"Traditionally, the Left in Europe was universalist and humanist. It wanted rights and protections for everybody, equally."
You sure about that? I mean, once upon a time not so long ago, there were vibrant and militant Communist parties in europe, and I don't think that they were classical liberals.
Anyway, the reason we expect to see violence from the right and not the left (after the fall of communism) is that the average leftist these days, especially the average frustrated *european* leftist, is a Front Row Kid to the core. He/she is good at witty repartee, at clever memes, at puns that subtly demonstrate how well-read they is, at ideological shaming for saying that there are only twenty six genders (plus genders not discovered yet) when everyone not literal Hitler knows that there are at least twenty eight - but fighting?
Come on, he/she couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag.
Which is why some actual violence from a leftist is actually sort of refreshing.
You are such a dick. Did you actually read the article? Apparently not.
Nice face saving edit you made there. I wished I had taken a screen shot of your original post where you stated, "The left couldn't fight it's way out of a paper bag." Your edit then added the bit about leftist violence being refreshing.
Thus clearly showing how reactionary and ignorant you are.
Regardless of what's written your response is always predetermined and predictable.
He's an unemployed layabout with issues. He spams the internet desperately looking for engagement. Best to ignore. Hopefully Substack adds an ignore button in the future, it really needs one!
While it is true that I live by my wits, I have enough means and territory to be in the 1%. Besides that, I make more from investing than I do from any "job". My secretary brings me greenies and sashimi and the C suite bathroom in my office building has a cat flap.
I also get to set my own hours and I come and go as I please. So if you do not like what I write, nobody forces you to read it.
OK, you are just a rich and boring reactionary. In that case f*** off to the Bahamas or similar and stop polluting various threads with your half-witted, repetitious nihilistic pus.
Well, it’s difficult to bemoan all of this as there is a lot of good handwringing in it which all reasonable old lefties must agree with. The obsession with identity politics and the fracturing of the real left has been a problem for ages. But, it wasn’t all an invention of the “French” school. The right, including CIA funded propaganda outlets had been harping on this for years before the Tea Party took it up in America in the 80s?, 90s?
Also, as misguided as these new identity warriors of the left may be they aren’t the first to kill people for only their opinions. Deaths squads in Colombia, El Salvador, Spain, Chile, Argentina…shit just about everywhere the right was supported by American started doing that wel before we have a single death, or maybe 2 or 3 to complain about in France.
And that doesn’t even count what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Indeed, one fact that may be motivating these new militants is the perception, not inaccurate, on the left that their obsession with grand moral claims inhibits them from direct, violent action. Che Guevara and Castro used to remark on this. The right kills people all the time, the left not so much.
Another quibble… : Supercillious dismissal of people using the term “fascist” to describe Western States discloses the white bourgeois viewpoint of the the author (who I admire a lot by the way, I am white myself, though not bourgeois). I remember the great Lynton Kwesi Johnson asking, in a song in 1980 or so, “is England becoming a fascist state”? It certainly must have depended on your. Kew in London back then. Being black in South and West London then while the SPG were marauding around the late night streets killing and brutalising people must have made it seem that way. And don’t forget, these blacks weren’t radicalised muslims in the 2010s in Paris. They were stoned rastas doing nothing much.
One more quibble…: the “resulting catastrophic defeats” of the Labour Party in the 80s were not due to the infiltration of the party by the Militant Tendency, a group that had wide support in the Labour heartlands of the north west. They were more the result of the defection of the SDP which split the labour vote and gave Thatcher a disproportionate majority. Tony Benn was aghast, even though he was a vitriolic opponent of Militant, at the subsequent rightward shift of the party under Kinnock and then, eventually, Blair. He knew that the anti human pro capital neoliberalism that was coming would eventually need a. Alternative in parliament which, sadly, is no longer there because of the betrayals of the past 30 years.
Let's call a spade a spade... The West, initially and throughout its history, has merely imitated the leftist movement dominant in the North and East. Even Christianity, with its significant humanistic leanings, was transformed in the West into a "right-wing" Catholicism. Then Christianity was replaced by socialism, but even then, only in Russia and China did people not imitate the struggle, but rather made the new left dominant.
It's not enough to resist Hobbes like Rousseau. We must also recognize that this battle is taking place within us. Accordingly, we must first win within and only then take to the streets with slogans.
For the red idea, you must not only be prepared to die, but also to be unaware of your chances. That's how much you need to love the revolution of the spirit. That is, to completely forget about yourself. It's a special experience. The West doesn't yet have a corresponding tradition, but it will likely emerge soon.
Incidentally, this has an unexpected flip side... The East has been so accustomed to its people sacrificing themselves for the common good that it has never been particularly interested in them. People there have always been merely a resource. This is clearly evident in the plight of the Russians. The West, on the other hand, has always turned its face toward the people. With the goal of deceiving them for the sake of capital's power, but with pleasant attention.
