"Joe Namath has never said anything political in his life, but they knew he was unreliable. To them, a guy who will flaunt dames and have a bar and look the way he does is clearly a guy who'll flout authority, and they don't like that. There's a Nixon way of doing everything. And the essence of totalitarianism is precisely that: in a totalitarian society there's a state way of doing everything — mathematics, forestry, sex. I think that's what the enemies list was all about — enforcing a kind of orthodoxy in everything. I'm certainly not saying that these guys were Nazis, but they
operated like Nazis. James Reston, Jr.... wrote to Albert Speer and got a very interesting letter back. Naturally, it's hedged with comments about how reluctant he is to comment on the American political situation, but the parallels Speer points to between Nixon and the Nazi White Houses are remarkable — the same loyalty to the leader without any consideration of ideology, the same drawing of power into a tiny, isolated group, even the same shielding of the leader by giving him only a prepared news summary. You know, I've read a lot of biographies of Nixon, and they all seem to agree on one thing — that he really was an uncommonly good poker player. I think I've figured out why. It's that he
always looks as though he's bluffing. You've got three kinds up and he raises, and you look at his face and you think, 'Nah, he doesn't have the aces.' But he'd look exactly the same if he didn't have them. He's always bluffing. There's no reality. A strange man — but awfully dangerous."
Said Frank Mankiewicz, interviewed in
the November 19, 1973 issue of The New Yorker. Mankiewicz, who had been Robert F. Kennedy’s press secretary and who directed George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign,
died yesterday at the age of 90. From the obituary:
A scion of Hollywood, the son of Herman J. Mankiewicz, who wrote “Citizen Kane,” and the nephew of Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who directed “All About Eve,” he grew up with an Algonquin West round table in his Beverly Hills household, regaled by movie stars, famous writers and comedians like the Marx Brothers.
What a lucky man!
Posts
109 comments:
What a timely observation from Mr. Mankiewicz.
For all the bluster, this blurb is a really great thumbnail character description:
You know, I've read a lot of biographies of Nixon, and they all seem to agree on one thing — that he really was an uncommonly good poker player. I think I've figured out why. It's that he always looks as though he's bluffing.
The other very interesting thing about the quote is the way it promulgates the Albert Speer myth -- that the former Nazi architect and Minister of Armaments was really a good guy another intellectual can trust.
The 800lbs gorilla in the room that Nixon haters overlook when judging Tricky Dick is that Nixon had very real and dedicated enemies working to destroy him from the moment he touched the Alger Hiss cabal of American Communists who were in active cooperation with sweet Uncle Joe's nuclear weapon armed Evil Empire.
Apart from that personal talent that like to trick those enemies that did him in, Nixon did everything very well.
... the same loyalty to the leader without any consideration of ideology, the same drawing of power into a tiny, isolated group, even the same shielding of the leader by giving him only a prepared news summary.
Hummmm, now what does that remind me of?
When I look at what the current administration routinely does and without any press complaints I have a hard time remembering why we were so upset at Nixon.
Nixon was paranoid because he had reason to be paranoid. He knew how sausage was made on both sides. I almost look wistfully back upon those days. Imagine a media that went after Benghazi-gate, Fast 'n Furious-gate, IRS-gate, etc., with the same relish they went after Watergate.
The Frank Mankiewicz article is very wrong, due to his arguing from a false premise .
Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left. And that is just a fucking fact - easily realized by anyone who thinks honestly and clearly about the subject, and looks at History.
"Mathematics, Forestry, Sex"
A great title for something
"And the essence of totalitarianism is precisely that: in a totalitarian society there's a state way of doing everything — mathematics, forestry, sex. I think that's what the enemies list was all about — enforcing a kind of orthodoxy in everything."
Perfect critique of the current liberal mind.
"Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left."
It is a phenomenon of the human, right or left. Presently the American left are ascendant in important centers of thought and power, and think they are immune from this tendency. They are not. But neither is the right.
Unfortunately for movie lovers, the heir apparent to the wonderful TCM host Robert Osborn is junior communist Ben Mankiewicz. So we can look forward to progressive politicking, editorializing about 'The blacklist' and 'the McCarthy era' and snide asides whenever the stars of the movie are Robert Taylor, John Wayne, Ronald Reagen, Doris Day etc.
David said...
"Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left."
It is a phenomenon of the human, right or left. Presently the American left are ascendant in important centers of thought and power, and think they are immune from this tendency. They are not. But neither is the right.
Sure it is. The Right is: individual freedoms, small limited federal government, issues and rules pushing as local and granular as possible, people free to worship or not, as they wish, government forbidden from establishing an official state-approved religion, etc.
Hardly breeding grounds for totalitarianism, as the Founding Fathers knew.
Now, is human nature such that totalitarians can be found in all times and places? Certainly. But the only forms of government that will give them easy access to power, are Leftist/Statist ones and/or Theocracies (e.g. Iran).
You are perhaps confused by the leftist propaganda that the German National Socialists were of the Right. They were still of the far Left, but were, I guess, to the 'right' of the Russian Communists , just as Las Vegas is to the 'right' of San Fran, but that hardly makes it an Eastern city.
"Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left. And that is just a fucking fact - easily realized by anyone who thinks honestly and clearly about the subject, and looks at History."
Hahahaha!
Yep, Boy Howdy! Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the left, only of the left. It can never arise from the right.
Except when it does.
Don't make ludicrous statements, Someone.
"The Right is: individual freedoms, small limited federal government, issues and rules pushing as local and granular as possible, people free to worship or not, as they wish, government forbidden from establishing an official state-approved religion, etc."
Funny, I always see those left of center as the greater proponents of individual liberty, fighting against government intrusion into the religious sphere, etc.. though I acknowledge many principled people right of center have held and do hold these same views.
But I guess it's easy to define totalitarianism so easily as being only possible on the left when you change definitions to suit you as you go along. (You can repeat until the earth spins out of its orbit that the Nazis were "far left," but it'll never be the truth, and only fools will agree with you.)
I thought there would be an "Obama is like Nixon" tag. Its absence could be an Althouseian ploy to determine her meaning by the omission. Tea leaves.
