The Left is in crisis -and the first steps have been taken to the right direction

 Weak pun in the title intended.

So. The Left is in an utter disarray, with failure after failure everywhere in the Western world from the US to Central Europe. (Yes, culturally, it is still "the Western World".) The focus shifted from the traditional issues (plight of the working class, the poor and the rest) to identity politics that is oh so important for the activism-minded part of the upper middle class, the people I like to call "the Starbucks Socialists".

And it shows. 

But now, in Germany, at least, there is a new party. And the people forming this party gave a pretty good argument for their case. If they are successful, I can only hope there will be similar initiatives all over the world. 

Even if you are a conservative, you have to agree that an unipolar political field is unhealthy for all involved. We need a strong, healthy Left to keep the Right in check, and vica versa. So cudos to you, guys, and godspeed.

Migrants, refugees and terrorists - and the short memory of everyone involved

During the height of the migrant/refugee crisis in 2015 many -admittedly right-wing- media outlets and politicians asked the question about how many terrorists are entering Europe with the unchecked flow of people.

Remember the rat cartoon? That is sooo Nazi! (Except it isn't, but don't let a deliberate misinterpretation stand in the way of a good controversy.)

Remember when Hungary tried to enforce the Schengen rules as a border country, and got a shit-ton of flak for that? Just remember the name "Keleti Railway station".

For this they were called Nazis. Yes, I know we don't like Fox News and the Daily Mail; however the whole point of being a rational and liberal person is to actually use, you know, reason instead of labels. Unlike those stupid right wingers who are just putting everything you say into the category of "tree hugging pinko commie", and hence ignore it. No, liberals never would do that.
Ever.

Except they did. Or many of the people who pride themselves as liberals did so. Which is a shame; a shame we would like to quickly forget. They ridiculed, they accused, and they used red herrings so that the actual issue -how many terrorists enter Europe unchecked- was never asked. In fact if you search 2015 articles, you will be reassured, how unlikely it is for terrorists to go through all that suffering just to walk into Europe; after all they can fly, right? (A BBC article talks about Schengen issues pretty eloquently, although appears to avoid some tough questions involving events a couple of months prior...)

After the wave of attacks, of course, the narrative changed; now we can read about how these pesky terrorists used the crowd to mask their presence (just like the rat cartoon suggested), how they abused Europe's naivety to enter and do their shenanigans; but no one in the Guardian, Independent, New York Times, etc. stopped and said: you know, guys? We were wrong. No; what you get is a report on terrorists using the Balkan route to enter Europe, and then an attack on the one politician who dared to mention that it is a very real danger. The terrorist in question came through the Keleti Railway station into the EU I would like to stress. He was helped by well-meaning people (or, being somewhat cynical, people who sought to get political capital out of the situation), who then marched to the Austrian border to demonstrate how evil it is to enforce the law. In other words: terrorist (well, several, as we know) did what those Nazis were warning us they would. Now what? Do we apologise? Or do we keep going on with the offensive?


In fact, they still seem to be very much attacking the one guy who was right in this case. Don't get me wrong; Orban is no saint. He needs to go; this post is not about him. It's just in this one case he was right, and he was right when it mattered- during the height of the crisis, and not in hindsight. Since then his 2015 suggestions of refugee camps outside of Europe (oh, are they hellish? YOU NAZIS!), the protection of borders (I wonder how you do that without fences to force people use the border checkpoints?) -even by the Guardian, and so on have been adopted quickly by the people who called him (and the whole nation of Hungary) a Nazi; and refugees are now called migrants. (It's interesting that even the Guardian changed its tone, and nobody seems to care.)


Yet nobody had the guts to say: you know what? We fucked up. These other guys were right. They just pretend the past did not happen, and by the magic of the media, indeed it has been erased from the history books. And we're not talking about an ancient kingdom's past, or if the Black Prince was indeed such a blood-thirsty tyrant. We're talking about changing what happened two years ago. We're talking about decisions made that cost lives. Could have been some of these events avoided? Who knows? But that does not absolve people who made them, who called others trying to argue for a different approach Nazis, and then now pretend the whole thing did not happen.

It is truly Orwell's worst nightmare coming to life.

