No Laughing Matter
This is not a funny post. This is not a post where we wryly mock Jonah, or his face-mullet, or the sad fact that he suckled bitter milk from the teat of Lucianne Goldberg, or that, were it not for the machinations of Mommy Goldberg and Linda Tripp, Jonah would be managing an Applebee’s restaurant in suburban Washington. No, this is a serious post, because I have finally had it with this miserable dirigible of flatulence.
At his blog devoted to Liberal Fascism: From Mussolini to Compact Fluorescent Bulbs, Jonah said this:
Michael [Ledeen,in his review of Liberal Fascism] seems to be saying that Nazism was primary about racism, not socialism. And that the socialism was a mere epiphenomenon. I think he’s right and wrong about that. I think he’s forcing a hard intellectual distinction that doesn’t need to be made. Socialism today is seen as a purely economic doctrine. It’s not. The “social question” was aimed at how best to organize society and economics was merely the best empirical grounds for having that discussion (and then the Marxists said every thing was about economics, etc). But for many non-Marxist socialists, socialism was about more than economics. For many socialists and progressives, socialism was racism and racism was socialism. Nazism was socialism for a race. The Nazi view was uglier and more extreme than anyone else’s, but it was not philosophically so distinct from the views of many progressives in America and socialists in Britain.
Okay, so Jonah, a contributing editor of National Review, fer chrissakes, is throwing an accusation of racism against progressives and the left. That doesn’t just take the cake, it takes the fucking cake platter, the table under the cake platter, the whole fucking dining room, the house too, and the block on which the house is located, and the city, state, nation, planet, galaxy and universe. At its inception, the whole point of the National Review, the magazine that pays for Jonah’s triple bacon cheeseburgers, was the virulent racism of William F. Buckley and his cohorts, all of whom spilled truckloads of ink over the virtues of segregation.
If you don’t believe me, let’s take on instructive trip down memory lane and read stuff that was printed in the National Review in its halcyon days. Here’s what NR had to say about the Birmingham church bombings after they occurred:
Let us gently say the fiend who set off the bomb does not have the sympathy of the white population in the South; in fact, he set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur — of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro.
And let it be said that the convulsions that go on, and are bound to continue, have resulted from revolutionary assaults on the status quo, and a contempt for the law, which are traceable to the Supreme Court’s manifest contempt for the settled traditions of Constitutional practice. Certainly it now appears that Birmingham’s Negroes will never be content so long as the white population is free to be free.
And, of course, there’s more. Lots more after the fold.
From an unsigned National Review editorial printed August 24, 1957, titled “Why the South Must Prevail” (probably by William F. Buckley Jr.):
The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists
From Richard Weaver, “Integration is Communization,” published by NR on July 13, 1957:
‘Integration’ and ‘Communization’ are, after all, pretty closely synonymous. In light of what is happening today, the first may be little more than a euphemism for the second. It does not take many steps to get from the ‘integrating’ of facilities to the ‘communizing’ of facilities, if the impulse is there.
From an interview of Senator Richard Russell published in NR, also in 1957:
As you know, Mr. Jones, there are some communities and some states where the Negro’s voting potential is very great. We wish at all costs to avoid a repetition of the Reconstruction period when newly freed slaves made the laws and undertook their enforcement. We feel even more strongly about miscegenation or racial amalgamation.
The experience of other countries and civilizations has demonstrated that the separation of the races biologically is highly preferable to amalgamation.
I know of nothing in human history that would lead us to conclude that miscegenation is desirable.
From James J. Kilpatrick, “Right and Power in Arkansas,” published August 28, 1957:
The State of Arkansas and Orval Faubus are wholly in the right; they have acted lawfully; they are entitled to those great presumptions of the law which underlie the whole of our judicial tradition . . . Conceding, for the sake of discussion, that the Negro pupil has these new rights, what of the white community? Has it none?
From an unsigned NR editorial published on June 2, 1964:
But whatever the exact net result in the restricted field of school desegregation, what a price we are paying for Brown! It would be ridiculous to hold the Supreme Court solely to blame for the ludicrously named ‘civil rights movement’ — that is, the Negro revolt.
From an unsigned NR editorial published on July 2, 1963:
The Negro people have been encouraged to ask for, and to believe they can get, nothing less than the evanescence of color, and they are doomed to founder on the shoals of existing human attitudes — their own included.
The intellectual dishonesty of Jonah’s claptrap is astonishing. Progressives weren’t writing segregationist and racist shit like this. Jonah’s employer and forebears were.
Leonard adds: As some of our commenters point out, Jonah was peddling this same line on The Daily Show, making the ludicrous claim that self-identifying as a progressive (since some progressives in the past were racist) should set off as many alarm bells as self-identifying as a fascist; leaving aside the obvious fact that progressives have nothing even remotely resembling the history of murder, warmongering and bloodshed that fascists do, should we hold self-identifying as a conservative to the same standards, since some conservatives – many, in fact – have also been racist?
Likewise, his fatuous comments about the New Republic’s having praised Mussolini is a colossal irrelevance, as almost every national magazine praised him early on (he was Forbes’ Man of the Year as late as 1934, in an article that was also, for bonus fun, racist), and Jonah’s own magazine has a long history of praising people like Suharto, Pinochet and the Shah of Iran.
It couldn’t be more obvious at this point that the entire basis of Jonah’s book is based on the mistaking of what is superficial for what is essential, and that’s why any serious reader of any political stripe should consider him a laughingstock.
Wouldn’t be safe to say at this point: “Jonah, you’re full of shit, STFU” ?
Also, when Michael Ledeen (Michael Fucking Ledeen) is schooling you on what a mendacious tool you are … well, words just fail me.
BTW, does anyone else suspect that this book may be Der Loadenpänt’s Waterloo? I really, really, really doubt he has the stones to live his life as a circus act á la Coulter … which is what he would have to do to continue to defend his steaming pile of counter-factual provocateurian hacksploitation while writing new books, developing new theses, etc. etc.
Has this idiot ever read a single text on the civil rights movement? Every single organization involved in it — from the NAACP and the CIC in the 1920s, through the SCHW and the SRC in the 1930s and 1940s, to the SCLC and SNCC in the 1960s, and on and on — they were all attacked as “socialist” and “communist” precisely because of their racial views. Fighting racism in those days was seen as a sign of socialism.
What an utter moron. He’s decided his beliefs are normative, and everything else — communism, socialism, fascism, vegetarianism, organic food, whatever — is a muddled mess that is indistinguishable.
Just because you can discern the differences doesn’t mean the rest of us are as stupid, Jonah.
He said right there on A Daily Show that it was an organization’s past that was important, after all. Shouldn’t he have known what he was getting into when he decided to accept those paychecks?
What a pantload of peanut filled shit this guy is.
I know Jonah fancies himself a self-taught genius who has no need for “books” and “facts” and such, but he should really try reading what professional historians have to say about this. For starters, he might try:
Glenda Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights
Thomas Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: MLK and the Struggle for Economic Justice
Bill Mullen, Left of the Color Line: Race, Radicalism and 20th c. Literature
Ohhhhhh!!!!! The wingnuts are going crazy in the comments section of Amazon’s review pages for Pantload’s book! You should check out the crazy lines of defense they are spoutin’.
Oh! I have an idea on how Jonah can respond!
“What does William F. Buckley have to do with modern conservatism? And what does denigrating blacks have to do with racism anyway? I would be willing to discuss any of this if liberals would only offer serious comments instead of academic trade guild talking points.”
Jonah Goldberg: The last pitiful scream of the bought mouthpieces for the WASPy Right, as they fade into cultural irrelevance.
Sad, really. All he’s doing is pimping for a bunch of people who would have no problem sticking him in the showers right after the liberals.
Come to think, you gotta wonder what the Stormfront guys think about being compared to MLK and Hillary.
Submitted for your approval: Teh Pantload in his own words.
After spending the better part of a day cutting that down from the hour-long BookTV appearance, I really, really want to punch that guy.
Has anyone else noticed that each time Jonah mentions the number of times he says libruls ain’t nazis in his book, the number goes up? In the Colmes bit Jennifer linked to on the last thread he took it to 50, then 100, in the space of a single sentence.
Jonah simply isn’t in Coulter’s “class”. At least she has the courage to defend her batshit crazy words in person. If Coulter had written this one, she’d have told Jon Stewart, “yeah, I am calling you a Nazi”. Jonah’s repeated “why are you hitting yourself?” routine when called on the implications of the title and cover and underlying thesis that any system that relies on any kind of idea of a unity, even a basic common good, can’t possibly fool even the drooliest of mouth breathers.
He keeps repeating that no one who disagrees has read the book, as if the chapter titles and words in the book itself don’t share the thesis, and then multiplies the number of times he qualifies his thesis in the book. I keep expecting him to slip in an interview and say “I told the ghostwriter Mom hired to go a little easier, but I was too busy watching Jaws 2 5 times a day every day for 3 weeks to supervise.” Eventually some interviewer is going to ask the question Jonah dodged in his response to Dave Neiwert’s review; why are the actual fascists in the US today creatures of the extreme right?
I really want him to have to face that question in person.
Jonah has just the trick to make my head snap into blah blah. He’s trolling the world, dudes, and he’s winning. Ruppert ghost wrote that thing.
Has anyone asked Jonah whether he believes that Zionism is a form of Nazism, and, if not, why on earth not? The early Zionists were all socialists. If you believe this:
For many socialists and progressives, socialism was racism and racism was socialism. Nazism was socialism for a race. The Nazi view was uglier and more extreme than anyone else’s, but it was not philosophically so distinct from the views of many progressives in America and socialists in Britain.
…then how can you possibly NOT believe that socialists like Herzl, Ben-Gurion et al were philosophically congruent with Nazism?
I mean, I think there’s a vast world of difference. But on what possible grounds could Jonah think so, if he thinks that Nazism, like Zionism, is an ideology of the Socialist Left?
A whole fucking book that is basically based on “the Nazis called themselves socialists, and, erm, socialism is a doctrine of the left, ergo Nazis were leftists”. I first heard that one on Usenet some time back. I kicked the fucktard who tried to stand it up black and blue, obviously, because I didn’t know it was actually a rightard troll meme.
Thing is, booting rightards around is fun, but it has to be fun. Let’s not get angry with the Pantload. He’s a figure of fun, not a serious writer.
Transcript of part of Jon Stewart’s interview with Jonah Goldberg.
THE END. Now is that insane or what?
Oh! Oh! I got a better one!!!
All Jonah has to say is: “The liberals are, as usual, playing the race card, so I think I can just dismiss them.”
I came up with that myself! And I wasn’t even home-schooled!
Canada’s Foreign Affairs department just issued a report identifying Israel and the US as countries that practice torture.
As far as racism and teh Left go, I can think of no more illustrative example than the story of the Scottsboro Nine, whose only defenders in the United States were the Communists.
