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Comment by Der_Einzige | Hacker News Reader

Camus spent some time withing the hard left (including being part of a communist party for some time), and was friends with other hard leftist philosophy authors (sartre being the classic example). The socdem point is far later in his life, and the authors should include his earlier political life in this analysis...

Camus is without a doubt a part of the leftist cannon. Just read "The rebel" if you don't believe that Camus has anarchist sensibilities.

Orwell literally joined a red brigade in the spanish civil war and killed fascists for left-wing political reasons. He's also a leftist, even if he ended up disillusioned with the soviet form of it by the end...

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You're talking past me. I'm not denying that these people are leftists, I'm saying that it doesn't matter. There's nothing wrong with quoting a leftist in a rightist argument (or vice versa).

This situation reminds me more of like when Bruce Springsteen objected to Trump using the song Born in the USA. Springsteen is alive to object. Camus isn’t alive to object, but looking at his past thinking, it’s not far fetched to presume that he would object to use of his art and writing to reinforce the arguments of political figures with opposing viewpoints.

Except it isn’t about quoting. Many on the right claim that Orwell, Camus, etc were in-fact right wing and hated the left because they disagreed with extremist Stalinists and such.

It is much like religious people claiming Einstein was religious.

It seems to be a common tactic to rebrand people as believing in the opposite of what they did.

It is very much about quoting. Gingrich did not say that Camus was right wing. Nor have I ever heard that claim.

Camus was a leftist who was against Stalinism, I am pretty sure he would have abhorred the Cultural Revolution in China and the woke brigade now.

So, Maoism and ‘the woke brigade’ are the same thing? This is exactly my point. Thanks.

If you dont like vanilla and you dont like chocolate are both those the same thing? This your standard of debate.

Camus, a free-thinker, womanizer, pied-noir,who reached across the aisle during the war writing to a German friend, it is the antithesis of the current woke, liberal,sex-repressed,pro-foreign-intervention, cancel-everybody-who-dares-to-think-different-to-me woke crowd so common in Twitter and here.

I'm a bit uncertain by what you call the "hard left". I don't know how one can read the "The Rebel" and come out with the idea that the author is a hardliner, when he's advocating for temperance and common sense even in the pursuit of freedom. It's true that Camus and Sartre shared some seminal ideas about religion, absurdism, and the freedom that burdens humanity. Those ideas may have formed the basis of their initial friendship, but as their respective philosophical views developed a rift also formed, with Camus rejecting the more radical notions that Sartre embraced. Again "The Rebel", which Sartre deeply disapproved of, is one such example.

Aren't anarchists different than leftists? I don't think an anarchist would support Obamacare, given that it forces people to pay/join.

Anarchists are part of the left. I think you're thinking of anarcho-capitalists who reject that sort of coercion. Which is not to say anarchists aren't against Obamacare, but it tends to be [0] more on the grounds that it's corporatist incrementalism. They're against "pay or die" coercion in general, and the capitalist healthcare systems as built on that premise.

[0] weasel words used as I am not an anarchist nor have I read a substantial amount of anarchist theory

I'm a little fuzzy, also. I assume anachists would not be in favor of a law like Obamacare because it was imposed on the 49% of the population who were strongly against it. I would assume acarcho-capitalists would have the same conclusion.

I understand the historical relation between anarchy and other leftist politics like socialism and communism. But since anarchists seem to be opposed coercive top-down hierarchies, idealogical or otherwise, I found it interesting that they are considered to be on the left and not outside of left/right politics.

As I'm typing here, headed towards looking up the differences between left and right, I found this: "In both its social and individualist forms, anarchism is usually considered an anti-capitalist and radical left-wing or far-left" [0]

That jives with the overlap I've noticed between anarchists and a subset of libertarians.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

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