There are many reasonable writers at Reason magazine. I’d like to see them defend this:
[I]n Friday’s hour-long documentary, titled “The Revolutionary Holocaust: Live Free…or Die,” Beck doubled down on the use of imagery pulled from the 20th century’s totalitarian past to make a point about citizens needing to be wary of government overreach in the present. […..]Indeed, like typical documentaries, there were the talking heads in front of a black background, including a number of prominent conservatives and libertarians – Jonah Goldberg, National Review writer and author of “Liberal Fascism”; Nick Gillespie, editor-in-chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com; Lee Edwards, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation – and even outgoing Ukranian president Viktor Yushchenko.
[….]Beck may be a strange mix of comedy and pathos, but he’s also bringing substantive discussion to cable news and creating arguments that can be engaged, refuted, or amended,” Gillespie said after the film aired.
Goldberg, reached before the show aired, described what he’d seen of it as “very hard-hitting.”
Everyone who works for Reason or subscribes to Reason should be deeply ashamed of themselves.
wvng
They won’t be.
Kryptik
But Douuuuuug, they called themselves National Soshulists for a reaaaasooooon…
…ok, so it was a completely different and cynical reason than Beck and Goldberg try to attribute, but hey, who cares when you can try and hang the good ol’ H-Man over Liberals heads as if DFHs were in charge of Auschwitz.
Jason
He couldn’t fit “Meteor Mass-Grave 9/11 Apocalypse” into the title? :yaaawn:
Chyron HR
So Beck wants America to be like New Hampshire? Fair enough.
GregB
In the brief clip I saw, my stomach turned a bit when I heard that charlatan use the voice of now deceased and noted liberal Congressman Tom Lantos in his slickly produced propaganda attack on liberals and progressives.
Beck is insane and he’ll be pulling an Artie Lang sooner rather than later.
-G
Viva La Revolucion
I sincerely hope that Glennda is willing to be the first martyr of the tea party revolution. ‘Cause if you’re not willing to take a bullet for it you should just STFU!!!
Prophetic words from “Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy.”
It is notable that a future edition of The Encyclopedia Galactica fell through a wormhole in time, and its entry for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is “a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”
Seanly
Did you see the clip of Beck & Goldberg watching some oddball clip of G B Shaw rambling about Mussolini?
It’s a very weird clip of Beck & Goldberg watching a very odd clip of G B Shaw. Beck lets the Shaw clip run too long – his own show cuts back to showing him & Goldberg watching it. Each cutback it looks like Goldberg is about to launch into more of his retarded thesis, but Beck is enthralled with the Shaw clip.
I suppose the Shaw clip shows G B Shaw is a racist fascist because he called Mussolini a “nice fellow”. For the life of me, the G B Shaw clip reminds me of an Abe Simpson ramble. It’s pretty intellectually lazy to say that someone is XXX for calling an XXX person a nice fellow, but laziness is the hallmark of Goldberg’s entire body of work.
Atlliberal
You have to have a conscience to feel shame.
They know exactly what they are doing.
BruinKid
@Viva La Revolucion: That would be truly disturbing, because if that were to happen, you’d see such a complete rewriting of history from his sycophants about what a great American patriot he was. I can see them building statues of Beck if that comes to pass.
I’d much rather see him disgraced and exposed as a fraud, than to see him martyred in any way.
xjmueller
in the Reason piece Doug links to, Goldberg is quoted:
“If they’re trying to make the case that Obama’s going to lead to anything like the 65 million killed or the concentration camps, I’d be the first to condemn it,”
But if it’s only implied, there’s no Reason to object.
El Douche
Mussonlini’s nickname was Il Duce. I just wanted to adapt it for Glennda, who’s already got the uniform in his closet. Fired up and ready to go…
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×6482366
Paulie Chestnuts
I wonder how these glibertarians reconcile the fact that plenty of nations with WAY more gubmintal ‘overreach’ end up scoring higher than the U.S. in the UN’s Human Development Index.
I’m sure there are plenty of victims to ‘communism’ (whatever that means — communism and totalitarianism are not the same thing, and if communists argue that a number of these regimes weren’t ‘real’ communism one would actually have to learn about it in order to argue against that), but frankly a system of governance that supplies basic human needs sounds a lot better to me than living in, say, Somalia or so many other dog-eat-dog countries where you’re truly screwed if you’re a member of the lower classes.
Honestly, sometimes the cynic in me thinks that their main objective is to produce a whole generation of compliant feudal serfs.
The Republic of Stupidity
There… better… no?
Alan
OT: Regarding the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on corporate free speech rights, this is a very interesting read:
What did the Founding Fathers really think about corporations and their rights?
El Douche
Sorry, last link didn’t work, hopefully this one fares better.
There was a typo in Glenn Beck’s book title – I think it should have been called: “Agreeing With Idiots.”
http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/what-not-to-wear/
Brick Oven Bill
I watched this show and thought it was pretty informative. What are the factual errors to which Balloon Juice is alluding?
Annie
@The Republic of Stupidity:
Much better. Now it makes sense.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Brick Oven Bill:
It’s too early in the morning to get down ‘n dirty in the nutty w/ you. Just click on the link above (I’d like to see them defend this…).
Michael Calderone at Politico does a respectable job of dissecting the mess.
I just hope you brought enough prions for the whole class this morning.
Rick Taylor
@Brick Oven Bill
Thanks for the laugh. I needed that.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Annie:
To paraphrase J Milton (M Berle’s uncle):
MikeJ
@The Republic of Stupidity:
The man doesn’t know the difference between infer and imply and he’s paid to be a professional journalist.
