As Zandar noted yesterday, Steve Scalise (R-LA-1) was shocked to find that David Duke was a neo-Nazi white supremacist after the fact that he spoke at one of Duke’s all-white rallies surfaced. But let’s not forget who else pals around with neo-Nazis.
[…][I]n the right atmosphere, the neo-Nazi vibe is downright presidential. For instance, here’s a picture of Ron Paul with Don Black, the founder of America’s #1 White Supremacy website, Stormfront, in 2007. (Black co-founded the site with the ex-wife of David Duke. Gosh, it’s nice at parties when everyone already knows each other.) Paul refused to divest himself of funds raised through Stormfront ortheir activist support, and they joined in on his money bombs well into 2008. And none of it became buzzworthy or even an ear worm with any of his constituencies: not when Jamie Kirchick summarized Paul’s eliminationist newsletters and included a link to archived scans of them in 2008; not when the Washington Post reported that Paul was deeply involved in production and proofing of his newsletters to create a paleo-libertarian movement; hell, not even when one of his Michigan campaign coordinators turned out to be a neo-Nazi.None of that would matter in 2014, of course, except that Ron Paul gifted his entire fundraising and grassroots apparatus to his son Rand (including Stormfront moneybombs), who hopes to be elected president in 2016. Rand even added some of his own neoconfederate flavor, with a neoconfederate aide and a spokesperson who publicly posted an image of a lynching. Besides, what’s passing a legacy between father and son? That’s not hate; that’s heritage.
What are the odds of any candidate in the Republican primary even mentioning this? There’s no upside with the current batch of Republican primary voters, and some obvious downside.
lamh36
Former KKK leader says his political adviser was ‘friendly’ with Rep. Scalise
Helmut Monotreme
Rand Paul just knows the best way to launder money is to inherit it.
Keith G
So he (Scalise) spoke with a group called European-American Unity and Rights Organization without being able to suss out what type of meeting it was or he was not bothered by the aims of such a group.
Well, he is either really stupid or he supports racism…..probably both.
JGabriel
Heritage: just like the confederate flag, the klan, and commemorating Robert E. Lee and Nathaniel Bedford Forrest.
Mike in NC
This stuff should only be discussed in quiet rooms. You know, the kind you have to pay $50,000 a plate to get into.
Botsplainer
http://fortressamerica.gawker.com/david-duke-claims-to-have-met-with-other-pols-threaten-1676415305
LOLOLOL
samiam
Since Griftwa1d is a huge fan of that father/son clown show, anyone who supports him supports the neo-naz1’s as far as I’m concerned.
SatanicPanic
@Botsplainer: in Louisiana? Do we still have Democratic pols there?
Villago Delenda Est
The Paul family is racist from stem to stern.
And Hitler was the ultimate libertarian. The catch of course for that sort of “freedom” is only one can enjoy it.
Botsplainer
@SatanicPanic:
Conservative ones.
Somebody needs to explain to the dipshits that it isn’t the party label that’s the problem, its the conservatism.
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer: Scalise shoudl be treated every bit as fairly as Mussolini or Streicher was.
Villago Delenda Est
@JGabriel:
FTFY.
No charge, ever!
Villago Delenda Est
@Keith G:
I would say with near metaphysical certitude “both”.
MattF
The predominant “Do whatever it takes” mindset among Republicans pretty much rules out disavowing racism. It’s how they got to where they are.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: They’ve adopted the Vince Lombardi ethos, which was made in reference to a game, to politics.
Frankensteinbeck
@MattF:
I would argue that it’s not only how they got here, it’s who they are. Racism is baked in. It is one of the pillars of the party, maybe the core itself. They are racists pandering to racists. There is no Republican party without racism, so they cannot abandon it. All that’s changed lately is how effective the cover stories are.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
lamh36 was saying yesterday that her Democratic rep made a statement in support of Scalise, and she was pretty pissed about it. She lives in New Orleans, which still has quite a few Democrats representing it.
I’m guessing the real problem here is that Duke has been in Louisiana and Republican politics long enough to know where all of the bodies are buried, and he can cause a whole lot of embarrassment to Republicans (and some Democrats) nationwide. I kind of hope he does, actually.
Tree With Water
“What are the odds of any candidate in the Republican primary even mentioning this”?
