November 26, 2017

"Readers Accuse Us of Normalizing a Nazi Sympathizer; We Respond."

The NYT has a third article about that one Nazi/"Nazi" it found in Dayton, Ohio. We're already talking about the first 2 articles, the first one, which didn't make much sense, and the second one, in which the author said the editors challenged him to make some sense, but he couldn't. I said:
But why was he important enough to drag into the spotlight in the first place?.... The answer must be that he serves a purpose for you and the NYT. You could put some effort into self-examination: Why are you using him?
In the comments, Matthew Sablan — anticipating the subject matter of the third NYT article — said:
I don't understand. The NYT takes someone everyone thinks is an extremist and does everything they can to make him seem evil and wrong, and people STILL think the NYT is trying to make him look like a regular Joe? They go out of their way to try and downplay his every day Joe-ness, even burying the fact he wasn't even AT Charlottesville.* Anyone who thinks the NYT is defending or promoting Nazis needs to re-read the piece and figure out how they misread it so epicly bad.
So the readers over at the NYT — according to the third article —  found the story offensive:
“How to normalize Nazis 101!” one reader wrote on Twitter. “I’m both shocked and disgusted by this article,” wrote another. “Attempting to ‘normalize’ white supremacist groups – should Never have been printed!”...

But far more were outraged by the article. “You know who had nice manners?” Bess Kalb, a writer for Jimmy Kimmel Live, said on Twitter. “The Nazi who shaved my uncle Willie’s head before escorting him into a cement chamber where he locked eyes with children as their lungs filled with poison and they suffocated to death in agony. Too much? Exactly. That’s how you write about Nazis.”
One reader characterized the profile of Hovater as "glowing." Why didn't the NYT pick a more obviously evil American Nazi to profile? It says it didn't intend to "normalize" Hovater but to show how "hate and extremism have become more normal" than we want to think. That is, the NYT claims to be showing what is, and the readers are saying Don't do that. You're helping them. You must keep them as monsters, make them toxic.

The NYT says the idea of the article was to figure out "Who were those people" who marched in Charlottesville last August:
We assigned Richard Fausset, one of our smartest thinkers and best writers, to profile one of the far-right foot soldiers at the rally. We ended up settling on Mr. Hovater....
The NYT doesn't say why it picked Horvater. Who else did it consider profiling? And the NYT doesn't admit it did anything wrong, just expresses "regret" that readers were offended. It doesn't even clearly come out and say our job in journalism is to tell the facts the way they are. I guess that's because it would further offend the feelings of readers who are especially fierce in their position that nothing even remotely sympathetic to any Nazi should ever be said.

And while I'm here, I wanted to highlight something chickelit wrote in the comments to my earlier post. Like me, he noticed the photograph — in the first NYT article — of Horvath's bookshelf, a photograph that makes a strong impression because one of the books has a big swastika on its spine. But that book is William Shirer's "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich"!
That must be a Doubleday first edition, because my mother had the very same book. I read it growing up and can't imagine a more first person account of anti-fascism- particularly of the sort that came out of 20th century Berlin. But of course in this NYT hit piece, the effect is to make us believe that Hovator reads Nazi propaganda. Pathetic.
I have  "The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich" too and have read it recently (and often reread parts of it). This book is in no way pro-Nazi. Did Fausset — "one of our smartest thinker and best writers" — ask Hovater about that book? Did Fausset even know what that book was? If I'd been with Hovater and looked at that shelf, I'd have said "Oh, you have 'The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich'! How can you read that and feel any admiration for the Nazis?" But all the article says is "Books about Mussolini and Hitler shared shelf space with a stack of Nintendo Wii games," as if Hovater is just a shallow youth, playing games. But the NYT and Fausset are shallow if they did not recognize the significance of that book with the swastika.

Here's how the book looks now, in its 50th anniversary edition:


There's still a swastika on the cover. There's also a quote: "One of the most important works of history of our time." The source of the quote: The New York Times.

And you would think that the NYT and Fausset would especially care about an important work of history written by a man, William L. Shirer, who was a reporter — a reporter who lived through and covered the events. From the Foreword of the book:
With... the memory of life in Nazi Germany and of the appearance and behavior and nature of the men who ruled it, Adolf Hitler above all, still fresh in my mind and bones, I decided... to make an attempt to set down the history of the rise and fall of the Third Reich. “I lived through the whole war,” Thucydides remarks in his History of the Peloponnesian War, one of the greatest works of history ever written, “being of an age to comprehend events and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them.”...

No doubt my own prejudices, which inevitably spring from my experience and make-up, creep through the pages of this book from time to time. I detest totalitarian dictatorships in principle and came to loathe this one the more I lived through it and watched its ugly assault upon the human spirit. Nevertheless, in this book I have tried to be severely objective, letting the facts speak for themselves and noting the source for each. No incidents, scenes or quotations stem from the imagination; all are based on documents, the testimony of eyewitnesses or my own personal observation. In the half-dozen or so occasions in which there is some speculation, where the facts are missing, this is plainly labeled as such.

My interpretations, I have no doubt, will be disputed by many. That is inevitable, since no man’s opinions are infallible. Those that I have ventured here in order to add clarity and depth to this narrative are merely the best I could come by from the evidence and from what knowledge and experience I have had.
I have such respect for this book, and I would think all journalists would know about it. To not know or to know and still treat it as an object that says "Nazi!!" about some guy in Ohio is just awful.
_________________________

* The article is confusing and can leave you with the impression that Hovater wasn't at Charlottesville because the second-to-the-last paragraph says:
The pasta was ready. Ms. Hovater talked about how frightening it was this summer to watch from home as the Charlottesville rally spun out of control. Mr. Hovater said he was glad the movement had grown.
That makes it sound as though he watched the whole thing on TV like most of us. But even more buried, in the center of the article, we read:
After he attended the Charlottesville rally.... Mr. Hovater wrote that he was proud of the comrades who joined him there: “We made history. Hail victory.”

In German, “Hail victory” is “Sieg heil.”

296 comments:

1 – 200 of 296   Newer›   Newest»
mockturtle said...

The NYT writers are largely uneducated imbeciles. So there's that.

Darrell said...

The NYT didn't advocate killing white people, like that nurse in Indiana. That sounds like advocacy to me.

Unknown said...

Perhaps the critics of the article have never heard the phrase the banality of evil.

I, too, wondered about the significance of the bookshelf: so he read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, that in and of himself doesn't make him a Nazi. Nor would having read Mein Kampf, for that matter.

MayBee said...

So......does that mean that until these "Nazis" start shaving people's heads and putting them in gas chambers, they don't need to be written about at all? Because I'm guessing these guys are NEVER going to do that.

hawkeyedjb said...

The New York Times, having warmed up by normalizing and praising communism, now turns its gimlet eye on Nazism.

Guildofcannonballs said...

Word Illinois.

Word joy.

Word boy.

Word goy.

Word toy.

Illinois word.

Goy word.

Joy word.

Boy word.

Toy word.

SGT Ted said...

The "normalizing" term is merely an empty headed phrase that is now popular with the Social Justice crowd. It first cropped up in the silly "resistance" movement to Trump. It has been used as an attempt to police speech they don't like, most recently directed at people like Ben Shapiro, Milo, Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, etc. coming to speak on college campuses. Inviting dissenters is equated with normalizing hate.

Achilles said...

The left has been trying to normalize Nazi tactics for a long time:

Gun Control.

Political violence.

Racial Identity Politics.

Hatred of Jews.

Corporate Cronyism.

Miss anything?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Don’t accuse the NYTs of trying to normalize Nazis in America, that article was a really weak attempt, IF that’s what they were really doing.The Alt Right commenters on this very blog did a bang up good job doing so in the other thread.

Achilles said...

Unknown said...
Don’t accuse the NYTs of trying to normalize Nazis in America, that article was a really weak attempt, IF that’s what they were really doing.The Alt Right commenters on this very blog did a bang up good job doing so in the other thread.

Nazi's loved straw men too.

Paco Wové said...

Seems like the opposite of "normalizing" is "othering".

David said...

Using a sample of one to represent a group is about as foolish as it gets.

tcrosse said...

Hate is hate, no matter how well-intentioned, and how deserving its object. Call it by its name and own it.

Paddy O said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Inga...Allie Oop said...

American Fascists/ Nazis just trying to be seen as normal Americans. Why should anyone consider them to be normal Americans? How to they reflect American values?

Take Achilles as an example.

Ann Althouse said...

"The New York Times, having warmed up by normalizing and praising communism, now turns its gimlet eye on Nazism."