Would somebody send a nun with a ruler around to the Politico offices?
bemused
@The Republic of Stupidity:
A few threads below you linked to pieces on the Rick Santelli rant which discussed the Playboy investigation “Backstabber, Is Rick Santelli a plant?’. I’m wondering why Playboy pulled that piece so soon after it was up…inaccurate or all too accurate upsetting Koch family & other big money guys behind the tea party movement?
Chyron HR
@Brick Oven Bill:
The “Caprica” thread is a few posts down.
aimai
Why should they be ashamed? It all makes sense, to them.
aimai
The Republic of Stupidity
@Alan:
Anybody know what the Brits use the ‘corporation’ for in slang?
It’s how they refer to criminal gangs…
“It’s me corporation, guv…”
aimai
Ah, yes, at the end of the calderone piece:
So, condemn it, already.
aimai
The Republic of Stupidity
@bemused:
Now that you mention it… I recall that being discussed at the time… I believe it was considered a case of the latter at the time… fortunately, material posted on the innnertubes is forever.
The Republic of Stupidity
@MikeJ:
Whilst that may be true, even he can see thru Beck’s shinola…
General Winfield Stuck
OT
I want to say it’s been a rough several weeks. With much angst and consternation. We are all democrats. Well, most of us here.
I hereby tender my apologies to any one on the other side of the HCR issue, if I insulted you unfairly. Even Cole. Nerves are frayed and passions have been running high.
As a peace offering I give you
There’s a dog in their somewhere
Life as a Doggie
All of today’s romp in the snow Charlie pics
AhabTRuler
@General Winfield Stuck: Charlie rocks! ;-)
Brick Oven Bill
I am still awaiting the factual errors. In the interim, as directed by The Republic of Stupidity, I have reviewed the link. In the link, Nick Gillespie says:
“Beck may be a strange mix of comedy and pathos, but he’s also bringing substantive discussion to cable news and creating arguments that can be engaged, refuted, or amended.”
Also in the link, Steven Marks, who works at a college, says:
“No one in their right mind is going to defend Stalin or Mao or Che Guevara.”
Professor Steven should perhaps watch Glenn’s TV show as if he would have watched it he would know that Anita Dunn, the Obama honcho and wife of Obama’s personal lawyer-hero, considers Chairman Mao to be one of her favorite political philosophers.
Barry
“There are many reasonable writers at Reason magazine.”
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
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iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Like Matt ‘I get my healthcare from France, f*ck you all’ Welch?
Reason jumped the shark a long, long time ago; in the later years of the Bush administration, it was just harder to see. They’ve gone back to their roots, which are glibertarian anti-liberal lunacy.
valdivia
@General Winfield Stuck:
Charlie does put a smile on my face. And you do too whenever you talk about the plastic unicorn. Then again I am an O-Bot so the unicorn must be the code that activates my program. :)
Bob In Pacifica
Paul Weyrich’s Heritage Foundation and other front groups were essential in “teaching democracy” to former Soviet captive states. That is, the CIA was putting in their people into the new national power structures. Yushchenko, a supply-sider who has been polling about 7% favorability when he left office and who was coming down heavily on dissidents (the other 93%) was the perfect foreigner to use for this. I guess Georgia’s Saakashvili, who started a war on behalf of Big Oil’s thrust into Pipelineistan, was otherwise occupied.
Also, please recall that Goldberg’s mom, where Jonah presumably suckled, used a CIA cover in 1972 when she was spying on the McGovern campaign for Richard Nixon (the North American News Alliance, I believe). I don’t know if the CIA was handing out fake reporter IDs to everyone back then or if there was some relationship between Goldberg and the Agency. You can decide for yourself.
And Lucianne Goldberg also was in the middle of the cum-stained dress mess too during the Clinton years. She was the friend of Citizen Tripp, who it might be remembered had been working for the ultra-top secret Delta Force before she transferred to working at the White House. Remember how Goldberg “advised” Lewinsky?
Oh, and Jonah’s mom was also Mark Fuhrman’s literary agent. Managed to get Regnery to pick up his enlightening book.
This is how fascism works. It’s a corporate takeover of the government at one level and propagandizing false narratives to the ignorant bottom feeders who will fill their armies and march in the streets in fear and anger against “the Other”. The dilemma that fascism had is that it was responsible for so many deaths and so much misery that it had to change its identity. Thus the Goldberg-headed campaign to change the definition of fascism and pin the word “fascism” on anti-fascists.
If you live in a brick oven this strategy may actually work. Or maybe you just send people to ovens.
GregB
Bob,
I find this all deadly serious. That is why I am coming down on the stop mocking tea-partiers as a bunch of nincompoops side.
That energy and anger welling up in these groups may end up getting transferred somewhere.
Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg are using a white board to point the way. They are setting up a “do it to them before they do it to you” narrative.
-G
charles pierce
I will wager a considerable sum that,
“If they’re trying to make the case that Obama’s going to lead to anything like the 65 million killed or the concentration camps…”
Jonah would not be the first to condemn it.
I am reckless with my money.
charles pierce
I will wager a considerable sum that,
“If they’re trying to make the case that Obama’s going to lead to anything like the 65 million killed or the concentration camps…”
Jonah would not be the first to condemn it.
I am reckless with my money.
MattR
@charles pierce:
Fixed that for ya.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Does anyone know where the funding for Reason comes from? And who publishes it? CATO? Someone else?
Legalize
Shame? They love this stuff. The only thing they will feel is glee. And even more glee when one of their deranged followers takes a shot at the president.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
@charles pierce:
That’s not reckless, that’s a wise bet.
There ain’t any reason at Reason. Like every other Republican endeavor, its name has nothing to do with what the word actually means. In fact, the best way to determine what a right wing project is designed to do is to take the name they use to describe it and find the opposite meaning of it.
