BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
Nazism is leftist, big-state politics – something that should never be placed on the right-hand side of a single-left-right-axis linear political spectrum. The clue comes in its German origin: Nationalsozialismus. Just because Nazism countered left-wing communism from the get-go of its original, twentieth-century Munich manifestations hardly warrants it a place alongside small-state, individualistic libertarianism.
Yet the Left, by screaming loudly, disowns Nazism by branding it right-wing; more recently, yelling that Marine Le Pen in France is right-wing when she’s clearly a nationalist espousing some big state, often left-wing, anti-globalist policies. The rise of violent Antifa in the US is the embodiment of contemporary leftist pretence; Antifa should be attacking itself if it stood for what it meant but, instead, it’s attacking a nationalist, small-state collective of Trumpists, who are neither collectively right or left-wing; certainly not fascists. At least the Islamists are true enough to their craziness to kill themselves – expediting the inevitable outcome of theocratic absolutism.
Shouting loudly is one thing. Being correct seems to be altogether another.
Another old chestnut from the Left that needs cracking is psychopathy. Too often those on the Right along the political spectrum from Centre Right to Far Right are lumped together as uncaring and callous. If you put ancient barbarism on the extreme right of the linear spectrum then no doubt our barbaric club-wielding ancestors – perhaps laudably individualistic – were occasionally lacking in empathy. But the Centre Right?
Famously the Tories were described by New Labour as “the nasty party” – a theme picked up on by the current Tory Prime Minister Theresa May when she chaired the Conservative Party in the early noughties and sought to reform the Tory image.
The Left’s default position today is to perpetuate this image of the mainstream, centre-right Tories as being uncaring:
How can this be?
Doesn’t do-gooding, left-wing politics have a rather bad record when their fixed political tenets start losing grip with the fluidity of economic reality?
The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris offers the following rough breakdown of the numbers of people that communism killed:
- USSR – 20 million
- China – 65 million
- North Korea – 2 million
- Cambodia – 2 million
- Eastern Europe – 1 million
- Latin America – 150,000
- Africa – 1.7 million
- Afghanistan – 1.5 million
- Communist movements, parties not in power – 10,000
Calculating the numbers of individuals who were killed as the result of Nazi policies is a difficult task. If you count all premature excess deaths that occurred due to the war Hitler started and the atrocities committed during that war, Nazism was responsible for about 42 million deaths in World War II in Europe. Add that horrific number to the bloody, left-wing tally.
Meanwhile Socialism is hardly an empathetic success story around the world. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam murdered more than 1 million people. Latin America has endured socialism which has managed to impose the greatest destruction and misery the continent has ever seen – today in Venezuela many citizens are forced to eat grass or rummage for scraps in bins, while the socialist government of Nicolas Maduro imprisons and kills political opponents. Venezuela has fallen hard from its capitalist 1980’s when it enjoyed AA-credit ratings in debt markets.
The evidence for the political failures of left-wingers who started out as do-gooders is not disputed. It’s all available online from unbiased sources if leftists should care to look.
The Left has killed millions over the years in its most extreme forms and much misery in do-gooding attempts to thwart capitalism with socialist policies. Sure, Capitalism may at times be cold and callous, which is why parties like the Conservatives have tamed it to some degree with Christian democratic policies – via the helping hand of welfare and the promotion of philanthrocapitalism.
Ah, but we mean Sweden and Norway when we talk about socialism, the leftists cry.
Yet the social democratic redistribution of the Nordic model in Norway depends on a massive state oil fund while Sweden’s left-wing policies – extensive public provision of welfare in tandem with a strong promotion of a culture of individualist capitalism – are more statist-individualist than socialist; Sweden like France now suffering more than most left-wing-run lands from over-liberal immigration policies and other do-gooding backfires.
Knowing the pain that the left has caused in the past, what is more lacking in empathy? A conservative voting for the Tories or a leftist voting for Corbyn’s Labour?
Given all the evidence of horror that the left has trailed across the planet, might it not be wise to reflect on its psychopathic tendency first before voting for more of the same? Before branding the Tories as uncaring psychopaths?