Why the Political Right is so Fragmented

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In his latest essay, MC examines the nature of the Culture Wars that have put various factions of the Right into conflict with one another.

Why the political right is so fragmented
by MC

The genuine conservative political right is defunct. It no longer exists as a separate entity and is now securely blocked in with the fantasy ‘Nazi’ ‘far right’.

The leftist/collectivist policy of denigrate, divide and destroy has worked beautifully, no doubt assisted by fifth-columnists well able to hide amongst the tolerant liberalism (small L) of conservative (small C) opinion.

The US Republican establishment is now left of centre. With the exception of the Reagan years, it has been drifting steadily leftwards, totally out of contact with grass-roots conservatism. In fact, the modern GOP does not hide its contempt for its supposed conservative roots.

The British ‘Conservative’ Party is a bit of a far-left-of-centre joke. For sick political expediency it has killed justice and allowed a multi-tier system of ‘race/Islamophobia/social cohesion’-driven legal exceptions to prevail. We now have one law for Muslims and their patrons, another law for the man in the street, and a third more draconian law for those who wish to express their freedom, liberty and/or right of free speech. The Conservatives have particularly allowed freedom of speech to become encrusted with so-called ‘hate’ legislation where hate is an ill-defined term, randomly applied and seemingly related to causing offense particularly to Muslims and/or gays and/or general dissent. But where causing offense to Christians or Jews or real conservatives is studiously ignored.

So how did we get here?

I suspect that the contrived association between Nazism and the ‘right’ has much to do with it. However, there is also a failure to understand liberty , racism and nationalism as they apply to traditional liberal conservatism. But there is yet another factor which may also be critical.

There was recently an article at Gates of Vienna about Jewgida, which attracted more than the usual number of comments. Many of those were divisive and intolerant, seeking to emphasize that Jooos are the enemy rather than celebrate the number of Jews who participate in the counterjihad movement.

Personally I am disappointed that Jewgida feels the need to exist outside of any local/national Pegida movement(s), but all the same I would welcome them into the fold.

The right is vapid because it is fragmented. It is fragmented because it has been taught to be intolerant and see the likes of Jewgida as a threat. This is not part of true conservatism or the true right; it is the absorption of leftist principles into the conservative psyche.

Real conservatism has a Judeo-Christian core belief, a belief that leads to trust and tolerance: trust and tolerance in God and in (conservative) man. When that core is deflated, however, then there is only fear and fragmentation. The negative reaction and mudslinging provoked by the publication of Diana West’s book American Betrayal (a MUST-read for ALL those on the right), presumably at the fear/knowledge that the Republican Party had also been thoroughly penetrated by KGB agents of influence, was just too much for the supposed icons of right-Republican thought.

So here is a provocative piece from a UK Nationalist website of dubious origin, which is unconfirmed in any way:

“I learnt some of the plans of the deliberate One World agents at a meeting in Harold Wilson’s [UK Prime Minister in the 60’s] room in University College, Oxford, in October 1940. He explained the organization of the subversive groups in this country, with the biological, economic and political sections as the most important, and with overt left wing organizations such as the Communist Party to divert attention from the three vital sections. He said that the overall head of the subversive organization was the head of the biological section, while he himself was the head of the political section of the subversive organization. Members of his section were to infiltrate the political Parties, A larger proportion were to infiltrate the Labour Party, most of them posing as ‘moderates’ on the right of the Party, but a substantial number were to infiltrate the Conservative Party, these posing as ‘moderates’ on the left of the Party. He explained that they were to pose as ‘moderates’ because the British people tended to distrust ‘extremists.’ At a later stage everyone who is patriotic was to be described as a ‘right wing extremist.’

— Dr. Kitty Little PhD. BSc. MA.

Let me reiterate that this is unconfirmed in any way. Nevertheless, it is thought provoking because what it posits has come true (see the rest of article at the link).

If the ‘right’ has indeed been penetrated, then the brief for the agents of influence would be to divide and render harmless, which has very obviously been achieved. The infighting in the ranks of the right, worldwide, has been sad and destructive.

Margaret Thatcher described Ted Heath as a Conservative éminence grise constantly sowing discord. This is the same Ted Heath who took the UK into the EU (EEC) and lied (by omission) about an “ever-closer union”.

By all appearances the natural Right has now been demolished and removed from the political scene in most of the western world. Thus Geert Wilders’ PVV is deemed ‘far right’ rather than plain ‘right’ because any criticism of ‘immigrants’ means ‘racism’, and ‘racism’ is ‘Nazi’ and thus ‘far right’.

The ‘Socialism’ in National Socialism is rarely emphasised, and it is the ‘National’ that is deemed responsible for all the evils of the Holocaust and the general hatred of Slavs, Africans etc. And, yes, the Nazis were very racist when it suited them. But they accommodated the Japanese, and the Bosnian Muslims and the proto-Palestinians when it was in their interests to so do. We see this same phenomenon too in most socialist regimes, where the real but covert object is to create a feudal state with a party elite ruling over a proletariat of workers whose existence is little more than slavery. All are equal, “but some are more equal than others,” as George Orwell put it. Stalin hated Jews, but he also hated Caucasians and Mongolians, and the Chinese communist nobility hate anybody not of Han descent.

