Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Three Reasons Why I call myself a Right Winger and not a "Progressive"

1. I do not support Israeli apartheid and colonialism.
2. I do not believe that Soviet, Czech, and Polish crimes against ethnic German men, women, and children and others were morally justified by the Nazi crimes against Jews.
3. I do not worship Barack Obama.

6 comments:

Magistra said...

Are there other "right-wingers" who share your views on topics 1 and 2, e.g who are opposed to Israel's current policies and sympathetic towards German victims? If so, who are they? If not, I feel yours is an extremely idiosyncratic definition of being right-wing.

In the UK the left is generally much more pro-Palestinian than the right, but I think frankly almost no-one has an opinion about German post-war suffering in Eastern Europe.

J. Otto Pohl said...

There is A.M de Zayas although I don't know if he describes himself as right wing or not. Certainly other people have described him as being so.

Farhad said...

I doubt you got the distribution between right and left correctly. I'd appreciate a more lettered differentiation. Also, is it the left or right with the problem or people that pronounce themselves to be in one or the other? I was under the impression that US right wingers need a lot of persuasion on the Middle East. I am also surprised you ignore some of the most prominent leftists like Chomsky and even - I can't believe I will say that - Vidal! Left itself is someone conscious, hence exclusion of Christopher Hitchens from the mainstream left for his support of the war in Iraq. But he still managed to stay somewhere in the margin of the maintream for his support of Palestine. On the other side there is Horowitz who had to shift sides from left to extreme right, who to my ears pronounces a lot of nonsense. I'll stand to be corrected though.

Leo Tolstoy said...

Yeah, Otto, virtually every person I've ever met who describes themselves as right-wing has been an uncompromising supporter of Israel. In the last election cycle, the GOP hammered on Obama for not supporting Israel sufficiently.

But of course very few on the left support Palestine: Juan Cole is one. But in general Americans are pro-Israeli.

J. Otto Pohl said...

Walt:

We must hang out in different circles. But, when I lived in the US all the hard core supporters of Israel were self described liberals and progressives. It was right wing isolationists who were the only non-Arabs in the US critical of the US.

J. Otto Pohl said...

Oops I meant right wing isolationists who were critical of Israel.