Condemning Nazis should be easy. But just as Trump found it impossible to unequivocally denounce the Nazis and fellow travelers who terrorized Charlottesville, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis whiffed when he had an opportunity to condemn the Nazis who paraded around Orlando last weekend.
First he remained silent even as other Florida politicians, Democrats and Republicans, executed the super-easy layup of denouncing Nazis. Maybe the Florida Nazis’ signage explains DeSantis’s reticence:
As I’ve mentioned here before, DeSantis has leaned hard into the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme, arranging travel to a suburban Tampa town called Brandon to sign unrelated legislation, solely to bask in the “Let’s Go Brandon” chants his traveling circus of rabid supporters provide and give his spokeswoman/hagiographer* new meme material for Twitter.
DeSantis is also trying very hard to be the most anti-vax governor in the country, a position that also just so happens to dovetail with the Florida Nazis’ outlook:
Awkward. But when DeSantis eventually did address the Nazi parade, in response to a reporter’s question, we got a glimpse of the peevishness that underlies his initial non-response and the culture war issues he focuses on instead of the state’s real and pressing problems. From The Orlando Sentinel:
Neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando over the weekend drew bipartisan condemnations from state and local officials, but Gov. Ron DeSantis remained silent until Monday afternoon when he responded to a question about the rallies with a tirade against his political enemies.
“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to with do that, we’re not playing their game,” the governor said during a press conference in Palm Beach.
Emphasis mine because there it is, friends. It’s all about him — he’s the victim. Not the citizens of this state, especially those who are Jewish and therefore understandably alarmed by the resurgence of hate groups, including Nazis who openly express an affinity for politicians who are in power right now.
It’s that same centering of himself — and of whiteness more generally — that leads DeSantis and Republicans in the Florida statehouse to gin up outrage about CRT and champion bills that coddle the most dainty and fragile snowflakes of all:
CNN: A bill backed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that would prohibit Florida’s public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” or “guilt” based on their race, sex or national origin received first approval Tuesday by the state’s Senate Education Committee.
The Republican-controlled committee approved the bill with six Republican senators in favor of the bill and three Democratic senators opposed to it.
“As if I had something to with do that” is the unexpressed complaint about teaching actual American history, warts and all. You’ll hear that same sentiment expressed in different ways when certain white people confront issues around race in all sorts of situations.
Affirmative action is a handy example: “Well, sure, slavery and the decades of legal oppression that followed were wrong, but my ancestors never owned slaves and I never personally oppressed anyone, so why should I be punished as if I had something to do with that?” Blah blah blah.
Look, I’m not exempting myself from the whiny white people brigade. My parents lived in a run-down trailer park when I was born, and I’ve bristled at the suggestion that my modest achievements as an adult were based on anything other than my hard work and determination. I’m not proud of that defensive reaction, but I think it’s kind of understandable.
But adults who aspire to be informed citizens in a complex society have to be willing to take a step back and look at the larger picture, to assess the social framework in which we all operate. In other words, they have to do a CRT (which, ironically, is what white people who claim “reverse racism” is a huge problem are also doing). Reasonable people can disagree about the remedies, but the systemic defects are undeniable.
And yet, they are denied. Politicians like Trump and DeSantis and the statehouse Republicans deny them with a childlike insistence that any suggestion that America isn’t perfect and good is un-American, and they harness the “as if I had something to do with that” sentiment because it resonates.
Do they push this garbage cynically — stoking racial fears and ginning up concern that individuals will be treated unfairly — to get and maintain power, or are they themselves whiny snowflakes? The answer is yes.
Open thread.
*Christina Pushaw, the governor’s press secretary/internet troll, also made a complete fool of herself this week, suggesting in now-deleted tweets that the Nazis in Orlando might be Democrats disguised as Nazis to make DeSantis look bad. No really. Dollar General-brand Kellyanne is truly the worst.
Alison Rose
You know, as much as I dearly miss my departed Jewish Florida-dwelling grandparents, I’m sure as fuck glad they didn’t live to see this.
Baud
As I and others keep pointing out, the GOP leans into the idea that they have no collective responsibility. In this case, not even the responsibilty to condemn Nazis.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Baud: And say something bad about their fellow fascists? Hades forbid! //
Dorothy A. Winsor
Desantis’s claim that the Nazis have nothing to do with him is consistent with the Republican disinterest in actually governing.
dmsilev
Assuming just for the Hell of it that she was right, wouldn’t that have made it even easier for DeSantis to denounce them? Not just Nazis, but DEMOCRATIC Nazis! Seems like a slam-dunk for some righteous denunciating.
Emerald
The GQP won’t condemn Nazis, will ban Maus and Black history because they want to do it again. Oh, maybe not all the way to actual death camps, but certainly to a few real concentration camps, the revival of everything Jim Crow and maybe worse. After all, if they’re in charge and they don’t to use that power to oppress people, then what’s that power for? And it makes them feel all strongish and masculiney and stuff. And superior. Especially superior.
They will burn books. Watch.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“Nazis, who I do not support, have every right to have their views heard without criticism and be respectfully treated in the marketplace of ideas. The shitlib response should be by respectful counterpoint, but without acts of censorship (like boycotts of sponsor donors).”.
– Glenn Greenwald, probably
gvg
I don’t feel responsibility for anything my ancestors did. I am not entitled to feel proud of anything good they did either. I don’t even buy the IMO moronic distraction argument that removing confederate monuments makes people feel bad about their ancestors. The reason people don’t want to remove confederate junk or condemn Natzi’s is because they are racist bigots now. I am not (except no one is perfect) so I want that stuff gone right now.
Ancestor worship is something Americans aren’t supposed to do. The class of nobility and special people is part of what the revolution was about abolishing and the American dream of anyone can get ahead is specifically about not having a frozen forever elite.
VeniceRiley
Yes we have to make a clear message that main character syndrome is an inappropriate lens through which to understand and improve society-wide issues and problems.
The Dangerman
Democrats disguised as Nazis? Sure, why not. And maybe it’s not Desantis (or Trump) saying weird shit but, rather, stunted doubles pretending to be them. Or holograms. That Tupac looked real.
Brachiator
Damn. DeSantis is really working that mini-me Trump thing.
japa21
@dmsilev: Since Nazis were socialists and Dems are socialists, it is of course only natural to say the demonstrators were Dems who not only weren’t posing as Nazis but actually are Nazis.
At least I have been so informed by very well educated people.
geg6
@Emerald:
Why would you think they don’t want death camps? I have seen more evidence that they do than that they don’t.
Chris
@gvg:
The discrepancy between “you can’t blame me for anything my ancestors did” and “you should be proud of everything your ancestors did” has always been an eyeroller.
The people indignantly shouting “well MY ancestors never owned slaves!” might be easier to take seriously if they weren’t the same people who still think the entire world should kiss their ass for what America did in Normandy, even though most Americans weren’t even born yet during World War Two, and most of those that were didn’t serve either.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Emerald: Sort sceptical that the GOP would build actual death camps because that would take actual work out of them. They aren’t just fucking racists, they are simply useless, lazy fucking racists. Not to mention if they did manage to build a camp they would most likely end up gassing their own base and few random counties out of sheer incompetence.
Emerald
@geg6: You’re probably right. I’m being kind, sort of. I just don’t want to think that fellow Americans would do that, but of course they would.
Emerald
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Even closer to the mark!
rikyrah
The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.?
If this isn’t your belief, then you are knee deep with Nazis.
brantl
DeathSantis is a one-trick pony of aggressively shouting “Not my fault! Not my responsibility!”
geg6
My sister did some research through Ancestry to find out more about my grandfather Schnell’s family back in Germany. She found some current descendants in Bavaria, so she contacted one of them. We apparently had actual Nazis in our extended family that stayed in Germany. It was not a pleasant thing to find out. But the cousin she talked to said the entire family is ashamed of those scum. I’m ashamed and I am only distantly related.
But an asshole like DeSantis cozies right up to their modern day equivalent. Just too disgusting. Man, I hate these people.
rikyrah
@geg6:
See COVID as a reference
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@geg6: I have no problem envisioning camps staffed by the sort of long-bearded, fat, camo-clad, Oakley-wearing dickbags who were too sadistic to get employed by the Louisiana prison system. They’d take great joy in “correcting” eggheads, race traitors, uppity types, homos, humanists, Jews, liberals….
