Althouse: "Smell of horror, the panic, the fear..."/"It's creepy, isn't it?"

February 27, 2020

"Smell of horror, the panic, the fear..."/"It's creepy, isn't it?"

34 comments:

Temujin said...: Jane O'Meara Sanders gets Bernie a bottle of this every year of their anniversary. It's Bernie's favorite scent.; 2/27/20, 2:00 PM
rehajm said...: To Bernie it's the smell of nostalgia, to an age he longs to see return.; 2/27/20, 2:03 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Smells like teen spirit.; 2/27/20, 2:03 PM
Shouting Thomas said...: A Bernie supporter on FB said that the fact that the Senator advocates nationalizing the oil biz and imprisoning oil execs doesn’t prove he’s a communist.

“He’s not in favor of nationalizing everything!”; 2/27/20, 2:07 PM
Yancey Ward said...: To induce dread in a progressive, you have to combine the odors of burnt gunpowder, gun oil, an abattoir, a Baptist church, Mike Bloomberg's checkbook, Budweiser, and Alabama.; 2/27/20, 2:09 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Normally I have no time for stunts like this, but in this case, it is highly appropriate.

How quickly we forget.

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Terror-Reassessment-Robert-Conquest/dp/0195317009/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+great+terror&qid=1582834157&s=books&sr=1-1

Available through the Althouse portal. If I can read it all the way through, you can too.

Never again.; 2/27/20, 2:10 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Oh, and Walmart and whatever cologne Trump uses.; 2/27/20, 2:11 PM
Susan said...: Now do the sound of fear.

Hundreds of deplorables breathing in the dark. With random giggles.; 2/27/20, 2:19 PM
Yancey Ward said...: To induce fear in a conservative, you have to combine the odors of any non-starchy vegetable, a soy latte, any Apple product, San Francisco, Whole Foods, and whatever perfume Shelob uses.; 2/27/20, 2:21 PM
Nichevo said...: "I can smell Aeon now: leather...hazelnuts...gunpowder...sex."; 2/27/20, 2:21 PM
bagoh20 said...: How about a scent called "Big City Leftist Government"? We all know what that smells like.; 2/27/20, 2:34 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: "Sex Panther" from Ron Burgundy.; 2/27/20, 3:03 PM
Yancey Ward said...: 60% of the time it works every time.; 2/27/20, 3:06 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: A scent called "Politician' would simply be distilled essence of manure.

Could bridge the political divide.; 2/27/20, 3:07 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: It's a good sign that some Russians, at least, want to remember the terror and Stalin's many victims. Those victims deserve to be remembered as much as the millions Hitler killed.

They should sell this on college campuses. The reason Bernie's sucking up to the USSR does not inspire disgust among young people is because nobody has taught them about the USSR.; 2/27/20, 3:17 PM
tim maguire said...: Why shouldn’t a perfume store be in a building with a terrible past? Is it the building’s fault? What’s the relevance of the past tenant to the current tenant?; 2/27/20, 3:37 PM
narciso said...: interesting the lubyanka, was based in the former anchor insurance company, I discovered that from tim power' declare,; 2/27/20, 3:49 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: tim maguire: Same reason why a Disney theme park would be out of place in Antietam, or Gettysburg.

It wasn't the dirt's fault, after all.; 2/27/20, 3:58 PM
Ann Althouse said...: “ Why shouldn’t a perfume store be in a building with a terrible past? Is it the building’s fault? What’s the relevance of the past tenant to the current tenant?”

Why didn’t they put a fashion mall on the footprint of the WTC?; 2/27/20, 4:44 PM
Nichevo said...: Temujin said...
Jane O'Meara Sanders gets Bernie a bottle of this every year of their anniversary. It's Bernie's favorite scent.

Yeah, but it doesn't match up to the original. He should know. "Where's the piss and shit? I distinctly recall the hoarders and wreckers soiling themselves!"

Problem is that Russia, like Kaiser's Germany, quit on its own terms. There was no debolshevikation the way there was denazification after 1945. No trials, no reconciliation.

