Saturday, May 03, 2008

Das Clintons sind unser Unglueck!

A few days ago, progressive fascists -- no, the term is not too strong, although it may be a tautology -- on Huffington Post scored Sydney Blumenthal for spreading "right-wing" talking points on his email list. The charge is a lie, as documented here by eriposte and Joe Conason -- who has written some rather vile anti-Clinton material himself this campaign season. (Have you finally noticed the stench emanating from your bedmates, Joe?) After quoting Conason, eriposte adds that
...it was the Obama campaign and some prominent Obama supporters, who from day one, have been the biggest, McCarthy-like proponents of guilt-by-association when it comes to Sen. Clinton. In their view, every pathetic or outrageous comment made by anyone who could even remotely be linked to the Clintons was a reflection of the Sen. Clinton's personal views (remember The Clinton Rules and The Obama Rules). They are the ones who made guilt-by-association the reigning standard in this primary (starting with Bill Shaheen). Further, just as they wilfully and happily embraced McCarthyite guilt-by-association as their de-facto political philosophy and weapon against Sen. Clinton, they simultaneously sought to actively decouple Sen. Obama from the unacceptable and outrageous statements made by prominent Obama supporters/surrogates against Sen. Clinton and sometimes demanded no accountability from the Obama campaign for such statements. Then, they professed utterly fake outrage and crocodile tears when their pathetic guilt-by-association "game" was turned against them by the media using Rev. Jeremiah Wright, then falsely smeared Sen. Clinton on the Wright story and outrageously tried to tie the Clintons themselves to Jeremiah Wright. These are the McCarthy-like tactics that Dreier obviously could care less about since they all involve The PreciousTM and some of his prominent and precious supporters.

Second, where was Dreier when the Obama campaign or pro-Obama bloggers did not just pass on but actually endorsed fraudulent posts by right-wing hitmen like Matt Drudge or Robert Novak? Was he outraged that some pro-Obama bloggers propagated and endorsed the latest fabrication?
Turns out the latest fabrication -- the doctored "Kantor says nigger" video -- originated with Drudge. See this D.U. post, by the apporiately nicknamed "unsane":
Shit BREAKING---Drudge has Kantor video up--this thing is blowing up

Hillary has FORFEITED her chances at a nomination with this SHAMEFUL trash. Fucking ATROCIOUS.
How does this sort of propaganda differ from the offerings of Julius Streicher? Answer: It doesn't. And the hell of it is, the quote above is kind compared to many others you can find by Googling the words "Kos" and "Hillary" and "bitch." And yet these people accuse Hillary of negative campaigning!

The disgusting behavior has caught the attention of Vanity Fair writer James Wolcott. Wolcott's piece is undercut by a desire to pretend that both sides are at fault, though he is unable to cite any pro-Hillary blogs displaying the kind of psychopathology on daily display in Cheetoland.
Perhaps no vilifier of Hillary Clinton traipses across the footlights with a bigger satchel of calumnies than Andrew Sullivan, who diagnosed Mrs. Clinton as “the hollowest form of political life,” a “sociopath.” His solo act had and has a symptomatic significance. Published under the aegis of The Atlantic’s stable of notable byliners, Sullivan’s Daily Dish blog is must-reading among the media elite, those sheep. His words extend wider ripples in the ocean of emotion that passes for opinion journalism than did those of his fellow cobblers. In a column for The Times of London entitled “The Clintons, a Horror Film That Never Ends,” Sullivan compared Hillary to Glenn Close’s bunny boiler in Fatal Attraction—“Whoosh! She’s back at your throat!”—and the Clintons as a couple to the fast-running zombies in 28 Days Later. “The Clintons live off psychodrama,” he contended in a classic pot-kettle-black moment.
Moulitsas, Stassinopoulos, Sullivan -- have you noticed something about the creatures who have taken over the Democratic Party? To wit: Where were these people ten years ago -- and what gives them the right to kick lifers like me out of the party?
What chafed Hillary supporters was how many supposed liberal outposts chimed in with this chorus of abuse, from the op-ed pages of The New York Times (where only Paul Krugman seemed to have a kind word as Maureen Dowd kept reminding readers of Monica Lewinsky’s lipstick traces on the Clinton saga, and Gail Collins seemed to be putting on some sort of puppet show) to the studios of Air America (where hosts Randi Rhodes—who was suspended, then resigned, after calling Clinton a “whore” at a public appearance—and Thom Hartmann kept the hostility percolating), to progressive Internet mother ships such as Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post, where even a notable progressive such as Barbara Ehrenreich tried to tar Hillary with fascist associations. (The majority of Huffpo’s high-profile contributors were so over the rainbow about Obama that it was as if they had found rapture in the poppy fields and were rolling around on their backs like ladybugs.)
(By the way -- if you want a closer view of the "revamped" Kos, click on the image above. Feel free to reprint it.)