Robert Cook said...
"Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left. And that is just a fucking fact - easily realized by anyone who thinks honestly and clearly about the subject, and looks at History."
Hahahaha!
Yep, Boy Howdy! Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the left, only of the left. It can never arise from the right.
Except when it does.
Don't make ludicrous statements, Someone.
You're a fool, perhaps one of those so-called 'educated idiots'. You see the world as you want it to be, not as it is.
I'll not be engaging you, as it is a huge waste of everyone's time, so post away. I'll just get out of your way.
The left's dilemma is the bad karma generated by how they achieve their stated ends. Their vision of freedom usually involves wrecking things owned by others, or using tax money, which is of course taken from others at the point of a gun. And when all the lives are wrecked and all the money is taken, they still don't achieve what they said they were going to -- and they don't give a shit about that, because power is a wonderful aphrodisiac, and that's what they were really all about in the first place.
But anyway, Frank's son Ben is a wonderful presenter and curator on Turner Classic Movies. TCM has evolved into a massive cultural resource for the country. It's all the more amazing because it doesn't rely on government money
Thank you, Fred. Yeah, there's something very familiar about that description.
Funny, I always see those left of center as the greater proponents of individual liberty
Purblind cognitive dissonance at work.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left. And that is just a fucking fact - easily realized by anyone who thinks honestly and clearly about the subject, and looks at History..
There should be some filter function on this blog to eliminate the completely stupid statements.
...who had been Robert F. Kennedy’s press secretary...
You mean the same Robert F. Kennedy who was staff attorney for Joe McCarthy, who asked Joe McCarthy to act as his daughter Kathleen's godfather, and who approved wiretaps on Martin Luther King? That guy put people on Enemies' Lists?
The Dark Night of Fascism is always descending upon the political right and always lands on the political left.
Amazing how that happens.
AReasonableMeltdown: "There should be some filter function on this blog to eliminate the completely stupid statements."
LOL
What a blissfully ARMeltdown-free blog this would be then.
Cookie: "Funny, I always see those left of center as the greater proponents of individual liberty..."
LOL
The Soviets used to lecture us endlessly on how their citizens were truly much more free than those in the West.
Marxists never change.
"What a lucky man!"
I take it this is sincere, but find it strange he was lucky to have those lives involved with his. I suppose so, but who knows if "ordinary" company in one's home is any worse or better than the enlightened movers and shakers of the celebrity class.
Maybe the Marx Brothers were boring in private. ; )
Sure it is. The Right is: individual freedoms, small limited federal government, issues and rules pushing as local and granular as possible, people free to worship or not, as they wish, government forbidden from establishing an official state-approved religion, etc.
Some on the right. I think we are in the midst of a developing schism on the right between Classic Liberal/Libertarians and Authority-based/Religious types.
As for actual Republicans, their method of restricting government intrusion into lives over the past 4 decades has been pretty abysmal.
Apparently the way to define right and left is to define the thing you are as goodness and light and the other side as totalitarianism in embryo.
And none of this self-promotional game of definitions gets at the distinct character of fascism. Fascism embraces violence as a core element of political action. It is not a violence of means to obtain totalitarian ends; it is a mystical celebration of violence as human achievement.
I'm certainly not saying that these guys were Nazis, but they operated like Nazis
What nonsense, & Mankiewicz knew it the instant those words came out of his mouth.
I live in the DC area, and I know some political types & their staffers, and the foremost virtue among them is LOYALTY to the boss. Because, in that business, you soon find out Rep/Senator/Secretary X is a narcissistic, greedy, lying, adulterous motherfucker, and you've got two choices 1) keep quiet & hitch your wagon to his (hopefully) rising star or 2) have your conscience get in the way of business.
As for a dedication among the staff to the citizens, the republic, or God, that's waaaaaay down the list if it's there at all.
There's no reality. A strange man — but awfully dangerous."
could apply to the King Putt as well
I think we are in the midst of a developing schism on the right between Classic Liberal/Libertarians and Authority-based/Religious types.
I think you are right about a schism, not sure about where you have drawn the fault line though.
I was reading an article last night or maybe this morning where the two opposing 'parties' were described as Democrats vs. Conservatives. Interesting that.
"Funny, I always see those left of center as the greater proponents of individual liberty..."
That would explain all the speech codes and due process violations at those havens of enlightenment and discovery -- our nation's colleges and universities.
On the subject of Fascism --- Right or Left. It's neither.
1) National Socialism & Italian Fascism (IF) have little in common in terms of their ideological roots. IF's never called themselves National Socialists & Nazis never called themselves Fascists.
2) That there is some sort of continuity on the right with Free Market Liberalism -> Aristocratic societies -> Fascism is an invention of Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideology in the late 20's/early 30's. Italian Marxists like Benedetto Croce who lived through IF never thought that.
3) Fascists/Nazis thought of themselves as neither left nor right, but as true representatives of their nations that transcended such distinctions. They borrowed ideas from as needed from the right, left, & center to cobble together an ideology of the totalitarian state as either 1) the assembled vitality of the natural groups of the Italian people ("corporations") for the IF, or 2) the expression of the racial spirit of the German people for the Nazis.
Mathematics, Forestry, Sex
I have a friend who works in that department. Right down the street from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
I'm not sure which one is more fun.
Drago, the ball-less troll, is back.
Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the left.
Maybe not, but the butcher's bill of 20th Century totalitarianisms (Stalin, Mao, Kim, Pol Pot, Mengistu)
certainly is.
They just had the PR, espionage and receptive, gullible campus nitwit audiences that Hitler and Tojo could only dream of.
ARM is back to step on his dick defending his ludicrous assertion that the House cut funding to the CDC.
This mis-perceives poker and bluffing. Or more precisely, the writer confuses bluffing with eliminating "tells."
Bluffing isn't being un-readable. Bluffing is misleading. As a poker player, you don't want to be un-readable. You want to be readable, at least as other players perceive you — and for those players' perceptions to be strong but only randomly correlated to your actual play.
