Political Violence: Left-Wing versus Right-Wing - Research Paper Example

Political Violence: Left-Wing versus Right-Wing Political Violence: Left-Wing versus Right-Wing Unlike many political and terrorist environments elsewhere across the globe, where the designations of right and left are not commonly applicable, a good number of political violence within the United States fall within the left-wing and right-wing prospects. Even religious and nationalist sources of such incidents tend to reflect the attributes of rightist and leftist movements. Left-wing politics refer to the political activities or positions that support or accept egalitarianism, impartiality, and social equality, commonly in opposition to the social inequality and social hierarchy (Norberto & Cameron, 1997). Typically, they involve concerns for the society members who are usually perceived as the disadvantaged, relative to other members, and beliefs that there is existence of unjustified inequalities, which need to be abolished or reduced. In other words, left-wing denotes the more progressive and liberal views, and the movements that often endeavors to change things in ways that had never been tried before. Taking it to a logical conclusion, the left-wing politics always result into some form of socialism. On the other hand, the right-wing commonly denotes the more regressive and conservative views. Its movements always endeavors to make things stay the same way as they are or return them to the way they used to be. Here, people believe in the natural human selfishness, and they view achievements as equivalent to self-worth. Government stays out of people’s affairs and do not force the most productive citizens to subsidize the least productive ones. Right-wing politics thereby lead to either “anarcho-capitalism” or “fascism.” This paper thereby discusses the impacts or influences of these two political prospects and their contributions to political violence in the United States, with a significant consideration of the leftist movements. The contemporary American left may be characterized by a number of movements that emerged out of the political enthusiasm of the 1960s. These movements were fairly interconnected such that understanding their origins provided an instructive insight into the fundamental issues of the left. Here, from the origin, one should be able to bear in mind that none of these movements was fundamentally violent, and that they were not to be regarded as terrorist movements. Nonetheless, the prevailing extremist trends within them gave rise to factions that occasionally embraced and championed violent confrontations, and a few of them began to engage in terrorist violence. According to Norberto and Cameron (1997), as transitional waves from the authoritarian rules swept through the Latin America by 1980s, the notion of ‘deepening democracy’ arose as a guiding principle to the “Political Left” and “social movements” in diverse regions. With their emphasis on the popular movements and grass-roots’ participation, the ideas of left-wing gained force and support from the political and social actors who sought to reconcile the new-found respect for representative democracy with the Left’s traditional commitments to the radical changes. Visions of the progressive democratic-reforms helped revive the leftist parties whose dreams of revolution had been crushed by the military authoritarianism, and whose traditional economic and political models had lost charm due to the world-wide communism crisis. The right-wing conspiracy theories tend to focus on the efforts of communists as well as other affiliates such as fascists, organized socialists, and advocates of the government in order to impose an absolute tyranny on Americans, particularly making it a nation where major industries, resources and products would be controlled and owned by political bureaucrats. The rights of peaceful citizens, their properties and lives would thereby be destroyed downright by the central political plans and controls (Norberto & Cameron, 1997). The modern left holds that the non-socialist societies are largely characterized by dominators and the dominated, in addition to the oppressors as well as those oppressed. The economic system of free-market capitalism is the purported source of this social arrangement, which is perceived by the left as the origin of all manners of social vices and ills, such as racism, alienation, sexism, imperialism, and homophobia (Eric, 2004). According to the left movement’s calculus, capitalism serves as an agent of exploitation and tyranny that possesses its roots upon the proverbial neck of a wide range of victim groups, including the blacks alongside other minorities, homosexuals; women, the poor, and immigrants among others. This is the reason why according to the left, the U.S. (historically, the standard-bearer of all capital economies), can also do wrong. In order to eliminate the America’s intrinsic injustices, the modern left movements seek to invert the hierarchy of power, such that the said oppressed groups now become the most privileged classes and races of the new social hierarchy or order. The quest of the left movement to transform the “oppressed” into the “oppressors” and the “dominated” into “dominators,” and vice versa, draws its inspirational foundation from the “Communist Manifesto,” which affirms that the history of all, hitherto the existing society, is a history of class struggle. The struggle recognized by this Manifesto was that of the proletarians, in compliance to their intellectual frontline, who (armed with radical utopian visions of socialism) were anticipated to launch a series of civil wars within their own nations (Rowe& Carroll, 2014). Such battles would sooner or later topple the ruling classes, as well as their illegitimate societies which they established. During the late 19th and early 20th century, anarchism anchored the militant (a radical side of the U.S labor movement), and left in something similar to the way Communism would do in the later decades, during the wake of the “Bolshevik Revolution.” Even though there were anarchist organizations, most essentially, the anarcho-syndicalist industrial-workers of the world (IWW) organization was no longer the strength of the anarchist movement. Anarchist uniqueness was never linked to membership in any other organization in the way that communism uniqueness was later anchored to the membership within the communist party. Regardless of such disparities, anarchism still occupied a position within the established left that communists later came to occupy. However, the shocking secrets of the current American Anarchist movement is that it traces its origins not from the left-wing traditions connected to the trends, but in the right-wing libertarianism that resulted from the civil activities of the 1980s and early 1990s. In this context, libertarianism might have helped or probably really helped the nascent anarchism