Why does it seem like most extreme extremists are rightists?
Why is it only liberal figureheads (King, Kennedy, abortion doctors, etc.) who get assassinated, for example?
Why are there so few instances of rightist figureheads (Ollie North, Jessie Helms, Ronald Reagan, etc.) being assassinated, or even targeted for (political, non-Jody Foster-related) assassination?
Personally, I maintain that it’s because opposition to the rightist agenda is the duty of the intelligent, rational thinker, and the right attracts irrational people; that liberals are less likely to resort to irrational solutions to political problems, and rightists are all, like, crazy with frustration because they know they’re wrong.*
But that’s just me.
Anyone else?
[sub]*The tone is tongue-in-cheek, but the question is a serious one.[/sub]
I don’t see that you’ve established your point very well. How many major violent acts have there been by rightists? You mentioned King and Kennedy, but there’s also Reagen and Wallace. Maybe liberals are just worse shots? There have been abortion doctors killers and a Oklakoma City bombing, but there’s also been tree spikers and the Unabomer.
This also gets in to the whole poltical “spectrum” issue. Are Commies (who seem pretty extremist to me) off in the same political “direction” as liberals, only more so? Does that mean that libertarians and fascists are somehow also in the same general political region (i.e., “far right”)? (Although, in this country, it is odd how extreme libertarianism and violent authoritarianism seem to get jumbled together in the realms of the “far right”…and historically the “far left” has included radically authoritarian Marxist-Leninists and radically anti-authoritarian–sometimes violently so–anarchists.) Don’t forget, several notable public figures–including President McKinley–were assassinated by “leftist” anarchists back around the (previous) turn of the century. Left-wing types back in the '60’s got pretty violent sometimes, too. It does seem like these days the scariest loons are Right Wing Loons. It also seems that the Left and Right have flip-flopped on “law and order” to a great extent–now, it’s right-wingers who go around muttering about jack-booted “pigs” and police brutality and such-like.
This is a very interesting point too: it’s always struck me as strange (and vastly oversimplified and reductive, needless to say) that the farther righ someone gets, the more their views seem to have in common with the extreme left. Anarchism as an absurd extension of liberalism, for example, and its parallels with Libertarianism, which I feel is an absurd extension of conservatism.
I’d say that most of the people protesting at the WTO and in DC and here at the RNC were of the left persuasion. Wackos, I’d stake a bunch of money on, are pretty well distributed.
Maybe because, being a liberal yourself, you’re less likely to see liberal wackos as wackos. Don’t take this too personally. It’s a natural human tendency to see everything bad in groups you don’t identify with and nothing bad in groups you do identify with.
I’d say the pinheads at PETA definitely qualify as wackos. The more extreme Afrocentrists qualify as wackos too. The PC liberals who seem determined to silence everybody to the right of Ted Kennedy definitely meet the requirements. The feminist movement also has more than its fair share of folks with a shaky grip on reality. Of course, as you’ve already pointed out, there are plenty of crazies on the right, too.
Politics certainly does seem to bring out the worst in people.
I’d say that if your point is that anyone protesting at the WTO and in D.C. and at the RNC were likely to be wackos, then I think he’s not the only one whose premise is flawed.
no, i was not asserting that the Protesters were all wackos. But there were several incidents of violence and mayhem which pretty well fit the definition of ‘wacko-derived’. For example, here in Philly a few cops were hospitalized after a toxic substance was thrown in their faces, and another officer was beaten with a bike.
Cars were smashed and tires slashed. In Seattle, Gaps were wrecked and stores were looted.
I am sure that you are aware of incidents of this type. True, my post wasn’t the clearest. But don’t verbally poke me because you inferred that I meant all the protesters were loonies. (Poking is very gentle. I didn’t see it as an attack or anything)
No liberal homicidal wackoes, eh? I suppose you think Ted Kaczinski (the Unabomber) was a Republican, huh?
Read his manifesto (I have), and you’ll find that it’s a pastiche of familiar liberal complaints about society. Indeed, more than a few leftists around the country have been heard saying, “Well, I don’t condone the killing of course, but he makes a lot of sense…”
Beyond that, there’s the SLA, the Weather Underground, a host of 60’s-style loonies who bombed offices or robbed banks in the name of “the revolution.” And let’s not forget Lee Harvey Oswald.
And Katherine McKinnon, who is a whacko and (sadly) a liberal as well.
We’ve got quite a few on our side of the fence too. Most of the really annoying ones are Republicans though
I live in Seattle. I’m a liberal. I and most of my friends, while sympathizing with their causes, believe that the Gap-smashing, Riot-escalating, Brutality-complaining WTO protesters were whackos as well.