Wapiti
@The Dangerman: Democrats disguised as Nazis? Should be even easier to condemn the Nazis. And everything the Nazis stand for, starting with book-banning.
Baud
@gvg:
Folks excessively rely on the good works of their ancestors when they believe that their own lives aren’t anything to write home about.
Wapiti
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Eh. A lot of WWII Japanese-Americans might disagree with your assessment.
Hungry Joe
It’s good to see usage trending away from “neo-Nazi.” I mean, “neo-“ … how? Because they’re now available in cherry flavor? They have more cup holders? They all come with wi-fi?
“Neo”? Please. “Nazi” works just fine.
VeniceRiley
@Chris: The discrepancy between “you can’t blame me for anything my ancestors did” and “you should be proud of everything your ancestors did” has always been an eyeroller.
The people indignantly shouting “well MY ancestors never owned slaves!” might be easier to take seriously if they weren’t the same people who still think the entire world should kiss their ass for what America did in Normandy, even though most Americans weren’t even born yet during World War Two, and most of those that were didn’t serve either.
Adam L Silverman
That sign is atrocious. They misspelled Brandon.
Chris
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They had no trouble filling camps with immigrant children in the Trump years.
The laziness in this case is a bonus, because it means the buildings will be as shoddy as possible, with all the implications for the people living in them, and their donors who were contracted to do the construction get to pocket even more $$$.
zhena gogolia
@VeniceRiley: I was going to ask who you were quoting because it’s really good!
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
America, not just the GOP, has often been racist. And racists have never had to be particularly efficient in oppressing people.
So yeah, let’s mock the shit out of these dopes. But also pay attention and fight them where necessary.
zhena gogolia
@Adam L Silverman: Hahaha! Pedant!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@geg6: Hey, could be worse, my mother family is Croatian so I have relatives that were vile in both WW2 and the Bosnian Civil War. While can empathize with you don’t get to chose your family, but that doesn’t mean you have defend the crappy things they did (like blowing the shit out of their own town, just because that would POWn the Muslims)
brantl
This is completely incorrect, the whole idea of “exceptionalism” is about that we had such wonderful personal- and national- ancestry that these wonderful results are for-ordained, and it’s unadulterated horseshit. And everyone is supposed to be able to inherit their parent’s or relatives’ largesse, regardless of how ridiculous it is. Just ask these whiney weenies, and you’ll see.
Ruckus
@Baud:
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Republicans do not want responsibility for their actions because they do know exactly what they are doing. They have found a way to plunder, maim and rape the citizens and government of this country for monetary gain. It helps that they are not decent humans because it allows them to screw everyone (including themselves) in the long run for short term monetary gain. They don’t give one shit about the long term, they want money and power now and are obvious in their intentions and methods and their disregard for the future. They are too stupid and venial to understand that they could be just as wealthy by not being so fucking selfish, demeaning and by building a nation like it says in the founding documents. And even if the process that was adopted to create the government that was discussed and written about was flawed, that could be made better, if it wasn’t for the selfish, wanton disregard for anyone but themselves. Conservatives have always been this way, they just hid it better and still managed to be wealthy and in charge. Now there is more power in numbers and the inevitable destruction of their wanton methods and bullshit is catching up to them, they are doubling down rather than learning and doing any figuring out of how to live comfortably in a society rather than robbing it blind for short term gain. trump is a symptom of their bullshit, not the cause.
Roger Moore
I think this is a good question, and people who want to talk about it need to have a good answer. I think the answer really comes in two parts:
sstarr
My ancestors certainly never owned slaves, and they all fought for the north in the Civil War. They were totally virtuous please don’t look too closely at how they got all of that farmland on the great plains…..
Chris
@Wapiti:
Heck, if the Nazis are actually Democrats, all the more reason to sic the cops on them. Heck, give a call to all your totally-not-fascist militia friends in the Kyle Rittenhouse vein and tell them to do what they did during the BLM protests, but this time to the Democratic Nazis! You won’t have any trouble getting either the cops or the militia types to go along with that, will you?
Among other things, this is how you know that their “did you know the Nazis were <em>left wing</em>” was always pure trolling that they don’t even believe anyway. We know how they react to groups that they actually believe are left-wing (OWS, BLM, Antifa). It’s not how they react to Nazis. Not even when they go the whole nine yards with the swastikas and sieg heils to make sure everybody knows they’re actual Nazis.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Oh yes, whatever it is they want to do has be stopped because it blow up everyone’s face in some random, unpredictable way. The pandemic filled with examples of that.
geg6
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Exactly. My paternal grandparents were both immigrants from England. My maternal grandmother was a second generation American of Irish (Catholic) descent. Turns out they both had relatives who served in the Anglo-Irish War and some who killed and were killed in the Easter Rising.
It was a real to-do when my mom and dad got engaged. The hostility of each set of grandparents to the other was apparent even to me as a small child years after my parents married.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: Agree 1000%. My dad killed his share in WW II and is proud to be Antifa!!!
kindness
When I saw the news about Nazis marching in Orlando I was confused. Having grown up in the NY suburbs I have & had many Jewish friends. Almost all of their grandparents (like mine) were snowbirds & went to Florida for the winter. Many of them ended up moving there full time. So I guess I thought that Florida had a reasonable Jewish population. Maybe it’s just Miami that has that population and I’m just ignorant. Still, I’m a bit taken back by the brazenness of the fascists/racists and the support they get in Florida.
And as a side note, Whoopi dear, I love you but many of us view hatred of people based on their religion as racism. Yea I know the word race is in racism but I have widened the definition to include more than just the color of one’s skin.
Chris
@Ruckus:
“They’ll never admit to what they did, because if they admit to one thing, they have to admit to it all. They were never victims. Most of them threw flowers and welcomed the Nazis with open arms, and that’s the simple truth.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Case in point, that was their brilliant solution to Covid.
geg6
@kindness:
My sister lived in the West Palm Beach area for a dozen or so years. I never saw so many Jewish people all in one place in my life. I’ve always thought West Palm was where all the northern Jews moved to.
However, I think Orlando is a very red area, so they probably felt very comfortable there.
Burnspbesq
If a future Republican administration were to reopen Manzanar, LA County Sheriff’s deputies would volunteer in droves.
Chris
@Ruckus:
They don’t want to be rich. They want to be in charge, with their boot stamping on the Unpersons’ face, forever.
There was an article reposted on LGM a few months back pointing out that Burma’s economy got way better with democratization and then got worse after the recent military coup – but the generals, who by and large look at the worst junta days as a golden age, don’t give a shit. They’re willing to accept a poorer country, even if it means fewer opportunities for profit for themselves, if it means they get to remain the big fish of their little pond forever.
It’s an ethos that we’ve seen here before (the South was basically a disaster area under Jim Crow, but never seriously tried to un-fuck itself, because the status quo was keeping These People in Their Proper Place), and I think it’s an ethos that’s increasingly taking hold all over the world.
Kay
Sebastian
John Legend is right. What about black people being uncomfortable with the whitewashing?
bluegirlfromwyo
@japa21: Do these well educated people think North Korea is a democracy because their name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? None of them I’ve talked with seem to.
jimmiraybob
When you walk and talk and govern like a neoNAZI…………
Roger Moore
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
They would outsource it to businesses who would be happy for the revenue. We’re already well on our way with private prisons.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Roger Moore: To me, how the past shapes our current situation is exactly the issue. People can be individually of good will, but we live within racist structures that have been constructed over centuries. We have to affect individual knowledge and attitude yes. But we also have to affect those structures.
Baud
It just occurred to me that no country has Capitalist in its name.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
I used to wonder about the Civil War, how you could get the point of being willing to shoot fellow Americans over political beliefs.
I no longer wonder this. I believe there are many MAGAts who would shoot me for being a Democrat.
I used to consider it hyperbole to say or think that there were bigots who would be happy to bring back slavery.
I no longer believe that is hyperbole. Especially as I’ve learned over the years in how many ways de facto slavery was actually reintroduced to this country.
trollhattan
DeSantis is a slightly stupider Pompeo, and his legacy will be measured by how many people he gets killed. I see nothing but upward progress for this modern Republican.
jonas
@Alison Rose: A generation ago, a Florida politician, *especially* the governor, would have had to scramble like mad to condemn this neo-Nazi shit given the strength of Jewish voters in South Florida. The fact that DeSantis is kind of meandering around, whistling innocently and trying to pretend he doesn’t see it is indicative of how whitewashed the state has become. Sad.
trollhattan
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Trump wondering why “he” has all these nukes if he can’t use them? is multiplied by tens of millions with their AR-15s and ginormous magazines, all cleaned and ready to hunt hippies.