Good point, and it makes me wan too say that Chickelit's comment ends with: "I wonder if Fausett has any Walter Duranty scribblings on his bookshelf?"

I didn't include that along with what I quoted because it was an added layer of complexity.

campy said...

The NYT should have made every third sentence in the article read: "This guy is evil and we hate him." Maybe then the moronic libtards who read that fishwrap wouldn't accuse them of glorifying him.

donald said...

I read that book and Huckleberry Finn for the first time in 1970. My dad gave em to me. Said they were the two best books I would ever read. I just checked with him to confirm that moment.

I was 10.

buwaya said...

The press since the 1940s has been normalizing Japanese, who killed dozens of my relatives, men women and children, in 1942-45. Not with poison gas in concrete chambers, but with dysentery and beri-beri in death camps, with bayonets, grenades and gasoline.

This all was only partly a matter of policy. The Japanese mainly did this because it came naturally, a consequence of an ethnic chauvinism that even the Nazis could not match. They did after all have to persuade each other and rationalize it. The Japs didnt have to.

So someone says that Nazis must still be hated, but Japanese are OK?

And lets not get into communists.

The truth is this hating Nazis is all a pose. A ritual. A political performance. There is no historical logic to it.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

First of all the NYTs is accused of otherizing him. Now the NYTs is being accused of glorifying him.

Make up your mind.

James Pawlak said...

The ultimate book about Nazi evil is "The Theory And Practice Of Hell"!

I have read both Mein Kampf and the Koran---Finding them much alike and both a source of institutionalized evil.

The masthead of the NYT should read, "Tell A Lie Often Enough And It Becomes The Truth"! Look up that quote!)

Wince said...

REVEALED: Founder of white power group whose member killed six in Sikh Temple massacre is now best friends with a man whose father was killed in the shooting.

I urge everyone to watch the Showtime episode of "Active Shooter" pertaining to the attack at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, which goes into more detail.

The Sikh temple shooter himself was a conflicted individual who left his Native American girlfriend and may have committed the crime because of isolation and peer pressure.

The take away being that most self-proclaimed "extremists" are indeed "normal people" who can be brought back may be the solution.

Robert Cook said...

The idiots barking at the Times for publishing this article are idiots, (I repeat myself). Do they think all racists and Nazis are gnomish, snarling, spittle-flecked beasts shouting incessant vile tirades about killing blacks, gays, and Jews? This IS the reality: they are everyday Americans, sitting next to them in the movie theater, shopping in the local grocery store, with kids in the local school, attending the local church. They had better realize they're not going to be able to identify villains by looking for villainous aspect or behavior. Real life is not so easy.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The take away being that most self-proclaimed "extremists" are indeed "normal people" who can be brought back may be the solution.”

I agree! They may be deplorable, but are not irredeemable. I don’t agree that they were “normal” all along. People can be forgiven IF they change their ways.

Sebastian said...

"It says it didn't intend to "normalize" Hovater but to show how "hate and extremism have become more normal" than we want to think. That is, the NYT claims to be showing what is, and the readers are saying Don't do that. You're helping them. You must keep them as monsters, make them toxic." Thereby nicely showing how hate and extremism, by the left against anyone to their right, have become more normal.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

I think people who called themselves liberals used to think that the solution to bad books is good or better books. Now one of the wisps of thought around the campus seems to be that there are some books that should be banned--we'll come up with a complete list as we go along. They won't want to actually read very much, so they'll look for easy signs like "swastika on the cover." (Hey, maybe it has to do with Zoroastrianism, or Hesse, or Nietzsche? Oh well). For now they're trying to target people who are clearly racists, and whose views can be paraphrased as something fairly crude. Who will come to the defence of such people? Surely good Republicans, and all good people, will join in the denunciation? (As Buwaya points out, the Japanese are probably plenty racists--in fact there are a lot of racists in the world, supposedly all welcome in the diverse new multicultural West. Oh well). One concern is that the progressives will think that advice to read more and think more is just a cop out--but that is what a liberal education should be about.

Qwinn said...

And for every Nazi you meet in the corner store, you'll meet 50 unreconstructed Marxists who think the magic words "Real communism has never been tried" absolves them of allegiance to an ideology that killed two and a half times as many people as the Nazis did.

rehajm said...

Dangling a pretty fish lure in front of NYT readers masks the intent.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Thereby nicely showing how hate and extremism, by the left against anyone to their right, have become more normal.”

No, wrong. Not just anyone “to their right”. If you want to include Nazis in America in the “right”, you might want to reconsider. Or don’t expect us to see them or you as normal Americans. There are conservatives and rightists that don’t want to embrace the Nazis in their midst...aren’t there? I know my relatives who are conservatives would have nothing to do with American Nazis.

rehajm said...

they are everyday Americans, sitting next to them in the movie theater, shopping in the local grocery store, with kids in the local school, attending the local church

See, Cookie gets it: All those normal looking Republicans are Nazis. He didn’t need NYT finish what they started.

Paco Wové said...

Ok, so I admit up front that I'm a lazy jerk and haven't read any of the growing corpus, but just what did this guy *do* such that we can label him a "nazi"? Is he a nazi because he says so? That's no more true than "Antifa" being anti-fascist because they say so.

Robert Cook said...

"See, Cookie gets it: All those normal looking Republicans are Nazis.He didn’t need NYT finish what they started."

No, I didn't say or imply that, and I don't think that, and that's not what the Times meant to convey. (All my family members are Republicans, as was I until my early 20s, and they're not Nazis, not by any stretch.)

However, Nazis are ordinary people who live in towns and communities in this country, leading lives very much like their neighbors, or like us in other locations.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

The NYT wasn't normalizing Hovater, but presenting him as a fairly normal example from the Basket of Deplorables, thus further otherizing, anyone who dissents against the party line.

The angry comments at NYT are merely the result of a mad scramble to signal the greatest virtue in the face of the Nazi menace.

Jack Klompus said...

They had better realize they're not going to be able to identify villains by looking for villainous aspect or behavior. Real life is not so easy.

Thank God righteous geniuses like you are out there doing the job mere mortals are not capable of doing.

Anonymous said...

Qwinn: And for every Nazi you meet in the corner store, you'll meet 50 unreconstructed Marxists who think the magic words "Real communism has never been tried" absolves them of allegiance to an ideology that killed two and a half times as many people as the Nazis did.

And as Cookie said, above, "they are everyday Americans, sitting next to [you] in the movie theater, shopping in the local grocery store, with kids in the local school, attending the local church [and sometimes even posting on your favorite blog hang-out!]. [You] had better realize [you]'re not going to be able to identify villains by looking for villainous aspect or behavior".

(OK, he wasn't talking about commies. But I've taken the liberty here of assuming our Cookie isn't one of those "Red Scare" type who give a pass to an ideology that has the satanic disticntion of being even more murderous and all around fucked-up than the Nazis.)

cubanbob said...

Robert Cook said...
The idiots barking at the Times for publishing this article are idiots, (I repeat myself). Do they think all racists and Nazis are gnomish, snarling, spittle-flecked beasts shouting incessant vile tirades about killing blacks, gays, and Jews? This IS the reality: they are everyday Americans, sitting next to them in the movie theater, shopping in the local grocery store, with kids in the local school, attending the local church. They had better realize they're not going to be able to identify villains by looking for villainous aspect or behavior. Real life is not so easy."

It may have escaped you that your comment works equally as well substituting Nazis with Communists.

tcrosse said...

Are they normalizing the Nazis or Nazifying the Normals ?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

I don’t think Cookie will be agreeing that Communists were worse than Nazis. Still making excuses for Nazis, I see.

Who knows, maybe he’ll tell us.

Jack Klompus said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paco Wové said...

Here's an article by the man himself. The man doesn't have a lot of use for Jews, that's for sure. But he doesn't seem to obsess about it.

Robert Cook said...

"I don’t think Cookie will be agreeing that Communists were worse than Nazis."

I agree that Stalin was as bad or worse than Hitler. I also believe that dictators of any political orientation are despicable.

Lucien said...

Is it just me or has Inga been more boring than usual recently? It's almost like she's phoning it in.

Mary Beth said...

This comment on the earlier post made me think that at least one commenter has a reading comprehension problem:

Unknown said...

In Defense of American Fascism. An alternate title for this blogpost.

11/26/17, 10:33 AM


I'm not that surprised that many of the NYT commenters do too.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Cookie,
As bad, yes. Worse, seems hard to imagine. But the assertion was about Communism being worse than Naziism, not just about Stalin. She said she thinks you’d agree that Communism is worse than Naziism.

