Once again, Dave Neiwert tears Jonah Goldberg to shreds over his poorly conceived book and his related attempts to equate modern American liberalism to fascism:
No, Jonah, being bad guys alone doesn’t make them fascists. But holding swastika and Dixie banners aloft, shouting “Sieg Heil,” and ranting ad nauseam about how bestial colored people and queers and the Jewish media are destroying the country, and demanding that we start shooting Mexican border crossers — well, that pretty clearly marks them as fascist, dontcha think?
And for a guy who insists irregularly that we not confuse European liberalism with its American version, Goldberg certainly has little compunction about conflating European fascism with its American variant. In fact, American fascists are fairly variegated in their worldviews and resulting strategies: some, like the Posse and the Freemen, are indeed hyper-local, though their version of local government is a white male supremacist ideation in which minorities have no rights and homosexuals and abortion providers are put to death. Others see themselves as largely regional organizations (particularly the Northwest’s “white homeland” advocates) with a national reach, while still others — the Klan, the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, Hammerskin Nation — see themselves as national organizations whose ideas for a right-wing authoritarian state do indeed more closely resemble the European model.
The same is true for figures like David Duke, who sees himself as an international role model for neo-Nazism. In recent years, he’s been traveling to places like Russia and the Arab world, spreading his vicious anti-Semitic propaganda. And in both places, it’s clear he’s been gaining audiences and having an impact on the ground. So much for these fascists’ insignificance.
But then, it’s essential for Jonah’s already-shaky thesis that he minimize, downplay, whitewash, and otherwise utterly trivialize these groups, their presence and their activities, because their very existence not only undermines, it completely demolishes his central claim that “fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all” but that “it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left.” Because clearly, American fascists are now, and always have been, a phenomenon of the right, quite unmistakably so.
It’s all about trivializing the monstrous, all to serve his increasingly dubious claim that conservatives are in no way at all even remotely fascist. Indeed, it’s more than evident that the wish to rebut that “smear” is what has animated this entire enterprise (Goldberg has made this clear in numerous interviews, as well as the book itself).
The problem is that it’s much easier to demonstrate the opposite is true. And over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be discussing that.
But you have to wonder about someone who can so easily whitewash the realities of the Klan, dismiss the social and cultural effects of modern-day fascists, and then compare the Nazi eliminationist program to Hillary Clinton’s day-care initiatives. It is not often you get to see the holes in people’s souls on public display, and it’s never pretty.
Why don’t we all read the book first, then make up our minds? How stupid is it to debate the contents of something no one has read?
Oh, wait…I forgot…These are the HA Happy Hooligans, and asking, “How stupid is it…” on anything belabors the obvious.
You can get the volume here:
http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-.....0385511841
The Piper
@1
If someone wrote a book saying that George W. Bush was a Communist, would you need to read the book to know it was ridiculous? Because that’s how ridiculous Goldberg’s argument is that the modern American left shadows fascism.
Jonah Goldberg: Right wing revisionist historian who wouldn’t know a facist if they sat in his lap.
sorry Jonah – you are about as accurate as your prediction/bet on Iraq: that Iraq would be safe by 2006.
You have been so wrong so many times – your credibility and that of your neocon buddies at National Review is shot. Reading your columns (without antacid) is tough enough. Your logic is so twisted it makes a pretzel seem straight. by the way – I read NR just to see the latest RW crap they are pushing.
so far: endorsements of romney and thompson – they sure know how to pick losers. I guess I should have known that already. I did like the article on why the GOP is a minority party – until I got to the part about it was all clintons fault and that if we just had Reagan again….what enlightened thinking…this is the best the the republicans can come up with. they are a party devoid of ideas and fixated on terrorism – but unwilling to go after bin Laden.
What terrorists have killed the most people in the US? Homegrown right wingers (remember Oklahoma city) – now tell us how right wing facists are not dangerous again….
@2…Lee…
Calling George Bush a Communist is a statement of fact, albeit incorrect, while Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning propounds a thesis.
Agree or disagree with his reasoning, but read the book first before condemning it out of hand.
And I offer as proof of the possible validity of his thesis the bizarre rant of @3…CnR…
Why is it OK, even considered witty and wise, to slap the fascist tag on conservatives then get your knickers knotted when the fair play of turnabout adds a figurative wedgie (skid marks optional) to the mix?
There are many who believe that if a totalitarian dictatorial state comes, it will come from the left.
BTW…have you actually read the book?
Think on it…
The Piper
Once again Speaker Pee-Lousy rolls over for Bush and sacrifices the poor by trading away food stamps and unemployment benefits for Bush’s okay of a stimulus package that includes $50 billion of tax breaks for business.
This woman has to go! Picking a new speaker should be the first item of business for the next Democratic Congress.
So here we are entering what could be a prolonged recession and the leader of the House Democrats refuses to fight for extended unemployment benefits. So, if you lose your job and the recession last longer than 26 weeks, you’re SOL. She’s worse than useless; she’s virtually colluding with the anti-worker Repukians.
Lee, one of your strongest posts to date. I get that the book and its thesis alone gives one plenty to work with in order to air the points you put out there. Oh and please do not buy the book.
But let’s not forget to put the primary blame where it belongs: If Bush and the GOP could get their way the poor, workers, and middle class would get nothing and the whole $150 billion would go the business and the rich.
GOP trickle down economics: Giving a dime to a poor person begging for food on a street corner.