Lots of bluffing is affirmative misdirection. It usually takes more than a single hand to accomplish; it has to be set up.
A player who always looks the same way — even though he may thereby eliminate all his tells and prevent anyone else from deducing what he's actually thinking — leaves money on the table at the end of the night, as compared to the player who can induce other players to fold at key moments with big pots by giving off a strong, calculated impression of a strong hand (that doesn't actually exist).
You want the other player to be certain that you must be bluffing — when you're in fact not bluffing. And you want him to be uncertain whether you're bluffing when you in fact are.
Or of course, there's the Obama school of poker, in which the superior player says to the Republican: "Call my bluff," and thinks he's being tough thereby.
YoungHegelian said...
On the subject of Fascism --- Right or Left. It's neither.
Hey! A-middle-of-the road'er.
Why have to declare oneself!
Here's an easy test. Just you one issue: the right of the ordinary citizen to keep and bear arms.
What would the Right's position be?
What would the Left's position be?
What would the Fascist position be?
Which position does the Fascist position most resemble? Left or Right?
Do that on a few more issues and you will soon see what complete self-be-clowning ass-hats Robert Cook and the so-called AReasonableMan, are.
It is patently obvious that Fascism and Totalitarianism are phenomenons of The Left.
AReasonableMeltdown offers up another "quality" and "non-stupid" post!
LOL
At least he is consistent.
"Blogger Robert Cook said...
"Correct premise: Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the Left. And that is just a fucking fact - easily realized by anyone who thinks honestly and clearly about the subject, and looks at History."
Hahahaha!
Yep, Boy Howdy! Totalitarianism is a phenomenon of the left, only of the left. It can never arise from the right.
Except when it does.
Don't make ludicrous statements, Someone."
Cookie, I am not at all surprised to see you say this. The left thinks that the Nazis were of the right. The totalitarian state began with the French Revolution which defines the left to this day.
The "right" is a bogeyman of the left but, in fact, there really is no right. There was slavery, which is often considered as an evil of the right but it was not. It was an anachronism that had existed since Greece and before. The monarchies of Europe are often considered members of the "right" but they were also anachronisms. The British monarchy supported the abolition of slavery.
Conservatism is an ancient philosophy and could be thought of as "right" but it is not about economics. Today, the right in American poetics is mostly a combination of libertarian economics and conservatism social principles. Marriage, family and the other social virtues the left is determined to destroy. In that sense only, you can talk about the right but it has never been and will never be totalitarian.
Another Mankewitz quote:
"As part-time advisor to Senator Gary Hart's presidential campaign in 1984—the first I had participated in actively since 1972—I was struck by the minutiae of the press's questions. The authorship of a speech—the identity of the speechwriters—seemed far more important than its content. Strategy was a primary concern—which votes are being sought? How much money has been raised for television commercials? Who will produce the commercials?.... Rarely if ever does the question turn on such things as "does he have the right ideas?" or "would he make a strong—or even good—president?"
By the way, poker aficionados would scold me for that last comment, in much the same way professional magicians scold someone who reveals the secrets behind a magician's trick.
Alas, Mr. Mankiewicz is no longer a bird who may be fleeced. I love to play cards with people who confidently misuse poker terminology!
Maybe the Marx Brothers were boring in private
They were definitely bores in private life - frequently ill-mannered, crude and occasionally obscene - but they weren't exactly "boring." An evening with the Marx Bros. was not quiet and sedate.
Chico was notoriously ribald. When he wasn't directly propositioning any woman he could buttonhole, he would often challenge the men to an "equipment" comparison. Oddly enough Adolph Marx (a.k.a. Harpo) was the shy socially awkward brother. Putting on the fright wig and the top hat transformed him into the frenetic clown, but he rarely was seen offstage in that getup. Zeppo was a serious drinker and would exhaust himself on champagne cocktails in short order. Gummo avoided his brothers socially, particularly Chico, the bad boy of the family. Julius wanted to be a raconteur, but Hollywood delighted in the Groucho persona and expected rapid-fire quips and off-color remarks whether Julius was willing to deliver or not.
@Someone.
It is patently obvious that Fascism and Totalitarianism are phenomenons of The Left.
What you are doing here is the same thing as the Left did to Fascism/National Socialism, Someone -- you're squishing it into pre-made political categories to serve your ideological ends.
I prefer to let the original sources of Fascist & National Socialist thought speak for themselves & what they say is basically what I wrote above. Now, it may be in some great historical scheme either you are correct that they belong on the Marxist Left, or, the Marxist Leninists may be right & it's Capitalism with the gloves off, but at this time I haven't seen any evidence to convince me better than the authors' words themselves.
This thread reminds me of the coming news stories.
Every Presidential election year we hear of the Republican schism between the Religious Right and everyone else in the Republican party.
The media's favorite storyline to help out their Democrat allies. Divide and conquer!
Michael K wroteThe totalitarian state began with the French Revolution which defines the left to this day.
Dead on target. Every trope of modern "progressive" liberalism has its roots in deep in the soil of Jacobin politics. Robespierre would have been an Obama's Attorney General except for the accidents of time and place.
Lucky??!!! He's DEAD!
Only the truly lunatic fringe believe the nonsense being peddled here, but if it makes you guys happy I guess it has some utilitarian value. And Goldberg made money out of his book, thanks to guys like you, a small stimulus to the dumbass economy.
"...in a totalitarian society there's a state way of doing everything."
Obama style...
I'll drink your health,
share your wealth,
run your life,
steal your wife.
"You're gonna kiss me. Give him something to talk about. Now, he's really jealous."
We're all confused, what's to lose?
You can call this song the United States Blues.
Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.
Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.
The paragraph about Nixon could have been written about Obama.
I am of the right. I do think I have ideas that everyone should follow and that society will be better off for it. The Ten Commandments, the Boy Scout Law, and the Bill of Rights have the kind of ideas that I think make a good society. I think we should make laws based on those ideas of behavior and throw people in jail who lie, steal, and murder.
What behaviors do the left want to outlaw?
Somebody's projecting.
Would this be the same Frank Mankiewicz that HST disemboweled in "Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972"?