What are the odds of any democrat mentioning it, much less wielding it like a weapon to attack the GOP? In that sense, the democratic party remains in a very stupid, trance-like thrall to the southern doctrine, like little mice afraid to peep. Perhaps the thrall is disappearing now the great blue dog experiment has finally played itself out. Wouldn’t that be nice?
balconesfault
The “I don’t want to pay taxes to provide those black bucks with steak dinners” mentality runs deep in libertarian circles.
Those who consider themselves more intellectual also rush to point out that blacks score worse on IQ tests.
rakesh
It is interesting to read these blogs. When did we decide that speaking to a racist group makes you racist? Dont you think we should look at Scalise’s or any one else for that matter own actions rather than condemning based who he spoke to.
Origuy
I get the feeling that David Duke wants the attention he’ll get by naming names. He doesn’t want to let this die down.
eric k
he’s from Lousiana and he claims to not know about Duke? What is he 14? Anybody over 21 in Louisiana, especially one involved in politics must remember the “vote for the crook, its important” election
Chyron HR
Figures, you liberals just can’t handle a Black man voting Republican.
SatanicPanic
@Mnemosyne: yeah, I hope Duke’s feelings take a beating here and he starts naming names
Mandalay
@Botsplainer:
I really hope that happens, and let the chips fall where they may. Any Democrats who get burned will deserve it even more than the Republicans.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chyron HR: /rimshot
Mandalay
@Origuy:
Nor me. I never thought I’d say this, but David Duke has my full support.
Release those names. All of them.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: I’ll allow that there’s a difference between lying and confabulating– It’s possible (if not exactly plausible) that Glenn Beck believes the things he’s saying. But it’s not possible that, e.g., Jeb! believes anything.
Bob In Portland
Something else for brave Juicers to ignore.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
Maybe I’ve got this wrong. But I seem to remember that the Republican party was not originally like that; that the worst of the racism arrived with the Confederate tendency’s baggage, when it was wooed and won by the Republicans in the 1960s.
Gin & Tonic
Here’s the Orange Man:
Roger Moore
@Bob In Portland:
LOLWUT! Did you actually look at the topic of the post before posting that comment?
MattF
@Amir Khalid: In fact, African American voters were predominantly Republican, at least until the 1930s:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/opinion/charles-blow-race-to-the-finish.html
White Southern Democrats began to secede from the rest of the Democratic party in the late 1940s as ‘Dixiecrats’
Frankensteinbeck
@Amir Khalid:
Correct, and note @MattF as well. The problem is, that was two generations ago. For two generations, the Republican party has specifically and deliberately courted racists. In doing so, they realigned the political landscape into the ‘racism vs. everything else’ parties. This is a process, not an absolute change, but as the last six years have eloquently demonstrated, we have reached a social tipping point where the racists are so afraid of the rise of minorities that they have abandoned all other considerations
Bobby Thomson
@Roger Moore: With the drop in oil revenues, his propaganda writers are just mailing it in at this point.
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
No. SATSQ.
David Koch
They get the media to do it.
Back in 2012 Ron Paul made a last minute surge in Iowa and the media hammered him with his racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic newsletters and he sunk like a rock.
Same thing will happen to Baby Doc. The second he gets close to the lead the media will be fed all the opo-research and he will sink like a lead weight.
Roger Moore
@David Koch:
And he’ll slink home with his giant pile of grift. Mission Accomplished!
ET
No one, and I mean no one in the press should believe Scalise and if they don’t hold his feet to the fire they are negligent. David Duke is a known quantity in Louisiana – the 1991 election wasn’t all that long ago, particularly for those in the state and stayed in state and went into politics. He is in his late 40’s or 50 and there is no way in any version of this universe that he doesn’t know Duke, what he stands for, and what organizations he runs and affiliated with stand for. Duke being affiliated with something particularly with the name “European-American Unity and Rights Organization” (not all that different from the National Association for the Advancement of White People).
Amir Khalid
@Bobby Thomson:
It’s sad to see what feeble stuff they post when the propaganda machine isn’t cranking it out for them, isn’t it? Just yesterday, BiP was trying to tell me about the MH370 captain’s political connection to opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, which the FBI was for some reason afraid to investigate. As was well known to people around him, Capt Zaharie Ahmad Shah was just one grassroots activist in Anwar’s party.
Mike in NC
@David Koch: So, not much chance for a ‘Paul / Duke 2016’ ticket?
