Congeries of cross connected concepts
Instantman provided a link to Daniel W. Drezner who was wondering why Facism is considered by intellectuals to be disrespectable (it's can't be evil because that's too simplistic) while Communism is respectable, despite Communism having killed more people and created more misery than Facism. I think that there are some interesting comments in this regard on his site, but what I find interesting is Drezner considers Facism to be "Far Right" when it is actually a leftist / socialist political movement. It is not random chace that "Nazi" is "National Socialism". The primary developers of Facism were Italian socialists (which is why the name harkens to the glory of Rome).
What we see here is the tendency of the left to use epithets rather than argument to promote their views. That which is disliked by the left is labeled "conservative" or "right-wing" without regard to its actual provenance. We can see that in the labeling of Facism as "right-wing". But it was also in view during the failed "coup" in Russia. The hard line communists who attempted to assert power were labeled "conservatives", which of course is bizarre given the antipathy between US conservatives and Communism and the fellow traveling of the progressive / left in the US. Perhaps in a few decades Communism will be re-labeled as a part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy as Facism was. In this regard one should note the current fellow traveling of the Left and the Calipharians, the latter of whom have been viciously hostile to Communists (for instance, many Communists were butchered after the fall of the Shah and the rise of the mullahs in Iran). Some may say that this is silly, how can the left ally with people as repressive as the Calipharians? But could the Calipharians really do worse than the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? And certainly, like the Communists in the early days, there is plenty of evidence of repression for those who look yet this has no effect on the support available to the repressors from the left.