People forget but when Hitler first campaigned for Chancellor, he did so on a platform of lower taxes, free trade, less government regulation of manufacturing and increased private ownership of firearms. How soon they forget. Those are, undoubtedly, the aspects of Hitler's programs that made him so appealing to Joseph Kennedy.
AReasonableMeltdown: "Only the truly lunatic fringe believe the nonsense being peddled here..."
Enough about Robert Cook and his (and yours) insane conspiracy theories, what about everyone else?
I'm impressed with how badly a man who spent so much time thinking about Nixon misunderstood Nixon. Just goes to show you, experience is not always a reliable teacher. You have to not be a nitwit or idealogue to learn anything.
Of course, anybody who worked for the Kennedy brothers was either a starry-eyed naif or deeply corrupt, so either way it kind of figures.
From the quote in Althouse's post -
"but the parallels Speer points to between Nixon and the Nazi White Houses are remarkable"
Wow! If that's not a "tell" then nothing is.
"I prefer to let the original sources of Fascist & National Socialist thought speak for themselves & what they say is basically what I wrote above."
Mussolini was editor of a socialist newspaper before he was a politician. Hitler took Mussolini's social theory and added the addled German romanticism of Wagner and Neitzche.
Other concepts appear rarely, or are confined to one or two major works, yet are considered centerpieces of Nietzschean philosophy, such as the Übermensch and the thought of eternal recurrence. His later works involved a sustained attack on Christianity and Christian morality, and he seemed to be working toward what he called the transvaluation of all values (Umwertung aller Werte). While Nietzsche is often associated in the public mind with fatalism and nihilism, Nietzsche himself viewed his project as the attempt to overcome the pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer.
Wagner, whose music Hitler loved, added the mythology and Neitzche, the philosophy such as it was.
The Fascists and the Nazis began as Socialists. Mussolini would have died in power and well loved if Hitler had not come along.
"when Hitler first campaigned for Chancellor, he did so on a platform of lower taxes, free trade, less government regulation of manufacturing and increased private ownership of firearms. "
So did Roosevelt. So ?
Especially a balanced budget.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
You [David] are perhaps confused by the leftist propaganda that the German National Socialists were of the Right.
Hardly. I am not a fan of facile oversimplifications.
The Nazi's were militarists, statists, racists, opportunists. They thought they were on the opposite side from the communists, and were violently opposed to the communists (who they conflated with the Jews so that was an element of the opposition). That the Nazis went to war with the Soviet communist regime proves less, since it's possible that any Russian dominated state would have been seen in the same light by Hitler. But it also must be given some weight.
The Nazis appealed to the deepest nostalgia for a largely mythical past and fear of a leftist revolution in the present. The had a strong alliance with the industrialists and the conservative landowning classes. They were not particularly similar to the American right or left but by their society's standards there was a strong thread of conservatism in their doctrine and appeal.
If you look to Japan, the Baathists in the Middle East, some of the South American dictators, South Africa, Belgian African colonialism. most European colonialism in the Far East and the current radically conservative Muslims, you will see conservative sentiments paired with totalitarianism.
Finally look to the American Revolution, made by a set of elite leaders of a conservative agrarian-merchant-slaveholding society. They well understood that such a society could succumb to a totalitarian impulse, and that understanding was the field in which our Constitutional Democracy was planted in an attempt to offset that impulse.
Presently the American left is the most possessed of a totalitarian-statist impulse. Your assumption that this evidences some universal truth is another facile oversimplification.
@William,
I don't think so. Do you have a source for that?
National Socialist Party platform of 1920 (before getting into power) here. 1932 Platform (right before assumption of power) here.
Chico was notoriously ribald.
In an interview with Dick Cavett, which appeared in a 1993 television documentary “The Unknown Marx Brothers, Cavett told of Tallulah Bankhead meeting Chico Marx at a party.
This was before she had become famous, and when she was still prominent for being the daughter of William B Bankhead, Alabama politician, member of the US House of Representatives and Speaker of the House.
Marx had been cautioned to not display any of his typically crude comments and behaviour. The two met over the punch bowl and exchanged greetings:
Chico: “Miss Bankhead.”
Tallulah: “Mr Marx.”
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
Chico: “You know, I really want to fuck you.”
Tallulah: “And so you shall, you old fashioned boy.”
Totalitarianism certainly is a phenomenon of the Left alone, because its essential premise springs from the socialist viewpoint. The socialist believes there are no individual rights that can possibly trump the rights and privileges of society as a whole: the good of the many outweighs the good of the one. Therefore it follows inevitably that there can be no limits to the moral authority of government to interfere with the lives of individuals. That's the essential premise of totalitarianism -- nothing in the private life is exempt from adjustment seen as necessary for the collective good.
That doesn't mean the right doesn't approve of structures with a great deal of power over the individual. But that power is always exerted by another individual, and not by (or even necessarily for) the collective. It is, furthermore, always constrained by feudal traditions. For example, the king may have the right to condemn a baron to death (and the baron one of his knights, and a knight his tenant, et cetera) -- but only under certain specific circumstances, and the decision and responsibility are personal. The phenomenon of diffused responsibility, where a committee can vote for a man's death and the responsibility be assigned to the whole committee, or even the whole people, is anathema to the right -- but essential to the left.
Neither structure if implemented in its ideal form need be violent or unpleasant: in principle the king, his barons, and your lord can make only wise and judicious use of their power which maximize both individual liberty and social good, and in principle so can the Supreme Soviet.
But while this occupies politicians and theorists, the average joe is a bit more concerned, rightly, with the ways that either system functions when it is not ideal, e.g. implemented by fallible humans instead of perfect robots or angels. The ways in which the two systems become abusive and violent are notably different, with the track record of dysfunctional lefty systems being much worse than dysfunctional righty systems. Mao destroyed far more people than any Confucian Emperor of China, than even the Huns, and Stalin had more people shot than any Tsar before him. More peasants died under the Committee For Public Safety's guillotine than under Louis XIV's headsman's axe. So it goes.