And then taking a tax deduction claiming they gave $10,000 to a food bank.
Republicans think of charity as a profit center, you see.
@4
Why is it OK, even considered witty and wise, to slap the fascist tag on conservatives then get your knickers knotted when the fair play of turnabout adds a figurative wedgie (skid marks optional) to the mix?
Because Fascism is related to a right-wing mentality in the same way that Communism is related to a left-wing mentality. That’s not unfair, that’s just the accepted definitions of the term. Goldberg isn’t wrong to say that the far-left can become dangerously authoritarian. He’s wrong in characterizing that as Fascism.
There are many who believe that if a totalitarian dictatorial state comes, it will come from the left.
There are many who believe that Building 7 of the World Trade Center was brought down in a controlled explosion. Just because many people believe something doesn’t mean that it’s not ridiculous to believe it.
BTW…have you actually read the book?
Nope, don’t need to. I’ve already read Mein Kampf. Anyone who has read that book can very clearly tell you that the movement that led to the Fascism of Nazi Germany has absolutely no correlation with the left wing of today. To be clearer, Goldberg’s book is just as ridiculous as a book implying that the American right is carrying on the tradition of Karl Marx and a great threat to make this country Communist.
Think on it…
I’m not really convinced you know what that word means. It does not mean, “Listen to Bill O’Reilly and repeat what he says.” It actually means something quite different.
@7
Well, thanks. Although, Dave did the work. :)
Well, it’s easy enough to figure out whether fascists are “right” or “left”: Who tolerates them, conservatives or liberals?
No, Jonah, being bad guys alone doesn’t make them fascists. But holding swastika and Dixie banners aloft, shouting “Sieg Heil,” and ranting ad nauseam about how bestial colored people and queers and the Jewish media are destroying the country, and demanding that we start shooting Mexican border crossers — well, that pretty clearly marks them as fascist, dontcha think?
Hell no. David needs to read some history. The fascists were anything BUT racist. Mussolini had major Jewish advisers. The revisionist here is David
In fact, American fascists are fairly variegated in their worldviews and resulting strategies: some, like the Posse and the Freemen, are indeed hyper-local, though their version of local government is a white male supremacist ideation in which minorities have no rights and homosexuals and abortion providers are put to death. Others see themselves as largely regional organizations (particularly the Northwest’s “white homeland” advocates) with a national reach, while still others — the Klan, the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, Hammerskin Nation — see themselves as national organizations whose ideas for a right-wing authoritarian state do indeed more closely resemble the European model.
Racism and fascism are NOT synonyms. The Klan was and is a democratic (small d) liberal (again) organizatiuon with no interest in the merging of the state and corporations
The same is true for figures like David Duke, who sees himself as an international role model for neo-Nazism. In recent years, he’s been traveling to places like Russia and the Arab world, spreading his vicious anti-Semitic propaganda. And in both places, it’s clear he’s been gaining audiences and having an impact on the ground. David Duke is a RACIST. OTOH President Hu of China is a true FASCIST. The distinction matters lese we condone fascism when it id not rascist.
it completely demolishes his central claim that “fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all” but that “it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left.” Because clearly, American fascists are now, and always have been, a phenomenon of the right, quite unmistakably so.
American racism has been on both the right and the left. Farrakhan is NOT a Republican. The KKK was largeley or totally Democrat. G Wallace ran as a Democrat. The hijacking of racism into the Republicans by Atwater/Reagan may hopefully be remembered as one of the most evil deeds in the US history.
It’s all about trivializing the monstrous, all to serve his increasingly dubious claim that conservatives are in no way at all even remotely fascist. Indeed, it’s more than evident that the wish to rebut that “smear” is what has animated this entire enterprise (Goldberg has made this clear in numerous interviews, as well as the book itself).
I suspect this is true though I have not read the book. The Reprocan effort to smear the Dems is worse than the Billary effort to smear BHO though both behaviours are despicable.
But you have to wonder about someone who can so easily whitewash the realities of the Klan, dismiss the social and cultural effects of modern-day fascists, and then compare the Nazi eliminationist program to Hillary Clinton’s day-care initiatives. It is not often you get to see the holes in people’s souls on public display, and it’s never pretty.
FINALLY .. David is making a real point!
Why care? I care about the term fascism because I am scared shitless by the confluence of China, Russia, Singapore, UAE, and .. Japan. These are ALL countries where one can argue that il Duce’s system IS WORKING!.
There is a real danger here too of the corporate state taking over more and more governmental functions. One reason I prefer BHO to HRC is that I do not see her as oposed to fascism.
Of course, if the term is used the way I want it, the worst Fascist is stting at 1600!
PS syndrome @1: “Why don’t we all read the book first, then make up our minds?”
Fair on its surface, Piper, and I’m sure you’ve read everything by Karl Marx, neh?
What presumptuous bullshit.
SJ close that tag!
Goldberg’s book was completely discredited on its day of publication. The guy is a complete loser, a hack, a walking self-parody.
I await the publication of “Conservative Communism”:
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8571.html
Now THAT will be a fun read!
@15
Steve,
The belief that your particular group or clan is superior to all of the others is what usually gives rise to the particular economic systems that constitute fascist movements. Fascism isn’t inherently racist in the sense that one can be a fascist without being racist, but being racist most certainly makes you more prone to become Fascist. Not only that, but racism is the usual form of fear-mongering that allows for a fascist to slowly gain that level of control and absolute power.