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been waiting for SOMEONE to take on Sullivan. He's in a class by himself, has been for a while.

I saw THE WAR ROOM when it came out - when was it? 1998? If Kantor had said the N Word then, don't you think that a firestorm would have erupted? Geez, these people can't even employ elementary logic. Their stories fall apart under the weight of their own absurdity!

NatRev on Hillary:

"She's had great photo ops, is handling Bill O'Reilly like he's a pussycat, tore Obama apart in the debate, and is making her opponent look evasive by demanding more. Team Obama can brag about their continuing delegate lead, but there's no doubt who's been running the more effective campaign for the past two months or so.

Even if she doesn't win the nomination, political strategists will be studying her comeback for years to come."

NatRev!!

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/

Anonymous said...

Where were these people ten years ago, indeed, Joseph. Not giving a rat's ass? Scoring suck-points with Republican employers, constituents, fathers and father-figures? Counting their money? Molesting their children? Mocking and abusing liberals, as well as people who actually do care about change and have sacrificed quite a bit of our own quality of life, upward career mobility and personal resources to make it happen?

They disgust me.

Hyperman said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

Godwin's Law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states:

"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

Godwin's Law is often cited in online discussions as a caution against the use of inflammatory rhetoric or exaggerated comparisons, and is often conflated with fallacious arguments of the reductio ad Hitlerum form.

The rule does not make any statement whether any particular reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be appropriate, but only asserts that one arising is increasingly probable. It is precisely because such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued that overuse of Nazi and Hitler comparisons should be avoided, because it robs the valid comparisons of their impact. Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and more recently blog comment threads and wiki talk pages.

Joseph Cannon said...

"Cool graphics constitute an automatic exception to Godwin's Law."

-- Cannon's Law

Joseph Cannon said...

By the way, H-man: I just Googled the words "Kos" "Fascist" and "Clinton." I did a similar serach using "Democratic Underground" instead of Kos.

I found some very rank things, as you might imagine.

And did you complain, H-Man? No, you did not. Stay off this site from now on, hypocrite.

John said...

Joseph, you're wrong.

The original video was posted at You Tube by BingoFrogger on May 1st, who joined You Tube that day.

I have identified the people who are apparently behind this.

It's some of my best work.

John
SluggoJD

Joseph Cannon said...

Well done. The Jamal Boone you identify appears to be the same fellow as this guy...

http://www.spock.com/Jamal-Boone-N2pXb1Wm

Young kid. I think he lives in Compton.

J Mils B productions appears to be a cyber-only "store" for leather goods, with a mail drop in Venice.

John said...

Hmmm, not sure about that, but you might be right.

Joe, I've also just outed a big troll, Politikewl, who posts anti-Hillary and pro-Obama videos all over the place...and I really mean, all over the place.

Politikewl is Scott Dimeler, of Middletown, PA. He owns precisionchaos.net, and goes by the name of Jiggles.

John
SluggoJD

Joseph Cannon said...

