“Violence on many sides” claims and Hayek’s warning

In The Road to Serfdom, Hayek noticed the many students who went to Europe (especially to France and Germany) to study in the 1920s and 30s:

“Many a university teacher during the 1930’s has seen English and American students return from the Continent uncertain whether they were communists or Nazis and certain only that they hated Western liberal civilization.”

There are false equivalences — but differences between “far-left and “far right” are not relevant to evaluating those who arrive at protests armed with weapons and primed for violence.

The true equivalence is the underlying ideology of anti-individualism, anti-reason, and anti-liberalism. That ideology can come in variations, but our generation’s students still learn it from the same French and German intellectual sources and still militate for the same methods and results.

1 thought on ““Violence on many sides” claims and Hayek’s warning”

  1. Russian International Socialism (zionism) and German National Socialism (anti zionist). Crude and simplistically put, but essentially true. Both have religious/spiritual undertones (as with all other cultural variations/themes) that are not able to ultimately lead an individual to a place of liberty and reason. Freedom from religion is given by accepting the fulfillment of scripture – the Messiah has come. History cannot be fully understood without this consideration. Especially liberal intellectual notions from whichever part of the globe that are permeated by both left and right.

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