Just because the Klan and other related groups in this country are small and powerless does not mean that the things they’d do if allowed to wouldn’t resemble the kinds of things that Hitler and Mussolini did at the national level.
Let’s hope the world never forgets Europe under the iron heel of the League of Nations.
@15:
Get a clue, Seattle Jew.
Hitler: Facist and racist – try reading Mein Kampf sometime.
Mussolini- fake everything (fake facist and fake jew lover) – acceded to Hitler’s war on the Jews and put them in concentration camps – but I guess according to you – concentration camps are not racist?
Required reading for Seattle Jew:
Garden of the Finzi contini – about the round-up of Italian Jews
or the story of the Jews rounded up in Rome within sight of the Vatican?
Mussolini as friend of the Jews? maybe you need to read some history. a few early Jewish advisors does not make Mussolini a non-facist or non-racist.
Now we have it all: A Mussolini apologist
the argument about the Klan and demcrats is also pathetic – since the mid-60’s the democratic party has shifted. Yes – originally the republican party under Lincoln supported civil rights – but they sure as heck don’t now.
and if you think the Klan is so democratic and liberal – try joining it (sic).
What a pathetic argument.
How many leftist speakers are shouted down at college campuses these days? How often does it happen to conservatives?
In the 1920’s and 30’s, who made a habit of making sure their opposition wasn’t able to speak in public?
Simplistic? Sure thing, but hardly innocuous. Don’t say there isn’t a passing resemblance between the left-wing today, and the fascists they claim to hate.
Mussolini: Hey, I’m not anti-Semitic. Some of my best friends are Jewish.
Aha, proof!
Lee,
I think we agree. The problem is that the term fascist has been expropriated first by Hitler then by the left so that it has become an epithet.
Fascism, pre Hitler, was PRAISED by FDR and Gandhi for its ability to improve the people’s lot. Under Benito it was NOT racist .. other than the built in concept of Eurosupremacy that has afflicted every government of any kind since Charlemagne.
I would not mind if the term changed its meaning, except that equating Nazism with Fascism has become an excuse on the Right and the Left for ignoring the growth of the corporate state .. true fascism.
China, as one example, seem pretty free of racism, but is a totalitarian society that has, until now, suppressed free speach and fostered .. of all things .. classism. The same can be said of Singapore and Malaysia. Oddly Japan and Korea seem to have found a way of containing classism and allowing more than a little free speach, but they are fascist as well. What do you think the chances would be of establishing a company that was not funded by the Zaibatsu in Japan or the triads and people’army in China?
I recently read an essay in the Economist on the new monetarism that makes fascism, as it was pracrticed in Italy before Nazism, more scary. The essay pointed out that “we” are now in a post capitalist system in the sense that earning money is now unlinked form any form of productivity! The implication is scary. Management has become not unlike the Party in Soviet days .. nominally there to serve the people/investors but with hge incentives for personal gain that sre unlinked from productivity of workers. The result? there is little reason for these affluent folks in the US or China to want the workers to do well and a lot of reason to encourage classism.
So, as ugly as racism is (and Bill Clinton seems to need a lesson on THAT subject) is think we have a lot more to fear from the willingness of most people to cede their rights to corporations than we do from the David Dukes, Clark Cty Repricans, etc.
BTW .. I have been trying to reach you. Can you drop me an email or call?
” … whole $150 billion would go the business (sic! sic! sic!) and the rich.”
Did this goat fucker really graduate from law school?
@23 ,, I have read a resonable amount on the pre-Hitler pact Italy and nothing I have seen depicts Mussolini as an antisemite. If you know more, teach me.
@16…PTBAA…
Not everything, but enough.
Here’s something…A book I read a few years ago that has something to say is Radical Son by David Hororwitz. The son of avowed Communists and an absolute sold-out supporter of the Black Panthers who became horrified by totalitarian mindset of both the underlying philosophy and how it plays itself out in reality.
Another volume, admittedly one I haven’t read all the way through, is Witness by Whittaker Chambers, which recounts his personal philosophical and moral journey from totalitarian Communism to capitalist freedom.
My point? Read first, judge later. Right now, Lee is judging a book by its cover and title. He renders an opinion based upon the hearsay of another. How intellectually honest is that?
If you don’t want to support Jonah Goldberg financially, then I’m sure the Seattle Public Library will be well stocked with copies.
As for me? I’ve put it on my, “Gee, I’d like to read that!” along with several hundred other volumes.
The Piper
@21…CnR…
SJ didn’t say Mussolini was a FRIEND to Jews. He said he wasn’t anti-semitic per se. There is a difference.
Yet you are correct that he acceded to Hitler’s demands to persecute them.
But when it comes to persecuting Jews and other ethnic minorities, Josef Stalin takes the cake. Ask the Kulaks, Ukranians, and countless others who were the victims of pogroms, intentional starvation, ethnic cleansing before it was ethnic cleansing, and good old fashioned genocide.
All done in the name of Marxist-Leninist Communism.
And if you want to know how democratic/Democratic the KKK was, ask Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV who joined it as a young man since in those days it was how one advanced in the KKK.
Also, the late Justice Hugo Black, an appointee of FDR, was a KKK member in the 1920’s. That he later was a liberal SCOTUS justice doesn’t erase the fact that this Democrat used to not only belong to the KKK, but he also used to attack witnesses in court by alluding to their religious beliefs and practices.