Well, John, you know, he's got a right. How can I mind someone stumping for his candidate? What bugs me is the lying, the hypocrisy, the demonization, the racist-baiting and -- god help me, but I'm going to use a word I thought I would never use -- the gate-keeping.

Anonymous said...

Joe,

The stink about this cheap little doctored video will die down soon.

There are bigger fish to fry, to wit: THE NEW YORK TIMES. Yeah, they endorsed Hillary, but their coverage of Messiah-boy has been breathless bullshit. Then, to the malicious glee of Olbermann, they renounced their endorsement of Hillary after the PA primary, in one of the stupidest things ever written in that paper (and that's saying a lot.)

Now this:

(Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/opinion/03blow.html)

"Since January, the Clintons have pummeled Barack Obama with racially tinged comments and questions about his character.

Hillary Clinton has questioned why he didn’t walk out on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.; why he “denounced” but didn’t “reject” Louis Farrakhan; and whether he is too chummy with the former radical Bill Ayers. She chastised his characterization of white working-class voters as being highfalutin and chided him for not agreeing to a street-fight-style debate. "

Lies, bullshit, distortions, every word.

I have a secret: a lot of people right here in NY-town don't take the Times seriously as a news source. It's more of a style arbiter and gossip purveyor.

It's record as a source of journalistic integrity isn't very high. In addition to Jayson Blair and Judith Miller, there are the scandals of Walter Duranty (who somehow missed the Ukrainian famine while being stationed in Soviet Russia during the 1930s) and the fact that during all of WWII, the Times published hardly a word about the massacre of Europe's Jews - kind of a large omission. There are other examples, but those suffice.

The NY Times is totally corrupt.

Anonymous said...

I knew it, I fucking knew it.

When I read about the Kentucky Derby (which has lead on Drudge since yesterday - how many people have died in Iraq since then?), I wondered if the Obama-bots would crow in malicious glee, and make analogies between Messiah-boy and Hillary. (You know: Big Brown wins, the filly comes in second, breaks her ankles and is euthanized.)

I rejected that thesis. It was too much, even for them.

I was wrong.

http://tomwatson.typepad.com/tom_watson/

Now, if we call Obama "Big Brown" here on in, will we be accused of racism?

If we call Obama, Obama, will we be accused of racism? Whichever way, it doesn't matter. We are supposed to keep our mouths shut until he is anointed the Sun King, and then shield our eyes from his ineffable splendor.

Anything else would be racism.

Anonymous said...

First off joe fuck you for thinking that Kos et al are anywhere as bad as Der Stürmer. Obviously you didn't loose 80% of your family in Auschwitz, or like me in the Lodz Ghetto. So to bring up Streicher, and say they are the same. Wow. I guess there's no difference between exclusivity on a golf course, and a good ol fashion lynchin neither?

And it just shows how totally ignorant you are of the evolution of propaganda and its form and functions in the 2nd half of the 20th century. Where YOU (amerika) perfected it. Or am i mistaken? Was i not singing "A While New World" when watching Aladdin in Baghdad only 9 months after Desert Storm?

If you think that Kos and Huffpo are the most egregious examples of fascism in America, and that their propaganda is equal to the nazis, then you are now completely insane.

An insanity which is evident from your 'experiment' "just Googled the words Kos Fascist and Clinton. I did a similar search using "Democratic Underground" instead of Kos."

What you did not search to take this from (antiKos)propaganda to a real study are the following:

KOs + HRC + Fascist 132,000
KOS + BHO + Fascist 127,000
DU + HRC + Fascist 110,000
DU + BHO + Fascist 173,000

So what does that say?? And now you are going to point the finger at Kos and Huff and say they are Fascists. (BTW if you google cannonfire + BHO/HRC + Fascist your margin is closer to 4%)

Joe you have told me many times that you read and respect Parenti.
But i don't believe it. If that were the case, then why not admit that almost everything the US has been doing since WWII has been fascist? And that your very own economy while not brownshirtted and homoerotic, is a fascist economy. Really, tell me what is different between your economy and Hitlers or Musolinis? You all privatize public services. You all take over other countries to serve your economic needs. You all downplay unions and keep getting rid of the middle class... You (America) have a fascist take on economy, you have a fascists way of dealing with the rest of the world, and even your culture and 'art' can be seen in the same sick neo-classical vein that hitler was so into...