Nationalism is not the same as racism. Nationalism can be precisely defined, but racism is exactly what socialists want it to be, in that it is not necessarily anything to do with ‘race’ but more to do with skin colour or religion. Socialists are obsessed with skin colour in a way that nationalists find strange and revealing. To a nationalist it is ‘culture’ that is important, and particularly the preservation of the national culture. Religion, too, is a socialist paranoia. In the socialists’ view, Christianity is uniquely indicative of ‘white’ supremacy and ‘white’ privilege, and must be purged. The more a Christian is Bible-orientated, the more dangerous he/she is. Any other religion is just a point of leverage which can be used to turn on the faucet of violence at need, and at this Islam has shown itself to be compliant and thus useful.

Socialism is a political religion. It believes that man is god, and that mankind can build a heaven-on-earth utopia based upon equality and social justice, but only if all become believers. This means that pragmatically, dissenters must be isolated and removed (exterminated), whether by using gulags or Konzentrationslager, or just scimitars, is largely academic. This philosophy also means that the party must redefine ‘truth’ because the basic curiosity of a human must be eradicated and replaced by doctrine and propaganda, a process nicknamed ‘brainwashing’.

The political right has thus been brainwashed out of the common perception, and an Antifa movement has been established to make sure it stays there. Antifas are interesting as well as oxymoronic: these are the Sturmabteilung of the Nazis rehashed as enforcers of socialism, which implies that it was always the socialism of the Nazis that was important, and that every howl of antifa rage is to give voice to an opinion that both Stalin and Hitler were correct.

There is no political ‘far right’, because in reality the Right’s policy is for small government and minimum interference with individual liberty. Therefore, to interpolate ‘far right’ is to contemplate a state with no government at all i.e. anarchy in the truest sense of the word (anarchy = without government).

The ‘right’ is often closely associated with capitalism, and we have to be careful here for most people confuse capitalism with cartelism. Capitalism means that everybody has access to the markets subject only to their own financial resources and ability to sell their labour. Cartelism means that markets are only open to those meeting criteria set by those already controlling that market. In the UK one works for a company and is paid a remuneration which is governed by a salary band. This salary band is an averaging-out of the ‘value’ of all the workers in that pay band, so the good, profitable workers have to subsidize those in their band who are unprofitable, This is called ‘Social Justice’, and is just another expression of cartelism.

The ultimate in cartelism is in the full socialist agenda, where the state is in absolute control of all production of wealth. Communism abhors capitalism, but enforces absolute state-run cartelism. That is not to say that capitalism is perfect, but it is like democracy: it is the best we have, despite its faults. There was a time when, especially in the USA, if one worked hard and intelligently, then one was almost sure to prosper. This was the American dream. But cartelism has turned that dream into a worldwide nightmare. No longer can lemonade be sold from the front yard — the cartel just can’t stand the competition.

The big selling point of socialism is ‘welfare’, and I suspect that the major criticism of rightist politics is that the balance of welfare to work is too much on the side of ‘work’ and an ethic of ‘no work, no pay’. But the incredible ability of ‘right’ politics to create jobs and distribute wealth and therefore to promote wellbeing is rarely discussed, as is the profound reciprocal ability of socialist ‘welfare’ to promote poverty. When, in the UK, I smashed my leg (high-energy pilon fracture type 3), I had a choice: I could live on welfare for the rest of my life, or I could try to hold down a job as a cripple. I chose the latter, but in doing so, had to give up all access to the former because this was an all-or-nothing inflexible type of welfare designed not to help the patient but to be able to tick a box on a political welfare agenda sheet.

Socialism tends to be very physicalist. Whilst it looks after the injury, in doing so it wants to also own the mind. It has no room for the metaphysical, which says I want to be free and to decide for myself and take responsibility for my decisions.

Because socialism is essentially a religion, it seeks always to evangelise and sermonise. It is much like Edmund taking the White Witch’s Turkish delight*: not only can one ever get enough of it, but it also puts one into spiritual shackles to the point where one will betray one’s brother and sisters for more of the same.

The opposite of the (political) Left is not National Socialism, as the Left would have us believe. And, yes, there were (and still are) street battles between socialist factions like the BNP and SWP, or even BLM and Trumpeters. The real opposition to socialism is from the liberal conservative right, who, on the whole, don’t realize that they even exist, they are now so isolated.

Although Communist Russia fought National Socialist Germany, that does not make them political opposites — brothers often fight brothers, and sometimes with an extra bitterness which comes from sibling jealousy and rivalry, given their competition for the same finite resources….

Time to make friends, brothers of the right!

*   The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis)
 

MC lives in the southern Israeli city of Sderot. For his previous essays, see the MC Archives.

66 thoughts on “Why the Political Right is so Fragmented”

    • Yes, it will end in bloodshed. I read a comment somewhere about the German situation “Blast off, nuke it from space.” I chuckled, but then realized how it is a possibility.

  2. I have to say that this is the best essay that I have seen to date that makes this distinction clear. The Nazi’s were basically Marxists who played to German nationalism. The Germans just weren’t ready for international communism. Even then, many German nationalists, like my late father-in-law, recognized the Nazis as something alien. He had left Germany in the 1920’s for the U.S. because he couldn’t find a job. In 1936 he took a vacation and went back to visit his family in Munich. Since he had heard that things were better, he was thinking of moving back, because he preferred Germany. The culture suited his tastes better, for one thing. While there, he went to the theater and was treated to a “heil Hitler” ceremony as a prelude to the performance. “What is this!?” After seeing that, he finished his vacation and went back to his job in the States, and in due course, married a high school German teacher, second generation Hungarian-American, who looked great in crown braids and was willing to have the children speak German at home.