Clear Skies Initiative = More pollution
Reason = Nonsense
and so on and so on…
It gets easy after awhile.
GregB
By the way, as if things aren’t bad enough.
Haaretz is reporting that Israel, Syria, Lebanon are going on alert on fears of renewed hostilities.
Link.
-G
dr. bloor
@Legalize:
This. From a developmental point of view, these are people who never got past the stage in which you delight in upsetting the grown-ups by smearing your own feces on the wall.
Joel
@Seanly: GB Shaw was a Stalinist, though, wasn’t he? Doesn’t discredit his writing but he had some vile bedfellows, and Orwell rightly called him out on it in Animal Farm.
serge
A couple of years ago I re-upped my Salon subscription and they were offering some freebies. For reasons I cannot explain, I had never heard of Reason, and it was one of Salon’s choices. I chose it.
This was naivete that I cannot defend. The first issue finally arrived, and I said, “WTF?” I spent the next five months shredding each issue. How could I not have known?
mtraven
@Calvin 39 —
Reason gets its fundtion from an array of right-wing foundations, including Koch, Scaife, and Olin. The Koch Family Foundations are especially notable for funding glibertarian apologists for the right, including The Cato Institute and the George Mason University economics department as well as Reason.
Crusty Dem
Whilst it may be a bit long
would make an excellent tagline.
Paulie Chestnuts
“No one in their right mind is going to defend Stalin or Mao or Che Guevara.”
My granddad was a sailor on a Sicilian merchant vessel and made occasional trips to North America and China.
It just so happened that on one occasion he remembers seeing children begging in the streets. The next time — after Mao took the reins — there was some development in the country and he didn’t see these children begging anymore.
Any system has winners and losers, but it’s a bit rich to hear the well-off and well-fed complain about the loss of lives when I’m sure there many people who had previously died miserable, anonymous deaths.
bemused
@Brick Oven Bill:
Ahhh, such wide-eyed unquestioning trust. That’s sweet & adorable in toddlers & perfectly normal for that age group. Not cute coming from a grown person. Credulous adults are easy marks.
NobodySpecial
I don’t want them to apologize OR feel ashamed.
I want them to get louder and shriller.
I want them to get so disassociated from reality that people finally reject their ‘I got mine, fuck you’ mentality that drips from every hole in their body in disgust.
Maybe after a couple of centuries in the wilderness being used as the bad guys in modern Grimm Tales, we might consent to the idea that they weren’t all bad, as some of them may have had offspring they cared about and didn’t eat.
Maybe.
Stroszek
@Bob In Pacifica: Back in the good ole’ days, I took a “Politics and National Security” course taught by a Heritage Foundation flunky. My college wasn’t stellar by any means, but she was easily the stupidest professor I’ve ever had. She was an “expert” on communist states who had apparently lived through the Cold War but obstinately neglected actual history in favor of loony conspiracy theories. She was saying some crazy shit about the UN being an anti-Taiwan commie lackey group one day and I had to correct her by pointing out that the PRC wasn’t even recognized by the UN until the early 70’s. She resolutely denied this, even when presented with evidence to the contrary, so I gave up, wrote a paper kissing Fukuyama’s ass and got my easy A.
Anyway, I assume she is representative of the kind of advisers that were sent into eastern Europe after the Cold War, so it really doesn’t surprise me that their experiment with capitalism has been pretty much an unmitigated failure.
Brick Oven Bill
Glenn has three simple Principles:
1. Question with boldness. (Logic)
2. Hold to the facts. (Arithmetic, Geometry, Logic)
3. Speak without fear. ([True] Rhetoric)
Glenn should be applauded for his dedication to the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences, and not have to endure threats from felons.
Trust is not a part of Glenn’s TV show bemused. The Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences are the biggest threat to the modern Left (those who seek to impose the Central American model of government on the United States). This is why we are talking about Glenn. He is a threat to the power structure.
We are not trying to tear down Sean Hannity for a reason.
Laertes
The big problem you’re up against when trying to convince people that the Nazis were leftists is that Fascists hated Leftists, Leftists hated Fascists, and Fascism arose as an explicit rejection of Communism.
This was all well-understood at the time, and it explains why the moneyed classes in the UK and US were largely sympathetic to the fascists.
At bottom, the the struggle between Fascism and Communism was about who should get all the loot: The existing aristocracies or the leaders of some new revolution who could then set themselves up as a new aristocracy.
The game Beck is playing, and it’s a wise move on his part, is to obscure the fundamental opposition between Fascism and Communism by focusing on the traits they shared–a tendency toward totalitarianism, military adventurism, and mass murder of disfavored populations.
That part is easy, really. If Adam is a stupid, violent, mass-murdering thug who thinks that the people should control the means of production and we ought to kill millions of people, and Bob is a stupid, violent mass-murdering thug who thinks that workers ought to meekly endure their sorry lot and we ought to kill millions of people, Adam and Bob have a lot more in common with one another than either of them do with any civilized bystanders, whatever opinions those bystanders may hold about social justice and the distribution of wealth.
So it’s not that hard to make the point that all totalitarian states are broadly similar. The next step, then, is to point out that some totalitarian states are leftist, therefore they all are, and then draw a line from there to people who favor single-payer health care.
Sounds like a tough sell, but if your audience is frightened and angry, you can sell them anything.
Beck knows it can work. After all, it worked for Hitler.
Stroszek
@Brick Oven Bill: I take it you got your BA from the State University of LaRouche.
bemused
@Laertes:
It’s worked on Brick Oven.
Obliterati
Glenn has three simple Principles:
1. Increase his ratings. (Hype)
2. Create fear and uncertainty. (Propaganda)
3. Sell gold. Lots of gold. (Profit!)
Glenn should be applauded for his dedication to his corporate sponsors, and not have to endure threats from people who correctly point out that he’s full of shit.