ET
Heck Erik Erickson doesn’t believe Scalise’s shit.
Redshift
@Gin & Tonic: Huh, I must have missed the part where he said it was “wrong and inappropriate.” All I’ve read so far is Scalise saying he was too dumb to know who he was talking to, and he would never have anything to do with a hate group, while carefully avoiding saying this was a hate group, or condemning them in any way.
“I made a dumb mistake” is not the same as “it was wrong and inappropriate.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rakesh: Probably not for you, yet here you are.
I’m a (former) professional musician. If I take a gig at a white power “conference”, that’s a statement on my behalf of the sort of clients I approve of. I can pick and choose my clients, and would never take such a gig based on that alone. Scalise took a paying speaking gig – same thing as I do minus music – at a white power conference. I have to assume he approves of those who hired him, since he did the gig and cashed the check.
Done. His actions and public statements show that he is a racist.
Thank you for playing.
MattF
@ET: Jen Rubin too. No link, but I saw it with my own eyes.
Redshift
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Exactly. We are looking at his actions, instead of his excuses for them.
Mike in NC
Remember the ‘Citizen Councils’ that existed throughout the South? Many prominent Dixiecrat politicians like Senator Trent Lott were proud members. Perfect for those who didn’t want to muss their hair with a white hood.
MomSense
@Botsplainer:
Is it wrong that I am rooting for injuries (of the political variety of course!!)?
Bob In Portland
@Roger Moore:
Or is the KKK, when discussing the KKK, too far off limits, Roger?
Bobby Thomson
@Bob In Portland: Are you sure you’re trolling the right blog?
MattF
@Bobby Thomson: Looks to me like an off-by-one error.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
@Bob In Portland:
So you’re finally coming around to my view that the U.S. has been a fascist (or at least proto-fascist) state for over 100 years thanks to Jim Crow and white supremacy. Maybe in another few months, you might be able to recognize that people in other countries can take action without the CIA holding their hands. Baby steps.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: You’re off topic, Amir.
From the Daily Mail.
But being a good citizen, you are not interested in MH370, just as you are willing to wait until the guard dogs of the media tell you what to think about MH17.
Michael Bociurkiw is heading up the OCSE investigation of MH17. Funny that he wrote an intro to a book about Malaysian Islamo-fascists. A puff-piece book. And back in 1987 he was writing articles against the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, the section tasked with finding Nazis in the US. He was so rabid that the World Jewish Congress took note of him.
Small world.
So maybe you’re willing to admit that there are fascists in the world, maybe even admit that there are fascists in Ukraine and the US and Malaysia, but that their connections are all coincidental.
What time does the Rose Bowl start on the 1st?
Calouste
@Gin & Tonic: Well, Boehner was the man who showed up to support a GOP candidate who was cosplaying in an SS-uniform. And not just any SS-uniform, but the Viking-brigade, specifically created for all the Nazi traitors from Scandinavia and the Low Countries. Of course, being attracted to treason comes naturally to America’s right wing.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini): You’re not looking for an excuse to ignore the advances of fascism today, are you?
Good.
I would be willing to say, although Mussolini coined the term “fascist” in the 20th Century, that iterations of the same philosophy have run most civilizations since the first village had a granary and someone held the key to it. Fascism is at the heart of monarchism. It’s all about the centralized control of economic power and the okeydoke to get the general population to go along, whether that be to give a couple sheep to the king’s taxman when he comes around or why people must build pyramids or march off to kill people in a neighboring nation.
Actual democracy has been a most radical departure from the historical domination of fascistic governmental structures. So, yes, there were “fascists” a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, six thousand years ago. And after the little bubble of egalitarianism it appears that the curtain is coming down again.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Is the OSI the only organ of the DOJ of which you approve? But the OSI and the FBI both report to the same boss. Surely that is not a coincidence?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne (iPad Mini):
I don’t think I ever said that. But the CIA, as representative of Wall Street and our energy interests around the world, do in fact hold the hands of fascists all over the world. Are some fascists independent operators? Yes.
Does the CIA have a grand plan for control of the world like they have for control of the US? Well, the CIA is just a part of the puzzle. The FBI helps by not investigating certain things that would be politically embarrassing for the CIA, or finding proposterous explanations for false flag operations. The NED helps by training politicians to go over to overseas posts where they can initiate American plans. You might have noticed that. There are think tanks. There are the Americans trained in torture who teach people in other countries how to torture. You shouldn’t focus only on the CIA, Mnem.
