Politics - The modern left - The left's support for tyranny

The left thinks western capitalist democracy is basically, and is always in search of some kind of revolutionary "change" that will make everything right. As a result, the left has a history of getting excited about romantic foreign leaders and third-world "rebels".

The right, in contrast, thinks the answers to how to order society lie in the Western Enlightenment and were basically worked out in the 17th-18th centuries. As a result, the right has little interest in new "revolutionary" ideas, especially ones from outside the West. The right is largely unimpressed with the non-western world. In fact, the right seldom gets excited about foreigners at all, especially if they are non-westerners or third-world people.

The predictable result of these differences is that the left has a far more embarrassing track record of supporting foreign tyranny than the right. And because of these differences, this track record is likely to continue (see for example the recent left-wing enthusiasm for the butchers of the Iraqi resistance). This page lays out some of the shocking (and not widely-enough known) expressions of support from comfortable western intellectuals (mostly but not all left-wing or left-leaning) for foreign tyrannies they would never live under themselves.

The western left has a long history of supporting third world tyranny that they would never live under themselves.Shown here is how many western leftists still consider people like Che Guevara and Mao cool in some way.





Western useful idiots are shown around Soviet Russia.From Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930).





Irish useful idiot Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington praises Stalin's Soviet Union.

From Irish Press, December 15, 1932.





Another Irish useful idiot, feminist and republican Charlotte Despard.

From Irish Independent, December 24, 1930.









Right-wing support for fascism: The Daily Mail , under Lord Rothermere, supported Hitler, Nazi Germany, Mussolini and British fascism in the 1930s. The Daily Mail 's support for fascist tyranny ended when war broke out in 1939. By contrast, the modern Guardian actually prints articles supporting the fascist enemy during the war, while brave British soldiers are dying to try to stop the fascists slaughtering civilians. Both of them are despicable, but I suppose one would have to say that the Guardian is worse than the Daily Mail . British writer P.G.Wodehouse made radio broadcasts for Nazi radio. The broadcasts were harmless and he does not seem to have actually supported the Nazis. They seem to be the acts of an idiot rather than a supporter. They will, rightly, forever sully his reputation. G. K. Chesterton praised Mussolini. Like many other intellectuals, Evelyn Waugh supported Hitler, Mussolini and Franco in the 1930s. Though he made up for it by joining the Allied war effort in 1939. T.S. Eliot expressed some sympathy for European fascism in the 1930s, though again this ended with the war.







George Bernard Shaw said in 1945 that the Nazis running concentration camps "were not fiends in human form; but they did not know what to do with the thousands thrown on their care."

From the 1945 preface to Geneva.

Capture from here.









Irish right-wing support for Franco: Some of the Irish Catholic right supported the Spanish dictator Franco because: (1) he was conservative Catholic, and: (2) he defeated a barbarous communism. But the fact is, he was a fascist dictator who killed maybe 200,000 people and crushed liberal democracy. Photo of Irish Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave signing book of condolence for Franco at his death in 1975. Posted here.



"Dinner with Pol Pot", a promotion for a Swedish exhibition , Sept 2009, on the Cambodian genocide, and the Swedish leftists who supported the communist regime.And search for copies.





20th century French intellectuals have a lot of innocent third-world blood on their hands.

Sartre calls for the violent overthrow of bourgeois society.Luckily for him, that never happened in France.But the hatred of decency that he preached infected much of the third world, and led to millions dead.









The left's support for communist Cuba

Galway City Council resolves in May 2011 to erect a memorial to the totalitarian communist Che Guevara





The left's support for Serbia

Harold Pinter supported Milosevic. As well as supporting Castro and Milosevic, the Nobel Prize winning leftist Harold Pinter has also described the US government as "the most dangerous power that has ever existed" . He describes Guantanamo POW camp as a "concentration camp" . He actually believes Bush got elected because of "propaganda and control of the media" (rather than, say, because thinking people were convinced by his arguments, and think people like Pinter are ignorant crackpots). LGF posts FrontPage articles How Low Can They Go? Harold Pinter wins the Nobel Prize in Literature by David Pryce-Jones

Brave students from Tehran University, Iran, write to the Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, 2005. They attack his left-wing isolationism, that says we have no right to overthrow foreign tyrannies: "Today, we the people of Iran are under the yoke of a regime no less brutal than the Nazis. Just like the Nazis, the Islamists are motivated by an ideology of hate. They have destroyed our country that they conquered through terror. They are as ruthless as the Nazis. Can Mr. Printer tell us, how can we fight them back with our bare hands?" "Mr. Pinter is not moved by the misery of people who may not be as white as he is. ... He thinks others have to fight for their freedom if they really want it badly. Did you fight for your freedom Mr. Printer or was it given to you in silver platter, courtesy of the very Americans that today you disregard. How ungrateful of you Sir!" "As the oppressed people of a third world country, that will remain a third world as long as it is not liberated, we would like to thank the United States of America, the Great Britain and all other countries that helped to get rid of the blood thirsty dictators such as Saddam Hussein, Molla-Omar and the Taleban. ... We dream of the day that our flag will be hoisted next to the flags of other free nations and will dance in the wind proclaiming our freedom to the world. The oppressed people will be victorious and you and your ilk will be remembered as those who sided with their oppressors. Your name will be covered with shame."



Hamas flag at anti-Israel demo, Dublin, 31 May 2010





Hezbollah flag at anti-Israel demo, Dublin, 5 June 2010.





The left's support for tyranny will continue forever.

A play on a popular meme. Found here.





"Liberals failed one of the two great moral tests of the twentieth century, [and] they still do not know they failed and have not grappled with the implications of that failure."

- Mona Charen on the Cold War.

"I wonder, however, why people are still puzzled over the double-standards within the Irish left and the Human Rights Industry vis a vis Israel. To me, it shows that people still believe that the far-left actually has a real sense of right and wrong. They do not. Leftism has no regard for right or wrong, its about favoring Designated Victim Groups. ... I actually suspect that if Hamas were a group of Christian fundamentalists, the left would have cheered on Operation Cast Lead, as Christians of all types are very low on the DVG-scale. If Israelis were predominately Arab Muslims, nobody would give a damn what is happening in the region, especially the left, as they could not feasibly demonise one side for the crime of being more white and western than the other."

- John Connolly on our perennial ability to be surprised or shocked at the left's support for tyranny.

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