If you're Jewish and the use of "cosmopolitan" doesn't scare you, read some history https://t.co/yc5xTCN2ck
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) July 18, 2019
It’s all over political twitter, but the only mainstream-media pushback against Hawley I could find so far was from his hometown paper, the Kansas City Star:
The Anti-Defamation League in Missouri is calling on U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley to apologize for a speech he delivered this week slamming the “cosmopolitan elite” who “look down on the common affections that once bound this nation together—things like place and national feeling and religious faith.”
Hawley, during a keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference on Tuesday, said the “cosmopolitan agenda” drives politics on both the left and right.
“The left champions multiculturalism and degrades our common identity,” he said. “The right celebrates hyper-globalization and promises that the market will make everything right in the end, eventually … perhaps.”
He decried the “cosmopolitan consensus,” “cosmopolitan elite,” “cosmopolitan class,” and “cosmopolitan economy,” and argued that the “cosmopolitan agenda” has broken America’s national solidarity.
Karen Aroesty, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League in St. Louis, said Hawley may not have intended to offend anyone with his speech. But terms like “cosmopolitan” and “globalist” have a sinister history as anti-Semitic dog whistles, and she said Hawley should apologize.
Hawley’s speech, “raised real concern for members of the Jewish community who are and should be acutely sensitive with increased incidents of antisemitism in the US and beyond,” Aroesty said. “We have asked the Senator for an apology for even unintended harm caused by the speech. For the Senator and all who have a public platform that comes with power, context matters. Words matter.”…
This conference sounds like a pretty convincing declaration of intellectual bankruptcy. Kudos to @JacobHeilbrunn for attending so the rest of us didn't have tohttps://t.co/v4Zk6BKF2s
— Christian Caryl (@ccaryl) July 18, 2019
From the NY Review of Books, “Retrofitting Trump’s GOP with a Veneer of Ideas”:
… Perhaps the most evocative and conclusive sign of Trump’s sway over the conservative movement came this week, however, when the recently established Edmund Burke Foundation in Washington held a meeting titled “National Conservatism” at the Ritz-Carlton. The conference aroused a good deal of controversy before it took place, but attracted a formidable array of conservative figureheads, including Peter Thiel, Tucker Carlson, John Bolton, and Senator Josh Hawley. The panelists included Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, Chris Buskirk, the publisher and editor of American Greatness, J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, Michael Anton, a former Trump administration National Security Council official who has inveighed against “birthright citizenship,” and Chris DeMuth, a former president of the American Enterprise Institute and now a distinguished fellow at the Trump-friendly Hudson Institute. The latter has recently extolled Trumpian nationalism in a lengthy essay in the Claremont Review of Books. “Harnessing today’s nationalist impulses,” DeMuth wrote, “is a task for conservatives and libertarians, who stand in the shoes of the liberal reformers of the middle and late nineteenth century.”
The event tried to do that. A July 14 invitation letter signed by David Brog, the president of the Burke Foundation and the former executive director of Christians United for Israel, noted that the conference was intended to help bring about the “revival of the unique national traditions that alone have the power to bind a people together and bring about their flourishing.” It was supposed to provide, Brog went on, “an intellectually serious alternative to the excesses of purist libertarianism, and in stark opposition to political theories grounded in race.” If nothing else, a consanguinity of thought quickly emerged.
