The reversal of Left and Right
by Nicolai Sennels
In the good old hippie days, the socialists on the Left were the good guys. They risked their jobs and reputations demonstrating for the equality of women, sexual freedom, and freedom of speech to criticise the system and the authorities. It was the time when the Left said that “Religion is the opium of the people” and freedom-loving youth made fun of the religious authorities and their dogmas.
But something happened. The Left — which defines itself as the protector of the weak — decided that a repressive religion and its often fanatic and incompetent followers were a threatened minority, whose destructive actions were a result of poverty and a reaction to others’ criticism, all caused by capitalism and racism.
Most people were cowards and feared being called racists, and this made it easy for the Left’s agenda to find its way into politics and the media.
The Left’s struggle for “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” has faded. Today, such archetypal human values of liberty (free speech), equality (of women) and fraternity (social cohesion) are defended by the Right.
Many people grew up as Leftists or hippies, but are now categorized as Rightists — or even extreme or radical Rightists — because they criticise the oppression of females and religious fanaticism, and support Western culture. But those people did not change. Politics changed. On protecting and promoting basic humanitarian values and human rights, the Right is now the cutting edge.
Nicolai Sennels is a psychologist and the author of “Among Criminal Muslims: A Psychologist’s experiences with the Copenhagen Municipality”.
Previous posts by or about Nicolai Sennels:
27 comments:
"The Left’s struggle for “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” has faded. Today, such archetypal human values of liberty (free speech), equality (of women) and fraternity (social cohesion) are defended by the Right."
the Left... Nicolai, you don't know what you are talking about.
Right = America
Left = historically compromising with islam ruling class of europe...
“Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” are AMERICAN VALUES FIRST..
I don't believe you have an intrinsic understanding of being a real 'honest to goodness' individual.
There is no reversal.. there is a RETURN..
Americanization is Salvation.. If you can keep it..
Van Grungy, you are mistaken. "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" is NOT an American slogan. It was the motto of the French revolution in 1789, and has been the French motto ever since, except for the brief period 1940-1944, under Vichy, when it was changed to "Travail, Famille, Patrie" (work, family, fatherland).
It's not American in the slightest.
They risked their jobs and reputations demonstrating for the equality of women, sexual freedom, and freedom of speech to criticize the system and the authorities.
True. Except that it was personally and selfishly motivated in that they had their own personal agendas intertwined with the people they supposedly where/are supporting.
Just as now, the lefts agenda is not support of religion, minorities, or Muslims, but about gaining control and power.
People think that money corrupts, but in reality it is power that corrupts. Money is just one way, but manipulating the sympathies and beliefs of others is a much more potent means.
Baron is right; that motto reflects the first earnest irruption of modern Gnostic exuberance, in the French Revolution, its devolution into grotesque terror, and thence its derailment into unhinged Imperialism. It was not for no reason that Hitler made a point of visiting the mausoleum (so to speak?) of Napoleon to pay tribute to a kindred soul.
My take on "Left" and "Right":
Left/Right Polarity, Convergence
You righties never put yourselves in the lefties’ shoes, SO typical! Tsk, tsk, tsk. ;-)
May I attempt to explain the left’s core value.
Today’s lefties suffer mentally because they aren’t being victimized.
Victimhood is Virtue. It is a constant source of SHAME to be living the First World Western Good Life as they do. There is an absolute moral authority wagging a virtual finger accusingly at them in their mind for being "Privileged."
“Oh, ow, that hurt, even just uttering 'Privilege'. OK, I won’t say it again. But........if only I can find someone to yell it at very scoldingly, with the full force of that awful wagging finger - Why, Yes! Then I’ll feel respite from that postmodern burden! [zombie like monotone:] Must find a way to position self in a narrative that expiates me, that paints me as moral (however questionably)[/zombie off]. I must regularly be in a position of scolding something Western that’s either “privileged” or “oppressive” or I start to look evil to myself."
What a waste of a mind. This pressure preempts both their morals and their intellect. That may be one of the parallel mental patterns they share with Islam. And to them, you all are shameless heathens, unmindful of how sinful you all are, being permissive of privilege. If you could only see it as they do, you’d agree with them and convert, appalled by your shameless former self, which was ugly as privilege.
Anyhow, this is not a bugbear to trifle with, for those in its grip. Just as Islamic beliefs’ power is not to be trifled with for those it that grip. Once the mind is “trained” this way, reasoning is difficult.