And to make matters worse, you bring up the old propaganda models to show how much better 'we' are now ...So if you are going to start throwing around words like that, be aware that you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

I know you wont print this and that I am not allowed to speak in your blog anymore, but knwo this; if you think there is no difference between a blog and the nazi party-- and you have the nerve to pontificate on this while your country has killed over a million people in the past few years--- well then you are sicker than i ever thought....

AitchD said...

gate-keeping? Is that anything like the graphic-rich red-lining of the late 1960s the realtors designed after the fair-housing laws went into effect? Like the doubling in 'value' of homes in every 'white' community after affirmative action went into effect? Coinciding with the devaluation of the dollar in 1973 (soon cut in half) and the consequent rapid surge in crude oil prices (traded in US $, of course), which coincided with the colonial African states becoming independent - but suddenly unable to afford to build an infrastructure (roads, schools, hospitals, airports, etc.)? Just like in many other areas, I see piece-of-shit homes and properties here in Charlotte, NC, selling for $1 million, which sell for 1/3 that in the Pittsburgh area. Location my ass, your ass, their ass. Pittsburgh has the finest medical center in the country; a very superior public school system (I ought to know); more colleges and universities per capita than anywhere on the planet; but Charlotte has nothing, almost literally nothing. Not even water. Maybe it has the highest per-capita rate of billionaires; it's a small town with the worst schools on earth, and the worst traffic snarls owing (to my eyes) to the endless all-day streams of private-school busses. There's a church on every corner, though. Hyperbole? Use Google Earth. Charlotte is also the banking HQ of the US, and NASCAR's home, including NASCAR's new museum.

After I read that Tom 'one-man, one-vote' Hanks has announced his support for Obama, I realized that I feel sorry for Tom, whose homes' values have tanked, whose other assets are shrunken, and who must be wondering who in their right mind will continue, or be able, to pay good money to see his shit-for-art work. I won't be surprised, even if y'all will be, when the cotton-picking subject of 'reparations' raises its dark head again, and this time won't go away. Can we talk? Let's call it a different kind of stimulus program. Who will object? Marxists? Poor white trash? Blues singers? As in the past, it will so overbloat the money supply, that 'real-estate' values will over-inflate again, giving home owners their nests back to them, maybe including Hummer riding mowers, simply by changing the locks on the gates. At the least, your present $85K 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath 'condo' will be worth $3 million. BTW, you haven't heard an honest discussion about 'universal' health care yet only because you probably can't imagine the morbidity and mortality of the excessively unhealthy South; that is, if you think affirmative action and school bussing were 'divisive' issues, you might want to try to transcend hope and change. Geez, we let them start using the word 'trillions' like it's just another number, but a trillion is impossibly big. If you say 'one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three...", you could count to one million in about four months; to one billion in slightly more than a generation's time; and to one trillion in thirty-thousand years. Okay, then: on your mark, get set, go!

Joseph Cannon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Joseph Cannon said...

lee,

Actually, I thought your comments rather interesting. Not that you are welcome here, but you held my interest this time around.

"Obviously you didn't loose 80% of your family in Auschwitz, or like me in the Lodz Ghetto. So to bring up Streicher, and say they are the same. "

Yeah, but the guys who engineered the atrocities got their start with propaganda broadsheets, didn't they? Large oaks grow from small acorns. I am simply asking you to examine the acorns.

"If you think that Kos and Huffpo are the most egregious examples of fascism in America, and that their propaganda is equal to the nazis, then you are now completely insane."

There are no direct equivalences. Ever. There is only history. We learn from it or we don't.