    • It is nonsense to suggest Nazis were Marxists. There was very little nationalization of private firms under the Nazis, for instance- unlike the USSR.

      You may not like Marxists, and you may not like Nazis, but this does not make them the same.

      • Property Right (ownership) – the full use and disposal of justly acquired property by an individual, provided it does not violate the same right of another individual.

        Under a free society, the individual owner decides the use and disposal of property.

        Under Marxism (socialism), the nominal ownership of property lies with the state . . . so the controllers of the levers of state decide the use and disposal of property.

        Under fascism (Nazism), the nominal ownership lies with the individual . . . BUT the controllers of the levers of state decide the use and disposal of property – regardless of the desires of the nominal owner.

        Now do you see the “difference”? 😉

        The first thing you own is yourself. Can you imagine the implications when you live under socialism (Marxism or Nazism or fascism)? If you have ever been drafted (a subset of slavery), this little matter should be crystal clear to you.

        • You got it. Granted, Socialism (National-Nazi) or otherwise, does tend to work better than Communism, at least at first, since the farms and the factories are left in the hands of people who actually know how to run them, instead of being completely handed over immediately to the tender mercies of politically correct theorists, and therefore the bureaucratic strangulation of production is a slower process. My father did a YMCA tour of Europe including Moscow, in 1936. When he came back from a trip to the Soviet Union connected with his work for the State Department around 1960, I asked him how things had changed. He said that in 1936 they did not know how to lay bricks (having purged the people with the know how), but now the quality of construction was on a par with the shoddier work found in the U.S. Apparently they did let someone learn something in the meantime.

        • Have you ever read Larken Rose? Someone here at GoV recommended him to me a while back.

        • No doubt you have more property rights in a liberal capitalist order than under Nazism. Hitler very much saw individuals being subordinate to the collective, ad did Marxists. Hitler, however, also valued enterprise and even property rights as essential to fulfilling individuals.

          I don’t think you would find similar statements from Marxists.

      • The Nazis sold themselves as anti-Marxist, they promised to be such.

        It doesn’t matter because they played both sides and the middle, anything to achieve power. The final form of racial, nationalism has been branded “of the Right”. They were most definitely NEVER animated or motivated by Marxist theory. How could they be if they were openly hostile to German Communism? Socialism was widely accepted in post-WWI Germany and Hitler appealed to that so that he could be a “populist”–no offense the the Trumpeters.

  3. People seem to forget that the Communist parties in the U.S. and Britain, who took their orders from Moscow, initially gave their propaganda support to Hitler and the Nazis. Not to mention the non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin. Then Hitler broke the pact, and literally overnight, the U.S. Communists changed sides from isolationism to interventionism and in Britain from “a Colonialist war to be opposed” to a “just war that should be supported”. As one observer put it, at that point it was obvious who was a communist. On the other side, in Russia, World War II is referred to as “the Patriotic war” because Stalin was forced to appeal to Russian nationalism to get his people to fight, “Save Mother Russia!” as a result, the Russians began to think of the post-war Soviet Empire, as “our Empire”.

    • Indeed, Stalin eventually made that ‘patriotic’ appeal. ‘Uncle Joe’ had almost lost his mind when Germany attacked Russia, & locked himself away in solitude for days. He apparently found it difficult to believe that it had happened. He left Molotov to make an initial speech to the Russian people, if I remember correctly.

      The Reds were actually supplying Nazi Germany with goods right up until 22nd June 1941, in accordance with the terms of the Nazi-Soviet pact.

      (I took Higher History at school, but none of this was covered – didn’t fit the narrative? – I had to find it all out for myself years afterwards!)

      • They still taught it in school when I took A-levels in Yorkshire in the late ’60s. Regardless of the leftward slant of the national politics of the UK back then — the days of Red Harold and “Grocer” Heath — the curriculum in the grammar schools was still rigorous and thorough. My history teachers had me read many variegated sources on the period, from the anti-commies to the commies. For me there have been no significant revelations about Barbarossa that came out after the fall of the USSR. There was a lot of fascinating stuff that emerged from the archives after 1991, but mostly it just confirmed what was already suspected — e.g. the magnitude of the number of victims of the gulag, etc.

    • “The huge popularity of the Soviet Union in wartime Britain was a source of dismay, indeed exasperation, to the small number of people at the top who knew the truth about the barbarity of Stalin’s regime, its hostility to the West, and its imperialistic designs on Eastern Europe.” (Sir Max Hastings, ‘Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940 – 1945’, Kindle Loc. 92)

      “It is hard to overstate the embarrassment and even shame of British people as they perceived the Russians playing a heroic part in the struggle against Nazism, while their own army seemed incapable of winning a battle. To understand Britain’s wartime experience, it appears essential to recognise, as some narratives do not, the sense of humiliation which afflicted Britain amid the failures of its soldiers, contrasted— albeit often on the basis of wildly false information—with the achievement of Stalin’s.” (ibid., Loc. 53)

      “The integrity of Allied purposes in the Second World War was inescapably compromised by association with the tyranny of Stalin to defeat that of Hitler. Once this evil was conceded, lesser ones remorselessly followed.” (ibid., Loc 8990)

      “Long before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Joseph Stalin had created within its borders the greatest edifice of repression , mass murder and human suffering the world has ever seen.” (Sir Max Hastings, ‘Armageddon’, Kindle Loc. 2253)

      “The central popular myth that surrounds the war, a kind of Hollywood version of the history, is that this is a simple story of an alliance of good people who fought an alliance of bad people. It’s an immensely consoling way of looking at the past, and it’s sad to let it go. But let it go we must” (Laurence Rees, ‘World War Two: Behind Closed Doors’, Kindle Loc. 6953)

      • If you looked at the respective body counts of fascism and communism as of September 1939, it is extraordinary anyone could have seen communism as the lesser evil.