The seed of this may exist in earliest leftism (and some earlier influences too), but previously it probably appeared against a contrasting (more traditional) background, and now it’s so dominant and normal it doesn’t stand out.
That’s why, as Nicolai Sennels observed, all the cool kids are on the right, nowadays (that is, people appreciative of rationality and liberal virtues).
One cause of this shift has been such academic fashions as Edward Said's Orientalism, and the related schools of thought such as post-structuralism. I'm trying to read more of this garbage, to figure out how all this can be reversed, but it's hard to read and critique because most of that stuff doesn't make sense to an honest person.
But anyway, that's the problem and the possible solution. Once college professors move on from these toxic schools of thought, young people will no longer froth at the mouth at any mention of colonialism or European culture.
One readily apparent explanation for the Left's subversion is its dalliance with Communism and all other forms of Socialism.
In a "radical" (Is your Frink-O-Matic Irony Meter™ pegging?) departure from being "against the system", Liberals have sought to grow government in ways that only a career politician could love. Big Government and the nanny state that is so often swift to follow runs directly against early leftist ideals.
One of Liberalism's greatest downfalls was its inability to understand that free market economics played a large part in the evolution of those exact freedoms which the Left so adamantly claimed to protect. We are seeing this exact same manifestation in how the Left’s fondness for “free speech” has come full circle to now impose unequally enforced “hate speech” laws that protect their pet minorities.
In this rejection of Capitalism lay many of the Left's very worst departures from reality. Its ability to embrace redistribution of wealth most perfectly embodies this rejection of the real world. For there to any wealth that can then be redistributed, first someone must create that wealth. One cannot tax their way to economic prosperity. Clearly, this concept eludes most modern Liberals.
By vilifying Capitalism, the Left allowed itself a host of other distortions that eventually perverted its original frame of reference. A principal result of this anti-Capitalist stance is the firm belief that most criminality results from economic disadvantage. Money (or the lack thereof) being “the root of all evil” and other persistent societal or socio-religious urban legends were embraced despite their clear contradiction of the intellectual foundations which the Left once cherished.
The author addresses this somewhat tangentially by mentioning how Liberals "decided that a repressive religion and its often fanatic and incompetent followers were a threatened minority, whose destructive actions were a result of poverty and a reaction to others’ criticism, all caused by capitalism and racism." One might easily suppose that, in accordance with Liberalism's "anything goes" mentality, it suddenly became unfashionable to label any other outlandish cultural norms as morally corrupt.
It is here where moral and cultural relativism managed to get their collective noses into the Liberal tent. Amidst their own hedonism and redefined Roman orgies (e.g., Woodstock), the Left found it rather difficult to criticize the excesses of other groups, even in the face of their clear illiberality. A distinctly perverse harmonic convergence saw the Christian church join in this Liberal chorus of voices defending what were once clearly objectionable practices such as that laundry list of man’s inhumanity to man otherwise known as Islam.
By rejecting the primacy of creating and retaining individual wealth, the Left then cascaded into discarding so many of the other vital corollaries which derive from that basic precept; such as private property and other fundamental Constitutional rights. The Left’s greatest hypocrisy resides in how it routinely hid and continues to hide behind these exact same Constitutional rights, even as it seeks to erode them. This Constitutionally subversive behavior is one of the most glaring examples of how today’s modern Left employs the same corrosive tactics as Islam and thereby shares in the blame for deconstructing Western civilization.
Excellent post, Westward Ho. I look forward to seeing more of your comments. The Left's wholesale rejection of privilege, even when it is earned honestly, goes to the root of Liberalism's "classless" (in every sense of the word), society.
Nicolai Sennels' generalization is partly correct,"something happened" to some sections of the Left,but definitely not every member of the Left. I'd bet that the present noisy crowd of "anti-facist","anti-racists" and pro-"multiculturalists" are the intellectual descendants of the old Communist party,not the social democratic Left.
The Old Left would never have pandered to Islamists.
I'll remind those commentators who demonize the Left,that without the Left slavery would still exist,most people wouldn't have the vote,women would be non-persons and most of us would work 60hr weeks from the age of 10.
Thank you very much, Zenster. I'm trying to better collect my thoughts on this subject - the left's mutation into the closed minded herd it now is.
