I've got a bone to pick with that definition as well, but Ms. Rothstein will only get some cold comfort from me.
bigoted attitudes; intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.
"the report reveals racism and right-wing bigotry"
To dispose of the second part of the definition first, intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself, then if that is all bigotry is, I would give the point to Ms. Rothstein hands down. Of course, one does not have to be to the right of Attila the Hun to be intolerant of those who hold opinions different from one's own. Over twelve and a half of posting on DU, I've seen people confess to not speaking to relatives who thought the war in Iraq and everything else the Frat Boy did was peachy keen. I've even recall a post from a woman who was disowning her college age son for being a Republican. That's carrying a distaste for other people's opinions a bit far. I suppose those people could be characterized as bigots.
The first part of the definition, bigoted attitudes, is useless. It simply defines bigotry as bigotry. We're still left with the question: just what is that?
We are more familiar with bigotry as intolerance differing points of view from not just of one's political beliefs, but of one's race, religion, sexual orientation, social status, ethnicity, nationality, gender, etc. This kind of intolerance is typically right wing.
Now, why would I say that?
The epitome of what is right wing is to hold to a belief in a social hierarchy in which some people are simply better than others, either by nature or divine will. The landed aristocracy of France as late as the 1790s still felt that they had the right to subjugate peasants and other commoners to their will, and the clergy, although held to be apart from the aristocracy, were still those who were ordained by God to perform a certain ruling function in matters of the spirit. The aristocracy and clergy, as the ruling classes, allied together to make sure that only commoners paid taxes. Sound familiar? I think so, too, but let's not digress. So, those who rule were ordained to do so by God in some mythical part of spacetime that is beyond human understanding, so, even though nobody understands it, it is heresy to question it. That justification for the subjugation of the common people by the aristocracy and clergy has also been used to justify slavery in North America and Jim Crow legislation following the abolition of slavery, Apartheid in South Africa, anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, the subjugation of Palestinians by Israelis and the murder of three thousand Americans on September 11, 2001, by another right wing moron, Osama bin Laden.
The attitude held by the so-called "superior" class in all of these instances is bigotry. It is right wing by definition. The left, on the contrary, holds that the natural order is egalitarian. The Ku Klux Klan is right wing, the Westboro Baptist Church is right wing, Pam Geller, a fanantic Islamophabe, is right wing, Bibi Netanyahu is right wing and the late and unlamented Osama bin Laden was right wing. Vladimir Putin persecutes gays, bombs Chechens and wants to reincorporate former subject nations of the Russian Empire into a new Russian Empire; he is right wing. We on the left, at least theoretically, want to render such artificial distinctions unimportant, so that they will no longer be used by the right to subjugate great swaths of humanity.
Warning: the above might be an oversimplification. One might find some among us who self-identify as left but may still feel the urge to disapprove of an entire group of people, like Mormons or Jews who support Israel's right to exist, is still engaging in right wing behavior. Repent. Just as the sober conservations (not necessarity racist) who signed on the the GOP's necessarily racist Southern Strategy for many, many years and even up to the present day should repent.
I hope this brings Ms. Rothstein to better understanding.
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