        Just why western democracies took that view has a lot to do with geopolitics, and, yes, the influence of Jews and cryptic communists in the UK and USA. It has precious little to do with the actual morality of the Nazi regime.

        • Also something to do with the reality that Hitler was the more immediate theat, apart from his attack on Poland, with which the Britsh and French had treaties.

        • Amen observer , we picked the WRONG side, surely that should be clear to everyone by now? No more brothers’ wars!

    • Well said and spot on! Hollywood was (and is?) full of these Fifth Columnists who hate America.

    • Yes, and there is no need to forget any of that–or learn it for the first time–by reading Whittaker Chambers’ three books; especially now, for Americans.

  4. One can see clearly about many things – their demarcations and boundaries – when one wakes each morning and, from the kitchen window, eyeballs an honest-to-goodness border fence.

  5. This is a very thoughtful essay. The anecdote about Dr. Little’s acquaintance with Wilson is illuminating. Even if apocryphal, it is perhaps just an analog of what was described in Appendix F of The Red Decade which republished a London newspaper’s account of how the Labour Party was completely captured by communists by 1922! 1922!

    The horrendous events of the last 50 years, esp. contemporary Merkelism and Junckerism, remains to be satisfactorily explained but I am powerfully drawn to the view that they are manifestations of a network of traitors and agents of influence put in place by the Soviets and Markus Wolf but who remained in place when the tide went out forever and who are yet seized with the insidious, destructive hate for Western civilization that is characteristic of the Fabians and communists. What is must simply be ground into the dust as so much filth.

    I do not at all think that the right has been taught to be intolerant nor do I see it as being fragmented. Having grown up in southern Africa and seen much of the world, I always had a simple, uncomplicated appreciation of the U.S. I might have been vaguely liberal as a young fellow but only until I read Solzhenitsyn’s marvelous opus! After that I have never been less than a constitutionalist, rule of law, limited government, entrepreneurial, natural law kind of guy.

    What I’m getting at is that I have almost never encountered people in my personal life who had a similar epiphany about the danger of concentrated state power. Everything the Framers and Ratifiers did was to try avoid that, yet I have found almost no understanding in family, friends, or acquaintances of the essence of their efforts or of the historical phenomenon of 20th-c. mass slaughter.

    Is not the lesson of the last century Beware of total power?! Of course. Nothing els, but for Europeans the answer has been…are you ready?…evil NATIONALISM. So the E.U. exists above all to save Europe from nationalism, as though anyone’s love of and preference for his own kind, his own food, culture, forests, music, and literature necessarily leads to a yearning for lebensraum and March on Moscow 2.0. And in the process the E.U. regresses to a political structure that is an affront to free people and a pale copy of what was really the source of misery, death, and destruction. But not a toothless, pale copy.

    It’s not really an open question which of the three statist experiments (E.U., U.S.S.R., Third Reich) will prove to be the most destructive. Two spilled much blood and caused much waste and destruction. The E.U., however, and the monstrous lie machine that the U.S. ruling elite have devised, involve a monstrous betrayal of native peoples and a resort to methods of political control that degrade, humiliate, and destroy. And as you know, AntiFa scum are always there to do the bidding of the European state(s) as their street auxiliaries.

    It’s perfectly true that the so-called conservatives of the last few decades became enablers and much like a controlled opposition. Buckley did in the end care more about being accepted and banished thinkers of great ability to the Outer Darkness. That it was difficult for those men to prosper afterwards was not due to their being in fact at odds with other patriots but to what I described initially. Our fellow citizens are more interested in their pet causes or their own exaction(s) from the productive courtesy of their legislators (i.e., socialist boodle) than they are in liberty.

    The internet has worked miracles in neutralizing the lie machine. Whether the statist, globalist, Islamic tide can be turned remains to be seen. Mr. Trump has arrived and is causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s fascinating to observe. Perhaps there is still some vitality to our and, hopefully, European democratic forms.

  6. The existential threat humanity faces involves one religion – Islam. Conservatives and their values do not have to stem from religious doctrine. This really is not about Christianity or Judaism. It is about right and wrong, Islam vs everyone else.

  7. “I am surprised how few historians seem to notice that many things which the British and Americans believed they were concealing from the Soviets— for instance, Bletchley Park’s penetration of Axis ciphers and Anglo-American arguments about launching a Second Front —were well known to Stalin, through the good offices of communist sympathisers and traitors in Whitehall and Washington. The Soviets knew much more about their allies ’ secret policy-making than did the British and Americans about that of the Russians.” (Sir Max Hastings, ‘Finest Years: Churchill as Warlord 1940 – 1945’, Kindle Loc. 99)

    “It is also important to understand the way in which the Soviets ran their occupation of eastern Poland between 1939 and 1941. That is because many of the injustices that were to occur in parts of occupied eastern Europe at the end of the war were broadly similar to those the Soviets had previously committed in eastern Poland – the torture, the arbitrary arrests, the deportations, the sham elections and the murders. What the earlier Soviet occupation of eastern Poland demonstrates is that the fundamental nature of Stalinism was obvious from the start.” (Laurence Rees, ‘World War Two: Behind Closed Doors’, Kindle Loc 83)

  8. Language. It’s all about language and defining the terms. Whoever controls the meaning of words can steer the discourse. The authoritarian Left recognized this and have been masterful at twisting the tongue to advance their agenda.