...OT: shooting in Milwaukee on the NY news. 1) hope all here are OK, 2) feeling the Bern?; 2/27/20, 5:15 PM
Nichevo said...: Narciso, the Lubyanka was the original headquarters building of the All-Russia Insurance Company, before 1917. From this exceptionally uninformative broadcast, I am having trouble telling whether it was the actual Lubyanka building, which afaik is still in use by the FSB, or whether the referenced "Shooting House" was some annex or outbuilding. Amazing how LITTLE a video can tell you.; 2/27/20, 5:24 PM
William said...: Passing thought: The least celebrated victims of Communism were not those who died in gulags or The Terror, but rather those who died in the famines. There are books and even a couple of movies about The Terror but those terrible famines passed unremarked. Probably just as well. Starvation rarely brings out the best in people.; 2/27/20, 5:28 PM
Fernandinande said...: I thought it'd be something cool like pheromones, but it sounds about as terrifying as a burnt candle.

The BBC seems to be the only outfit advertising it.; 2/27/20, 5:31 PM
Nichevo said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/27/20, 5:31 PM
Nichevo said...: The issue has been cooking for some time. Here is a much more informative article from 2018:

http://www.vbirstein.com/2018/10/23/dance-floor-in-auschwitz/

No, it's not the Lubyanka, though it's right nearby. It's the former Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court:

In 2019, the businessman Vladimir Davidi is planning to open an high-end store in the center of Moscow, in a building with a horrifying history, the so-called Execution House.

From 1933 to 1949, this building was occupied by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court that between 1936 to 1938 sentenced 31,456 victims to death, many which were executed in the basement of this building. Among them, there were famous Soviet and military leaders such as Nikolai Bukharin and Mikhail Tukhachevsky, the theater director Emil Meyerhold and the writer Isaak Babel. On the whole, 44 Commissars of various industries, 141 high-level military commanders, 100 professors, 300 factory directors, and numerous artists and writers were executed during that period as a result of Military Collegium sentencing. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and his closest cronies personally approved the lists of the names of those who would be executed. In the archives, 383 of these lists have survived. The two huge rooms in the basement of the building where executions were carried out are still in place. Of course, today, the location of the building at Nikolskaya Street, 23, half way between the Kremlin to Lubyanskaya Square, with its infamous NKVD-MGB-KGB-FSB headquarters, is very desirable.

The attempts to turn this building into a memorial, a branch of the Museum of History of the Gulag, started just after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but ultimately failed.; 2/27/20, 5:32 PM
Fernandinande said...: The building seems to be Nikolskaya street, 23, Moscow, which is on a swanky tourist mall.; 2/27/20, 5:51 PM
William said...: A perfume boutique seems grotesquely inappropriate for the site. Given that over 30,000 people died there I can't think of any possible commercial use. I can't even think of a non-commercial use. Make it into a park, and I wouldn't want to sit there on my lunch hour....I wonder who Vladimir was named after. A bit of research into this guy's family history would be entertaining and, perhaps, edifying.; 2/27/20, 6:01 PM
eddie willers said...: Did the Google street thing. Man, there are some good looking women. So glad the Soviet look is over.; 2/27/20, 6:02 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Nichevo: I was also annoyed that this video didn't name the building. I kept wondering, is it the Lubyanka, or someplace else?

Well, that's entertainment.; 2/27/20, 6:12 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: No one else has asked this question, so I will: Whose vagina does it smell like?

Sorry. I'll go away now.; 2/27/20, 6:13 PM
Nichevo said...: Whose vagina does it smell like?

With Beria in charge, or Yezhov, there were lots of choices.; 2/27/20, 6:46 PM
Kelly said...: It’s been weaponized and released on wall street.; 2/27/20, 7:03 PM
Dear corrupt left, go F yourselves said...: smell the bern; 2/27/20, 7:42 PM
exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...: "OT: shooting in Milwaukee on the NY news. 1) hope all here are OK, 2) feeling the Bern?

The national media will drop it quickly. The perp wasn't the right color. Neither were the victims.; 2/27/20, 8:40 PM