User: proud lefty

You do know the poll was intendently ironically don't you?

Classic liberal and neo-liberal is essentially the same thing.

If you need to imagine the unhappiness of a crazed loner to convince yourself that America is winning the """"War on Terror"""", then you've already basically resigned yourself to its defeat.

Ya wha'? Anyway, you're still prevaricating.

The definitions of race, nationality and ethnicity are utterly ambiguous and meaningless; whether or not you regard one group or another as a race is up to you, and your opinions on that matter will only underline your prejudices. But its a totally pointless argument. As far as I'm concerned, you're capable of being "racist" against Palestinians regardless of what means of identification you wish to apply to them. For the moment you're simply using semantics. The point is that clearly you have an irrational and disproportionate disdain for an entire group of people; call that what you will.

The reason why neo-Nazis and the far-right would ally themselves with the Palestinians is fairly simple. Firstly, the extent to which they do is highly over-exaggerated, secondly they're anti-Semites and the Palestinians are not only in conflict with Jews, but the Israeli occupation of their land affords a rare case in history where Jews are in the wrong. That's gold-dust for the racist far-right, and the Israelis (and American Jews) have only themselves to blame for providing it. This of course means that, by coincidence of history, exponents of the Palestinian cause find our arguments filched by some rather unattractive individuals, but that's not to the detriment of the orginal assertion.

The far-left doesn't actually have a particular interest in Palestine from my experience, it's much more the domain of chianti-drinking European moderates like myself.

Your comparison to other oppressed groups is another evasion of the subject. That Palestinians get a high amount of attention (and a lot of atrociously negative and misguided coverage) is no reason for you to defend Israel. But its also a basically misguided contrast to make. For a start equating the situation for the Palestinians to the present-day circumstances of the Basques is obscene. The same goes for most disputed regions and minorities in western Europe, excluding perhaps the less typical cases of immigrants and the Roma. As for Tibet, Kurdistan and the rest, the main difference is that no other oppressed group is subject to anything near the scale of slander and misinformation in the western media and from western politicians as Palestinians are. A much more intriguing question is why there never seem to be so many people leaping to the defence of the Turks, Iranians or Chinese as there are for Israel.

The situation in Palestine is also more severe than most places. Economically, poverty in the occupied territories is especially dire, and Palestians constitute the greatest single race/nationality/ethnic group/imaginary-creation-for-the-nefarious-purposes-of-the-liberal-left of refugees in the world.

The idea that Fascism was anti-capitalist or economically socialist is also another self-congratulatory right-wing myth., it has no real historical basis except through a particularly shallow and partisan analysis.

That message demonstrates another problem you have. You seem incapable of confronting an argument directly, instead prevaricating and making assumptions about the person who disagrees with you. You argue against freedom for Palestine, the crimes of colonialism or social democracy not by addressing those issues themselves but by assuming my hypocrisy and prejudice in other matters. A few examples:

"Since you're pro-Palestinian you must support Fatah, Hamas and Arab dictators; its wrong to support Fatah, Hamas and Arab dictators",

"Since you support Palestinians you must support Islam; that makes you a hypocrite because claim to be against religion",

"Since you support socialist economics you must support communist dictatorships; its wrong to support communist dictatorships",

"Since you blame colonialism for some of Africa's problems you must see the Africans as blameless; that makes you illogical and racist."

"Since you support equal treatment for the people of Palestine you must be against it for the people of Darfur, Western Sahara and eastern Europe; you hyprocrite!"

And so on. By this means you can avoid confronting the hypocrisy, dispropotionality and prejudice that dictates your own beliefs.

I must say I'm enjoying this discussion.