I honestly see the progressive movement as heading in a fascist direction.

This has happened only since the internet media arm of the movement was taken over the Libertarians-in-disguise: Moulitsas, Stassinopoulos, Sullivan. I am only beginning to learn about which side of Salvadorian war Moulitsas' family was on. I know much more about Arianna. I don't know enough about Karlin or Skinner to know if they are also Libertarians at heart.

At any rate, the parallels are not exact -- when are parallels ever exact? -- but we see enough of them to be troubled.

We see the formation of a mob mentality.

We see an unwillingness to compromise.

We see a contempt for moderation.

We see people take a perverse and thuggish pride in the embrace of the most extreme language.

We see the utter dehumanization of perceived enemies.

We see the language of violence and the violence of language.

We see paranoia.

We see the reflexive reliance on a conspiratorial view of history.

We see a loathing for truth.

We see an inability to be self-critical or introspective; doubt is now a sin.

We see a longing for answers outside the right/left paradigm.

We see the superficial appeal to populism matched against the behind-the-scenes wooing of the monied.

We see a contempt for the liberal consensus that, as Krugman pointed out, was accepted by both parties throughout the 1945-1976 era.

One thing we have heretofore missed was the emergence of a cult of personality. And now we have that.

Actually, we had some hint of that cultishness in the Dean movement.

And before you say it: It is not that I think that Dean, or even Obama, could ever be dictatorial figures. (I admire Dean immensely, as a matter of fact.) What I refer to here is the QUALITY of the movement which formed around these men. At what point does endorsement become worship? At what point does a political movement become mob action?

If the internet mob can cross that line in promoting a decent fellow (Dean, say), might not a similar mob later cross still other lines in promoting some other-than-decent future figure?

My point is that we should distrust ALL forms of political mobsterism, even one that seems benign. When a mob mentality emerges -- when it is seen as something normative -- then we have reason to fear. Today, the mob coagulates around a good or fine person or a not-so-bad-as-all-that person. But tomorrow...?

When I compare the progressive cyber press to the Nazis, I'm not referring to the Goebbels-controlled Nazi press of 1939. I'm referring to broadsheets available in Munich in the 1920s, which spurred the brownshirted bullyboys into action.

And yeah, I think this comparison is instructive. I won't apologize for it, no matter how many times people quote Godwin's law to me.

The writers in the 1930s who tried to warn America of Hitler's movement were later, in the McCarthy era, denounced as "premature anti-Fascists." I guess that is my role here.

I am -- "prematurely" -- saying that the progressive movement is degenerating into fascism. I am saying that the progressive movement is an impediment to, not a catalyst for, the return to the liberal consensus which Krugman describes.

This idea will strike many as unacceptable -- at present.

In the future, people reading these words may see them as prophetic.

Gary McGowan said...

O.K. Joseph, Now you’ve done it. :)

”We see the reliance on a conspiratorial view of history.”

Lyndon LaRouche and colleagues have been called almost every name in the book, including “conspiracy-theorists.” The one-man Ann-Randist tyranny called wikipaedia (or something like that)’s mission in death is to rid the world of contheo. How in hell does he or his munch kin think the cheetoists get their crunchy messy fix? Cheetos grow on bushes in their yards?

LaRouche wrote this great little (little compared to, say, Bratia Karamazovy) smilingly-named piece called "The Secrets Known Only to the Inner Elite" in which, somewhere a good way through, he addresses the subject of histography. I won’t ask you or anyone to track it down and read it, but it is really good. Conspiracy theorist, my ass.

Not that there don’t exist bad contheos in abundance, but, well, it just sort of pushed my button.

Better to be premature than a limp-dick.

LaRouche is going to give another of his premature analyses of the world situation in a webcast May 7, by the way. Again, I won’t urge you or anyone here to watch it or download it after, but I will mention they do take and answer E-mails. The Q and A following his introductory remarks is often the best part.

(To save us all another post by me), AitchD, that was an inspired and truthful rant. I hope, and trust, for your sake you don’t type as painfully slowly as I do.