    A prime example of this is how they were able to define National Socialism as “far right” and why they always use the acronymic Nazism to obscure its inherent socialism. National Socialism is “far right” only in the the sense that it wasn’t as “far left” as the Soviets. Both were collectivist ideologies; their primary difference being internationalism versus nationalism, or rather who was going to be in charge: Stalin or Hitler. I always use National Socialist when referring to the Nazis and have noticed this is becoming more commonplace.

    The distinction drawn between capitalism and cartelism is an excellent way to explain the difference. Cartelism readily evokes Italian Fascism and the Corporative State and its widely-applied modern usage for the Colombian drug cartels and OPEC has negative connotations. In this regard it also has good propaganda value.

    When referring to capitalism I prefer to always preface it with “free market,” or better still use “free enterprise” in its stead. The idea is to reinforce that what we’re really talking about is the more fundamental human relationship of “free association,” that as individuals we’re free to associate with whom we want and the exchange of goods and services can be a part of that association, hence free enterprise.

  9. “History has shown us what some people are capable of when they believe in a final solution. In the society that my generation was brought up in, the state was trusted to do what was right, so it might be difficult for some people to accept that we are travelling down that road again. Unfortunately, there is no longer any question of the state doing what is right. In a ‘politically correct’ society, the state decides what is right, and woe betide anyone who questions that. Citizens are already being sacrificed at random on the altar of the neo-totalitarians’ final solution. If you switch on the news, at any time of the day or night, you will see the latest victims lying in the street. Not only are innocent people being executed in public, a system of control is being established that is so evil, it uses those human sacrifices to accelerate their program. That system will end your life as a free human being, just as surely as if you were forced to your knees by an agent of the state and shot.”

    Patriot’s Corner: The Red and The Black.

  10. “Real conservatism has a Judeo-Christian core belief”

    I think this is a key point. As Christian belief has fallen away in the general population of “Western” nations,( and you could include all of Western Europe, US,Canada, Australia & NZ), it is also less influencial in the political parties that were known as “conservative” or centre right in the Western block. This is particularly clear when it comes to social policy of these parties. The liberal policies favoured traditionally by the parties of the left are now being adopted by the parties of the right. See for example the debate over “gay marriage”. It now seems that the only difference between centre left and centre right is with regards economic policy, deregulation of industry, size of the Civil Service and some defence postures.
    A typical example of this is the National Party of NZ Prime Minister John Key. The National Party from the 1950’s until the 1980’s was a traditional conservative party. That is no longer the case and in stealing some of the left’s social policies, Key has held on to governance for 9 years. As a strategy it is effective as it undermines the “opposition’s” point of difference when trying to appeal to voters.

    • I was not aware of parties on the right adopting support for “gay marriage”. Unfortunately, regarding this issue, voices on the left are very loud and aggressive. Most conservatives do not favor gay marriage, but many think that the battle has been lost. Often the right must counter the pervasive (and controlled) media that eschews conservative views on many issues. At the same time, “progressive” views regarding social issues (feminism, abortion, punishments for crime, etc.) are systematically destroying families, culture and Western society.

      • The article struck a real chord with me, particularly this sentence:

        “There is no political ‘far right’, because in reality the Right’s policy is for small government and minimum interference with individual liberty.”

        To me, gay marriage is a matter of individual liberty. Why should someone be deemed as “lesser” on the basis of their sexual orientation – something they are born with, like their skin colour? I was originally opposed, then considered that two people loving each other is not an issue I need to be concerned with. It does not cheapen the value of my marriage in any way.

        I intensely dislike the New Zealand National Party, and I agree with Baucent that they are not conservatives in any shape or form.

  11. I must confess that, despite having studied political philosophy at uni, the meaning of ‘right’ and ‘left’ in this context is still far from clear to me. To my mind, the core activity in any human being’s life is to assign meaning to their own lives. In order to do that, one needs the freedom to investigate different religions and philosophies and the freedom to discuss any and all aspects of those belief systems without fear of harm being visited upon you.

    If this is the yardstick by which different political systems are measured, then there seems little difference between ‘the right’ and ‘the left’ as we have experienced them in recent years.

    Looking back to the war years, in which the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ went the whole hog and became pure in thought and deed, an essential expression of ‘right’ and ‘left’ ideologies – there was no difference between the two. The National Socialists implemented their policy of Gleichschaltung and the International Socialists used the gulag system to achieve the same end.

    And that end is, in the final analysis, to deliberately and knowingly wrap ‘spiritual shackles’ (to use MC’s term) around each and every sentient being under their control, so that people are denied the ability to assign meaning to their own lives.

    The people who do this, whether they call themselves (or anyone else) ‘right’ or ‘left’ – they are evil.

    • “To my mind, the core activity in any human being’s life is to assign meaning to their own lives.”