Heidi Mom
@gvg: Under their “I had nothing to do with that” theory, they have no reason to celebrate the Fourth of July, not even if their ancestors were here at the time, not even if their ancestors included Thomas Jefferson or John Adams. But this isn’t personal, this is our country’s history, and if you want to be proud of the good parts, you don’t get to deny the bad parts.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@geg6:
We were in Heidelberg a few years ago. The university there is famous, and has been since its founding in the 14th century.
I remember a plaque listing the professors who were prominent Nazis.
The University of Heidelberg and Germany know that they have to face the basic fact of Nazism, and continue to fight against its resurgence.
We as a culture are still determined to try to pretend that bad things have ever been done by our government, and it doesn’t work. When the hell are we going to learn how to face painful truths?
Elizabelle
I wonder if this is getting dialed up to 11 in the fever swamps because something is about to break with Trump and various Republicans.
Describing them as “crazy as shithouse rats” is unfair to rats.
Chris
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I think euphemizing it as “over political beliefs” while glossing over what exactly those political beliefs were and what they meant in real life for hundreds of thousands of people is a gigantic part of the problem.
Not that I’m blaming you, this is exactly how it’s always been taught – “oh, wasn’t it crazy that brother was pitted against brother over something as silly as political beliefs?” with the overtones that disagreeing about slavery is like disagreeing about what color the upstairs curtains should be. And it goes on to today with the modern versions of the debate.
Baud
@Chris:
To be fair, most of the North cared more about preserving the Union than about slavery per se.
Chris
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
The Germans are basically the only people I’m aware of who react to the past crimes of their country like grown-ass adults.
bluegirlfromwyo
Virtually every job in existence is based on solving a problem the jobholder didn’t cause. That alone makes the I had nothing to do with it argument complete bullshit.
Roger Moore
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
They didn’t get their on their own. If they had been left to their own devices, they would have covered up and minimized. Germany was forced to face up to its past by the occupying powers. Why exactly the Union didn’t do the same to the former Confederacy is one of the big issues in American history, but the obvious truth is they didn’t.
Elizabelle
@ Betty Cracker: Meanwhile, a rogue Rhode Island Red chicken attempted to breach security at the Pentagon. She was apprehended, transferred to the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, named “Henny Penny”, and will be rehomed at an animal sanctuary.
WaPost:
Wandering chicken seized near Pentagon
The bird was spotted near a checkpoint, according to an animal welfare group
Dorothy A. Winsor
@bluegirlfromwyo: Good point
moops
I wonder if the GOP realize how unpalatable Ron is on the national stage?
Can you imagine Ron holding a rally like Trump anywhere outside Florida or Texas?
lowtechcyclist
@Chris:
Of course, for a long time, the argument was that secession hadn’t been about slavery, but about states’ rights, tariffs, and who knows what else.
That’s one argument the Internet killed. Like with America’s secession from Great Britain nearly a century earlier, the seceding states felt that “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” required them to explain why they were seceding.
Each state made its own separate declaration. Most of them straightforwardly gave slavery as the sole reason. The rest listed some other reasons, but still gave slavery as the primary reason.
Finding these documents wasn’t something most people could do, let alone show to others, pre-Internet, so as recently as a quarter-century ago, people were able to get away with bullshit arguments about why the South really seceded, and could make it sound like a war over tariffs or whatever. Fortunately, no more.
germy
Brachiator
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Some will fight to the death to preserve the myth that the United States was forged in perfection and is greater in purity than the Virgin Mary, and anyone who disagrees must be a commie or a traitor, or possibly both.
In some of my first jobs college, I would work with people who got visibly upset when they ran across a newspaper article criticizing something the American government had done.
The one good thing is that some people, after initially fighting some change, would accept it as now part of America.
John S.
And yet, DeSantis is likely to get re-elected as Governor (if he doesn’t end up being the nominee for president).
Reason # I lost track of why after 40 years of living here, I cannot wait to get out of this dumpster fire of a state and move to my new house in Washington.
Another Scott
He’s following TFG’s playbook in every respect.
“some of them, I’m sure, are good people” “there are good people on both sides” “they’re being treated so unfairly” etc.
One way to fight back against this, while calling it out as usual, is to hammer on how much of a crybaby he is. Find that weakness in his self image, and hammer it. The equivalent of TFG’s hair and tiny hands.
I can’t help but feel, though, that so many of these RWNJ politicians would shrink and crawl under their rocks if they didn’t get so much attention in the media. School boards wouldn’t feel so threatened if dozens of (often out of town) people hyped up on this nonsense (that they see everywhere they look) weren’t showing up. What’s the balance? I dunno.
We know that Nazis were rallying in NYC in 1939. It apparently took WWII to get them back under their rocks.
We know that the Klan was very active in the US in the 1920s, including a big September 1926 rally in DC.
How were they defeated before? We need to learn from the history. With any luck it won’t take another Depression, fear of Communist revolution, or another world war to do it this time…
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
dlwchico
Short (7 minutes) documentary about the Nazi rally in NY in 1939 called “A Night at the Garden”
If you have watched any right wing gathering these days they give off a similar vibe.
https://vimeo.com/234762935
Dorothy A. Winsor
My hope is that TFG will destroy DeSantis’s effort to be re-elected governor
SFAW
@geg6:
My Grossvater was an Unteroffizier in the German army before WW I. My father said my grandfather saw which way Germany was heading, even then (although I doubt he foresaw Nazism and its genocidal tendencies), and decided to come to America.
Where he met my Grossmutter, which eventually resulted in a somewhat-assholish commenter on a near-Top-10,000 blog.
I consider myself fortunate/lucky that I have nothing to be ashamed of re: my Grossvater (who, unfortunately, died five years before I was born), and am grateful he came here before those bastards took over, so he wouldn’t have had to make a choice.
japa21
@bluegirlfromwyo: Same comeback I always use.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Because most Yankee voters were themselves pretty racist, so sticking up for black people’s rights once they’d been freed from literal slavery wasn’t a big priority, and most Yankee elites were the kind of robber-barons who were busy dividing the entire United States into their personal fiefdoms, so they weren’t interested in seeing any part of the country rebuilt as something more functional and democratic. Alas.
gvg
@Chris: I don’t think the world should kiss our ass for WWII either. Maybe be nice to my grandfather who did fight but he died before I was born and their own people fought and died too so….
I have not heard anyone say both my ancestors didn’t own slaves and America is great forever because 3 or 4 generations ago we fought on the right side in WII.
I don’t happen to know if none of my ancestors did not own slaves. Statistically if you go back far enough, all of us have multiple murderers in our family tree, because we are all related to each other. And that is ignoring how social norms and defining “murder” may have changed. All of us are descended from murderers and other scum. Also from really nice saintly people. People need to look at what they themselves ARE now.
UncleEbeneezer
Denial of the existence of Systemic Oppression may be the most important goal of the GOP and its’ voters. Their whole house of cards is built on the myth that __isms/__phobias are individual matters, not systemic ones. That’s what all the pushback against CRT and Anti-Racism, are, imo. Dems and other decent people, have been paying more and more attention to Systemic issues over the past few years (largely thanks to BLM) and are starting to target our politics accordingly. This scares the shit out of the GOP because it threatens the entire house of cards upon which the GOP is built (White Supremacy, Patriarchy etc.)
Chris
@lowtechcyclist:
I knew it was a recent thing, but I hadn’t thought to connect it to the Internet. Good point.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
A chuckling chicken checkpoint checked a cheeky chic chick.
Brachiator
@Baud:
Very true. But you couldn’t restore the union without dealing with the issue of slavery.
I like how the film Lincoln deals with the political side of the war and how Lincoln ultimately dismissed any accommodation with slavery as an option for the Confederacy rejoining the United States.
japa21
@SiubhanDuinne: groan
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
Excellent point. Another example of why some people hate the Internet, because it made it harder for people to deny the truth or to hide behind bullshit.
SFAW
@germy:
I guess I’m supposed to recognize the guy with TFG, but I don’t. I’ll probably smack myself upside my head (plus an “oh, right”) when someone tells me.
Captain C
@Emerald:
I wouldn’t put it past them, not at this point. Especially if they figure they can make a profit.
