Everything That Opposes the Left Is 'The Right'? Balderdash.

Chapter 4.2: Deconstructing spectrums based on opposition to the left

Why this book | Title Page | Table of Contents
Preface | Introduction
PART 1
Chapter 1 (1.1) (1.2) | Chapter 2 (2.1) (2.2) (2.3) | Chapter 3 (3.1) (3.2) (3.3) (3.4) (3.5) (3.6)
PART 2
Chapter 4 (4.1) (4.2) | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
PART 3
Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14
PART 4
Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 |
PART 5
Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Conclusion
Appendix | Works Cited

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4.2
Spectrums based on opposition to the left

• The French Continuum, Version 1

• ‘The right’ in Latin America

• The Marxist Continuum (again)

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Spectrums based on opposition to the left

The next kind of relative spectrum is a variant of the previous, with the small adjustment that the perception of the rivalry comes solely from the point of view of the left.

For the better part of the last 200 years, the left has slowly gained control of the narrative in the most countries of the West, a process that accelerated after they began their “long march through the institutions” in the early twentieth century. Thus, to a significant degree, they have been able to turn their point of view into everyone’s point of view. This begins with our most common definitions of "left" and "right."

The French Continuum, Version 1

A spectrum born of myopic paranoia

In 1976, the New Yorker magazine published Saul Steinberg’s “View of the World from 9th Avenue” as the cover art for its issue of March 29th. With a casual flair that belies its intricacy and artistic skill, Steinberg’s image conveys a thousand words about the near-sightedness that can afflict even the dwellers of a cosmopolitan city like New York.

In the foreground, we see the streets from 9th Avenue to the Hudson River in great detail. Beyond the Hudson, detail quickly gives way to a compressed and childlike depiction of the rest of the United States—a few place names and bumpy things for mountains, bordered in straight lines by an excessively prominent “Jersey,” Canada and Mexico to the north and south, and a strip in the distance for the Pacific Ocean. Beyond the strip lie three lumps for China, Japan, and Russia.

The image itself, and its unique way of depicting myopic provincialism, have become iconic and instantly recognizable to nearly anyone over a certain age. Its style has been imitated in posters and postcards to convey the same myopia from the vantage point of other cities, states, and countries: “Look at us—we’re near-sighted and parochial too!”

This image is an excellent metaphor for the myopia of the French revolutionary left and the political continuum produced by their paranoid mania. At first, the left side of their continuum contained a variety of views, from the constitutional-monarchist Feuillants to the monarchy-hating Montagnards. (Fig. 4.5)

As the revolutionaries became increasingly radicalized, however, each out-of-favor faction in their turn was recast as “the right” and tossed to the other side, until finally, the Montagnards alone constituted “the left.”¹  (Fig. 4.6) On the right, all compressed together, were genuine supporters of the Ancien Régime, moderate republicans, and radicals who were starting to have second thoughts about the crazed carnage of the revolution.

Like the graduations on an irregularly stretched length of taffy, one side was compressed to the point of meaninglessness. The only information conveyed by this continuum: “the right” is anything that the official or orthodox left dislikes or decides to vote off the island.² Unfortunately, the French press gave its journalistic imprimatur to this myopic self-importance, saddling us with the first modern political spectrum.

‘The right’ in Latin America

In 1979, a small cadre of military officers engineered a coup in El Salvador against the ruling regime. Motivated by a desire to improve conditions and end government repression, the plotters contrived to co-opt military officers in key positions and then install a democratic-socialist government with as little bloodshed as possible. Best laid plans being what they are, however, a power struggle ensued and El Salvador was plunged into a protracted civil war in which as many as 80,000 lost their lives. 

According to René Guerra (then Lt. Col. René Francisco Guerra y Guerra, one of the original plotters³), there were three main players in the power struggle…

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