John henry said...

Not going to read the article but perhaps someone can tell me:

Did the NYTreport ever use the words "National Socialist"?

Or did they stick with the made up word Nazi?

Wouldn't want to give socialism a bad name now would they?

In an earlier post I saw that they did reference NSDAP but translated it Nazi.


I expect to be told shortly that German National Socialism was not really socialism. I'll suggest that whoever believes that id ignorant of both socialism in general an National Socialism in particular.

John Henry

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
buwaya said...

If Filipinos can forgive the Japanese people for the evil their still-current ethnic chauvinism led them to, inherent in their culture, then it seems to me that Americans can forgive some of their own who pretend to be Nazis.

To expand on the Japanese thing - the march from Shanghai to Nanking was akin to the Hutu-Tutsi ethnic slaughter, except that the Hutu in this case were nominally organized as a western-style military. In Manila the Japs killed their own German allies hiding out in the embassy, the German club and among the religious establishments. And every sort of neutral civilian, Spanish and Swiss included. This was and is ethnic mania.

But is it ok to harp on their guilt to this day?

Your colleges were and still are full of Maoists, Stalinists and fellow travelers of every stripe, and this does not harm them professionally. They are welcome to argue their case in public fora.

I find this all, of course, inconsistent, illogical.

Sprezzatura said...

Big excitement on the blog.

Whooped the NYT ya did. Y'all are so good at sussing out NYT lameness: e.g. they used a Nazi and they gave comfort to a Nazi (the same in both scenarios, sure that seems incompatible, but when yur throwin' spag at that wall, it's all good) and they didn't put this piece is the Book Review.


What's that thing folks say re when yur pointing a finger at someone else, therefor ya have three fingers pointin' back at you? I suppose them book-learned folks gots some fancy way of sayin it.

Bluster on!

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“This comment on the earlier post made me think that at least one commenter has a reading comprehension problem:

Unknown said...

In Defense of American Fascism. An alternate title for this blogpost.”

11/26/17, 10:33 AM

That was directed to Althouse. Not the NYTs. The Times wasn’t defending American Nazis. Althouse was questioning the NYTs motives for singling out this Nazi Horvath and writing a piece on him and asked why he was being “used”. So it’s your reading comprehension that might be in question, not mine.

Althouse said....
“These are people that the establishment doesn’t care about.... You're already writing him off as an enigma. But why was he important enough to drag into the spotlight in the first place? You're ending your mini-opus in the style of "Citizen Kane,"** but the Kane character was undeniably an important man. Why not leave Tony Hovater alone? The answer must be that he serves a purpose for you and the NYT. You could put some effort into self-examination: Why are you using him?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Hovater, not Horvath.

John henry said...

Unknown,

Unless you are speaking about an Italian socialist politics party active in the 20-43 era, fascism should never be capitalized. Doing so is either sloppy typing or ignorance.

As a more general comment instead of antifa, we should be spelling it with an e. Ante-fa. Precedent to fascism.

See mussolinis book "The Doctrine of Fascism" it explains exactly what the antefa folks are doing and what they are trying to achieve.

John Henry

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Well, if memory serves, Inga had family in WW2 Germany. Supposedly the bad kind.Rather the victim or neutral kind. So, she may have a reason for being vociferous.”

My family hasn’t set foot in Germany since 1720.

Lydia said...

"The pasta was ready. Ms. Hovater talked about how frightening it was this summer to watch from home as the Charlottesville rally spun out of control. Mr. Hovater said he was glad the movement had grown."

That makes it sound as though he watched the whole thing on TV like most of us.


Not really -- that's "Ms." Hovater who was watching at home, not Mr. Hovater.

Ralph L said...

The truth is this hating Nazis is all a pose.

I'm hoping calling oneself a Nazi is, too. I can see how someone can get to white or black or brown or yellow supremacy, but linking yourself with mass murderers is demented and self-defeating (if you're not Muslim).

Sprezzatura said...

"Well, if memory serves..."

So, memory is failing. An easy win re fighting amyloid plaques is to regularly (e.g. 4+ times a week) use a sauna.


You're welcome, golden years people.

Sprezzatura said...

"I can see how someone can get to white or black or brown or yellow supremacy"

Wut?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

"The pasta was ready. Ms. Hovater talked about how frightening it was this summer to watch from home as the Charlottesville rally spun out of control. Mr. Hovater said he was glad the movement had grown."

That makes it sound as though he watched the whole thing on TV like most of us.

Not really -- that's "Ms." Hovater who was watching at home, not Mr. Hovater.”

Exactly. I pointed that out to Matthew Sablan in the other thread. Mr.Hovater was marching around in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us!” and carrying a tiki torch in a recreation of a Nazi torchlight March in Germany, pre WW2.

John henry said...

One more of socialisms sins is giving the swastika a bad name.

I recently reread Sinclair Lewis 1919 novel Free Air (excellent book). One of the cars in the novel has a swastika in the tread and this is pointed out a couple of times indicating that the car had been down the road.

Perfectly normal in context. Jarred me a bit each time I saw the word.

John Henry

Inga...Allie Oop said...

From the other thread.

Blogger Unknown said...
Did you even bother reading the article?

Matthew Sablan said...
“They go out of their way to try and downplay his every day Joe-ness, even burying the fact he wasn't even AT Charlottesville.
—————————-

From the article:
“After he attended the Charlottesville rally, in which a white nationalist plowed his car into a group of left-wing protesters, killing one of them, Mr. Hovater wrote that he was proud of the comrades who joined him there: “We made history. Hail victory.”

In German, “Hail victory” is “Sieg heil.””

11/26/17, 11:14 AM

Gahrie said...

But I've taken the liberty here of assuming our Cookie isn't one of those "Red Scare" type who give a pass to an ideology

You're wrong though..kinda.

Comrade Marvin is one of those "true communism has never been tried" folks.

Robert Cook said...

"But the assertion was about Communism being worse than Naziism, not just about Stalin. She said she thinks you’d agree that Communism is worse than Naziism."

Yes, I know what the question was. However, Naziism and Communism can't be easily compared. The worst of what either did was the result of particular strongman leaders. The Nazi party rose and died with Hitler. The communists continued after Stalin's death, but they were never as bad or as murderous after his death as during his reign. They imploded over 25 years ago. Whatever Russia is now, it's not a communist regime.
In China, as well, it has never been as murderous after Mao's death has during it, and it may still call itself a communist society today, but there's a lot of capitalism going on there. Both Russia and China are authoritarian states, but they are not what they were under Hitler and Mao.

Who knows what course the Nazi party would have taken if it had not died with Hitler? A path similar to Russia and China? We can't know. So, I can only compare the leaders who were responsible for the worst depredations of any of these nations. Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, (and Lenin), were, yes, all despicable mass murderers.

FullMoon said...

Unknown said... [hush]​[hide comment]

“Well, if memory serves, Inga had family in WW2 Germany. Supposedly the bad kind.Rather the victim or neutral kind. So, she may have a reason for being vociferous.”

My family hasn’t set foot in Germany since 1720.

And you have the hat to prove it?

Sprezzatura said...

IngaKnown,

The facts don't matter to these folks. Likewise folks on the other side.

So, what to do?





John henry said...

The woman who died in Charlottesville was not struck by the car.

She died of a heart attack.

According to her mother in an nbc interview. See it on YouTube

John Henry

John henry said...

The woman who died in Charlottesville was not struck by the car.

She died of a heart attack.

According to her mother in an nbc interview. See it on YouTube

John Henry

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The facts don't matter to these folks. Likewise folks on the other side.

So, what to do?”

Damned if I know.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The woman who died in Charlottesville was not struck by the car.

She died of a heart attack.”

If true, I guess it just goes to show ya that hearts don’t like when the body is hit by a car.

Big Mike said...

I don't think neo-Nazis are normal, but then neither are Democrats.

Number of Democrats politicians put in the hospital in the past year by neo-Nazis: 0

Number of Republican politicians put in the hospital in the past year by mainstream Democrats: 2

Ralph L said...

John Henry, there were small, discreet swastikas in the noisy wallpaper my mother put in my bathroom in 1979. Perhaps it was designed in a non-Western country, but why didn't anyone notice?

Sprezzatura said...

"I guess it just goes to show ya that hearts don’t like when the body is hit by a car."

I know Doc Mike is a surgeon, but maybe he can check w/ a cardiologist pal to see if it's a medical problem when a racist (or Muslim) drives over innocent people.

FullMoon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lydia said...