This was a Trump-inspired counter-revolution, a conservative colloquy that aimed at creating a catechism purged of the verities of the Reagan era: a crusading foreign policy and an idolatry of free-market economics. Usually, intellectual movements precede the rise of political ones, but in this case, Trump’s camp followers are reverse-engineering an intellectual doctrine to match Trump’s basic instincts. The new national-conservatives want to form what Burke called “little platoons” to ground conservatism in what they referred to as Anglo-American traditions…
The Burke speakers sedulously avoided discussing the maelstrom of nationalist and racial bigotry stirred up by Trump, but it was hard to avoid the sense that something of a shell game was taking place. In a remarkably complacent column in The New York Times, Ross Douthat claimed that “the nationalist turn in conservative politics seems to me eminently justifiable, a response to a series of elite blunders that should inspire anger and revolt.” Although Douthat ritually drubbed Trump himself, the “nationalist in the Oval Office,” as an “exceptional disgrace,” can nationalism be so neatly detached from its most prominent promoter? Is it “eminently justifiable,” or simply a new shibboleth that is supposed to camouflage a yearning for hierarchy and retrograde social views?… [A] variety of speakers made use of the elasticity of the term “nationalism” to smuggle in any number of traditional conservative hobbyhorses about the perfidious sway of cultural Marxism, political correctness, and identity politics. Facebook board member Peter Thiel made waves with his accusations of treasonous collaboration by Google with Red China; Trump subsequently tweeted about his accusation and stated that he was asking Attorney General William Barr to investigate the matter. Thiel also took potshots at what he claimed was the moribund nature of American universities, saying that Harvard and Stanford did not deserve their tax-exempt status…
This is the context, and I gotta say, it isn’t great. pic.twitter.com/rYnpAn2iCw
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) July 19, 2019
Us v. Them: "'We' live in the rural heartland, where the pure values and traditions of the nation still miraculously exist despite the threat of cosmopolitanism from the nation's cities, alongside the hordes of minorities who live there…." — How Fascism Works by @jasonintrator https://t.co/tSu05LaTEZ
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) July 19, 2019
There is an entire American tradition of right-wing nationalist language that frames a herrenvolk middle against an underclass of racial and ethnic others and an overclass of the wealthy, defined primarily as cultural elites and often identified as Jews.
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) July 19, 2019
Hawley (and Cotton) is why I'm reasonably sure we'll get a "Trump but actually competent" at some point in the near to medium-term.
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) July 18, 2019
lamh36
Repost, because I think this fits better here!
Yes!! Forever FLOTUS Michelle Obama!
@MichelleObama
What truly makes our country great is its diversity. I’ve seen that beauty in so many ways over the years. Whether we are born here or seek refuge here, there’s a place for us all. We must remember it’s not my America or your America. It’s our America.
https://twitter.com/MichelleObama/status/1152303775236919296?s=20
And I tell you what…that Orange mofo better just keep it moving and betta keep Michelle O’s name out of his mofo mouf!
Baud
Sounds far worse than what Omar said.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I guess at least we can feel somewhat thankful that these assholes aren’t really even trying to hide it any longer. Small comfort, but yo take what you can get, I guess…
MomSense
Dark days, indeed.
Baud
I’m surprised he didn’t take on Cosmopolitan magazine. Coward.
Baud
When has Hawley ever stood up to the market?
Gelfling 545
Interesting experience today. I was in a room full of Trumps. I have mentioned my young relative who suffers from that surname. Her great grandmother died at the age of 94. I had only met the lady a couple of times as she was more or less a recluse. My relative &her dad are nice, normal progressive people but he did hail from a small rural town. I drove there this morning. Took about an hour from Buffalo, not counting the time warp. And there they were. All the Trumps. Turns out that she & her dad are anomalies or mutations because I can tell you that Trumpism appears to be genetic. One is having a house built with aluminum in the walls so the government can’t spy on him. Another believes that immigrants cause autism. It was straight out Twilight Zone shit. I thank dog she has strong progressive maternal genes.
debbie
@Baud:
Some “intellectual” named Yoram Hazony has a Twitter thread disproving Hawley’s anti-Semitism by pointing to the many books with “cosmopolitan” in their titles. I also have a feeling he’s denigrating James Fallows for being a Jew.
Wikipedia tells me he’s an Israeli philosopher and political theorist. I think he’s Stephen MIller’s dream man. I’ve kind of lost my appetite:
Brachiator
Damn. That’s not very subtle.
Some people believed that Trump and the GOP could modulate and channel racism and bigotry. Cubans would continue to see support for anti Castro programs. Giving up the right to speak Spanish in public? A small price to pay.
For some Jewish Americans, full throated support for Israel, but in exchange, STFU and don’t dare side with black and brown people over issues of civil rights. A small price to pay.
But once you give the signal that it is okay to hate again, bigots will inevitably throw off all restraint. You cannot carelessly toss lit matches and be surprised when things start going up in flames.
ThresherK
I didn’t know who Hawley was. I would have lost a bet on him.
Kris Kobach has competition for biggest Kansan jagoff.
