The Acceptability of Far Left politics (or "How I have been somewhat misleading...")

[philmophlegm]

Is this a growing trend I wonder, or has it always been there?

This post was prompted by a couple of comments I've seen on other people's journals lately (by friends of friends (or possibly just posters that were passing by friends' blogs) rather than by friends) and by a preview of a radio programme I saw in a newspaper today.



The radio programme was on last week (I forget the station or the time), but it was about Che Guevara. The newspaper preview of this programme talked about Guevara as "young and handsome" and refers to a famous photograph of him in his beret gazing into the distance as "iconic".

This is a man who presided over firing squads that executed opponents of the Castro regime, who presided over the infamous labour camps. Does it make anyone else uncomfortable that he is spoken of as a romantic figure in a national newspaper (The Times in fact)?


I've seen two LiveJournal comments in the last few weeks that have shocked me for similar reasons. One was from a person who liked the fact that her local supermarket sold "The Morning Star" (the newspaper of the Communist Party of Britain) and that she enjoyed reading the copies of it that a friend of hers always had in the bathroom.

Another comment, from a different person, said in passing that he or she was "a bit of a commie at heart".

From the tone and context of these comments, I don't think they were being said in the sense of "free speech is important", I think they were being said in the sense of "I sympathise, at least in part, with these viewpoints".

Am I right to be shocked by this?





Do you see what I did there? This is the real article. The previous one about far-right politics was the fake. Now I agree with everyone who replied to that, saying that acceptance of far-right politics was worrying. But my point is that nobody ever seems to be worried by the far more widespread acceptance of far-left politics. And I would suggest that if you look at the world today, far-left politics is a bigger problem (unless you count Muslim fundamentalists as far-right). China, North Korea, Zimbabwe - all unpleasant, far-left regimes in the news recently.

Why is it acceptable in this country to show sympathy to the far left, when most people would (rightly) find similar sympathy to the far right abhorrent?

Comments

[the-marquis.livejournal.com]

I would presume the far-left is not noticed the same way, perhaps because the media is made up of lefties even if the magnates aren't that way inclined. It certainly seems to be the case that many people know about the holocaust & Hitler but the same people generally do not know that Stalin was just as bad in many ways. He was also better at covering up the evidence. Perhaps it is also because the aims of socialism (universal healthcare, education etc) are seen as inclusive and giving the have-nots something; while the far-right are seen as divisive and selfish?

I'm no expert but it is an oddity of the modern world that perhaps ought to be explored more by people, like various other 'dilemmas' of modern times.

[purplecat]

I'm not sure you're comparing like with like here. I'd equate communism more with nationalism than racism or nazism. i.e. a problematic ideology with frequently extremist and authoritarian implementations but not, in and of itself, entirely without merit.

I guess the problem is, once you go further left than communism you get personality cults, e.g. Stalinism, Maoism which are harder to identify as ideologies (as opposed to one man's paranoia imposed upon a state) than racism is.

You're right about Che Guevara of course but the iconic nature of that image is hardly a new thing, its been on student walls for, what?, 30 years now.

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

China is hardly a far left regime any more; what it is, is another matter, but I would agree that it has a profoundly sinister influence.

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Personally, I very definitely count Muslim fundamentalists as far-right by the Kinder Küche Kirche (well, mosque) rule. And as the Marquis/Parrot Knight/Louise point out, the regimes you mention are totalitarian to an extent that makes definitions of left or right fairly irrelevant to the vast majority of people in those regimes. Me having leftwing sympathies no more implies agreeing with Stalin and Mao than you having rightwing ones means you think I should be sent to Auschwitz because my dad is Jewish. And half the people with Che posters probably just think he's hot ;-)

Also as far as this country is concerned I would not underestimate the extent to which a certain amount of fashionable leftwing sympathy is fuelled by fashionable thinly veiled anti-Americanism ;-) The grinning moron from Texas does make it easier, granted.

For the rest, my comments to your earlier post more or less stand; I still think the "bit of a [label] at heart" sounds jocular rather than deadly earnest, and having handled the Morning Star on many occasions as a library assistant, I did find it entertaining to read, though doubtless not as its publishers intended! But then my left/right antennae were tuned at a formative age to their social significance in Italy in the 70s and 80s, which was at the time still riven by the aftermath of an actual fascist regime and borderline civil war (brigate nere, brigate rosse), and where the strong popular tradition of communist sympathies was as much anticlerical as it was trendy leftwing in impulse.