Just as the West merely imitates humanism, the East merely imitates democracy.
Thus, a synthesis of these two worlds is begging to be achieved. The West knows HOW to treat people, the East knows WHAT should be their essence. Only in this way, in alliance, will the left prevail!
A wise position, as 'democracy' as currently understood in the 'west', is merely oligarchy. hiding under a cloak of egalitarian choice. Voting every four or five years for a bunch of stooges who have mostly already been sold and bought by vested interests is a sham.
Real democracy can only function as it was practiced for a short time in ancient Athens - i.e. temporary committees elected by random choice for a limited time to consider and administer matters.
Jams, you're as perceptive as usual: I later discovered the error in this assessment of democracy myself.
Rather, it's the East that expresses "domocracy," since the authorities there express the collective desires of the people. Even if that desire is "irrational" — to sacrifice the present for the sake of the future. The West, however, merely feigns democracy: parliamentarians are sovereign only as long as their opinions don't conflict with the interests of the real authorities — capital.
And, conversely, the West still holds sway in matters of ideological formation. When collective tradition prevails here, too, new times will dawn.
"the plague produced exclusively by Western Europe - Marxism."
And what's your recipe for improving society? Or are you happy just the way it is? To approve of 'capitalism' + 'democracy' as it is, is to approve of a system of demonstrable unfairness and exploitation. Possibly if you are one of the exploiters that's fine - what if you weren't?
I have a vague memory, 20 or more years old, of a British PM (one Tony Blair) opining that consumer choice is the true democracy nowadays. Now maybe I didn't actually hear that: maybe I dreamt it in a nightmare. But it certainly seems to fit the neoliberal swamp we currently inhabit.
And I also think that the modern plague of the West have roots in unholy alliance of the managerial elites, who are basically nomads with no place or country to truly call home, with the cultural left, who are basically Bolsheviks without their economic programme. It started in 1960s and now the power of this alliance reaches its peak.
I don't know any particular recipes. What I know is that mankind developed alright for millennia with crazy millenarist cultists not in power. Communism produced huge demographic, economic, cultural cost for Russia, we still reel from the results, and this war is one of them (bald degenerate Lenin split our nation in three, forcibly making Ukrainians, before 1917 only one of the Russian sub-ethnic groups, a full fledged nation). Then again, imagine the country without private property at all. You couldn't open your own bakery or a stylist salon. You could not even build a house more than 60 square metres of the floor area. Everything was "common" and that meant - no one's. The result was the Soviet workers' joke - "take home every nail you find — you’re the boss here, don’t be left behind" (Тащи с работы каждый гвоздь, ты здесь хозяин, а не гость) You western people just don't understand it, for you it's only the mind games of the (allegedly) well-intentioned intellectuals and students. Here, it was a tragedy.
Compared to Europe, people in Russia weren't comfortable in a material sense even before the Bolsheviks. To a large extent, it's still not great today.
Yeah this Moscow region with all those high rise cheloveyniks and Tajik immigrant crowds make it kind of embassy of Hell on Earth, isn't it?
On a more serious note, I'm not sure the difference with Western Europe are that huge by now. Some things are better in the West (usually legacy things like all that beautiful architecture) and some are in Russia.
Regarding the pre-revolution period, Eastern Europe (not only Russia) was underdeveloped indeed but started to catch up in the early 20th century. Then came those German millenarist sect crazies (nothing new for Europe there were anabaptists and other wackos before them, but nothing of that kind had ever been in Russia. Ethnic Russians were underrepresented among early Bolsheviks). In GDP per capita, Russia (without Poland and Finland) was more or less on par with Spain and Japan in 1913, but trailed behind both of them heavily in 1990.
This woke shit is a completely westoid thing. Non-existent in Eastern Europe (incl. Russia), Eastern Asia, India and all other countries. No one outside North America, Western Europe and Australia is going to give a damn about minority- and sexual degeneracy-worshipping.
Aurelian has made those comments about the notional left, and they are largely correct. However, this is something else. He is basically repeating propaganda.
I expect more from an essayist than to repeat diatribes, whether anti-rightist or anti-leftist.
Shameful minimizing of the far right fascist threat and mischaracterisation of what happened that borders on libel. We know that you detest the LFI but you've gone too far. Examine your soul.
A comment not particularly to do with this excellent article. Our host called Trump a nutcase a few months ago. I thought that was a bit too strong at the time. Now I think it was a bit too weak.
'The government is fascist, the state is fascist, the police are fascist, the media are fascist-controlled, the education system is fascist-controlled, and so on.(It’s surprising how many commenters on Establishment media sites in France seem to share this view.)'
