. The BBC’s Burma coverage since the cyclone always speaks of ‘generals’ or ‘the military’ when discussing the regime. After more than a week with no clue to the ideology of the regime in any of the reports I caught, I had to go to reference works and Wikipedia to discover that (quoting the latter):
Democratic rule ended in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d’état. He ruled for nearly 26 years and pursued policies under the rubric of the Burmese Way to Socialism. Between 1962 and 1974, Burma was ruled by a Revolutionary Council headed by the general, and almost all aspects of society (business, media, production) were nationalized or brought under government control (including the Boy Scouts) …. Between 1974 and 1988, Burma was effectively ruled by General Ne Win through the Burma Socialist Programme Party …
(For the whole wikipedia entry on the involved history of military rule in the country, go here.)
This socialist origin and orientation of military rule in Burma seems to have been airbrushed out of routine BBC coverage. The mention of ‘generals’ and ‘military’ with no hint of their ideology has an obvious tendency to suggest a right-wing regime rather than the left-wing regime it more appears to be. Is this actual deceptive intent, unconscious prejudice, mere carelessness, mere brevity of reporting, mere ignorance, …? Take your pick.
[Added a few hours later] To be fair, I can believe the Burmese junta does not shout about ‘socialism’ as loudly now as in the days before the collapse of the Soviet Union (when it was more fashionable), and with frequent coups of one general against another it may be hard to say just what their current ideology is – beyond holding onto power, of course. I conjecture a situation similar to China: an unrepudiated socialist past but with little ideological rigour today. My reason for posting is that I found myself wondering whether, if the regime had a similarly-explicit right-wing origin, I would have found it equally easy not to hear of it during a week of coverage.
[highlighting of text in wikipedia quote added by me]
Anon – I would big him up more if he forced Chevron to stop investing there.
aviv – your definitions are slightly misleading. The left cannot merely be categorised as believers in a large state. Where does that leave the libertarian left? Anarchism is not a right-wing ideology by any stretch, so where does that fit into your explanation?
As for dictators being solely of the left…..presumably General Pinochet was a left-wing dictator who just so happened to draw a lot of support from the right? I seem to remember that when the left was protesting against Pinochet, the right were noticeable by their abscence.
There has, and always will be, a totalitarian right and a totalitarian left as well as a libertarian left and a libertarian right. To suggest otherwise is simplistic in the extreme.
Korova- I do not merely categorise the left as believers in a large state, but a large state is certainly necessary to implement left wing ideology (central economic planning, curtailment of individual rights and freedoms e.g.) I am happy to consider other features that differentiate left from right, but this seems to me to be a big and useful one. Perhaps your definiton will shed light on what you mean by “libertarian left” as my definiton obviosuly can not reconicle the two. So, how would you define left wing and right wing?
Anarchism? I have not thought about this since I was about 14. I suppose it is neither left nor right…nor relevant.
Pinochet. True, he was an advocate of free markets, so he had that in common with the right. In most other respects (violent disregard for individual rights and freedoms e.g.)I would suggest he had more in common with the USSR, Cuba and North Korea of his day than with the US under Regan or UK under Thatcher. As for why they supported him, if you were politically sentient during the 70s and 80s I suspect you can figure that one out.
Am I to take it then, from your rather simplistic political analysis, that you consider George W Bush a left-wing president? He does, after all, display a disregard for individual rights and freedoms. If you characterise the right as observing basic liberal values, how can you explain the denigration of a right to fair trial? How does Guantanamo Bay fit in with the right’s liberal values??
Both the left, and the right, are in love with the idea of the large state. Both the left and the right have supported, and continue to support, surveillance of private individuals.
I’m sorry, but your definitions of what constitute ‘right’ and ‘left’ (old fashioned terms that they are), do not bear up to scrutiny.
Korova- you still have not provided me with a more accurate definiton of what constitutes “left wing” (and with a definiton of what a left wing libertarian is). This might be a more fruitful exchange if you did.