I think outright sadism is a bigger motivating force for a lot of them than is generally admitted.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
Zucker.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: She’s in fine shape, that hen. My guess is she’s not a stray — perhaps an escapee from a backyard flock, if such a thing is allowed in that area. :)
gvg
@brantl:
Exceptionalism became part of the public concept AFTER we won the revolution. Like a lot of human things, we aren’t really consistent. That…..stupid…policy/popularism of American exceptionalism is really not a good fit for the principles of the revolution. In other words we are hypocrits. We need to do better.
I do think we are exceptional in one way. Exceptionally lucky. For a long time we really got lucky. 1st Washington didn’t make himself king or dictator/President for life. He set an example of 2 terms only and others felt they had to follow his example. Compare to the revolutions after us and……I don’t recall another and many went very autocratic.
Soprano2
My boss came in my office today and told me someone had complained to HR about the cartoons I have taped on my door about vaccination – you know, ones like the headstones in the graveyard all yelling “Fire Fauci” and Santa telling a healthcare worker he’s sorry, but he can’t make people care about other people. Maybe it was the one with the kid coming out of the vaccination site telling protesting adults to “grow up” that offended them. I’m still deciding what to do with them – maybe I’ll tape them to the wall in my office! I’m also contemplating putting up a small sign where the cartoons were that says something like “Sorry you were offended”. What a coward, instead of saying something to me or my boss they went to HR and got the department head involved! Wanna bet they have a banner that says “Fuck Biden”, or a T-shirt or sign that says “Fuck your feelings”?
On another note, they’re still projecting 8-10″ of snow for us tonight and tomorrow. Luckily we didn’t get that much ice.
Captain C
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
five minutes later:
“Shitlibs should be deplatformed everywhere. They’re the biggest threat to humanity since the meteor that killed the dinosaurs.” — also Glem, probably
five minutes after that
“No, I’m not a hypocrite. I’m entirely philosophically consistent. If you don’t understand how, it’s because you’re stupid and malicious. You are all hypocrites for censoring me by your criticism. I make total sense and you don’t!” — also Glem, probably
Soprano2
Get a load of this – a state senator from my neck of the woods is advocating for a bill that one prosecutor calls the “Make Murder Legal” bill. It would give shooters and other assailants the benefit of the doubt that they were acting in self-defense. Of course, we all know it would be applied selectively, to white people only.
trollhattan
@dlwchico:
Yeah, more than casual curiosity at work there. How about a Klan rally in D.C.? To bad there are no pics of the NY Klan rally Fred Trump was arrested at.
gvg
@geg6:
No Orlando is a big city and thus reasonably blue. Probably not as many Jewish people as Miami but overall pretty democratic. It is not a monolith, no place is and even California still has some bigots. Bigots are currently trying to advertise to each other. they show off by having events in liberal areas and trying to “prove” they have power to intimidate. Also Orlando is surrounded by rural areas, like most big cities. Also republicans win sometimes in Miami, I think due to Cubans. I have never lived in south Florida though. I grew up in Orlando.
I will say that retirees that move here often become very anti tax including for schools (my kids already went to school somewhere else selfish thinking) and so they often become more republican over time.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Even a lot of the abolitionists hated slavery for what were basically negative reasons: they didn’t want to compete with slave labor, or they hated black people and wanted to send them back to Africa. This is one more thing about American history that gets elided. When the abolitionist movement was limited to people like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, it was too small to make much difference. It was only able to grow into a serious political force by expanding to include people whose motives for opposing slavery were much less pure.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: Wow, that is a drag.
Brachiator
@gvg:
Also possibly lucky that Washington did not have any sons.
But it wasn’t just luck. They debated terms of office when devising the Constitution, and had to decide against a presidency for life.
And Washington was acutely aware of the fact that he was setting precedents for how the government would work and be perceived. Even now seemingly mundane things like how his Cabinet would work as advisors, via meetings or by submitting their recommendations in writing.
And here I am not simplistically praising the American experiment, but I find it fascinating how often democratically elected leaders in other countries decide that a couple of terms in office are insufficient to accomplish what they want to do, even when they appear to have good intentions.
Also, despite it working mostly for the good of the country, American political leaders feared and distrusted the power that FDR accumulated by going beyond two terms.
Elizabelle
Aha. The last remaining Confederate monument in Richmond VA is coming down shortly, sometime in the next two months. AP Hill, Confederate General, was actually buried (standing up, whatever) in the base of this one, so there was a delay in taking his monument down.
No word in this story, but wonder if he’s being sent back to Hollywood Cemetery in RVA (final resting place of Jefferson Davis and scores of better deceased), where Hill was interred for a while before being relocated posthumously to the middle of what is now a busy suburban intersection. This will make the 4th interment for Hill, so he is one up on Germany’s Red Baron.
The city is also removing the pedestals of the previously removed monuments. They’re going to the Black History Museum. The RE Lee pedestal is an important piece of protest art, and its removal part of an earlier contract. I honestly do not know if it is still standing in its circle or not. It is enormous.
I do know that one of the old biddy residents of Monument Avenue who was trying to keep the RE Lee statue in place just kicked at age 98.
https://apnews.com/article/richmond-race-and-ethnicity-virginia-levar-stoney-948c3e176fc07d0d7b81c63a8fae38e4
gvg
@Heidi Mom:
Celebrating the 4th is a thanksgiving thing. thank goodness we aren’t still a chattel colony of an indifferent exploitive “mother” country and get to make our own choices even if sometimes we fuck up. then if we do realize the mistake, We can fix it at the ballot box ourselves.
As stupid as Britain is acting right now (don’t look in too many mirrors), they probably would have remained worse if all the colonies had remained subservient.
Now it’s true that most people don’t think too hard about the meaning of the 4th…most of the time it’s just a holiday. And we all need holidays too.
VeniceRiley
WE can also insist on reframing reparations as a societal “we.” It’s not ‘I didn’t own slaves or get 40 acres.” It should be seen as “We all benefitted, whether we personally received 40 acres or not.” We as a society took 400 years of unpaid labor and abuse and stole land and lives from indigenous peoples. Welcoming those groups, whose wealth and labor were stolen, into society as a permanently behind underclass on the periphery does not qualify as reparation.”
West of the Rockies
@germy:
Who is that with Trump?
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Maybe she was rustled.
Pentagon “for security reasons” won’t disclose where Miss Henny Penny was found, but I am not aware of any homes nearby.
If that chicken could talk …
Elizabelle
@West of the Rockies: Jeff Zucker. Who resigned today as CNN chief, for not disclosing a romantic relationship with a subordinate.
Bye Felecia.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
Unfortunately, that seems to be how pretty much every political movement works.
Supposedly, this exact phenomenon was a spirit-breaking moment for Georges Clemenceau. He worked his ass off to rally people to the good side of the Dreyfus Affair, and ultimately he succeeded… but only when he managed to stir up socialist and labor union types, who were basically rallied because of class politics: “the aristocracy and the clergy really fucking hate this Dreyfus guy, whoever he is. We really fucking hate the aristocracy and the clergy. So we guess we like Dreyfus.” Clemenceau thought the simple fact that the man had been innocent and could be pretty convincingly proved so should be enough to outrage everybody, regardless of any more complicated political alignments.
He continued a brilliant career in politics for years, but apparently the disillusionment from the Dreyfus Affair is something he never quite recovered from.
Sure Lurkalot
@Elizabelle:
Chicken Run! No, I mean, chicken, run!
tokyokie
I had ancestors who owned slaves. I share a common ancestor with Edith Bolling, Woodrow Wilson’s second wife (and apparently the one running the country after Woody’s stroke), and she was from the Virginia landed gentry. (My branch of the family moved progressively west and became progressively poorer and less educated.) There’s nothing I can do about that history but acknowledge that my ancestry meant that I was born into relative privilege and to try to level the playing field so that those whose choice of predecessors wasn’t as keen as mine have the same opportunities that I have had.
Chris
@gvg:
So many stars aligned.
We were lucky that Washington wanted to establish and give all his legitimacy to a democracy rather than go the Napoleon route. We were lucky Adams similarly put the survival of the new republic ahead of his own power hunger. We were lucky that the wars between the major empires that could have continued to cause us trouble worked out to our advantage. We were lucky that everybody else in the hemisphere turned out so much more dysfunctional than we were, so that we never really had a rival to fight for domination of the Americas. We were, frankly, insanely lucky that Abe Lincoln was the person who saw us through the Civil War when there were so many shitty politicians around… Etc.