Anonymous said...

We see the formation of a mob mentality.
…and of course mobs never existed before 2007 in the USA??? Or in the world before Fascism? Come on…. Mob mentalities are bad, but to call them fascist (instead of looking for real fascism) helps no one.

We see an unwillingness to compromise.
Joe Cannon? What? Who is unwilling to compromise? Huff Kos and the 45 vocal assholes on their site? Or you? Or more to my point, what rotten apple did we compromise with geopolitically? How has Cuba been getting along with all your compromises? How well have we accepted Daniel Noriega’s return?

We see a contempt for moderation.
..and we didn’t see that when Reagan got rid of the solar panels on the white house roof? We didn’t see that with the October Surprise? WE haven’t seen that with a 20 year anyti-liberalism campaign?

We see people take a perverse and thuggish pride in the embrace of the most extreme language.
Not a facet of Fascism. And again, you probably don’t listen to much gangsta rap, but read some lyrics someday….

We see the language of violence and the violence of language.
Was Musolini’s language violent? Like below, please explain how this is at all related to Fascism (not Nazism)? Or for that matter how this is different from the previous comment?

We see the utter dehumanization of perceived enemies.
Oh really! And no one in the United States has ever been dehumanized? Was it empowering to have to use the colored’s washroom? The colored’s water fountains? And how humanizing or dehumanizing is crack??? (not even looking at Ark) The crack epidemic, facilitated by the CIA led to a dehuminzing or 10% of the American population (and the media’s fixation in gang bangers, gangsta rap and the like didn’t help with the images portrayed to people, sure didn’t humanize—and they are supposed to be part of us, not even an enemy)… and of course, we didn’t dehumanize Gooks, or Sand Niggers, did we? Oh no, not at all…..


We see paranoia.
And that is exclusive to the Fascists? Was that what the lords of the UK, Henry Ford, Walt Disney at all were so attracted to? Or was it the corporatist economic stance? Is that a cornerstone of Fascism? A “you’re either with us or against us” attitude?

We see the reflexive reliance on a conspiratorial view of history.
Find me one historian who says that conspiracies are a basic tenet of Fascism? And worse yet, what this implies is that there have been no conspiracies in the USA. When the fact is that it has been one long string of co-ordination and plans to conspire since day one (or again am I mistaken, did someone named Kermit Roosevelt not overthrow a democratically elected Persian leader? Did the US not take out 30-40 governments since WWII with whom they did not see eye to eye? Do you know any Serbs, Joe? Maybe you ought to talk with them about what was going on in Bosnia before you folks decided to stop the alleged “ethnic cleansing” and give the KLA their own country. You can call them conspiracies if you want to brush them off--- but to many they are real.


We see a loathing for truth.
…As opposed to the “truths” we were told before… about Salvador Allende and his 9/11 about Turijo, about the ‘truths’ of the refugees from Nicaragua (who were all working for the Guardia or for Somosa).Any truth there about Haiti?? What truths exactly were respected in the 50s? the 60s? the 70s???


We see an inability to be self-critical or introspective; doubt is now a sin.
Oh an McCarthy was a genius of self criticism!

We see a longing for answers outside the right/left paradigm.
This has got to be the biggest joke of them all. As if Fascists want to get off the left right paradigm. Come on Joe—my country Canada has 5 main parties. Are we fascists now too? And if you look at the spectrum, if communism is extreme socialism on the left—what do you think is extreme capitalism on the right? The libertarians you are fighting with are fascists who expect that they will get corporate handouts just like Musolini did to his pals and just like Hitler did to his cronies…. But make no mistake they are not on some other spectrum just because they are extreme.