Not just France, you can find this sentiment across the west. A few months before the last US election Robert Kagan warned of Trump's second fascist presidency. Timothy Snyder et al have noisily relocated to comfortable positions at Canadian universities, not wanting to 'live under fascism’.
At the same time the anti semitic heritage of the far left has been responsible for typical (and mind boggling) political and moral acrobatics. From the early 80s the hard proletarian left and the middle class social-democracy-for-academics left (in fashion since the academics took over labour parties in the 70s while the universities began their social sciences diarrhea fountain) adopted Muslim immigrants as their next love child and vehicle-for-political-change (though Muslims were the last expected to change).
Though standing shoulder to shoulder with the most misogynist, anti semite, and gay-hating and bashing (new) segment of society felt awkward at times (few progressives marched with European Muslims calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie), the alliance always held.
Today, with Trump attacking Iran led by the most misogynist, anti-semite, and gay-hating and bashing not so new segment of Iranian society, the moderate meek left reports on the fight with clear discomfort: where’s the correct position? How will that position make me look? Where’s the least risky pov?
Seeking refuge in pointless discussions about the lost world of international rules (and an apparent though mythical lost ‘fairness’). The hard left has fully chosen for Iran’s rulers and their street thugs, simply because when Trump says a you say b ánd because Iran’s leadership is so unashamedly anti-semite.
You are (wilfully) confusing anti-semitism with anti-zionism. It's an old trick, played like a violin by the habitually child-murdering Israeli government, and you show your true colours by using it.
For some reason killing children only matters when a Jew does it...
Anti Zionism is just the veil. Mommy-boy Marx himself was an anti-semite. And he liked ridiculing n*gg*rs in his letters with Engels (one of his sons in law was a n*gg*r). And haven't you noticed that in most cases when a prominent hard lefty or hard righty changes sides they never move to the middle? They always go from one hysterical flank to the other. I guess they're too much in need of that one special ingredient in their murky ideological soup…
"For some reason killing children only matters when a Jew does it..."
Nope. It's just that the Zionist regime seems to specialise in baby-killing - snipers shooting babies in the head. So brave of the 'most humane army in the world' or whatever twisted psychopathic label they use now.
First off i would like to ask , who defines Left wing who defines right wing or far left and far right ? My answer to that question would be everybody and i would add that not everyone agrees on what is left or right far left or far right because the methodolgy for deciding is impossibly stupid .
It is far easier to call a groupright wing or far right depending on how criminal they are under current laws in the country involved and left wing and far left should be called such depending on how much they obey the laws of the land.That way , everyone knows how the judgement is reached.
Now some might say but what happens if a group justifiably break the law in order to try and get the law changed , thats easy , describe them as right or far right for breaking the law and call them left or far left if and when that law is changed.
Doing this clarifies matters.
At present most are called left or far left if they want to end war and improve peoples lives but its silly to call them left if they go about in masks killing people.
The denomination afforded is very important if we want clarity.
I agree with you , BUT , there are still many many people plus the media and the Labour Party itself think it is left wing , the point i am making is that sometimes people or political groups that call themselves left wing or are pereceived as left wing must be judged on their actions and not their label.
The definition of 'left-wing' is perfectly simple - it is a movement to abolish the capitalist system and allow the people who produce wealth to reap the fruits of their labour. The 'right-wing' is just the opposition to this effort. Of course there are add-ons here and there to both sides, but they are not central to the definition as outlined. Anything labelled as 'left' (such as the Democratic Party in the US) which does not fit the above definition is not 'left'. In the case of the 'Dems' they are classical 'Liberals' - nothing to do with 'leftism' except in the warped understanding of heavily indoctrinated US clowns.
No. The UK 'Labour' Party is just a convenient substitute for the tory party when they get too unpopular. The 'Labour' Party have no intention of abolishing the capitalist system, and have never seriously expressed such an intention.
Politics generally seems to be descending/reverting to a combination of witch hunts, the inquisition, and petty sociopathic gang leaders scrapping for power for its own sake. The centre may not hold.
I agree with you , BUT , there are still many many people plus the media and the Labour Party itself think it is left wing , the point i am making is that sometimes people or political groups that call themselves left wing or are pereceived as left wing must be judged on their actions and not their label.
Your premise seems to be that we expect violence from the Right, but not the Left, and this is a new sinister development. No. There has always been violence from extremes on both sides. Throughout the cold war there were concerted state efforts to repress the far Left, on the grounds they were a threat to national security. This did not happen to the far Right, who were largely treated as a sort of extreme version of football hooligans - indeed, there was a lot of crossover in the 70s and 80s particularly.
Trying to turn it into some sort of conspiracy that undermines the stability of our society is the sort of thing I might expect from a saloon bar boor rather than anyone with pretensions to insights on socio-political currents. There are violent thugs around. Some are linked to the Left, and some to the Right. Some are apolitical. Some are encouraged by various state actors, and a range of states that seek to control or manipulate public opinion, or just ferment disorder. Some are employed or funded by those with money to act on their behalf - imposing their "standards" upon the rest of us, or trying to ensure opinions or movements do not gather strength. It has always been thus.