Sane people would look at all this and say “we’ve got a really good thing going, we need to look after it.” Idiots, of course, look at this and say “well, it can’t be luck, it’s that the hand of Jesus is literally guiding us and we can do nothing wrong.”
Elizabelle
The city of Richmond did remove the RE Lee pedestal. December 31st. The ground has been leveled. Wow. https://apnews.com/article/richmond-virginia-e16a82f0760683d62e2c99522476cf05
I missed all this; was out of town. Heard about them hunting for the time capsules placed in the pedestal; didn’t know the whole thing was down. Progress.
(The pedestal alone was 40 feet tall.)
different-church-lady
Dismantling systemic oppression is not the same thing as being punished. Jesus…
gvg
@bluegirlfromwyo:
I had nothing to do with it is not bullshit. Because it doesn’t follow that that means you don’t have to do anything about the problems NOW that were caused by the past mistake. It in my case means I don’t get feeling guilt about it. I do feel responsibility for what goes on NOW, including things like Bush authorizing torture. Mostly it means vote. There is a lot to study too like understanding systemic bias and puzzling out how to fix things. I really want to do something about how so many more blacks get convicted and incarcerated in our prison system. I don’t know how but it is something I pay attention too. I feel it is a big moral black sin that most people are too used to to really think about.
It may be a personality thing but I just don’t get that kind of guilt and I don’t believe those white delicate feeling bigots who claim that is why we shouldn’t discuss some bad thing their ancestors did. I think that is just a strategic distraction. How can anybody ever improve things if you don’t talk about it? It feels great when you solve something or make something better than it was before.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Emerald: The US has already done something very similar in the recent past. They weren’t death camps, but the U.S. has already had concentration camps. Thousands of Japanese-Americans were striped of their homes, businesses and properties and sent to prison camps. Quite a few died from diseases(TB, flu, Typhoid, whooping cough) that swept through crowded barracks and from lack of care for conditions worsened by the camps(asthma). When released most people were give 25$ and a bus ticket home…
Personally I am ashamed of inhumane things my country has done. And I tried to teach my daughter that she has benefited from the fact that she is white, ablebodied, middle class, and had access to good schools.
Kattails
Stonekettle has repeatedly noted that the Nazis saw themselves as victims, not oppressors. This allows a great deal of justification in defining and attacking one’s perceived enemies. Pretty much the modern GOP.
bluegirlfromwyo
In other words, there have never been good Republicans.
lowtechcyclist
Or, “Sorry you were offended – SNOWFLAKE.”
But that would surely get you into even more trouble with HR.
Maybe just replace the cartoons with a bunch of cutouts of snowflakes.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
With Washington, I think it helped that he honestly wanted to get back to his personal business at Mount Vernon. That’s not to say he didn’t get anything from public service and was doing it only out of noblesse oblige. But it seems to have taken more effort to drag him back to public service than just than if his objections had just been a pro-forma attempt to avoid the perception he was seeking office.
PST
@kindness:
Although I would not apply the word “racism” to purely religious hatred, there is no doubt that the Nazis regarded Jews as a race, and an inferior one. The degree of legal discrimination mandated against individuals was based on percentage of “Jewish blood,” and religious conversion did not negate Jewishness. Nazi antisemitism was racist because its adherents viewed their beliefs a founded on a hierarchy of races.
Chris
@bluegirlfromwyo:
Nah. Lincoln is one of those politicians from the past about whom I have absolutely no doubt that he’d have been a Democrat today. And Thaddeus Stevens was even cooler than he was.
It’d be more accurate to say that the Republican Party’s been on a steady decline basically since it was born.
bluegirlfromwyo
@gvg: I agree with you. Just because you had nothing to do with a prior mistake doesn’t mean you get to excuse yourself from helping to fix it.
bluegirlfromwyo
@Chris: Good points. I can agree with that conclusion.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
[Sound of palm hitting head]
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
True. But a lesser man might have tried to profit more from the office of the presidency and wanted to continue. A more ambitious or insecure man might have so enjoyed the trappings of power that he might never want to give up the presidency. Or Washington might have yielded to the flattery that he was too essential to country not to run again.
Contrast this with Trump, who hates the fact that he lost, and had to give up the presidential grift. Eats him alive.
SFAW
@Captain C:
An offshoot of
A: “You KNOW what I mean/meant”
B: “No, I don’t”
A: “Well, if you don’t, I’m not going to explain it to you.”
An actual justification I’ve heard, albeit not recently.
Soprano2
OMG, I love that idea, because who could be offended by that? LOL
mrmoshpotato
What an absolute pile of shit political party. You built this, you Nazi-humping shitstains.
randy khan
On the point about privilege, I occasionally tell other white people that I remind myself periodically how lucky I am to be a straight WASP male. I think I’m pretty good at what I do, and from that perspective I have earned what I’ve gotten, but I’ve had so many unconscious, unknown advantages over the years that it’s impossible to believe I did it all on my own. (Heck, even forgetting all the WASP male advantages, I certainly didn’t do it all on my own. The number of people who contributed to my success – parents, teachers, friends, co-workers, mentors, etc. – is uncountable, and that doesn’t even include the financial aid that got me through school.)
Roger Moore
@PST:
FWIW, contemporary genetic research shows that Ashkenazi really are a distinct group. That doesn’t justify the rest of the Nazis racial nonsense, but to the extent you can identify certain groups as genetically distinct from the population around them, Ashkenazi fit the bill.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle:
And besmirches the good name of shithouses everywhere.
MazeDancer
@Alison Rose: No one’s grandparents should have to witness this horror. Especially, Jewish ones.
When I first read about Ron Gone pro-Nazi, my first thought was does he have no idea the size of the retired Bubbe population in Florida?
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2: Especially because it’s seasonal. How can anyone criticize snowflakes on your door in the middle of winter?
Without proving beyond a doubt what a snowflake they are, of course.
Chris
@Brachiator:
One of the things that occurred to me a decade ago when watching the whole Arab Spring thing unfold was… why don’t dictators ever have retirement plans? You know: give yourself a good run of a decade or two to rob the country blind, but at some point, step down, name a successor, let everything be his problem now, and… just go live off your billions somewhere! No need to look over your shoulder for rebels, the CIA, or your own ambitious underlings anymore. They’re all too busy gunning for your successor now! Who, if he’s smart, will do the same thing as you in a few years.
Of course I know why it never happens: it’s not how these people are wired. If they were the kind of people who could simply retire, they never would have become dictator in the first place, just like if billionaires were the kind of people who could look at their bank accounts one day and decide “that’s enough the rest goes to charity,” they never would have been billionaires in the first place. But it makes me respect people like Washington that much more, knowing how uncommon that sort of behavior is.
Mike in NC
The Nazis were well known for burning books they didn’t approve of, and Republicans secretly admired that.
trollhattan
Just great.
Think of it: a former rural sheriff was not “conservative” enough for them.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
Had a staffwide zoom thing with our director yesterday. She said (with no irony) that a whole 67% of employees had used the system to verify their having been vaccinated, meaning that among California adults (we to my knowledge use no child labor) my workplace is far below the state average in vaccinated percentage. And yet, and yet, a mandatory 50% in-office policy remains in my division during a time the county has record high infections.
Trying to square that circle.
Betty Cracker
Regarding Whoopi Goldberg, do y’all think she deserves to be suspended for two weeks from her show for what she said? Here’s a brief account via CNN for context:
She apologized and admitted she didn’t fully understand the “race” context when she said what she said. She explained further that her POV as a black person infuses her view of issues related to race, which is understandable, so punishing her for it seems wrong.
I think it would make more sense to devote an episode to the Holocaust, have some experts on to explain the “race” aspect of it. Thoughts?
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I have no idea what this means or how it might be significant. And certainly, the Nazis had no access to this information.
Also, the Nazis hated all Jews. As the range of their empire expanded, they would endanger anyone who was Jewish.
The Nazis had no access to any information that could “identify certain groups as genetically distinct from the population around them.”
More important, this bullshit had no biological meaning at all. It was all about designating the mythical Aryan race as superior and everyone else as lesser.
germy
The Moar You Know
I’m actually a bit shocked this took place in Orlando. That town has one product – tourism – and one might think that people parading around with actual Nazi flags would be met with an immediate and forceful response by the authorities.
HA! That was a good one, right? Most cops are Nazis. Almost all at a minimum sympathizers. But seriously, not a good look for Orlando and the town might really want to think about that.
