Hi Joe,

"they weren't all that different" that is why I disagree with the terms Left and Right, it conveys the impression that Fascists and Communist thinking and philosophy is diametrically opposed when the reality is there is much commonality within the two.
If I was hosting a dinner party I would seat Hitler and Stalin together down one end of the table, reserved for the radicals, Roosevelt and Churchill up the other end where the moderates would sit. It would be a rather long table with lots of wacko's sitting in between. What made Hitler and Stalin such monsters was opportunity, they had both the means and the will to exercise the most horrific of acts. Given the same opportunity would Mussolini and Mao have been any different, I think not.

Hi Paul,

As a Maoist for twenty-odd years, I'll forever be privately questioning whether or not I'm really all that bright. Part of my disillusion was the realisation of Mao's callous brutality towards 'his' people mainly the peasantry, in multi-million deaths through the Great Leap Forward, famines and the Cultural Revolution. Comparing him to Mussolini, who certainly murdered thousands of the Left in Italy, invaded Abyssinia/Ethiopia and murdered hundreds of thousands there, invaded Albania and Greece. etc., is like comparing a grizzly with a koala.

As for the inappropriateness of using terms like Left-Right, Hayek suggests a triangle, with the three points held by 'Leftists', Liberals/mild Conservatives and Reactionaries/Fascists. He suggests that branches of each often collaborate with branches of the others.

Maybe these days, the polygon is many-sided. But it's still a very useful way to understand positions and alliances of various political parties. Incidentally, Hayek declares that he isn't/wasn't a conservative. I'm still puzzling over that one.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi Joe,

In a cesspool of a society, only the crap floats to the top, the Lillywhites have no chance, they simply die long before they can reach the surface. The bigger the cesspool, the bigger the lumps of crap. Hitler and Stalin were like Mao floating on the top of very large and very putrid pools, Mussolini not quite so, but still the Il Duce, like the others, went to the extremes that he felt were necessary to form society into what he perceives as correct.
In a turbulent, bitter, extreme society, there is no room for moderates, only extremest. Hitler was definitely a fascists, Stalin was not a true Communists in my book, Trotsky was probably more the communist, we'll never know thanks to an ice pick complements of Comrade Stain, Stalin was a Stalinist, if he had Karl Marx under his control I am sure he would have had him shot for being the wrong kind of Communist, the right kind was one who had complete loyalty and faith in Comrade Stalin, and possibly that would not have been enough to avoid an early death.

p/s In my youthful days of mixing with the Trots, I was chasing this rather cute little trot, wanting to do a bit more than discuss the virtues of Marx and Engels with her. One thing I learnt from the Trotskyists was the only thing lower than a dirty rotten Capitalists was an even dirtier and even rottener Stalinist! Checking out the Stalinist babes at the time, I had to agree, they all looked like waterside workers but uglier.

Oops! Family First has merged with the Australian Conservatives, leaving the Kenyan senator an independent, as useless as that other SA independent, Nick Xenephon.

Just wondering of course, but could that have been a cunning move on the part of Family First to shake off an embarrassment they did not want?

Hi Ttbn,

Or could it be an even more cunning move by Senator Gichuhi to flirt with some of the small parties in the Senate, from One Nation across to the Xenophon Team ? After all, she's now a very free agent, duly elected, and in the cat-bird seat ?

Hey, crazy thought: what if she was persuaded to join the Lib/Nat Coalition ? On condition that she be put in the top four of the ticket for the next Coalition Senate team ? Or perhaps appointed as an under-study to one of the Ministers ? She's relatively young, there's time for her to be promoted in future Coalition governments.

Imagine an African Minister in the National Government, Ttbn: wouldn't that really get up your nose ?

Keep smiling,

Joe

Dear Joe,

From your mouth to the Coalition's ears.

Smiles all round.