Sunday, August 16, 2009

Heil, Comrade!

Right. Left. Center. Moderate. The terms are often used as epithets, flung at opponents, not patted onto lapels. But the labels persist all the same.

But if Solzhenitsyn decried the use of the words "Right" and "Left," who am I to use them?

The situation, as far as I can see it, is not a straight line,

FAR-LEFT ---- LEFT ---- CENTER ---- RIGHT ---- FAR-RIGHT

but a line that loops back onto itself, forming a circle.

So, "ultra-left" is actually the same as "far-right." Hence the title of this post. There are more similarities than differences between communism and fascism. And what few differences they have are dwarfed by their common goal: the oppression of the soul of man by a totalitarian regime. If you don't believe me, think of the name of Hitler's party. That's right. Nazi was just the abbreviation. The full name was the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, a.k.a. the National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Why, then, do so many Marxist-Leninists publicly shy away from the Nazis and use "fascist" as the ultimate slur? It can't be a sensitivity to the mass murders under Hitler, for Stalin and others who implemented Marx's ideas had their own cattle cars and mass extermination centers. The difference was not substantial. While Hilter used gas, Stalin relied on labor to crush his political prisoners. No, it can't be that kind of sensitivity.

The problem with Hitler wasn't his attitude toward the Jews or other minorities. Oh no. His problem was that he was trying to advance the cause of a single nation over all others.

To Fabian Socialists -- members of the prevailing strain of Marxist-Leninists in our country today -- if Hitler had been an international socialist instead of just a national socialist, he might have been as revered by socialists as much as Stalin is today.