...now I try to be amused
@gvg:
I’m come to believe it is a personality thing. Some people take everything personally.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Did a search for “Meghan McCain suspended for remarks on The View” and found bupkis, but do find lots of “McCain Criticizes TV’s ‘Double Standard’ for Acceptance of Whoopi Goldberg’s ‘Half-Assed’ Apology.”
So I think 1. she’s correct about the double-standard and 2. not in the way she thinks. It seems that she left “The View” on her own accord and was not punished for four years of saying hateful and loopy things.
sab
@germy: They are supposed to be conferring about other stuff and otherwise schmoozing.
She really isn’t interested in this legislative thing anymore. Turn up vote, collect her six figure salary, and then dash off to her real life, whatever the fuck that is. Public servant she is not.
germy
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t really have an opinion on the suspension. Corporate HR and PR.
I don’t know that there is some general “POV as a black person” that leads to misguided views about race. I would have hoped that living in a diverse city like New York, which has historically been a center of a range of discussion about race might have resulted in her having a more nuanced understanding of the issue.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
How about you start dressing for work like you’re a United States Senator?! You fucking brat! The gall for her to yell at anyone…
Villago Delenda Est
No one should be surprised. DeathSentence is fascist scum.
Captain C
@SFAW: This seems like abuser talk, to wit “you have to figure out how you have wronged me!” So, Glem, basically.
The Moar You Know
@Betty Cracker: No. I think she should be fired.
This is not rocket science, and she is certainly old enough and smart enough to know better. She said what she said.
Cacti
The Republicans admired the fascists the first time around too.
germy
@Betty Cracker:
When Ms. Goldberg first made her comments, I just assumed she viewed the subject of race as Black people and Non-Black people. So she saw the Holocaust as a matter between a group of non-Black people. She was wrong, but I don’t believe her intentions were bad.
She’s a talented entertainer and a smart person, but she clearly spent most of her youth preparing for a life of performance and comedy, rather than studying history. I’m not sure why we expect educational television from entertainers.
Captain C
@mrmoshpotato: Her flounce upon leaving the Senate will be epic.
sdhays
@mrmoshpotato: She seriously used the word “discipline”?
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
I don’t care how she dresses. I’m most concerned with a specific part of her body: her thumb. But only when it points down.
JaneE
Republicans don’t even try to make sense any more. They don’t even try to pretend they have any sense of ethics or responsibility. And the media won’t even try to put them on the spot, even for obvious issues like not criticizing Nazis.
If that new bill passes, it would probably become illegal for school teachers to criticize Nazis for fear of offending Floridians with German ancestry. I have to wonder if Black and Hispanic students would feel “discomfort” with some of the Confederacy supportive history being taught. I have to wonder if they would be allowed to complain about that.
When I was in school some 60+ years ago, teachers weren’t allowed to be partisan or express opinions on politics either. Students still wanted to know how their teachers felt about things, including political candidates and especially hot-potato political stuff. I had a couple who felt comfortable enough with their classes to go off the record and admit to having an opinion. Which led to the question “Why?” and the discussions that followed were probably more educational than half of our official coursework. We would have been considered junior high or middle school level, and we kids could tell the difference between the thoughtful reasoned answers our teachers gave us and the “you will understand when you are older” or “because we are Democrats/Republicans” type of brush-off that some got from their parents. Only about half of us had parents who treated us like adults. None of the teachers I had ever got in trouble over what they said in school, but that was over 60 years ago.
SFAW
@Captain C:
Whatever happened to the twitterererer who posted as “Glem Greenwald”? He/she was pretty funny, and seemed to have as good a handle on Glenny as DougJ does on the FTFTFNYT.
[NB: Just googled him/her, still appears to be active, after a twitterererer ban last year.]
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: The real deal has skin as thin as TFGs.
trollhattan
Good. And the only proper ruling possible.
OTOH some lawyer is auditioning for a future gig on a Trump defense team.
germy
Why I despise Jeff Zucker:
trollhattan
@Captain C:
Practicing that heel-turn, which is totes not as easy as it looks.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
It’s probably because it’s not the first time she’s made such bone-headed comments and also because she went on Colbert’s show later the same day and doubled down.
Brachiator
@JaneE:
Very good stuff. Thanks for the reminder. I can’t believe it was 50 plus years since I was in junior high and high school.
I was very lucky to have teachers like the ones you describe.
Jeffro
The DeSantis thing is pretty simple:
“I’m not going to play that game” = “I think I’m clever, when all people will really see is that I’m not denouncing Nazis”
germy
trollhattan
@germy: Jesus, he’s been mismanaging forever, hasn’t he?
gvg
@lowtechcyclist:
Um, I hate to be a party pooper but the right wing would assume you are one of them, and the liberals might think you are GOP too. I think I would avoid snowflakes.
I know they are, but they don’t know it.
SFAW
It will be interesting to see how Jews living in The Villages will handle DeathSatan’s support (so to speak) of/for Nazis. Will hatred of Demon-crap beat hatred of Nazis? Thirty or 40 years ago, there would have been no doubt which way they’d decide; now, it’s not clear to me what the numbers/percentages would be.
Subsole
@Elizabelle: Good fucking riddance and I hope he stays gone.
Dean Baquet next, please.
sab
@Brachiator: She has been in LA a long time. Also tone deaf a long time. Remember her and Ted Danson in blackface?
I personally think she is just too much inside her own head and not a bad person or an idiot. Just clueless in a remediable way. ( Maybe… she is rich.)
I am white and midwestern, so willing to cut her some slack, but still I thought hmm…. (actually I thought YIKES but that was rude and possibly overreacting.)
On the otherhand, I have posted stuff on BJ where when I read it next day I thought ” Oh my God! I said that! I did not mean it!” Quaker Oats, anyone?
germy
@trollhattan:
He’s sort of the Zelig of our current dystopia. Joe Rogan and Trump…
MagdaInBlack
Betty, If you’re around, I saw Nikki Fried, who is running for Fla gov, on Meidas Touch, and I’m curious what you think of her chances. I was impressed, but that doesn’t mean much considering what/who she’s up against.
Baud
@SFAW:
Yes. We can no longer assume that people haven’t lost their minds.
Baud
@germy:
Jesus. His fingerprints are everywhere.
raven
@The Moar You Know:
Most cops are Nazis.
that’s fucking stupid
RSA
@Soprano2:
Not that I’d support this bill, but I’m wondering how many people in abusive relationships might be thinking, “Hmm… I have this crazy idea.”
Cacti
I have to say that one thing I find particularly odd about neo-nazis is their idea that Hitler was some sort of champion for a universal brotherhood of white people.
Hitler despised non-germanic whites.
sdhays
@RSA: On either side of the abusive relationship.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
The other thing about Washington is that he caught pneumonia during his second term and was never the same after. I think that strengthened his resolve to retire, since he wasn’t physically up to the job anymore. He died before the end of Adams’s term. Yes, that doesn’t mean he would have died in office in the counterfactual that he was convinced to run for a third term, but it’s a sign that he was significantly weakened.
germy
@Baud:
And the corpse is still warm.
scav
@SFAW: Well, they got Eeeeeevangelical Christians to worship a pussy-grabbing serial adulterer as the Second Coming, why shouldn’t they expect to convince Jews that Nazis are their besties?
Kirk Spencer
@germy: So I decided to go look at the original comments. And once I did, I realized I don’t disagree with what she seemed to be trying to say even though the specific wording was bad.
The victims of the holocaust weren’t just Jews. We know this but we tend to not demonstrate the knowledge. Roma, Sinti, labor organizers, homosexuals, poles, disabled, and on. Per the German statements of the time it was about keeping the Aryan race pure. So yes, it was about race if you take the Nazi definition.
But as Whoopi says on the same show after being asked what she meant, the holocaust was a demonstration of inhumanity against humanity (slight paraphrase on my part, not quote). Evil not against other because of their race, but because they were other.
YMMV
Brachiator
@sab:
This actually did not bother me that much. It did not seem to be hostile or directed against anyone. But note that in general I hate this stuff.
But her living in Los Angeles would make me hope that she would be more intelligent about race and religion. And she has said much that was on the money in the past.
Good points. Also, I think there is still much to learn about how we treat and mistreat one another. And despite all these years, even more to learn about the Holocaust.
Subsole
@Brachiator:
Yep. The sadism was the point. The entire Nazi movement and ideology was just the excuse. People tend to forget that the Nazis had a pretty brutal hierarchy among whites, too. Scandinavians, Germanics, AngloSaxons, and so on down the ladder.