We see the superficial appeal to populism matched against the behind-the-scenes wooing of the monied
Now that is totally different than a president I can drink a beer with… what exactly is there that is different about the Oman’s than any president since 1980? Was Reagan anything but populist? Didn’t he hire a secretary of the interior when he found out the guy was at a rodeo? Did Bill Clinton play a bassoon on TV? Oh no it was a sax, and he sure as shinola wasn’t playing Pendereki

We see a contempt for the liberal consensus that, as Krugman pointed out, was accepted by both parties throughout the 1945-1976 era.
So you are basically saying that there have been no real liberals since 1945. And yet when someone gives you a Chomsky reading on JFK you go ballistic… interesting

One thing we have heretofore missed was the emergence of a cult of personality. And now we have that.
Um, really? Never had that before?? There’s no airports named after living Bushes? And what about Reagan? No cult or personality there ...riiight. And am I mistaken that immediately post911 the MSM was all up in W’s butt about how he’s our “daddy figure” You have no [OJ] Cult of [Britney] Personalities in the USA? Ha ha ha ha ha

And some things that we see (and have been seeing since WWII) which you forgot to mention (I know it doesn’t apply as well to AntiO-man sentiments):
***Obsession with National Security
Plutocracy choosing the autocrats
***"Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato."
***Irrational jingoism and chauvinism
***Folk Mysticism (like “Ein Folk Ein Reich”) all about how great we are and how evil other peoples are… total xenophobia.
***Opposition to labor parties and trade unions.
***Even while being completely un-religious, religious imagery and mythology gets wrapped up in religious iconography to serve the political aims.
***Wages slashed, Tax exemptions, subsidies, cutting social welfare expenditures, to ensure profits for the corporatist.
***an expansionist military regime, paid for by taxes but really to maintain profits even in a sinking environment (even post dot com bubble) with huge military contracts, i.e. major capital investments.

…and like I said before Privatizing of public services like the buses, like hospitals, like garbage removal, armies, schools, social security…

So go on saying that the progressive movement is degenerating into fascism. Thats a good one. a bunch of websites who have no control over anything i have just outlined. Who is really responsible for the new degeneration into fascism, Joe?

Anonymous said...

"We see the utter dehumanization of perceived enemies. "

like calling them a brainless "Obots" mob ? I know you think of yourself as some superior elite who knows better than people who support Obama (but not people who voted for him before being against him like you), but you're the first one to dismiss your perceived ennemies with name calling... You insult people and you're surprised and act as the poor victim of a mob afterward. Quite amazing. If this is your house, what you're doing is the equivalent of putting big signs on your lawns with "PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT OBAMA ARE BRAINLESS MORONS" and you're shoked afterward
that some people are throwing eggs at your garage door ?

"The writers in the 1930s who tried to warn America of Hitler's movement were later, in the McCarthy era, denounced as "premature anti-Fascists." I guess that is my role here.

In the future, people reading these words may see them as prophetic."

what a grandiose image you have of yourself, it's magnificient. Are you the oracle of the blogosphere now ? But i'm not sure the writers of the 30's were fighting a personal war with some web sites. But it's part of the mental disease process, the difficulty with boundaries, it becomes about the individual who thinks he has some grandiose role to play in history.

Anonymous said...

Joe your house is an Oak fores. So when you are"simply asking [one] to examine the acorns," it's kinda silly. Look around you:

[and no, i did not cut & paste the following excerpt-- i had to transcribe it from one of my Parenti MP3s]:

In Germany the same story between 1933-35 wages were lowered anywhere from 25-40%. Wage taxes were instituted, municipal poll taxes were doubled. Payroll deductions helped finance the Nazi controlled Labor Front. And the NLF controlled the party organizations and the health and unemployment insurance all of which lowered wages by another 20-30%. That is the things that were taken out of your pay for that. And the non-profit mutual assistance and insurance associations that had existed before the Nazis came to power and free labor unions were abolished. Their funds were taken over by private insurance companies that charged more while paying out smaller benefits.

There’s something else both of the fascists leaders did. In both Italy and Germany the process of privatization, state owned enterprises such as power plants, steel mills banks, railways, insurance firms, steamship companies, and shipyards were handed over to private ownership. For a song. Like gifts.

