Reply #47: On left wing authoritarianism

[eomer]

I married into a family and live in a community that know all too well the horrors that can be inflicted by a left wing authoritarian regime. I know people who grew up never knowing one of their parents because they (the parents) were political prisoners for decades. I know people who had parents or siblings murdered by a left wing government.

Unfortunately the reaction of my neighbors and family members has been to believe that the problem was left wing authoritarianism when it was really authoritarianism of any stripe. A tiger, whether white or bright orange, is still a tiger. But it is extremely difficult (or impossible) to convince most of them of that. They will go to their graves convinced that anything that leans slightly to the left is "Communist" and represents grave danger.

Just to clarify, I think that the particular left wing authoritarian implicated here in my community uses left wing ideas as more of a cover story than a true ideology. But that's probably true of many right wing authoritarians as well. Many of the so-called Christian right wingers are only pretending to be Christian as a way to get and hold power.

I'm sensitive about this question because I struggle with it every day in my real world life, hearing constantly about the evils perpetrated by a left wing government. Then in my virtual life (here on DU, in other words) I hear constantly about the evils of right wing governments. I wish that both sides would realize that the problem is not with whether something is a bit to the right or a bit to the left. We ought to be able to have civil disagreements about some reasonable range of policy choices that are somewhat in the middle (although I personally come down firmly to the left). What we really need to reject is authoritarianism, period. What difference would it make whether the story the dictator tells is leftist or rightist. If your innocent child was murdered by someone so they could seize or hold power, why would you care what their lame justification for it was?