I am having some difficulty mapping this onto the political scene in my own country of Canada. Perhaps we lack either the cultural industries or the sort of imagination which I presume are necessary to create and sustain such movements.
What Is a fascist, really? Pinochet; a mas murdering neo-liberal Chicago School-beloved, and oh-so good for business guy, a veritable one-man military drag act, even when he used the loo. Also a good Catholic. But not a fascist.
Anti-democratic governments, movements, et al, will either try to terrify into silence, kill, or throw you in the slammer for life if they don’t like your opinions. But not necessarily fascist. Para-fascist, quasi-fascist, fascist-like, fascistic, fascistoid or fascistized….and other political hybrids (not invariably cross-fertile) come down to the same old phenomenon in various contradictory drag.
If it’s difficult to keep track of the proliferation gender identities, it is just as confusing to maintain discrete separations of all current hyphenated right jack-assery. Extreme violence is however, a generalized tendency we can all agree on. How to characterize deadly violence among “left” formations though, is a problem, as it is fuzzy thinking to even identify such formations as “left”.
Syndicalists anyone?
Stalin? Mao? Personalist dictators who threw around commie rhetoric At least they dressed down...
Is Jennifer Rowlings a ffffascist? Who cares. What matters is that the Cult of Potter has at long last been doused.
In ending this blah-blah, Phillipe Petain was a fascist, not so, Phillipe Gaulier, so baptized by his father, to the son’s everlasting though highly fruitful irritation. Producing a pearl of great price. Phillipe Gaulier, you will be profoundly missed.
yes, Pinochet was a fascist. No, Stalin and Mao weren´t. Every political figure proclaiming "We are superiour, they are subhumans, we alre allowed to do anything, they are not allowed to do anything" is a fascist. You may call it nazi, because it´s closer to Hitler than Mussolini, but in reality we just don´t have the term describing this archaic way of thinking that found its new life in western ideology
Petite précision "Aurélien". Vous évoquez des manifestantes féministes issues de la droite catholique traditionnelle or historiquement, la droite catholique traditionnelle rejette fondamentalement le féminisme qu'elle considère comme une idéologie mortifère. C'est un peu comme si vous écriviez "des militantes juives issue de la tradition nazie", pas possible...
Je vous remercie tout d'abord pour votre réponse "Aurélien". Effectivement, les militantes appartiennent au collectif Némésis, qui se réclame du féminisme, et sa fondatrice, Alice Cordier, se dit catholique et de droite mais rejettent les valeurs de la droite catholique traditionnelle, contrairement à une figure telle que Thaïs d'Escufon, par exemple. Peu importe finalement car tous les courants du spectre politique se fondent désormais sur l'émotion, voire la pulsion, à défaut de l'instruction et de la raison qui permettent d'élaborer une pensée politique propre à créer un débat constructif. En ce sens, votre diagnostic est, hélas, implacable. Bien à vous
Thank you for your weekly reminder of the existence that spongy matter sitting between our ears. I find myself entertained by a thought, though, and I cannot but classify it as a Foucauldian take: could "identity politics" (or whatever) be a dispositif of post-modern biopolitics whose aim is to outsource the State monopoly of violence to the subjects themselves? In other eras, we used to define it "divide et impera". In Italy, the policy of the "Opposti Estremismi" of the 70s and 80s got quite some mileage and excellent results. After all, who cares if the plebs kill each other? Isn't it another opportunity to promote the reassuring allure of Emmanuel (or whatever)? After all, once the frontal cortex is turned off, you just need to invest in a few big-box buildings fitted with enough electricity, cooling water, and chips scattered throughout the countryside to be able to (literally) push the thalamic buttons of the proles and PMC underlings to start the Hate Merry-go-round at will and happily chug along. The question, then, is really NOT rhetoric: "who cares?".
"Traditionally, the Left in Europe was universalist and humanist. It wanted rights and protections for everybody, equally."
You sure about that? I mean, once upon a time not so long ago, there were vibrant and militant Communist parties in europe, and I don't think that they were classical liberals.
Anyway, the reason we expect to see violence from the right and not the left (after the fall of communism) is that the average leftist these days, especially the average frustrated *european* leftist, is a Front Row Kid to the core. He/she is good at witty repartee, at clever memes, at puns that subtly demonstrate how well-read they is, at ideological shaming for saying that there are only twenty six genders (plus genders not discovered yet) when everyone not literal Hitler knows that there are at least twenty eight - but fighting?
Come on, he/she couldn't fight his way out of a paper bag.
Which is why some actual violence from a leftist is actually sort of refreshing.