Re the woman who died in Charlottesville -- Heather Heyer’s cause of death was blunt force injury to the chest, according to the Central District Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Umm, includes you, right Inga, you're the other side of "these folks".”

Maybe, who knows, but I’m not among the dummies who were mad at the NYTs for featuring Nazi Hovater. I think writing about these guys is doing a public service. If we keep them under the rock, we’ll never see them for what they are.

Sprezzatura said...

Big M,

And, more than 10 grand in folks murdered by guns in the US. Don't see that in less liberty lovin' places like Australia. But, you sure as hell don't want to emulate Australia re freedom.

So, if ten grand is cool w/ you, it seems sorta silly for you to expect us to believe that yur too worked up about 2 (never mind that that 2 isn't closer to 1, and since white murderers are just mentally ill, not terrorists or political killers, yur really down to zero).

Carry on.

Ralph L said...

Cook, don't forget Pol Pot and the first Kim. There seems to be a trend that the first ones are the worst, and their example keeps later generations in line without excessive slaughter.

Michael K said...

The issue is not whether the woman was hit by the care but whether the whole thing was a setup.

The car that hit her was blocked by a driverless car parked to block the intersection. Maybe that was the car that hit her.
The whole thing smells. The organizer of the "white supremacy" rally was a Occupy Wall Street organizer and Obama voter.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

John said...
The woman who died in Charlottesville was not struck by the car.

She died of a heart attack.


Best case scenario, John is a fascist apologist spreading fascist propaganda.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Re the woman who died in Charlottesville -- Heather Heyer’s cause of death was blunt force injury to the chest, according to the Central District Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond.”

Thanks for that Lydia.

As if a heart attack caused by a car hitting her at high speed was somehow better than blunt force trauma, huh John Henry?

Chris N said...

Clearly anti-fascists are righteous crusaders against evil, and the oft hysterical ‘otherization’ of vast swathes of the populace who might disagree with the progressive cause du jour by is proof positive progressives are the people we want protecting our liberties.

You’re right Inga.

Robert Cook, buddy, I owe you a turn on the community plow.

Nazis!

We must expunge all racists, sexists, climate-deniers, the imperial war-machine and the unjust rule of law by the crony elite. Late capitalism...see ya later.

Paradise awaits!

Big Mike said...

@anti-de Sitter, as long as Democrat-sponsored antifa are running around shutting down constitutionally-protected speech with violence, as long as Democrats think that putting Steve Scalise and Rand Paul in the hospital is all jolly good fun, then I will keep my guns, thank you kindly.

But I'll tell you what, how about you go about removing the illegally-acquired guns from the inner cities as a show of good faith, and then we can revisit the topic.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Michael K said...
The issue is not whether the woman was hit by the care but whether the whole thing was a setup.

The car that hit her was blocked by a driverless car parked to block the intersection. Maybe that was the car that hit her.
The whole thing smells.


You are a lying sack of shit.

Robert Cook said...

"Clearly anti-fascists are righteous crusaders against evil...."

Anti-fascists can be fascistic in their intemperance and unwillingness to allow free speech or opposing idea. All humans have a tendency to extremism.

Sprezzatura said...

"Best case scenario, John is a fascist apologist spreading fascist propaganda."

I'd say that the BC is that he's sorta "spectrum-y" and not quite aimed right. So ya get some drill down that seems logic-ish. So, props for the drill-down. But, it's still wrong.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The whole thing smells. The organizer of the "white supremacy" rally was a Occupy Wall Street organizer and Obama voter.”

Maybe he repented and became an Alt Right American Nazi. It’s said that there aren’t any more than enthusiastic believers than converts.

Sprezzatura said...

Big M,

But, your just doin' anecdotes. Not the big numbers.

If you really cared about the small data, you'd be exponentially upset by the exponentially larger numbers. But, yur not. What does that mean to you, about you?

Just sayin'


BTW, this website could be total shit, I just googled for info re the Chiraq importation of illegal guns. But, it has a cool graphic (and real data does show that guns come from out of Chicago to thugs in Chicago, if I was less lazy (busy) I'd look for such):

https://mic.com/articles/127842/this-is-how-chicago-gets-flooded-with-illegal-guns#.zNCp8GGZa

Inga...Allie Oop said...

I like you a lot Cookie, but you’re equivocating. Is Communism a worse evil than Naziism, that is the question.

“Clearly anti-fascists are righteous crusaders against evil...."

“Anti-fascists can be fascistic in their intemperance and unwillingness to allow free speech or opposing idea. All humans have a tendency to extremism.”

Chris N said...

Really, you guys have made the case.

The logic is sound, the cause is socially just (for all...finally!) and it’s past time to just start implementing all the knowledge available.

A Reasonable Man, naturally you’ll be Minister of Reason.

Inga-Nurse General

Cook, you’ll dismantle the military, offer art criticism, maybe some Party strategy and then fish in the afternoon. A real Renaissance Man. Maybe sit in on the economic panels.

Ritmo will oversee mental health.

Guildofcannonballs said...

"They had better realize they're not going to be able to identify villains by looking for villainous aspect or behavior. Real life is not so easy."

But results, not mere aspects of behavior or otherwise, implicate you, yes you you, the real you you, as the villain for carelessly causing so many tens and tens and tens of millions of deaths because of your horrifically deadly ideology. Pray tell how can they realistically do that? Are you going to flip your hatred of life and humanity on a dime just because it results in orders of magnitude of fewer deaths? As if.

You have that ego you'd gladly see the second to last human smolder in order to protect, after literally all.

Bay Area Guy said...

It's a cascade of stupidity and ignorance.

1. Horvater is stupid and ignorant. But the article suggests he has committed no criminal acts, just espouses stupid opinions.

2. The NYT is stupid and ignorant for magnifying Horvater's stupid and ignorant opinions as some large and more pervasive movement.

3. The NYT commentators are stupid and ignorant for criticizing the NYT for "normalizing" Horvater.

4. The NYT double-downs on the stupidity and ignorance for responding to the stupid and ignorant commentators who are mad at the NYT for failing to sufficiently denounce the latent rise of Nazism in Trump's America.

Most "normal" Anericans ignore this stupidity.


tim in vermont said...

Nazis, commies, fraternal twins.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Nazis, commies, fraternal twins.”

Agreed.

buwaya said...

And what is wrong with fascist apologists spreading fascist propaganda?

Communist apologists spreading communist propaganda have regularly been granted tenure for the last 70+ years. Plenty have won public office and even more have been given government grants, contracts and jobs.

I have met high school kids who claimed to be communists. Try declare yourself a Nazi in a San Francisco High School.

So why freak out about a few Nazis?
The real answer is its not about the Nazis, and has never really been, not since the last generation of WWII victims.

Sprezzatura said...

Most "normal" Anericans ignore this stupidity.

Hence, 5) Althouse and her commenters participating in this are stupid and ignorant.


BTW BayAG,

Too bad ya couldn't see the obvious fifth rapid. The one that implicates yourself.


Maybe, someday.

buwaya said...

Heck, anti-commie truth was blacklisted.

Robert Conquest was explicitly persona non-grata in US history departments for thirty years, and this is still true, to the extent that any history is still taught.

He wanted to call his revised edition (post commie collapse, with material fron Soviet archives) - "I Told You So You Fucking Fools". But they werent fools of course, they were partisans.

Conquest was being nice about calling them fools.

Michael said...

Of course they want to "normalize" Nazis so that readers will know that they are everywhere, having emerged in the last 12 months and flexing their power.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya said...
The real answer is its not about the Nazis


Nazis killing a woman in Charlottesville is not about Nazis?

Nazis defaming a woman killed by Nazis is not about Nazis?

Good to know.

buwaya said...

PB&J,

No this is significant.
This all ends up in a system of education and resulting culture that is killing your childrens minds, the equivalent of sticking icepicks randomly into their skulls. Its that bad.

CJ said...

Jeez. NYT readers are ninnies.

tola'at sfarim said...

Another history book on his shelf was by cy sulzberger. Of the nyt sulzbergers...

mandrewa said...

I've read several of William Shirer's books including I'm pretty sure "The Rise and Fall of Third Reich." It was a long time ago though. In particular, although I can't remember the name of the book, but somewhere in the middle of one his books, it was a long book, and it was all about his experiences in Europe over two years, I think it started in 1937 and went to sometime in 1939, but anyway, in the middle of this book, there was one paragraph, with one line in it, where he confessed, that for one year he'd totally believed, along with his wife, who was with him in Paris, in Nazi Germany and Hitler. And for a year he'd written columns for the Chicago Times that praised Nazi Germany as if it were Utopia.