Your contention that the right is in love with idea of a large state is patently absurd and disingenous, not least because most left wing criticism of Regan, Thatcher and other bogey men (sorry, bogey-persons) of the Right focuses on the fact they reduced the role of the state and degree of collectivism in society (think helath care in the US and unions in the UK). The right has never advocated big government, so please don’t fob that off on us: it is a left wing obsession.
Do I consider Bush left wing?. No I do not because most of his policies are in line with liberalism and are therefore right wing.
Do I belive that governments have the right to conduct surveillance on certain members of the populace that they have cause to belive are a threat to society and act in such a way that prevents those individuals from carrying out an act that endangers said society? Youbetcha. Indeed, protecting society and enforcing rule of law and security is one of the few roles that right wing thinkers approve of handing over to the state (with appropritate checks abnd balances). I draw the line at such left wing institutions as Stasi and gulags though.
Do I belive that Guantanamo Bay is an abomination that undermines the essentially liberal nature of the US? Nope, though you could argue (and N.B. in the US, unlike in left wing states, people do, all the way up to the supreme court) that it is inconsistent with the essentially liberal nature of the US (i.e an exception that proves the rule).
I’m sorry, but your comments do not successfully rebut anything I’ve argued so far.
and here is where you and I differ:
Do I belive that governments have the right to conduct surveillance on certain members of the populace that they have cause to belive are a threat to society and act in such a way that prevents those individuals from carrying out an act that endangers said society
That ‘belief’ in a supposed threat to society is reliant on instruments of the state, which is why I am opposed to a large state spying on individuals. As far as I am concerned, no elements of the state are to be trusted, whereas you believe in the ones that merely support your own prejudices. There is no justification for widespread surveillance of individuals by the state. I suspect you believe the burden of proof lies with the individual (hence your acceptance of the denigration of liberal ideals of justice that you claim to support – Guantanamo).
Of course the right advocates big government, just not in the way you describe. A state that locks people up without trial and spies on the individual, both serious attacks on individual liberty no matter how you dress it up,is indicative of a large state organ. The state is, as far as right-wing governments are concerned, an organ for crowd control whilst corporate entities get a free ride to control all other aspects of the state. My ideological predecessors, alongside myself, oppose oppressive state power (eg Guantanamo, gulags etc etc), corporate power and support the individuals right to liberty. Given your support for Guantanamo, it would appear you are not as staunch a defender of individual liberties as you might claim (you will find many right-wing libertarians are as opposed to Guantanamo as I am).
Out of interest, as you are concerned with civil liberties, which civil rights organisations are you a member of? Personally, I am a member of Amnesty and I have been involved in campaigns in respect of the US, UK, China, Cuba etc. How deep is your love for civil liberties one wonders?? Is it merely posturing??
Oh God — Shamnesty International. A bunch of Left wing whores.
What a poseur.
Can i now assume that you have no better definiton of left wing than the one I proposed?
In order:
(1) “No elements of the state are to be trusted”. You, Milton Friedman and me are in full agreement. Hence the bit about checks and balances.
(2)”there is no justification for widespread surveillance of individuals”. Completely agree, hence my qualification along the lines of “certain individuals who pose a threat…”
(3) “you believe the burden of proof lies with the individual”. Nope. Not sure where you got that one from.
(4) “the (right wing) state is an organ for crowd control”. Clarify please (preferably without reference to Noam Chomsky, who I find tiresome).
(5) “Corporate entities get a free ride…”. Interesting view point, especially in light of corporation tax, regulatory oversight, anti-monopoly legislation etc. etc.
(6) “… to control all other aspects of the state”. Fascinating viewpoint. I feel some Chomsky coming on…let me try to short circuit it by asking: whom exactly do you think controls corporations?
(7)”My ideological predecessors…oppose corporate power”. Assuming corporations are powerful, can you think why they might be? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that they produce products and services that consumers wish to buy? But hang on, that means conusmers have the power becasue they force corporates to produce things they want.
(8) “You will find many right wing libertarians are opposed to Guanatanmo as I am” Yeeees. And your point is?