Felanius Kootea
This compendium of responses from 16,000 New York Times readers responding to a question from the paper about being told to “go back…” really shook me. I used to live in Brookline, MA. I’ll never forget the day I wore a Nigerian outfit to my cousin’s graduation in Cambridge, almost a year after 9/11. I often wear Nigerian outfits, including geles (Yoruba headwrap), for special occasions and in the past (before 9/11), I’d received compliments. I was walking with my brother, who was in a suit and we both noticed these hostile looks and a weird, uncomfortable silence as we walked by. Finally he said to me “They’re looking at you like you’re Osama Bin Laden’s sister!” We quickly hailed a cab and luckily got a Pakistani-American driver who laughed with us about what had just happened. That was the first time in two decades that I felt a teeny bit afraid to be in the US and unsafe/vulnerable.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
This is fucking terrifying. The American political landscape is coming apart before our eyes
A Ghost To Most
Fucking nazis.
Ruckus
@Gelfling 545:
Humans be weird.
Logic, reality, science are, in many cases, never considered as part of life. It’s all fairy tales, family stories and scenes from an extremely strange movie, where the only explanation is some strange mushrooms or a naturally occurring form of LSD in the water. Or both.
If anyone has a better idea, please let me know.
Wapiti
National Conservativism.
So for shorthand, are they going with NatCon or Nat. C.?
SiubhanDuinne
Doktor Zoom over at Wonkette had a piece up earlier. Not that Wonkette is either twitter or MSM, of course.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Fuck, even the title, “National Conservatism” isn’t very subtle
It’s a real ideology, from wiki:
National conservatism is a variant of conservatism common in Europe and Asia that concentrates on upholding national and cultural identity.
It shares characteristics with traditionalist conservatism and social conservatism given how the three variations focus on preservation and tradition. As national conservatism seeks to preserve national interests, traditional conservatism emphasizes ancestral institutions and social conservatism. National-conservative parties often have roots in environments with a rural, traditionalist or peripheral basis, contrasting with the more urban support base of liberal-conservative parties. In Europe, most embrace some form of Euroscepticism.
A majority of conservative parties in post-communist Central and Southeastern Europe since 1989 have been national conservative.
SFAW
@debbie: @debbie:
Yes, Yoram, and “Hey, Moshe, I’m getting the ovens ready for you” has no “anti-Jewish valence” because there are bakers the world over, and some probably have co-workers named “Moshe.” And “darkies” has no “anti-black valence,” because there are plenty of persons who tan well.
And so on.
Where’s that fucking Infinity Gauntlet when you need it? The world would be a much better place without people like Hawley, Cotton, their apologists, RWMFs, and Rethugs in general.
Dopey-o
@ThresherK: Josh Hawley (R) is Missouri’s replacement for Sen. Clare McCaskill (D). 2018’s blue wave missed Missouri.
SFAW
@Wapiti: @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Just remember, Liberals are the real fascists.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
You cannot carelessly toss lit matches in an open drum of gasoline and be surprised when things start going up in flames.
Fixed it for you.
This is one of the reasons that the GOP kept their actual racist concepts of government on the down low for so long. But the ignorance and hate was always just bubbling below the surface until one of their own, who is the personification of ignorance and hate, was installed into power. I predict that no matter how it ends up, the road to get there will not be smooth and flame free.
Mart
@ThresherK: The major Kansas City is in Missouri. The lying racist piece of shit Josh Hawley is a Senator from Missouri. MSNBC’s Ari Melber briefly covered the speech, calling Hawley a Senator from Tennessee.
“Trump but actually competent” -This is what terrifies me. Asshole facsists like Hawley see how Trump with Barr has no legal restraints. They are not 40 years past their prime like Trump.
SFAW
@Mart:
His “prime”? Not sure that ever existed.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
yeah, but was Hawley wearing a tan suit?
Mart
@SFAW: Thought he used daddy’s money on a few money makers in his youth before stringing together the bankruptcies.
trollhattan
It’s interesting to watch them try and stick the landing with the tricky tumbling run in which they simultaneously denigrate Jews while attacking commie, librul elties for wanting to kill Israel with their socialism.
Goddamn impressive they manage to not be called on that.
Aleta
Lately I’m getting whiffs of that characteristic Bannon-infused rot.
Aleta
Hawley, wiki page:
Jay
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14
Yup, 14 words, quelle suprise.
RepubAnon
People need to watch the Emo Philips Heretic Joke to see where this type of thing ends up. Here’s a shortened text version:
I was walking across a bridge one day, and I saw a man standing on the edge,
about to jump off. So I ran over and said, “Stop! don’t do it!”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he said.
I said, “Well, there’s so much to live for!”
He said, “Like what?”
I said, “Well…are you religious or atheist?”
He said, “Religious.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Christian or Buddhist?”
He said, “Christian.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Catholic or Protestant?”