Corporate taxes were reduced by half in both Italy and Germany. Does that sound familiar? Taxes on luxury items for the rich were cut. And inheritance taxes were either drastically lowered or abolished. Just as they have been here in America.

In Germany between 1934-40 the average net income of corporate businessmen rose by 46%. Enterprises that were floundering were re-floated by State bonds, recapitalized out of the state treasury. And they were returned to private control when solvent. So you see these are people who say socialism doesn’t work, but when capitalist businesses start to fail, they go socialist. They take the money out of the public treasury and then re-float these businesses. Does that sound familiar to people worrying about the S&L bailout [this was obviously an older speech]? With numerous enterprises, the State guaranteed a return on investment. And assumed all the risks of investment losses. So the investor didn’t have to worry about any losses, and if they did loose, he would get his investment money back from the state treasury.

This is why the capitalists did like fascism.

Anonymous said...

And one last thing-- if you think i am making this stuff up, or being irrational especially when i say that Fascists love to stop labor unions (and wait! but we have unions here!!) three words for you: Taft-Hartley Act

AitchD said...

Just back from Gary Buell's Covert History blog, and, well, while he's still betting that Barry will win, now because Barry has adorable kids, I'm betting that the JCS will give us a coup d'etat, since they'll either give the order to attack Iran any day now or be forced to resign - or take the third (fuck me? fuck you) option. Even though last week it was chestnuts, and this week it's acorns, I'm hoping (but not betting or predicting) that Joseph will be the junta's press secretary.

Joseph Cannon said...

lee, your words ARE irrational. Honestly, much of the time I don't know what point you are trying to make. At other times, you seem either to miss my point completely or to buttress it unintentionally.

Did I say anything about labor unions? Did I say anyting about Allende or Trujillo or any of those other unconnected data shards you've decided to fling at random?

Did I ever intimate that fascism cannot assert itself in other ways? Fascism is a poisonous liquor that, like any other liquid, takes the shape of the vessel into which it is poured. It began as a left-wing movement, to a large degree. I know you won't believe me, because you won't read the writings of Feder and Strasser. But if you do check them out, you'll see what I mean.

The "progressive" variant of fascism now matters most to me, because I was until recently thought to be allied with progressives. I need no further justification for my stance beyond the sensible and pragmatic advice given in Matthew 7:3-5.

I have to focus on one particularly bizarre statement which demonstrates that you are an unwothy debating partner on any historical matter.

"Find me one historian who says that conspiracies are a basic tenet of Fascism?"

Find me one who would DISAGREE with the idea!

I don't know if you are asking for hstorians who associate fascism with conspiracy theory, or if you are asking for historians who talk about conspiracies committed BY fascists. Either way, we have plenty of examples.

Offhand, I would name Konrad Heiden, James Poole, William Shirer, Alan Bullock (who said "Hitler was jobbed into power by backstairs intrigue"), Ralph Waite, Arthur Derounian, Nicholar Goodricke-Clark and James Webb.

After you ahve digested those works, I would direct your attention to the historians of post-war fascism and its intersection with conspiracism. Kevin Coogan, George Thayer, Morris Kaminsky and George Johnson come to mind. Certainly you could consult Kurt Tauber's awe-inspiring compendium, "Beyond Eagle and Swastika."

Of course, you could consult the writings and speeches of the Nazis themselves. Mein Kampf is filled with conspiracy theories. Nesta Webster, Queen of Conspiracism, was a British fascists. Or you can look at the words spoken and written by such American fascists as Father Coughlin, William Dudley Pelley, Gerald L.K. Smith, Willis Carto, Yockey, Goff, Rockwell, or...well, the list is almost endless.

Hell, the issue of Der Sturner from which my illustration derives propounds the most pernicious conspiracy theory of all!

lee, I could go on, but why bother? I think you've proven yourself an unworthy adversary, and I won't give you a voice here again. Waste of time.