The Republic of Stupidity
@BOB:
Really? Really?
When seeking out leadership (father figures?), do you always gravitate towards self-proclaimed rodeo clowns who think their followers are idiots?
eemom
here ya go — here’s the antidote. Balls Beer for Health Care reform!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMlPE1lV_5Y
Chyron HR
@Brick Oven Bill:
And those would be what, exactly?
1) Chemistry,
2) Astronomy,
3) Poetry,
4) Philosphy,
5) Dopey,
6) Sneezy, and, um…
7) TV Tropes?
Cat Lady
@charles pierce:
While you’re here, can you confirm this for the BJ lexicon?
kthxbai.
Ogami Itto
@The Republic of Stupidity:
And an alcoholic, self-proclaimed rodeo clown at that!
Also, as has been noted elsewhere, Beck has some sort of strange mother fixation. So basically the guy’s a mess.
Koz
I can’t see why Reason is supposed to be embarrassed by this. From the article, it looks like their involvement in the project is limited to the fact that one of their writers was interviewed for it.
More importantly, I can’t see why the project itself is disreputable. We know it’s produced by Glenn Beck and there’s at least one history professor who thinks it’s misleading. Pretty weak sauce if that’s all there is.
Ecks
@Laertes:
Bravo.
A very tidy summation, and nicely done.
I’d also add that some of the official rhetoric of communism and fascism start to look quite similar when you take a bit of a step back.
Communism: The wealth of the country belongs to everybody, equally! We all get a share!
Fascism: The wealth of the country belongs to us REAL
GermansAmericans, those of uswith pure Aryan blood, who are tall, blond and white, and hate the jews and blackswho love guns and the constitution and pick-up trucks, and who hate them people with their fancy educations who get down on us when we call n*ggers n*ggers. We want our country back!burnspbesq
I should probably save this for a NFL open thread tomorrow, but hey, I’m not the most patient guy.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here, in all its glory, is the single stupidest thing Marc Ambinder has ever written.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/01/on_how_mark_sanchez_is_kinda_like_barack_obama.php
Zach
QFT:
I don’t even think Beck and Goldberg are aware of the fact that universal healthcare in Germany predates Nazism.
This whole absolutist view of history… finding a need to lump everything you find wrong about the past with everything progressive… is really disturbing. Goldberg insists that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist even though this simply wasn’t the case; but because she made the almost universal mistake of taking the science of eugenicists at face value, she wanted to kill the poor and stupid. In reality, her birth control program was the most all-American, pro-Freedom, rah-rah-rah option out there. It was up against forced sterilization and communism.
Laertes
What’s disreputable, Koz, is that Beck is trying to pretend that Hitler was a leftist.
This isn’t just some annoying historical error, like promoting the view that the battle of Agincourt took place in 1417.
It’s a project that, if successful, could have ugly consequences. Stalin and Hitler serve as warnings about the dangers of extreme leftism and extreme rightism, respectively.
Beck’s attempt to recast Hitler as a leftist is, effectively, an attempt to remove a constraint on extreme rightism.
Ever heard the saying “Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it”? Beck is trying to make us forget the real Fascism.
mcd410x
Good interview by TNC of Ezra.
Worth a read.
mcd410x
@burnspbesq: You won’t mind if I’m skeptical of that statement, will you? The stoopid part, I mean.
Brick Oven Bill
Chyron HR; Behold the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences:
Grammar.
Rhetoric.
Logic.
Arithmetic.
Geometry.
Music.
Astronomy.
The first three are ‘The Trivium’, and allow us to reason and communicate thoughts. The final four are ‘The Quadrivium’, and provide for us metrics for our use in judgment and verification.
1500 years before the Enlightenment, which gave rise to the Constitution, Plato summarized the totality of everything the Greeks had learned into Four Understandings:
First, there is certainty.
Second, mathematics gives us the power of perception.
Third, as mathematics is thought, it is eternal, and in another realm of existence.
And Fourth, as mathematics is thought, it can be known by all.
This is why Obama officials accuse people using math to measure the outcomes of their initiatives of ‘calculator abuse’. They hate math, as people capable of reasoning can understand it.
Will
Could someone at Balloon Juice: John, DougJ, Anne or Tim, please post a response to Glenzilla’s simply awful defense of Thursday’s USSC decision regarding campaign finance?
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/22/citizens_united/index.html
I would really like to hear any of your opinions, and imagine others here would too.
Chyron HR
@Brick Oven Bill:
Oh, honestly. Even I can spot a parody troll eventually.
licensed to kill time
Glenn Beck has three simple principles:
1. Boldness with questionable facts
2. Holding on to his questionable facts with tenacity and his questionable sanity by his fingernails
3. Speaking without fear of reprisal or refutation while raking in the bucks.
I predict he will have a very public meltdown and be dragged off the set by men in white coats while sobbing “They’re coming to take me away, hohoheeheehaha to the funny farm where life is beautiful ALL the time” and he’ll be happy to see those men in their little white coats as they’re coming to take him away.
Haha.
Persia
@Chyron HR: Does Beck know they have gay marriage now?
Ogami Itto
Glenn Beck: Grammarian. Rhetorician. Logician. Arithmetician. Geometrician. Musician. Astronomer. Rodeo Clown.
Verily, the man’s genius knows no bounds.
Ogami Itto
Also, if Nick Gillespie is the “Fonzi of Freedom” then who’s the “Chachi of Freedom”?
Brick Oven Bill
Jared Bernstein assuses mathematicians of ‘Calculator Abuse’.
Photo of math-deniers. Jared ‘Calculator Abuse’ Bernstein is on the left.