The Piper
@21 correctnotright
Try putting your mind in gear.
I have watched the “Garden” as a movie, nit read it. Your point is what? This has nothing to do with the pre Hitler period in Italy.
Nor did I ever depict Mussolini as a pro-semite, like most goyem given the choice between us and their own welfare we seem an easy sacrifice. Same thing has happened in the US many times. I think the Gay community has the same experience. Frankly, I think most of us .. me too, would lack the courage to stand up for others rights .. read the Goldhaber book. I lived through McCarthy .. lotsa liberals found themselves shunning the commies.
As for the KKK, whether you like it or not, the KKK was founded as a populist movement. It was not recognizable as rightist until Ronald Reagan and Lee Atwater .. you know the hero of the right, saw an evil way of stitching Jesus to the flag. On alrger scale you would have to go all the way to Germany to find a regime as racist as Stalinist Russia.
I grew up in an Irish-Italian city. The apartheid system imposed by the Boston Dems on Blacks would have made any Africaner proud.
So, if your only concern with “fascisms” is its racism, I guess state corporatism, another namer for fascism (an Italian not a German word) is OK?
Before you congratulate “us” for being nonracist, read some POGO.
12: Goldberg proves or ‘proves’ that fascist socialism became identified with the right because Stalin wanted to avoid confusing it with Stalinist socialism.
Stalin’s variant was identified, via the Cominform and Comintern, with international socialist revolution. That’s what ‘Comintern’ means. Italian/German socialism, called fascism, concentrated on concentrating statist power within the Italian and German states.
Both socialisms, Soviet and fascist national socialism, were socialism.
One of your lop-eared comrades noted a few months ago that national socialism was rightist because Hitler smacked down Bolsheviks. When Hitler gained power in January 1933, Stalin had already more-than decimated the cadres of Bolshevik cronies who had assisted his godless scientific socialist enterprise. By warped Rabbit’s warped definition, Stalin was a rightist. (Sounds like the thesis of the next liberal best-seller. Tell Krugman or Rabbit to write it … give them something worthwhile to do with their too-abundant spare time.)
@28
Tx Piper.
BUT .. yu also need to acknowledge that the unholy alliance created by Reagan was racist.
BTW, you emailed me but did not send a phone number.
Stalin v. Jews: Indeed. Also anti-Muslim as the forced evacuation of Chechnya demonstrated.
Stalin’s final paranoid delusion in 1952 and 1953 was that he was a victim or target of a Semitic doctor’s plot. His final solution to the plot was to kill Jews until death (Stalin’s) intervened.
Radical Son: Excellent book. But to mention Horowitz in enlightened and tolerant Seattle, without invoking an obligatory Red-Guard-lite denunciation of Horowitz, is to evoke a reaction that might be called anti-Semitic.
Witness: A foundational document of our time. Chambers said the right side, the good side, was destined to lose. Looks like he was … right.
Facism is all about control of the masses. Nothing about which direction it comes from. German fascists were on the right, Chinese fascists are on the left. Americans suffer from both sides. And they can both kiss my behind.
Take Seattle as an example. It is illegal to fail to recycle. You can be cited. The city has at least 4 inspectors working on ensuring compliance for businesses. Mere citizens are watched by the co-opted employees of the City’s garbage collection franchisee. Your garbage man is supposed to monitor your garbage and refuse to collect it if it contains more than the allowed percentage of recyclables. I’d happily dump my garbage on the mayor’s desk if he wants to look through it so damn bad.
31: Have enjoyed many of your comments. Have agreed with few or none. But this one is just … nuts. Very uncharacteristic of you, and very unworthy of you.
@31…Steve…
We’ll have to disagree on Reagan…
What about the horrendous racial overtones in the Clinton campaign?
Phone number should have been in my signature line.
The Piper
33: Wrong about German fascism being other than what it was, leftist statist socialism. Magnificently right about tolerant progressive enlightened Seattle-style fascism. Recycling, as the (ahem) New York Times Magazine proved, is a crock. Almost always, in almost all circumstances, at real-world price levels.
That Seattle sics recycle police and transfat police and second-hand smoke police on citizens whose taxes are being extorted for the privilege of being invasively policed tells you all you really need to know about the socialist agenda.
Piper
The massive conversion fo the South to Republicans was based entirely on the identification of the Dems with civil rights.
I suppose it is possible that Reagan was unaware of this but that is hard to believe. Atwater and Rove were pretty clear about their commitment to the end justifying the means.
Another point the right needs to fear is that BHO has set his sites on bringing white christians of the working class back into the fold. Hillary and her ilk are too blind to note the change in the racial mix at medachurches.
@27: “Not everything, but enough.”
What a priceless (and shameless) evasion. Har, har, har. Little, if anything is more like it, I’ll wager. Meet me some time and I’ll give you a quiz. You can quiz me on Miltie Friedman, just to be fair.
And please, David Horowitz? A liar. A paranoid lunatic. An opportunist of the lowest order. A recipient of wingnut welfare. The stupid version of Lyndon LaRouche?
We knew him when he was a lefty, and he was a piece of shit then. I stopped reading his ‘essays’ in Ramparts because they were just plain shallow warmed over ideological and moribund crap.
I’m more than certain that you read little, if any, left wing stuff. So your ‘read it first before judging’ is just so much pap. I bet you spouted off about Ward Churchill, right? Did you read any of his books?
