Here’s an article you would think is on our side, even coming with the cartoon you see above: The First Step in Fighting Barbarity is to Speak Out. But there, right near the end, we find this:
Well, I oppose the far right in whatever form they take, be it that of extreme ethnic nationalism or Islamo-fascism.
Militant Islam is on the right! Left-right has in many ways lost its meaning but that is ridiculous. The “far right” are invariably socialist and collectivist – see National Socialist Workers Party as just one example of many – and are thus part of the left in every way that counts. The difference between the National Socialists and the communists was in the word “national”. The communist version is characterised by the phrase, “workers of the world unite”, a presumption that was shattered for all time in 1914 when the workers in every country of Europe lined up with their own national governments as they marched off to war. The only difference between these ideological soul mates is whether they pretend they are seizing power for the good of the people of the world or only for the people of their own nation state. All the rest – in fact even that, especially that – are just lies and deceit. Radical Islamic Terrorists exactly fit the mould.
So let me assert one very simple way to tell left from right which is the John Stuart Mill On Liberty test. This is Mill’s own test and if you accept his “very simple principle” then we are comrades in arms on the right side of the political divide. If you do not, then you are part of the left, and the farther from this very simple principle your beliefs happen to be, then you are to that extent a member of the far left, which naturally includes communists, Nazis, Antifa, and most of the media.
The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
I gave a copy to each of the children of my cousins back home, with no real hope that any of them will read the book but just so they will actually have heard the name. Meantime, almost everyone I know, if it came to the crunch, is more like to line up with Antifa than the Mises Institute. This is the great danger of our age, that ignorance not only of what is needed to preserve our freedoms but what these freedoms even are. And if you haven’t read On Liberty, or haven’t read it recently, you really do owe it to yourself to at least go through Chapter One.
And having written that I came across this. From J.J. Sefton at Ace of Spades with the same message: How Can There Be “Right Wing Extremists” If the Right Believes in Individual Liberty and Freedom, OR Why the Left-Center-Right Paradigm Is a Myth. Read the lot, but here is a sample:
THERE IS NO LEFT/RIGHT PARADIGM. There are only those who believe in freedom and liberty and those who do not; or more precisely, those who are willing to take advantage of the good nature and gullibility of all too many to seize control and to tear down America as founded, Judeo-Christianity, the Scottish Enlightenment, free market capitalism and every other aspect of real human progress the aforementioned have fostered over the past 2,000 years of history.
We cannot allow the left to get away with its moral equivalence argument, which is one of their techniques for hiding their own hideous past, and the first place to start is to recognise no such equivalence exists. Keeping the blood soaked history of the left in constant view – which includes National Socialism – must become an absolute standard part of the political debate from our side of the divide.