Now there were Nazis and the Nixon White House. But "Nixon and the Nazi White Houses?" The transposition if not an inept misquoting is just mindblowing!
And yet the press seems strangely quiet about the Clintons' enemies list. We have people far more ruthless and amoral than Nixon about to try for another term in the White House.
Carl Pham said...
The phenomenon of diffused responsibility, where a committee can vote for a man's death and the responsibility be assigned to the whole committee, or even the whole people, is anathema to the right
So you are against trial by jury, as enshrined in the US constitution?
Communism = fascism. That's why the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Makes.Perfect.Sense.
Paul Johnson, writing in Modern Times, described fascism as "a Marxist heresy."
In Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder observed that "while many bolsheviks were Jews, not many Jews were bosheviks. He went on to point out that "the two were entirely different propositions."
Discuss.
Never quite understood the problem with having an enemies list. Any adminsitration has its enemies. Compiling a dossier on those who are attempting to destroy you is simply book keeping.
The democrats trot out The Koch Brothers publicly as all,that is wrong with modern society (but not any liberal special interests that actually contribute more to left wing causes). How is that not an enemies list? You don't think they are keeping records on people,at Koch?
When the CEO at Firefox decided to support Prop 8 he went on the lefts enemies list.
The problem would be if the govt started using said list to illegally target their enemies for persecution (like say the IRS targetting tea party groups) . But the evil wouldn't be thst they kept an enemies list but that they treated those they targeted unfairly under law.
But All president know who their enemies are. And if they don't they are dummies.
Garage mahal wrote:
Communism = fascism. That's why the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Makes.Perfect.Sense.
the fact that they liberated aushwitz doesn't prove they aren't facists. At that point they were at war with Germany. Germany set up auschwitz. So when Russia fights Germany they also end up doing things like liberating Auschwitz. It doesn't say anything about their facism.
What was Russia when they signed a pact with Hitler?
@garage, the party Hitler led was the National Socialist German Workers Party. Try to stop being so ahistorical.
This pretty much sums it up:
"Nazism was inspired by Italian Fascism, an invention of hardline Communist Benito Mussolini. During World War I, Mussolini recognized that conventional socialism wasn't working. He saw that nationalism exerted a stronger pull on the working class than proletarian brotherhood. He also saw that the ferocious opposition of large corporations made socialist revolution difficult. So in 1919, Mussolini came up with an alternative strategy. He called it Fascism. Mussolini described his new movement as a ``Third Way'' between capitalism and communism. As under communism, the state would exercise dictatorial control over the economy. But as under capitalism, the corporations would be left in private hands.
Hitler followed the same game plan. He openly acknowledged that the Nazi party was ``socialist'' and that its enemies were the ``bourgeoisie'' and the ``plutocrats'' (the rich). Like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler eliminated trade unions, and replaced them with his own state-run labor organizations. Like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler hunted down and exterminated rival leftist factions (such as the Communists). Like Lenin and Stalin, Hitler waged unrelenting war against small business.
Hitler regarded capitalism as an evil scheme of the Jews and said so in speech after speech. Karl Marx believed likewise. In his essay, ``On the Jewish Question,'' Marx theorized that eliminating Judaism would strike a crippling blow to capitalist exploitation. Hitler put Marx's theory to work in the death camps."
Only the left thinks that Hitler was somehow not left wing. Or even an offshoot of socialism. But the name National Socialists should give some clue.
I also recently had a debate with someone about Hitler and the Nazis being Christians! Hitler was raised catholic and hitler certainly made lip service to Christians. But what did the aNazis DO?
Google the nazis 30 point plan. The whole point was to destroy the Church and remove all traces of x
Christianity, and replace it with Nazi propaganda. THe church would not be a meeting place ordered around religion but around state. They actually has as part of their plan the they would ban all bibles and religious icons.
And by 1939 all Catholic Churches were wiped out. By 1941 all catholic press was wiped out.
So a regime that has a plan to ban bibles and get rid of churches can't possibly be ordered around Christianity.
The left though only has skin deep knowledge of history. They are so used to calling Conservstives nazis that they don't really even bother looking up what the nazis were about. Their formulation is Nazis are bad. conservatives are bad. Therefore, Conservstives are nazis. Its really that shallow.
For sure
It's amusing reading the well researched and thought out comments by some of the people here juxtaposed against the simple proclamations and ad hominems of "A Reasonable Man" and his leftist cohorts. No evidence, no argument, just assertion and insult. It demonstrates the reactionary simple mindedness of the typical leftist vs. the studiousness and critical thinking that leads to a more conservative or libertarian viewpoint.
It also shows the danger to society that an unsophisticated but emotionally charged mob poses. But isn't that the goal of leftist agitprop?
" They thought they were on the opposite side from the communists, and were violently opposed to the communists"
Study that history, and that of Russia, a bit more and you will see that Communists, or rather Bolsheviks were enemies of Socialists.
Read about Kerensky and the Mensheviks.
"There should be some filter function on this blog to eliminate the completely stupid statements."
Is there a better description of the totalitarian impulses of the left today ?
This is why left wing blogs don't allow comments that disagree.
Paul said...
It's amusing reading the well researched and thought out comments by some of the people here juxtaposed against the simple proclamations and ad hominems of "A Reasonable Man" and his leftist cohorts. No evidence, no argument, just assertion and insult. It demonstrates the reactionary simple mindedness of the typical leftist vs. the studiousness and critical thinking that leads to a more conservative or libertarian viewpoint.
It also shows the danger to society that an unsophisticated but emotionally charged mob poses. But isn't that the goal of leftist agitprop?
Or, Nazis=leftists is just a silly fad, like we had a while back with claims that FDR caused the Great Depression.
"Marx theorized that eliminating Judaism would strike a crippling blow to capitalist exploitation."
He had a point. In Paul Johnson's "History of the Jews," he points out that Jews probably invented Capitalism and shares in corporate entities as a way to salvage wealth when they were driven out of an area. There is a reason why Ashkenazi Jews have higher IQs than most other Europeans. It's called living by your wits.
And it is fine with me. Maybe because I know my own IQ.