It all underlines an excellent point from an excellent thread by MisterDancer:
Whiteness can be revoked. It can be given, and taken away to suit the whims of the people wielding it.
I am as WASP as you get. The instant I criticize the GOP, I get labelled as a self-hating white, which is to say, a race-traitor, which is to say, not actually white.
It’s that easy.
I like to think this country would be very, very different if more volks realized that being white today doesn’t mean you’ll be white tomorrow.
Chris
@Cacti:
There’s a lot about the modern conception of whiteness that would have been anathema to people eighty years ago. And not even just Nazis.
The whole concept of WASPs, white non-Anglo Protestant immigrants (Germans, Dutch, Scandinavians), white Catholic immigrants (Irish, Italian, Polish, more Germans), and even the occasional Jew all celebrating their whiteness together at Trump rallies would have been revolting to, say, the KKK of a hundred years ago.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
It means you can look at someone’s genes and say they have X% Ashkenazi ancestry, the same way you’d be able to say someone has X% Native American ancestry or whatever. That kind of thing can only happen if there’s virtually nobody marrying into the community. It’s true that the Nazis didn’t have modern genetics, but they could and did notice the part about people marrying into the community, which is they kind of thing that feeds myths about racial differences.
Again, none of this validates the rest of the Nazis’ racist claptrap. But it is possible for groups to remain reproductively isolated within a larger community, and for that isolation to last for long enough for that community to be genetically distinctive. The same thing is true for some other religious minorities, like the Old Order Amish here in the USA. And people can and do notice that kind of isolation even in the absence of modern genetic testing.
Subsole
@germy:
That’s right up there with Les Fucking Moonves.
Brachiator
@Kirk Spencer:
You left out Nazi outrages against Africans and people of African ancestry in Germany.
But it would be absurd to say that these outrages were worse or “understandable” because they were atrocities committed against black people.
ETA. And of course the stupid and false ancestry myth was that “Gypsies” were descended from Egyptians, and so not quite white people.
Subsole
@Chris: Hell, it would’ve boggled their minds fifty years ago.
Polish people were very much not white back then – Archie Bunker did an episode about it.
germy
@Subsole:
We know about the bad people Zucker and Moonves promoted, but we’ll probably never know about all the talented people whose careers were thwarted.
I mean, I can think of Linda Bloodworth-Thomason but I’m sure there are many more.
Steeplejack (phone)
Back-story on Jeff Zucker’s resignation—the Cuomo connection! (Thread.)
Soprano2
So I took lowtechcyclist’s idea, and cut out some snowflakes that I taped to my door after I took the cartoons down and put them inside my office. I guess we’ll see if anyone has the balls to complain about that! I’m sure the intended target will get the message, but try explaining that to HR.
Betty Cracker
@MagdaInBlack: I didn’t see Fried’s appearance on that channel, but I’m sort of leaning towards her for the primary for one reason: she takes the fight to DeSantis in a way that her main primary rival, Charlie Crist, doesn’t do. (And besides, he’s an ex-GOP retread who has already lost a gubernatorial race to a horrible Republican opponent, i.e., Rick Scott.) Fried aggressively goes after DeSantis, which seems like the appropriate response to an authoritarian bully.
Can she win? I don’t know. She’s got some vaguely hinky stuff in her past that I am sure DeSantis will weaponize the machinery of the state to highlight for voters. Also, I don’t believe in the polling fairy anymore, but a recent poll of views on DeSantis indicates his horrific mismanagement of the pandemic, authoritarian interference with state agencies and institutions, and general obnoxious partisanship hasn’t hurt him nearly as much with voters as I’d hoped. But it’s early yet.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: Hahaha! Brilliant! :)
Roger Moore
@trollhattan:
I don’t know about that. He’s doing what any good defense lawyer would do when the facts are against him: argue the law. That argument doesn’t have much chance of succeeding, but as long as it has some chance and he’s getting paid, it seems worth arguing.
Subsole
@germy:
I know. I think of that every time I am reminded of the unfortunate fact that Chris Cillizza has not starved to death in utter destitution because he couldn’t manage giving five dollar handies behind a vacant bus stop in Ballsack, South Dakota.
How many talented – or even just competent – people could you pay with his check?
S’why I don’t have any pity when the news companies cry about declining profits. You don’t get to keep Ken Fucking Vogel, Sam Dipshit Stein, Axis Maggie Haberman, and Maureen Ginbottle Dowd on the payroll and cry about finances. The fact you do not know how to spend your money wisely does not make you poor.
sdhays
@Steeplejack (phone): I have no idea what the actual story is, but it’s completely unbelievable that a CEO, any CEO, would have to resign over a failure to disclose a personal relationship. CEO’s don’t have that kind of accountability with “minor” HR requirements.
Now, if there are further allegations coming out of that undisclosed relationship, that’s different. But that’s not what they’re saying.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Yeah, that was my impression too.
@geg6: Okay, I wasn’t aware of that.
Chris
@Subsole:
The pop culture landmark I always remember for this is the Illinois Nazi thing in The Blues Brothers. It very much marks the movie as “of its time” – the hostility between the Nazis (whose race ideal is clearly WASP-American) and the Blues brothers (who’re Catholic “white ethnics” from a city orphanage) makes total sense, but that’s probably the last decade in which it would. After the eighties, the Illinois Nazis wouldn’t care if you were Catholic or from the wrong part of Europe anymore, and people with the Blues’ heritage would be as likely to say “right on, brother!” when driving past a Nazi rally as be repelled by it.
Barbara
@Betty Cracker: Suspensions seems like a pretty mild reaction. I find it incomprehensible that Goldberg would see the Holocaust (as a comment below yours suggests) as a fight between two non-Black groups of people. Therefore not her fight. I do see how for her race means something way different from what it meant to Hitler — whose views on race did not make even all Caucasians a single group.
No idea where her comments on the Holocaust came from but you would have to convince me that she is quite a bit less informed and less intelligent than she claims to be for me to accept that she came by such an outlier view only with the most innocent of intentions.
I’d also note that she has made stupid comments like this before — defending Roman Polanski because he didn’t commit “rape rape.”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I though they should have asked Woopie to explain what was up with the Rwandia Genocide if she thinks race is only a matter of skin color.
PST
@germy: I agree. It’s not as if she denied the Holocaust or minimized the horror of it. I likewise agree that she was wrong in not viewing it as a crime of racism, but that’s fixable.
Chris
@Barbara:
Roman Polanski is like the topic where all of Hollywood shows its ass. Even otherwise sane celebrities stick their foot in it when it comes to him. Which says nothing pretty about Hollywood.
Barbara
@Chris: They should read the grand jury findings and ask whether they think it would be okay for their own 13 year old daughter to be drugged and dragged into a hot tub as a way to activate Polanski’s creative filmmaker genius. That’s literally how his actions were defended.
Betty Cracker
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: That would have been the perfect rejoinder.
@Barbara: My impression is formed entirely off a clip of the exchange, so maybe she said even more obnoxious things that I don’t know about. But in the part I saw, I don’t think she was trying to minimize the Holocaust at all but rather quibbling over the use of the word “race.” That was ill-advised and uninformed, but it didn’t seem malicious, at least from what I heard.
Philbert
The Nazis wre fanatical to kill all the Jews. That was the root of the system. The rest, with the system built, they just took the opportunity to kill them as well. Russian POWs too. It wasn’t just typical inhumanity, it took the focus of Jew hatred to implement the Final Solution as an offically dedicated, planned, and funded system. Minus Jew hatred, no machinery of death, probably ‘merely’ gulags.
Respect for Whoopi, but she has been wealthy long enough to succumb to full-of-oneself.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
a) There such a thing?
b) Wonder if it ever occurred to Perker that she might have just pumping his dick just to get a promotion and that’s why he was shit canned for being a total idiot?
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: I dug around and see she has some campaign finance issue going on.
I also see that as of Jan 18, The National Review hates her. So there’s that.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Again I have to ask how is this significant? Elizabeth Warren had some Native American ancestry, but everyone screamed at her “you’re a white woman!”
Jews in Europe sometimes dressed differently and retained separate cultural practices. They were “distinctive” more because of irrelevant social markers than any genetic factors. And this was reinforced by Jews often having to live in designated areas. Social separation probably also reinforced any reproductive isolation.