He said, “Protestant.”
I said, “Me too! Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”
He said, “Baptist!”
I said, “Wow! Me too! Are you Baptist Church of God or Baptist Church of the Lord?”
He said, “Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you original Baptist Church of God, or are you Reformed
Baptist Church of God?”
He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God!”
I said, “Me too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1879,
or Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915?”
He said, “Reformed Baptist Church of God, reformation of 1915!”
I said, “Die, heretic scum”, and pushed him off.
Peale
@SFAW: well I do have to admit, Hawley’s Use of the term harkens back to the early sociological writings of Gerog Simmel. But no footnotes or Bibliography citations?
SFAW
@Mart:
I’m curious to hear where he actually made more money than was expected, without employing legbreakers like Roy Cohn.
Actually, not really curious. And I’m sure-as-shit not going to research it.
ETA: To be more clear: anyone with a $400 Mil bankroll from Daddy can make money. But if he used that money on a project where his return was, let’s say, $5 Mil, but any chimp with two brain cells to rub together could make $10 Mil, then I don’t consider him to be a “money maker.”
randy khan
Notice that the ADL doesn’t say what everyone there is really thinking, which is that he knew exactly what he was saying. And I’m pretty sure he was, because otherwise the repetition doesn’t make any sense.
SFAW
@Peale:
From me? Or Hawley?
Jack Hughes
National Conservatism: Like National Socialism only without the socialism.
zhena gogolia
@SFAW:
He missed a few decades that happened in the Soviet Union.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: so is the actual landscape as the temperatures soar north of 90 across half the country
Jay
@Jack Hughes:
If you read Adam Tooze’s “The Wages of Destruction”, an economic analysis of Nazi Germany from Weimar to it’s destruction,
He will quickly disabuse you of any notions that there was any actual “socialism” , other than the Corporate/Military kind, in Nazi Germany
Butter emails!!!
@Jack Hughes:
So exactly like national socialism.
jimmiraybob
It goes deeper than just an anti semitic dog whistle. The founders that crafted the political theory of the new nation, as seen in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, revered such Roman Stoic philosophers such as Seneca and Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. Ideas such as “All men are created equal” and appealing to “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” and “let Facts be submitted to a candid world” are deeply Roman Stoic cosmopolitanism. The idea that human dignity is grounded in reason is deeply cosmopolitan. The idea that humans, all humans, by the mere fact of being human, are endowed with unalienable rights is deeply cosmopolitan. These are some of the aspirational ideals and principles of the European and American Enlightenments. These aspirational ideals are the legacy of the founding and our inheritance, first as human beings and then as citizens.
Hawley’s declaration that “It’s time we ended this cosmopolitan experiment” comes eerily close to “It’s time we ended this American experiment.” As Franklin said when announcing a new Republic, “if you can keep it.”
Jean
Headline I just saw in the NYT: Trump’s Electoral College Edge Could Grow in 2020, Rewarding Polarizing Campaign.
“His advantage in the Electoral College, relative to the national popular vote,”may be even larger than it was in 2016, according to an Upshot analysis of elections results and poling data.” I read the rest of the piece and it’s depressing.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: If in doubt stick the word “rootless” in front of cosmopolitan.
Mart
@Aleta: Lying fuck Hawley beat McCaskill largely on an ad stating one of his kids has a pre-existing condition, and no one wants to end the mess with pre-existing conditions more than him. All the while as MO AG he was backing the lawsuit (in the news this week) to end the ACA and its pre-existing condition protections.
He is really scary. Groomed at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, met his wife while both clerking for Robert’s on SC, Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, etc. He worked on the Hobby Lobby case to allow corporations to deny contraceptive coverage because corporate Jesus. Not surprised he made his national break out the week Trump went full racist.
Omnes Omnibus
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: When it is part of a uniform, tan is called khaki. Like with the Afrika Korps.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
I didn’t know that khaki is an Urdu word.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: It’s always seemed a Brooks Brothers/L.L. Bean word to me.
mrmoshpotato
@Gelfling 545:
That’s not Twilight Zone shit. Serling and the other writers would throw away such crazy fever dreams. Same with Peele, etal.
jimmiraybob
Incidentally, Hawley, in his attempted defense, provides a misleadingly partial quotation from Martha Nussbaum’s (Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago) 1997 paper entitled, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism” (available on line) and I would recommend reading it. I had read it before and was rereading it today.