You are such a dick. Did you actually read the article? Apparently not.
Nice face saving edit you made there. I wished I had taken a screen shot of your original post where you stated, "The left couldn't fight it's way out of a paper bag." Your edit then added the bit about leftist violence being refreshing.
Thus clearly showing how reactionary and ignorant you are.
Regardless of what's written your response is always predetermined and predictable.
He's an unemployed layabout with issues. He spams the internet desperately looking for engagement. Best to ignore. Hopefully Substack adds an ignore button in the future, it really needs one!
While it is true that I live by my wits, I have enough means and territory to be in the 1%. Besides that, I make more from investing than I do from any "job". My secretary brings me greenies and sashimi and the C suite bathroom in my office building has a cat flap.
I also get to set my own hours and I come and go as I please. So if you do not like what I write, nobody forces you to read it.
OK, you are just a rich and boring reactionary. In that case f*** off to the Bahamas or similar and stop polluting various threads with your half-witted, repetitious nihilistic pus.
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Actually, I read your bitchy little screed that thought that I could explain myself better.
"at clever memes"
But the left can't meme as they say.
Your behind the scenes historical analysis of events is always enlightening.
Well, it’s difficult to bemoan all of this as there is a lot of good handwringing in it which all reasonable old lefties must agree with. The obsession with identity politics and the fracturing of the real left has been a problem for ages. But, it wasn’t all an invention of the “French” school. The right, including CIA funded propaganda outlets had been harping on this for years before the Tea Party took it up in America in the 80s?, 90s?
Also, as misguided as these new identity warriors of the left may be they aren’t the first to kill people for only their opinions. Deaths squads in Colombia, El Salvador, Spain, Chile, Argentina…shit just about everywhere the right was supported by American started doing that wel before we have a single death, or maybe 2 or 3 to complain about in France.
And that doesn’t even count what happened in Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Indeed, one fact that may be motivating these new militants is the perception, not inaccurate, on the left that their obsession with grand moral claims inhibits them from direct, violent action. Che Guevara and Castro used to remark on this. The right kills people all the time, the left not so much.
Another quibble… : Supercillious dismissal of people using the term “fascist” to describe Western States discloses the white bourgeois viewpoint of the the author (who I admire a lot by the way, I am white myself, though not bourgeois). I remember the great Lynton Kwesi Johnson asking, in a song in 1980 or so, “is England becoming a fascist state”? It certainly must have depended on your. Kew in London back then. Being black in South and West London then while the SPG were marauding around the late night streets killing and brutalising people must have made it seem that way. And don’t forget, these blacks weren’t radicalised muslims in the 2010s in Paris. They were stoned rastas doing nothing much.
One more quibble…: the “resulting catastrophic defeats” of the Labour Party in the 80s were not due to the infiltration of the party by the Militant Tendency, a group that had wide support in the Labour heartlands of the north west. They were more the result of the defection of the SDP which split the labour vote and gave Thatcher a disproportionate majority. Tony Benn was aghast, even though he was a vitriolic opponent of Militant, at the subsequent rightward shift of the party under Kinnock and then, eventually, Blair. He knew that the anti human pro capital neoliberalism that was coming would eventually need a. Alternative in parliament which, sadly, is no longer there because of the betrayals of the past 30 years.
Let's call a spade a spade... The West, initially and throughout its history, has merely imitated the leftist movement dominant in the North and East. Even Christianity, with its significant humanistic leanings, was transformed in the West into a "right-wing" Catholicism. Then Christianity was replaced by socialism, but even then, only in Russia and China did people not imitate the struggle, but rather made the new left dominant.
It's not enough to resist Hobbes like Rousseau. We must also recognize that this battle is taking place within us. Accordingly, we must first win within and only then take to the streets with slogans.
For the red idea, you must not only be prepared to die, but also to be unaware of your chances. That's how much you need to love the revolution of the spirit. That is, to completely forget about yourself. It's a special experience. The West doesn't yet have a corresponding tradition, but it will likely emerge soon.
Crikey.
Incidentally, this has an unexpected flip side... The East has been so accustomed to its people sacrificing themselves for the common good that it has never been particularly interested in them. People there have always been merely a resource. This is clearly evident in the plight of the Russians. The West, on the other hand, has always turned its face toward the people. With the goal of deceiving them for the sake of capital's power, but with pleasant attention.
Just as the West merely imitates humanism, the East merely imitates democracy.
Thus, a synthesis of these two worlds is begging to be achieved. The West knows HOW to treat people, the East knows WHAT should be their essence. Only in this way, in alliance, will the left prevail!
Two converging lines must one day intersect.
" the East merely imitates democracy"
A wise position, as 'democracy' as currently understood in the 'west', is merely oligarchy. hiding under a cloak of egalitarian choice. Voting every four or five years for a bunch of stooges who have mostly already been sold and bought by vested interests is a sham.