How about Noam Chomsky? Paul Krugman?**
Thought not.
Why I’ll bet you’ve made lots of hay about Hillary’s Book, “It Takes a Village”. I’d bet you’ve never read that one, either–but then nobody has, but it certainly sold more copies (warning: don’t take this as an assertion of the validity of her points) than David Horowitz’s entire life output.
**That’s not an endorsement of any of these particular authors (although Krugman is very good), just a few names that come to mind.
Jonah Goldberg, National Review, current issue, reports that Mussolini and his Italian socialist fascists protected Italian Jews and expat Jews from Hitler until Germany invaded Italy in 1943. The French marched their Jews to the border or to their Vichy quislings and handed them over.
And I’ll say it again: “But to mention Horowitz in enlightened and tolerant Seattle, without invoking an obligatory Red-Guard-lite denunciation of Horowitz, is to evoke a reaction that might be called anti-Semitic.”
Piece of shit for falling in with the Oakland Panthers? Is that what you mean? For lending them Betty van Patter? For having second thoughts about the smelly leftist orthodoxies that he retailed in Ramparts and, earlier, in Free World Colossus? (Still have my copy, and will lend it if you want to read it, if you can read, which is unlikely.)
Ramparts! Dig it! I was a subscriber. And a reader.
39 – The French, in WWII, couldn’t wait to help the Nazis round-up French Jews. That country is very anti-Semetic.
And having a population of 10% Muslims now ain’t helping their reputation in that department!
re 22:
“In the 1920’s and 30’s, who made a habit of making sure their opposition wasn’t able to speak in public?”
Fox News? Yer an idiot.
41: Oui. Mark Steyn’s recent book is about the new Euro caliphate. Explains those French “youth” riots reported by Big Media, BM.
@40: No. He was a piece of shit because he was an opportunistic ideological hack. Worse, he was boring. He has not changed in that regard.
“Ramparts! Dig it! I was a subscriber. And a reader.”
What? You can read? Just returning the gratuitous insult.
There was a bad 90’s movie from the bad 90s called Serial Mom. Kathleen Turner offs her scofflaw neighbors who don’t recycle.
(Speaking of being offed: Where’s my best bud Lee? Have done several desultory posts here this afternoon, and Lee hasn’t done the beatdown smack down on me yet. I mean, he gets off on that jack-boot thug-life power trippin’ … Rabbit’s the official greeter-excreter and Lee’s the official deleter. Speaking of fashionable left-wing fascism …)
Per Orwell, a fascist has become someone or a group that you don’t like very much.
Grat-u-it-ous … Wow! Had to look it up! Bet that’s one of those subliminable Bushisms that you liberals flip out to get us off our game. Head trippin’.
So Horowitz is shit because he’s an opportunist because he changed his mind. Better tell Bill and Hillary, who in 1998 made regime change in Iraz our official policy and who insisted that Saddam had bad weapons and that he’d use them … a point that Senator Dennis Rodman Clinton reiterated in 2002.
And thanks for all the Charmin.
Mussolini’s anti-semitism and his on-again, off-again relationship with Zionism is rather interesting. See this, for example:
http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/zizad/zizad4.html
It would seem anti-semitism in Italy was driven mostly by the Catholic Church, and Mussolini terrorized Germans in the Tyrol!
My, my, my.
First Iraq. Iraz comes next.
Does that make Mussolini an “anti-nazi”?
A fascist state is one in which the state and the corporate interests combine to promote their own interests over those of the people.
Whether Democrat or Republican, the good old US of A displays the facets of fascism-lite.
To get rid of the government would leave us to the not so tender mercies of the corporations. Personal freedom ends once you enter the door of your corporate employer.
So I would do away with the corporations.
Mr. Weston: Indeed. And my earlier reference to smelly orthodoxies of the Left was lifted directly from Orwell.
Check out Orwell’s essay about the moral use of language. Then try to explain it to Goldy, Lee, Rabbit, YLB, and the whole smelly orthodox melange.
@47: “So Horowitz is shit because he’s an opportunist because he changed his mind.”
Maybe you can’t read after all. He’s a shit because he has exhibited his opportunism throughout his career. I don’t hold it against him that he changed his mind. We all make mistakes.
You appear to have changed your mind since the 60’s as well. You may or may not be a shit–I have no evidence other than your posts, but you’re not a shit because you changed your political views.
You may be a shit, however, because you don’t appear to be very polite. Time will tell.
Regards,
hateful right wing shit-head nut @ 52
I challenge you to find anybody talking up Marxism here.
Of course you’ll cook up something “implied” in that stewpot of hate and paranoia you call your head.
Marxism? Seldom mention them. Occasionally watch their movies … am told that Rufus T. Firefly = Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Made no reference to Marxes or to their movies in my right wing shit-head nut post @ 52. Regards.
Proud: I don’t do polite. Leave that to the excellent Piper, a Baptist & a gentleman.
I’m an unreconstructed mean-spirited right wing shit-head nut.
Name morphing troll:
You’re not here to present ideas or even just vehemently disagree. You’re here to hate.
You’re like Horowitz – you were wrong then and you’re wrong now.
53 – he’s a shit all right. He’s all about hating Seattle and people who comment here.
The same old knee-jerk right wing bullshit amped up with a little nastiness.
Pretty sad to be middle aged and so hateful.