Hawley’s misleading proof texting of Nussbaum’s paper strongly suggests that he’s read it, grabbed the text he needed to fit his conclusion and used it for misleading purposes. This is classically defined as a lie. Or, using Kellyanne Conway’s theory of truth – alternate fact based.
Rand Careaga
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Not necessarily. I’m reminded of this scene from the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. By the time the podfolk weren’t hiding their agenda, it was too fucking late for poor Veronica Cartwright.
Villago Delenda Est
Hawley is a Nazi. Plain and simple.
chris
@Jay: Nicely done.
Another Scott
@jimmiraybob: I get the impression that he may have read Adam Gopnik’s piece in the NewYorker from June:
(Emphasis added.)
I agree that he knew exactly what he was saying, and I agree that he means more than it to be a wink and a nod to anti-semites and other racists. It’s an attack on democracy and self-government that protects the rights of minorities (and thus all of us).
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
patrick II
It bothers me that people like Trump (who kept a book of Hitler’s speeches bedside) and Hawley study Nazism, like Murdoch read “1984”, to emulate not to avoid.
Steeplejack
@lamh36:
Also reposting here, because this comment in that Twitter thread was great:
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
I hate Missouri NAZIs
jimmiraybob
@Another Scott:
Transforming the Party of Lincoln to the Party of Mussolini and Franco (but with less Vatican) since 2016.
Matt McIrvin
Antisemitic but it’s not just that: the guy wants to purge the Untied States of anyone he sees as a foreigner.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Khaki is a Hindustani (Hindi/Urdu) word. It is synonymous with uniform in India. Police wear khaki and so do postmen (mailmen and women). It is the color of dust and dirt, so it looks good even if it gets dirty.
apocalipstick
My junior senator folks… an emptier suit never walked the planet. He is ambition on two feet.
apocalipstick
@ThresherK: Hawley’s not a Kansan, and he’s more dangerous than Kobach could dream of being.
apocalipstick
@Dopey-o: Missouri is intent on becoming Mississippi.
Karen
So “cosmopolitan” is now the new code for Jews. I thought “elites” was. Eventually (not a long time,) they won’t bother with code. The only thing stopping Trump is that the Evangelicals NEED Israel and they need all Jews to go to Israel to be slaughtered. If they’re killed now, no End of Days. BTW, I’m Jewish.
jimmiraybob
@Karen:
Just for the record, Hawley used “cosmopolitan elites.” So, that box is checked.
I think that “cosmopolitan” when used alone means dirty hippie liberal scumbag, open-borders lovin’, commi-socialist, anti-American non-Evangelical Christian, atheist pluralist diversity lovin’, Demoncrat race traitor. Or something close to that. My decoder is a bit on the fritz.
Bill Arnold
@Gelfling 545:
At a social gathering a couple of weekends ago, I met a Trump supporter, reasonably bright, talked with him a while. He was a Trump supporter because he went to high school (one year younger) with Donald J. Trump. (New York Military Academy.) He told a couple of interesting stories about young DJT, that weren’t derogatory, but asked me to not repeat them because he was afraid of retribution. (Am respecting his request.) So DJT supporter, afraid of DJT retribution at the same (advanced) age as DJT. (Another well-known character in one of the stories, since deceased, did come across as a psychopath; that one eventually was CEO of two major corporations.)
I left shortly after the host and him were going on and on about unions ruining America. (Both had fathers with factory/business ownership.)
Was irritated for days. People of this type will be very hard to reach; the narrative frameworks that they’ve internalized will need to be destroyed. Not impossible, but unpleasant at best.
Villago Delenda Est
These vile people are all still Nazis.
Fuck ’em.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
It’s one of those things I learned doing crossword puzzles.
Michael Allen
This is a Cosmopolitan.
https://www.hemmings.com/blog/article/classy-cosmopolitan-1950-lincoln-cosmopolitan/
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
I did Nazi this coming
evodevo
@Bill Arnold: Yes. I have a whole subdivision of these idiots (economically entitled…not Trump classmates) on my mail route in Ky…have talked with most of them casually at one time or another…they were full-on Xtian Teabaggers when that was a thing, and now are Trumpettes to the max. You are not going to reach them until they have lost everything in an economic crash, and maybe not even then (see: Davis ex Machina lol)…the next election is going to require that EVERYONE get out the vote…
Daoud bin Daoud
“Dog whistle? What dog whistle!? I didn’t hear no stinkin’ dog whistle!”