Nick
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Post by Nick on May 28, 2004 3:30:13 GMT -5
I just saw this another thread. Do you actually believe this, or was it just a provocation?
He is considered in Britain to be considerably to the right of all post-war Prime Ministers apart from Thatcher, who is only slightly left of.
Several conservative PMs are left of Blair. Most analyses I have read put about on par with Bush Senior who, although not as Right as some was certainly not a radical leftist.
Nick
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Post by MO on May 28, 2004 10:05:15 GMT -5
Anything to the left of center is radical leftist to me.
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Nick
Beagle
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Post by Nick on May 30, 2004 7:47:38 GMT -5
But you're viewing it through american eyes. Tony Blair is not an American. He's British. And here, is considered right of centre.
Nick
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Post by frankiegoestostoke on May 31, 2004 12:28:56 GMT -5
I think this might be a little over the top... Many of the pre-Thatcher Conservative Prime Ministers such as Heath were certainly to the left of Blair in terms of domestic policy.
This is classic right wing nonsence. Surely you are aware of the MASSIVE ideological difference between Lenin and say, John Kerry?
I may as well say that anyone to right of centre may as well be a Nazi but this would obviously be absurd.
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Post by MO on May 31, 2004 12:41:46 GMT -5
Yes, that would be absurd because they were socialists that had more in common with modern liberals than conservatives. from- www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=20281Of course, the media are free to define terms however they like, but the fact is that the ideological origins of Nazism are with the left. The term Nazi itself is short for the National Socialist German Workers Party. Nazism was fashioned as a totalitarian nationalist alternative to the totalitarian international socialism of the Lenin model. But national or international, the relevant word is socialist, which should be the first tip-off to Nazism's leftist origins.
It was no accident that the Nazi flag was a red banner; it was taken from the flag of socialism. As Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn showed in his book, "Leftism" (1974 and 1990), Hitler and all his top lieutenants were hard-core socialists who hated everything about the old Europe, including small states, the monarchs, the Church, the landed aristocracy, peace, and the free economy of the 19th century. They imagined themselves running a centralized, protectionist, and statist Germany under the executive-branch "leadership principle." They talked constantly of a proletarian revolution that would destroy the bourgeois class.
Furthermore, as Robert Proctor showed in "Racial Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis" (1988), the Nazis were health fanatics who banned cigarette smoking, promoted vegetarianism and organic gardening, engaged in abortion and euthanasia, frowned on all capitalist excess, and even promoted animal rights. They were environmentalists who locked up land from development to promote paganism.
The Nazi government introduced socialized medicine and government-mandated vacations at government spas, imposed handgun control, and expanded unemployment "insurance" and Social Security. The Nazis opposed the traditional calendar and wanted to replace it with one centered on race and nation rather than faith and family.
A new study of Nazi make-work programs of the 1930s by Dan P. Silverman ("Hitler's Economy," 1998) shows that Hitler's government pursued a program of "public investment" even more far reaching than the U.S. New Deal. This government imagined itself as the employer of every citizen, the planner of every production decision, and the redistributor of every accumulated pocket of wealth in society. From the Nazi point of view, full glory came during the war when they took over the economy completely, Soviet-style.
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Post by frankiegoestostoke on May 31, 2004 18:27:30 GMT -5
Comparing Nazism to socialism is completely insane.
Although links can be made to socialism and nazism, the very core of the nazi ideology is right rather than left wing.
And the reason for this is that nazism ignores the very fundamental heart of marxist politics, and that is the politics of class. Where marxists beleive that nationality and race were tools used to divide the working class against one another rathar than against the capitalists, the nazis beleived that race and nationality were vital differences.
Where the overally long term aim of marxism is to create a classless society, the nazis wanted very much to seperate a ruling elite class from the rest of the soceity.
Finally, the most obvious example of the way in which nazism and socialism are so ideologicaly apart, is the way that they hate each other. Hitler massacred socialists in concentration camps because he disagreed so violently with their ideology.
This is the same reason that the Spartacists and the Freikorps were at effective war with each other in 1919.
The ideological differcece between radical lefties, and liberals, is also vast. While radical lefties would want to create a classless soceity, acheived by revolution, and voilent supression following that revolution, liberals beleive in higher taxation to improve the lives of poor people, maintaining human rights, and acheiving power electorally. As I'm sure you'll agree, these are two very different political stratagies.
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Post by Ian on May 31, 2004 18:35:32 GMT -5
The difference between fascism and socialism is that socialism lies to the people and promises that the government will evolve out of totalitarian rule, whereas with fascism totalitarian rule is a completely open fact.
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Post by Ian on May 31, 2004 18:45:22 GMT -5
One thing fascism and socialism have in common, however, is a total attack on religion.
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Post by MO on May 31, 2004 19:46:57 GMT -5
There are many parallels. Frankie is long winded but not very convincing.
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Post by Ian on May 31, 2004 19:48:52 GMT -5
AMEN!
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Post by frankiegoestostoke on Jun 1, 2004 5:59:30 GMT -5
You should read the words of Karl Marx some day. In the long term socialism aims to create a classless society without government. This was the aim of most of the members of the Communist Party in Russia before Lenin assumed control in 1924. It is true that in terms of state structure, if not ideology, Stalinism and Nazism were indeed very similar. But Stalinism is not an example of socialism, by a long shot. (To find out why read Trotsky's writing on dialectic materialism - the essay can be found here www.marxist.com/Theory/ABC.html) But firstly you are basing your analogy on Stalinism and Maosim, not marxist socliaism or social democracy as practised today. Once again you are basing your analogy on socialism in its purest form, or communism. You would be very hard put to find a modern day modern socialist who wishes to abolish religion. Many christians are, and have been heavily involved in socialism, (as well as many Hindus in the socialist states of India such as the Karela), father Gapon was instrumental in the 1905 uprisings in Russia. |
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Post by Ian on Jun 1, 2004 14:04:21 GMT -5
I have. My point was that socialism has not, nor will ever be able to assume it "true" form, whereas fascism has.
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Post by Ian on Jun 1, 2004 14:09:53 GMT -5
Hmmm.... Fidel Castro? How about modern day China.
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Post by frankiegoestostoke on Jun 1, 2004 14:27:53 GMT -5
Well then I agree. Traditional marxist socialism has never reached its true form (traditional marxist revolutionary socialism as opposed to social democracy).
My point that they are still ideologicaly extremely different still stands then.
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Post by lordjulius7 on Jun 9, 2004 14:53:07 GMT -5
Back to the original question, Blair is not a right winger. He's a centrist. He is to the right of Heath but not Churchill, Eden, Douglas-Home, Macmillan or Major.
Obviously, he's closer to Thatcher than Lenin but that's a false premise because Thatcher wasn't at the extreme end of the right wing spectrum. Put Ayn Rand against Lenin and Blair is a centrist or mild left winger.
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