Amazingly these liberal types don’t focus on Fabianism, Eugenics or Progressivism in the early 1900s. They only focus on fascism.
The PuddyStudy delivered last week had no commentary on fascism. It did cover all three topics aptly skipped my the moronic lefties!
Down and Out: or is it dumb and dumber?
If you want a group of smelly, constitution hating, civil rights and individual rights baiting and losing thugs – look no further than the republican party support for Bush and Cheney as they wash our inalienable rights down the toilet.
No habeus corpus
Illegal search and seizure
enemy combatants
Cruel and unusal torture
A (no) Justice department
Illegal wiretapping
Abramoff buying influence of Republicans
If you watch old movies then GWB = ?
“But holding swastika and Dixie banners aloft, shouting “Sieg Heil,” and ranting ad nauseam about how bestial colored people and queers and the Jewish media are destroying the country, and demanding that we start shooting Mexican border crossers — well, that pretty clearly marks them as fascist, dontcha think?”
Uhhh…. no. That clearly marks them as racists, isolationists, xenophobes, and probably neo Nazis, but not necessarily fascists. Even if all fascists are racist (they are not), all racists are not fascist.
Equating neo-Nazism and fascism is ironic in that there are no viable democratic neo-Nazi political movements, and thus their existence relies heavily on individual liberties granted to them by their respective states (the very same liberties fascists seek to limit!). In other words, consider an anti-Nazism fascist state. Fascism itself is agenda-agnostic.
“The belief that your particular group or clan is superior to all of the others”
That’s just nationalism. Nationalism is indeed a powerful tool for fascism, but again, not fascism in and of itself. Fascism can exist without Nationalism.
“Mussolini- fake everything (fake facist”
Fascism has many definitions these days, but I think most can agree that a central tenet is collectivism/statism over individualism. And in that respect Italy certainly was fascist. Whether Mussolini truly believed in these ideals himself is another story, but if you’re going down that road you probably need to question every politician’s motives.
I think #15 was on the right track and clarified themselves nicely in #24.
“As a revolutionary, Mussolini had always worked with Jews in the Italian Socialist Party, and it was not until he abandoned the left that he first began to echo the anti-Semitic ideas of the northern European right-wing. Four days after the Bolsheviks took power, he announced that their victory was a result of a plot between the ‘Synagogue’, that is, ‘Ceorbaum’ (Lenin), ‘Bronstein’ (Trotsky), and the German Army.[(1)] By 1919 he has Communism explained: the Jewish bankers –‘Rotschild’, ‘Wamberg’, ‘Schyff’ and ‘Guggenheim’– were behind the Communist Jews.[(2)]”
From the link above – Mussolini was definitely facist and was a back and forth racist. sometimes not – sometimes yes.
Yes – facism and racism are not the same thing – but Mussolini did both just fine.
@18 That’s rich!
“I’m planning on writing a book called ‘Conservative Communism: The Collectivist Temptation from Mao Zedong to the Hoover Institute’. Basically, the premise of the book is that even though people think that Communism is a phenomenon of the Left, it should be obvious to any serious scholar that Communists have more in common with today’s conservatives than they do today’s progressives. I mean, Lenin outlawed prostitution, and Focus on the Family wants to keep prostitution outlawed. Mao thought all businesses should be supported by the government, and modern conservatives think that the government should avoid taxing businesses and give them all kinds of grants and free money. You can see that they’re basically the same thing. Anyway, I’ve only just started working on this, but I can guarantee you that this argument has never been made in such detail or with such care.”
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/8571.html
@53 “because you don’t appear to be very polite”
Who cares about that? and since when are we “polite” on this blog? The poster @47 is a shit because he’s a wingnut, and all wingnuts are shits.
Down and out in Ballard and Fremont. I haven’t been here long enough to form any opinions on the posters here. I’ve been on Media Matters for about a year, which like this site allows conservatives and progressives to debate in a fairly open manner. This a rare thing as far as I know, and pretty much unheard of on red type sites.
First impressions show a more profane attitude. Profanity can get you removed at mmfa. No big deal. Seem like some good folks here, I hope to be about.
On topic, several corporate media outlets seem to be intent on the liberal as fascist meme. Why not they’ve called us everything else.
Mr. Weston: Media Matters. My oh my! (Is it true, as Rush said today, that MM is Hillary’s Baby, similar to Rosemary’s?)
Am ashamed to admit that, along with being an impolite wingnut and shit, I was a David Brock cheerleader before Brock was cool. Actually recommended The Real Anita Hill to my friends, both of them. Actually breathlessly followed Brock in American Spectator.
Horowitz: Am still clueless about Proud Ass’s assertion that David Horowitz was/is a career opportunist. There was nothing opportunistic about Free World Colossus (c. 1963) because almost nobody read it. Even more than Witness, Chambers’s foundation document for the resurgent right, FWC was an obscure foundation document for the insurgent New Left. Maybe Tom Hayden abstracted it for the SDS Port Huron Statement, but Horowitz was mostly hanging out there on his own. And, unlike opportunist I.F. Stone from the Old Left, who was probably subsidized by the KGB, nobody has ever said or implied that Horowitz was on the Kremlin payroll.
The books and monographs that bubbled up from the Horowitz/Collier Second Thoughts seminars have occasional whiffs of opportunism, but the whiffs come from P.J. O’Rourke, who was clearly trolling for a new gig … BaltoCong and National Lampoon having shot their wads.
