Vigilante
Diamond Member
- Banned
- #21
Talk about the ignorant....this moron is the biggest putz!
The most prominent early user of the term left-fascism was Jürgen Habermas, a sociologist and philosopher influenced by the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School. He used the term in the 1960s to distance the Frankfurt School from the violence and authoritarianism of left-wing terrorists.[1][2] Habermas, whose work emphasizes the importance of rational discourse, democratic institutions and opposition to violence, has made important contributions to conflict theory and is often associated with the radical left.
Sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz, in his 1984 book "Winners and Losers", built on Vladimir Lenin's work "Left-Wing" Communism: An Infantile Disorder.[3] Lenin describes the enemies of the working class as opportunists and petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, which he links to anarchism. Horowitz argues that there was a similar political strain in the United States in the 1980s, which he characterizes as "left-wing fascism".
Horowitz argues that it is dangerous to assume clear distinctions between left, centre and right, and that various combinations are possible. He warned of "left fascism" during later years of the European Years of Lead, which were rife with red-black terrorist groups such as the German Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF) and the Italian Red Brigades, which had mixed left- and right-wing influences. Horowitz argues that "left-wing fascism" in the United States, as in Europe, is capable of combining very different ideological strains into a political formula that has the potential for mass appeal. He argues that it operates through mystified language, attributes faults "everywhere and always in an imperial conspiracy of wealth, power or status", and uses anti-Semitism as a pseudo-populist tool.
Horowitz argues that a tenet of "left-wing fascism" in the United States is a rejection of American ideals and the democratic system, and an assertion of socialism as an idealized abstraction. He argues that "left-wing fascists" uniquely examine socialism without comment on the activities in the Soviet Union. He also argues that the potential strength of left-wing fascism, as practiced by Lyndon LaRouche's National Caucus of Labor Committees (NCLC), is in the combination of motivating principles for development of a new fascist social order. The effectiveness of the NCLC is seen in the success in building single-issue alliances with the far right and anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, Black Muslim movements and conservative Teamsters Union officials.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the term left fascism has been used to describe unusual hybrid political alliances.[4] Historian Richard Wolin has used the term left fascism in arguing that some European intellectuals have been infatuated with post-modernist or anti-enlightenment theories, opening up the opportunity for cult-like, irrational, anti-democratic positions that combine characteristics of the Left with those of fascism.[5] Bernard-Henri Lévy, a philosopher and journalist, calls this political hybrid neo-progressivism, new barbarism or red fascism. Lévy argues that it is anti-liberal, anti-American, anti-empire, anti-Semitic and pro-Islamofascist.[6]
Left-wing fascism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