Nicolai Sennels wrote:
"In the good old hippie days, the socialists on the Left were the good guys. They risked their jobs and reputations demonstrating for the equality of women, sexual freedom, and freedom of speech to criticise the system and the authorities. It was the time when the Left said that “Religion is the opium of the people” and freedom-loving youth made fun of the religious authorities and their dogmas."
At first, I thought the author was joking. Then I realized that he really believes this tale - about benevolent socialists - to be true. This is nevertheless a big help for my understanding of his preoccupation with leftist Club of Rome issues like overpopulation and so on.
So van Grungy is right in his assertion, but not where it says that the US is right or right-wing. Not since classical liberalism in the Anglo-American world changed beyond recognition during the 19th/20th century, and aggressive Wilsonian Progressivism became standard, rendering the so-called polarity between left and right completely useless, leading to the farcical opposition between Dems and Cons, the same in-difference we see in the EUssr, between social and liberal democrats.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
* firmly doped up, typing with left hand only, because of a nasty skeeler (inline skating) fracture. So this comment might contain even more nonsense than usual ;-)
The Isle of Wight Festival 1970 all change, the music is libarated from the hippie collective and the next generation inherated the music without the hang-ups and hypocrisy.
Unfortunately the subversive brutality of the hippie mind collective would be transferred into the classrooms of the U.K.
Thanks to the modern studies teacher for the allience against Uncle Joe, down with the history teacher who dragged me across the table for not conforming to the collective.
Westward Ho:
I think you are right about the Left's psychological trait: They want to be victims. They see themselves as victims - and therefore easily identify with other victims (even though those "victims" wants to turn the world into a Khalifat)
latte island,
Edward Said didn't originate the trend of anti-Orientalism; his famous 1978 book merely exploited it -- albeit influentially.
This article by Martin Kramer is a good place to start for this perspective on Said. Said would not have enjoyed the influence and traction he has enjoyed in subsequent decades, had the West not already been receptive to his unoriginal thesis: i.e., the West's dominant PC MC paradigm has an anti-Western tendency (taking the good virtue of self-criticism to irrational excess).
Baron,
Slogans and reality are not the same.
Though a French motto, it was America that kept that sense of liberty equality and brotherhood alive and strong.
At least until the 100 year progressive slide into europeanization. All socialist, all the time.
There really is no left and right anymore. Just correct and dead wrong.
Europe has been on the dead wrong side constantly. The only correct side is adherence to American founding ideals.
Europe can pretend it ever valued liberty equality and fraternity, history shows europe has rejected these sentiments over and over and over again.
If euros actually win against the muslims, I hope they finally come to their senses and adopt American ideals that have been implemented and have been successful. You know, before the idiocy of progressivism tainted the great experiment.
On the victimhood tendency in Leftism: Of what precisely they feel victims is authoritarian structures of Those in Power. I.e., there is an amorphous view among Leftists that Those in Power are, and always have been, corrupt reactionary power-hungry crushers of the free spirit -- whether the evil Kings and Popes and Clergy of the past, or the evil Fascists and Right-Wingers and Republicans (in the American political sense) of the present. There is thus an aura of the Rebel that imbues the victimhood of the Leftist -- struggling against "the System", against "the Man"; which is largely the reason they tend to romanticize the Third World guerrilla, who are Noble Savage Peasants fighting in sincerely starry eyed virtue against right-wing and fascist "oppression" -- into which slot the various Muslim mujahideen of the world fit snugly as O.J.'s glove (this thus is what I have called the "Che-Guevarization of the Muslim").
It is thus peculiarly ironic that many anti-Leftists (whom in my previous link of my previous comment about "Left/Right" I have dubbed "Polar Leftists") share essentially the same alienation and paranoia about Those in Power.
Edison owns the lightbulb because he made it work for everybody. He did not invent it, but nobody cares about the inventor.
It's not enough to just invent. Perfecters should get the lions share of the credit.
Jmo
Spaghetti is another example of perfected ownership.
Zenster said... "In a "radical" (Is your Frink-O-Matic Irony Meter™ pegging?) departure from being "against the system", Liberals have sought to grow government in ways that only a career politician could love. Big Government and the nanny state that is so often swift to follow runs directly against early leftist ideals."
There you go. The modern "left" has always been "against the man". Challenging authority. When they challenge to the point where they become the authority, they have to change their tune.
The can't be against "the man" when they become "the man". So what do they become against? They become against those not in power... and in this they become the very thing their ideologies are taught to loath.
They come to loath their own authority.
Someone once said that Liberalism is a mental disorder.