In fact, the whole revolutionary Left in the whole goddamn world made hay out of American racism for the better part of a century. The European socialist press ran full front page articles on Emmett Till, complete with gruesome pictures, and cited it as examples of capitalism’s inherent depravity. The North Vietnamese produced flyers targeting black soldiers asking them to consider if any VC had ever called them “nigger” and if they really liked the idea of killing other minorities for the sake of the white man. Frankly, American racism – from both conservatives AND liberals, to be honest – is the best thing that ever happened to world leftist movements, because the centuries long tolerance of it makes capitalism look really bad.
Here’s the whole thing I’m noticing that Jonah’s doing – he’s defining the “liberals” that the fascists complained about as “classical liberals” and then doing the awesome switcheroo that National Review types are so prone to and calling the modern American conservative movement the descendants of the classical liberals. In doing so, he’s blurring over some really important distinctions – I’m sure it’s because he understands fuck all about nineteenth century European history.
Gah. End of marking period work is killing me – hope to say something more substantial soon.
Here’s my letter to this fat fuck, boxer-briefs-full-of-poo-poo:
I read a lefty blog tonight that, for me, summed up the downright nonsense that is your “book”.
To quote you:
Michael [Ledeen,in his review of Liberal Fascism] seems to be saying that Nazism was primary about racism, not socialism. And that the socialism was a mere epiphenomenon. I think he’s right and wrong about that. I think he’s forcing a hard intellectual distinction that doesn’t need to be made. Socialism today is seen as a purely economic doctrine. It’s not. The “social question” was aimed at how best to organize society and economics was merely the best empirical grounds for having that discussion (and then the Marxists said every thing was about economics, etc). But for many non-Marxist socialists, socialism was about more than economics. For many socialists and progressives, socialism was racism and racism was socialism. Nazism was socialism for a race. The Nazi view was uglier and more extreme than anyone else’s, but it was not philosophically so distinct from the views of many progressives in America and socialists in Britain.
Liberals are Racists???????????
Well, Johah, I guess it’s safe to say that you went there. You truly went there.
Well, here’s some quotes gleened from your favorite blog, SadlyNo! :
“Okay, so Jonah, a contributing editor of National Review, fer chrissakes, is throwing an accusation of racism against progressives and the left. That doesn’t just take the cake, it takes the fucking cake platter, the table under the cake platter, the whole fucking dining room, the house too, and the block on which the house is located, and the city, state, nation, planet, galaxy and universe. At it’s inception, the whole point of the National Review, the magazine that pays for Jonah’s triple bacon cheeseburgers, was the virulent racism of William F. Buckley and his cohorts, all of whom spilled truckloads of ink over the virtues of segregation.”
I just have to add:
This is a classic case of projection, Jonah. And you wonder why we refer to you as the Doughy Pantload. (here’s a hint: It ain’t because of your considerable, Cheeto induced girth. It’s because in your Pants resides a considerable Load Of Shit.
Liberals and Progressives alike throughout its history in this country has, and I’m going to hold you down with one foot on your neck and my lips as close to your politically tone-deaf ear as possible and scream; PROGRESSIVES AND LIBERALS WERE NEVER RACISTS!!!!!!!!!!!!
On the contrary, your publication- you know, the one that sends you the bi-monthly Wiingnut Welfare Check? – has a long and illustrious history of vile, vomit inducing racism……….
Here’s a few quotes:
Here’s what NR had to say about the Birmingham church bombings after they occurred:
Let us gently say the fiend who set off the bomb does not have the sympathy of the white population in the South; in fact, he set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur — of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro.
And let it be said that the convulsions that go on, and are bound to continue, have resulted from revolutionary assaults on the status quo, and a contempt for the law, which are traceable to the Supreme Court’s manifest contempt for the settled traditions of Constitutional practice. Certainly it now appears that Birmingham’s Negroes will never be content so long as the white population is free to be free.
Here’s another:
From an unsigned National Review editorial printed August 24, 1957, titled “Why the South Must Prevail” (probably by William F. Buckley Jr.):
The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.
Not convinced? Here’s some more:
From James J. Kilpatrick, “Right and Power in Arkansas,” published August 28, 1957:
The State of Arkansas and Orval Faubus are wholly in the right; they have acted lawfully; they are entitled to those great presumptions of the law which underlie the whole of our judicial tradition . . . Conceding, for the sake of discussion, that the Negro pupil has these new rights, what of the white community? Has it none?
Let me interject here:
Now, Jonah. What political movement is filled with bigotry?
In a word: Yours.
Sleep well, Dullard.
P.S.
I currently have 8 cats (all rescues) a dog, and two ferrets. I love animals. The Nazis loved animals, therefore I’m a Nazi.
You’re a clown, Tunderrella. Now dance for your masters. And while you’re pondering your navel, don’t forget to pick out the lint.
You’re a jackass that has risen in the arena of political discourse, not by your merits- this 465 page book is ample evidence of that- but rather, you have risen in the aformentioned arena simply by nepotism. That’s right, Nepotism. Mommy just can’t have her son working as a manager at Costco! Your vapid arguments not only undermine and cheapen the REAL threat of fascism in this country and the REAL debate that this vile subject needs in the world at large, it renders the reasoned and needed discourse cheap and tawdry. You are a textbook case of psychological projection. In ’09 I can’t wait to see your taxes raised. In fact I’m going to revel at the inevitable the sound of your whining and your predictable and ridiculous claims and protestations that you are…………wait for it…………….a victim.
Good luck, Panload. Now run off to tell your mommy that the bad, mean liberal was unkind to you today. I’m sure she won’t be surprised in the least seeing how she has spent her entire life as a mother assuring that her Jonah wouldn’t have to play by the rules that bind the reality based community.
One more parting shot.
Your vaunted “Conservative Movement”? It’s dead meat on a stick……. politically. Void of ideas and lacking a moral compass. And the saddest thing? You booger eaters don’t even know it. Well, get ready for that liberal biased concept of reality. It’s going to become a cold harsh realization.
One more thing:
I read your fucking Opus of Balderdash.
I’ll look for it in the remaindered bin in about 4 months. That’s gonna leave a mark. Maybe you and mAnn Coulter can go on a College tour. Start with Grambling U. You should start your lecture with this gem: “For many socialists and progressives, socialism was racism and racism was socialism. Nazism was socialism for a race. The Nazi view was uglier and more extreme than anyone else’s, but it was not philosophically so distinct from the views of many progressives in America and socialists in Britain.” Repeat it, verbatim, until they fully understand what you said. I’m sure you will make a TON of new friends with that one.
J.
Apparently Jonah isn’t receiving emails from me anymore. We had a bit of a to-do awhile back. would someone be so kind as to copy and paste my above email to this fat bastard and send it his way? You can sign it: Joeyess@mac.com. HEH!
Here’s his email:
JonahNRO@aol.com
I would appreciate it.
its not just what NR was saying 40 years ago that makes this stick in the craw, Jonah himself is a huge fucking racist. he’s got a creepy obsession with african americans that borders on the pathological and covers every right-wing racist base from “why can’t white people say nigger?” whines to welfare cheats (nudge nudge), the supposed dysfunctions and inferiority of black culture and the inherent animalism and bestiality of black people (cf. Katrina). A quick search of alicublog should bring up some whoppers. i cant be bothered to check whether he was one of the people pushing The Bell Curve back in the day, but i’d bet money he was.
after that astounding level of research can i have a book deal?
Is this the same person who convinced himself that Dave Neiwert was trying to smear right-wingers as racist, and then got all hot and bothered that anyone would be so despicable as to fling such a baseless canard against an entire political movement?
Despicable, I say.
It may in fact be that canards cannot be flung. Did I say canard? A baseless aspersion, is what I meant.
“This point about race that Neiwert brings up is an important one — and one that I anticipate and discuss in my book. Because he believes that racism is inherently right-wing, the fact that the Nazis were racists means they had to be right-wingers. I concede, and talk at length, about the fact that the Nazis were racists. But racism, I’m sorry to say, is not definitively right-wing in my book (literally and figuratively).”
That was awesome, kingubu.
Jonah doesn’t want to be hugged.
I really wish we could see the full 18 minutes of Teh Daily Show interview. It was chopped up so badly it’s kinda hard to tell wtf went down exactly. I’ve never seen Jon give a disclaimer before an aired interview before either,it must have been a total trainwreck.
As for Jonah,god,where to even start.
If he thinks teh liberals are the racists,he really needs to come to Georgia so I can give him a tour of my upper middle class neighborhood. I live in a wierd place,it’s a mix of McMansions(some trying to sell for over a million dollars-keyword,trying)and mostly white people from the north and older homes owned by people who have had family here for generations(and who aren’t upper middle class). The racism isn’t the territory of either bunch,but one thing they aren’t is even remotely liberal. The confederate flag still flies here,proudly. During election season,unless you want to be harassed,run off the road in your car,have your car vandalized,or have your kid threatened at school(all of which happened to our family)you openly support the GOP ONLY. There are also alot of people here,way too fucking many, who want a do-over of Teh Civil War.
This is the place that gave the world Newt and Ralph Fucking Reed. Leo Frank was hung by an angry mob of wingnuts about 10 miles from here.
What sucks is that this rotten doorstop of a book is in the top five at Amazon. Is there any way to see actual numbers of books sold,and where they where sold(not specific locations,just general parts of the country)?
Liberals are racists for pointing out that all the people conservatives want to torture are brown-skinned.
It may in fact be that canards cannot be flung.
Yes, my dear Smut, canards may be flung, since the word comes from the French (Freedom!) for duck. There are several stories about the origin of the usage, but my favourite is that of the man who had some number of ducks, killed one and fed it to the rest, and so on, until he had one duck that held all the others (obviously a Jonah-shaped duck).
So by all means, my friend, fling your aythyan missiles all you please: the word police will not hinder you.
Once again Jo’berg is stumping for the approach that actual distinctions are unimportant, and vast differences can be treated as similarities. Meanwhile, glaring likenesses are to be ignored and dismissed.
Whenever you want to. As long as you’re him. Because no one will make you justify that what you allege is similar really is, and no one will make you justify that what you allege is different really is.
So, of course, Goldbutt is right:
After all, a view that suspects should be murdered on the street without trial is simply “uglier and more extreme” than a view that suspects should be arrested, given fair trials and punished if convicted. Both views rob suspects of their liberties.
A view that individuals dissenting against a government should be jailed or expelled from the country is simply “uglier and more extreme” than a view that dissenting individuals have a full right to speak freely, although perhaps not the right to scream into a megaphone at full volume outside senior citizens’ care homes at night. Both views support the repressive force of government preventing certain types of speech.
For that matter, a view that there should be a totalitarian collectivist government run economy in which all property is the property of the State and directed by the Party is simply “uglier and more extreme” than a view that there should be a loose federal Constitution binding several States together with a government-run revenue cutter service levying tariffs on imports and taxing alcohol shipments. Both views admire governments using force to control the property of others.
And if I disagree with one of my colleagues, and express this clearly at a meeting, that is one approach, shared by “many progressives in America”, and on the other hand, if I creep into his house in the middle of the night and slit his throat so that he bleeds to death, this is simply “uglier and more extreme”. In both strategies I try to gain my point over the objections of my colleagues.