Peter Orszag, on the right, testified before congress that Freddie-Fannie’s liabilities could be assumed by the taxpayer, from the banks, for likely zero dollars.
Stroszek
@Chyron HR: BOB is one of my favorite troll varieties. I really love reading his posts, though my all-time favorite of this breed is the guy at Salon who constantly shows off his book learnin’ by vomiting strained analogies comparing Palin’s various fumbles to the tactics of Civil War generals.
Comrade Kevin
@Ogami Itto: He also did us the service of pointing out the OLIGARHY.
Hob
@Joel: Shaw was a peculiar crank with a lot of horrible opinions. It’s really hard to know anything at all about Shaw and not know that. I can only figure that Beck must’ve just recently heard of the guy, found out he was a sockalist and a vegetarian, and assumed that he’s therefore a timeless saint in the liberal religion. In Beck’s mind, the commie hippies nightly pray to Shaw’s beard and swear by every word that came out of his mouth– but their dirty little secret is, he liked Mussolini! So that’s what sockalism is all about! Shoot me now.
I believe everyone who donated to the Catholic Church in the 1970s deserves a refund of whatever portion went toward Beck’s education.
Comrade Darkness
I love the duality of the right screeching: “the scientists and intellectuals are evil and destroying America” while over here Beck and Goldberg are trotting out: “the fascists were evil and they’re back, watch out!” But the first thing every fascist regime in history did was kill all the educated and intellectuals. *rolls eyes*
More projection. More cognitive dissonance. Basically, more of the same as always.
Koz
“Stalin and Hitler serve as warnings about the dangers of extreme leftism and extreme rightism, respectively.”
First of all, Stalin is a much clearer exemplar of the Left than Hitler is of the right. Contrary to the argument in your prior post, fascism is not at bottom about dividing spoils or opposition to Communism. Primarily, fascism insists on the supremacy of the interest and the greater glory of the nation, and repudiates the self-determination of the individual or the family or anything else that could get in the way.
Hitler distinguished himself among fascists with his weird supposedly scientific race theories.
Add all that up, it’s clear Hitler is the epic fail of something, but not necessarily “Rightism” as you might think about it.
Of course, Beck being Beck, it’s entirely possible that he went over the top in one way or another. But, whatever we criticize Beck for should be about the documentary he produced, not an article on Politico. I haven’t seen this documentary. I haven’t seen this documentary and it doesn’t look like anybody else here has either, so we should at least allow for the possibility that secondhand sources have misrepresented Beck, as much as Beck misrepresented his source material.
Stroszek
@Brick Oven Bill: Whoa, you’re bringing Plato into this? If you’re going to equate Dunn with Mao for the prior citing the work of the latter, I can only assume your reference to Plato means you’re an unabashed pederast who endorses slavery and views democracy as a degenerate form of government.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
Yes, that’s pretty much the definition of right-wing politics. Bismarck wasn’t a fascist since it didn’t exist yet, but he absolutely believed in the supremacy of the nation.
So your argument is that because fascism took those arguments even further to the right, that proves that it’s not based in right-wing ideas? Huh?
ETA: Since you seem a little confused about the actual definitions of “right” and “left” (as opposed to the new definitions that Jonah Goldberg pulled out of his ass) here’s a little primer from Wikipedia for you. You’re welcome.
Koz
“Yes, that’s pretty much the definition of right-wing politics.”
Uhhh, no. Among other things, and to state what should be obvious, the Right believes the individual and the family are ends in themselves and have very important spheres of self-determination.
Brick Oven Bill
Timocracy is the way to go Stroszek, in my opinion. In many ways, this is what was established in 1789, and it worked pretty good for around 200 years.
AhabTRuler
@Brick Oven Bill: Frankly, I just don’t understand what pie has to do with anything under discussion here.
Ogami Itto
@Stroszek: I guess the only question now is whether Brick Oven Bill, a man who cites Plato, prefers penetrative or non-penetrative sex with adolescent boys. It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty_in_ancient_Greece
Brick Oven Bill
Your pizza sucks AhabTRuler.
Translate that.
AhabTRuler
@Brick Oven Bill: Dammit BoB, there are more important things to discuss than food. Why must you always bring the conversation down to such a petty level? I mean really, can’t you think with something other than your stomach?
Brick Oven Bill
The world always boils down to money, women, and food AhabTRuler.
Here is my pizza.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
Uhhh, yeah. Look up “Kinder, Kuche, Kirche” and tell me again that fascism is not a right-wing ideology. Also note that there is not a single right-wing ideology, so claiming that your personal ideology only has a few things in common with fascism so therefore fascism is not a right-wing ideology is moronic.
Patrick
Beck may be a strange mix of comedy and pathos, but he’s also bringing substantive discussion to cable news and creating arguments that can be engaged, refuted, or amended,” Gillespie said after the film aired.
“Substantive discussion” my ass!
Stroszek
@Brick Oven Bill: Hey, I agree with you there, though I’d peg 1829 as the official death of American timocracy. I remain a closeted Hamiltonian, as any good elitist liberal should be.
Koz
I’m not exactly getting your point here, so I’ll just make a couple of points and hope they address your quibble.
First, as Jonah argues in Liberal Fascism, fascism, historically, intellectually, politically, is a phenomenon of the Left here in America (to the extent that it exists at all, an important qualification).
Second, part of the point about family and children is meant to emphasize that such things are ends. Eg, Sarah Palin has the right (and duty) to raise her fifth child by her best judgment even if some other party thinks he’s defective or contrary to the interest of the state.