Ashkenazi Jews might show genetic differences when compared to Sephardic Jews, but again this would not have meant a damn thing to Nazis. None of this would be apparent or allow anyone to identify any Jewish person on the basis of these “distinctions.”
Roger Moore
@Subsole:
Yeah, I’m old enough to remember “Pollack” jokes based around the stupidity of Polish people. I know similar jokes targeting whichever minority people want to hate on have been popular since forever, but it’s telling that Polish people would be a target within my lifetime.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
what he said, it worth keeping in mind in the middle of a total war Nazis tied down a lot desperately resources just to kill Jews.
germy
@Philbert:
I think another issue is the weird culture of celebrity. Most of them got where they are by being very, very good at one or two things. They’re like pole vaulters. We marvel at their skill at flying through the air. But when the rest of us were reading history they were practicing flying through the air.
I remember one of the last interviews with John Lennon. He told an interviewer the theory of evolution was a myth. “Why don’t we see monkeys turning into people?’ he demanded of the embarrassed rock journalist.
These are all talented people who are poised and graceful on stage, who are really good at a thing, but who have deep gaps and holes in their education. And yet we look to them for wisdom. It’s insane.
Baud
@germy:
Oh Lordy, now I have this vision of Lennon as an anti-vax MAGA head had he lived.
James E Powell
@Subsole:
Exactly. If the CNN & FTFNYT were the liberal, anti-Trump organizations that Republicans claim they are, David Fahrenthold would have had stories on the front page every day and regular appearances on CNN. See also, Sarah Kendzior.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It reads like she was being momently an idiot American, that it she simply couldn’t understand our culture doesn’t apply in other countries. One of my really woke moments was realizing most other cultures can’t tell the difference between white and black Americans because we are all loud, over opinated and pushy to them. Most of this race nonsense is just trivialities.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: Should have gone with pounding the table.
SFAW
OT for this OT: I haven’t been visiting here as much, but I realized I hadn’t seen Amir’s name recently. Did some checking, saw his going-into-hospital-for-a-few-days comment, and nothing since. Does anyone know if he’s OK? I’m certainly hoping he is.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Good points. Yes, Washington had good practical reasons for not pursuing a third term.
But had he died in office during a third term, future presidents would likely never consider term limits. Who might have tried for a third and fourth term?
Baud
@SFAW:
He’s been missing since telling us he’s going to the hospital.
Roger Moore
@Philbert:
You need to read more about Nazi racial attitudes. Their long-term goal was to exterminate all the Slavs so Germanic people could take their place. Other groups might have been higher priority targets, but it was going to be the Slavs’ turn soon enough.
A Ghost to Most
Yeah, well, failed fascist states. Hoocudanode?
Brachiator
OT. Holee Phuck. Some financial news.
Alphabet this week announced that its board approved a 20-for-1 stock split, meaning that shares of the Google parent company will soon be trading at a much cheaper price.
Though the new price will be roughly $150 per share — as of Alphabet’s Wednesday closing price of $2,960 — existing shareholders will receive 19 additional shares for every share they already own.
This means that an investor who owned 100 shares will now own 2,000, but the total value of their holding will remain the same.
Following approval by shareholders, owners of Alphabet stock will receive their additional shares on Friday, July 15. Alphabet will begin trading under its new price when markets reopen on July 18.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator:
FDR.
Anyway
CaseyL
@Brachiator: Speaking as a Google/Alphabet shareholder, this makes me happy. My small number of shares will now be somewhat less small. The same creeping incrementalism I have been practicing with my Apple stock…
…Just 20 or so more splits, and I WILL BE RICH.
Philbert
@Roger Moore: Thanks and very true. Does seems to me that Slavs were more in the way than the fundamental object of total hatred, though.
debbie
@Adam L Silverman:
No points for spelling goyim correctly?
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
RE: Who might have tried for a third and fourth term?
Already accounted for.
frosty
Right. Assume the worst about an entire group based on the behavior of the ones who make the news. Show me your evidence for “almost all.”
frosty
@raven: Thank you.
louc
@gvg:
Sigh. Back when I lived in Palm Beach County, the (largely) New York Jewish population of Century Village and King’s Point would vote overwhelmingly for any tax to finance public schools because they adamantly believed in the importance of public school. Fortunately, the condo commandos — well-portrayed in Seinfeld’s del Boca Vista — vastly outnumbered the rich retirees living east of the Intracoastal.
The west coast of Florida had it worse. New Yorkers flocked to the east coast and Midwesterners to the west coast. Midwestern retirees were much more miserly about supporting “other people’s kids.”
The CenVille crowd has died off in the 25 years since I moved away and lesser folk have taken their place.
Steeplejack
@sdhays:
The “subordinate” (CNN’s chief marketing officer) was formerly a top aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (communications director), and so a potential pipeline to him during the months when Zucker was defending CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s extracurricular participation in defending his brother from charges of sexual harassment. So, yeah, it appears to be more than a simple “failure to disclose a personal relationship.”
Also, according to Matthew Belloni:
Gin & Tonic
@Philbert: “Opportunity”? Read about Generalplan Ost
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: Sounds like Chris saying “Fuck me? No, fuck YOU!”
germy
Andrew Cuomo’s blast radius is wider than I thought it’d be.
leeleeFL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Fuck Glenn Greenwood to the end of time! What an absolute piece of crap he turned out to be!
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: We already have Gitmo, the ICE/CBP facilities they round undocumented immigrants into, and every prison and jail in the country. People die from neglect and abuse in these places all the time, and some have execution facilities. Converting them to actual extermination camps would be work, but, then again, the Nazis didn’t have to round up everyone into gas chambers either; other favored methods of exterminating people were to just work them to death, or let them die from starvation or disease.
Glory b
@geg6: You haven’t been to Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh?
lowtechcyclist
Since the actual town of Brandon has been mentioned, I’ll just say that the best tacos I’ve ever had, by far, were at a place called Jimmy Hula’s in Brandon. They’re on Route 60 near the hospital, which is how I tripped over JH’s in the first place: my MIL was hospitalized there several years ago, and I was looking for a place to grab lunch after visiting her.
My wife and son and I stopped there this past Christmas, and they’re still awesome.
West of the Rockies
@trollhattan:
I taught for some years at Shasta College in Redding. Collectively, the students were far more religious, conservative and white than Butte College students just 90 miles south.
lowtechcyclist
@gvg: They know what’s been on Soprano2’s door. They’d get the message.
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
She is listed as having a net worth of $60 million. She could always tell ABC to fuck off.
catclub
@Brachiator:
The guy who shot Teddy Roosevelt had strong feelings on a third term.
lowtechcyclist
@Soprano2:
Cool! You’ll have to let us know if there are any reactions.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: Maybe the intended target will get the message, maybe not. The biggest, whiniest snowflakes only see it in other people. They are who they are because they lack insight.
Citizen Alan
I’ve said this many times. My father was a truck driver. My grandfather was a literal, honest-to-god sharecropper. And I’m still honest enough to admit I’ve had advantages in my life unimaginable to any black person born in Mississippi in the same year that I was. Literally unimaginable.
Jinchi
I disagree. Anne Frank and her family had to hide in an attic because there was a good chance they’d be picked out as Jews if they went strolling down the street. They couldn’t simply change clothes and blend in. Even in the US we can typically pick out the the difference between different ‘white’ ethnic groups. In a more homogeneous country like 1940s Germany the differences would only be more obvious.
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
FTFY.
lowtechcyclist
Hell, as they were losing that war, the emphasis shifted even more towards killing all the Jews they could before they were overrun. They even basically invaded Hungary, an ally of theirs, in 1944 in order to kill the Jews living there.
pluky
@Roger Moore: The word for today is endogamy. Compromised along the way by rape as a tool of pogrom.
Captain C
@Brachiator: I bet Andrew Jackson tries until he dies, for one.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris: Usually dictators have enough people who want to kill or imprison them for their crimes, or just to settle scores, that they’re seriously afraid of what would happen if they ever personally relinquished power. It’s a problem. It may be part of the reason why Trump was so intent on staying in office.
Citizen Alan
@Roger Moore:
I doubt Germany would have ever gotten there if the overwhelming majority of the allies had also believed in the inferiority of jews at the time Ww2 ended.
Another Scott
@germy: I don’t recall seeing that, but you made me look. I couldn’t find that, but did find his last Playboy interview.
Still applies today, and will probably still apply in the 2080s. People have to actually do the work.
Cheers,
Scott.