Real democracy can only function as it was practiced for a short time in ancient Athens - i.e. temporary committees elected by random choice for a limited time to consider and administer matters.
Jams, you're as perceptive as usual: I later discovered the error in this assessment of democracy myself.
Rather, it's the East that expresses "domocracy," since the authorities there express the collective desires of the people. Even if that desire is "irrational" — to sacrifice the present for the sake of the future. The West, however, merely feigns democracy: parliamentarians are sovereign only as long as their opinions don't conflict with the interests of the real authorities — capital.
And, conversely, the West still holds sway in matters of ideological formation. When collective tradition prevails here, too, new times will dawn.
"This is clearly evident in the plight of the Russians"
Yeah it's like the Russians who are press-ganged from the streets in hundreds of thousands. Oh wait...
The actual plight of the Russians of 20th century came from the plague produced exclusively by Western Europe - Marxism.
"the plague produced exclusively by Western Europe - Marxism."
And what's your recipe for improving society? Or are you happy just the way it is? To approve of 'capitalism' + 'democracy' as it is, is to approve of a system of demonstrable unfairness and exploitation. Possibly if you are one of the exploiters that's fine - what if you weren't?
I have a vague memory, 20 or more years old, of a British PM (one Tony Blair) opining that consumer choice is the true democracy nowadays. Now maybe I didn't actually hear that: maybe I dreamt it in a nightmare. But it certainly seems to fit the neoliberal swamp we currently inhabit.
And I also think that the modern plague of the West have roots in unholy alliance of the managerial elites, who are basically nomads with no place or country to truly call home, with the cultural left, who are basically Bolsheviks without their economic programme. It started in 1960s and now the power of this alliance reaches its peak.
I don't know any particular recipes. What I know is that mankind developed alright for millennia with crazy millenarist cultists not in power. Communism produced huge demographic, economic, cultural cost for Russia, we still reel from the results, and this war is one of them (bald degenerate Lenin split our nation in three, forcibly making Ukrainians, before 1917 only one of the Russian sub-ethnic groups, a full fledged nation). Then again, imagine the country without private property at all. You couldn't open your own bakery or a stylist salon. You could not even build a house more than 60 square metres of the floor area. Everything was "common" and that meant - no one's. The result was the Soviet workers' joke - "take home every nail you find — you’re the boss here, don’t be left behind" (Тащи с работы каждый гвоздь, ты здесь хозяин, а не гость) You western people just don't understand it, for you it's only the mind games of the (allegedly) well-intentioned intellectuals and students. Here, it was a tragedy.
Compared to Europe, people in Russia weren't comfortable in a material sense even before the Bolsheviks. To a large extent, it's still not great today.
I live near Moscow.
Yeah this Moscow region with all those high rise cheloveyniks and Tajik immigrant crowds make it kind of embassy of Hell on Earth, isn't it?
On a more serious note, I'm not sure the difference with Western Europe are that huge by now. Some things are better in the West (usually legacy things like all that beautiful architecture) and some are in Russia.
Regarding the pre-revolution period, Eastern Europe (not only Russia) was underdeveloped indeed but started to catch up in the early 20th century. Then came those German millenarist sect crazies (nothing new for Europe there were anabaptists and other wackos before them, but nothing of that kind had ever been in Russia. Ethnic Russians were underrepresented among early Bolsheviks). In GDP per capita, Russia (without Poland and Finland) was more or less on par with Spain and Japan in 1913, but trailed behind both of them heavily in 1990.
PS. I live in Belgorod lol.
This woke shit is a completely westoid thing. Non-existent in Eastern Europe (incl. Russia), Eastern Asia, India and all other countries. No one outside North America, Western Europe and Australia is going to give a damn about minority- and sexual degeneracy-worshipping.
Aurelian has made those comments about the notional left, and they are largely correct. However, this is something else. He is basically repeating propaganda.
I expect more from an essayist than to repeat diatribes, whether anti-rightist or anti-leftist.
This is a boring, mainstream analysis that could have been read in any pro-system media in France. Ridiculous, and quite a letdown coming from you.
Mais non mon camarade, it's entertaining: you completely made his point.
Shameful minimizing of the far right fascist threat and mischaracterisation of what happened that borders on libel. We know that you detest the LFI but you've gone too far. Examine your soul.
[*Star wars meme*:]
- You're being ironic, right?
- You're being ironic, right?
" Examine your soul."
I'm not sure if bureaucrats have a soul. If they do, it would be in spite of everything in their experience.
A comment not particularly to do with this excellent article. Our host called Trump a nutcase a few months ago. I thought that was a bit too strong at the time. Now I think it was a bit too weak.
'The government is fascist, the state is fascist, the police are fascist, the media are fascist-controlled, the education system is fascist-controlled, and so on.(It’s surprising how many commenters on Establishment media sites in France seem to share this view.)'
