On Charlottesville: Why the Center Is Okay with Nazis but Hates the Left

Look, the Charlottsville march of Nazis (they had the swastika and the salute, they’re not alt-right) showed very clearly the difference between how Nazis and left-wingers are treated. Left-wingers march, and the riot police are in their faces. Nazis march, and the police don’t even intervene while they are beating up counter-protestors.

Then, of course, we have the Nazi who drove his car into the crowd, and much of the media calling it a “clash with counteprotestors” (no) and saying things like “amid violence” rather than “in an act of terrorism.”

The center, which includes what is laughably called the “center left,” may condemn Nazis, but they certainly prefer them to left-wingers. They can do business with Nazis. The people they hate are those they call the “alt-left” in an attempt to pretend that wanting universal healthcare and cops to not kill blacks is the same thing as being a Nazi.

But the reason is simple enough: Centrists make a lot of money from prisons and for-profit healthcare.

The left–people who want single payer healthcare and less people in prison–are a direct threat to the center.

A lot of people get confused about Nazis: When Hitler got in power, he broke the unions, and the socialists, and lowered wages. “National socialism” is not socialism. Corporate profits went up and wages went down; it was good times for business.

So the center, including the center left, is essentially okay with Nazis. If they have to choose between Nazis and the sort of scum who want everyone to have healthcare at the cost of corporate profits, or to reduce profits on prisoners, well, they side with their self interest.

It has always been thus, and it will always be thus.

(Update: Do I need to say that people who blame Russia for this are tendentious morons? Sadly, I think I do.)

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