Thus, there is no time, no place, and no level at which differences of scale begin to matter and at which analogy cannot substitute for argument, So Sayeth Jobeak Goldbuzzard.
There is no time at which intelligent people can make reasoned arguments that similar things are similar, and different things are different.
This works in the defense of Goldsphincter’s preferred heroes, too. A Ronald Reagan providing arms & logistics and diplomatic support so that his evangelical army friends in Guatemala can attempt an actual genocide against the Mayan population (among whom many rebels arose or were alleged to have community support) is nothing like the Nazis and certainly not at all like Stalin’s massacres and starvations. Rather it must be reminiscent of something else, involving freedom and nice things.
But that’s okay. Because Goldbugger’s rich friends will promote him even when he assumes that no one else has ever momentarily considered and generally comprehended the Sunday school proffered dilemma that in some interestingly philosophical ways, perhaps feeling jealousy in your heart over some possession of your neighbor really is just like stealing it, and perhaps occasional lustful thoughts toward a coworker really is just like continual sexual harassment. That is, if we’re dealing with any view Jo’butt wishes to count as ‘liberal’ or ‘of the left’.
It’s okay for me because Jo’nuff has rather publicly given permission for terms as fascism to be openly applied once again to the right wingers who resemble fascists enough, and the nerdish invocation of this bulletin-board based ‘Godwin’s Law’ observation as a rule is hearby thankfully released. George W. Bush’s crimes really are just like those of Stalin; National Review really is just like a Klan circular; and free marketeers who say that workers displaced by ‘free trade’ agreements should find other work are exactly like the Khmer Rouge driving professionals out of the cities and into the fields to work as peasants.
Short quiz for the pantload:
Southern Strategy: an electoral appeal to white racists in the South made by:
1) Hubert Humphrey
2) Richard Nixon
A controversial wreath-laying visit to the military cemetary in Bitburg, where Waffen SS members are buried, was made by:
1) Jimmy Carter
2) Ronald Reagan
In the 2000 South Carolina primaries, a candidate was successfully smeared with a rumor that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock. Was this the:
1) Democratic primary
2) Republican primary
ifthethunderdontgetya: The problem comes in defining terms.
It is not racist to base part of a political appeal on invocations to white Southerners who do not like black people, have historically been opposed to the recognition of political, commercial, and civil rights for African Americans, by using moderately coded phrases to suggest that shared belief, and then following up by undermining to the degree politically possible every program you can which enforced those rights.
What is racist is the remainders of the government welfare programs which survived conservative & business & racist opposition in the early 1960s (the early programs which encouraged home ownership, job training, and which aimed to actually create jobs) continuing on to give bureaucratically entangled welfare to desperate people, only some of which are black but who will be portrayed as the majority of recipients.
The Great Society’s welfare programs which survived the right wing and business assaults is the racist totalitarian approach; declaring that you are running to put those (black) welfare queens out of their Cadillac is simply being pro-freedom and anti-totalitarian.
It isn’t racist to blame a racial minority for your problems; the true racism is, of course, any program which would somehow momentarily yet inefficiently shield some people (some of whom are minorities) from the down sides of being at the bottom of the economy.
The Klan, you will recall, are ‘liberals’, and they are not like fascists, because they did not like immigrants. That is why most of the Freedom Rides were filled with liberal white Klansmen tired of their fellow American black citizens being denied their Constitutional recognition.
El CId, speaking of terms, how about Der Dolchstoß?
The liberals made us lose in Vietnam! They’re gonna make us lose in Iraq!
(You can read these sorts of comments in the WaPo everyday, always coming from wingnuts.)
ifthethunderdontgetya: Is it so hard to guess?
The liberals made us ‘lose’ in Vietnam because their radical fascist loyalty to pacifism made them hate our attempts to protect our Southeast Asian brothers from a collectivist fascist communist Nazi Stalinist regime.
Liberals oppose our victory in Iraq because of their admiration of the collectivist Islamo-fascist jihadi challenge to what they sickly view as imperial actions by the U.S., and also they hate Israel just like the Nazis did. A victory in Iraq would suggest that Iraqis do not want to be governed by liberal collectivist jihadist tyrants, and nothing would undermine the liberals’ pro-fascist arguments as much as a successful freedom-getting by Iraqis.
Canada’s Foreign Affairs department just issued a report identifying Israel and the US as countries that practice torture.
Maybe they don’t want this to happen again.
I wondered that a few days ago as well. Some of the hardcore Christian ID rah-rah-rah-USAUSA! types would be pissed as hell about the claim that they’re tree-hugging environmentalists who want to tax everyone. If they aren’t, they’re either dumber than a fucking brick or never really believed their own claptrap in the first place.
That’s the only thing I admire about Coulter. She doesn’t whine “libruls oppressed me!” like Malkin or spin @ 3,600 RPM to backpedal out of something like Jonah. She’s sort of like the Howard Stern of neocons: “Yeah, I did something rude. So fucking what?! Maybe I was just joking.”
“Liberal Fascism,”
George Carlin, have at it…
Johan Goldberg, arguably the smartest invertebrate of all time. After the slug – which he what he resembles.
What a dope… What a maroon…
Very well said, El Cid.
Unfortunately I am beginning to think that this is all a big nasty sore festering under the surface of our national skin. If Obama wins the candidacy, we will get months and (erm, hopefully?) years of the “Obama’s pastor is a racist” and “Obama is a black supremicist” bullshit.
I wonder sometimes if there isn’t a solid majority in this country that believes that it is better to have systematic racism against minorities than to risk the possibility that even one white person should ever, EVER be discriminated against even once by a person of color. Because THAT would be a national tragedy.
I have an Onion healdline, should he pull it off:
“215 Million White People Lose Top Job to a Black Man”
He’s worse than a maroon. He’s a moran.
Anonymous editorials in the National Review – priceless. Today, we can go to any wingnut blog and read the same preening, pseudo-intellectual drivel by interent patriots, too chicken-shit to put their names behind their musings.
What everyone seems to miss about this is that any and all ideological governments, from capitalism to communism, will end up fascist if the leaders are not held in check. The Soviet Union was very much a fascist state by the definition of Webster’s Online:
The greatest thing our founding fathers did was to include provisions in the constitution guarding against the pitfalls of human nature and the powerful’s desire for more power.
Read “Thunder At Twilight” – a real history book that helps to explain how a group of people living in Vienna just before WW I spread out across Europe and Asia after WW I with differing ideologies, yet came to the same dictatorial end.
Yep… it’s the same bullshit, just delivered to you 1,000,000 times faster. Ain’t technology wonderful?
El Cid, thank you. That was what I was thinking about the other day, trying to figure out why Jonah’s book is even supposed to make any sense at all to people inclined to agree with him on everything. Because on the face of it, it is an irrational, deeply flawed premise, and I think probably any small amount of thought would make that obvious.
And yet people seem to be agreeing with him, even if they are not the smartest people on the block, and even if they are the sort of people who like to call liberals Nazis in the same way they like to refer to cars or whatever as “gay”.
It occurred to me that the only possible point he can be trying to make is that liberals, by wanting accountability for corporate misdeeds, by wanting taxpayer funded universal health care and social safety nets, by wanting Head Start or anti-discrimination programs, by wanting regulations on what can be put into the food we eat and the cars we drive and the air we breathe, are all trying to take away your freedom. Whether it’s to stop global warming so that millions don’t die or to prevent people from selling their kidneys when they get fired, it’s all anti-freedom on some level. They want to decide what is best for you, and that’s inherently fascist.
Of course, every freedom is in some way limited. It’s the only way you get government of any kind. Unlimited freedom for you means limiting someone else’s freedom. So we make compromises, and in a domocracy, we’re all supposed to be making the best compromise we can all agree on.
There’s an obvious difference between a seatbelt law that was enacted by a representative form of government and anonymous guys with bombs and guns killing abortion doctors. Jonah doesn’t seem to see that difference, or else he is deliberately ignoring it. And people who are defending his book apparently don’t see it at all.
As far as they are concerned, Hillary Clinton wants to force you to submit to her health care plan, and the fact that she would be elected (if she is) at least partly on the appeal of that plan which would then have to make its way through a consensus form of government doesn’t make that not exactly the same as the Klan threatening black families out of a neighborhood. In essence, anybody who tells you what to do for whatever reason by whatever process is a fascist. We’re all fascists.
Which would be silly enough if he wasn’t then ignoring the actual fascists in the room.
He’d have been better off sticking with vague assertions that liberals are nanny-state types who want to limit your freedom. It’s stupid, but it’s believably stupid if you are a stupid person who wants to believe it. “Nanny state” and “freedom” and “limit” are, after all, essentially meaningless in this context, and so any idiot can make a case as well as any other idiot can. But words like “fascist” have actual largely-agreed-upon definitions, and you don’t get into that sort of fight without expertise in the area.
It’s the same sort of thing that leaves people attempting to disprove evolution by re-defining “species”. It may impress the morons you usually hang out with, but there are people who know that what you’re saying is literally nonsense, and can demonstrate that.
Democracy.
Curse you, spell check! And I’m not even on any decent fucking drugs, though with a little luck I will be by the end of next week. (Stupid doctor. If Tylenol was getting it done, I wouldn’t have schlepped down town to see her, would I have. I call fascism on her!)
What everyone seems to miss about this is that any and all ideological governments, from capitalism to communism, will end up fascist if the leaders are not held in check.
Well, if we agree that fascism is synonymous with authoritarianism, I agree. Traditionally it has been a specific type of authoritarian movement, but words do tend to broaden in significance over time.
But that is another reason that Jonah is full of shit. In the US, right now, it is the conservative movement that has been chipping away at individual rights, calling “traitor” to silence dissent, and trying to unite the entire national will behind a radical program.
So if he wants to say that some people who called themselves progressives 80 years ago had some authoritarian characteristics, fine. But a lot of people who call themselves today are right there with them.
The only “freedom” that rates with conservatives is the “freedom” not to be taxed. Period. Tyranny = taxes. Well, and also the “freedom” to target, deport, torture, discriminate against, and humiliate minorities, gays, libruls, etc. The mindset is simply one arising from privilege. They feel “entitled” to all they have, regardless of the source. They feel like ANY intrusion into their world of privilege is literally an assault on freedom.
Their total lack of self-awareness or the capacity to recognize any experience other their own as valid, just reinforces this sense of entitlement.
They are a pack of Patrick Batemans without the wit, humor, and sadistic killing (although at the rate they are devlolving, the killing is only a matter of time).
But Sidhe, government is not the only entity that limits personal freedom. That is a Reaganite lie that does tremendous damage to our political culture. A genuine liberal wants a government that protects the freedom of it’s citizens, without itself being overly restrictive of personal freedom.
Conservatives don’t have a problem with the government forcing everyone to give up their hard-earned money for national defence, because they reason that we would all have much less freedom under foreign rule, or even under the constant fear of a violent attack. Fine.
But when my insurance company tells me what medical procedures I can and can’t have, when my education is only possible after I have taken on crippling loans, when the nuclear plant tells me that I don’t have a choice about where their waste get’s dumped, that also restricts personal freedom.