Stroszek
@Koz: I’m glad you can cite ideologically disinterested scholars like Jonah Goldberg.
b-psycho
@Patrick: Is horseshit not a substance?
joe from Lowell
That’s nonsense. Opposition to desegregation, opposition to entry into WW2 and an alliance with the Soviets, support for the Nazi regime, denunciations of Marxism, lynchings – none of these things are remotely leftist.
The fascists themselves certainly never described themselves as leftists, but as rightists.
Mnemosyne
@joe from Lowell:
The really funny part is that support for civil rights, entry into WWII to fight fascism, and opposition to lynchings were all cited as signs of the pernicious influence of Communism.
So I guess Goldberg is claiming that all political battles have really been between factions of the left and the right just sits on their ass and watches while everyone else does things. Sounds about right for him.
b-psycho
@Will: What exactly is wrong with it? I could at least understand defense of the campaign finance restrictions if they had a clear effect, but anyone with a pulse can tell the political arena was no less corrupt with them in place than without. They’re questionable in both constitutionality and usefulness, what is there to defend?
When I see corporate interests paying to maintain favorable government, I don’t think “let’s keep them from airing attack ads within X days of an election”, I think “why the fuck does such a legal status even exist?”. Campaign finance reform is like responding to the existence of armed muggers by putting up “robbery free zone” signs.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
Ah, yes, the noted scholar and historian Jonah Goldberg, who of course has no interest whatsoever in cleansing the image of the right wing and certainly has no interest in damaging the image of the left wing. No, he’s just a completely neutral observer who managed to come to these conclusions through his intensive study of the subject in unbiased sources.
Next up: Koz knows that global warming is a hoax because the unbiased sources at Exxon/Mobil told him so.
Laertes
One might as well say that Communism wasn’t about starving millions of rural peasants and slaughtering the old aristocracy, but instead about worker control of the means of production.
To do either that or what you’ve done is to confuse the slogans with the reality. If you read Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or Orwell’s War Diaries, you get a pretty clear picture of how Fascism was seen at the time: An explicit rejection of and a bulwark against Communism.
If we look below the sloganeering, what we see is Communism rising in the early 20th century to scare the hell out of moneyed classes around the world, and to inspire a large number of poor people, thugs, fools, intellectuals, idealists, and people who were any combination of these.
Fascism’s elevation of the good of the nation above the good of the individual might strike modern ears a bit differently, but at the time it was clearly understood to be a reaction against Communism, and the leftists of the day (c.f. Orwell) saw this clearly, as did the Right in both Britain and America, which broadly sympathized with the Fascists.
Orwell tells an unforgettable story of Conservative MPs on the floor of parliament cheering the news that British ships bringing supplies to the Republican (Anti-Fascist) forces in Spain had been bombed.
The conventional wisdom on the Right was that Fascism was perhaps a bit regrettable, but that Communism was far worse. “Better to go Fascist then to go Bolshevik.”
The Arch-conservative Churchill hated Hitler, but this made him something of a maverick on the British Right. Lord Halifax, for instance, once wrote that “Although there was much in the Nazi system that profoundly offended British opinion, I was not blind to what he (Hitler) had done for Germany, and to the achievement from his point of view of keeping Communism out of his country.” Edward VIII was infamously pro-fascist.
Roosevelt faced constant opposition from the American Right, who (correctly) perceived that he aimed to bring America into the war against the Fascists, and (again, correctly) perceived that he was eager to make common cause with the Communists to do so.
We tend to think of the right as the warmongers and the left as the peaceniks, but that’s merely an artifact of post-war politics. It all depends on who the enemy is. In Orwell’s words, the American Left was “positively bloodthirsty” to get into the war.
Koz
This isn’t exactly clear either. In any case, the important point is this: the “conservative/Southern” artifacts of regional/racial conflict in America were not fascist, period. You keep using that word, but it doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
I see someone has never heard of Huey Long.
I agree that someone here is very confused about what “fascism” means, but it ain’t joe from Lowell.
(Speaking of the South and fascism, the Google led me to this fascinating-sounding book. I don’t think it’s $40 worth of fascinating, though.)
el donaldo
@Koz:
Not fascist? In that they lacked a European context? The argument you’re making couldn’t be that circular, could it?
But don’t be so fast to put a period to it. To cite one example, David Duke and his supporters: that’s an extreme product of the political/racial/regional of Southern conservatism, and its sympathies are quite clearly not leftist. It’s an extreme case, but it’s not an outlier, simply a far point on a trajectory.
Koz
“If you read Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich or Orwell’s War Diaries, you get a pretty clear picture of how Fascism was seen at the time: An explicit rejection of and a bulwark against Communism.”
Well yes, but at least as much a rejection of liberal society as that.
In its historical context, fascism should be understood as a response to 19th century industrialism and the profound economic changes that brought. Communism was one response, liberal (in current terms, libertarian) democracy was another. Fascism was the attempt to preserve some semblance of social order through those tumultuous times. Almost a “middle way” between Communism and liberal democracy, if you will.
To accomplish this, fascists repudiated individual autonomy in order to organize the economy (and by extension life in general) for the greater glory of the nation.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
So, if I’m interpreting you right, you’re claiming that libertarians are the real right-wingers and fascists are just poseurs?
I guess that means you get to have the anarchists, then. I always thought they represented left-wing individualism while libertarians represented right-wing individualism just as fascists represented right-wing authoritarianism while communists represented left-wing authoritarianism, but since you’re claiming that individualism is solely a product of right-wing thinking, you can have the anarchists.
Which, not incidentally, means that you get to be blamed for the Seattle riots since individualism is a function of right-wing thinking. You’re welcome.
(Edited to add clarification to the second paragraph.)
Koz
And who is that? Huey Long is a figure of the Left, that’s one of Jonah’s main examples.