      The individualist-collec5tivist continuum is but one dimension on which political positions can be analysed. Obviously liberal capitalism is very individualistic, whereas both Nazism (who saw destiny in racial-collectivist terms), and Marxism (who saw class as the key collectivist idea) are not.

      A more salient distinction today, however, is the globalist-nationalist continuum. Both liberal capitalists and Marxists are internationalists (denying race/culture has any meaning) and only traditional nationalists (so-called far right parties) oppose this. (Even Islam is a kind of globalism, wanting to subsume national identities in the one ummah.) State control of the economy – once a fundamental premise of Marxist regimes and socialist parties everywhere, is now a dead letter – even the Chinese communists have adopted market mechanisms in some parts of their economy. That debate is over, for all practical purposes.

      If you think, as I do, the real political fight is between globalists (of various types, and who see people as interchangeable and malleable) and nationalists (who wish to preserve race/culture distinctiveness), that clarifies a lot about contemporary politics.

  13. I suspect that the contrived association between Nazism and the ‘right’ has much to do with it.

    Were the Nazis of the Right or Left? What exactly does “contrived association” do for us in this regard?

  14. The opposite of the (political) Left is not National Socialism, as the Left would have us believe.

    If one considers the political spectrum to be a line like the X axis of the X-Y plain, with a center zero, then problems arise when explaining fascism. Ask the question, what is the difference between ruthless social control, including murder, on the Right and on the Left? Are they opposites? They arrive at the same place, which can not be expressed as a line.

    • Was there really any difference between being hauled off to Dachau or sent to one of the islands in the ‘gulag archipelago’?

      It may have been a bit colder in Siberia, but still …

      • It depends on the date. “Dachau” had different meanings during its dozen years of operation. Initially- under the Munich police – the prisoners were released after “treatment” . . . to serve as a warning to the population. Things changed when the SS took over the management in 1935.

        • I was talking to someone today who had to write a report (for school) on ‘The Fear Factor’ employed by the Nazis within Germany.

          I recommended that they watch the movie on Sophie Scholl, which is a lifechanging event in my view.

          And I let them read a passage from a book I had, written by Laurence Rees, in which an individual was lifted by the German authorities early on in Nazi rule, beaten and whipped with leather belts, given a rope and told to hang himself, then was finally let out of Dachau 18 months later, with a lung disease.

          Lovely stuff, eh.

    • Fascism is not right wing, yet you begin your analysis on the premise that it is.

      Mussolini said, “All within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State.” In what way could this be said to be, even remotely, the view of Ronald Reagan, Russell Kirk, Patrick Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Robert Taft, Sam Francis, Antonin Scalia, Phyllis Schlafly, Clarence Thomas, Calvin Coolidge, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin, Albert Jay Nock, Walter Williams, Garet Garrett, Thomas Fleming, or Barry Goldwater?

      Which of the above individuals was an advocate of ruthless social control, including murder?

  15. In view of the author’s reference to the ‘Sturmabteilung’ may I offer a few pointers for those not familiar with the terminology or the interrelationships between the various elements of the NAZI State apparatus?

    The SA (Sturm Abteilung, the ‘Storm Department’, aka. ‘The Brownshirts’), a large group of predominantly ex-military WW1 survivors, were the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, the NSDAP (National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei, the ‘National Socialist German Workers Party’).

    Once they had served their purpose, i.e. helping to bring Hitler to power during the 1920s and 30s, they were ruthlessly, in the main, eliminated during the blood purge of 1934 (die Nacht der langen Messer, the ‘Night of the long Knives’) so that they could no longer exercise any significant influence on the Party or its direction under Hitler and its enforcement arms under Himmler.

    The SS (Schutzstaffel, the ‘Protection Squadron’) was originally a branch of the SA and in 1934 Hitler put it under the command of SS Chief Heinrich Himmler who was appointed Chief of German Police in 1936. By then the SS consisted of four principal constituent sub-organisations:

    • The Allgemeine SS (General SS) was responsible for general policing and enforcing the racial policies of the Reich.
    • The Waffen SS (Armed SS) were combat units serving in and alongside the Wehrmacht
    • The SS-TV (SS-Totenkopfverbande, the ‘Deaths Head Units’) ran the concentration and extermination camps.
    • The Gestapo, (Geheime Staatspolizei, the Secret State Police), formed by Herman Goering in 1933, was taken over by Himmler, again in 1934, and in 1936 he made it a sub-office of SiPo (Sicherheitspolizei, the ‘Security Police’) then, from 27 September 1939 onwards it was administered by the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the ‘Reich Main security Office’) where it was considered to be a sister organisation of the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, the ‘Security Service’)

    I hope that is of some help, and perhaps the thugs of the ‘Antifa’ might care to consider the fate that befell the SA, but I doubt it.

    S III.
    P.S. Excellent analysis, MC; thank you.

    • The Night of the Long Knives (June 30, 1934) served an additional purpose: It killed off most of those war veterans who were witnesses to Hitler’s dalliances with “nancy boys” on the Western Front during the Great War. The SA was rife with homosexuality — any number of the victims that were hauled away and shot that night were rousted from their beds with their blond blue-eyed Aryan catamites — and many of those who knew about Hitler’s wartime predilections were in the higher ranks of the SA. Roehm was the main target, of course — he knew all of Der Fuehrer’s naughty secrets.

      • Oho!

        Interesting.