Anti-Hungarian bias in the media

Yes, I write a lot about it. Because it annoys me. Because it is present, and it is frankly strange, that the Western media would pick on a shitty little country that matters to no-one. Since I happen to be from that shitty little country, it annoys me. It also worries me, since the reason Hungary got the short end of the stick after WWI (and was punished way more than anyone else on the losing side) was one part due to the incredibly anti-Hungarian press in the UK and elsewhere. While British and Russian football hooligans were fighting on the streets, the British newspapers were worried about Neo-Nazi Hungarians who did not actually do anything- showing the photo of a Hungarian fan who happens to live and teach in Spain.

This is especially prominent during the times when the center-right is in power; during these times the cries of fascism, the return of the ovens and whatnot are always the loudest. One reason is simple: the Hungarian Left loves to complain about the destruction of democracy, the free press, and the inherent racism of Hungarians which can clearly be seen by them electing the wrong people. (They are fine of labelling their own people genetically inferior, too.) Also: antisemitism is on the rise, obviously. Even though facts and statistics don't really show it -especially comparing Hungary to France, the UK or the US, Hungary is clearly on the verge of firing up the ovens. Interestingly, when they don't get the stuff they want, they just bury an interview. 

The last couple of years of migrant crisis was also a great demonstration of this. They were complaining about closed borders (even though anyone is still free to pass through the actual border crossings, and ask for asylum), the brutality of Hungarian police (with carefully edited footage and no proof whatsoever), the chaos at the Keleti Railway station (as if the government could be held responsible for people striking up camp in the middle of Budapest...), and for not letting the migrants on the train (even though the Schengen Agreement kind of forbade letting this happen), where Jews are in danger (yet interestingly French Jews are fleeing to Israel), and so on and so forth. When the government's propaganda (which was quite inappropriate) mentioned no-go zones in the UK, the BBC and others jumped on it; even though the BBC four was airing "No go Britain" at one time, and there are issues with the whole thing. Sorry, guys, if you make documentaries like these, people will believe them, regardless of what the actual situation is... so you really should not complain. If you made a misleading documentary, then the onus is on you for the mistake. And if all else fails, just do the old guilty by association smear quoting some BNP nutjob. Suddenly his delusions mean that Hungary, is in fact, Nazi. Don't get me wrong: it's not about how innocent and pure the government is. It's about how biased the western media is, regardless of what the government does. 

The whole of EU used Hungary for their virtue signalling exercise, meanwhile quite content in the knowledge that someone else -that someone they are condemning with the strongest words- are doing their own dirty work. Once the migrant flood rerouted (even though, if they really wanted to keep to the law, they still could have applied for asylum), they themselves started building fences- which, apparently, are not that big of an issue. Only the Hungarian fence hurts these paragons of morality. The ones built before or after are fine. A fence between two EU nations (Slovenia and Austria), does not offend anyone, either. (Oh, but it's not a fence at all... it's a "gate with wings".)

Hypocrisy much?

Three more examples demonstrating the blatant anti-Hungarian bias in the Western Press.

Example number 1.

The recent shift to the Right in The Netherlands filled a lot of people with worries until the election. So what was the reaction? Did we read angry editorials that would shame OId Testament Prophets about the inherent Nazism of the Dutch?

Did we?

Well, not exactly.

We read a couple of lamenting articles on how we need to respect the differences in the EU project, and how not respecting them could lead to a powerful push-back.

So when populism makes way in Western Europe -you know, the civilized folks- then we need to consider the reasons, and gently ponder on the solution. When populism -and not even as extreme as the Dutch- is making way in Central -sorry, Eastern- Europe, then it's those unwashed barbarians are tainting our sacred European project!!

Example number 2.

Gabor Vona, the leader of the actual far right, the Jobbik  Party (think of Hungarian Ukip or Tea Party) went to London. Now, you don't have to make facts up to write bad things about this guy. You don't need to lie -there's enough bad things for everyone to choose from. Yet, the BBC did just that. For some reason which I cannot fathom, an ortodox Jewish organization actually demonstrated for him. The BBC simply edited the photos so that the signs were not visible, and then claimed that they were demonstrating against him.

It took a while -and some serious complaints from the group involved- to correct the mistake, but the first iteration of the correction was to simply remove them from the article altogether. Only in the next version did they get back in, with the correct caption this time.

Example number 3.

And then there's when the stars align and you can smear Trump and Hungary at the same time.

We're talking about Sebastian Gorka here. Who is, apparently, a Nazi. Let's just ignore everything about the case that might prove us wrong; we finally can call Trump a Nazi, since he is employing one.

Interestingly, the Jerusalem Post -of all newspapers- came up with a long analysis of the case, doing actual journalism. Journalism, which only required about 30 minutes of google searches, but apparently was not a feasible option for The Independent.