(Oops … I’m being impolitely profane again.)
Ramparts: As a preteen revolutionary in Cowflop, Wyoming 82666, I was a real early reader of Ramparts paranoia: Madame Nhu as Satan in a bouffant, Brown & Root as general contractors for digging the Texas Democrat cesspool, Jim Garrison as Jim Garrison, a shit and wingnut.
Was also a reader of The Realist. Even had a St. Realist on the dashboard of my car, just below the fuzzy dice … a little plastic gift from St. Paul Krassner.
60: Oh, please. Give it up.
Your only useful unbulleted bullet point is Abramoff. I donated actual dollars to Rabbi Lapin’s Toward Tradition, and I apologize to you & you & you. Did Daniel know that Jack was crooked as a Boston Democrat? Probably not, but that’s a big part of the problem.
“You’re not here to present ideas or even just vehemently disagree.”
I vehemently disagree with your asswipe assertion.
Polite American version: I vehemently disagree with your assertion. Have a nice day.
http://www.historyplace.com/wo.....oints.html
Racist socialism is still socialism.
Not found.
What part of ‘diversity’ does YLB not understand?
Just google “Nazi Party Platform.”
I’m about halfway through Goldberg’s book now. Some of it is silly. Some of it is really interesting.
Basically, the parts that lay out the close connection between the Progressive movement and collectivist/fascist European movements – that’s good. The parts dealing with modern American politics – not so good.
You’ll never think about Woodrow Wilson and both Roosevelts the same way, that’s for sure.
I should elaborate a little – it’s not even that the indictment of liberalism is completely unwarranted, just that a lot of the same criticisms apply to the modern form of “conservatism,” too.
If you’re an economic libertarian, you don’t have much of a choice these days. You haven’t had a real choice since 1964. Of course, the guy in that race who was good (from the small-gov’t perspective) on the economic side was bad (from pretty much any perspective) on civil rights – as, to his credit, he later realized.
Anyway. If people could get past the title, they might learn a lot from the book.
68 – Like I said, you’re here to hate.
Pathetic, disgusting…
re 59: I’ve told you before: Fabianism never happened until the 1950’s!
‘Turn me Loose’
‘Like a Tiger’
@66 Morph
I want to like Horowitz because I believe we do need more doversoty opf thought on campus. The problem I see is that he suports nuts and fruits rather than scholars. The truth of academe is that by and large we want diversity but often can not find conservative thinkers whose ideas a re solid.
I can give you two examples. On area that conservatives are badly needed in is economics. One friend of mine is a Friedman protégé. He is very sought after and very successful because, t the academic, he has a “specialty” that is he supports a critical set of ideas. You may not believe this but it is true.
On a different tack, the med school makes a huge effort to see that students learn different approaches. My Dad, now in his mid nineties, taught until this year .. in part because he represents the best of the sinbgle practitioner odel.
Where Horowitz and his ilk go wrong is in the source of the problem of acadmci and media bias. If they really want to change the composition of academe or of the news media, the they need to help fund traiing for solid, brialiant, creative right wing thinkers. Some of this has occurred .. the Hoover Institute and the Heritage Institute may not be my cup of lemonade, but they are impressive folk.
Look closer to home. Dino is going t lose .. why? Is it the media? Or is it that he turns to the Lou Guzo’s of the world for intelelctual support?
“The truth of academe is that by and large we want diversity but often can not find conservative thinkers whose ideas are solid.”
I think that’s definitely true, as you note, in economics. It gets less true the further you get from the “harder” end of social science. In, say, literary studies, it’s a *lot* less true.
Horowitz is given to extremes – he’s gone from one kind of radicalism to another. Certain personalities are centrifugal. His memoir (“Radical Son”) shows a surprising degree of self-awareness on this subject.
SeattleJew: What about Drs. Walter E. Williams or Thomas Sowell; both black and conservative economists?
Since Clueless Idiot Fool only accepts the kool-aid sites: I compromised and delivered the left leaning wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell
But on this board all you read about it Paul Krugman… and that’s a real laffer! Pun intended.
NMT@71: Yelling Libby Blatherer (YLB) doesn’t understand large words with more than six letters. Maybe it’s why he changed his name from Clueless to YLB?
Idiot
Stupid
Moron
Dumb
Fool
Now those are words you can use to describe his thought processes. One word which seemed to trip him up lately is Excel. Somehow spreadsheets and Clueless
Diversity is a tough one for him.
@77 And by what criterion are either of these folks of high stature in economics?
Just because a chimpanzee dressess in a Republican suit, that does not mean you wuold want the chimp top teach aesthetics.
SeattleJew did you read their credentials or do you honestly act like most liberal morons here and skip the links?
SeattleJew: I am shocked and amaxed:
Thomas Sowell: In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.
Never thought that in the benighted Soviet of Seattle I’d witness a respectful and thoughtful discussion of Dr. Sowell. What a thrill.
Sign me up for the Puddy Fan Club and send me the T-shirt. And keep talking truth to the YLB-tards who know only how to talk trash to power.
(Have been a Sowell Brother since Econ grad school. Don’t let the HA bastards talk him down. He’s right; they’re wrong.)
Radical Son by Horowitz is mighty fine. It’s useful to be reminded of the NE red-diaper gulag (as a kid, Horowitz went to kommie kamp in the katskills, sang Pete Seager tunes around the kampfire). And it’s useful to remember why he climbed off the Soviet ark: something about the Panther killing fields in the hills straight outta Oakland.