(9) I am a member of Amnesty” I love the apporpriation of the moral highground. I take it then you were the sole voice at Amnesty that opposed Cuba’s membership of the UN HRC?
I really do think that you fail to see the inherent contradiction in your argument. You claim that you (and your fellow right-wingers) are concerned with individual liberty and the overwhelming power of the state, yet you have no qualms in defending the one arm of the state that can do most direct damage to individual liberty. The checks and balances argument is laughable. Given your lack of trust in the state, who will administer these checks and balances? The state?? Or agents of the state?? Or will the state entrust these checks to someone entirely neutral? Given that you view the state with suspicion, why do you think they would handle this any better?
As for the right-wing state as an organ of crowd control…let’s take the example of General Pinochet. Pinochet shut down on basic civil liberties whilst introducing Friedmanite economics that were recommended by the ‘great’ man himself. This led to free market reforms in conjunction with vicious human rights abuses. The kind of vicious human rights abuses that you claim to be opposed.
Your argument about civil liberties is now helped by nutjobs like Jack Bauer. When even your own side claims that groups fighting for civil liberties across the globe are ‘left-wing’ it only underlines how your own side has made civil liberties an issue of the left and not of the right. I cannot even bring myself to believe that someone of the right is claiming to be a big supporter of civil liberties. The present occupier of the White House has overseen the biggest destruction of individual liberties in modern history. And guess what?? He’s a creature of the right.
korova | Homepage | 13.05.08 – 5:29 pm |
The present occupier of the White House has overseen the biggest destruction of individual liberties in modern history. And guess what?? He’s a creature of the right.
Bwahahahahahah!
Which rights have been destroyed, and for whom? And compared to which part of American history, exactly? The part of the 1950s when Leftoids were blacklisted from working in many industries, and the government tolerated massive public discrimination against African Americans and Jews? The part in the 1850s, when slavery was legal in many states and Congress was more concerned about which new states would be free and which wouldn’t, (when they weren’t feeding at the trough and beating each other with canes, that is)?
The Constitutional rights of American citizens are under threat from the Left, not from Bush. Bush didn’t un-Constitutionally ban handgun ownership in DC. Bush doesn’t tell American academics to silence free speech the way they do. Bush doesn’t tell people they don’t have the right to their paychecks.
Bush doesn’t spy on you, and he doesn’t spy on me. Bush hasn’t taken away a single civil liberty of yours or mine, nor that of any legal American citizen – unless they were engaged in criminal activities. I’m sure you honestly believe that many, if not most, of the people held in Guantanamo Bay are either completely innocent, or were merely guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time when Amerikkkan jackboots decided to go a-huntin’ fer terrorists.
You would be wrong. You are telling fairy tales. Other haters believe that nonsense, and even try to extend their hatred of the truth to claiming that any light shed on an actual weakness or failure of Obama’s is a mere “distraction”, calculated to inspire hate.
You have never been under any surveillance, or in any danger of losing a single right as a US citizen for the last eight years. Ever. You have not lost any civil liberties of any kind due to Bush. Ever.
David – Is that some kind of weak joke??????? I find your kind fascinating. You are against a large state apparatus, and yet you hold everything that eminates from the state to be wholly true. An interesting paradox.
“I find your kind fascinating”
There it is again the authentic patronising voice of the totalitarian.
“Anarchism is not a right-wing ideology by any stretch” –
err, actually it is. Since it believes in (extreme) personal freedom, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called anything but. It is diametrically opposed to lef-wingism, which requires the state to intervene in order to right (real or imagined) inequalities.
“How deep is your love for civil liberties one wonders?? Is it merely posturing??” –
what a patronising little poseur.
“The present occupier of the White House has overseen the biggest destruction of individual liberties in modern history” –
what an ignorant, pathetic poseur you are. You know a big fat zero about the USA, and yet you post this infantile, screeching nonsense. You are saying that Bush is worse than Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot. You are a dumb loser, an idiot, probably insane.
“I find your kind fascinating”
You patronising tosser.
“You are against a large state apparatus”
The Stalinist one that your sympathies are so obviously with, I suppose.
