LEFTIST HISTORY AND FASCISM

Being a Leftist historian must be a depressing job: So much of history upsets Leftist preconceptions. The only way out for them is to lie -- as Keith Windschuttle has repeatedly shown. The Australian historians criticized by Windschuttle are minor offenders compared with some of their colleagues in the USA and the UK, however. I have twice previously mentioned (here and here) the utter trash put out by Robert Paxton in his alleged history of Fascism. He's the guy who said Hitler was an "antisocialist" when the very name "Nazi" is a German abbreviation of "National Socialist"! The whole point to the twists and turns of Leftist historians is of course to deny that Fascism was a Leftist sect and to deny that Fascist ideas still live among modern Leftists -- things that I point out at length here. Even the Marxist Terry Eagleton admits the latter point.

I was rather amused therefore to note a good point made by Orrin Judd in his review of Paxton's book. Orrin notes that in his desperation to deny what Fascism really was, Paxton ends up defining Fascism as modern, scientific and anti-Christian. Which is of course very much how modern-day Leftists see themselves. So no matter where he turns, Paxton cannot escape the fact that the modern-day Left is in most respects the lineal descendant of Fascism. The modern Left is even becoming pretty antisemitic these days. And, as Orwell points out, modern Leftists even have their own version of nationalism. The group-minded politics of the modern American Left would not have surprised Orwell one bit. It is only conservatives who stand up for the individual.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a huge review here of books that try to explain anti-Americanism. The Leftist explanations are hilarious in their selectivity about America's faults. It all boils down to envy of course but I found this bit interesting: "Because as they struggle to learn and speak English and to find a comfortable meeting place between America's culture and their own, these foreigners are acutely aware that Americans don't have to make a comparable effort. English is our language; American culture, our culture. It is our exemption from this otherwise global burden of adaptation, Purdy suggests, that makes us seem "imperial."". I had never thought of that -- probably because Australians generally feel perfectly at home in America without making any effort at all. Old guys like me even appreciate the fact that America still has proper measurements -- like feet and inches and miles and pounds instead of the kilometers and kilograms that now prevail almost everywhere else. Australia went metric in 1970 -- at enormous cost and for no good reason. With metric you have only got to misplace a decimal point and you are history. You can't make that sort of mistake with feet and inches.

A powerful article here: ""When a white person kills a black person, we all go out in the street to protest," said Reverend Floyd Flake. "But our children are being educationally killed every day in public schools and nobody says a thing.".... The Democratic Party's two evil co-conspirators in this systematic destruction of black childrens' minds, dreams and futures are a labor union, the National Education Association (NEA), and what used to be regarded as a civil rights organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). All three groups in this unholy trinity exploit children - as surely as did 19th Century plantation slave owners or Dickensian industrial factory owners - destroying millions of young African-American lives for their own selfish gain.... today, by cynically working together the NAACP, NEA and Democratic Party have created for themselves a symbiotic iron triangle of wealth and power that would fall apart if any one of the three departed from their symbiotic, self-aggrandizing behavior. Their wealth and power are being paid for with the enslavement and wrecked futures of millions of black children and the betrayal of African-American parents."

America's anti-American cult: "Now most people, when they hear about something called anti-racism, do not want to criticize it. After all, we would all agree that racism-acts and speech aimed at harming people of a particular race because of their race-is a morally bad thing. In the real world, however, anti-racism means something far more than the condemnation of discrete and morally objectionable acts and statements. It means the indictment of America as America, and of white people as white people. The anti-racist movement has advanced itself most prominently through the schools"

The latest attack on people's liberties: "Children who watch more than two hours of television a night seem to be at higher risk of becoming smokers or being fat, out of shape or having high cholesterol as adults, according to a new study." Who doubts that being inactive makes you fat and unfit? But if people are not entitled to decide what they want to do with their own bodies, what liberties do they have?

How the Canadians hate anybody getting good health care! "Ontario is striking back at the creeping privatization of health care by preparing to buy out seven private clinics and bring them into the public sector, The Canadian Press has learned."

A great victory over the feminist man haters: "On June 30, a California man being forced to pay child support for a child he had not fathered got his day in court when the Second District Court of Appeal of California overturned a paternity judgment against him. Los Angeles County, which had imposed the judgment, knew that Manuel Navarro was not the father of the child in question because DNA testing had proved so. Yet under both federal and state child-support laws, the county was still able to demand Navarro pay child support. The court's landmark decision in Navarro's favor may well become the controlling authority for contested paternity in California and a legal precedent nationwide."

The British Labour Party is now pushing "Britishness". Why? "They fear an English parliament - or, more to the point, English issues being voted on solely by English MPs - because it would soon mean that Labour would never rule in England again". The reference is to the fact that Labour usually has to depend on Scottish voters to win power.

Chris Brand has a new post about the BBC tripping itself up while trying to discredit the anti-immigration British National Party. More on the story here. I am told that this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsa/n5ctrl/tvseq/newsnight/newsnight.ram shows the actual interview concerned, though you may need broadband and RealPlayer to view it.

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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