I had a history teacher who gave me the perfect tool to understand this. The trick is to stop thinking it's a straight line between left and right. It's a circle.

at the top of the circle, is the political center, normal people. left is left, right is right. But as you go further left or further right, you follow the circle DOWN, and then at the bottom is batshit insane, where the left and right intersect in a blur of violent and repressive ideas.

Essentially, Stalin and Hitler insisted they were different, and were willing to kill each other's people, and their own, to prove it, but that makes them more alike to each other than normal centrists, or even people right-of center or left-of-center but still not batshit insane like Hitler and Stalin.

Goldberg insists that modern liberalism is closely aligned with the most batshit Stalinist ideas, and of course would insist modern conservative is not at all aligned with batshit right-wing stuff like KKK and Hitler.

If you imagine a clockface, Hitler is 5 o-clock, stalin is 7 o'clock.(normal is 12, batshit is 6, right is 3, left is 9) He's saying liberals are 8 o'clock and conservatives are 2 o'clock.

Is Goldberg correct in that the left is more batshit that the right? Well, that depends who you ask!

Holy crap! I was just composing in my mind, as I read, this exact notion. You saved me some typing and for this I am greatful. It seems too that the further from 6 you move (in either direction), the more difficult it becomes to see the truth of this.

A good example from popular culture, the book/film Fight Club.

Yikes! Make that the further from 12.

The left-right foolishness is worse than Madai describes. The left-right paradigm supposes that political positions can be reduced to one variable that can be plotted on a line or a circle. This causes endless confusion and futile arguments like the one over "liberal fascism".

It takes many variables to describe a political position like:

1) The role of the government in the economy

2) The extend to which social order should constrain liberty

3) The extend to which common services should be socialized

4) The role of government in promoting social justice

5) etc.

So instead of a one dimensional line (or circle) we have a multidimensional space. Now, it happens that these variables tend to be correlated and with a highly partisan two-party system, the variables will be highly correlated. This gives us the illusion of a natural left-right political spectrum. But it's just an illusion.

pwoxby, you can increase the complexity of the model until it is indistinguisable from reality. I'm replacing a simple, fatally flawed model with an equally simple one that is slightly less fatally flawed.

As for illusions, sometimes they are useful even if they are illusions.

I didn't intend to give the impression of disparaging your model. Indeed, I'm indebted to you for bringing up the point that a line is not the only model of political positions. And you are correct about a model being a balancing act between simplicity and reality.

I don't expect people to think about political positions in terms of multidimensional spaces. I can't do it myself. But this discussion about whether fascism is left wing or right wing is based on a false premise and on that I think we agree.

I partly agree with you -- I agree that taken to their extremes, the doctrines of zealots on both left and right converge to authoritarianism. However, there was a time when we had words describing these two extremes: fascism on the right, and communism on the left. We could have a reasonable discussion about the differences between them, and about how over-reactions against one might play into the hands of those trying to implement the other. (Fears of communists in Italy and Spain helped bring fascists to power -- and it was Franco's "muscular" anti-communism that made him a darling of the National Review and other conservatives.)

And now, are they not all owned by the same companies? What I fear most( not personaly, for the world) are the young wild ones Magabi and his ilk are training their young to be totally conscience free soldiers, what are we doing? the same LOOK, just the same. we are becoming more like them ( cold war ) they like us, is that not so? Why I do not know but it is all about power aint it? and they are all using the same tools, some with a smile some with a smirk, some you love to love some we love to hate, same result. Why? why? do we believe that any polotician can possibly make things better than another? they cannot, will not, that is not what they are about now a days. Only we little ones can make life on this earthmore like the paradise it really is xxx dont you think?