69 million page views

Re: OK, I Have A Few More Minutes After All

Reader comment on item: The Far Right & Jihadis in Alliance
in response to reader comment: OK, I Have A Few More Minutes After All

Submitted by Aymenn Jawad (United Kingdom), May 12, 2009 at 05:22

Dear Orange Yonason:

With regards to my point that many figures on the Left were leading critics of communism, you ask "what's my point?" My point is that not everyone on the Left has a totalitarian agenda! You then make the huge generalisation that "leftists are self-centred and intolerant, even of other Leftists who disagree with them".

The very fact that you concede that there is disagreement amongst the Left only proves my point that the Left as a whole is not a monolith. The social-democrat movement has integrated fully into the democratic world. The problem here is that we have two separate definitions of the Left: yours does not take into account the social democrat movement.

However, if you were to define the Left as solely being those to the Left of the parties I listed: you and I are in agreement. It was the far Left who devised destructive doctrines that took the West's three golden threads (rationalism, universalism and self-criticism) to their extremes: rationalism led to scientism, universalism to multiculturalism and cultural relativism and limitless self-criticism to self-hatred (as espoused in the works of Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk and Michael Moore). Nonetheless, I still contest your assertion that the Nazis were full-on leftists. Hitler banned trade unions, for example. That is hardly a feature of centre-Left politics.

Yours faithfully, Aymenn Jawad.

Dislike
Submitting....

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

Follow Daniel Pipes

Facebook   Twitter   RSS   Join Mailing List

All materials by Daniel Pipes on this site: © 1968-2024 Daniel Pipes. daniel.pipes@gmail.com and @DanielPipes

Support Daniel Pipes' work with a tax-deductible donation to the Middle East Forum.Daniel J. Pipes

(The MEF is a publicly supported, nonprofit organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Tax-ID 23-774-9796, approved Apr. 27, 1998.

For more information, view our IRS letter of determination.)