"claims that FDR caused the Great Depression."
I'm glad to see you are awake. I think that FDR caused a long decline after the 1929 panic. His hostility to business and his regulatory excesses, like the TVA assault on the Southern Company utility with the famous court cases that made Wendell Willkie a famous name.
Roosevelt Didn't directly cause it any more than Bush caused 2008, but if they had known more economics, they might have avoided them.
Correction. When I said Hitler campaigned on a platform of lower taxes and less government regulation of manufacturing, I was being tongue in cheek. Those are conservative things and not Nazi things......If you drew a Venn diagram, you would find a tremendous amount of overlap between Hitler and Stalin. I don't think there was much overlap between Coolidge and Hitler. On the other hand, there wasn't much overlap with FDR and Stalin either.......In the twenties and thirties, the most oppressed people on earth were not Italian immigrants to America, nor Lowndes county sharecroppers nor German Jewish business owners nor IRA freedom fighters.. The most oppressed people on earth were Soviet agricultural workers. By the millions they were starved to death. Can anyone point to a movie, play, or poem that dramatized their plight.
"The most oppressed people on earth were Soviet agricultural workers. By the millions they were starved to death."
Particularly Ukrainians.
IWilliam said...
n the twenties and thirties, the most oppressed people on earth were not ... Lowndes county sharecroppers ... The most oppressed people on earth were Soviet agricultural workers.
Not sure how you quantitate this particular misery index, but I would like to see some comparisons of life expectancy and infant mortality rates to back up this claim.
AReasonableMan said...
Or, Nazis=leftists is just a silly fad, like we had a while back with claims that FDR caused the Great Depression.
See, that right there is why no one should take you seriously.
Condensing down our well thought out and carefully expressed arguments as being "Nazis=leftists", is ignorant, disingenuous strawman building.
The valid and correct point that you are slandering with that formulation, is this:
As you move down the political spectrum, from the middle to the left, you encounter today's Progressivism, then a little further left European Socialism, then actual Socialism, then maybe Plato's Republic, finally fascism, Nazism, and communism.
So NOT "Nazis=leftists", implying some sort of Godwin's law situation. Rather, as Leftism gets more extreme, it moves into fascism and worse.
Fascism is a phenomenon of the Left.
"Finally look to the American Revolution, made by a set of elite leaders of a conservative agrarian-merchant-slaveholding society. They well understood that such a society could succumb to a totalitarian impulse, and that understanding was the field in which our Constitutional Democracy was planted in an attempt to offset that impulse."
Their understanding was based upon a careful study of the history of Rome, which is why they designed a Constitutional Republic. The founders regarded "democracy" as a danger to be guarded against. Only white men with property were to vote, and only for state legislatures, which would then elect the Senators and Representatives.
The history of that Republic has been one of increasing democracy, the final and most perfect stage of which is called Dictatorship.
So, what would theoretically lay at the end of traveling the political spectrum to the Right, instead of to the Left?
Probably some sort of zero government anarchy. Complete individualism. But fortunately there is a 'brake' to this movement to the Right.
The Right does not ever say 'no government'. It would just break government into smaller, more local little chunks, and whittle government down to it's proper function (not much more than protect the populace from attack, and enforce laws and contracts).
On the Left, though, there is no equivalent'brake'. There is no point at which the Left says "OK, that's it. Government size and span of control is large enough. No more.'
It never thinks or says that. And even if it did, it has already created a monster that can no longer be controlled.
Fascism. Totalitarianism. Phenomenons of the Left.
A dead body is usually an accurate metric of how saturated your body is with misery. In the twenties and thirties, the Soviet Union led the world in the production of dead bodies......It is is said that the German shame was not that they did nothing about Hitler's atrocities but that they knew nothing about those atrocities. The same complaint can be made about the left. To this day, they remain willfully ignorant about the crimes of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. You can argue that Hitler was just as evil, and maybe, in some respects, more so, but all his crimes have been dramatized, vilified, and publicized. You can't say the same thing about Stalin and Mao. That's the shame of the left. They turn their heads from so many crimes.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
Condensing down our well thought out and carefully expressed arguments as being "Nazis=leftists", is ignorant, disingenuous strawman building.
As you move down the political spectrum, from the middle to the left, you encounter today's Progressivism, then a little further left European Socialism, then actual Socialism, then maybe Plato's Republic, finally fascism, Nazism, and communism.
I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or just trolling.
I get it that calling Fascists leftists is a funny way to get a rise out of left of center folks, not centrists such as myself of course, but those other guys. I just don't think you should take it too seriously. If you genuinely believe that the right can never be totalitarian you will end up providing unthinking support for the kind of totalitarian policies that have produced our world record incarceration rates or our surveillance state.
----There should be some filter function on this blog to eliminate the completely stupid statements.----
What a fascistic thing to say.
How many times does it have to be pointed out that Il Duce was a card-carrying (literally) socialist and, a (pre-war) editor of Italy's largest socialist newspaper La Stampa? In Germany for all practical purposes the only major difference between the Nazis and the Communists was that the Communists were into propagation of socialism internationally while the Nazis were strictly nationalists. Once, in a newspaper interview in 1936 Hitler was asked what the future held for Communism, and he replied: "Oh, they will eventually end up where we already are." History has shown Hitler was one of the world's most deeply insightful prognosticators..
AReasonableMan said...
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
Condensing down our well thought out and carefully expressed arguments as being "Nazis=leftists", is ignorant, disingenuous strawman building.
As you move down the political spectrum, from the middle to the left, you encounter today's Progressivism, then a little further left European Socialism, then actual Socialism, then maybe Plato's Republic, finally fascism, Nazism, and communism.
I honestly can't tell if you are being serious or just trolling.
I get it that calling Fascists leftists is a funny way to get a rise out of left of center folks, not centrists such as myself of course, but those other guys. I just don't think you should take it too seriously. If you genuinely believe that the right can never be totalitarian you will end up providing unthinking support for the kind of totalitarian policies that have produced our world record incarceration rates or our surveillance state.
Your reply is unresponsive. NO surprise there.