That does it. I’m going to write a book called “Conservative Commies” and claim Karl Rove shops at the Wild Oats health food co-op. And further, that Chairman Mao was secretly on the board of directors for the NYSE. Take that Mr. Dimples!
Hey, El Cid, could you please please PLEASE please please go post your “uglier and more extreme” comment to JoGo’s Liberal Fascism blog? (Is it accepting comments?)
I’m a racist. It’s hilarious. Ever since I started a new account on YT and have printed positive things about the Cuban side of my family as well as some negative things about how extremely white the area I live in when not in Tampa is (and picked on the evangelicals), all I get is criticism that I’m an anti-white racist. From the same people who want all Hispanics kicked out of the U.S.
Pantload was so lost on Daily without being the king of the mic after his BookTV appearance. Ahh, the history of the Progressive Movement. He cannot connect one pet peeve to the next in any meaningful way other than to insult them. I doubt if he’ll do the Colbert Report after all of this, but I can dream, can’t I?
It sort of reminds me of one twerp I met in college who said: “I’m not a racist, but those damned Japanese!…”
You are, Lex, and so am I.
If you like diversity, it’s racist, against the white population. Unless you want everyone to be white, you must hate white people. But to be multiculturalist and socially relativist for a moment, it is part of their cultural heritage.
Ped–ahh yes, that’s one place I’m being tarred as a racist (I keep forgetting, happens all the time now). My comments at Atlas on one of the Obama posts. Note, I had to point out which post due to the sheer # of them. Seriously, if she wants $$$ she should ask for it from those campaigning against Obama. Now he has radical Muslim relatives and more, and more, ad nauseum.
Besides, at this point the Dems could run anyone short of bin Laden and anyone with half a brain would vote just to insure that we not have another GOP admin.
But Sidhe, government is not the only entity that limits personal freedom.
Of course it’s not. As a liberal, I believe that government is useful in allowing us–all of us, not just the rich or powerful–to try to sort out what kind of freedoms we can all have without decreasing someone else’s freedoms. Corporations are distinctly able to limit my freedoms, by poisoning my drinking water or locking me in a sweatshop or whatever else, and government is how those of us who aren’t rich and powerful can keep them from doing it.
Of course, government is also more than capable of limiting my freedoms by allowing someone to poison my drinking water or declaring me a terrorist and shipping me off to some random country to be tortured. But a representative government is at least supposed to be something we can examine and influence in the hopes of making those things not happen.
Whatever Grover Norquist says government is not inherently anti-freedom, and whatever John Stossel says the market is not inherently free. But one of the two allows for greater participation in decision-making, and is therefore more likely to preserve the freedoms of larger numbers of people, even if the freedoms are more limited than would be given to a very small number of people under the other system.
And I’m good with that tradeoff. Most of us fairly free to live how we want is far better than a few of us extremely free to live how we want and everybody else at least potential casualties of that freedom.
As I said, it’s a largely nonsensical position to say that not allowing boiled rat asses in the local milk supply is somehow fascist. It may be somewhat authoritarian to put together a law that cars have to stop at crosswalks, but it’s hardly fascist, if only–and there are clearly lots of other reasons–because of the potential participation of all citizens in creating and amending such laws.
But that’s the only thing I can possibly figure Jonah is trying to build his point on. Liberals want to prevent you from emitting as much greenhouse gas as you like, which means they’re fascist.
the obvious fact that progressives have nothing even remotely resembling the history of murder, warmongering and bloodshed that fascists do
Well, see, it’s only racism if you don’t act upon it…
like i always say, “Not all racist are Republicans, but all Republicans are racist.”
Ped–that’s the thing, I’m pro-assimilation all the way. I wouldn’t exist without my relatives having been able to assimilate, nor would I be of such screwy mixed heritage. I tend to stay clear of the “embrace diversity” promoters as well just because of their obsessive focus on my ethnicities, when my heritage is just U.S. suburban brat, really. I was invited to one festival along with my old next door neighbor (who is gay) and we offered to sit in the display windows.
I just think the way to accept diversity is to just fucking accept it. Don’t single people out. Just be welcoming to people in general. Racism is on the rise again though, due to this immigration hatred. One needn’t be Mexican to catch crap, either. Oh well, maybe I’ll join the DAR and confuse them all. I must admit, these days I’m a little wary of being in all white crowds when I didn’t use to be. Living between Florida and the Midwest also makes me notice the extreme whiteness of the area of the city I now live in, and I’m not that used to it. The people here would feel just as out of place in Tampa though, it’s just culture shock, not racism.
The hilarious part to me is how little they realize how much more openly racially concerned Latin Americans are. Talk about some really racist comments….ROFL. It’d make most Americans’ eyes roll to the backs of their heads.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like such a fucking fascist.
You’re a clown, Tunderrella.
That’s going to leave welts.
Lex, that is an all-too-typical thread. I liked this comment:
One wonders whether or not Obama’s “Church” is teaching the historical facts that it was the United States that ended the slave trade in the western hemisphere in 1807 and that 600,000 Americans died serving in the Civil War (the war which permanently outlawed slavery in America).
Of course it doesn’t matter that the US instituted one of the most brutal forms of slavery in history, or that it was nearly the last Western nation to outlaw it. But I am a little bit happy when I imagine the day in the not-too-distant future when bigots will brag that the US was one of the first countries to allow gay marriage and that we have been instrumental in securing gay rights around the world – so that they can oppress someone else, of course.
Ped–that’s the thing, I’m pro-assimilation all the way.
But the Borg are fascist!
El Cid, thank you. That was what I was thinking about the other day, trying to figure out why Jonah’s book is even supposed to make any sense at all to people inclined to agree with him on everything. Because on the face of it, it is an irrational, deeply flawed premise, and I think probably any small amount of thought would make that obvious.
D., you begged the question.
These people DON’T think. They absorb. Too involved in the travails of Britney and Jamie Lynn, too amped because the Daytona 500 is only a few weeks away, mourning the Cowboys loss and infuriated by Yoko Romo (as pplayed by Jessica Simpson), they only want to open their mouths and have their faces stuffed, and who cares what they swallow along with the buffalo chicken strips and pork rinds?
Jillian,
Furthermore, if I understand Jonah correctly in the Daily Show interview–current liberals are different from the classical liberals that the fascists opposed, but current progressives are exactly the same as progressives from the 1920s and 30s.
He’s got nothing left; he’s just spinning his wheels and hoping that critics will choke on the dust.
But Sidhe, government is not the only entity that limits personal freedom. That is a Reaganite lie that does tremendous damage to our political culture. A genuine liberal wants a government that protects the freedom of it’s citizens, without itself being overly restrictive of personal freedom.
Well put, Ped.
The basic social contract in any nation, amongst any people, is that the government, commerce, and citizenry can be protected from each other.
Because in a working, functional society, the government is answerable to the people, this usually boils down to the government allowing business as much freedom as possible, so long as it doesn’t harm the citizenry (which you can extend to mean the planet in general).
In a dysfunctional society, such as America has become, government and business have tag-teamed.
THAT is the very definition of fascism. I wish Jonah Goldberg had actually studied in college rather than rely on mommy’s blowjobs for grades.
Furthermore, if I understand Jonah correctly in the Daily Show interview–current liberals are different from the classical liberals that the fascists opposed, but current progressives are exactly the same as progressives from the 1920s and 30s.
He trotted out the New Republic’s praise for Mussolini in 1920 as evidence of progressive love of fascism. I guess the National Review’s praise for segregationists in the 1950s and fascists like Franco then too is irrelevant.
IOKIYAR!
Alas, friends, the joke is on us. If Jonah can be trusted, ahem, the book will be listed in the number 10 slot on the NYTBR bestseller list next week.
I haven’t had time to bookscan his sales numbers and figure out where his sales are coming from–maybe it’s all bookclubs and bulk orders–but it’s freaking depressing. We are going to see this book at church thrift stores the rest of our lives. Kids, ten years from now, and going to use it for their freshman comp papers. We are going to see a stack of translated editions on Jonah’s blog in 2010. And, yeah, another dozen books that should have churned through Regency are gong to land at mainstream houses.
Argh.
The hilarious part to me is how little they realize how much more openly racially concerned Latin Americans are. Talk about some really racist comments….ROFL. It’d make most Americans’ eyes roll to the backs of their heads.
Don’t I know it – actually, I was starting to get a little nervous when the CorpCons did the whole push to include Hispanic voters in the Republican coalition. “Family Values” + immigration reform + a Spanish-language Southern Strategy could have been really nasty.
When I say that I value diversity, I don’t mean it in the “let’s have lots of exhibits at the zoo!” sense. I think that the diversity within each community is even more important, because that is what allows us to build bridges, learn from each other, and generally wreak havoc on any attept at classification.
I haven’t had time to bookscan his sales numbers and figure out where his sales are coming from–maybe it’s all bookclubs and bulk orders–but it’s freaking depressing.
Relax.
Trump did the same nonsense. He bought up all his books and forced his way onto the TBSL.
The TBSL has become the Golden Globes (Pia Zadora era) of book merits.
Look for spam e-mails in the next three weeks as Richard Mellon Scaife gives away copies with a subscription to Town Hall.
D Sidhe, you are cranking out some fine rants! You are rocking today!
I liked your rant about freedom, so let me expand – Here’s the kind of freedom the conservatives want –
Freedom to practice their religion=
Erect religious monuments that are supported and maintained by public dollars.
Force teachers and students to pray in school
Freedom of speech =
Ability of powerful corporations to control what appears on the airwaves and in print
Tolerance of the use of racial and gender-based slurs in speech – nay, endorsement!
Forcing people to speak English
Freedom of assembly =
The right to exclude people based on their gender, race, or religion
The right to exclude people from seeing government officials based on their support for the officials’ opponents.
Freedom to bear arms =
Unrestricted sale of all firearms and ammo
The compromises to freedom that conservatives are willing to accept for the “public good”are:
Prosecution of people for what they do in the privacy of their homes
Locking people up without benefit of habeus corpus
Spying on citizens and collecting data about them
LImiting the rights of citizens to sue government or corporations
Enacting laws with zero-tolerance penalties that prevent judges from exercising their own discretion.
It’s worse than that. The entire basis of Jonah’s book is the KNOWING BLURRING of the line between what is superficial and what is essential and hoping nobody notices.
Books are supposed to teach people things, not exploit what they don’t know for one’s own – I was gonna say profit, but that’s not even right. Ego? Cocktail-party bragging rights?
The above, by the way, is the charitable explanation. The real explanation, is course, is that, petulant adolescent that professional victim Goldberg is, he decided one night that since his beloved conservatives are fast becoming fascists, and people are figuring it out, there should be a book called Liberal Fascism. Because American conservatism has devolved to “I know you are, but what am I?”
For my next opus, Zionist Nazis to be followed up by Black Nationalist Crackers and then Queer Homphobes and finally Secular Ministers.