Talking about the JP... you know when foreign and domestic press is writing about Horthy as a rabid Nazi intent on exterminating all Jews? Well... 

It is indeed astonishing that aside from modern historians (whose work nobody reads) only the JP came up with a factual description of Horthy. Again; it's not to say he was a blameless saint with a halo; it's about not lying about the past.

This should really tell you something.


Addendum: after an extensive email correspondence with the Independent (because I honestly thought they'd need some information so I shared the JP article with them), this was published. The article is far from coherent, but hey! We can cry Nazi!

So here's an amazing analysis from Reddit about the issues concerning tribalism, the Left and Right.

I'm just gonna post it in full. (It's a tendency of all the "big" media outlets to steal shit from Reddit; at least I'm properly crediting it.)

All I'm saying is if someone does something bad in a protest, that doesn't make the protest bad.

I think you've chosen the wrong argument here. I think what you should say is that the reason for the protest might not be wrong just because it turns violent, as in the position or argument that the protestors are basing their protest on can stand regardless of the protest actions. That could be true.

However, a protest is what happens at it. A protest that turns violent is, by definition, a bad protest. There is a difference behind the position of the protestors and the behaviour of the protestors. Bad behaviour doesn't mean a bad position, true, but the protest itself is the behaviour, not the position. You can hold the position with or without protesting. The behaviour is the protest and the protest is the behaviour.

Being "in the right" or "in the wrong" is also multifaceted. If I tell you that 2+2=5 and you say, no, it's 4, and I disagree, so you punch me in the face, then you are factually correct in your information but morally wrong in your actions on how to convey that information.

Beyond that academic discussion, there is a deeper issue though. Resorting to violence itself tends to come from a few main sources. People who resort to violence generally often can't win the argument on merits and get frustrated, so turn to violence because they truly believe something even if they can't demonstrate it to be true or articulate it. For example, the claims that Milo is a white supremacists, racist, sexist/misogynist, Islamophobic, or otherwise are baseless because there's both no evidence of any of that and there's plenty of evidence he isn't. But, he tends to vehemently criticize the "social justice" left, so they hate him and either tend to shout him down or turn to violence, since they can't win by debating on facts and reasoning. (I say this as somebody who disagrees with much of what Milo has to say in academic terms, but his critics are more wrong than he is.)

Another related reason people turn to violence is they've fallen prey to ingroup/outgroup tribalism, which is perhaps best modeled by Realistic Conflict Theory and best demonstrated in the Robbers Cave Experiment (RCE).

Essentially you can create hatred, vitriol, and violence between groups is two easy steps. Step 1 is to divide people into groups. That can be random as in the RCE, arbitrary such as the eye colour in Jane Elliott's classroom experiment, or essentially any differentiator: political leanings, favorite sports team, religion, nationality, accent, height, PC vs Mac, Android vs iOS, Coke vs Pepsi.

Step 2 is to set the groups in conflict, either via a competition (rewards, punishment, social status, attention, special privileges, etc.) or sparked by group-based insults ("fascist right", "communist left", "criminal blacks", "privileged whites", "terrorist Muslims", etc.).

That's it. Then buy some popcorn and watch it degrade into violence. In the RCE there were fistfights, sabotage, burning of other teams flag, and so on. In Jane Elliott's class, the different groups oppressed each other given the chance.

In addition to the violence and hatred, the groups tend to create in-group social norms arbitrarily and out-group narratives, typically with "us" being saints and righteous and "them" being evil. Both sides tend to rationalize, including rationalizing violence because "they" are evil, and the ends justify the means. Facts be damned.

In the U.S., this tribalist behaviour is clearly demonstrable in the massively partisan division. On top of that, you have the fringe voices becoming the justifications. On the fringe right you have the white supremacists who statistically represent a small rounding error of Trump supporters yet these are who the political left use to smear Trump supporters. On the fringe left you have the "social justice" activists and anarchists who represent only a fraction of the anti-Trump crowd (and/or Clinton supporters), yet this is who the political right use to smear anti-Trump supporters. (Milo is one of them too, who equate SJWs with liberals or anyone left of center, which is where he is very wrong of course.)

It also happens that these are the two groups that instigate Steps 1 and 2 of Realistic Conflict Theory. The fringe bigots on the right group people by traits: skin colour/race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. They put them in a competition in a hierarchy with the dominant/majority at the top and the marginalized minorities at the bottom, and suggest everybody must conform to the interests of people at the higher end of the hierarchy.

