Where’s the libel?

Independent Observer,

Thank you, I have bags of intellectual curiosity.

And I would remind you that a socialist, Steve Cohen, wrote one of the earliest works on the left and anti-Semitism.

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/ressources/funny/

Over 25 years ago, but that wasn’t my disagreement with you, it was your sloppy use of language, exaggeration and you essentially argued that authoritarianism is compelling a Left-wing trait.

You will remember your original comment:

“Leftist ideology is already authoritarian-minded, whether the exact ideology is that of the Stalinism-apologist or the more velvet-gloved “political correctness”. “

I do not object to you pointing out that there is, insensitivity, ignorance or stupidity about antisemitism on the Left. That is fairly obvious from the evidence, but what I objected to, as a minor student of political history, was you inaccurate representation of the Left as being the sole authoritarians.

Independent Observer, I have no doubt in your library you will have books on the prewar situation? and you can find any number of authoritarians rumbling across Europe, a sizeable percentage were rightwing.

If you were then, so inclined in the 1970s to study Latin America you would find many authoritarians, military dictators, who were rightwing.

If you were to look for dubious dictators across the world who America found mostly agreeable in the 1980s and 1990s, you would see that they were mostly rightwing.

And even today, hunt across the Middle East and you’ll find be authoritarian regime in Saudi Arabia, rightwing and conservative, still better if you went across to Burma, you would find another rightwing authoritarian regime and so on.

That is a bit more of a balanced picture, and I’m sure if my memory were not so bad I could probably name another handful of authoritarian, conservative and right-wing regimes in the past 40 years.

Authoritarianism isn’t solely confined to the Left, although if you wanted to look at some of the worst regimes you could certainly make a case for Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China, but they are not alone.

I hope that explains what I was trying to convey.