PrintJanuary 10, 2007
"Left Fascists" are fascists too...
J.R. Dunn points out today that leftists cannot be fascists, at least according to leftists. That's nonsense, of course, and it deprives political taxonomy of a perfectly useful term created by the Left itself, i.e., "left fascist". I think the phrase was first applied by Trotskyites for Stalinists, or possibly the other way around. It doesn't matter. The UK Telegraph uses "left fascist" to describe the (racist) British National Party. It also makes a useful retort to bizarros like the New York Times writer who just wrote ,
"Of course there are Christian fascists..."
That sounds a lot weirder to me than Left fascists. I'm not aware, for example, of the last time Christians ran concentration camps, tortured people, and murdered one hundred million of them, as the Left did in the last hundred years. So "Left fascism" fits the bill, all right.
The Left conveniently forgets that real fascists, like the Nazis and Mussolini type, had the same passionate hatred for traditional religion that the Left harbors. Some coincidence!
We should use "left fascist" as an intellectually accurate term, not just another way of shouting "You mother wears combat boots!" "Left fascism" should be a standard part of our vocabulary, because it's so obviously accurate in real life. It was the Left fascists who drove Larry Summers out of the presidency of Harvard University, because he uttered an Incorrect Thought. Thought crimes are typically fascist devices to control human beings.
As George Orwell had it, our first responsibility in a time of lies is to tell the truth. "Left fascist" nails it.
We cannot let the Left define the terms, and in this case it's the Left that came up with it! So they can't disown it.
James Lewis blogs (when time permits) at http://www.dangeroustimes.wordpress.com/