Sagunto: I hope that your right hand feels better soon. :)
What happened to the good old days when Nicolai Sennels wrote about what he knows best? His articles about what he learned when working with young muslims in prison were invaluable.
I found the information he gleaned from interviewing those muslims enlightening and informative. He was is a unique position to give us information that no one else had.
Then he decided to weight in on unrelated matters were he was much less knowledgeable. When he advocated sending defenseless midwifes into muslim homes to education women on their rights while presumably their oppressors were nearby, my enthusiasm for him cooled considerably. He should have at least included a Seals Six team to guard and protect those midwifes.
Nicolai, how about you write more about what you know best? I guarantee those articles will be as well received as the previous ones you wrote.
Sincerely, SarahSue
Egghead -
"Fracture radius proximal", should be over in a breeze ;-) Thnx.
sheltiebreeder -
"What happened to the good old days when Nicolai Sennels wrote about what he knows best? His articles about what he learned when working with young muslims in prison were invaluable."
I've been asking myself this very same question and I agree to the full: Sennels' clinical expertise with young Muslim delinquents really added to the discussion. When he zoomed out and started to cover "the bigger picture", I got a feeling that he's trying to save the "old left" good guys from the "new left" bad fellows, (un)wittingly promoting the myth that back in the old days, socialist "ideals" were bona fide and even contributed to Western civilization.
We have quite a few of those fine and good natured publicists in Holland, all of them hanging on to this type of old leftism nostalgia, blaming today's left-wing politicians for "betraying" true leftist values and ideals.
My general point would be that it is precisely those ideals that - even with the best of intentions in mind - pose a threat to Western civilization, now as then, as ever.
Ultimately, what makes these ideals so dangerous, is their utter disregard for the reality of human existence. Having read up on Voegelin, after some discussions with Hesperado, I found a thought-provoking passage on the universal human experience that provides a powerful drive for all of this leftist, progressivist, post-Millean liberal, experimenting with modern society - all for "the common good" or "social cohesion", of course - and I quote:
"Gnosticism as a counterexistential dream world can perhaps be made intelligible as the extreme expression of an experience that is universally human, that is, of a horror of existence and a desire to escape from it."
Eric Voegelin, "The New Science of Politics" (1952).
Take care,
Sag.
The Demonization of the Working Class.
All those privileged Western elites so guilt riden, victims of enlightenment and entitlement now rendered speechless by their affliction they leave it to their muslim subclass supplanters to act as the lens to project their self-loathing and attack the indigenous underclass - chavdom the last bastion of Western Civilisation.
But last week a Lib Dem peer on that very commission [Commission for Equality and Human Rights] caused controversy by using the term [chav] on twitter: "Help. Trapped in a queue in chav-land! Woman behind me explaining latest Eastenders plot to mate, while eating largest bun I've ever seen," Baroness Hussein-Ece tweeted.
Lawrence: They can't be against "the man" when they become "the man". So what do they become against? They become against those not in power... and in this they become the very thing their ideologies are taught to loath.
They come to loath their own authority.
That is a neat rephrasing of my previous point and a solid bridge into Westward Ho's own outstanding observations about victim mentality and privilege.
Of equal, if not greater importance, is identifying a link to the Left's deep seated self-loathing. Even when given an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of their own Leftist ideology, this phobia about power causes crippling internal dissonance.
One cannot simultaneously wield the scepter and be the oppressed victim. So, what shall it be for the Left, privileged leader or downtrodden masses, "floor wax or dessert topping"?
Sadly, Liberal minds may not be able to endure the stress of abandoning their favorite underdog pose. Witness how Obama's administration has played the race card so often as to leave it dogeared and creased. Such disreputable campaign trail folderol should have been left at the White House door but has, instead, become a staple repertoire for these four-flushing champions of "social justice".
Not too long ago in a comment here at GOV (back in February of this year), I weighed in on my misgivings about Sennels, who strikes me as one of those neo-Wilsonian asymptotic analysts who may be plotted on the anti-Islam graph somewhere between Daniel Pipes and Jamie Glazov.
@Zenster
"this phobia about power causes crippling internal dissonance."
In the case of the U.K. rather than concede and hand that power back to its rightful inheritance - the indigenous masses, the elite can not as the indigenous masses are now the manifestation of the elites own selfloathing and power can not be concede to those deemed inferior therefore the scepter must be handed to the muslim proxy.
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