I was stunned when I read it and I started to think about all of the implications. First, where is the missing year? This book was about his experiences in Europe writing for the Chicago Tribune and it was mostly about his experiences in Germany and he had totally left this out of his account of that. Except for the one sentence. And actually I appreciated his honesty, even if it was just one line.

Second, William Shirer, wasn't nobody. He was popular. He was influential back then. Lots of people would have read those columns. Naturally I'd like to read those columns. Can't find them. Anybody know? I've bet they've disappeared.

Third, William Shirer wasn't just a journalist. He was high up in the American Socialist Party. So was his wife. They were a team. They were quite influential within the American Socialist Party, and that was the high point of the American Socialist Party in America. It wasn't such a small thing back then.

Fourth, lots of left-wing people would have know and followed what William Shirer wrote. They would have know about this. If he wasn't being denounced, it has to be that many other people on the left had similar ideas at that time.

Fifth, he won a Pulitzer Prize after the war. So even after the revision of memory, the burning of diaries and papers and articles that I suspect happened, sometime during World War II, he was still considered an acceptable person, by people that would have remembered those columns.

buwaya said...

There are people killing people all over this country much more deliberately, dozens daily.
One accident during a semi-riot makes this a crisis?
Do you want, say, an anti-black propaganda campaign that prints pictures and biographies of people killed by black criminals? There would be a few every day. Would that be evil?

Michael said...

buwaya brings up Conquest whose three laws follow:

Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

Big Mike said...

I just googled for info re the Chiraq importation of illegal guns. But, it has a cool graphic (and real data does show that guns come from out of Chicago to thugs in Chicago, if I was less lazy (busy) I'd look for such)

Yawn. No one seriously debates that the guns come from outside Chicago. If one is not going to prosecute straw purchasers, then straw purchasers are going to acquire guns and resell them at a huge markup to gang-bangers.

Here's a factoid for you: "In 2010, 48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns. They [The Obama administration] prosecuted only 44 of them."

That's a claim made by Senator Ted Cruz in response to the mass shootings in Sutherland Springs. Polifact, ever quick to jump on Republicans in defense of the Great Obama was forced to admit that the claim as "mostly true," because it doesn't point out that things were almost as bad under George W. Bush and because there may actually have been even fewer than 44 individuals prosecuted by the Obama administration (emphasis mine).

tola'at sfarim said...

I like this part "George Zimmerman, the white man who shot the black teenager....'

Michael said...

mandrewa
Shirer was not the only one to have admired the Nazis in the pre-war years. His supporters were legion in the UK upper class and in the upper reaches of the US government.

Gahrie said...

So even after the revision of memory, the burning of diaries and papers and articles that I suspect happened, sometime during World War II, he was still considered an acceptable person, by people that would have remembered those columns.

The truth is, much of the Left was fond of fascism in all of its forms prior to WW II. It wasn't really until Hitler invaded the USSR that the Left shifted to a condemnation of fascism.

Amadeus 48 said...

I don't know how the Times missed this.

Horater had an anti-gay screed on his shelf. Noted LGBT activist Peter Tatchell has been criticizing The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for twenty years because of Shirer's take on homosexuals:

"But not only does Shirer ignore the Third Reich's brutal policy towards homosexuals, he is also actively homophobic in his approach to the subject. Those Nazi personalities who happened to be homosexual he denounces as "notorious homosexual perverts" with "depraved morals". Employing the crudest of hostile stereotypes, he says they "quarrelled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can". Some Nazis, then, are attacked as much for their gayness as for their fascism, and Shirer almost seems to see a link between the two."

They obviously have a shit/Shinola problem at the Times. Why aren't they up on this stuff?


Sprezzatura said...

"No this is significant.
This all ends up in a system of education and resulting culture that is killing your childrens minds"


So you're saying that the inculcation of a Nazi-type POV is overcoming the States.

IMHO, there's less of that than you seem to think there is. As much as DJT tries to cover for the folks he calls very fine people, I'm optimistically hopeful that most people will continue to recoil re a reaction to racists.

Time will tell if I'm wrong and the racists do take over.



Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya said...
There are people killing people all over this country much more deliberately, dozens daily.
One accident during a semi-riot makes this a crisis?


How could the murder have been any more deliberate? He ran his car into a crowd at speed.

Your attempt to frame this as an accident is beneath contempt. It was an attempted mass murder. James Alex Fields is currently charged with murder and three counts of malicious wounding.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...


"Number of Democrats politicians put in the hospital in the past year by neo-Nazis: 0

Number of Republican politicians put in the hospital in the past year by mainstream Democrats: 2"

Ah, but in the worldview of the gibbering Left, Republican politicians are Neo-Nazis. So it's all good.

Gahrie said...

Naziism and Communism can't be easily compared. The worst of what either did was the result of particular strongman leaders.

You will never get Comrade Marvin to admit that communism is evil, let alone more evil than fascism.

Sprezzatura said...

Big M,

That sorta fact check is like when (circa 08) the NYT tried to question BHO's classmates to corroborate BHO's claims of drug use.

NYT had to report that BHO's claims seemed exaggerated.

Anywho, you forgot to mention the guns re BHO admin re Fast and Furious.



The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

This reminds me of the militia panic of the '90's. Groups so marginal and goofy that no conservative would ever pay them the least attention. Thank God we have Leftists to alert us to this mortal and imminent danger.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The truth is, much of the Left was fond of fascism in all of its forms prior to WW II. It wasn't really until Hitler invaded the USSR that the Left shifted to a condemnation of fascism.”

I’m not sure sure about that. It appeared that Pelley the founder and leader was a rightist, not a leftist.
—————————————————
“The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist organization founded by William Dudley Pelley that was headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina[1] and announced publicly on January 30, 1933.”

“Pelley traveled nationwide, holding recruitment rallies, lectures, and public speeches. He founded Silver Legion chapters in almost every state in the country.[4] Membership peaked at 15,000 in 1935, dropping to below 5,000 by 1938.[2] His political ideology consisted of anti-Communism, antisemitism, racism, patriotism, isolationism and British Israelism, themes which were the primary focus of his numerous magazines and newspapers, which included Liberation, Pelley's Silvershirt Weekly, The Galilean and The New Liberator. He became fairly well known as the 1930s went on.[11] Sinclair Lewis mentioned him by name in his 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here about a fascist takeover in the U.S. Pelley is praised by the leader of the fictional movement as an important precursor.

Pelley opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. He founded the Christian Party in 1935, and ran an unsuccessful campaign as candidate for president in 1936, winning only 1,600 votes.[2] He engaged in a long dispute with the United States House of Representatives' Dies Committee, predecessor to the House Un-American Activities Committee. In 1940, federal marshals conducted a raid on Pelley's headquarters in Asheville, and they arrested his followers and seized his property.[4]”

Wiki

buwaya said...

No PB&J

You are smart enough to understand me.
What you have in US education is a campaign to create a hatred of the American polity, and especially of its own people, or a majority of them. They can do no good, have never done any good, and must be condemned at every opportunity. This is hate pure and simple. They demand that white Americans hate themselves, and remove themselves.

This campaign for auto-extermination is quite unique in world history actually. And the scale of it, the pervasiveness and ubiquity, has never been seen before.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

The problem with Cookie's equivocation is where has Communism ever held sway without strong man leaders?

Inga...Allie Oop said...

A white-supremacist, antisemitic group[2] modeled after Hitler's Brownshirts, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart: an emblem meant to symbolize Loyalty to the United States, Liberation from materialism, and the Silver Legion itself. The blocky slab serif L-emblem was in a typeface similar to the present-day Rockwell Extra Bold. The organizational flag was a plain silver field with such a red L in the canton at the upper left.

“By 1934, the Silver Shirts claimed to have about 15,000 members[3]. Circa 1935, a Nazi agent befriended mining fortune heiress Jessie Murphy, convincing her to contribute cash, and the use of her ranch, recently purchased from screen cowboy Will Rogers, to the fascist movement. The Silver Shirts began construction of the Murphy Ranch, situated on a secluded, 55-acre site in the Los Angeles hills, meant to serve as a fortified world headquarters after the expected fascist global conquest.[4]

Silver Shirt leader Pelley called for a "Christian Commonwealth" that would combine the principles of racism, socialism and theocracy while excluding Jews and non-whites[5]. He claimed he would save America from Jewish communists just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany."[6] Pelley ran for president of the United States in the 1936 election on a third-party ticket. Pelley hoped to seize power in a "silver revolution" and set himself as dictator of the United States. He would be called "the chief" just like other socialist world leaders had similar titles.[7] However, the presidency remained in the hands of incumbent Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. By around 1938, the Silver Legion's membership was down to about 5,000.[8]”

Wiki

Gahrie said...