        Wasn’t he up to no good with his cousin as well, until she shot herself?

      • No doubt the SA was rifebwith homosexuality, but that was not the reason for the purge – that was to gain the trust of the German Army, who disliked the SA.

        I also find the claim of Hitler frolicking on the Western front quite amusing, but do you have any sources for this? Even biographers hostile to Hitler, such as Ian Kershaw, do not mention this.

        • The Hidden Hitler by Lothar Machtan.

          The documentary evidence is not extensive, since according to this account most of the witnesses were killed or bribed into silence. But there is some corroboration in the record. Look up his sources.

          It helps give a fuller picture about the Night of the Long Knives. Yes, of course it wasn’t the only motive. But it could have been more important than you think, if what happened on the Western Front was kept as secret as the author maintains it was. It could even have been Hitler’s most important motive — he was still consolidating his power in 1934, and if he had been exposed, it might have been devastating.

          • That sounds an interesting book, but I do note its claims are contested (to say the least).

            I also note there has been an ongoing campaign to pathologise Hitler, and far right supporters in general, by elements of the left. ( you can see this in a lot of the analysis of Trump supporters, and even Trump himself). Much of this smear, both historically and now, has come from Jewish intellectuals, e.g the Frankfurt school, or neo-cons today. That campaign has been quite effective in criminalizing certain political beliefs.

          • Yes, I noticed your bristling when I mentioned something that might sully the sterling reputation of Adolf Hitler. Of course the allegations must have come from the Jews! What other explanation is possible?

            As it happens, I read that book. Yes, its assertions are contested, but he does have some sources for what he proposes. I’m not saying it’s true, just that it’s plausible.

            Homosexual behavior in environments like that found in the trenches on the Western Front is quite common. That Roehm, Hitler, and others found an outlet in such a manner would not be surprising. Roehm went on to become fully homosexual; perhaps Hitler did not. That happens to many men in similar circumstances, e.g. prison — when they come out, they revert to heterosexual behavior.

            Why does it matter a century later whether or not it is true that Hitler kept catamites when he was in the trenches in 1917 and 1918? What difference, at this point, does it make?

          • I can’t help remembering Tony Sopranos’s outlook on this sort of thing, while people were in jail. 🙂

      • “Yes, I noticed your bristling when I mentioned something that might sully the sterling reputation of Adolf Hitler. Of course the allegations must have come from the Jews! What other explanation is possible?”

        Ha ha, Baron, good for you! I am suspicious of some attempts to smear Hitler (a flawed, but more interesting character than the cartoon-ish versions of evil we normally get presented with). Jews, naturally enough given Hitler’s hatred of them, have often had a role in this. Why shouldn’t Jews hate Hitler, after all – that is entirely appropriate given the murderous crimes Hitler instigated against them.

        I actually agree with you here – to me, the homosexuality or otherwise of Hitler makes very little difference either way. Like his alleged vegetarianism and anti-smoking attitudes, I doubt it tells us much about much at all. My own take, FWIW, is that Hitler was something of a prude (by today’s standards, and even by those of his own time) so I find the thought of him cavorting gaily hard to fathom. But perhaps that is me.

        PS Anti-semitism has had differing levels of plausibility in different historical contexts. In Hitler’s time Jews did have a disproportionate (and I would say malign) influence on much of Weimar Germany – it would be hard to make the same claim today about modern Germany. Similarly, arguing Jews have a great influence over US foreign policy today is more plausible than arguing, say, they have the same influence over Poland’s or China’s.

        Unfortunately, however, these nuances of analyses are generally not possible to make, given the virtual criminalisation of antisemitic views that has occurred since WW2. Understandable, of course, but I think regrettable as well. Much of antisemitism today has been diverted into – regrettably I think – exaggerated and silly attacks on Israel. I think Jews identifying with, and seeking to preserve, a homeland in the Middle East seems a reasonable thing to do.

  16. There is no doubt that liberal views – free trade, free borders, multiculti etc – have swept through many ” conservative” parties. This is, I believe, to the detriment of all of us who value nations in the traditional sense.

    On the role of the Jews, no doubt they have played an oversized role in many of these intellectual assaults on tradition – be it multiculti, free trade, demonization of traditionalist nationalists etc. Paul Gottfried is an essential read on this.

    Yes Jews are also overrepresented in counter jihad, but their motives may be different from more traditional nationalists. This may not matter much in the short term, but it may in the longer term I.e when articulating an alternative to multiculti is required

  17. A really interesting and informative essay. May I just add a small piece of information to your discussion? Having been a member of the Anglican Church I became a Roman Catholic in the late 1980s. The priest who received me into the Church – an archetypal Englishman- was also a convert to Catholicism after World War II and had got to know Dr. Kitty Little very well. She became a close friend of his, and was spoken of by him, and by others in our circle, as a paragon of integrity and a fount of knowledge.

    Thank you for your sterling work. It is appreciated more than you know.

  18. The problem with the GOP is that the three planks of the party have, in practice, become:

    open borders
    off shoring
    endless yet unproductive war

    Everything else is merely fluff to hide this fact.

    • You forgot #4: “Don’t raise taxes — borrow more money to pay for the wars.”

      • I thought I was the only one who noticed how “unconservative” it was to spend, spend, spend with no idea of how to pay it back, and how that itself was a tax that had yet to be levied, and without the pesky voting process that could be used against you in an election or primary. So much for the idea that the GOP hates taxes, they don’t hate them they hate getting caught voting for them.