[wryelle.livejournal.com]

I agree with louisedennis. Left and right are (not-very) useful lables for vague concepts. Far left and far right are lables for other things. There isn't really a linear scale of opinions, such that 'far-left' is symmetrically opposed to 'far-right'.

Trying to fit Muslim fundamentalists onto such a scale shows it's no longer really adequate to describe the spectrum of ideologies out there.

[wryelle.livejournal.com]

Also - my original point stands that there is a change happening in the acceptability of far right views, whereas the far left have always been visible (if marginal) as far as I can remember.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

I have argued a number of times that it has *never* been a scale that made any sense. The Nazis described themselves as 'national socialist', nationalised pretty much all industry and were in no way a 'free market' organisation: why are they considered right wing? For that matter, why is the BNP right wing, I don't get it!

I just do not understand why violent extremist, discriminatory nutters can't be put into their own group off on their own, with no relation to the general run of politics.

And I don't really understand why there is an assumption that social, religious and economic policies sit together on some sort of one-dimensional spectrum and that if you hold certain opinions on the economy, you necessarily need to have a matching set of social opinions.

Frankly the whole thing seems to have been compiled by a set of simplistic loons who should be sent off to do something less mentally taxing and more constructive!

[bunn.livejournal.com]

It does surprise me a little that the hammer and sickle of Stalinism is still quite ofteh seen, when no reasonable person would consider wearing a swastika.

The swastika has a long and positive tradition as a good luck emblem, but got dirty visually during the 30's and 40's. I don't entirely understand why the hammer and sickle is not similarly contaminated by the massive crimes committed under it under Stalinism.

I don't know anything about the communist party of great britain, so I'm not going to assume that it is a stalinist party because of its name: communism is a broader word than Nazi, and I'm not sure it should be entirely contaminated by the legacy of Mao and Stalin. What are the policies and associations of the party?

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

I suspect part of the continued tolerance of the hammer and sickle may be its association with freedom fighters/resistance movements against some pretty sinister and oppressive regimes in some parts of the world. Certainly that was the case when I was growing up in Italy: Stalin's Russia was a long way away, but partigiani fighting Mussolini's brownshirts (who often had tacit complicity from the ecclesiastical hierarchy which fed anticlericalism after the war) and later German occupying forces was living memory for a generation. Leaving aside the extremists, which as Wryelle notes tend to converge on equal gruesomeness (Italy had terrorism from both sides), "rightwing" and "leftwing" had social/sociological as well as economic and political meaning. For example I have fond memories of an Italian academic explaining why Parmesan is rightwing and Mozzarella is leftwing.

[helflaed.livejournal.com]

A tricky one that- after all one could argue that "communism" as practices by Mao, Stalin et al had very little to do with "communism" as described by Marx, (who was no plaster saint either, but then he never actually got into power)Or as my old history teacher once said "Communism was a great idea- shame no-one has actaully tried it!"

With regards to the photo of Che Guevara- I would refer you to my comments about Himmler. The communist regimes were no slouches when it came to propaganda either.

[kargicq.livejournal.com]

You originally posted about df/dt but now you're talking about f(t). I.e., yes you're right (in my opinion) that left-wing [as commonly defined] politics and atrocities have traditionally got off much lighter than their right-wing equivalents (Stalin vs Hitler etc), and this still is true to some extent. But, I also think it's true that this is changing, i.e. views that quite recently would have been denounced as unacceptably right-wing are now quite mainstream. Possibly related to this is the decline in feminism, e.g. my local Tesco's having toy aisles labelled "girls' toys" / "boys' toys", which has me raising my eyebrows thinking "Surely that would have been unacceptably un-PC when I was growing up?!" -N.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I take issue on your last point, N - ISTR that such things happened more often 30 / 40 years ago than they do now (but my memory may be failing me, of course!)

[chainmailmaiden]

The iconic status of Che Guevara has always amused me and I always wonder when I see people wearing clothing with his image on, whether they know the things he did...

Extremism of any kind, be it far left, far right, religious fundamentalism (in any religion) etc. is always dangerous. What really irritates me is the way people use whatever label they are going under as their excuse for atrocities. There is no excuse for what is going on in Zimbabwe, North Korea, China or any of the other countries you could have named. The problem underlying all of this is sheer human greed, bigotry, intolerance and cruelty, unfortunately these traits seem to be universal whether people are left or right wing.