GaryK wrote:Ken wrote:RZehr wrote:So they were persecuted for being liberal? Is that what you’re saying?
No one is saying they were persecuted for being conservative. Conservatives can be radical and threatening to the social order too. I don’t know that there is any real reason or even much accuracies in tying persecution to that spectrum, but maybe so.
Not liberal. Radical or revolutionary. A liberal in 16th Century Europe would have perhaps advocated reform within the church and social order. Like enlightened Jesuits perhaps. Anabaptists wanted to tear it down. They were not interested in reforming the church, they wanted to replace it. Kingdom Christianity or Anabaptism was a profoundly radical movement in the 16th Century.
You can't really impose modern conservative and liberal ideas onto 16th Century Europe because the issues have changed. But they were radicals or revolutionaries who were advocating a complete revolution in the social order. Yes they were doing it for religious reasons. But you can't disentangle religion and politics, especially then. They were persecuted as much for political reasons as religious because you can't really separate the two. They threatened the political authority of the Catholic church and the political power of the priesthood to govern civilian or secular affairs as much as religious affairs.
Am I hearing you say that only the left can be defined as radical and revolutionary? And that because the early Anabaptists were radical and revolutionary they should be considered part of the left? If that's not what you are suggesting, then why isn't Josh correct in saying there were no left and right distinctions in the 16th century?
Ultimately we are just talking about labels. In every society there are those who wish to preserve the existing social order and power structure: religious, political, economic, etc. And there are those who seek to reform or replace it. Whether we are talking about ancient Rome, 16th century reformation, the American or French revolutions, or 20th century communist revolutions.
And yes, you can have conservative revolutions that seek to restore older forms of social order in the face of change. That was what the Iranian revolution was in 1979. And the current Taliban in Afghanistan. But they are pretty unusual and normally driven by religious fanatics. Like ISIS, for example, which is seeking to establish some sort of 7th Century Islamic religious caliphate.
If you define left and right in simple Marxist terms then yes, the reformation was not a class war of the proletariat. But then most left wing and right wing politics in the US don't fall along simple Marxist lines either. You have movements around social justice and anti-racism. You have movements around LGBT rights. You have movements around environmentalism. You have movements around women's rights. You have movement against corporate control and in favor of localism. You have peace movements. You have movements for indigenous rights and against exploitation, drilling, mining, pipelines etc. on native lands. You have animal rights/vegan type movements. They are all labeled "left" in the current American context but none of them are primarily "Marxist" in their outlook or objectives. Despite attempts by some conservatives to label them as such. The Bernie Sanders supporters concerned about the power and influence of corporate America and the "One Percent" are not that different from reformation-era middle class merchants rebelling against the entertwined twin powers of the nobility and the Catholic church.
We can't have it both ways. If "leftist" is narrowly defined in classic Marxist terms, then only a tiny fraction of the American left is really "leftist" and the term doesn't have much meaning. But if leftist is more broadly defined as movements for social change and rights against entrenched powers and institutions then those have existed in every era in history.