You have the Republican Party, which is essentially America’s Fascist Party, and the Democratic Party, which at the national level is essentially Republican Party-lite.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
I’m impressed that you’ve heard of Pak Lah, considering the man’s reputation for colourlessness. But your characterisation of Dr M as a hardline fundie Muslim demonstrates ignorance of my country’s politics. He spent his political career not in PAS, the fundie Islamist party, but in UMNO, the standard-bearers of ethnic Malay chauvinism. And Anwar has never been PM; he was Deputy PM until Dr M fired him in 1998, and replaced him with Pak Lah. I’m inclined to think your source is full of shit.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Were you opposed to searching for Nazis in America, Gin? That’s what the OSI did.
I find it interesting that there’s an blog here about a high-ranking Republican who spoke to white supremacists. I link to an article which says that the KKK helped in Nixon’s Southern Strategy, and Roger Moore accuses me of being off-topic. Well, maybe linking the KKK and white supremacy in the South is too much of a reach for you, Roger.
Then Amir goes off-topic to criticize me about something I commented about in an open thread yesterday. So it turns out that the Ukrainian/Canadian who is leading the investigation into MH17 in Ukraine wrote a puff-piece into for a Malaysian Islamo-fascist from the same milieu as the leading suspect for the MH370 disappearance. Golly, let’s not look any closer at that. That would be conspiracy thinking, and our intelligence services would never do that!
And Mnem appears to me to be saying that fascism in America has been around a long time, so stop pointing to fascism today. And for god’s sake don’t point to connections between historical fascism and current fascism.
Instead of attacking me or arguing that fascism can’t happen here, perhaps you can open your eyes. It happened. It’s happening. And it’s a system where, when the greedheads have nothing to stop them, don’t stop. Very simple.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Have you come up with an explanation for MH370 yet, or are you willing to wait until you’re told?
Amir logic: Dubya was a Republican President, not a member of Stormfront. Therefore, there is no connection between Republicans and fascists.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Were you opposed to using Soviet-fabricated evidence to deport people without due process, to countries they had never lived in, Bob? That’s what the OSI did.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
You need to get your facts right before you can claim any credibility. But that has never stopped you here, has it?
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Where is the quoted material from? It contains a number of errors.
Gin & Tonic
@Cervantes: Bob and factual errors go together like peaches and cream.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: No. And as a former officer in a union, I would argue that the two or three war criminals still alive should get their social security, as it was earned and paid into here in the US. And why should the US punish war criminals that another wing of the US government embraced and nurtured? What the OSI should have been allowed to investigate was the Crusade For Freedom, but since in 1987 the President of the US was its former spokesman, Ronald Reagan, I guess that wasn’t going to happen, was it?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: No, you were not opposed to using fabricated evidence without due process? That’s good to know.
Do you agree with the 6th Circuit decision that the OSI had “perpetrated a fraud on the court”?
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: So you know that there is nothing to the pilot of that plane and Islamo-fascist politics in Malaysia because someone in an article referred to a Deputy Prime Minister as a Prime Minister?
Let me know when your betters tell you what happened to all those Malaysian airliners that seem to keep falling out of the sky. A-OK.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Very well briefed on the Justice Department’s attempts to deport Nazis.
Let me say, it doesn’t surprise me. Do you know about the Crusade For Freedom? You know, how all those fascist Ukrainians got into the US in the first place.
You do.
So, if all the BJers here are upset with fascists in the Republican Party, why would you be upset about the CIA importing them into the US and then seventy years later using their offspring to sell a war in Ukraine?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: And you’re very well-briefed on the ancient history of the OUN. Tell me, how and where did Bandera die? How about Konovalets?
You must be OK with the US taking out al-Awlaki, then, right?
