The Postmodern Thuggism of the New Storm Troopers

Last week saw the latest gathering of the blogging Counter-Jihad movement, this year in Vienna (data collection point on the Mission Europa Netwerk). There's some cause for pause. Some speakers and attendees pronounced the wish to move on after the rift that developed about a year ago between the publisher of Little Green Footballs, and everybody else in the Counter Hirabah. Scouring the paperwork doesn't allow for much optimism in that department. We'll go over some texts produced in the meeting in the coming days.

Essayist Fjordman cannot help himself either in that respect and has a part retrospect running up on The Brussels Journal. After initially harking back what follows is a shocking expose about the state of affairs in Scandinavia. He describes the almost institutionalized thuggism in Sweden by what might accurately be termed the new Storm Troopers.

Our own investigations on the philosophies contained in Postmoderism meanwhile have hit rock-bottom. Scraping the base of that particular pond reveals that the dichotomy of political Left and Rightism is in essence artificial and non-existent. We've all been had by the wrong markers.

Just as an American once queried me on the subject, arguing that the Left cannot be identified with the Right 'as they do not do antisemitism,' just as wrong-footed is the notion that the Left is Socialist, whereas the Right isn't. Then, what is the Right? Is it a movement entrusted with the interests of royalty, the elite, or capitalism? Evidently not!

Much as it must never be trivialized or belittled, the antisemitism of Nazism is not a typical marker of the Socialist Right. Mussolini's Socialist Republic of Italy didn't have race laws until Hitler pushed their implementation much later, when very reluctantly and halfheartedly some antisemitic measures were put in place.

In the insightful book "Explaining Postmodernism" (p. 106) Objectivist philosopher Stephen Hicks writes: "By the early twentieth century (...) the dominant issues for most continental political thinkers were not whether liberal capitalism was a viable option - but rather exactly when it would collapse - and whether Left or Right collectivism had the best claim to being the Socialism of the future. The defeat of the collectivist Right in World War II then meant that the Left was on its own to carry the Socialist mantle forward. Accordingly, when the Left ran into its major disasters as the twentieth century progressed, understanding its fundamental commonality with the collectivist Right helps to explain why in its desperation the Left has often adopted 'Fascistic' tactics."

Coming as both do, from the anti-modern German Idealism based on the musings of Swiss-French agitator Rousseau, the Left versus Right dichotomy is highly artificial and arbitrary, and post World War II a means used by the Left to differentiate from their opponents.

For example the Left (or Young) and Right Hegelians differed and fell out over in the acceptance of the role played by religion within the state. What sets Communism apart from Fascism and National Socialism is argued to be public versus private property, but the prestigious Von Mises Institute has successfully argued that - since private property was up for confiscation by the all powerful state at any time - private property existed only nominally in Nazi Germany and the Socialist Republic of Italy.

The far Left keep emphasizing the Fascist nature of their opponents in an effort to put some distance between themselves and their own resort to thuggism. In so far as it's attributable to psychology, it's a clear case of projection. The fact is, on the philosophical level Left and Rightism belong to one and the same group of ideologies that developed from anti-modernism. The new Leftist brown shirts are no mystery.

The false dichotomy has fathered the erroneous reasoning that since the Marxist Left catered for the proletariat, the Socialist Right must be a party of and for the elite. This cannot be the case. But it is true that throughout, both have been violently attacking the middle class and bourgeois values. And barely noticed, they still do. And that's your main marker to watch out for!

For more read the compilation in "The Dystopia of Paradise." Here's the Fjordman story:

The Brussels Journal: "To the Readers of Little Green Footballs"

(...) Also in Sweden, Antifascistisk Aktion (AFA), a group that supposedly fights against "racists," openly brag about numerous physical attacks against persons with their full name and address published on their website. How come AFA gets away with their violent, extra-legal activities for years without being stopped by the authorities? Is it possible that the political elites find them to be a useful tool against dissidents who criticize mass immigration?

The thugs of AFA in the spring of 2008 destroyed the car of a 90-year-old woman and wrote "nasse" (Nazi) on top of it. As it turned out, they picked the wrong car, but who cares? It's all for a "good cause."Leading national newspaper Aftonbladet has close ideological ties to the Social Democrats, the country's dominant party for most of the past (...) >>>


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