Not just France, you can find this sentiment across the west. A few months before the last US election Robert Kagan warned of Trump's second fascist presidency. Timothy Snyder et al have noisily relocated to comfortable positions at Canadian universities, not wanting to 'live under fascism’.
At the same time the anti semitic heritage of the far left has been responsible for typical (and mind boggling) political and moral acrobatics. From the early 80s the hard proletarian left and the middle class social-democracy-for-academics left (in fashion since the academics took over labour parties in the 70s while the universities began their social sciences diarrhea fountain) adopted Muslim immigrants as their next love child and vehicle-for-political-change (though Muslims were the last expected to change).
Though standing shoulder to shoulder with the most misogynist, anti semite, and gay-hating and bashing (new) segment of society felt awkward at times (few progressives marched with European Muslims calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie), the alliance always held.
Today, with Trump attacking Iran led by the most misogynist, anti-semite, and gay-hating and bashing not so new segment of Iranian society, the moderate meek left reports on the fight with clear discomfort: where’s the correct position? How will that position make me look? Where’s the least risky pov?
Seeking refuge in pointless discussions about the lost world of international rules (and an apparent though mythical lost ‘fairness’). The hard left has fully chosen for Iran’s rulers and their street thugs, simply because when Trump says a you say b ánd because Iran’s leadership is so unashamedly anti-semite.
"the anti semitic heritage of the far left"
You are (wilfully) confusing anti-semitism with anti-zionism. It's an old trick, played like a violin by the habitually child-murdering Israeli government, and you show your true colours by using it.
For some reason killing children only matters when a Jew does it...
Anti Zionism is just the veil. Mommy-boy Marx himself was an anti-semite. And he liked ridiculing n*gg*rs in his letters with Engels (one of his sons in law was a n*gg*r). And haven't you noticed that in most cases when a prominent hard lefty or hard righty changes sides they never move to the middle? They always go from one hysterical flank to the other. I guess they're too much in need of that one special ingredient in their murky ideological soup…
"For some reason killing children only matters when a Jew does it..."
Nope. It's just that the Zionist regime seems to specialise in baby-killing - snipers shooting babies in the head. So brave of the 'most humane army in the world' or whatever twisted psychopathic label they use now.
First off i would like to ask , who defines Left wing who defines right wing or far left and far right ? My answer to that question would be everybody and i would add that not everyone agrees on what is left or right far left or far right because the methodolgy for deciding is impossibly stupid .
It is far easier to call a groupright wing or far right depending on how criminal they are under current laws in the country involved and left wing and far left should be called such depending on how much they obey the laws of the land.That way , everyone knows how the judgement is reached.
Now some might say but what happens if a group justifiably break the law in order to try and get the law changed , thats easy , describe them as right or far right for breaking the law and call them left or far left if and when that law is changed.
Doing this clarifies matters.
At present most are called left or far left if they want to end war and improve peoples lives but its silly to call them left if they go about in masks killing people.
The denomination afforded is very important if we want clarity.
I agree with you , BUT , there are still many many people plus the media and the Labour Party itself think it is left wing , the point i am making is that sometimes people or political groups that call themselves left wing or are pereceived as left wing must be judged on their actions and not their label.
The definition of 'left-wing' is perfectly simple - it is a movement to abolish the capitalist system and allow the people who produce wealth to reap the fruits of their labour. The 'right-wing' is just the opposition to this effort. Of course there are add-ons here and there to both sides, but they are not central to the definition as outlined. Anything labelled as 'left' (such as the Democratic Party in the US) which does not fit the above definition is not 'left'. In the case of the 'Dems' they are classical 'Liberals' - nothing to do with 'leftism' except in the warped understanding of heavily indoctrinated US clowns.
So do you think the Labour Party is left wing ?
No. The UK 'Labour' Party is just a convenient substitute for the tory party when they get too unpopular. The 'Labour' Party have no intention of abolishing the capitalist system, and have never seriously expressed such an intention.
Politics generally seems to be descending/reverting to a combination of witch hunts, the inquisition, and petty sociopathic gang leaders scrapping for power for its own sake. The centre may not hold.
I agree with you , BUT , there are still many many people plus the media and the Labour Party itself think it is left wing , the point i am making is that sometimes people or political groups that call themselves left wing or are pereceived as left wing must be judged on their actions and not their label.
Your premise seems to be that we expect violence from the Right, but not the Left, and this is a new sinister development. No. There has always been violence from extremes on both sides. Throughout the cold war there were concerted state efforts to repress the far Left, on the grounds they were a threat to national security. This did not happen to the far Right, who were largely treated as a sort of extreme version of football hooligans - indeed, there was a lot of crossover in the 70s and 80s particularly.
