I wonder if this confusion between definitions in America and Europe is what leads to some of the confusions over the peace marching, just to give one example. One of the main organizing groups in the UK was the Socialist Workers' Party, and they teamed up with some very extreme elements in the Muslim community - people who might rightly be called fascists. And it's this "meeting in the middle" of the fascist element with the extreme left in Europe that is always a worry that you don't find in America (at least not to my knowledge). Another example -- neo-Nazi skinheads were marching against war recently in Germany, supposedly in support of their Muslim brothers, as their placards put it. The neo-Nazis in Europe and the Holocaust revisionists in Europe and North America have teamed up with certain Muslim and Arab groups because of their shared hatred of Israel, and you'll find them all opposing the invasion of Iraq.
So when I made the point about these terms (leftwing/rightwing and liberal/conservative) being difficult, I wasn't talking about semantics and dictionaries. I was trying to point out that the world is changing, and interesting and sometimes quite scary alliances are being formed. America has virtually no history of extremist politics, but Europe does, so Europeans, I would say, might tend to be more vigilant about extremism, and more aware of how it can worm its way into other agendas. This is why, even if I opposed the invasion of Iraq, I would not have attended any of those peace marches in Europe, because I know those groups were heavily represented there, both as participants and as organizers. To me, the term "liberalism" precludes extremism by definition. Not so, the term "leftwing" -- not in Europe anyway.
Sarah
At 11:09 AM -0800 02/22/2003, Susan Guzzi wrote:
I have been here all m life and as Randy said the left is often considered the liberal and the
right, conservative.