-THE Doughy Pantload
Jonah’s entire point is to get back at ‘Teh Liberuls’ who have tossed the ‘f’ word around too … er … liberally. Why he felt it necessary to address behaviour that is far less common than say, fRightWingers calling liberals terrorists, Nazi appeasers and traitors, I don’t know. But out of the number of ways he could have done this, he tried to take a scholarly approach.
FAIL.
So while it looks like he has some nefarious agenda that will make people think that progressive is fascists and war is peace and Jonah is quite slim actually, the book and his attitude about the book is nothing more than one man chanting “I am rubber you are glue,” over and over.
I suggest you go back to mocking him. But feel free to beat down any shmuck who takes his crap seriously.
GSD:
I think that you could easily find examples of all but the first of those. Of course, exceptions don’t always prove rules.
Actually, I think it’s just a continuation of the well-known phenomenon of conservative projection. Preachers shout about teh evil, evil ghey, all the while having meth-fueled rendezvous with male escorts; creationists believe that there’s an academic conspiracy to suppress evidence of intelligent design because, hey, it’s what they’d do; Republican politicians accuse liberals of undermining the military while they’re busy engaging us in as many unwinnable wars as possible.
So he accuses liberals of being fascists, while ignoring the actual fascism being practiced on his side. Whether he’s doing it out of ignorance or malice is debatable, but really beside the point.
So he accuses liberals of being fascists, while ignoring the actual fascism being practiced on his side. Whether he’s doing it out of ignorance or malice is debatable, but really beside the point.
He’s picked up Rush Limbaugh’s mantle: the clown distracting us at the circus while the techs pick up the body of the trapeze star who fell, as Al Franken puts it.
BTW, nothing and nobody can make Ann Coulter look okay by comparison. She is perfectly capable of whining. After her riff about how the Jersey Girls were having so much fun as 9-11 widows, she reacted to the criticism by acting all wounded and claiming that she was being forced into silence. I’d get the cite but my little laptop is being SLOW as hell, and besides, jeebus, it’s Coulter.
I love your posts today, D.Sidhe. What a perfect description of how we are trying to live our lives, and why the work is daily, never completed, imperfect, and heroic.
I, for one, will not be surprised if Mr. Goldberg is nominated for the Noble Pizza Prize for Literature. He certainly deserves it.
she reacted to the criticism by acting all wounded and claiming that she was being forced into silence
But even then, she doesn’t seem to really believe it. She has that cold dead look in her eyes that makes you think that she regards the whole thing as one big chess game. She isn’t trying to be right, and you will never be able to really hurt her feelings – emotion is just one of her pawns.
Jonah seems to genuinely think that the crap he’s taken is one of the singular accomplishments of academic writing and everyone should be lining up to give him M&Ms. He doesn’t just want attention, he wants to be liked. It doesn’t make him a worse person, it just makes him seem more pathetic.
One note on Goldberg’s response to Ledeen. In his review Ledeen uses the term socialism consistently with the manner in which it was used and understood in the historical context at question, that is, in Germany and Italy in the years between the two World Wars. In other words, it was a clear and obvious signifier for Marxist political ideologies and movements of the left, and the fascist movements in these two countries responded to it as such. Ledeen makes very clear in his review the fascists’ appropriation of the socialist label was done to advance reactionary causes. This historically situated, theoretically grounded understanding of the term (without any modifier—Marxist socialism is a redundancy) as a reference to a political philosophy that in theory and action put class conflict and the struggle over productive processes at its center does not serve Goldberg’s ahistorical, theoretically unmoored purposes, so he casts it aside as “a hard intellectual distinction that doesn’t need to be made.” Having averted another academic trade guild snare, Goldberg can move on with his vacuous redefinition of socialism as any and all effort to deploy public power to achieve any degree of social transformation. On a roll, he then triumphantly pronounces all efforts to alter established order as inherently racist. If we were to extend his rationale, we would find the segregationists who sought to preserve the Jim Crow status quo confronted and eventually succumbed to the socialism and racism of the Civil Rights Movement.
The Goldberg Principle conquers all!
ped–I know you weren’t doing the Display Window Diversity crap, I was just going off on it. Agreed though with your comment.
I mentioned the Gilmore book above. Nice review of it in the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/10/AR2008011003462_pf.html
re: Actor 212 and “Yoko Romo”
I know the sports discussion was yesterday, but ye Gods, that was the funniest thing I read today. I laughed out loud, told everyone around me at work drawing big laughs…
It’s worse than that. The entire basis of Jonah’s book is the KNOWING BLURRING of the line between what is superficial and what is essential and hoping nobody notices.
Jonah’s just making a quick buck exploiting the lizard brain of the American Wingnut. The American Wingnut is not interested the truth and for damn sure knows absolutely nada about European history. There’s a reason these people are called “DIttoheads”– they want others to think for them so they can tend to the important business of watching Larry The Cable Guy and Ultimate Christian Wrestling. Joe Wingnut has no fucking idea what fascism or communism or socialism or Nazism was– he just wants to hear history framed in a way that makes those stupid libruls look like… um, stupid libruls.
Jonah simply takes the “Nazis = National Socialists = Socialists = Liberals” formula and pads it to 465 pages. I suspect we’ll be seeing lots more of Jonah in the coming years. A Democrat will be elected President in November; this will mean many more Jonah Goldberg opuses. The good news is that Jonah’s readership already pulls the “R” lever every time, no matter who is on the ballot. You don’t have to worry about him having any sort of influence or anything.
My guess is that clowns like Coulter and the Pantload are actually doing more damage to the Republican Party than good. People are getting sick of the freak show.
On a similar note – with a focus more on Jonah’s apologetics regarding the Ku Klux Klan: here is a really excellent – though lengthy – repudiation of Jonah’s efforts to make the KKK part of the progressive movement.
To quote the conclusion:
“This is of a piece with Goldberg’s treatment of fascism generally: just as he has managed to trivialize a genuinely destructive and monstrous ideology such as fascism, so does he whitewash and minimize the horrendously poisonous history of real American fascists like the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, it seems as if Goldberg is almost poised to declare the Klan “liberal” or yet another “progressive” offspring; but surely even that must give a pseudo-thinker like Goldberg pause. If the Klan is just another “phenomenon of the Left,” then the word no longer has any meaning.”
Lex-
Strangely enough, I took a class at my fundamentalist bible college that was taught by a professor who was big into the display window stuff. The class was called, “Non-Western Drama” and our first assignment was to “act out our ethnicity,” by which she meant, stereotypes of our ancestors. Mine were a mix of German, Cherokee, Choctaw, English, and almost certainly a little African, but I was raised to be a strictly white Southerner. I had it out with her privately about how offensive it was to make me dress up in buckskins and tell stories just because it was more exotic than sweet iced tea. Her explanation was that she wanted our heavily white class to recognize that we all come from diverse backgrounds and there is no such thing as “Just American.” Fine, fine, whatever.
Then for our final project she wanted us to quite literally put on an ethnic circus for the rest of the school. She was going to be the ringmaster and she wanted us to stand on pedestals and act out the stereotypes that we had developed in class. Ohhhhhh no, I was NOT doing that. HELL’S NO!
anybody who tells you what to do for whatever reason by whatever process is a fascist.
Holy crap! All this time my mom’s been a fascist! Who knew?
Those NR diatribes are very telling. Those of us who weren’t on this mortal coil during the civil rights movement have grown up to learn that the racists and reactionaries of the day were mere cartoonish villains, twirling their mustaches while reciting appalling screeds over and over again.
Well, although there’s certainly a pantload of that type of talk up there, there’s also an almost equally-parceled pantload of complete self-denial manifesting itself in the whole if-the-blacks-get-rights-then-what-about-us-poor-white-people? talk. Even back then, the privileged class was repackaging itself as the TRUE downtrodden. This strain wasn’t even new then; don’t forget 19th century South Carolina moaning about its poor, poor industry and its poor, poor property rights and how the slightest concern for blacks would send both into a tailspin.
Why is this important? Because this is the Exact! Same! Thing! that court jester Jonah is doing with this book. No no no, it’s not those who’d enact theocracy, total war, and a wholesale slashing of the Bill of Rights who are the fascists! It’s the dang hippies and the whole foods! Oh, woe is us, what with them making us even consider public transportation and all!
Abortion clinic bombers are the true activists. War supporters are the true human rights believers. And on and on and on, stripping every concept of its meaning, blurring the line completely between good and bad. Know who REALLY believes in moral relativism in this country?
Hey! I’ve got an idea!
Why don’t we ask, um, you know, American black people decide who they think are bigger racists today: the liberals or the conservatives?
Gosh, if only somehow we could know what they think the answer is!
But I’m afraid this may have to forever remain an enigma, wrapped inside a mystery, wrapped inside a giant-family-economy-sized bag of Cheet-Ohs.
Bingo. We may scoff off at Jonah the Whale- this book apparently is THAT bad- but the hombre really knows what he’s doing. Distracting us from ourselves.
The most depressing thing about Jonah’s book is that it doesn’t HAVE to make sense. It could literally be 500 pages of “Nyah, Nyah, Liberals are Nazis!” typed over and over again. It would make no difference.
The authoritarian movement is teetering on the brink of becoming something very wicked, and authoritarian personalities don’t need truth or logical arguments. They crave assertions that re-affirm their beliefs and anger their enemies. Jonah has provided just that.
It should be called the Goldberg Uncertainty Principle: the definitions of words are in constant flux, until an observation (ie: critique) is made of the thesis. The made up definition of certain words pop into existence based on the influence of the observer (ie: critic).
Almost ten years ago, conservative intellectuals wrote essays and books bemoaning the fact that irony and the postmodernist tenancy to deconstruct and redefine everything was rotting away our culture. The popularity of Seinfeld was held as one example. And who was responsible for such things? Why, the “eggheaded ivory tower limosene liberal”, of course.
But now we have a self-proclaimed conservative “intellectual” who is redefining words, and Coulter and just about any GOP politician using irony to the highest degree. Now that’s the ultimate irony.
Why don’t we ask, um, you know, American black people decide who they think are bigger racists today: the liberals or the conservatives?
The answer to you question is also the answer to the larger question.
It’s okay for me because Jo’nuff has rather publicly given permission for terms as fascism to be openly applied once again to the right wingers who resemble fascists enough, and the nerdish invocation of this bulletin-board based ‘Godwin’s Law’ observation as a rule is hearby thankfully released. George W. Bush’s crimes really are just like those of Stalin; National Review really is just like a Klan circular; and free marketeers who say that workers displaced by ‘free trade’ agreements should find other work are exactly like the Khmer Rouge driving professionals out of the cities and into the fields to work as peasants.
This may be the enduring legacy of this piece-of-shit “book”: freeing up our political discourse so that it can be pointed out that if liberals are like Mussolini, then conservatives are like Hitler with nuclear weapons; if liberals are racists because they want to promote diversity (i.e., give preferences to people on the basis of race), then conservatives are racists to the gazillionth power because they want to bring back slavery, segregation and anti-miscegnation laws. Any hyperbole will be acceptabel, thanks to Jonah. I await the highly entertaining blowback in the weeks and months to come.