    • Agreed. And although MC makes an exception for the Reagan years regarding America’s drift to the left I won’t even give the GOP that. Reagan raised taxes, increased the national debt, increased the size of Federal government and…if that wasn’t enough, he signed an amnesty bill for illegal aliens. How’s that for “grassroots conservatism”?

      The GOP has always been the conservative party that doesn’t conserve anything. It’s just getting harder for them to hide it today

  19. We got here due to our educational system and the liberal press. Imagine if we actually had a school system that taught American values, and free market economics. Imagine if we had a press that stood in support of those values and economic theories, and the idea that the founding principles of the nation are fundamental to everyone regardless of political affiliation or country of origin. Liberals in America have poisoned the playing field, and the conservatives have been on the defensive ever since. Politicians are just a reflection of the society they represent. Can you blame Bernie for running a Socialist ticket? This is actually what the voters want (regardless of what a total lie it is). The fact that the political right has done such a poor job in attacking such ideas does reflect very badly on them, but with the current press corps to report on this, who can blame them. Bring in enough low information voters and of course Socialism seems appealing, as well as any political reaction to it, regardless of how extreme they may seem to moderates. I tend to be not as optimistic as the author due to the fact that the left has constantly preached class and racial division. Where do you think the fracture in society is going to take place if that is what you are constantly reinforcing? Now you ask the opposition to not respond and to somehow adapt the very reasonable position of accepting anyone who supports our common values and views. Somehow I don’t think that is what will happen. History tells us that the extremist views hold sway in such an environment and not the voices of moderation ( look at Lebanon, look at Bosnia). There is no controlling just how extreme those voices will be. Until the press starts reporting in an unbiased manner, we are headed for disaster. Until the schools teach a common culture, we will be totally fractured.

  20. The factions in the British Conservative party along with England having more than two parties is why a Conservative PM cannot get his views in motion, no majorities, just several parties who are Liberal to Socialist having the majority and the factions who are Conservative don’t really get to first base.

    Lesson learned for those who have created factions in the Republican Party.
    The vast number of Republicans are Conservative. Bottom line, we have two parties, Republican & Democrat. The Democrats may hit each other in primaries but they team up together in the end working to defeat the Republicans.

    Republicans who don’t have the numbers of the Democrats, have a more difficult time because there are those who are the all or Nothing Crowd. If they can’t have a 100% pure conservative, they sit at home election day or vote third party.
    then you wonder why we have had an Obama for two terms.

    • I suggest reading up on the difference between the big- government Republicans and the conservatives. But the rot is through-and-through, as you can see in the so-called ‘conservative rags like The Weekly Standard and National Review. If they don’t get with the thinking of average conservatives neither magazine is likely to last much longer. We are being heavily spammed by NR bec we once has a subscription.

      You might enjoy reading the website Conservative Treehouse. They are small-c types who regularly call out the GOP(e) – the elites who LIKE being second, don’t care if the Republicans ever win the presidency again as long as they can keep their perks and their access to corrupt money – e.g., lobbyists for Big Pharma, Bigger Agra, and Mega-Meat.

      Sundance, the main writer for CT, is often ridiculed by the big boys. Because he scares them:

      http://theconservativetreehouse.com/

      I’d love to edit his writing, but just ignore the occasional infelicities and enjoy his deep understanding of what’s wrong.

      • Yes yes yes, Dymphna.
        Between GoV and Treehouse I have received a well rounded education at the ripe old age of 66. And the responders here, like the Treepers at CTH, are eloquent, learned and patriotic folk. I so needed this after 28 years in the Public School System, middle school math in Florida. The liberalism was positively stifling.

        I felt like I had PTSD when I retired and spent the first two years studying up on John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt. They taught me that I was wrong about pretty much everything I had come to believe outside of my faith in Christ as my Lord and Saviour.

        But suffice to say I am grateful to theconservativetreehouse.com (which I discovered when the George Zimmerman shooting occured in nearby Sanford, FL, and
        CTH covered it in great detail and with 100% accuracy it turned out) for the link to Gates of Vienna. You fine people here, the Baron and Dymphna, have raised the bar in international cultural and political coverage. Thank you and may God continue to bless you and keep you safe.

      • The monkey house is rabid Trump and vile and one of the posters there blamed Sundance for publishing a false title for a document in which Heidi Cruz was a co-signer and falsely said to have authored the document. I know this because I went ballistic on the poster when I discovered that the poster’s representation of the subject document was false. He then claimed to have learned the title from Sundance. I was banned from the site a short time later. This can be verified at this link. I’ve always wondered whether the misrepresentation is criminal.

  21. Interesting essay but in the UK, a similar case can be made for the fragmentation of the British left, a disparate group whose hatred for western civilisation is only exceeded by their hatred of each other.

    • It depends which day of the week it is, which they hate most. But yes, hatred does appear to be their motive spring.

      I see these people as a totally destructive force in this world. They don’t create anything, they only want to tear down everything around them. That’s all they can do. That’s all they stand for, at the end of the day.

      Their airy-fairy utopian dreamworld can never exist, and will never exist.

      And yet the further away they get from their fantasy world, the more extreme are the measures they adopt in order to express their hatred.

      They are a rotten, evil bunch.

  22. you need a hell of a lot of altitude to get over the rockies. don’t try it alone …

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