Peas in a Pod: Fascists, Stalinists, and Today’s Radical Left
By Howard Sierer
Today’s radical leftists and yesterday’s fascists and Stalinists are cut out of the same cloth, peas in the same pod.
Burning books, shutting down writers and editors that don’t toe the line, rallying and rioting to demonstrate loyalty to the cause, defacing and burning buildings, demonizing and physically attacking political opponents.
Students of political history will recognize all the above and more as harbingers of both Hitler’s and Stalin’s rise to power a century ago. Today’s students and the radical left are blind to the extent that their actions mirror those tumultuous times.
Harvard philosopher George Santayana famously observed, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Since so much of history is attributed to “dead white males,” too little of it is taught at today’s universities.
Instead, radical cadres née students are fed radical leftist pap, taught that American history can be summarized as nothing more than racism and the oppression of minorities and that the problem with the Founding Fathers is that they were both white and fathers.
The result: Finding victims of oppression on every hand has led to civil disobedience, rioting, and breakdown of public order we experienced over the last several months.
Many of today’s protesters are seeking some vague notion of social justice. So were the vast majority of Germans and Russians in the aftermath of World War I.
Sadly, both of those revolutions were hijacked by small, ruthless fringe groups: Nazis and Bolsheviks. Both parties were headed by ruthless demagogues: Hitler and Lenin (followed shortly by Stalin) whose sinister purposes were hidden behind populist phrases and promises.
What followed were one-party, authoritarian states where all citizens were forced into compliance by thugs recruited into state security services. Those refusing to “love Big Brother” ended up in concentration camps or the Gulag. As revolutionary zeal faded and promises were not kept, the revolutions were legitimized by demonizing minority populations who were killed by the millions.
A similar pattern occurred in 1789 revolutionary France where the national motto “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” led instead to Napoléon’s dictatorship.
Equivalent to burning books, today’s college students have become increasingly intolerant and unwilling to see anything other than leftist dogma as deserving discussion in the public square. Conservative professors are ostracized; conservative speakers are “disinvited” from campus programs, often accompanied by threats of violence. Authors are forced to withdraw books that are insufficiently “woke.”
Nazis and Stalinists shuttered opposition newspapers. Today’s radical leftists force media resignations by those guilty of indiscretions. Two opinion page editors at the liberal New York Times, James Bennet and Bari Weiss resigned this summer. “Intellectual curiosity is now a liability at The Times,” said Weiss, who was also a writer at the newspaper. Prominent journalist Andrew Sullivan resigned at New York magazine, expressing concern that its “woke” culture is crowding out dissenting opinion.
Many of those joining street protests did so with peaceful intent. They allowed themselves to be hijacked by violent political opportunists reminiscent of Nazis and Stalinists.
Journalist Michael Tracey reported in July that after traveling for a month around the country “from large metro areas like Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul, to small and mid-sized cities like Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Green Bay, Wisconsin, the number of boarded up, damaged, or destroyed buildings I have personally observed—commercial, civic, and residential—is staggering. Keeping an exact count is impossible.”
Portland, Oregon, is the poster child for cities beset with violence. Beginning on a so-called “riot night” in May, Portland’s radicals began nightly assaults, smashing windows and hurling rocks and bottles. By the July 4th weekend, they had added commercial-grade fireworks, cans of food, slingshots, sledgehammers, and reportedly, firearms and tasers.
Injuries to federal officers trying to protect federal property in Portland included severe burns, beatings, and three officers who may be permanently blinded after being hit with lasers. “Think about that the next time you see those young vanguards of the proletariat,” wrote Chuck DeVore of The Federalist, “armed with law degrees and Molotov cocktails, visiting violence upon a city, only to return to their expensive lofts with a city view before daybreak.”
Democratic politicians across the country, supported by leftist media, tolerated and, in too many cases, encouraged these protests, regularly claiming they were legitimate responses to racism and injustice. Most made no attempt to quell the violence.
Their refusal to enforce the law and willingness to tolerate breakdowns in public safety bordered on criminality. Ask yourself how mayors of riot-torn cities would have reacted if instead Neo-Nazis and skinheads were the instigators.
We often visualize a linear spectrum of political thought, the left tending toward increasing government programs and control, the right favoring individual responsibility, and free enterprise. Those near the center seek compromise solutions, drawing from both left and right.
Instead, I visualize politics and government as a vertical wheel. Once again, there is a center point at the top with responsible politicians and government leaders arrayed somewhat to the left and right. But traveling ever farther from that equilibrium point, either to the left or the right, we find increasingly authoritarian political leaders and governments.
At the wheel’s bottom are totalitarians, wielding an extremely high degree of control over public and private life. It mattered not whether Hitler, Stalin, or Mao came down from the left or right: the end results were similar.
George Orwell’s “Big Brother,” the ultimate totalitarian, created “Newspeak” to control people’s language and hence even what they were allowed to think. Big Brother is alive and well on the radical left with its litany of acceptable and unacceptable words.
A famous quote attributed to Voltaire was never more apropos than today: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Responsible Democrats and even Portland’s irresponsible Mayor Ted Wheeler are only too slowly beginning to recognize the real and present dangers to our democracy that they have encouraged. Now is the time for responsible citizens of both the right and the left to “defend to the death” true diversity of thought and the rule of law.
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Nice try Howard, but you can’t distract me from the authoritarian behaviors of the current occupant of the White House. He is so fearful of losing that he is trying everything he can to limit the numbers of people who will be able to vote in November. He is overtly trying to damage the postal service and, contrary to our experience here in Utah, exclude many people from voting by mail.
While not a problem here in Utah, “ballot harvesting” of vote-by-mail ballots is ripe for fraud. Democrats in California and Republicans in North Carolina readily found ways to submit thousands of fraudulent ballots. Trump’s concerns are well placed although as usual his way of expressing them is clumsy and the main stream media lambastes him no matter what he says or does. Read the following for some background on “ballot harvesting” and voter fraud. https://thefederalist.com/2018/12/14/ballot-harvesting-became-new-way-steal-election/
Mr. Sierer: I appreciate your explanation regarding far left and far right. I agree. They are the same.
Regarding election fraud, George Stoddard’s comment brought something into sharp focus for me. At this point the idea of a fair election may be entirely moot. It’s possible that the only reason the left, the Democrats, put forward the threat of forced mail-in voting was to begin eroding our confidence in our elections. The threat of mail-in voting, and all that we know and can prove about its potential for fraud, means the stage has been set; the seeds of discord are planted; and those seeds are bearing fruit. Clearly, once again, we are divided and the false narrative is strong. The ramifications of eroding our confidence in our election process are horrifying. It may well be the death knell of our precious Constitutional Republic.
USPS just filed patent for block chain voting. Not over as long as people like you get the msg out. In the end worst case scenario is a secession which is highly unlikely. Constitution will hold its ground and leftist threats are only credible if we ignore them. Keep your eye on the ball. Simple as that.
Interesting! Thanks for the heads up, Fulcanelli!
Bases loaded. 2 strikes, bottom of the ninth. The pitch is off. . CRACK goes the bat… Going, going, going…. Gone! Homerun for Howie ! Add the comment above – yep grand slam. (Let’s not forget Ray Bradbury’s FARENHEIT 451)