=Mark D. Niemiec One can always, in typical mathematical fashion, transform the concrete into the theoretical, treating 'right-wing' and 'left-wing' as abstract properties like 'red' and 'green', and then treat the concepts in the article on their own merits, ignoring any inferred agenda.

Yes, indeed one can. Equally if they were labeled "Jewish" and "Aryan". There is no doubting the power of the abstracted self: "The late Professor Jakow Trachtenberg was the founder of the Mathematical Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. After the Czar of Russia was overthrown, he escaped to Germany where he became very critical of Hitler. He was later imprisoned. Most fellow prisoners around him gave up hope and died even before being sent to their death. He realized that if he wanted to stay alive, he had to occupy his mind with something else rather than focus on the hopeless conditions surrounding them. He set his mind on developing methods to perform speed mathematics." (http://www.speed-math.com/) But my point is to question why, in supposedly civilized discourse, one should constantly be rudely required to perform such mental gymnastics just to read a simple account? Is it acceptable to acquiesce to what amounts to the nascent intellectual environment of the death camp without comment? The agenda in Devlin's essay isn't inferred, it's quite demonstrably explicit, unavoidably demanding of "treatment": "When it comes down to it, mathematics, for all that it appears to be the most right wing of disciplines, turns out in practice to be left wing to the core." He is a fine popularizer by a clumsy propagandist. As these meme wars escalate, there will be no non-combatants.