Trying to turn it into some sort of conspiracy that undermines the stability of our society is the sort of thing I might expect from a saloon bar boor rather than anyone with pretensions to insights on socio-political currents. There are violent thugs around. Some are linked to the Left, and some to the Right. Some are apolitical. Some are encouraged by various state actors, and a range of states that seek to control or manipulate public opinion, or just ferment disorder. Some are employed or funded by those with money to act on their behalf - imposing their "standards" upon the rest of us, or trying to ensure opinions or movements do not gather strength. It has always been thus.
I am having some difficulty mapping this onto the political scene in my own country of Canada. Perhaps we lack either the cultural industries or the sort of imagination which I presume are necessary to create and sustain such movements.
I can’t say that I feel we’re missing very much.
My usual italian translation, here:
"Entrambe le Parti, Ora.
Combattere la Non-Persona."
https://trying2understandw.blogspot.com/2026/03/entrambe-le-parti-ora-combattere-la-non.html
Thanks as always, Marco.
What Is a fascist, really? Pinochet; a mas murdering neo-liberal Chicago School-beloved, and oh-so good for business guy, a veritable one-man military drag act, even when he used the loo. Also a good Catholic. But not a fascist.
Anti-democratic governments, movements, et al, will either try to terrify into silence, kill, or throw you in the slammer for life if they don’t like your opinions. But not necessarily fascist. Para-fascist, quasi-fascist, fascist-like, fascistic, fascistoid or fascistized….and other political hybrids (not invariably cross-fertile) come down to the same old phenomenon in various contradictory drag.
If it’s difficult to keep track of the proliferation gender identities, it is just as confusing to maintain discrete separations of all current hyphenated right jack-assery. Extreme violence is however, a generalized tendency we can all agree on. How to characterize deadly violence among “left” formations though, is a problem, as it is fuzzy thinking to even identify such formations as “left”.
Syndicalists anyone?
Stalin? Mao? Personalist dictators who threw around commie rhetoric At least they dressed down...
Is Jennifer Rowlings a ffffascist? Who cares. What matters is that the Cult of Potter has at long last been doused.
In ending this blah-blah, Phillipe Petain was a fascist, not so, Phillipe Gaulier, so baptized by his father, to the son’s everlasting though highly fruitful irritation. Producing a pearl of great price. Phillipe Gaulier, you will be profoundly missed.
https://www.ecolephilippegaulier.com/2026/02/24/philippe-gaulier-obituary/
yes, Pinochet was a fascist. No, Stalin and Mao weren´t. Every political figure proclaiming "We are superiour, they are subhumans, we alre allowed to do anything, they are not allowed to do anything" is a fascist. You may call it nazi, because it´s closer to Hitler than Mussolini, but in reality we just don´t have the term describing this archaic way of thinking that found its new life in western ideology
Petite précision "Aurélien". Vous évoquez des manifestantes féministes issues de la droite catholique traditionnelle or historiquement, la droite catholique traditionnelle rejette fondamentalement le féminisme qu'elle considère comme une idéologie mortifère. C'est un peu comme si vous écriviez "des militantes juives issue de la tradition nazie", pas possible...
Historiquement vous avez bien sûr raison. Mais l'étiquette "féministe" a été revendiquée par les étudiantes elle-mêmes.
Je vous remercie tout d'abord pour votre réponse "Aurélien". Effectivement, les militantes appartiennent au collectif Némésis, qui se réclame du féminisme, et sa fondatrice, Alice Cordier, se dit catholique et de droite mais rejettent les valeurs de la droite catholique traditionnelle, contrairement à une figure telle que Thaïs d'Escufon, par exemple. Peu importe finalement car tous les courants du spectre politique se fondent désormais sur l'émotion, voire la pulsion, à défaut de l'instruction et de la raison qui permettent d'élaborer une pensée politique propre à créer un débat constructif. En ce sens, votre diagnostic est, hélas, implacable. Bien à vous
Thank you for your weekly reminder of the existence that spongy matter sitting between our ears. I find myself entertained by a thought, though, and I cannot but classify it as a Foucauldian take: could "identity politics" (or whatever) be a dispositif of post-modern biopolitics whose aim is to outsource the State monopoly of violence to the subjects themselves? In other eras, we used to define it "divide et impera". In Italy, the policy of the "Opposti Estremismi" of the 70s and 80s got quite some mileage and excellent results. After all, who cares if the plebs kill each other? Isn't it another opportunity to promote the reassuring allure of Emmanuel (or whatever)? After all, once the frontal cortex is turned off, you just need to invest in a few big-box buildings fitted with enough electricity, cooling water, and chips scattered throughout the countryside to be able to (literally) push the thalamic buttons of the proles and PMC underlings to start the Hate Merry-go-round at will and happily chug along. The question, then, is really NOT rhetoric: "who cares?".