Korova is a wind-up, right? Nobody can be that ignorant and stupid, right?
Korova- It is telling that the only organ you can think of that may be in a position to impose a check on state power is the state. That would be a difficult contradiciton to resolve. Fortunately I do not inhabit your state-centric universe and am able to identify other possibilities, chief among them the electorate.
Pinochet: I agree completely with your analysis, which is why I dumped him firmly on the left in my above post. The only ting right wing about him was his economics, in all other respects he had more in common with Uncle Joe, Fidel and Mr. Kim than with Maggie and Ron, who whatever their faults did not spend a great deal of time fretting about crowd control. The pre-eminent example of crowd control that I can think of by the way is the Berlin wall, a masterpeice of the left, not the right.
Interesting though these digressions are, we have wandered from the initial issue: what is your definiton of left wing?
sorry-anonymous above is me
I thought Anonymous was Galil 😉
Really, it is quite amazing the half-witted nonsense some of you come out with.
“Totalitarian”??? I cannot think of a single totalitarian regime I support. It would kinda contradict my political beliefs somewhat.
“You are saying that Bush is worse than Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot.” No, never said that actually, Nearly Oxfordian (or should that be Nearly Literate).
Pinchet was left-wing?? That is probably the biggest joke of them all. No evidence, just a simple attempt to re-write facts.
Well, I say biggest joke, I forgot Nearly Oxfordian’s remarkable claim that anarchism is a right-wing ideology. Very bizarre. Not an argument I have heard before, certainly not be someone of the right. I can only assume what they were referring to is anarcho-capitalism – a branch of anarchism that may be associated with the right.
My definition of left-wing?? Simple. It is a system by which property and the distribution of wealth is subject to control of the community. This means anarchism (or libertarian socialism) or your basic socialism. How the property and wealth are controlled varies amongst the left. The anarchist left would want them directly under the control of the workers and/or the local community and communists would want them controlled by the state itself (which is why I am no communist).
I simply cannot understand the assertion that anarchism is ‘right-wing’. Anarchism would wish to abolish borders (they inhibit personal liberty), would want all major corporations to be owned by the workers and not the ‘bosses’, capitalism would be smashed, prisons would be abolished, the application of violence to obtain mineral wealth would no longer be an option and the church would be abolished. Exactly what similiarities do you suggest there are??
Oh, and I do wish you would desist from labelling me a communist. It’s really affecting my standing amongst fellow anarchists.
Korova- so a community (lets call it an electorate) gets together and decides how wealth is distributed (lets call that bit tax) and property is controlled (law). Sounds good to me.
By the way, you did not reply to points 5,6 and 7 in my previous post regarding corporations. If you are going to hysterically fling about accusations, please have the courtesy to follow through. Unless of course you were unable to do this without reference to Noam Chomsky (and Naiomi Klein- is it too late to add her to my Index Liborum Prohitorum too?), in which case your silence is appreciated.
Regards
Aviv
korova, you sad, illiterate tosser – before you accuse others of illiteracy, go and read the mindless crap you posted yesterday, in which you did claim that Bush is responsible for the worst loss of civil liberties in modern history. Since Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot are part of modern history, and since (which evidently you didn’t know) there was the minor matter of loss of civil liberties under their regime), it follows (assuming one has two brain cells to rub together, which you don’t) that you are telling us that Bush was worse than all those.
Now go sue your primary school teachers for failing to teach you to read, you utter moron.
Korova- so in an anarchist “society” one would NOT have the freedom to individually start and own a buisness and one would NOT have the freedom to worship in a church…any other restrictions you would like to impose on your future subjects?
I note also that there are to be no prisons in your anarchist-land. What what would you do with people who “applied violence” to obtain mineral wealth? What would you do to people who started a business, or secretly worshiped a God of their choice?
aviv, don’t confuse korova with logic – she’ll get a headache 😉
Nearly Oxforian- I know,I know, but it amuses me. Grant me this pleasure in my otherwise drab and colourless life…not as drab and colourless as it sounds like in Korova-land mind you…must run and exploit the workers now: so much mouth watering surplus value to be skimmed off of their labour.