Larry Gossett and Seattle media apologists for the BP Party want you to believe that the Panthers were mere social workers in a hurry, handing out breakfasts to toddlers. The truth, as Horowitz knows and shows, is more nuanced and troubling.
And re his current gig, he’s most right about the media-academic complex, a plantation for the left-over Left. Still, appreciate the nuances introduced above about the academic power structure: further you get from real learning about the real world, closer you get to Lubyanka liberalism with a smiley face.
(Oh, yeah … Eldridge Cleaver became a capitalist and Huey Newton became very dead, dealing bad dope.)
@82 .. yes and your point is? Where did he work? Was he emplyed well?
BTW the AEI is anythng but an academic org. IT is a conservative spin center … kinda like saying he got an award from Move-on.
@84
Everytime I read this rightist tripe I ask the same question, “Where is the meat?”
I have nothing against solid scholarship from any direction but most of the time the right wants equal time for creationism, supply sideerism, etc.
As for who is rerally living in isolation from the real world, come take a walk with me boobelah or a drive and I will show you Paul Alan’s fantasy castle, the shoreside at Hunts Point, the bad art at SAM, the floating whore houses on Lake Union, the multimilion pied a terr being built in Seattle.
Let em eat cake!
Where’s “dem” floating whore houses?
Are they Republican owned? Doubt it!
* ISBN 0-07-070378-7 The State Against Blacks (1984)
* ISBN 0-8179-7562-4 America: a Minority Viewpoint (1982)
* ISBN 0-89526-569-9 All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View (1988)
* ISBN 0-275-93179-X South Africa’s War Against Capitalism (1989)
* ISBN 0-8179-9382-7 Do the Right Thing: The People’s Economist Speaks (1995)
* ISBN 0-8179-9612-5 More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well (1999)
* Sowell, Thomas (2007). Economic Facts and Fallacies. Basic Books, 262 pages. ISBN 978-0465003495.
* Sowell, Thomas (2007). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy, 3rd edition, Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books Group, 627 pages. ISBN 978-0465002603.
* Sowell, Thomas (2007). A Man of Letters. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 320 pages. ISBN 978-1594031960.
* Sowell, Thomas (2006). Ever Wonder Why? And Other Controversial Essays. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 460 pages. ISBN 978-0817947521.
* Sowell, Thomas (2006). On Classical Economics. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 320 pages. ISBN 978-0300126068.
* Sowell, Thomas (2005). Black Rednecks and White Liberals: And Other Cultural And Ethnic Issues. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 360 pages. ISBN 978-1594030864.
* Sowell, Thomas (2004). Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 256 pages. ISBN 978-0300107753.
* 2004. Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, revised and expanded ed. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08145-2 (1st ed. 2000)
* 2003. Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, ISBN 0-465-08143-6
* 2003. Inside American Education, ISBN 0-7432-5408-2
* 2002. The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late, ISBN 0-465-08141-X
* 2002. Controversial Essays, ISBN 0-8179-2992-4
* 2002. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08142-8
* 2002. A Personal Odyssey, ISBN 0-684-86465-7
* 2002. The Quest For Cosmic Justice, ISBN 0-684-86463-0
* 1998. Conquests and Cultures: An International History, ISBN 0-465-01400-3
* 1996. Migrations and Cultures: A World View, ISBN 0-465-04589-8
* 1996. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08995-X
* 1994. Race and Culture: A World View, ISBN 0-465-06796-4
* 1987. Compassion versus guilt, and other essays, ISBN 0688071147.
* 1986. Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. Quill, ISBN 0-688-06426-4
* 1984. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-03113-7.
* 1983. Economics and Politics of Race. William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-01891-2
* 1981. Ethnic America: A History. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02074-7
* 1981. Markets and Minorities. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-04399-2
* 1980. Knowledge and Decisions. Basic Books.
* 1975. Race and Economics. David McKay Company Inc, ISBN 0-679-30262-X.
So SeattleJew: I hope you have some reading time since you wanted scholarship proof.
Sorry Morph and Mindy
I missed that one. His last was on Ms. Clinton’s posture.
Next it’ll be excess ear wax.
Ops didn’t get the refference.
Both Rush, Billo, and probably a few others(& no few posters) make the accusation that its a Hillory spin site, or an Obama spin site, or an Edwards spin site, etc, etc.
It has its mission, occasionally accused of over reaction, the “Why is this here” (with) crew makes points on occasion.Its got an interesting group of regulars. This site has many similarites to it.
I assume you read Brock’s “Blinded by the Right?”
@87 .. many of the large yachts on LU NEVER move form the dock. They owned by wealthy folks who deduct the thinsg form tyheir taxes and use them for late night liasons. Sometiumes they get burned down when the reprobate need $$$.
@88 89 Puddy the dullard
I thought your point was that conservatives can nto get academic jobs or publish
?Sowell has taught at prominent American universities including Howard University, Cornell University, Brandeis University, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds the fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman.”
He seems to be doing OK. You need some catnip.
SeattleJew, if you’re at all interested I’d recommend two Sowell books:
“The Vision of the Annointed”
and
“Black Rednecks and White Liberals.”
@95 I think I have a reasonable idea about what Sowell says, I read a lot but why would I want to read these?
“I read a lot but why would I want to read these?”
I said *if* you’re interested, these are the ones I’d recommend.