The social justice left also group people by traits: skin colour/race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and so on. They put them in a competition in a hierarchy with the marginalized minorities at the top and the dominant/majority at the bottom (known as the progressive stack), and suggest everybody must conform to the interests of people at the higher end of the hierarchy. And, they refer to groups having "voices" and treat people based on their grouping. It tends to derive from a form of Marxism of flipping the powers as applied to minority status instead of by peasants vs industrialists.

Voila, both of these fringe groups both contribute to creating hatred between groups. Both contribute to each others existence and power, and both pull the partisan politics to more extremes. And both are very, very wrong. Both commit the fallacy of division, assuming things that apply to the groups as a whole apply to individuals described by those groupings, and both commit the base rate fallacy. The fringe right confuse the fact that "most terrorists are Muslim" (true) with "most Muslims are terrorists" (not true). The fringe left confuse "most privileged people tend to be whites/males" (true) with "most whites/males tend to be privileged" (not true).

The correct answer is for both fringes to stop treating people as being part of a group defined by traits, and instead treat people as individuals who have traits. Treat them by the content of the character (merit), and not the color of their skin (race). This is, in fact, what is written into human rights codes, that all individuals are equal to other individuals and have the right not to be judged based on such traits, except where the trait is the merit of interest itself. It is then violations of that rule that are bigotry, and that applies equally to all people of all races, sexes, gender identities, nationalities, ethnicities, and so on. It's the violation of the principle that matters, not the particular race or group that matters.

So what does this have to do with violence and protests? Protests often turn violent when the protesters are themselves subject to tribalist tendencies; the "us vs them" mentality. This is why right-wing racists turn violent against racial groups and fringe left-wing groups, and why left-wing Marxists tend to turn violent against right-wing groups. It's also why liberals, libertarians, and moderate conservatives don't tend to turn violent, because they are based on common rules for all and equal freedom and equal rights for all, not group against group fighting for power.

So, in that context, a protest turning violent is an indicator that the protestors are not doing so based on taking a reasoned position, but rather are being tribalist. It's not so much your example, "if an anti-fascist protest happens and a protestor punches someone", it's more that the "anti-fascist" protest is very likely wrong that the people they are protesting are fascist at all.

Conflicting ideologies on the Left

You could ask me (not that anyone bothers :) ) why I focus on the Left so much.

Well, the answer is simple: I expect more of them than the usual tribalism, and ideology-driven thinking I kind of taken granted from the Right. (In which I myself display my own set of biases and bigotry.)

Anyhow. The import of "Taharrush gamea" (the mass sexual assaults on women by young men) into Europe with the recent migrant crisis points to a very interesting contradiction on the Left.

I associate the Left with human rights, women's rights, equality, feminism. Usually left-wing thinkers campaign for these things, and usually people on the left fought for them. Most feminist writers I know identify as someone being on the left. And yet, when it comes to these sexual assaults, both the political establishment, and the media is strangely silent; it's mostly the right-center right that is vocal about them. It seems like things flip upside down when it comes to migrants and sexual assaults: the Left is content blaming the victim ("keep them at arm's length" as the mayor of Cologne suggested; blaming drinking culture, as some people in Sweden suggested), while the Right wants to defend women against these men from a very different culture.

It is mind-boggling. Jessica Valenti is silent on the matter, even though she was quite vocal during even the Shirt Gate crisis. No prominent feminist writer in left-wing papers talk about these issues. It seems like the different ideologies (multiculturalism, Wilcommenculture, feminism, human rights) have this rock-paper-scissors dynamics. Apparently multiculturalism beats feminism when it comes to migrants. And this is sad, because it points to one thing: not even the Left has a coherent world-philosophy. (Well, very few on the Left does, let's just put it like this. Chomsky would probably have no problems processing these issues.) It shows that the Left is merely a collection of activists with very little intellectual power (or just simply too lazy). People who cannot or will not comprehend that things don't have to be mutually exclusive, so when one ideology (feminism) clashes with another (open borders, multiculturalism), one will lose out. I just had a conversation with someone who said the whole issue was blown out of proportion due to "some improper touching in Cologne that happened once". The mind blows. Suddenly I have a leftie who blames women, and trivialises sexual assault -something that is usually thought to be the privilege of the Right.

This leads to this weird reversal of roles between the Left and Right. I never thought one day I'd see Farage to be more of a feminist than Merkel.