Re: 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.

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