9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism

[laststeamtrain]

9 Conservative Myths About Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism
By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future
Posted on June 20, 2009, Printed on June 20, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140792/

<snip>

2. These terrorists are really left-wingers, not right-wingers. Because everybody knows that fascism is a phenomenon that only occurs on the left.

False does not even begin to cover the absurdity of this claim.

Fascism has always been a phenomenon of the right. Every postwar academic scholar of fascism -- Robert Paxton, Roger Griffin, Umberto Eco and onward -- has been emphatically clear about this. Benito Mussolini admitted as much. It's part of the very definition of the word.

Jonah Goldberg has gotten a lot of traction on the right for his argument that fascism is somehow a left-wing tendency; but in his badly argued, barely researched tome Liberal Fascism, he gets here by taking logical leaps that no college professor would accept from the greenest freshman.

The worst, perhaps, is the way he conflates "fascism" with "totalitarianism." There is such a thing as left-wing totalitarianism: Stalinism and Maoism both qualify. But they were communist, not fascist, movements. It's only when totalitarianism happens on the right that we call it fascism.

Still, this idea has caught on like wildfire and is being widely promoted by right-wing talkers like Glenn Beck. If you want the full takedown on this, I refer you to Dave Neiwert's exhaustive series of debunking articles, which are linked to in the sidebar at Orcinus.

<more>

http://www.alternet.org/media/140792/9_conservative_myths_about_right-wing_domestic_terrorism/

[NewJeffCT]

1. good article - first to K&R

thanks for posting.

[baldguy]

2. This is only possible because people are intentionally kept ignorant.

People don't know what fascism is - just that it's "bad". And since the right continually tries to color liberalism as "bad" (of course), they invariably try to link it with other "bad" things.

[ck4829]

3. K&R

[underpants]

4. Great article

love the link to Orcinus-bookmarking for later read

[laststeamtrain]

6. Dave Neiwert was on Ring Of Fire yesterday. A gentleman & a scholar.

http://ringoffireradio.com/blogengine/

:thumbsup:

[underpants]

5. Great article

love the link to Orcinus-bookmarking for later read