Does anyone have a link to the website that tracks bulk book purchases, so we can get a glimpse at how much the rating is skewed by bulk purchases? Someone linked it back when Sandpaper Snatch’s (aka Kate O’Beirne) puff piece went on sale.
Here’s the whole thing I’m noticing that Jonah’s doing – he’s defining the “liberals” that the fascists complained about as “classical liberals”
What gets me is his take that fascists were against liberalism in the European sense, not liberalism in the American sense–as if liberalism in Europe isn’t far, far more liberal than it is in America.
Hmmm…this tracks sales but it seems to me that the trend lines are currently incorporating days in the future (for which there are no sales yet).
http://www.tictap.com/salesrank/0385511841-Liberal-Fascism-The-Secret-History-of-the-American-Left-From-Mussolini-to-the-Politics-of-Meaning
Spam filter set me free!
This isn’t the bulk tracker Dagoril’s talking about and it seems to me to be currently tracking days in the future (for which there are no sales).
The spam filter hates me. Just so you know.
Have there been any good postings about how Jonah’s book readings have been going? Did the Borders reading in DC get interesting? Haven’t had much time online lately so I’m hoping someone here can be my ‘Doughy Live!’ one-stop. Thanks. I’ll have to go visit Stewart’s site for that interview.
As an aside, The Onion’s recent ‘story’ about Bush making plans for the last year of the United States before it crashes into oblivion was one of the most dead-on target stories I’ve seen anywhere lately. It was SO right.
The Nazi view was uglier and more extreme than anyone else’s, but it was not philosophically so distinct from the views of many progressives in America and socialists in Britain.
If, by “philosophically not so distinct,” he means “diametrically opposed to it in order to make sure something like Nazism never happened again,” then I guess Jonah is right.
But that isn’t what he meant, so he’s still a cunt.
.
Freedom to practice their religion=
Erect religious monuments that are supported and maintained by public dollars.
Force teachers and students to pray in school
Freedom of speech =
Ability of powerful corporations to control what appears on the airwaves and in print
Tolerance of the use of racial and gender-based slurs in speech – nay, endorsement!
Forcing people to speak English
Freedom of assembly =
The right to exclude people based on their gender, race, or religion
The right to exclude people from seeing government officials based on their support for the officials’ opponents.
Freedom to bear arms =
Unrestricted sale of all firearms and ammo
The compromises to freedom that conservatives are willing to accept for the “public good”are:
Prosecution of people for what they do in the privacy of their homes
Locking people up without benefit of habeus corpus
Spying on citizens and collecting data about them
LImiting the rights of citizens to sue government or corporations
Enacting laws with zero-tolerance penalties that prevent judges from exercising their own discretion.
Bingo.
The ‘Right’, Neo-Cons, or Republican Party, knowing perfectly well that a lot of their behavior is Fascist, and reflective of Hitler’s NAZI party, is trying to blur the meaning of those words/philosophies, while also engaging in their usual tactic of projecting their faults or negative (evil) behaviors onto the opposition.
Just the fact that they’ve been demonizing “Liberals” for 3 decades in the same way the NAZIs demonized Jews, Gays and other minorities demonstrates their fascist/nazi tendencies.
Add the almost-successful effort to legitimize torture (!) and the steady revocation and erosion of Civil Liberties… their are a multitude of fascist/nazi efforts on their side.
So they insist the Liberal-Progressive is also a Socialist of the old Communistic school, and therefore a Stalinist-type totalitarian, and therefore — ! a Fascist.
Considering their success in demonizing of the word/philosophy Liberal, if we don’t fight back –HARD– their will be horrors in store for the whole world.
Does anyone have a link to the website that tracks bulk book purchases, so we can get a glimpse at how much the rating is skewed by bulk purchases?
Sweet Jeebus, it is up to # 2 on Amazon. How? How did this happen?
I need a drink.
[…] Sadly, No!, Clif has the sorry job of responding to Jonah Goldberg’s latest load of […]
Kingubu wins Teh Interwebs!!!1!
Republican politicians accuse liberals of undermining the military while they’re busy engaging us in as many unwinnable wars as possible.
As well as actually, you know, undermining the military. Stop-loss, extended tours, non-rotational rotation, wanting their signing bonus back if a soldier gets injured, no pay increases, Walter Reed, &tc.
Is it possible for projection to be an airborne disease?
You folks are on fire today.
It’s so nice in here today without the kids throwing tantrums and making messes. Is it troll naptime?
Keep an eye on Amazon for my soon-to-be published biography of Jonah Goldberg, Literal Fascism.
Perfect headline:
Stocks Fall After Bush Announces Plan.
…it is up to # 2 on Amazon…
According to bookscan, the books are moving. I haven’t had time to dig through his sales stats but I’m not gong to be surprised when the book moves to the No. 2 slot at the NYTBR in about four weeks.
Perhaps someone at Doubleday can leak how many copies they printed, how many they advanced, etc. It would be interesting.
I’m sure he’s getting bulk sales but the question is: Are bulk sales his only sales?
Sleep tight gentlemen.
Jonah mentioned at least one bulk purchase.
Jack Fowler — publisher extraordinaire — has agreed to buy a limited number of books for National Review which I will be selling signed copies of through NRO (at, alas, a slight premium to what you’d pay at Amazon or Barnes & Noble to cover shipping and the rest).
And we’re off.
I will be selling signed copies of through NRO
Crayon doesn’t produce the most durable signature.
Cheeto dust mixed with skin oil, on the other hand, will leave a near-indelible stain on paper.
I dont think the rotten effect of Pantload’s “book” on our society will be felt until the GOPers are out of office. Once the Obama or Hillary administration is sworn in, and conservative influence in Washington is effectively nullified at the governmental level, the notion of liberal, or Democratic, or progressive reforms will be used by the wingnut establishment to get their drooling base all frothy with fear and rage about the notion of liberal fascism!!!111sixteen!11one11! here in AMericaz!!
They’ll point to crap like Pantload’s book as “evidence” of the “fact” that liberals really are just like Hitler, only with smiles. In other words, because we all know that wingers aren’t happy unless they are whining about their perpetual victimhood, a Dem-controlled federal government, coupled with “books” like Pantload’s will be the ultimate jean-cream inducing formula.
That’s when the knuckle-draggers start blowing themselves up at gay clubs, rock shows, art museums, farmers markets, doctors’ offices, sporting events, fitness centers, universities, etc.
Crayon doesn’t produce the most durable signature.
The agreement w/ Fowler/NRO specifically states that Jonah must sign them with his own blood. It’s cental to his point.
I hate to bring this up in a serious discussion, but it has been bugging me. That strange growth on Pantload’s face is not a ‘face-mullet’ — it is properly referred to as a ‘cat’s ass.’
That’s when the knuckle-draggers start blowing themselves up at gay clubs, rock shows, art museums, farmers markets, doctors’ offices, sporting events, fitness centers, universities, etc.
That’s when we start creating Blazing Saddles style false facade gay clubs, rock shows, art museums, etc. Getting them to blow themselves up without loss of innocent life is a win-win situation that we must do all we can to encourage.
My guess is that clowns like Coulter and the Pantload are actually doing more damage to the Republican Party than good. People are getting sick of the freak show.
Yep. Alienate the middle…
That’s when the knuckle-draggers start blowing themselves up
Spur on the nuts.
Spur on the nuts.
That’d be a violation of the Geneva Convention. Good thing we don’t care about _that_ quaint pact anymore.
I lifted this quote from ifthethunderdontgetya’s site:
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.”
Sinclair Lewis, 1935
Now that would be the basis for an interesting book cover (as opposed to, say, a George Carlin quote)
“Why don’t we ask, um, you know, American black people decide who they think are bigger racists today: the liberals or the conservatives”
Well we could but they’ve all been brainwashed by the grandpappy liberal fascist Soro’s and the New York Times. Same thing with the orientals and all brown people plus Jews and Unitarian’s etc…..
Cheeto dust mixed with skin oil, on the other hand, will leave a near-indelible stain on paper.
And other places, as MIchelle Malkin’s fans know.
That’d be a violation of the Geneva Convention.
Heh. But seriously, don’t republicans pay top dollar for that sort of thing?
A new interview, this time with Right Wing News. In it Goldberg provides his short definition of fascism:
Fail. Or, as Doctorb Science notes, diarrhea.
Or does he fail? A reader writes Jonah; Jonah repeats what the reader writes:
Score another victory for the Goldberg!
I also believe Jonah was *chosen* by (whoever-whatever) to push the Idea of Liberal Fascism, *** Because*** he is a buffoon, a clown, someone worthy of the most strident ridicule. This way they can try to sneak it past the true serious historians and intellects of the Progressive Sphere.
Does that make sense, or am I being sophomoric?
No, unless your definition of interesting includes the sad sight of a mental midget stammering and flailing to give meaning to his book, his thoughts, his life.
I really fucking hate cowards and JLoad is a big un.
Speaking of which, the last person to ask a question stood up to do so (he was kind of short). Johan looked rather alarmed even though this guy was three rows back.
Pathetic little dick.
Definitely, RB. If the past 8 years have shown us anything, it’s that “Cowboy masochist” has to be one of the top GOP role-playing fantasies.
If America ever needs a colonoscopy, Goldberg is where you’d insert the camera.
“A short definition would simply be — there’s a longer definition in the book — it’s one word we give for a totalitarian, religious impulse, where everything has to go together, where the state has to govern every aspect of society or at least direct every aspect of society towards some Utopian end. Something like that. It’s a hard thing to (define) which is why it’s important to define it better on paper, which I do in the book.”
Spoken like someone who has never cracked a book in his pathetic life. Dough Load, “fascism” isn’t difficult to fucking define, if one merely looks through the fucking historical record and examines fascist movements. Oh and you know, reading what Mussolini, like the guy who kinda invented the movement, said about fucking fascism, might be a decent place to start if one wanted to define the term and the various movements.
You lazy, stupid twat.
That does it. I’m going to write a book called “Conservative Commies” and claim Karl Rove shops at the Wild Oats health food co-op. And further, that Chairman Mao was secretly on the board of directors for the NYSE. Take that Mr. Dimples!
Hey, don’t go stealing my idea! My working title right now is Consservative Commies: The Secret History of the American Right from Mao to Reagan.
“Why don’t we ask, um, you know, American black people decide who they think are bigger racists today: the liberals or the conservatives”
Well, since most politically active black people tend to be liberal, that means that they’re fascists, so of being African-American Liberal Fascists they’ll obviously lie and say that conservatives are more racist. Its all part of the fascist conspiracy…
I also believe Jonah was *chosen* by (whoever-whatever) to push the Idea of Liberal Fascism, *** Because*** he is a buffoon
You’d have to be a buffoon to try to sell the argument, so it’s unlikely you’d get someone smart in any case. But yeah, it’s a job jar. Ramesh pulls “associate death with liberals” and Jonah got fascism.
Gosh, it seems Jonah doesn’t think bulk sales are real sales.
Hillary’s “Sales” [Jonah Goldberg]
The Prowler reports that Hillary’s Senate office is requiring — “encouraging” — groups to buy her book in bulk if they want her to speak at their events.
