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Political radicals are also at home on both wings at the same time. Radical right by day, radical left by night.

by Haga 7y ago

rexpop 7y ago
On its face, your comment is absurd, equating two concepts universally defined as exclusively complementary.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  ...unless you see the political spectrum as a circle where the opposites meet at the top. There is a lot to be said for this given the resemblance between authoritarian-left and authoritarian-right regimes. While they might sound different on paper and on the barricades they somehow seen to end up with largely identical - and largely dysfunctional - societies.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    Authoritarian regimes will drape themselves in whatever flag serves their interest, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there's no saying it's indistinguishable from its alternatives.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
You're getting downvotes for reasons that are probably obvious, but in fact you see this happen often enough for it to be notable as an occasional phenomenon - although currently it's far more likely to happen left -> right than right -> left. Some radicals aren't radical at all. They're actually authoritarian malcontents who will jump on any bandwagon that allows them some publicity, attention, and power. These people infect and distort public politics. They're often malignant narcissists, which can make them shockingly hypocritical, especially when they appear on the left - not to mention potentially violent. A lot of the left/right rhetoric is really about people accusing other people of being this kind of person. IMO if they were kept well away from power, politics as a whole would be far saner. Also IMO at this point in time they're far more of a problem on the right than the left. That hasn't always been true in the past, but right now it's a lot easier to find the odd person who started out as (say...) a student Marxist suddenly fervently supporting xenophobic anti-immigration policies than vice versa.

Political radicals are also at home on both wings at the same time. Radical right by day, radical left by night.

by Haga 7y ago

Political radicals are also at home on both wings at the same time. Radical right by day, radical left by night.

rexpop 7y ago

On its face, your comment is absurd, equating two concepts universally defined as exclusively complementary.

Yetanfou 7y ago
...unless you see the political spectrum as a circle where the opposites meet at the top. There is a lot to be said for this given the resemblance between authoritarian-left and authoritarian-right regimes. While they might sound different on paper and on the barricades they somehow seen to end up with largely identical - and largely dysfunctional - societies.
- rexpop 7y ago
  Authoritarian regimes will drape themselves in whatever flag serves their interest, but if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there's no saying it's indistinguishable from its alternatives.

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

You're getting downvotes for reasons that are probably obvious, but in fact you see this happen often enough for it to be notable as an occasional phenomenon - although currently it's far more likely to happen left -> right than right -> left. Some radicals aren't radical at all. They're actually authoritarian malcontents who will jump on any bandwagon that allows them some publicity, attention, and power. These people infect and distort public politics. They're often malignant narcissists, which can make them shockingly hypocritical, especially when they appear on the left - not to mention potentially violent. A lot of the left/right rhetoric is really about people accusing other people of being this kind of person. IMO if they were kept well away from power, politics as a whole would be far saner. Also IMO at this point in time they're far more of a problem on the right than the left. That hasn't always been true in the past, but right now it's a lot easier to find the odd person who started out as (say...) a student Marxist suddenly fervently supporting xenophobic anti-immigration policies than vice versa.