Reading the headlines on Sunday’s elections in Germany, you’d think that the Nazis had been refounded and entered parliament. The usual media hacks chewed up the news and tried to spit it down our beaks. The “far-right” had emerged from its 1945 bunkers and goosestepped through the Brandenburg Gate, en route to invading Poland.  “Extremists” imperil “democracy” and “Europe.”

Sam Gregg has unpacked in detail the story behind the rise of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). He called it a broad-based protest party. It just got millions of votes from long-time Social Democrats and Christian Democrats. Why? Because it’s not part of the slick, self-serving machine that governs Germany and the EU for its own narrow interests. It’s willing to face head on the threats to Germany’s identity, safety and public order. Like other European populist parties, it’s asking the forbidden question: “But the Emperor’s really naked. Can’t you see that?”

“Shut Up,” They Explained

Or to be more literal: “Muslims who hate us are colonizing our country. They hate Jews. And Christians. They want to turn our country into a mess like the countries they fled from. They’re not really refugees. They passed through safe Sunni Muslim countries and now 90 percent of them are collecting welfare. Not one of them paid taxes here in the past. Why should we keep allowing this?”

Anti-Nazi exile Eric Voegelin was the keenest student of totalitarianism in the 20^th century, bar none. He pointed out in his landmark Science, Politics, and Gnosticism the key mental trick that totalitarians play. They forbid crucial questions. Totalitarians build elaborate systems that beguile intellectuals. They give them lots of shiny concepts to move around like tin soldiers. But their arguments are fragile, brittle and false — because they rest upon evasion. They use sleight of hand like stage magicians to distract your eye. So you don’t see what’s really going on in their arguments. Raise the crucial questions that they’re evading, and that’s when they get angry. When they pound on the table, and try to get you fired. Or if they’re in power, imprisoned.

The left-right spectrum was always a blunt and brutish instrument. It is quite literally one dimensional.

Voegelin showed how Nazi racialism and Marxist materialism both rested on muffled questions. So does the totalitarian project that rules Europe today. Insist on knowing why Europe should open its borders to hostile strangers, and you’ll get not answers but abuse. Attacks. Attempts to smear your name and make you unemployable. In some countries like Holland or Germany, the authorities might even come and arrest you.

Winston Churchill, Islamophobe

I’m reading the crucial new book by Peter McLoughlin and Tommy Robinson, Mohammed’s Koran. In it, he recounts how a British politician quoted Winston Churchill’s harsh but candid words about how intolerant and warlike Islam has been since its very founding. That politician was damned in the media, branded an extremist, and virtually drummed out of politics. But not one media outlet would even report what he said. Readers and viewers had to guess. The words of the man who led Britain in its own fight for freedom got shoved into the memory hole. They were literally unspeakable.

Konrad Adenauer, Extremist

As a scholar of the German Christian Democratic movement and its beginnings, I find this amusing. Anti-Nazi hero Konrad Adenauer spent World War II in a concentration camp. Can we call him a “far-right” extremist? Probably not. But the platform on which he ran was far to the right of anything the AfD now proposes. Does anyone believe that he would have admitted over a million sharia Muslims and let them go on welfare? So how can AfD be far right, and Adenauer a noble centrist?

The key mental trick that totalitarians play: They forbid crucial questions. They build elaborate systems that beguile intellectuals. They give them lots of shiny concepts to move around like tin soldiers. But their arguments are fragile, brittle, and false — because they rest upon evasion.

Because the Left keeps moving the goalposts. That’s what totalitarians and dictators do, when you let them. In Franco’s Spain, Communists, socialists, and democrats were lumped together as “the Left.” In Stalin’s Russia, social democrats, libertarians, and Tsarists were all “far right.” The Bill Clinton of 1992 who opposed illegal immigration would be damned as “right wing” today. And let’s not even bring up how “transphobic” most Democratic Senators were just four short years ago. Not one of them campaigned for equal gender bathroom access! But oppose it now, and you’re an “extremist.”

In the media, of course, “far right” and “right wing” get used as terms of abuse. “Far left” and “radical” never even appear in news stories — except when “radical” pops up to imply that groups like ISIS are anything but highly energetic orthodox Muslims.

The Left-Right Spectrum Is Stupid

The left-right spectrum was always a blunt and brutish instrument. It is quite literally one dimensional. Read my 2002 column on how such a continuum couldn’t even fairly describe something as simple as cooking, much less the vast complexities of political philosophy. Two dimensional charts are a lot more useful, like the one you’ll find here. It tracks your take on personal and political freedom versus authority. That’s better, but still insufficient. It doesn’t allow for nuance, and pretends that state coercion is the only important issue.

Leave the rusty, simplistic, tendentious and constantly shifting left-right spectrum in your old college dorm room, where it belongs.

Much better to use actual, substantive adjectives to describe political stances. Call AfD “nationalist, anti-immigration, and populist.” Call Bernie Sanders what he calls himself, a “socialist.” Call Rand Paul a “Christian classical Liberal,” and Steve Bannon a “populist Catholic nationalist.” Call white racialists what they are, instead of smearing the “Right,” which includes men like Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas.

And so on. Leave the rusty, simplistic, tendentious and constantly shifting left-right spectrum in your old college dorm room, where it belongs.