RSA
Great. And in college, you might learn about linguistics, statistics, trigonometry, physics, biology, and a bunch of other topics in the liberal arts and sciences we’ve studied over the past 1500 years.
pj
To accomplish this, fascists repudiated individual autonomy in order to organize the economy (and by extension life in general) for the greater glory of the nation.
National Review, 1957
“The central question that emerges-and it is not
a parliamentary question or a question that is
answered by merely consulting a catalogue of the
rights of American citizens, born Equal-is whether
the White community in the South is entitled to take
such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically
and culturally, in areas in which it does not pre-
dominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes
-the White community is so entitled because, for
the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy,
and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing
the median cultural superiority of White over Negro:
but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be
hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropolo-
gists. The question, as far as the White community
is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization
supersede those of universal suffrage.”
Sleeper
@Paulie Chestnuts:
Indeed, Mao and Che, and to a lesser extent Stalin, are still revered throughout large parts of the world. Maoism still thriving in South Asia. And Mao has more or less been promoted to demigodhood in China, at least officially.
Mao and Stalin killed tens of millions of their own people and set up horrific police states, but at the end of the day they also transformed enslaved medieval states into world powers. That tends to rehabilitate them in the eyes of many as their crimes grow dim and distant. I think Americans are very naive when it comes to the appeal that revolutionary leftism still holds in the world.
Wile E. Quixote
@Brick Oven Bill
Dude, you are the last person in the world who gets to tell someone that their pizza sucks. I’ve looked at the pictures on your website and seen the ugly concrete turd that you call an oven (The Brick Oven Bill construction method, “does it look like shit? Pour on another bag of Ready-Mix to fix it!”) and your shitty looking pizza, which looks like something that got tossed in the trash at a mall food-court Sbarro after spending too much time under the heat lamps.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
Oh, well, if Jonah claimed that Long was of the left, that’s all the proof anyone needs. You can ignore, say, Long’s biographers if Jonah tells you otherwise.
I’m guessing you also believe that the New Deal caused the Great Depression, right? After all, Amity Shlaes told you so.
Sleeper
I think the main problem of trying to assign left- or right-wing labels to various political ideologies is that the traditional left-right spectrum is outmoded and insufficient to describe ideologies. The American right, in particular, defines rightism as individualism, insisting that the two are intertwined if not outright synonymous. This is wrong. The fact that both fascism and communism share totalitarian traits does not make them both left-wing, or both right-wing for that matter. There are several charts that political scientists have designed to designate various ideologies along x- and y-axes, with slight differences as to what both axes represent (cultural/personal freedom as one and economic freedom as the other, usually). In conclusion, Jonah Goldberg is a dumbass. Thank you.
Wile E. Quixote
@Laertes
Fix’t.
Sleeper
@Mnemosyne:
uh. I’ve never, ever heard of Huey Long described as a right-winger. He famously attacked FDR from the left. The New Deal didn’t go far enough for him. He literally wanted to begin redistributing wealth on a progressive basis.
To Goldberg, that’s a bad thing. I think we could use a Huey Long today, “colorful nature” and all.
Laertes
It’s also difficult because modern Rightists will see little of themselves in Hitler and modern Leftists will see little of themselves in Stalin. (In the West, anyway. The point about how Stalin still has lots of fans elsewhere is interesting.)
Big surprise.
If we look at the days before these guys signed their big record deals and like totally sold out and got famous, we see very clearly that the leftists of the day were way into Stalin and the rightists of the day were way into Hitler.
Neither the modern right nor the modern left are entirely the creatures they were 60 years ago, but some broad themes remain.
Wile E. Quixote
This is a long article, and it was published in 1984, but it still skewers “Libertarianism”. From the introduction.
The Libertarian as Conservative
I don’t know if Black originated the phrase “A libertarian is just a Republican who takes drugs” but I don’t recall hearing it before I read this article back in the late 1980s.
Koz
“I always thought they represented left-wing individualism while libertarians represented right-wing individualism just as fascists represented right-wing authoritarianism while communists represented left-wing authoritarianism, but since you’re claiming that individualism is solely a product of right-wing thinking, you can have the anarchists.”
Actually, I’ve got no argument with this, except that fascism really isn’t part of the Right (except the Franco variety, which was). And to the extent that fascism has roots or connections in America (which isn’t much, especially in comparison to the Continent), fascism is a phenomenon of the Left.
Wile E. Quixote
@Koz
Wow, and the communists did pretty much the same thing, repudiating individual autonomy in order to organize the economy (and by extension life in general) for the greater glory of the nation. So what the fuck is it that you’re babbling about? Are you stupid enough to have bought into Jonah Goldberg’s horseshit?
The whole stupid argument that you’re presenting reminds me of the late, and entirely unlamented by me, Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s essay Dictatorships and Double Standards, which should have been called Dictatorships and Doublethink. In this essay Jeanne Kirkpatrick went to great lengths to distinguish totalitarian states from authoritarian ones which basically boiled down to “if you’re grabbed off the street by a bunch of government thugs who were trained by the CIA and hauled off to a secret prison to be tortured and killed you’re better off than you would be if you were grabbed off the street by a bunch of government thugs who were trained by the KGB because well, because shut up, that’s why.”
After reading this I remember thinking “Hmmmm, I’m really not sure you’re going to care if your government is ‘authoritarian’ or ‘totalitarian’ when they hook the electrodes to your balls and crank the current up”. I could be wrong however and would be willing to test this by sending Jonah Goldberg to several ‘totalitarian’ and ‘authoritarian’ countries to be tortured to see if he thinks that there is a difference.
Wile E. Quixote
@
KozJonah Goldberg’s bumboy wrote:Can you offer any proof of this? Some relevant historical examples perhaps? Or are you just going to keep up with your doubleplusgood duckspeaking of Jonah Goldberg’s horseshit?
