With a major grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, [Jennifer] Evans and her Carleton colleagues Christiane Wilke, a legal scholar; historian Shawn Graham; and communications professor Josh Greenberg have embarked on a two-year project called "Hate 2.0: Combating the Radical Right in the Age of Social Technology."
Evans and her collaborators will examine the ways social media are being used to combat neo-Nazism and other radical-right strains of thought in Germany and Canada.The Carleton Department of History announcement of Evans’ grant last summer featured this National Organization of Women (NOW) logo along with these details:
In other words our federal government is ponying up real cash for far-left academic ideologues to investigate ways of combatting a handful of lonely neo-Nazis operating from their moms’ basements. Couldn’t they have at least targeted a real and present danger? Was Richard Warman on the committee that awarded that grant? So many questions.
Oh the humanities! What a colossal waste! Shut down the whole lot and save billions!
Update: Some of the comments regarding the proper place of Nazism and Fascism on the political spectrum reminded me of this post on the subject a few years ago.
17 comments:
It is very telling of their incompetence, since university "professors", especially a "historian" should know that Naziism was on the Left, not the Right.
Not only should the government not be funding this radical groups, it should not be subsidising universities that insist on maintaining these useless programs and studies. If they want them, then let them and the students pay with their own money.
Maybe you want to go and re-write the wiki on the subject given that is says "Position in the political spectrum A majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics."
Wiki isn't God.
It's only as good as its gatekeepers allow. National SOCIALISM didn't care one bit about about liberty or economic freedom. Nazi top down government control of everything has a lot more to do with leftist policy than anything on the true right.
Keep believing that some lone loser racist is the extreme right when all his ideas are just like yours. You make it easy when you are all out to lunch.
It is very telling of your political naivete and ignorance of the rise of fascism to say that nazism came from the left. "Fascism should rightfully be called Corporatism, because it is the merging of state and Corporate interests." - Benito Mussolini
Sorry dude, Nazism, despite its name, was very much a right wing philosophy. The Nazis did not practice centralized control of their economy, in fact quite the opposite: they gave very large military and industrial contracts to massive corporations. Contrast this with the centralized control practices by, not just the USSR, but the western allies as well. For example, the US picked ONE design for trucks (a Dodge truck) and had GM make the exact same truck. They had Ford make aircraft. Do I need to tell you who won?
Nony, wrongo, all the murderous regimes in the 20th century were left wing.. pretending National socialists are right is dreaming in spades
http://mises.org/daily/1937
Nazism was socialism.
More generally, Fascism is the conscription of the general population to realize the visions of a central authoritarian government. It is top-down socioeconomic engineering. What is common between Socialists and Fascists is the erosion of individual rights and freedoms. Both tend towards totalitarianism. Both are equally destructive of society and the economy. For examples close to home, consider the McGuinty government in Ontario. It's Green Act is a Fascist policy. It has destroyed property rights and undermined local authority, it's using massive subsidies to finance a vision. Also consider the Conservative government in Alberta that has virtually destroyed property rights. All major parties in Canada are Fascist parties to some extent. The difference is that one can often reason with Conservatives.
In any case, I agree with Alain. There is no justification for taxpayers subsidizing these kinds of endeavours. If Canadians want to finance it they can freely choose to do so rather than being forced.
If it's top down government it ain't on the right, Anarchy resides at the far right..No government.
If it's state control it's on the left.
Progressive,Socialist, National socialism(Nazi),world socialists(UN) Fascist and Communist all forms of state control and are all on the left.
Conservatism, Libertarianism and anarchy are all on the right.
Small government, minimum government and no government.
Hard to see how people see fascism or Nazism as right unless your education was provided by the state.
The left lay all their abortions at the feet of the right hoping that others won't notice.
Some claiming it's a right wing ideology and some claiming it's a left wing ideology--ultimately in hopes of tarring their partisan rivals. Yawn.
The left always tries to peg neo-Nazism and fascism as part of the radical right. As noted in many of the comments, Nazism and fascism, like communism, are extreme statist, totalitarian ideologies. They’re kissing cousins of the socialist far left. The only possible way that Nazism and fascism can be seen as “right-wing” is as the right-wing of the far left.
"If it's top down government it ain't on the right, Anarchy resides at the far right..No government."
So that would make monarchies and religions like catholicism a leftist proposition. That doesn't seem likely now does it. Maybe the distinction isn't quite as simple as your reasoning.
Nazism found support in the German "C"onservative movement and it's churches. Communism in Russia not so much with either of these groups.
Trade unionists in Poland and elsewhere fought against communism, but they were far from right wing in philosophy.
The monarchy and aristocracy in Italy gave legitimacy to Mussolini and supported him.
In the end follow the money and see who signs on as partners and that'll probably inform you as to the leaning of a bunch of folk.
-hence the distinction between SOCIAL conservatives and Libertarians.
Lucky for us someone realized that evil exists because God gave us free will. Only a free soul can prove itself worthy of heaven, else its just robots following orders.
So Liberty is a gift direct from God, or its a nutural inalienable right, or its an aspect of humanity the removal of which makes one less than human.
Whatever your view conservatives love Liberty and economic freedom.
Nazis and Communists AND Theocrats are the opposite of Liberty.
The earlier commentor is right. Yawn. Who can haunt these sites for so long and learn so little about us?
Heh. That too was my reaction to the yawner. I was tempted to tell him to go back to sleep, since his brain was apparently disengaged anyway.
So you posit free will from a supernatural entity as your rationale for insisting that conservatism is freedom loving. The onus is now on you to show us which version of the invisible being is the correct one and define what a soul is and how it works with the physical environment we inhabit.
Far from clarifying the issue you've added another layer of smoke and mirrors.
Being tagged as conservative means that you are resistant to change. Conservatives sought to preserve the authority of emperors, kings and the religious through out the ages from the forces of change, the terms progressive/radical etc have been applied to those who seek to upset the status quo. It's one of the reasons why the term "Progressive Conservative" is an exemplar for the word oxymoron.
The only freedom conservatism has ever been associated with is the freedom to keep stuff exactly the way it is.
I'm an atheist moron.
I'm explaining them to you because you have some kind of mental block. Only the first reason involves God. The other 2 are Libertarian and Objectivism respectively and do not require God. We are all conservatives. We all desire our liberty and economic freedom that inherently belongs to us.
Further, you assume that because religion is backed by a belief in God that all it's works are therefor flawed as well. That is't true. It doesn't follow. Their belief in free will is chief among them to me but charity for example is the reason I'm still talking to you.
Top down government (Socialism) is neither political right or left. It's obvious some people who post here like Alain, dsaar, Alex and JR didn't even bother reading up on what all these terms meant before using them. They try to prove their point by making unintelligible and inaccurate statements on far-right wingers would love.
Actually Stephen your comment makes no sense and has no basis in fact.
How would you know how much we read? You don't. You can't.
It fits in nicely with your random and meaningless assertions though.
The key you have missed is that left and right mean nothing at all unless you define them. The left has gone out of its way to support socialism in all its despicable forms. The left is socialism by self definition. The right is freedom and liberty or the opposite of socialism.
Another place and another time, like 1930's Europe, left and right could both mean socialism. That isn't what we are talking about. It doesn't make you seem very smart to willfully get confused about it.
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