Philip Cross: The ‘anti-fascist’ left were the real fascists all along

Many student groups have adopted from fascists “their anti-intellectualism, their anger, their street theater, their glorification of youth, or their mysticism,” conservative sociologist Peter Berger says. Getty Images file photo

It is important to note that combining conservatism with extremism is a sophisticated error of those who do not understand the place of fascism in the political spectrum. And it is that the “antifascist” left was the true fascist at all times.

That being the case, one could say that among the radical left it is fashionable to demonize the growing number of conservative governments elected in the Western world as the rise of the extreme right or extreme right. This is most pronounced in the anti-fascist movement, particularly on university campuses. However, the antifascist movement has a sophisticated misunderstanding of fascism and its location on the political spectrum.

Now, clearly, this lack of understanding that extends to their own social networks and even physical tactics that mimic the mafia psychology, street fury, and intimidation that are characteristic of the fascism they denounce, is more worrisome.

Another view

It should be noted that fascism subsumes all ideology to the objectives of the state and the need for state surveillance. The extreme version of conservatism is not fascism, as the left wants us to think. It is libertarianism

And it is that, instead of left and right or liberal versus conservative, a better scheme is to locate movements in a spectrum that ranges from tyranny to freedom. Thus, fascism embodies many elements of socialist state control of society.

It has now been seen that students have been attracted to the allure of totalitarian certainty long before political correctness and antifa movements reached the campus.

Outside the campus, the triumph of religious appeal over today’s reasoned argument lies in the radical environmental movement, whose early roots were in German fascism. Nowadays, the increase in extremism is more pronounced and frightening for the left than for the right. The demonization of law as fascism, which therefore loses its place to be heard in the public square, employs the strategy developed by the Marxist scholar Herbert Marcuse.

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Source: Financial Post