Saturday, March 02, 2019

The Inaccuracy of the Right Wing/Left Wing Paradigm

The labeling of conservatives as "right wing" in America is a deliberate attempt to attach fascism to the modern American freedom movement.  It is a cynical attempt to affix a swastika to shirts worn by people who have spent lifetimes trying to defeat the tyranny of either a fascist or communist state.  It is the simplistic method through which a freedom warrior like Jordan Peterson, a guy who despises all forms of authoritarian government, can be gleefully mislabeled a fascist.

Don't accept it. 

As American (or western) conservatives, that is, as people who yearn for a small republican state answerable to the very people who give it its limited powers, we find ourselves in direct conflict with both ends of the European right wing/left wing paradigm.  Even though we despise all forms of socialism whether it is administered by totalitarian communists or authoritarian fascists, we get thrown in with evil tyrants like Hitler and Goebbels and that little dweeb from Italy.

The right wing/left wing pole in European history places communism on the extreme left and fascism on the extreme right.  This is a natural comparison in that for most of the past 100 years on that continent (and beyond) there has been a brutal battle between these two authoritarian models.  The communists want control of means of production through government or collectivist means while the fascists want the means of production to be controlled top-down through a government/corporate partnership. 

In either of these brutal movements the individual is sacrificed to groups of ever greater power with ever shrinking accountability.

But, while that conflict is also present in America where the KKK might clash with antifa, the KKK is not an American conservative movement, and as such is not a legitimate member of the right wing outside of a European comparison.

But where on this European right wing/left wing yardstick can you place someone who believes in a small republican government?  You cannot.  Its like trying to place a mammal somewhere on the amphibian scale between frog and salamander.

While most conservatives know this distinction, many on the left are so progressively indoctrinated that they have never even considered that there is a difference and many others actually believe that right wing conservatives are the same fascists of old, hunkered down in their bunkers beneath the bombed ruins of Berlin.

We are not.  We never have been.  We will never be. 

We believe in small government.  We believe that by the virtue of our natural being we are provided with natural rights that are not bestowed on us by a benevolent state.  We believe in private property rights and that the individual is sovereign.  None of these notions, notions that are at the very core of our belief system, are considered legitimate by authoritarian governments whether they are of fascist or communist or any other top down socialist ideology.

Point this out the next time some intersectional postmodernist calls you a right winger and hints that deep inside you is a latent fascist waiting to put on jack boots and a brown shirt.  Point out that you do not accept this narrative.

If they insist they will expose themselves for the liars and hopeless losers that they are.  And lets be honest, it is not the first time you have witnessed them acting foolishly.