There is a lively discussion going on over here, which began partly as a disquisition about the similarities between political extremes who go so far around the twist that they meet up with what would be their polar opposites, and has since evolved into a lengthy thread concerning exactly at which point along the political continuum a variety of political extremists should be installed.With some little exasperation, Michael Totten has written
Conservatives who try to rewrite history and make fascists out to be left-wingers remind me of how Noam Chomsky tries to rewrite history and make Stalin out to be a right-winger. It’s comforting, I suppose, to think all the bad people are on one side of a (false) binary political divide and that all the good people are on the other. But it isn’t so. The extremists on your side – whichever side you happen to be on – often strikingly resemble the extremists on the other side. I guess that’s one reason why this argument never ends.
It’s curious that the focus is on the leaders of various movements, but not the followers whose attraction to the movement, and dedication to it’s promises made such movements powers to be reckoned with. I also think it’s curious that no one has tossed out all the left-wing and right-wing labels and invoked the spirit of Eric Hoffer, who incisively examined the curious nature of the “true believer”, the fanatic, the dedicated follower, and pointed out that really, it is only the details of the particular cause that vary. The character of the believer is remarkably consistent— even the vocabulary, the background, the motivations— are as depressingly uniform as the usually bloody outcome of the cause espoused. Political opposites meet on the outer fringes not because their ideology is anything alike… but because they are the same sort of personality.
“The fanatic is perpetually incomplete and insecure. He cannot generate self-assurance out of his individual resources— out of his rejected self—but finds it only by clinging passionately to whatever support he happens to embrace. This passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and all strength. Through his single-minded devotion is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. And he is ready to sacrifice his life to demonstrate to himself and others that such indeed is his role. He sacrifices his life to prove his worth…The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. But he finds no difficulty in swinging suddenly and wildly from one holy cause to another… his passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached… Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet…And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism, or Catholicism than to become a sober liberal… The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist, but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a God or not.”
My copy of “The True Believer” is an inexpensive paperback copy I had to buy from the student bookstore (price: $.95) in college as a class requirement, scribbled over with many jejune notes, and underlines, the only relic I have kept from that particular class. Philosophy? Political Science? History? I don’t remember— only that it explained clearly to me a certain kind of mind-set, and made plain to me a road in the wilderness, and a way of understanding the horrors that thinking human beings could commit upon each other. And it also made it clear, that one should not pay much attention to what political and intellectual leading lights might say, but that one should watch, rather, what they did.
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:15-20