I know the sports discussion was yesterday, but ye Gods, that was the funniest thing I read today. I laughed out loud, told everyone around me at work drawing big laughs…
I’d love to claim that as original…
How is he not basically America’s laughing stock? How is anyone taking him seriously?
current liberals are different from the classical liberals that the fascists opposed, but current progressives are exactly the same as progressives from the 1920s and 30s.
That caught my attention also. What a mass of confusion going on in that brain of his. Talk about your special pleading. “Well, this label, it goes without saying, meant what it always has…but that other one, now…see, that label, my poor little confused libtard, that label has changed in meaning.”
Moron.
anybody who tells you what to do for whatever reason by whatever process is a fascist.
“Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
He’s just a bundle of contradictions.
There is more, much more, to basic training than the mechanics of operating a rifle, grenade launcher, bayonet or knife. Most of basic training is dedicated to forming unit cohesion and esprit de corps. By Goldberg’s own definition, the military and West Point are the epitomy of “fascism”.
Wierd, huh?
Funny you should mention that, actor212. Goldberg’s expansive and ridiculous definition of fascism sweeps up Christianity too.
From the Right Wing News interview. My emphasis.
The only way- the ONLY way- Noodles von Cheez Doodles keeps from being the very definition of a contradiction is his lack of support for Huckabee.
For now, that is. Because if Huckabee somehow escapes from the incoming ’68 DNC replica that will be GOP Minny ’08, I’m gonna be totes LOL when Goldberg just ups and changes his mind.
…then again, Pantload could realize that his message is best served when The Party isn’t in power, and thus throw his support behind no one in particular.
Funny you should mention that, actor212. Goldberg’s expansive and ridiculous definition of fascism sweeps up Christianity too.
Doesn’t surprise me. Religion truly is the opiate of the people and if you’re going to demand fealty, religion is a good place to instill that respect for authority.
of course, Liberal Jesus and Conservative jesus are two different people…
Hee hee… if that is supposed to be the definition of “fascism” then virtually all human collectives, groups and communities are fundamentally fascist.
“… if everybody gets together, if everybody holds hands and agrees … to what the movement dictates is right and good, then we will be able to be delivered from history, we will be delivered to a promised land…”
I think that certainly summarizes the Republican party, all religious communities, anyone backing any pretense to social morality or ethical behavior (both of which are based on what is perceived to be “right and good” for the betterment of society as a whole) and so on.
So, I guess this means that Jonah Golderg is, in fact, correct. If you adopt a definition of “fascist” that encompasses all humanity and all collectives of human beings; then of course liberals – like everyone else – are indeed “fascists.”
I guess we all owe the fascist Goldberg an apology.
So, I guess this means that Jonah Golderg is, in fact, correct. If you adopt a definition of “fascist” that encompasses all humanity and all collectives of human beings; then of course liberals – like everyone else – are indeed “fascists.”
Does that mean we are all also Jonah Goldberg?
(runs screaming)
“Does that mean we are all also Jonah Goldberg?
Oh – good lord – NO! It just means that we’re all fascists, like Jonah Goldberg and all his friends, family, co-workers and virtually all other human beings.
He’s a fascist, she’s a fascist, wouldn’t you like to be a fascist too?
No? Too bad: according to Goldberg, you ARE a fascist, quite regardless of who you are, what you are, what you believe and so on and so forth…
“He’s a fascist, she’s a fascist, wouldn’t you like to be a fascist too?”
Somebody help me. So what kind of fascist are the islamofacsists and Rush’s Femminazi’s? Do you lump or split them on the Fascist Taxonomic Tree.? And what about the tree hugger’s , would you call them dendrofascist’s? So many questions, so little time.
“So what kind of fascist are the islamofacsists and Rush’s Femminazi’s? Do you lump or split them on the Fascist Taxonomic Tree.? And what about the tree hugger’s , would you call them dendrofascist’s?
Simple answer: YES! By Jonah’s definition, everyone – ruling out jungle children raised by monkeys and lacking all interaction with other human beings (and presumably US torture victims, also lacking all interaction with other human beings) – is fundamentally fascist.
Now that someone has posted Jonah’s working definition of the term “fascist” (sorry, I just couldn’t buy the damn book) it all makes much more sense: EVERYONE is fascist, which would of course include liberals (unless you feel liberals aren’t human beings, as the Nazis felt Jews weren’t, in which case the liberals are the only non-fascists).
See how simple it is?
I believe torture victims are also fascists. After all, they want to make the US stop torturing them. The fact that they have no power to accomplish this is, indeed, central to my point, whatever it is.
LF
Yup, it’s all so clear now.
I’m reminded of the moment in Bananas when Woody Allen is wishes-he-was-casually gazing over the rack of porn: Hustler, Orgasm, 362634, Cutie, National Review, Screw…
my favorite part of the interview was how he focused almost solely on Sen. Clinton’s it takes a village book, and how fascist it is and, thus, one would assume, how important it was, and then says that he was one of only 4 people who read it.
A short definition would simply be — there’s a longer definition in the book — it’s one word we give for a totalitarian, religious impulse, where everything has to go together, where the state has to govern every aspect of society or at least direct every aspect of society towards some Utopian end. Something like that. It’s a hard thing to (define) which is why it’s important to define it better on paper, which I do in the book.
This is the yammering of an idiot who dimly realizes that he is in way over his head.
[…] at the blog this week, and I think this amazing quote from the early National Review about the dangers of uppity commie Negroes does indeed bear revisiting: Let us gently say the fiend who set off the bomb does not have the […]
everyone – ruling out jungle children raised by monkeys
I dunno…that bonobo family that moved in next door indulges in communal child rearing…
This is why fascist sports teams will ALWAYS defeat weak, individualist teams!
Miracle, Remember the Titans, We Are Marshall, Cool Runnings, Pride, Drum Line… All of these show a team coming together to overcome diversity, and ALL were relaesed by the People’s Glorious Fascist Collective that is Hollywood!
Proving that the Patriots, of course, are the ultimate fascists.
You people here are in what we call the reality-based community: people who believe that assholes like Joe Q. Sixpack actually give a shit about history and reality.
That’s not the way the world really works anymore— it’s GOP World now, motherfuckers, you just live in it!
Cuz when we conservatives bring out the buckets of elephant shit to fling at you, we create our own reality!
And while you liberal-fascist-socialist-racists are sitting there saying “What? The? Fuck?”, we’ll shitboat you again, using other types of shit. l
Lke monkey diarrhea and hyena feces, which you can study too, judiciously as you will.
And that’s pretty much how things are gonna work, be-yotch.
We’re history’s actors…and you, all you liberal fascist homosexual whole-food eating socialist racist cocksuckers can just sit there and wonder what kind of exotic, unexpected shit we’re going to force-feed you next!
LOL @ “The fact that they have no power to accomplish this is, indeed, central to my point, whatever it is.” Indeed.
I believe torture victims are also fascists. After all, they want to make the US stop torturing them.”
Yes, on second thought, I think you’re right. After all, their desire to not be tortured is based on some notion of what is “right and good” presumably leading to a “better” world in which they aren’t being tortured. So I guess that just leaves the monkey children…
“my favorite part of the interview was how he focused almost solely on Sen. Clinton’s it takes a village book, and how fascist it is and, thus, one would assume, how important it was, and then says that he was one of only 4 people who read it.”
I guess that makes it pretty clear that Goldberg is not only a fascist (since he seems to have some notion of what is “right and good” that would result – at least in his mind – to a better world); BUT that he is also a fascist supporter (collective action, the hallmark of the fascist) since he purchased, read, and commented on (and thereby promoted) Hitlery’s book.
Jonahvitch? Jonahvitch, Jonahvitch!
I dunno…that bonobo family that moved in next door indulges in communal child rearing…
Sounds like a fascist comment to me, but then again, so is this…
“Proving that the Patriots, of course, are the ultimate fascists.”
Well, obviously. Not only do they work together, interact with people, but they even wear matching uniforms – JUST LIKE THE NAZIS!
duh.
Well, the monkey kids should have escaped . Just ask bigtime non-fascist Bill O’reilly. So because they chose to fraternize with apes makes them Darwinian Fascist’s for sure.
How y’all find out about Jonah’s reading in DC? I’m all amped to go see him here in nyc, but nothing is listed anywhere that i can find.
I need to see the look on his face when I finish my question by saying “btw, I’m the one who gave Sadly, No! a copy.”
I need to see the look on his face when I finish my question by saying “btw, I’m the one who gave Sadly, No! a copy.”
You absolutely have to have someone with you with a camera to get his expression when you say that. Please?
I know, this is suggestion that regards an idea of what is “right and good” (permanently saving his reaction to your statement) that will result in a better world (or at least one with more laughter) and is therefore, you know, fascist and all, but still… Please?
Given the description of his DC reading, I’m starting to seriously doubt whether the CA-bedecked Goldie ever actually wrote this tome: he has been MASSIVELY unprepared to defend any of his themes, even the defining one of the title, at any of his appearances.
Salon, Colmes, and Stewart have all tossed him around like a cat toy.
Hell, half of Jon Stewart’s real frustration was that less than a minute in, he knew he was talking to an idiot, and he far prefers an actual dialogue.
Can someone who supposedly spent five years preparing something (anything!) be so unaware of possible arguments against it?
“Well, the monkey kids should have escaped . Just ask bigtime non-fascist Bill O’reilly.”
LOL, you’re right. I so totally forgot that we had a monkey boy readily available for analysis.
He was in New York City on Wednesday, a different brad. Judging from the schedule, it doesn’t look like there was a Borders-style opportunity come in off the street and meet the author.
Yeah, I don’t really expect he’ll have the balls to come to somewhere as fascist as NYC, but how can you call yourself a real author if you don’t come to the capital of the literary world?
I’d love him to say “the white male is the Jew of liberal fascism” out loud in front of an audience.
As I’ve mentioned here before, there were certain others who felt that the New Dealers were basically “fascists”. Just add the term “social” in front of it.
But I’ve never noted Jonah living up to the knowledge that he’s repeating the analyses of one Josef Stalin:
That’s easy. When he does another book plug at a bookstore, just ask him, “At such and such point in your book, you say: ‘the white male is the Jew of liberal fascism’. Could you please elaborate on that?” If you do so in a serious, non-ironic tone, he’ll probably answer some bullshit, but it won’t matter what he says at that point… you can just sort of tune that out. The important thing is that line got out in front of an audience.
I’d love him to say “the white male is the Jew of liberal fascism” out loud in front of an audience.
Especially in New York. Or better yet, in some Texas town where you can easily see some hardcore wingnut asking: “Did he just call me a Jew? LOL.
Can someone who supposedly spent five years preparing something (anything!) be so unaware of possible arguments against it?
He can if he blegs for research help from his Corner readers and <a href=”
hires an assistant.
I’ve actually had fantasies regarding that Jew line: a Jonah interview and that quote running as a roll, or projected on a screen that plummets down from the rafters to just over his head…it’s so fucking nutty that you can’t do much after it’s highlighted.
you’re missing the point:
Obviously, with all that racism, the NR was a magazine in support of liberal socialism at its most virulent.
