LEFTIST ANTISEMITISM

The very considerable upsurge of antisemitism (sometimes thinly disguised as anti-Zionism) among US Leftists in recent times -- particularly on university campuses -- seems amazing and incomprehensible to many. How can people who have been beating the anti-racist drum so loudly and for so long suddenly turn into the very thing that they have always opposed? How can ferocious Leftists suddenly start advocating something that was until recently the preserve of the extreme Right? Why do many Leftists (including that great hater, Noam Chomsky) now seem to think that it is OK to have Jews being blown up left, right and centre but wrong to attack a murderous dictator such as Saddam Hussein? Can these be the same people who have been proclaiming their �compassion� for so long?

The mystery will be no mystery at all to anyone who has been following this blog or my recent writings elsewhere. As I have argued at some length previously, anti-racism has never been a deepseated or historic Leftist cause and was adopted by Leftists after World War II mainly as a means of gaining kudos. Hitler�s enormous racist excesses had made any suggestion of racism obnoxious -- and Leftists always like to masquerade as the good guys for as long as possible.

And Hitler was a Leftist too. Even those who know of the Leftist themes in Hitler�s election campaigns often say, however, that he was not a real Leftist because he was also a vehement nationalist. They seem to think that nationalism can only be Rightist. But that shows no knowledge of Leftist history generally.

From the days of Marx onward, there were innumerable �splits� in the extreme Leftist movement but two of the most significant occurred immediately after the Bolshevik revolution --- when in Russia the Bolsheviks themselves split into Leninists and Trotskyites and when in Italy Benito Mussolini left Italy�s major Marxist party to found his own �People�s� movement called the �Fasci Italiana di combattimento� (�Italian bands of combat�), later abbreviated as �Fascists�. So from its earliest days Leftism had a big split over the issue of nationalism. It split between the Internationists (e.g. Trotskyists) and the nationalists (e.g. Fascists) with Lenin having a foot in both camps. So any idea that a nationalist cannot be a Leftist is pure fiction and, as I have shown at length elsewhere (e.g. here), Hitler was most certainly both a nationalist and a Leftist.

So the antisemitism of modern days Leftists is nothing new. When the greatest antisemite of all time was a Leftist, why should we be surprised at Leftist antisemitism today? There have ALWAYS been Leftist racists and even Marx himself was an antisemite (again see here). Conservatives can of course be racist too but see my post of October 10th. below on that.


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CANADA

To those interested in economics, the comparison between the US and Canada is always interesting: Two very similar populations with very different institutional arrangements. The US economy is much more free-market while Canada is much more welfarist and highly regulated. So how have the two been doing? A Bank of Montreal study shows that from 1988 to 1997, the GDP per head grew each year in the USA at more than TWICE the rate of the Canadian figure. Canadian unemployment is also now much higher. Of particular interest, the same study also showed that it was not the productivity of the Canadian workforce that was at fault but rather the broader economic setting. Enough said.

For a discussion and much more data on the subject, see under �Land of Confusion� here. An excerpt follows:

Randall is speaking here of the "gaps" I described in August. Enumerated briefly, they include a gap in marginal tax rates, a gap in personal disposable income (and overall GDP per capita), a gap in labour productivity, a gap in unemployment, and a gap in the stability of the currency. Basically, between the U.S. and Canada, there's a "gap" in any indicator of economic health or standard of living you can conceive. Randall adds a new gap to this list--namely, a gap in the regulatory cost of financial services.

The October 12th post on Parapundit also takes up the cudgels, pointing out that the average useful income of a Canadian is now only about three quarters of what the average American gets. An excerpt:

The raw facts, as outlined by Andrew Sharpe of the Centre for the Study of Living Standards? Canada's per capita GDP is 84.7 per cent of the U.S. level. Personal income is 78.6 per cent. Personal disposable income (that is, after taxes) is 70.4 per cent. All of these gaps widened from 1980 until the last year or so.

And, as only an Australian would, I might point out that the Canada/US discrepancy is despite the much higher proportion of low-earning blacks and Hispanics in the USA.

No doubt Mark Kleiman and his ilk will again want to claim that life in Canada is still so much NICER! A safe claim: It all depends on how you define "nice".

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KRUGMAN

Noted US economist accused conservative debater Ann Coulter of a �flat lie� in her recent book about Leftist bias in the media. See the October 12th. post here to see Krugman demolished in turn.

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Email: jonjayray@hotmail.com.