Who's More Authoritarian, the Left or the Right?

Chapter 5.6: Setting the record straight

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) (4.3) (4.4) (4.5) | Chapter 5 (5.1) (5.2) (5.3) (5.4) (5.5) (5.6) | 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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5.6
Metrics of calumny

• Authoritarian oppression

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Authoritarian oppression

Perhaps it is an artifact of partisan politics and human nature to believe that our political opponents would begin ruthlessly oppressing us if given half the chance. 

In the United States, people on both sides of the political aisle have, in recent decades, predicted that an opposing party’s president will refuse to leave office when voted out, sparking military conflict and ending our long history of peaceful transitions of power. People on both sides occasionally make comments about being sent to reeducation camps by their political adversaries or subjected to brutalization by jackbooted stormtroopers. Not everyone, obviously, but enough to be noticeable.

Let us consider who is more likely to oppress whom. We will begin by identifying the left and right as we have thus far done…

The left is the collectivist, redistributist, and generally large-government phenomenon that arose in the nineteenth century, in the wake of the demise of hereditary class and in response to the rise in material inequality engendered by the ascendance of modern capitalism: communists, socialists, syndicalists, fascists, national socialists, democratic socialists, reformist socialists, progressives (early and modern), cultural Marxists, the New Left, social democrats, Postmodernists, and others.

The right is the classical-liberal, individualist tradition that came to political prominence during the Enlightenment, which cleaves to the concept of natural law and rights, and which helped set in motion the end of hereditary aristocracy and the rise of modern free-markets, continued today in the various flavors of libertarianism and classical-liberal conservatism.

Of these two, who has more reason to be wary of the other side’s propensity for oppression?

The left’s record is clear. They have engaged in and embodied every metric of oppression. They have created soul-crushing dystopian mega-states exercising control over economic and life-choices, speech, and even the very thoughts of the individual. They have deployed actual jackbooted stormtroopers.

They have sent millions to gulags, work camps, and reeducation facilities. They have interfered with family and child-rearing, restricted travel, destroyed economic and personal freedom, and then refused to let anyone leave. They have murdered and starved no fewer than 150 million of their own people. Even the “lite” versions of leftism seek control over a wide variety of individual choices, and have shown no indication that they would not go further if given half the chance.

Any normal human being is justified in at least wondering if the left might, at some point, subject him to authoritarian oppression.

Classical-liberalism has little to compare to this record…

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