The whole left/right thing is an illusion, I’d say. It helps us to avoid thinking critically about the issues that face us. Every group/individual has their own set of beliefs about what actions should be taken to remedy what problems, and it’s horridly simplistic to huddle belief systems into the camps of “left” and “right,” then try to devise some kind of scale with some deplorable regime at each endpost, thus justifying our stagnant two party system, since they are both standing about the center, which is further away from each “extreme” and therefore somehow better. Blah.
I think the big difference between “left” wing extremist and “right” wing extremists, currently, is that the right wingers think they and people like them are getting screwed over, so they take extreme actions. The lefter extremists are worried that others are getting screwed over (third world countries, the environment, animals) and are frustrated at how essentially impossible it is to effect change. That’s why I favor the lefties over the righties. Seems their motives are usually not entirely selfish, and I agree with some of their causes.
I’ll address the accusations against PETA specifically, since I consider myself a strong proponent of animal rights. Sure, some things PETA does are pretty boneheaded. I’ll agree. (One example that jumps out at me is how they wrote letters to a town named Fishkill, suggesting that they rename the town Fishsave. Kill, of course, is a Native American word for river.) Their mission in general, however, seems to me to be rather fundamental to anyone with compassion. There’s more to suffering than humans, after all, and to suggest otherwise is just arrogance. PETA doesn’t quite justify the “wacko” label. I’d say the people that stuff firecrackers in cat’s mouths are wackos, and should be prosecuted as serious felons before they can harm any more animals, human or not. Yet, there are many people, especially “right wingers” who think that animal cruelty should not be considered a serious crime. It’s still a misdemeanor in most states, IIRC.
Referring back to the Op- how do the facts that JFK was shot by a communist sympathizer and that RFK was shot by a Palestinian nationalist support the contention that rightwingers are whackier than leftwingers?
I think there are wackos aplenty to spread all around the political spectrum.
Crazy ideas aren’t limited to one ideology. You may hear of more right-leaning “wackos” because people like Matt Drudge or Art Bell sometimes give some of their ideas a forum.
Unless you are a devout Pacifica Radio listener, you miss your chance to hear some truly “wacko” left-leaning ideas.
The main difference between Extreme Righters and Extreme Lefters is that those on the right tend to use religion as their basis for doing everything, while those on the left use “freedom” and “making the world a happy, perfect place” (I know, I’m generalizing). Since strict religion isn’t the most popular meanse of living these days, those that adhere to religious principles are seen as “wacko”.
Another possibility is the (arguable) notion that the media is most liberal. If the right-wing extremists are shown as “wacko” and the left-wing extremists are shown as “good people, just made a few mistakes”, I’d understand how the OP could be thought of.
There are plenty of liberal wackos, it’s just that a lot of them take refuge in academia and are less visible to the general public than the Rush Limbaughs of the world. For every high-profile theorist like Catherine MacKinnon, there are easily a hundred lonely souls trying to prove that Charlotte Bronte spent her youth in Belgian porn shops or that transvestites through the ages have identified themselves to one another by their use of diphthongs. (I’m not making either of these theories up.) And don’t even get me started on the Marxists…
If the revolution actually comes, these people will be out of a job, so it’s in their interest NOT to work for social change in any meaningful sense – therefore, they put all their energies into lit theory rather than activism. Bunch o’ hypocrites.
Experimenting on primates is wacko. Whatever you think about animals in general, primates come far too close to home to be mistreated like they are in most experiments. They are generally kept in tight confinement, usually isolated from any others of their species. Primates are highly social animals, and the stressful conditions inflicted on them can only act as a confound in any experiment.
Wearing fur is wacko, vain, frivolous, and a waste of life.
I’ve never heard a meat eater referred to as a Nazi. Meat eating in general is an indulgence, waste of resources, and waste of life.
Quite.
Bah. Humans are capable of evil and intentional cruelty. We’re capable of good, too, to a certain degree, but most of that good takes the form of undoing the evil done by other humans, and the evil still outweighs it. Animals, human are non are not worth more or less than one another. They’re just different. If an alien race lands tomorrow, and they are vastly more intelligent than we, are our lives worth less then theirs? Arrogance. Simple arrogance.
Well, I’m glad to see that you’ve used logic to attack the premise of the movement, rather than resort to small minded name calling. And for that matter, I’m glad to see that you included all aspects of the animal rights movement in your post, thus justifying your assertion, that the “whole” movement is “wacko.”
