June 9, 2023
Cultural guerrilla warfare means hitting the enemy with precision and effective labelling that destroys their propaganda in one fell swoop.
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Everyone on the pro-freedom right knows that we are in a cultural battle that is going to be a knockdown, drag-out fight with the forces of evil, better known as the anti-liberty authoritarians of the far left. We are on the side of liberty and individual rights in the marketplace of ideas, while the sinister set is still pushing the failed concepts of collectivism, concepts that have failed for centuries. This isn’t the place to detail why they are doing this, only that they desire power over everything and everyone else.
The question for the moment is what do we call them? The good news is that there have been many an article on the subject of the war of words over the past few weeks here and elsewhere. One particularly well-thought-out and received an article from John Green Let’s Call Them What They Are: Communists, laid out the groundwork for the discussion.
We note that it was included in one of Glenn Beck’s morning briefing e-mails so it was widely distributed. The article made many excellent points, some of which we have reiterated over the years
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A “liberal” is someone who stands for liberty. That is literally the opposite of what our “liberals” stand for. They use cancelation and censorship to quiet disagreements. They distort the law to crush dissent. They use moral relativism to break our sense of right and wrong. They don’t deliver liberty. They deliver oppression and corruption.
We submit that true liberals belong on the side of the pro-freedom right and that ‘classic liberal’ and liberal mean the same thing (Just try to find the term ‘classic liberal’ in most dictionaries — it usually defaults to liberal).
In his recent speech at the Brown Palace in Denver, Freedom Center founder David Horowitz made the point that there is nothing about the far left that is liberal.
The anti-American left attacks patriotic Americans as “white supremacists,” “racists” “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” And we respond by calling them “liberals.” There is nothing about them that is liberal. They are vindictive bigots, determined to demonize and destroy us.
The far left’s many other self-laudatory labels are just as bad, so what should we call them? Communist does work and we’re fine with that term if everyone else is amenable.
However, we would like to make the case for some other terms that may be far more impactful.
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For starters, there are some decided downsides to calling them communists. For one thing, they like the term — many have bought into the wither-away bait and switch so they have a romantic view of this. They can also recoil in feigned outrage and invoke the ghost of McCarthyism, instantly disrupting any discussion.
Radical also has similar drawbacks — they love to consider themselves to be radicals — as in Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals.
We’ll make our case referring to the sinister set as the fascist far left by looking at each word and what it brings to the etymological table, starting with the word left.
We’re choosing this as the generic label for those people because of its unadorned nature. Unlike many of the other terms they use for themselves, left doesn’t falsely imply they favor liberty, progress, sociability, democracy, and community. As is the case with liberal, progressive, socialist, Democrat, and Communist.
The etymology for the word even makes it worse for them: The Left Hand of (Supposed) Darkness
Sinister, today meaning evil or malevolent in some way, comes from a Latin word simply meaning “on the left side.” “Left” being associated with evil likely comes from a majority of the population being right handed, biblical texts describing God saving those on the right on Judgment day, and images depicting Eve on Adam’s left. Consequently, the Latin for “right,” dexter, finds its way into positive words like dexterous, and the French word for right (droit) is found in adroit.
Then we have the interesting etymology for the word: sinister
early 15c., “prompted by malice or ill-will, intending to mislead,” from Old French senestre, sinistre “contrary, false; unfavorable; to the left” (14c.), from Latin sinister “left, on the left side” (opposite of dexter), of uncertain origin. Perhaps meaning properly “the slower or weaker hand” [Tucker], but Klein and Buck suggest it’s a euphemism (see left (adj.)) connected with the root of Sanskrit saniyan “more useful, more advantageous.” With contrastive or comparative suffix -ter, as in dexter (see dexterity).
You always have to wonder why things turn out as they do, given that the left is always associated with evil “prompted by malice or ill-will, intending to mislead,” when that always seems to be their modus operandi.
Then we have a couple of very good reasons to combine the words far and left. One is to distinguish the extremists of the other side — the tyrannical ten percenters. The overly vocal political minority makes the most noise. It’s also to return the favor in the fact that the far-left loves to always use the term far-right.
They rarely refer to themselves with those terms, because they love to cast themselves as the ‘moderates’ or ‘centrists’ and never extremists.
Thus far left pushes back on this mendacity.
Lastly, we add fascist to the mix for a whole host of reasons.
Primarily because the far left is fascist as we and many others have pointed out. Labelling them the fascist far left calls their bluff in projecting that on the pro-freedom side of the political spectrum.
If you watch what they do, you notice that they only go after targets in which they are assured of success. They avoid going after people in strong positions because when they lose, they look weak.
Thus, calling them fascists constantly calls their bluff while showing everyone else that they’ve been lying about the subject for 80 years.
Thus, they have to pretend they didn’t hear us say it.
A fascis, from the Latin word meaning “bundle,” the origin of the name of the National Fascist Party of Italy
There is also something to be said about the label being euphonically pleasing, not to mention short and easy to remember. You can call out the fascist far left, the fascism of the far left or refer to far left fascism and it will anger them like you wouldn’t believe, so what’s not to love?
One possible alternative could be a combination word of commie and fascist or commie-fascist, where we on the pro-freedom right create a word for once, but that would take a lot of effort in getting it accepted.
Thus, we’re back to labelling them the fascist far left with many points in its favor:
- Destroying their propaganda labelling in one fell swoop.
- Taking out their laudatory labelling, with just plain old Leftist in its place.
- It properly places them on the far left of the political spectrum.
- And finally, it calls their bluff on their big lie, trying to rewrite the history of fascism.
Using that would be worth repudiating one of the far left’s biggest lies as well as showing we’re not going to be cowed by them anymore. That is certainly worth consideration.
D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, the director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites. Find him on Substack.
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