The further to the Right one goes, the farther one gets from totalitarianism, and the closer one gets to everyone being left to their own devices - the OPPOSITE of totalitarian total control.
Conversely, the further to the Left one goes, the more totalitarian things get.
That much is fucking obvious to any reasonable man.
ARM's responses prove my point. Assertions stated as fact. No evidence, no argument, because he has none, just articles of blind faith.
You are perfectly named in leftist doublespeak as there is never any reasoning involved in your comments, just authoritarian proclamations and snark. You speak in the language of totalitarians and tyrants, and thus you expose yourself as the enemy of free men and civil society with every utterance.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
The further to the Right one goes, the farther one gets from totalitarianism, and the closer one gets to everyone being left to their own devices - the OPPOSITE of totalitarian total control.
Are you seriously arguing that the totalitarian behavior of our own government, incarceration of citizens at higher rates than communist China and Russia and the creation of the Patriot Act/Surveillance State were not driven primarily by right wing politicians? If so then you are not engaging with the real world.
Arguing that right wingers can't be totalitarians might give Mussolini, Franco and Hitler a laugh down in Hell but it is a not a serious position.
How many biographies of Nixon had been written before 1973, when the interview was given?
I'd say very few, so Mankiewicz's saying he'd read a lot of them strikes me as false.
Oh my...I check in to this blog thread the next day and I see it has become a predictably futile impasse between, on one side, those who assert totalitarianism is and can only be a phenomenon of the left, and never the right as the right and "further right" are the ne plus ultra of freedom's heroes...and, on the other side, smart people.
I learned a simple and true thing in high school civics class over 40 years ago: if one moves far enough to the right or far enough to the left, one arrives at the same place.
The will to power and ambition for domination is innate in humans--in our psychology, in our nature--an aspect of our being social animals, and it will inevitably manifest itself in any social group, particularly the larger in size and more complex to maintain the social group becomes, but it can be seen even in the smallest of social groups: the family.
But, for those who prefer to "relax in the safety of their own delusions,"**who insist on the inviolable sanctity of their side, who insist there is such a thing as any human belief or political system that can never be corrupted, that will never be turned by the controllers of power into a tool, then a weapon, for their own ends...well, have fun!
**(Church of the Sub-Genius)
AReasonableMan said...
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
The further to the Right one goes, the farther one gets from totalitarianism, and the closer one gets to everyone being left to their own devices - the OPPOSITE of totalitarian total control.
Are you seriously arguing that the totalitarian behavior of our own government, incarceration of citizens at higher rates than communist China and Russia and the creation of the Patriot Act/Surveillance State were not driven primarily by right wing politicians? If so then you are not engaging with the real world.
Arguing that right wingers can't be totalitarians might give Mussolini, Franco and Hitler a laugh down in Hell but it is a not a serious position.
Jesus, you are truly metaphysically incapable of learning, aren't you ARM.
Let me 'fisk' your latest nonsense and unfounded assertions.
Are you seriously arguing that the totalitarian behavior of our own government, . . .
By all accounts the most Leftist in our 200+ year history
incarceration of citizens at higher rates than communist China and Russia . . .
You incorrectly and illegitimately (by the rules of logic and debate known to reasonable men since ancient Greece) imply that 'incarceration' is a 'primary' - something that comes first, rather than what it actually is, a 'consequence' of a high number of lawbreakers in need of incarceration. First comes the law-breaking. Then trial and conviction. Then incarceration.
By leading with 'incarceration', you imply that nothing proceeded it. That government just incarcerated people for no reason. That only happens in Leftist totalitarian states and dictatorships, so certainly cannot be used as an example of the rule-of-law Right.
and the creation of the Patriot Act/Surveillance State . . .
I'm no fan of the Patriot Act/ Surveillance State. But as one moves Right from the center, one soon encounters Libertarianism, which is even MORE against a Patriot Act/ Surveillance State. So to get rid of Patriot Act/ Surveillance State, move to the Right, not the Left as you imply.
If so then you are not engaging with the real world.
I think I've just demonstrated that that charge applies to you, not me.
You just continue to assert what you wish to be true. That don't fly here. Reality has no truck with 'wishes'.
Arguing that right wingers can't be totalitarians might give Mussolini, Franco and Hitler a laugh down in Hell but it is a not a serious position.
Right wingers can certainly 'become totalitarians', but only by rejecting all principles of the Right (individual rights, limited State) and instead embracing the principles of the Left (an all powered central government, e.g. Socialist Nazi Germany and Socialist Fascist Italy).
You're taking a pounding here, ARM. Best go off and lick your wounds. And read a history book for christ's sake.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
By leading with 'incarceration', you imply that nothing proceeded it. That government just incarcerated people for no reason. That only happens in Leftist totalitarian states and dictatorships, so certainly cannot be used as an example of the rule-of-law Right.
This is so delusional it's sad.
in spite of what Robert Cook was wrongly taught in civics class the spectrum of right to left can best be described as the right extreme being like what the pioneers in America had, striking out on their own with no government and complete freedom of choice. While the extreme left would be the totalitarian ant farm of a North Korea, where the state is all powerful and makes all the decisions.
It's simplicity itself and utterly logical but unacceptable to the leftist whose brainwashing is complete and emotionally anchored to his self worth. That's what makes leftists like ARM and garage so intractably stupid, but the perfect useful idiot foot soldiers for those with totalitarian ambitions.
SomeoneHasToSayIt, you are the raw material of fascism, someone so convinced of the right of their 'side' that they are willing to believe literally anything, no matter how nonsensical.
You guys don't live in the real world of actual right wing politicians. You live in a fantasy world, subject to delusion and easy manipulation.
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
By leading with 'incarceration', you imply that nothing proceeded it. That government just incarcerated people for no reason. That only happens in Leftist totalitarian states and dictatorships, so certainly cannot be used as an example of the rule-of-law Right.
This is so delusional it's sad.
Boy, you don't embarrass easy, do you?
You continue to just make assertions that you cannot back up. You simply pull them from you ass.
