The threat to liberty comes mainly from the left

This might sound weird but stay with me..

I'm getting more and more interested in fascism.

Not from a personal perspective mind, but from an academic one. I find it fascinating and perfectly relevant to what is happening in the modern world (see below for details). I have been recommended a book called "the black book of communism", and whilst perusing the Amazon page, I saw the following review.

This book is an absolute disgrace. Its pure right-wing propaganda and the sort of book which should be banned from being published.

I agree with other reviewers that Soviet Communism is far different from other forms. Capitalists often forget to look at the flaws in their own system, many of the atrocities which the book mentions have taken place under the command of George W. Bush and his cronies in recent months.

I think the author should have taken a different approach and maybe actually bothered reading the Communist Manifesto!

I have encountered this myself. As soon as one utters a non-left opinion then there is a subset of people who ill shriek "neocon!" or "right winger!" as if these terms were dirty words in themselves, and whenever I utter a left wing idea then I get the idiots on the right shrieking "leftist" or "liberal". Both these groups are idiots but, as always, there are more on the left and the right.

The person who "wrote" this review is a fool incapable of thought and thus is pretty below the margin for consideration but the attitude of repression on the following statement:

Its pure right-wing propaganda and the sort of book which should be banned from being published.

Is very worrying indeed. These attitudes come from the view that people who differ are bad. And you can do whatever you want to the bad and/or bigoted. After all, is it not morally excusable to hate Hitler? If you conflate a good person with Hitler then you can justify any action, not matter how heinous, against them. This is one of the cornerstones of human evil, how we demonise those who we disagree with and when they lose their humanity we do not care how they suffer. It happened with the Jews, it happens to a lesser degree with whites and men today. Organised movements of hatred are to be feared greatly. Hatred always precedes atrocity.

Many on the left make the argument that the threat to freedom comes from the right. In many cases they are correct, the difference between right wing fascism and left wing fascism comes mainly from the general right/left differences.

The left dreams of utopia on earth and desires unity for people to come on board with this idea. They treat their politics religiously and murder those who disagree with them politically. They also deem to destroy institutions that represent separate sources of power and morals that could conflict with their political ideals. Religion is one, the family is another. Anything that threatens their sense of unity, you can see this in the statements of the American left today, the calls for unity basically mean "drop your objections, and come on board with my program".

Right wing fascism is tied to religion mainly. Where the belief that utopia cannot be reached on earth is errant. The main way people are oppressed under right wing fascism is in their actions and thoughts regarding religion. They are theocracies where government and religion are intertwined, in the left wing the government is the religion.

Both are faith based dogmatisms. I am a mere whippersnapper in this immense academic field so I shall humbly take your corrections, but this is the way I see it currently. Back to freedoms, where the right removes freedoms is in religious areas, they mainly want to affect what you do whereas the left wants to affect how you think. Which is the bigger threat? Well, leftist socialist regimes such as communism alone has murdered more of its own people than right wing fascist regimes do. Personally, the repression of thought such as currently goes on in North Korea and China scares more than any right wing fascism does. In the west the left is far more of a threat to freedom. We are entering a left wing fascism – that of political correctness. The right is not strong in western society at the moment. The pure size of government and how they control our lives is getting worse all the time, this is not a right wing movement but a left one. The problem is worse in socialist Europe than in any other place.

In the words of Fred Reed. I'm going to move into a shack in the woods and put up a sign that says "beware of radioactive cholera".

As for political correctness fascism. Here is a news piece from the BBC about a Dutch MP who is to be charged for "making anti-Islamic statements". Great, then there is no freedom of speech. End of story. Hate speech is a rotten Trojans horse by the utopians that are always in the wings, it's exactly the kind of smiley face fascism that Jonah Goldberg talks about in his book Liberal Fascism.

Here is Pat Condell on the matter:

Great as always.