Not "Right" Comin' At You

Noticed?  There’s been a lot of this recently.  The BBC reports:

Right-wing groups who claim to oppose Islamic extremism are trying to provoke violence on Britain’s streets, the communities minister has said.

First, the BBC outright employs the expression “Islamic extremism” without doubting quotes. Therefore, there is, definitely, such a thing as Islamic extremism, and we need not fear saying so. After all, the BBC just said so.  But that’s not the main issue.

John Denham spoke after clashes between different groups at a new London mosque, during a march by the group Stop the Islamification of Europe.

Demonstrations by an affiliated group, the English Defence League, have led to violence in Birmingham in recent weeks…

The question is: are they actually “right-wing” groups? Indeed, many of them seem more like (what were once) “traditional” Labour voters.   Regardless, Sunday, The Guardian/Observer offered up similar:

Hundreds of police will be monitoring Trafalgar Square today as extreme right-wing organisations and football-linked groups are expected to confront a coalition of Muslim groups holding a Palestine solidarity march in London…

The Independent also:

Fury as Muslim meeting is switched to Pall Mall while right-wingers protest in Trafalgar Square

Are the Beeb, the Guardian and the Indy therefore telling us the “white, working class” is normally Tory?  One assumes not.  Yet if we have been given the “all clear,” at least by the BBC, now publicly to utter the expression “Islamic extremism,” once more, however, we see this: major media failing (deliberately?) to appreciate there is a world of difference between a “right-winger” and a “fascist.”

The political compass is about “property” — first and foremost and in all its forms.  The less one thinks of private property, the more one is to the left.  The less one wants to see control of private property, the more one is on the right.

Therefore a fascist in reality is a combination of a hyper-nationalist and someone coming at government from left of center.  Why left?  Because he is most interested in state primacy over all property, including the rights of the individual.  Democratic socialists share an essential — thought not as extreme, of course — commonality of view.

That in league to some extent with the similarly private property loathing other left-winger: a communist.  He is different though, in that he is also one who, we are told, seeks to liberate the workers of the world irrespective of national borders.  So because he is not as wrapped up in “the state” that other leftists (especially socialists) more readily accept, a real communist — because he is indifferent to the idea of national boundaries — cannot, technically, be a fascist.

A “conservative” can be on the left or the right, depending on what the prevailing “norm” is.  A “conservative” is merely one who is uncomfortable with tinkering with long-existing traditions and “change” for change’s sake.  But it has become wrongly synonymous with “the right.”

That understood, pointing to an “arch-conservative” — meaning an extreme “right-winger” — as closely synonymous with fascist is badly off target.  True, because the nation-state is long the world norm conservatives are usually strong nationalists.  However, because conservatives also view the individual and private property — not the state — as supreme, they are usually also “small government, free market” types.

That being so, Mussolini was NOT a “right-winger”.  For while a hyper-nationalist, he was in no sense a “small government, free market” man.  For him, the state was supreme: it was to direct not only the means of production but also the life of each individual to achieve greater glory for the state.  The fate of any individual was decidedly secondary and even inconsequential.

Hitler was in the same boat.  Remember, National Socialism?  Rather a clue, one might think.

Which is why, also, Slobodan Milosevic was a fascist: ostensibly a communist, he is more accurately described as having been a state-centered, left-winger who morphed into an extreme nationalist.

None of that means that if one is left of center in a democracy, one is on the cusp of fascism.  Rather, it means only there is a blurry line crossed as state-centered-ism moves towards ever-increasing regulation over every facet of each individual’s life, with every individual faced with an ever more intrusive and capricious government exacting ever higher penalties upon anyone who fails to conform to the ever-widening state’s “goals”.  To justify the ongoing state power surge, the individual is always unfailingly informed that whatever the state demands — however disproportionate to resolving any given issue — is always inherently sensible and absolutely necessary for the greater good.

There’s the distinction: that governance is most definitely not “right-wing”.  But one suspects the last thing left-leaning mainstream media of today would want viewers to read too much about is how social democracy taken to the extreme, perverts not into communism, but in fact, into fascism?  That couldn’t be so because many wish to couple “right-wing” in the public mind with “fascist?”  Could it be?