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
I’m not inclined to trust the connections drawn by someone who often gets his facts wrong and sees things that aren’t there, whether it’s about Ukraine or Malaysia.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Thank you for your ad hominems. Weren’t you the one who pointed me to an article in VICE as a justification for blaming the Russians for shooting down MH17? Heh heh. Published by a man who worked for Giuliani’s anti-terror group. Very, very good. Maybe they’ll tell you about how MH370 went down.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: I’m against any state killing, including the death penalty after an actual trial. Have you contacted your friends in Kiev and told them that they shouldn’t roast those Colorado beetles until after a fair trial?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Did you read the accounts of Bandera’s death in the original Ukrainian? Or perhaps in a retrospective article written by Michael Bociurkiw in the Ukrainian Weekly before he went on to investigating air crashes? The world is such a small place.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Here, Bob, I’m sure you’ll be delighted that Oliver Stone interviewed Viktor Yanukovych. Great photo of the two yukking it up. Article is in Russian, not terribly important, but you can feed it to Google Translate if you want, or just scroll down to where they copy Stone’s Facebook post on the topic. Bonus point, he quotes as a source that plagiarist you also love to quote, Escobar. Stone is preparing an English-language documentary – with Yanukovych as a source, I’m sure it will be as coolly objective as Stone’s other work. He’s also working on a film about Putin. I can’t wait, Bob, how about you?
Roger Moore
@Bob In Portland:
No. You posted a link to an article about ties between the Republicans and the KKK and suggested that people at Balloon-Juice were afraid to talk about it. But you posted that in an article about ties between the Republicans and white supremacists, which showed we were perfectly happy talking about it- something that even a dim bulb such as yourself probably should have noticed, given how much time and effort people here go into talking about ties between Republicans and white supremacists. Or did you think our description of the Republican presidential contenders as the Klow Kar Kaucus had nothing to do with that other organization whose initials are KKK?
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: From an anti-fascist blog.
There are a number of posts about South Asian fascists. If you dig deep enough there’s that story of some of the OKC bombers “associating” with fascists in the region.
This is the Daily Mail link which points the finger for MH370 on the pilot and his association with fascists in Malaysia.
So sorry I brought up fascists in a blog about fascists. We’re only supposed to talk about Republican fascists, and not if they’re involved with the international fascist movement. Some people who talk about drowning babies in bathtubs may associate with people who actually drown babies. Who’da thunk?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Here’s a book you might want to read.
Bob In Portland
@Roger Moore: Oh, so the problem is that I pointed to an article where Republicans were willing to point to their KKK connections in the South instead of acknowledging that some Republicans are coy about their connections to fascism. Is that why it was off-topic? We were only talking about coy racists in this thread? My bad.
Well, we knew that with the Republican heritage formations that the national party was linked to foreign fascist groups, didn’t we? But those were foreign fascists, not Southern Republican fascist formations. Which we also knew but used other words for.
But I’ve pointed out Hans von Spakovsky. Dubya’s point man in the Justice Department for, er, discouraging black voting, and how his parents escaped Nazi Germany in 1950 to get away from Nazis and settled in Huntsville, Alabama where they could daily escape from Nazi rocket scientists.
‘Tis a small world.
Perhaps I need some published guidelines on which Nazis I’m allowed to talk about here at Balloon Juice.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Yes, a book about bad things that happened in WWII in the Soviet Union, a country which no longer exists.
And will this give me a clue about what?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: He writes, among other things, about assassinating Konovalets, which led to the splintering of the OUN and the rise of Bandera. But political assassinations in neutral third countries are bad, right? Just like the assassination of Bandera in Munich?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: And written by a guy who did them. From his wiki bio:
Got any books by Norman Lincoln Rockwell you care for me to read?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Do you mean George Lincoln Rockwell?
But, but, but … Sudoplatov was an anti-fascist. That makes him the good guy, no?
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Thanks, yes, I see — but the writer makes a number of mistakes, as Amir Khalid indicates above. I also see your suggestion above that those mistakes are immaterial, which is fine except that then I can’t follow your comments about various “fascists” including …
Did not dig deep enough. If you have a specific link I’ll try to look at it.
Which “fascists in Malaysia”? Anwar Ibrahim’s people are fascists? I’m losing the plot, obviously.
You should discuss whatever you like, as far as I’m concerned.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Yes, the guy whose address was in LH Oswald’s address book.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: As I recall, and it’s been twenty years now, Terry Nichols and Ramzi Yousef were in Cebu City together. I’ve seen the story in various places but I’d have to do some research to find it. Nichols returned to the US on a flight to LA that fit the description of one of the flights of a mass hijacking of a number of planes that was planned for the day by Muslim terrorists which for some reason never came off. I can’t say that it proves anything but looking back it seems suspicious. As I recall, McVeigh wasn’t there.