I’m not sure sure about that. It appeared that Pelley the founder and leader was a rightist, not a leftist.

I'm not talking about an underground political party, I'm talking about the Liberal intelligentsia and cultural elites of the time.

buwaya said...

And dont tell me I exaggerate. I have seen it for myself.
I have had kids through the system, and I have visited every UC and State campus.

This is real and terrible.

Big Mike said...

@anti-de sitter, I haven't forgotten Fast and Furious, nor have a number of people. The group of guys I shoot with include former law officers (and a couple current officers) and their opinions on that program -- started during the George W. Bush administration and heavily expanded during the Obama administration -- are, to put it euphemistically, decidedly unfavorable.

Michael said...

Having trouble remembering who was president when the ship St. Louis was turned away from Miami. The good ship St Louis was filled to the brim with Jews. Was Trump president then? Way back in 1937?

buwaya said...

The classic literary example of a pro-fascist bien-pensant is of course "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie".

A sympathetic look at a fan of Benito Mussolini. The 1969 film was Maggie Smiths masterpiece. You could not make that today, certainly not in the US.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“I'm not talking about an underground political party, I'm talking about the Liberal intelligentsia and cultural elites of the time.”

And where did you glean this nugget of knowlege, please share what you base this assertion on.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Having trouble remembering who was president when the ship St. Louis was turned away from Miami. The good ship St Louis was filled to the brim with Jews. Was Trump president then? Way back in 1937?”

Anti Semitism was pervasive, on that, I agree.

Michael said...

buwaya

You are correct about the US education system, at least the public school system. The lower grades are taught by people who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer and who embrace progressive "ideas" because they are made to believe the smart people hold those beliefs. It gets worse at the college level. My youngest is now a junior at an eastern liberal arts school. You should know that he and his cohorts don't buy into the PC mantras and are becoming more hardened in their conservative thinking. Privately educated.

buwaya said...

When the Philippine government of the time, when its foreign policy was under US control, attempted to permit free immigration of Jewish refugees, this was prevented by FDR's State Department, which suddenly decided that it had control of Philippine immigration policy. It held up the program for two vital years.

Michael said...

Ah, now I remember. FDR was president when the ship filled with Jews fleeing Nazi Germany was turned away the US Coast Guard off the coast of Miami.

Michael said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gahrie said...

And where did you glean this nugget of knowlege, please share what you base this assertion on.

Well, if you honestly want to educate yourself, Goldberg's Liberal fascism is a good place to start. It's extensively footnoted, so it gives you locations for much of the historical documents so you can check up or delve deeper.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

buwaya said...
And dont tell me I exaggerate.
I have had kids through the system, and I have visited every UC and State campus.
This is real and terrible.


You exaggerate.

Current president of the UC system is Janet Napolitano, "the daughter of Jane Marie (née Winer) and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Her father was of Italian descent and her mother had German and Austrian ancestry."

Hmmm. German, Austrian and Italian descent, obviously on a mission to exterminate the white race.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

Goldberg's Liberal fascism is a good place to start.

Of course, I thought so.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“You exaggerate.”

Yes he certainly does, it’s just a small part of stirring that pot.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Gahrie said...
Goldberg's Liberal fascism


Isn't that the guy who has spent the last two years telling us what a fucking disaster Trump is? Is it the same guy?

Paco Wové said...

Really outdoing yourself in the non sequitur department this evening, ARM.

Anonymous said...

ARM to buwaya:

"There are people killing people all over this country much more deliberately, dozens daily.
One accident during a semi-riot makes this a crisis?"

How could the murder have been any more deliberate? He ran his car into a crowd at speed.


Deliberate or accident, nut-case or compos mentis Nazi larper (if that's not a contradiction in terms)- it is not a crisis and there is no Growing Nazi Menace in the U.S. Regardless of your continuing unsavory delight about someone being murdered by a "Nazi". I would have thought you'd have gotten that under control -- or at least gotten better at concealing it -- since the last go 'round on the topic of Charlottesville.

Your attempt to frame this as an accident is beneath contempt.

Foot-stamping moral scold isn't really your thing, ARM.

"The real answer is its not about the Nazis"

Nazis killing a woman in Charlottesville is not about Nazis?

Nazis defaming a woman killed by Nazis is not about Nazis?

Good to know.


Nor is playing the stupid hysteric. Leave the crazy-cat-lady-in-a-pussy-hat routine to Inga, OK? (To coin a phrase, it's beneath contempt.)

Any non-stupid, non-hysterical adult understands perfectly well what buwaya meant by "the real answer is its not about the Nazis". Because what's going on in this country has jack shit to do with "Nazis". Regardless of how desperately nostalgic our progs our for The Return of the Nazi Menace.

Original Mike said...

ARM's drunk.

Get the popcorn.

Jim at said...

And Inga's march towards full-throated insanity continues unabated. Scream at the sky, pumpkin.

NAZIS!! ALL of you!!!!

Somebody called her a psychotic dullard the other day.
It was too kind.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

No. Attempting to reframe the murder in Charlottesville as an accident is deeply wrong. buwaya is playing a game. He believes very little of what he writes. Let buwaya defend himself, if he can.

Michael K said...

Your attempt to frame this as an accident is beneath contempt. It was an attempted mass murder. James Alex Fields is currently charged with murder and three counts of malicious wounding.

Standard leftist blinders.

There is a lot to question in that event. The driver may have been attacked by fascist rioters with baseball bats. he accelerated down a street that had been blocked at the far end by a stopped van with no driver. The DSA crowd was mobbing the street in spite of some weak attempts by the police, who were mostly AWOL.

I expect that more will come out in the trial but I have seen some video of the incident and it is not clear what happened.

Inga...Allie Oop said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Nor is playing the stupid hysteric. Leave the crazy-cat-lady-in-a-pussy-hat routine to Inga, OK?”

The Alt Right Nazi supporter Angel whose blond braids are tightly wound around her head, grabs the bullhorn, “Disperse immediatly! Go to your homes, there is nothing to see here! Everything is in order!” In a German accent of course.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“And Inga's march towards full-throated insanity continues unabated. Scream at the sky, pumpkin.”

How’s the bra business, fatso?

Michael K said...

it is not a crisis and there is no Growing Nazi Menace in the U.S.

There does seem to be a leftist hysteria in the country that resembles the
Recovered Memory" or the "Day Care Hysteria" of the 80s.

The College Rape Epidemic is part of it but there is also the present hysteria about "sexual molestation" that includes a lot of behavior that was considered innocent in recent times before the feminist psychosis took hold.

Young men are avoiding women and the universities are stoking the fires until college student mental health is a serious concern.

Michael said...

ARM
"Isn't that the guy who has spent the last two years telling us what a fucking disaster Trump is? Is it the same guy?"

Why, yes, it is. Which should give you the courage to give it a look.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

So was he right then or is he right now?

Michael said...

ARM
It is irrelevant to the topic of his book which addresses the corruption and debasement of the educational system.

The Godfather said...

I've never been worried that "American Nazis" will attract much support here (the guy in the NYT article is part of a group that claims to be closing in on a membership of 1,000). Anyone who knows a little bit of history will avoid "Nazism", unless he/she is just trying to be shocking -- and that's probably the motive of most of the almost 1,000 members of the group in the NYT articles.

But the Antifa, the BLM (Black Lives Matter), and the advocates for imposing Sharia have a better marketing strategy. They don't identify themselves with a failed totalitarian movement. Instead, they ostensibly embrace causes that many Americans find appealing. Yes, they do sometimes use violence and threaten more of it, but many Americans are willing to excuse their excesses because their ostensible causes are attractive. I don't read the NYT anymore. Can anyone tell me whether the Times is educating it's readers about these groups?

Big Mike said...

How’s the bra business, fatso?

I can imagine a career designing and fitting bras for busty women. I've been tempted to list that as my profession when the high school alumni committee reaches out to contact us. Fiftieth reunion caught me recuperating from a hospital stay but there will no doubt be a sixtieth.

narciso said...

Perhaps the fact that mcauliffe told the police to stand down, and the alt right permit are the last moment, this created an inevitable clash that some were victim too.

narciso said...

Of course the times under duranty, whitewashed the holomodor (the subject of applebaums latest) in of the precursors along with the death of pwtlyra, that was prologue to the next bloody chapter in the bloodlands.

Hari said...

