Why Are All the Conservatives Quoting an Anti-Semite?---Young Turks

Run time: 04:30 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR7Hsq7afsI   Posted on YouTube: October 15, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: October 17, 2008 By DU Member: CherylK Views on DU: 1847

 
Busted!!!

;)

Typical bunch of hypocrites (the Republicans).

Perhaps they are using the "broken clock" excuse, sometimes used here as well, to "justify" their using a smear/attack by an anti-Semite. Some bigotry just never goes out of style.

These people are willing to believe anything, no matter what the source or how ridiculous, that furthers an agenda or supports a particular world view.

Of course, there are people around here like that, too. They tend to think that September 11 was in "inside job" and Osama had nothing to do with it. But I digress.

What Cenk left out of his summary of Andy Martin's "theory" is how Bill Ayers somehow fits into this. According to Martin, Ayers and other radical sixties leftists recruited Obama, who, we must keep in mind, is a secret Muslim with terrorist connections in this alternate universe. So those who sought to destroy the United States forty years ago have joined forces with those who seek to destroy her today, in spite of the fact they really have nothing in common other than violent tendencies and a hatred for or distrust of America. This sounds more like the plot to a bad science fiction novel.

Martin is a devotee of classical right wing ideology. That is to say he is a racist. All racism is inherently right wing. What defines the right wing is a rejection of democracy, where all humans are equal, and an embrace of a social hierarchy where some people have an inherent right to rule all others, or even kill them. This emblem of superiority may be race (Hitler), heroism (according to Mussolini), religion (according to the dominionists) or wealth (neoconservatism).

The political left embraces human equality as its fundamental principle an rejects slavery, imperialism and other forms and institutions of social or political hierarchy. However, misguided usage of right wing ideology is not unknown to the left. A recent example is leftist usage of anti-Semitism as a tool against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The Israeli-Palestinian issue, in fact, has given birth to a bizarre conflation of left and right; we see racists embrace an anti-imperialist message, pretending to in solidarity with the Palestinian cause against Israeli ("Jewish") occupation and injustice while anti-imperialists, impatient with the occupation, lash out against not just the Israeli right but on all Jews (who "control everything").

Of course, that makes it very difficult to tell who's really left and who's really right.

Returning to Mr. Martin, any one can make sense out of his droppings probably belongs in the state hospital.

It is refreshing that others are also seeing this bizarre dance between the far-right and -left. It is one of the reasons I find some of the things here to be so out of whack with what should be real liberal values, and that does not include bigotry. It is the reason I trotted out the "broken clock" excuse, which I feel is extremely poor and is nothing more than one being lazy.

Any way, thanks for the thoughtful response and insight.

I would add that because the war is such an important issue at the moment, left-wing anti-war people are sometimes tempted to give too much credence to people who oppose Bush and the war but are right-wing in every other respect: e.g. isolationist xenophobes of the Pat Buchanan/LePen variety. It's good that the latter oppose the war for whatever reason; but they do so within a dangerously right-wing agenda that should not be taken as valid, just because it occasionally happens accidentally to lead to a correct conclusion.

With regard to your example of anti-imperialists sometimes being prepared to listen to antisemites and xenophobes with regard to the Israel/Palestine issue and indeed certain other issues: sadly, that is sometimes true. In fact, the very first time I heard of Andy Martin was when a left-winger quoted him approvingly, as a critic of Israel and its supposed influence on the USA. Neither of us knew who he was at that time, but I recognized a far-right-wing tone in the quotation, and then checked and found out!

'What defines the right wing is a rejection of democracy, where all humans are equal, and an embrace of a social hierarchy where some people have an inherent right to rule all others, or even kill them.'

I agree fully! In my view, a right-winger is fundamentally someone who considers that those who are in a strong position should have a right to enhance their position, even if it means trampling on those in a weaker position. The *extreme* right regard trampling on the weak as a *positive good*: the Fascist view was that society would become stronger through a social-Darwinist weeding out of the weak, and I see worrying echoes of this in, for example, Mark Steyn's argument that the Europaean welfare state is weakening our 'survival instinct' and contributing to 'civilizational senility'. The 'strong' most often means essentially the 'rich'; but it also often means the physically strong and healthy; the well-connected; those who are in majority groups, according to ethnicity, religion or personal characteristics; etc.; etc. The details of what right-wingers support in a particular society may vary according to who are the favoured 'strong' in a given society: they may be feudal lords, yuppie businessmen, Stalinist apparatchiks, top managers, military leaders, religious leaders, etc. But in all cases, the defining feature of right-wing society is the strong and tough are allowed to
crush the 'weak'; and once this is the case, even a nominally left-wing society will become fundamentally right-wing (cf Stalinist example).

And yes, racism is a very key feature of such right-wing ideology.

Anyway, thanks for a great post with lots of food for thought!

:kick:

How do these guys not just explode from rapid vibration cognitive dissonance? Scanners style.