Righteous Bubba said: I’ve actually had fantasies regarding that Jew line: a Jonah interview…
Damn, I promise you I’ll have to swear off S,N! should Jonah ever enter any of my fantasies…
I know, I’m a fascist. 🙁
…the NR was a magazine in support of liberal socialism …
No, no, no. Com’on, keep it straight. Liberals and socialists are fascist, so the NR was plainly representing the communist perspective (that being the antithesis of fascism); and since Communists are also fascist, plainly NR is fascist as well, which of course brings us back to Jonah – as an author for NR – being a fascist too.
I’d love him to say “the white male is the Jew of liberal fascism” out loud in front of an audience.
Especially in New York. Or better yet, in some Texas town where you can easily see some hardcore wingnut asking: “Did he just call me a Jew? LOL.
Or maybe in Atlanta, just down the road from where white supremacists murdered Leo Frank.
Liberte, fraternite, egalite, blancheur.
Right around MLK’s birthday we learn that he was a racist, being a progressive and all. I think at this point we need to step back and realize that Jonah’s only realistic goal is to muddy up the waters enough to say “OK, OK, organic food may not technically be fascist, but the label applies equally to the left and right.” Ditto for “racist.” This is all that Goldberg, Kristol, and company want– muddy the waters enough so that the right wing can stay on the offensive (in more than one sense).
“This is all that Goldberg, Kristol, and company want– muddy the waters enough so that the right wing can stay on the offensive (in more than one sense).
I don’t know if the proposed plot will work, nor do I think I’d really want to just assume that these folks are bright enough to come up with such a plot, but I’ll certainly agree that they’re offensive.
All I know is that mullet makes me hungry for a piece of cinnamon toast that fell and landed frontside on a barbershop floor.
American fascism runs straight through the actions of General Douglas MacArthur in 1932–a man who ignored the orders of the President, took US troops into Washington DC and drove the bonus protesters out of the city by force of arms, all while wearing his uniform and ignoring every scrap of advice given to him. In the end, he even took time to parade before the cameras and make sure everyone knew it was him who was saving the country from the rabble who threatened the State.
Of course, Goldberg probably thinks MacArthur was a wet dream instead of a nightmare…
No, you don’t understand. This too only strengthens his point and shows that the fascists came from the liberals came from the progressives and were on the left.
Doughberg’s points are like strange mutant creatures, riddled with some fantastic engineered virus, creatures which manage to keep going no matter how many times they are struck nor how many times an ordinary point would be dead. A certain landscape is now framed by his half-dead, putrescent, decaying points, dragging themselves forward, unable to rest in silent death, but forced to search, to push themselves on, for what purpose they do not know.
aww.. and he put a little ugly paintsplot on Forrest Gump’s nice smiley.
wev
other than the fact that he is a doughy pantload, using hatred for profit, why are we still talking about him?
No, you don’t understand. This too only strengthens his point and shows that the fascists came from the liberals came from the progressives and were on the left.
I know, I know. MacArthur and his right wing pals were all about making sure everyone thought they were undermining Harry Truman, but really, they were setting the stage for a Mussolini-styled takeover, replete with gray uniforms made out of hemp and adorned with crosses and smiley faces.
The weirdest thing about the Hillary Clinton’s book thing was possibly a misstatement, even Jonah can’t be this dumb, he actually said, “I’m one of like the four people in captivity who actually read her book…”
Half-assed attempt at a joke about people being forced to read the book in prisons? Or just massive, massive victim complex: you be the judge.
God knows he’s done nothing thus far to earn the benefit of the doubt.
Jonah, seriously. Call me. We’ll get drunk, I’ll introduce you to some friends, we can have liberal sex, you can get the hell over your issues. Even your wife would most likely be grateful, as I suspect it would make you much more pleasant to be around. It’s not like you’re a complete loser with nothing to build on. But Jesus you need an intervention and some intensive deprogramming. Walk away from your mom. If David Brock can make something useful of his life, you can too. Okay? But you have to walk away from your mom first. She’s not helping anything.
Can y’all help me? I’m trying to figure this out.
Okay (takes a deep breath) – Liberals used to be Commies. Conservatives used to be Fascists. Liberals are the opposite of Conservatives. Commies were the opposite of Fascists. But if liberals are now Fascists as well as Commies, and liberals are also still the opposite of conservatives, what exactly does that make conservatives?
Jonah, seriously. Call me. We’ll get drunk, I’ll introduce you to some friends, we can have liberal sex, you can get the hell over your issues.
Just for the sake of clarity, this arrangement is available only to the Doughy Pantload but not to any liberal fascists? Correct me if I’m wrong.
Liberals used to be Commies. Conservatives used to be Fascists. Liberals are the opposite of Conservatives. Commies were the opposite of Fascists. But if liberals are now Fascists as well as Commies, and liberals are also still the opposite of conservatives, what exactly does that make conservatives?
Idiots. At least the ones who listen to this crap.
Lawnguylander, with wit like yours, I’m guessing you don’t need help. 🙂
I just feel sorry for him. It’s pathetic, I know. But his biggest flaw is that he listens to the wrong people. I think deprogramming would solve many of his problems.
I could be completely wrong on this, but maybe it’s the liberal fascism that makes me want to do something to help him and the rest of the people he’s misleading, not to mention all the people whose lot in life he’d otherwise make worse.
Call me an optimistic fool, but I really think he could be less of an asshole if he worked at it, but it’s probably gonna take something cathartic to get him there.
Okay (takes a deep breath) – Liberals used to be Commies. Conservatives used to be Fascists. Liberals are the opposite of Conservatives. Commies were the opposite of Fascists. But if liberals are now Fascists as well as Commies, and liberals are also still the opposite of conservatives, what exactly does that make conservatives?
That’s exactly why Jonah and his drivel aren’t going to light up the salons of Europe and shine brilliantly any time soon.
The same idiots have been saying Martin Luther King was a communist. Well, not from where I sit. He was more interested in why people were living in poverty. Was there a socialist solution? Where could you go to get the answer? Social justice and civil disobedience would do what in a communist society? But what he found was that communism was the antithesis of Christianity.
So MLK decides he’s a Christian. Was he a fascist? Was he a communist? Where did he fall on the political scale? Did he try to tell people how to live or speak out about how people should be treated?
Don’t ask a Goldberg to figure it out. His head would explode trying to find a way to make it all make sense inside of his idjit head. His thing is about figuring out how to lie about what it all means.
Oh, man, I just thought of something, call me slow, go ahead, but did Jonah just call all living Nazis and KKKers homosexual vegan liberals? Oh, man, who cares what the lefty bloggers say about Jonah, I wanna know what real life Nazi and Klan guys think about the salad bar at Whole Foods, their views on gay marriage, and how they feel about Jonah’s oeuvre. Are they really okay with Jonah calling them liberals? Do they have any questions?
What the hell? I suppose if you want to loosely identify “fascists” as loosely as you’re accusing Golberg of identifying “progressives”, then maybe so…
But here is the sobering fact: There were four genocides in the 20th century that killed over 1 milllion people, and three out of that four were done in the name of communism – in other words, left wing ideolgy, not right-wing.
I would also be glad to stack up racist statements from 40 years ago by Southern Democrats vs. NR, anytime and see who comes out on top. You may not like the result.
Idiot. The black communities in the South and the liberal whites who came down to march with them were directly defying the white supremacist Democratic Party.
They knew that.
That group was defeated.
After their defeat, where did they go? What happened to those white supremacist Southern Democrats and their voters?
They became Republicans!
Do you want a list? I know, you’ll pull out the Robert Byrd thing, but the only reason Southern Republicans don’t like Byrd is that Byrd repudiated his former racism, whereas Jesse Helms, Trent Lott, Strom Thurmond, and all the other racist Republican former Southern Democrats
And I’d be glad to stack up racist statements by Republicans from 30 years ago! Or 20 years ago! Or 10 years ago!
I know! We can have a debate between all the black Republicans in Congress versus all the black Democrats in Congress! How would that sound?
I, for one, would like to know what Mike Huckabee said to the Council of Conservative Citizens.
Rohan, communism is not the same as progressivism. Read something besides the Pantload’s pre-digested nonsense.
You know, from the way people throw out that there were other genocides than the Nazi one, it’s almost as if some people are unaware that part of the intense historical interest in the Nazi genocide was that it precisely came out of the sort of society people had thought beyond such things.
Nowadays right wing nimrods just scream OH YEAH WELL COMMIES KILLED EVEN MORE as though people in developed Western economies with liberal democratic governance were expecting the sort of transitions experienced by Czarist Russia, or civil-war raged China, or carpet-bombed Cambodia.
The amount of stupid is just amazing.
But here is the sobering fact: There were four genocides in the 20th century that killed over 1 milllion people, and three out of that four were done in the name of communism – in other words, left wing ideolgy, not right-wing.
“Facts” are a lot more sobering when they’re backed up by actual evidence. But I’m guessing that the one you’re hanging on the right is the Holocaust. Does this mean you disagree with the pantload that the Nazis were left wingers?
By the way, that too is an interesting thing. Were the Leninists & Stalinists wrong when they denounced libertarian socialists and anarcho-socialists as “ultra-left”? Or were they not left enough?
After all, those two groups opposed the kind of concentrated authoritarian power embraced by the Leninists and Stalinists and Maoists.
Presumably, there simply is a massive pile-up of every group Jonah doesn’t like on “teh Leff”, including Stalin’s notion that the New Dealers were also fascists, just like him, except not.
Of course, then we come back to that original notion that the definition of “left” and “right” have to do with whether or not there were working classes in conflict with an ownership class, and whether or not you said you wanted said working classes to displace the ownership classes in wielding power.
Saul anticpates my new book, Libraro-Fascism: Check it Out!
Holy crap, wrong thread. I blame RSSofascism.
I can’t believe we all missed this blatant case of “Liberal Fascism.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/dining/16capi.html?ref=dining
And in the “paper of record” too!
Liberal Fascism Blog update:
1. We of the radical right shall overcome!
2. Goldberg has linked to John Emerson on Liberal Fascism. Could Sadly, No! be next? Stay tuned!
From J-‘s first link:
I have been amazed how many people have written me to say “I’ve been saying this all my life! Thank goodness someone finally wrote this book!” That is great kindling for a bonfire of sales.
I’m not surprised he’s amazed but I think the person saying “finally someone wrote this book” the loudest was his editor. And I think that second sentence is in there specifically to bait someone on the left into making a joke about how his book should be burned. Or maybe he’s just stupid.
Late to the party here, but I’ve been busy.
Two things:
1. I was able to make it out to JoGo’s “talk” at the DC Borders. An hour of nothing. His appearance the following day on the Daily Show contained many of the same exact “points,” almost verbatim. He spoke for about 30 minutes and then took about six questions which ate up another 30 minutes. I was unable to ask a question myself. He was able to work in the current talking point about homeless obesity = homeless must be doing okay.
2. My co-worker, the one who once said, “I knew it! Bush is a fucking liberal!” actually owns a copy of Mr. Goldberg’s “work.”
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