Can we stop giving the NYT such highbrow motives. The NYT has one and only one objective: making their readers feel good about themselves. Every single thing the NYT does is with this goal in mind. Their readers are always right. The NYT is not serving some greater good. It is not educating or informing the public. The NYT is hanging on to its customers by giving them whatever they want. If you think of it this way, everything makes sense.

From now on, when you read anything in the NYT ask yourself one question: does this make people on the UWS feel better about themselves.

narciso said...

Just like it mostly reLativuzed the cultural revolution, the killing fields of cambodia, while under say harsh made the pahlevi regimes one of the worst on the planet same for the Salvadorans with Raymond bonner

narciso said...

They were acvompluces in the fall of diem, thanks to their gullible cirrespondebt halberstam, who informed policy determination are variance with facts on the ground.
Of course as. BUckley jibed 'there were the ones who got Fidel his job' through Herbert Matthews

Achilles said...

Unknown said...
"American Fascists/ Nazis just trying to be seen as normal Americans. Why should anyone consider them to be normal Americans? How to they reflect American values? "

Take Achilles as an example.

I fight to preserve freedom.

You fight to take freedom away. Like the Nazi's did.

narciso said...

accomplices, correspondent, now Shirley Christian kept the Latin American bureau from being total apologists for every left wing insurgery, although bonner Barry and other harped constantly on the paramilitaries in the regio.

narciso said...

I'm thinking of the apologist for turkey and Iran in the current day. With regards to Israel its animus is informed by ignorance (tom Friedman, back to 1982) and kristof the aranist turned Russia and china expert,

narciso said...

The former is still putting stickpins into the dulles bros, as if that explains all.

mockturtle said...

Can people see that both Communism and Nazi-ism are totalitarian? There is no fundamental difference between the two, as they both have an agenda that involves firmly, even violently, controlling people to make them conform to that agenda. See that? If so, then ask yourself which groups in this country are most bent on making everyone conform to their agendas? Bingo!

Achilles said...

AReasonableMan said...
No. Attempting to reframe the murder in Charlottesville as an accident is deeply wrong. buwaya is playing a game. He believes very little of what he writes. Let buwaya defend himself, if he can.

The "white nationalists" were organized by Occupy Wall Street.

narciso said...

And they just happened to have been embedded by vice news,

SGT Ted said...

All of this "Nazi" stuff is political bullshit. There are probably the same number of Nazis in 2017 as there were in 2008. The NYTs and other propaganda outfits are trying to inflate the Nazis importance in order to then tie them to Trump, because Trump said some mean things about Mexicans in the country illegally.

Anyone who thinks Trump and his people are anywhere near the Nazis is a political and historical illiterate. Or a demagogue trying to stir up fear.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Can people see that both Communism and Nazi-ism are totalitarian? There is no fundamental difference between the two, as they both have an agenda that involves firmly, even violently, controlling people to make them conform to that agenda. See that? If so, then ask yourself which groups in this country are most bent on making everyone conform to their agendas? Bingo!”

Yes,Trumpism fits the bill.
———————————————-
Blogger tim in vermont said...
Nazis, commies, fraternal twins.

11/26/17, 7:03 PM
Blogger Unknown said...
“Nazis, commies, fraternal twins.”

Agreed.

11/26/17, 7:06 PM

Inga...Allie Oop said...

White supremacy: Are US right-wing groups on the rise?

Yes, they are.

Ken B said...

About books on shelves. Any remotely serious student of nazism has read Mein Kampff, and may well have it on their bookshelf. It usually has a swastika on it too.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Stepping from the shadows

White supremacists and neo-Nazis complain endlessly about media lies, and yet no one is more eager to pick up the phone than Heimbach and other extremist leaders. Getting attention – even negative attention – helps them recruit and inch toward the mainstream.

Analysts from the Data & Society Research Institute concluded the far right has risen to new prominence this past year in part by “attention hacking”, manipulating the conventions of mainstream news. Members of the “alt-right”, a mixed group of racists, nationalists, antisemites and misogynists, understand that many news stories are built on a framework of conflict and outrage, fueled by the power of a shocking image or the lure of a supposedly telling contrast. “The media’s dependence on social media, analytics and metrics, sensationalism, novelty over newsworthiness, and clickbait makes them vulnerable,” its report said.

People who have had personal run-ins with Heimbach – who have experienced him in action – say the media should not simply ignore his activities. Instead of glamorizing them or portraying them as cartoonish monsters, scrutiny should attempt to reveal their impact.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/04/national-socialism-neo-nazis-america-donald-trump

narciso said...

There's also the template that fascism was the third force between socialism and capitalism, it really owed it self to syndicalists like sorel and socialists like mussolini.

narciso said...

Meanwhile an occupy/antifa thug tried to mow down a whole team of congressman said thug had previously met with two Democratic senators

James K said...

Of course they want to "normalize" Nazis so that readers will know that they are everywhere, having emerged in the last 12 months and flexing their power.

It's like "Law & Order." Watching that show you'd think NYC was full of skinheads, white supremacists, and right-wing religious fanatics.

narciso said...

And even hawaii 5-0 redux, and the tv version of taken dwelt more than a little in antimoslem plots, as false flags.

chickelit said...

I'm a bit surprised that others weren't more diacritical regarding Mr. Hovator's eyebrows. They were described as "like air quotes" -- which prompted me to look up "air quotes." Um, no, they're more like two circumflexes. Circumflexes are used (by the French) to indicate something's missing (like a vestigial consonant). Like an "s."

A pair of "s's."

"SS," get it? Not there there. James Joyce wrote that absense was the highest form of presence. That sounds curiously like Althouse's own "better than nothing is a high standard."

Anyways, thanks for the tag. I promise I'll buy Shirer's book from your portal as soon as I get a new credit card. Mine was hacked this weekend.

Achilles said...

It is fun to watch Inga claim her political opponents are all Nazi's and deserve to be killed. Every now and then she slips in arguments about the need for gun control and higher taxes on non-leftists. Corporations favored by the government like the "green" companies and large banks and lawyers need government subsidies though. Because they donate to the right people.

But there are many leftists like Inga who think their political opponents are all evil and should be killed off.

It is the kind of morality it takes to vote for a known rapist twice and turn around and attack republicans over sexual harassment.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.”
― Hannah Arendt

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

narciso said...

Except eichmann didn't just carry out the final solution, he planned it at the eannsee conference. Maybe if she hadn't been a student of Heidegger was marcuse, arendt would have made the distinction.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

narciso said...

Heidegger one of the fathers of deconstruction, besides being a Nazi era university rector.

Mark said...

In German, “Hail victory” is “Sieg heil.”

In English, “Sieg heil” is "Victory is salvation."
"Heil Hitler" is "Salvation in Hitler (Hitler is our savior)."

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity. He had asked for a bottle of red wine and had drunk half of it. He refused the help of the Protestant minister the Reverend William Hull who offered to read the Bible with him: he had only two more hours to live and therefore no “time to waste.” He walked the fifty yards from his cell to the execution chamber calm and erect with his hands bound behind him. When the guards tied his ankles and knees he asked them to loosen the bonds so that he could stand straight. “I don’t need that ” he said when the black hood was offered him. He was in complete command of himself nay he was more: he was completely himself. Nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words. He began by stating emphatically that he was a Gottgläubiger to express in common Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death. He then proceeded: “After a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again. Such is the fate of all men. Long live Germany long live Argentina long live Austria. I shall not forget them.” In the face of death he had found the clichĂ© used in funeral oratory. Under the gallows his memory played him the last trick he was “elated” and he forgot that this was his own funeral.

It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us-the lesson of the fearsome word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”
― Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

narciso said...

And why was in hiding for nearly 15 years in Argentina, because like roeschman (The villain in the Odessa files, who Forsyth supplants for aloud Brunner, hadn't finished his task.

narciso said...

Brunner aka Georg Fischer was hard at work supervising a battery of chemical rockets for Nasser to target the jews

buwaya said...

Hannah Arendt was an interesting character.
She was one of the sane ones.
Taken as a whole, its highly unlikely that she would be happy in a modern US university, devoted as she was to classical liberal education, which has been gradually driven out since the 80s. Such as Stanford, where she started her structured Liberal Arts progtam, the core Western Civ program has been terminated.
Her defense of Heidegget alone, these days, would lead to difficulty.

narciso said...

Skorzeny like jochen pieper the model for hessler in battle of the bulge escaped and spent his time between Madrid and Buenos aires

Amadeus 48 said...

Eek! Nazis! In America! They could constitute as much as .000003 of the population!