The point is that there are levels of intrigue with these operations. In his most recent book Peter Dale Scott describes the FBI group that monitored some of the 9/11 hijackers leading up to the event. The FBI was somehow “led astray” by the CIA group monitoring the hijackers. What does it mean? It means nothing without conclusions and most people here resent conclusions.
We know that a plane for Huffman Aviation, where Mo Atta and a buddy allegedly learned how to fly airliners into buildings, was busted in Orlando with 43 pounds of heroin. And no one was prosecuted for that. And we know that Huffman never had a scheduled flight but routinely flew all around the Caribbean for some unknown reason. But let’s not jump to conclusions. Perhaps it was a coincidence that there was 43 pounds of heroin on one of their planes.
When various terror attacks link to each other it indicates that there is a, er, linkage.
Brucds
Cut the guy a little slack. It’s hard to know who these guys are when you can’t see their faces because they have sheets over their heads.
Bob In Portland
Anwar Ibrahim is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood through the International Institute of Islamic Thought, headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. Quite honestly, I don’t pretend to know much about politics in Malaysia, and there are a lot of people calling each other fascists there. IIIT was investigated under the FBI’s Operation Green Quest as a funding source for terrorism in the wake of 9/11.
I’ve also seen Ibrahim described as the IMF’s point man in Malaysia, which would put him on the other, more dangerous, level of fascism, as fascism is a two-tiered system, wherein the bankers and corporatists work at one level and the street fascists work at another. But occasionally we see linkages between one level and another, generally through intelligence services or their adjuncts and the various funding sources.
Maybe there are liberal Muslim Brotherhood dudes as well as fascists. I just haven’t heard about them.
Aside from describing Ibrahim as PM when he was a Deputy Prime Minister, what other facts did the article get wrong? That Ibrahim is NOT a fascist? Just that he co-founded a Muslim Brotherhood group that was suspected by the FBI of financing terror?
Bob In Portland
@Roger Moore: This is where I get lost by having to argue with a half-dozen hostile BJers. I posted the article precisely because the original article was about Republicans and got attacked for it.
You wrote in response to my link about an article about the KKK playing a major role in the Republicans’ ascendance in the South:
What did you think that this thread was about? I’m pretty sure that you may have posted on the wrong thread. Or you were just being an asshole. If you want to attack me, at least have a reason. Or adequately explain what the hell you’re talking about.
Bob In Portland
I came across this book close to thirty years ago. I think I gave it away during one of my moves over the years, but it was a good look at international fascism. If someone were really interested in the long, continuing history of international fascism it’s a great place to start. I believe WACL (which periodically goes through a name change just to confuse old men’s memories) was originally Hitler’s Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. Thus, fascism’s excuse for existing as a bulwark against Communism.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
You don’t even know enough to avoid calling Anwar Ibrahim by his father’s name.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Enlighten me. Is Anwar Ibrahim also Anwar Ibrahim, or are you just clarifying things? Would I do better reading Vice for straightening out this mess?
And who did your sources tell you brought down that flight over the Indian Ocean? That’s a little too far to blame on the Russians.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
You referred to Anwar Ibrahim as “Ibrahim,” as if the latter were his last name — whereas actually it is his father’s name. There is an implied “son of” (in Malay, “bin,” from the Arabic “ibn”) after “Anwar.”
Most male Malay names work that way, although omitting the “bin” is, from what I can tell, a relatively recent thing, a sort of Westernization. (The female version of “bin” is “binti.”)
Does any of this matter? I’m sure it’s possible to be accurate about some things without being accurate about everything — and yet, credibility is important.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: And that is why Amir (or Khalid) is saying that I’m inaccurate about Anwar Ibrahim? Not about his IIIT work, or the FBI’s Operation Green Quest in the wake of 9/11.
Well, that speaks to his problems with reality, not mine.
An honest discusser of facts would have corrected me for using the wrong name as a surname and gone about addressing whatever else, if anything, he wanted to challenge in what I wrote. I don’t know what Amir (or Khalid) thought he was gaining from his little hissy fit, but he only lost some respect from me for his intellectual dishonesty.
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
I’m inclined to agree with you that one should not be distracted by an innocent, understandable, and non-material mistake — and less still should one use it.