Fair enough, aviv – be my guest 😉
Oh, you guys! 🙂
“in an anarchist “society” one would NOT have the freedom to individually start and own a buisness”
Pray tell, why would one want to set up a business in an anarchist society? It would be a pretty pointless exercise, wouldn’t it?
My point exactly.
korova,
It seems Bush has also removed your freedom to speak out about all those civil liberties you’ve lost. I guess we should be grateful that you’re even allowed access to a blog that occasionally uses the terms “free speech” and allows commenters to have opinions that are sometimes critical of the Bush Administration. Gosh, things sure are rough for freedom-fighters in Bush’s Amerikkka!
Can’t even name one, can you? Bush may have screwed up a lot of things, but destroying our civil liberties isn’t one of them. Unless you’re talking about the right to kill policemen, US soldiers, and US civilians, that is. In which case, I grant you that Bush has taken those rights away from some people.
Aviv – eh? I’m not quite sure what you are going on about. Of course they would be entirely free to start up a business in an anarchistic society, but why would anyone use their service, given that money would be abolished?
korova | 14.05.08 – 4:07 pm |
Lets say it was the UK….
60 Million people operating without money, companies, telecoms(Company), banks…..etc etc
Brain dead is the only description.
Silly me – you got me with that one. Yes, yes, I see now. Of course it would.
Yawn, stretch…I think I’ll grant you the last word on this Korova.
By the time Korova graduates, finds a proper job, has kids, pays bills and taxes and so on, this anarchy malarky will be seen as the immature phase that it always was.
I don’t know anonymous- I’m coming around to the idea…no money, talking dogs, fish riding bicycles and juggling sugar-plums, clouds made of marshmallows, (unbranded) beer flowing freely from the taps…and of course my favourite: no more “application of violence to obtain mineral wealth”. I might just sign up.
Korova,
“Of course they would be entirely free to start up a business in an anarchistic society, but why would anyone use their service, given that money would be abolished?”
So when the money system is abolished as per your utopian system, how will people actually pay for stuff? Back to ancient bartering systems? How will you pay for your ISP subscription? With a sack of corn?
The people in power probably take one look at the likes of you and give themselves high-fives.
I don’t think they do, Anonymous – they are too busy rolling on the floor laughing.
Still waiting for korova to prove that Bush is worse than Hitler in the civil liberties department. I have a sinking feeling that I am in for a heck of a long wait.
Ah, you guys. You crack me up ;-).
Aviv – I think we will never agree on this one. However, I understand where you are coming from and it is rather heart warming to see that some on the right are prepared to stand up for civil liberties. It is a shame more people on your side of the fence don’t do more to defend civil liberties and speak out about the abomination that is Guantanamo. It’s nice to see that the divide between us can be bridged from time to time.
Nearly Oxfordian – Again, I think we will never resolve our differences on this one. You will forever see the state’s attempts to incarcerate without charge as a vital development given the ‘threats’ we face. And who can blame you? Whilst I disagree with your position vis-a-vis the altruistic nature of the security arm of the state, I entirely understand your position.
Anonymous – I have found your remarks entirely witty and insightful. Again, whilst I disagree with your standpoint, I appreciate your warm sentiments and your unending sense of humour.
Thank you for your time everyone, the conversation has been most…..enlightening.
“Nearly Oxfordian – Again, I think we will never resolve our differences on this one. You will forever see the state’s attempts to incarcerate without charge as a vital development given the ‘threats’ we face. And who can blame you? Whilst I disagree with your position vis-a-vis the altruistic nature of the security arm of the state, I entirely understand your position”
What a dumb, illiterate tosser you are. I have never said anything even remotely similar to those views you attribute to me. Not once. Not on this blog. Not anywhere else. Not ever.
All I did was expose your utter ignorance about America, about history and about several other things besides – those points you are now running away from like the little coward you are, because your ignorance has been exposed and you don’t have a clue how to deal with people who don’t buy your lies.
😉