Personally, I am more concerned about the percentage of college kids that think that socialism is a good thing. It takes a bit of doing to take the richest country in Central and South America and within ten years turn it into a place where you can't find toilet paper, but the Venezuelans managed it. The average Venezuelan has lost 19 pounds.

Next up: weekly chocolate ration increased from 30 grams to 20 grams in Caracas.

James K said...

Maybe if she hadn't been a student of Heidegger

Apparently she was much more than a student of Heidegger's. This describes him as "her longtime Nazi-sycophant lover."

It goes on:
"To my mind, the use of the phrase banality of evil is an almost infallible sign of shallow thinkers attempting to seem intellectually sophisticated. Come on, people: It's a bankrupt phrase, a subprime phrase, a Dr. Phil-level phrase masquerading as a profound contrarianism. Oooh, so daring! Evil comes not only in the form of mustache-twirling Snidely Whiplash types, but in the form of paper pushers who followed evil orders. And when applied—as she originally did to Adolf Eichmann, Hitler's eager executioner, responsible for the logistics of the Final Solution—the phrase was utterly fraudulent.

"Adolf Eichmann was, of course, in no way a banal bureaucrat: He just portrayed himself as one while on trial for his life. Eichmann was a vicious and loathsome Jew-hater and -hunter who, among other things, personally intervened after the war was effectively lost, to insist on and ensure the mass murder of the last intact Jewish group in Europe, those of Hungary."

Amadeus 48 said...



Evil is not banal. It is evil. Never mistake it for anything that is trite or lacking in originality. It is evil.

buwaya said...

Re Eichman -

Prince Asaka and General Matsui were in nominal command of the Japanese armies in Central China in 1937. Matsui was unwell and Asaka was a dope under the influence of his vicious underlings, who themselves were caught up in an episode of hysteria.

On the march out of Shanghai the Japanese acquired a taste for mass-murder on a scale seldom seen even in Chinese history. They could not be controlled by their commanders, indeed, officers competed with each other in beheading competitions. They cut a swathe through this heavily populated region; the rape of Nanking was just the point where everyone was forced to take notice. Asaka complained that he had lost control of his armies.

Neither Asaka nor Matsui were tried after the war. To a degree because the evil they supervised was NOT banal. This was personal, individual as well as communal. All the killing and torture and rape was done face to face according to the personal will of each soldier.

Arendt does not consider this aspect of humanity, the disorganized blood lust, sanctioned by the leadership in a way, usually to apply a pretense of control to an inevitable orgy of blood. In other words, "we meant to do that!".
This was not the Nazi way, but this Hutu-Tutsi sort of thing is more typical of human history.

SGT Ted said...

The Nazi baiting is just so precious. The idea that Trump is a totalitarian mass leader is laughable. Totalitarian mass leaders are also heavily ideological, usually based on some sort of collectivist offshoot of Socialism or Communism and militaristic, which Trump is the opposite of.

Historically and politically illiterate.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Arendt took great care to differentiate between the banal and the commonplace, but some reviewers — as those pre-bent on a reflexive rebuttal are always apt to do — accused her of suggesting that the atrocity of the Holocaust had been commonplace, which of course was the very opposite of her point. Among those who misunderstood her notion of the “banality” of evil to mean a trivialization of the outcome of evil rather than an insight into the commonplace motives of its perpetrators was the scholar Gerhardcholem, with whom Arendt had corresponded warmly for decades. At the end of a six-page letter to Scholem from early December of 1964, she crystallizes her point and dispels all grounds for confusion with the elegant precision of her rhetoric:

You are quite right, I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical.”

buwaya said...

As I said, Arendt is quite wrong.
And she was quite good at rationalizing her POV, which is what you get when you are an intellectual.
Quite likely also because the poor lady, even chased out of Europe by the Nazis, had a limited personal acquaintance of evil-doers.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Whether or not Arendt was wrong about Eichmann, in a way, misses the point. A host of reviews, including The New Republic were quick to criticize the movie, and Arendt, for being wrong about the banality of evil. What’s missed, however, is host of empirical studies, from the Stanford Prison Experiments to the Milgram Experiment, seem to verify the ease at which people can be turned into evil monsters. Even if Arendt was wrong about Eichmann, she was still right about the nature of evil.”

Michael McNeil said...

Tom Wolfe wrote “about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” (Tom Wolfe, “Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine,” 1976)

chickelit said...

Mark said...In English, 'Sieg heil' is 'Victory is salvation.'
'Heil Hitler' is 'Salvation in Hitler (Hitler is our savior).'


Minor quibble: The verb in "Sieg heil" (heilen) is in the imperative mood, not the indicative. So it can't really be "victory is salvation (indictative). Siegen "to win" is a verb too. Strict German grammar would require "Sieg heil" to be rendered as "win salvation" or "victory to salvation" if it is a command (imperative mood). Else why the odd transposition of the imperative verb heil to second place from the normal first?

People still say "hail Jesus" meaning "save, Jesus" so your translation of Heil Hitler is correct. Shirer wrote in "The Rise And Fail Of The Third Reich" that people looked at him as the Messiah.

Yancey Ward said...

I thought that perhaps Richard Fausset was just another one of the types of journalists that Ben Rhodes dissed as young know-nothings. Now, it is possible this is still true, but he appears to be around 47 years old, and seems to have been in the profession for over 20 years minimum.

I had the read the book in college history and remember it well, but it is possible Fausset has never read it- I wouldn't hold that against him. I imagine less than 1% of Americans have read it, and I see no reason to expect that percentage to higher for people with a BA and an MA in English and Journalism. If he were a history major, then it might be black mark.

Yancey Ward said...

Banality of evil came to mind when I read the first article, and I thought that really was the biggest takeaway from it. Sablan was right- the article in no way I could identify humanized him in any way. Has Hovater killed anyone?

I got the impression from the comments at the NYTimes that nothing short of giving out Hovater's home address with a contract on his head would have satisfied them. I really do have to wonder about who is more dangerous here.

Bruce Hayden said...

ARM:
"Your attempt to frame this as an accident is beneath contempt. It was an attempted mass murder. James Alex Fields is currently charged with murder and three counts of malicious wounding."

Let me remind you that people in this country are considered innocent until proven guilty, and that politically based prosecutions are not uncommon, esp with high visibility cases such as this, and, I will suggest by Dem politicians. The final verdicts/results in the death of Freddie Gray are in, with two (I believe) of the six officers accepting administrative punishment. No criminal convictions, despite a black judge and victim, with white officers in a heavily black community. This was after the six officers involved were charged with offenses up to 2nd Degree Murder. In this case there was never sufficient probable cause to support indictment, but MD state atty Mosby indicted anyway, for political reasons. Which is a good reason to assume innocence until guilt is proven.

We don't have enough facts yet to determine whether this "nazi" intentionally hit the people blocking the street, or was fleeing for his life, and she was hit in his attempt to escape. He may have a valid claim to self-defense (or the legal use of deadly force). It really depends on two things. First, was he being chased, or had he recently been chased, by a crowd threatening to drag him out of his car (etc)? Secondly, why was she in the street? Was she part of the violent antifa assaults, or innocently caught in the crowd? It looks, so far, like she was in town to protest the "nazis", but the question is whether her intent was purely passive. My guess is that if there is any evidence that she had any contact with Antifa activists, or engaged in any violence whatsoever, she is a coconspirator, and he walks. We shall see. In the end, the burden will be on the state to essentially disprove both of these beyond a reasonable doubt if any evidence is shown, by him, supporting these issues (video showing a crowd chasing his car should be sufficient to put the burden on the state for the first issue).

Bruce Hayden said...

"We don't have enough facts yet to determine whether this "nazi" intentionally hit the people blocking the street, or was fleeing for his life, and she was hit in his attempt to escape. He may have a valid claim to self-defense (or the legal use of deadly force)."

Let me add that prosecutors fairly routinely indict, and even try, cases where legally justified self-defense is fairly obvious. This was the major motivation for the immunity provisions in the misnamed FL "Stand Your Ground" law that has been so maligned by the left, to essentially prevent prosecutors from using the process of criminal prosecution to penalize people who legitimately used lethal force in self-defense, a process that often costs defendants hundreds of thousands of dollars and significant time and energy. All for legally defending their own lives.

Bruce Hayden said...

One more comment and I won't have to laboriously scroll my iPad to the bottom of the comments in order to comment. Not sure why, but I start at the bottom with commenting in Blogger on a PC, and at the top with an iPad. Plus, I have top and bottom keys on the PC, but not the iPad.

«Oldest ‹Older   1 – 200 of 296   Newer› Newest»