movement to get its start, but using the right-wing materials for the left-wing purposes, thereby unfortunately leaving its marks on the movement (Rowe& Carroll, 2014). Anarchism thereby entails the opposition of authority and hierarchical organizations in human relations conduct, including but not limited to the state systems. Since the late 20th century, anarchists have been involving in student protest movements, squatter movements, anti-globalization movement, and peace movements (Jeremy, 2000). Since 19th century, anarchists have participated in a number of violent revolutions, such as the Revolutions of Free Territory and the Catalonia, as well as anarchist political organizations such as the IWW or IWA-AIT. Hate groups are movements that practices and advocates for hatred, violence and hostility towards members of a given race, religion, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientations or any other designated social sector (Levin, 2012). According to the U.S. FBI, hate groups hold a primary obligation or purpose of promoting animosity, malice, and animosity against individuals or groups belonging to a religion, race, sexual orientation, disability, or ethnicity that differ from that of the member organization. The U.S. federal government thereby came up with two organizational bodies that monitor the intolerance and hate groups: the SPLC (southern poverty law centers) and ADL (anti-defamation league). In support of each other the ADL and SPLC maintain a list of groups that they deem to be of hate, anti-governmental, anti-Semitic, supremacist, and extremist intents. Unfortunately, hate groups or extremism groups are now transitioning from religion and racism hatred into a form of hatred that focus on governments and its representatives (Levin, 2012). The militia and patriotic groups are some of the rapidly growing groups, and the rhetoric and goals must be best understood in order to come up with successful strategies that would help counter their activities and behaviors should they become violent. The SPLC also serves to identify “sovereign citizens” who commonly operate as what is known as “lone wolves,” thereby breaking away from the main group to conduct a violent act elsewhere. With the use of the internet and social media, hate groups are now capable of recruiting and spreading their beliefs more easily and readily as compared to the past. To counter such extremism or hate activities, the government should be able to come up with an online monitoring organization that monitors the online presence of such hate groups, thereby regularly putting them on the watch. Governments, local authorities, criminal justice agencies, as well as voluntary sectors or organizations should work together to improve the ways hate crimes are dealt with at different levels. Owing to the latest analysis of the Department of Homeland Security and the new assessment by the Office of Intelligence, the extreme right (those who are hate-oriented, majorly the anti-government groups, or those who are dedicated to work towards a single issue) emerges to be a legitimate threat that the federal government law enforcement must properly deal with. As a result, several reports coordinated with the FBI and presented to the federal, state, and law enforcement departments send a stout warming that the right-wing extremists might be gaining new recruits through portraying their fears concerning several emergent issues. This arose from the events of economic down-turn and the election of the first African-American president during the early 2000s, thereby presenting unique drivers to the radicalization and recruitments by the right-wing (Eric, 2004). Many extremists have thereof made rhetorical statements and stopped short of appeals for violent actions; however, since the 2008 elections, the right-wing extremists have been reaching out to larger audience of potential sympathizers (Norberto & Cameron, 1997). Further intelligence reports affirm that supposing the perceived rise in influence by other countries and uncertain economy proceeds, the right-wing extremism is likely to advance in strength. The “lone wolves” and small terrorist cells that embrace the violent right-wing extremist ideologies will thereby emerge as the most dangerous domestic-terrorism threat to the United States. It is believed that the U.S. is swiftly degenerating into a full-blown fascist country, domestically under the pretext of the wars on crime, terrorism, and drugs, thereby developing an international empire that is comparable to that of Great Britain- of 200 years ago, or Rome- of 2000 years ago, both in its vileness and breadth. Crime analysts thereby argue that there are several thoughtful and reasonable people from across cultural and political spectrum who adeptly recognize such problems and have several similar ideas on the most appropriate ways to combat them. Evidently, the American activity profile is not an idiosyncratic profile since in Europe, the right-wing extremism is also no longer a marginal phenomenon. This is revealed by the neo-fascist movements in Greece and Hungary, Golden Dawn and Jobbik, and both of these groups exercise domestic violence in the public space against political minorities and political opponents, while simultaneously utilizing the legal political space presented to them as a result of their representations in the parliament. This phenomenon presents itself in diverse faces: with the exception of the neo-fascists who shamelessly profess to the violence, anti-Semitism, fascists’ tradition and the xenophobia, there are parties of the right-wing extremists who seem to have modernized their dissertation in a way such that they are also capable of mobilizing several voters who are cynical about their political and social situations, and cannot embrace an alternative, but not feel sympathy for the National Socialism and Fascism in the first place. Nevertheless, the principal of their ideology portraying the thinking and feeling of both leaders and corps of those parties over and over again break through the tinny layer of the discourse moderated for the sake of political reasons, as could recently be observed with Austrian Andreas Molzer and Dutchman Geert Wilders. References Eric, N. (2004). The environment, left-wing political orientation, and ecological economics. Journal of Ecological Economics, 51(34), 167-175. Jeremy, B. (2000). Globalization from below. Cambridge; South End Press. Levin, B. (2012). U.S. Hate and Extremist Groups Hit Record Levels, New Record Says. Retrieved on 23rd Feb, 2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-levin-jd/hate- groups-splc_b_1331318.html. Norberto, B. & Cameron, A. (1997). Left and right: The significance of a political distinction. Chicago; University of Chicago Press. Rowe, J.&Carroll, M. (2014). Reform or radicalism: Left social movements from the battle of Seattle to occupy Wall Street. New Political Science, 30(14), 79-85. Read More