[AktiviX] Left Wing, Right Wing, and Free Software

[Harry Halpin]

CC,
	Note that many people consider themselves virulently anti-racist
and right-wing - i.e. President Bush with his "multi-cultural" cabinet.
In fact, what I was pointing out that many people, RMS included, are 
attracted to the Right by their defense of individual liberties. 
"Empire" by Hardt & Negri gives an analysis of how the Right-wing has 
incorporated anti-racism into its agenda. I personally kick
racists off things like Indymedia newswires, since any open
discussion requires a prerequisite of tolerance.

I consider the whole left-wing/right-wing division to be 
politically pretty useless - after all, Stalin was "left" and Hitler was
"right", as many point out - although the original left-wing principles
are of course more attractive if properly presented. In the States we have 
a saying "Neither Right nor Left but Straight Ahead" for anarchy, and interested parties 
should check out the Post-Left Anarchism section on www.infoshop.org, 
which is attempting to merge the various postmodern and poststructuralist
critiques of the traditional Left and Right with anarchism. Not very 
popular in Britain but gaining lots of currency in the States where
the traditional Left is more or less dead, unlike here in Britain. I don't
consider either analysis to be "more right" but just differing ecological
niches for "anarchism" - i.e. anarcho-syndicalism has little going for it
in the States, but does so in Sweden due to their differing histories. 

					-Harry


 On  Sat, 6 Mar 2004 cc at riseup.net wrote:

> Hi
> 
> There has been some interesting discussion on Oekonux
> that relates to this thread, see this for the background:
> 
>   "Open Projects -- Do Lines Need to be Drawn?"
>   http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/02/29/2256205
> 
> Basically there are some in the project who do not want to
> have racists on the list and there are others, like the
> list moderator, who think that peole shouldn't be excluded
> for their political ideas -- as is the case on free
> software projects.
> 
> Personally I'm not interesting in working on projects that
> are so inclusive that racists are welcomed, thankfully I
> don't expect that this will be an issue here :-)
> 
> Chris
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