You need to give us a narritive of how, starting from the Right's principle of enshrined individual freedoms (speech, arms, pursuit of happiness, worship or not, etc) and from the starting point of limited central government and control, that one, moving to even more freedoms and more circumscribed government, one suddenly, "poof!!", gets totalitarianism and tyranny of the State.
How does that happen, step-by-step?
Time to put up (or perhaps get someone to restrict my free speech so you don't have to confront logic and evidence).
We can all easily see (reality shows us!) how, step-by-step, moving from the center to the Left, one gets closer and closer to tyranny and restrictions of the individual.
One simple example: First the liberal college administrators (legion) encourage everyone to 'respect each others rights'. Then, unhappy with how that is turning out according to their liberal world-view, they issue 'guidelines of proper behavior'. Unhappy with how that is turning out according to their liberal world-view, they mandate 'proper' behavior'. Unhappy with how that is turning out according to their liberal world-view they encourage alleged victims to come forth, accuse, and then they flip the burden and require the accused to prove their innocence.
Same goes for campus 'speech codes' and who can be invited to address student groups.
Slow and steady progress towards tyranny , as the further Left you go.
This is happening now, 2014, right before all our eyes.
Tyranny is a phenomenon of the Left.
Your assertions to the contrary simply be-clown you.
Let's see some facts. Lay out for us, how more freedoms and less government (the Right) leads to fascism and tyranny. Only in your ignorant fever dreams and wish-casting, so far.
Your serve.
"Are you seriously arguing that the totalitarian behavior of our own government, incarceration of citizens at higher rates than communist China and Russia and the creation of the Patriot Act/Surveillance State were not driven primarily by right wing politicians? If so then you are not engaging with the real world."
ARM, you misunderstand the word. Totalitarianism refers, not to the rigor with which a government enforces its whims, but to the scope of those whims. The government of Iran hangs boys for homosexuality, but that does not make it totalitarian. A totalitarian government is one which holds that its goals are the primary goals of the society it infests, and that any individual or institution that stands in the way of the least of those goals may rightly be dealt with by whatever means are likely to prove effective. Disproportion is a symptom of totalitarianism, but not invariably a sign.
The distinction between Right and Left in politics is not precise, which is why it is so easy to have these arguments. But the reality is that a conservative government, simply because it is conservative, is unlikely to find that every single institution of the society that produced it must be immediately ground to dust. A conservative government, for example, is not likely to find itself imposing draconian punishments upon those who refuse to conduct marriage ceremonies for lesbians.
But it is not the totalitarianism of the government that has me worried, it is the totalitarianism of the Left, and its ascension to power. The Left in this country is determined to destroy the existing society, ostensibly in order to replace it with something better. As always seems to be the case, the destruction is moving right along, but the "something better" is unaccountably delayed.
AReasonableMan said...
SomeoneHasToSayIt, you are the raw material of fascism, someone so convinced of the right of their 'side' that they are willing to believe literally anything, no matter how nonsensical.
OMG, you are describing YOURSELF, my dear man. Do you really not see that? WE all do.
I am dedicated to persuasion by reason, and have often changed my opinions based on new knowledge - though as I approach 65, things are appropriately settling in.
I am in fact the OPPOSITE of what you claim I am. Not only will I not just 'believe anything', but I will willingly and gladly drop a life-long-held view, if presented compelling contrary evidence.
What you find disconcerting is that the facts, and reality, align with the Right's views. A bitch, that (for you).
I didn't start out wanting to believe a certain thing, as you seem now stuck in, I just followed the truth as best as I could understand it, and it led, politically, to the Right.
More precisely, I am an Objectivist, if you want a label.
But trust me, you will not understand what that truly is, if you only Google or wiki it. But if you do reach an understanding of Objectivism, you will realize how off-the-chart ridiculous you were to say I am 'the raw material of fascism'. OMG LOL
SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
OMG, you are describing YOURSELF, my dear man. Do you really not see that? WE all do.
WE is half dozen like-minded nuts and conspiracy theorists on this blog. A majority of the citizens in this world can see that authoritarian right-wing governments both exist and have inflicted enormous damage on the people. You are completely delusional in your denial of this, undermining the credibility of everything you have to say, reducing it to nonsense. A comforting nursery rhyme, "I'm good, I'm good, I'm good".
"'Are you seriously arguing that the totalitarian behavior of our own government, . . .'
"By all accounts the most Leftist in our 200+ year history"
Hahahahaha!
I know it is impolite, even cruel, to laugh at ignorance or delusion, but sometimes one cannot restrain one's immediate impulses.
"By all accounts?" By whose accounts? Fox News? Newsmax? Breitbart? You and a bunch of your beer-drinking buddies down at the Rock Bottom Lounge?
As for "most leftist," (I'm not sure, but shouldn't that be "most left?"), I wonder how you can define it as "left" at all? It serves primarily as the loyal, even obsequious, lapdog to Wall Street, the big banks, and the Pentagon, and has demonstrated no inclination (or passed any policies) to assist the working and non-working poor, the working class, or the shrinking middle class, and yet no privilege is to be denied the wealthy elites.
If this is your notion of "leftist," then we must assume everyone on Wall Street is a card-carrying communist.
Re: RC and ARM
I have obviously cast pearls before swine.
Enjoy your ignorant lives, idiots. Your Progressive Masters count on your gullibility, and they are not disappointed. Good doggies. Now wag your tails and beg. Good boy.
"I have obviously cast pearls before swine."
Hahahahaha! You just keep getting more and more funny!
Robert Cook said... "Hahahahaha! You just keep getting more and more funny!"
The Life of Julia
Cradle to grave socialism, brought to you by Obama and the Democratic Party. And they brag about it, as if enabling a parasite is something to brag about.
MIchael the Magnificent:
Expecting the government to use OUR tax money, paid by US, to provide services to US, is not parasitism.
The problem is this government--including Obama's--does too little for us with OUR money. It should do much more for us! Instead, It takes OUR money and hands it over with alacrity to the Pentagon, to the arms merchants, to the big banks--who have ripped us off and continue to do so--and to any from the truly parasitical class (the wealthy) who come forward with cries of "I want!"
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