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Hey, this sounds familiar...

Started by Cain, August 10, 2011, 01:12:13 PM

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Cain

Quote"Time and time again, we shall see moderate middle class reformers mobilizing the masses against die-hard resistance or counter-revolution.  We shall see the masses pushing beyond the moderates' aims to their own social revolutions, and the moderates in turn splitting into a conservative group henceforth making common cause with the reactionaries, and a left wing group determined to pursue the rest of the yet unachieved moderate aims with the masses, even at the risk of losing control over them."

From Hobsbawm's Age of Revolutions 1789-1848.

Remove the political left-right labels and what does that sound like?

Don Coyote


Cain

Absolutely.

That Hobsbawm was talking about the early stages of the French Revolution there should not make you feel any better, of course.

Elder Iptuous

although i am not a fan of the single axis spectrum of left-right, i'm wondering why you say they don't apply in this circumstance?

am i interpreting the description correctly as:
middle class reformers - early tea party concerned with monetary and fiscal policy and corporatism.
masses pushing beyond moderates' aims - religious right/neocons glomming on to tea party, morphing it into teabaggers.
conservative group - tea partiers that stuck with teabaggers.
left wing group - tea partiers that either recoiled in horror, or reluctantly disassociated themselves with the movement.

Cain

My analysis is somewhat different.

Masses = Tea Party
Moderates = RINOs, East Coast Republican Elites
"Left" wing group = Neocon and Paleocon Tea Party enablers (National Review, FOX News etc)
"Conservative" faction joiners = David Frum, the Siftung Leo Strauss, Daniel Larison

As for why I saw ignore the labels, the above is exactly why.  You have to consider elite Tea Party backers as "left-wing" otherwise.  If you replace left and conservative with moderate/status quo and extremist/revolutionary it works better.

LMNO


Elder Iptuous

oic.
i'm not quite up on it like you are...
could you expand on the RINOs and EC Rep Elites and their mobilization against die-hard resistance or counter-revolution?

Cain

Well that would be, in the American context, the New Deal, embedded liberalism and progressive movements. 

The religious right were brought into the fold by the mostly less religious Republicans in the 80s and 90s for precisely this purpose.  The Tea Party are just the latest manifestation of this strategy, or manifestation of Movement Conservatism.

That's why the political labels had to be left out, otherwise it makes little sense, in commonly used political parlance.