Koz
Well Mr. Quixote, you’re more likely to catch and eat the Roadrunner than score a useful point with your last post. Let’s unpack this from the beginning.
No, no, no. The intent of the communists was to take political power as the vanguard elite in the interest of the working class, emphatically not the greater glory of the nation. In fact there was a big argument between Stalin and Trotsky about whether advancing the cause of socialism in the context of the nation-state was possible at all (Stalin won, Trotsky lost, obviously).
What they (Hitler and Stalin) do share is strong commonalities in means, in particular that the political leadership is entitled to run roughshod any way it wants over the interests of the individual citizens, which are completely unimportant. This puts both of them in irreconciliable conflict with the Right, which in most circumstances defends the interest of the individual as an end in itself, which he is entitled to pursue even if it’s against the interest of the state.
Finally, the whole business about the difference between authoritarian regimes totalitarian ones according to Kirkpatrick, was not a favorable opinion of human rights in authoritarian regimes. According to Kirkpatrick, authoritarian regimes are less stable than totalitarian regimes, therefore less able to destabilize neighboring regimes. For the same reason, they were also more reformable.
And, wrt the prior discussion of fascism, this has nothing to do with the price of tea in China.
Sleeper
@Koz:
Sorry, but no. Fascist is right-wing authoritarianism. It’s not part of the left. You’re wrong.
Koz
“Can you offer any proof of this? Some relevant historical examples perhaps?”
Just what I said before, fascism is a foremost a response to industrialization. Where there isn’t industrialization, there isn’t fascism, ie, that’s why Franco is an exception.
It’s more clear when you understand that the intellectual literature behind fascism is about getting rid of sloppy guilds and crafts and organizational dead ends, and force everybody to work in harmony together according to the rules set by those trusted with speaking with the authority of the nation.
Koz
It’s not part of the left.
Maybe not in general. But to the extent it exists/existed in America, yes it is.
Sleeper
@Koz:
Examples please.
Koz
Read the book.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Shorter Koz: Fascism is a liberal trait in America. Proof? Because this conservative guy I agree with wrote a book that says so.
Wow, you sure got everyone good with the intellectual heft of that argument. I’m not even going to try and argue with logic like that, you are truly a genius.
You win, take a bow and a victory lap.
Sleeper
@Koz:
Sorry, I meant examples that don’t come from nepotist douchebags living on wingnut welfare such as Mr. Pantload.
Laertes
There you go again, mistaking the packaging for the content. It’s true that modern conservatives like to talk a good game about the rights of the individual versus the state, but the governing record of Actually Existing Conservatism in that area, especially recently in America, is a horror show. (The governing record of Actually Existing Liberalism isn’t as good as it ought to be either.)
Sure, if you redefine rightism as classical liberalism you can make some interesting statements about modern politics. Similarly, if you redefine pointillism as abstract expressionism you can make some startling new conclusions about art.
In both cases, of course, you’d be talking utter nonsense.
charles pierce
“Just what I said before, fascism is a foremost a response to industrialization. Where there isn’t industrialization, there isn’t fascism, ie, that’s why Franco is an exception.”
1) You can’t return your own serve. You can’t make a categorical historical assertion, provide an example that demolishes it, and then say “Exception! Ollie-ollie-in-free!” You sound silly.
2) Your final sentence, literally means: ” that is that’s why Fanco is an exception.”
Bad thinking. Bad syntax.
Do better, please.
charles pierce
And Cat lady, up at #60
AFAIK, “C-Plus Augustus” is mine, as is “The Avignon Presidency.”
thx,
cp
Wile E. Quixote
@Koz
Jesus Koz, do you ever get tired of making these no true Scotsman arguments. I mean every argument you make is basically “No, fascists weren’t on the right because the right doesn’t do that sort of thing. Hitler wasn’t right wing because right wingers don’t do that sort of thing”.
OK, now I get it. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Jonah Goldberg and indeed the entire Republican/conservative apparat in America are not of THE RIGHT I mean they can’t be, not a single one of them believes that in most circumstances the rights of individuals are an end in themselves worthy of pursuit even if they are against the interest of the state. Therefore they’re really left wing communists and the ACLU, which has a long and distinguished history of defending individual rights against the abstract interests of the state are right wingers. And of course this makes sense, the communists called themselves the reds and where do all of the conservatives and Republicans in America live? They live in red states. We’re the true right wingers and it’s well past time that we rose up and killed all of those lousy, traitorous, red, left wing Republican/conservative bastards.
The distinction that you seem to be trying to make, but can’t because you’re stupid, ignorant and dishonest, isn’t between left and right wing, fascists versus communists or authoritarians and totalitarians, the distinction you’re trying to make is that between individualists and statists. Between those who believe that the state should serve all individuals equally and draws its power from them and those who believe that the individuals exist for the state and that the state should serve some individuals more than it does others (“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”).
Koz
This is not a No True Scotsman fallacy. There simply is no larger tradition or context of “Rightism” that Hitler or fascism is part of. There just isn’t. Among other things, the development of conservatism over more than two centuries is about local self-determination, and Hitler had no use “little platoons” of society except to the extent he could issue direct orders to them.
Consider the leading lights of conservatism up to and including Hitler’s time, eg, Burke, Madison, Adam Smith, Disraeli, Churchill, and Hayek. What part of this tradition was the antecedent or justification for anything Hitler did? Answer: none of it.
There is also a weaker, Continental version of conservatism that basically says, “Hooray for the ancien regime!” And guess what? Hitler wasn’t part of that tradition either.
I think they do, especially in the context we’re talking about, and the main reason you have problems with that is your own prejudices.
Koz
Your own prejudices are getting in the way of being able to think clearly in the matter.