftwing views on social and economic issues. As to whether Spain is a good proxy for Europe, it seems to be more anti-semitic than most, so who knows? I was hoping there would be some other surveys cited for further analysis. It would be nice to have more data, as otherwise people are asserting their own biases as fact, which I understand is a popular technique for political debate.
Except as has been demonstrated there are plenty of left-wingers who have anti-Semitic beliefs that are unrelated to Israel.
For example as already pointed to a disturbingly large number of democrats claimed that “the Jews” were responsible for the economic crisis.
Furthermore, plenty of Americans on both sides of the aisle believe that “the media” or “Wall Street” are controlled by the Jews and just as sizable percentages of Europeans are convinced their Jewish citizens are more loyal to Israel than to their home countries, you do hear some Americans talking about how Jewish Americans care more about Israel than they do about America.
Finally, I’d hardly call Jesse Jackson a right-winger and yet he certainly didn’t have his political career destroyed after referring to “Hymietown.”
Claiming that anti-Semitism in America is an overwhelmingly right-wing phenomenon is moronic and also there’s quite a bit of anti-Semitism on both political sides that has nothing to do with criticism of Israel.
Marley has told me not to continue debating with you regarding whether or not the Ba’ath Party, Nasser, and Havez Assad were left-wingers or not, so I won’t, particularly since it’s rather pointless since you obviously don’t even know who they are.
That said, you’re making the mistake by talking about “liberalism”.
This discussion was not about “anti-Semitism among liberals” but about “anti-Semitism amongst left-wingers”.
Not all left-wingers are liberals and, depending on what one means by the term liberal(it means something dramatically different in Europe than in the US) not all liberals are left-wingers.
Anyway, plenty of left-wingers are capable of anti-Semitism. Let’s not forget Jesse Jackson’s disparaging comments about “Hymietown”, Congressman Gus Savage attacking his opponent Mel Reynolds for accepting contributions from Jewish people and Cynthia McKinney being defeated because of “J-E-W-S”.
For that matter, while he wasn’t an elected official, Rick Sanchez certainly wasn’t a right-winger and his claims about Jews controlling the media had nothing to do with Israel.
No, fascism is a very specific thing, not just “right-wing authoritarianism” or even “authoritarianism” in general. The only real full fascist country was Mussolini’s Italy.
