The great ‘far right’ myth
GUSTAVO JALIFE
IN HIS Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli says that the rulers of a republic must uphold the foundations of the official religion, for it enables them to keep the populace devout and united. He advises encouraging anything that reinforces that religion, even if false, since such fabrications inspire confidence. In ancient Rome, every form of superstition served as an instrument of manipulation and deceit in the hands of those in power. In other words, Machiavelli concluded that ideology – what the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser called the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence – is a strategic device to preserve order and impose obedience upon any human agglomeration. These days, ‘far right’ is one of the most conspicuous terms of abuse among a vast array of fallacies specifically designed to lure the uneducated.
The characterisation of the ‘far right’ as nationalist, racist and authoritarian ideologies that seek to eliminate democratic systems, even through violence, is repeated daily by mainstream media pundits who deliberately try to smear whoever defends democracy by resisting the intrusion of the state into every crevice of private life. However, the formula perfectly applies to forces dwelling on the opposite side of the political arc. The Soviet Communist Party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party NSDAP (the Nazi Party), the National Fascist Party of Italy and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, among other totalitarian ensembles, fit the description precisely. That the flagrant subversion of a primary concept has taken root even among presumably learned people confirms the resounding success of one of the greatest propaganda operations ever undertaken.
In an article published in 2021 by the Mises Institute, How and Why Fascism and Nazism Became the ‘Right’, Allen Gindler, a scholar born in the Soviet Union, explains the semantic upheaval. The National Socialist German Workers’ Party was not right-wing, real or imagined. In fact, the NSDAP had carried out a large-scale socialist reform consistent with its collectivist platform, virtually identical to the programmes of most socialist parties in Europe of similar inclination.
Only three months after taking power, the Nazis banned communism and social democracy while crushing the trade unions. Like Mussolini and the Bolsheviks before him, Hitler eliminated opposition to consolidate the dictatorship of his party, which Stalin identified as possessing two defining features: nationalism and racism. The implications of this labelling, Gindler notes, were decisive. ‘Ordinary people lost sight of the socio-economic totalitarianism shared by fascism, Nazism and communism. All that the lay observer saw in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany was their chauvinistic bent; all that stood out in the Soviet Union was its proclaimed brotherhood of peoples.’
The Third International, founded in 1919, spread the gospel: fascism had been officially inscribed as right-wing by the Bolshevik elite, the unquestioned haruspices of Marxian Platonism. For them, fascism and Nazism were instruments of capital and the most merciless enemies of the workers. Once their epic-revolutionary monopoly – a crucial marketing gimmick – was threatened, the communists expelled fascists and Nazis from their legitimate position on the ideological cartography. The end of the Second World War and the Allied victory completed the work of global disinformation that still endures.
The Spanish Civil War, observes Gindler, dramatically altered public perception. The entire world saw Hitler and Mussolini supporting the Nationalist side, while the self-proclaimed international left rallied behind the Republicans. Political theory records numerous alliances forged out of convenience; nonetheless, governments, academics and opinion-makers concluded that Italy and Germany were right-wing simply because they backed the 1936 insurgents. This ridiculous simplification – a binary opposition perfectly suited to captivate indolent crowds – triumphed, as usual, over any attempt at structured reflection.
Thus, Nazism and Fascism, enforcers of a leviathan state as the Alpha and Omega of social order, were placed on the right flank of the spectrum. Meanwhile, Communism, another criminal creed that embodied precisely the same principle, reserved for itself the left tag, presumably the good one, where the friends of the dispossessed and human rights-lovers perform in a movie tailor-made for candid audiences, the kind that enthusiastically buy a product because the seller sings its praises.
Those untainted by the statist pathology – those who could legitimately aspire to be called right-wing, however reductively – never had the time to alter the course of history. The Second World War began barely five months after the end of the Spanish conflict. Later, during the Cold War, writes Gindler, fascism and Nazism were shifted to the far right by a Western intelligentsia co-opted by Soviet propaganda. The use of nationalism as the decisive factor in political polarisation soon made its way into university textbooks.
A leftist regime treats people as inventory units and expands the state until individuality dissolves into an ocean of regulations. State is the name given to the public sector turned into a police machine to manipulate, confiscate, and punish the individual. In a democracy, politicians merely administer the public sector. In a leftist oligarchy, bureaucrats command the state. The leader, a word brimming with sinister tones, becomes the avatar of multitudes yearning for a despot, a psychopath, or both. The fateful year 2020 exposed what had long been visible to anyone with eyes to see. In the police society anyone not part of the ruling bureaucracy – or shielded by it – is condemned to a fugitive’s existence. Josef K. was not the product of a random hallucination. His creator Franz Kafka was an empiricist unjustly accused of being Kafkaesque.
The oft-declared proliferation of far-right organisations and figures is an ominous spectre encircling individual autonomy and freedom of expression. The inconceivable absence of far-left actors from institutional vocabulary reveals the desperation of governments and the moribund news industry facing the inevitable demise of their hegemonies. In a world ruled by sentimentality and fear, the reckless use of right-wing as an insult still guarantees clicks and votes. Slogans attract millions; critical thought repels them.
This article (The great ‘far right’ myth) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Gustavo Jalife
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