Everyone reading this has been indoctrinated in the cult of anti-fascism, where Hitler is a mysterious super-villain, with magical powers. The Nazis are a hyper-efficient military machine designed to kill all that is good in the world. It borders on the ridiculous, but it has been effective in establishing fascism as the worst evil imaginable. There’s not much worse than being called a Nazi, other than having been an actual Nazi. Outside of prison, Nazis are considered the worst thing possible, even worse than child molesters.
On the other hand, Bolshevism has never been given the same treatment, despite the body count. The Nazis killed a lot of people, but the Bolsheviks were every bit as murderous. In fact, Stalin was vastly more efficient at killing the inconvenient. His policy of starving the Ukrainians killed more people than Hitler’s death camps and it did so much more efficiently. Not only that, the Bolsheviks exported their murderous ideology all over the world, causing tens of millions of deaths. Maybe more than 100 million.
Yet, you can be an open Bolshevik and there is no punishment for it. On every college campus in the 1980’s, for example, you could find clubs for Marxism, various forms of third world communism and even pro-Soviet organizations. Of course, hipsters have been sporting Che Guevara gear for decades. Guevara was not just a murderer and a communist, he was an over the top racist. He really hated blacks. Read his diary and even David Duke would squirm over some of the things Guevara said about blacks.
Anti-fascism evolved from an academic fetish among Frankfurt School members into a cult of sorts in the 60’s and 70’s. The Antifa loons of today are well within the tradition of prior anti-fascist loons. The puzzle is why no similar movement ever started in response to the Soviet atrocities. Even if you think the Nazis were worse than the commies, in terms of intensity, the Bolsheviks were around a lot longer. They also managed to kill, or cause to be killed, millions around the world. The commies were a global killing machine.
Why is the former the symbol of evil, while the latter is still popular?
The anti-Semites argue that the reason the Bolsheviks get a pass is that Jews invented communism and Jews now run the world. It is certainly true that Jews are, as a group, politically radical and opposed to Western traditions. It’s also true that Jews were wildly over represented in Marxist movements, including Bolshevism. Having won the ideological war with fascism, it made a lot of sense for Jews in America to use the Nazis as a lever to pry open the doors of the ruling class. Self-interest made fascism the great villain.
The fatal flaw in this theory though is that while it explains why anti-fascism remains a powerful force in the West, it does not explain why Bolshevism gets a pass. Stalin turned on the Jews in 1948, when he saw how his Jewish subjects responded to Golda Meir and the establishment of Israel. When 50,000 Jews showed up in Moscow to cheer their new ambassador Stalin decided he had a Jewish problem. From that point until the end of the Cold War, Jews in the communist bloc were subjects of official repression.
There’s another problem and that is the assertion Jews have the power to bewitch and beguile the masses. Even accounting for their exceptionalism, Jews are still 2% of the American population. Unless they are a race of super smart aliens with the ability to control minds, like the John Carpenter film The Live, it’s unlikely that they have controlled the debate for 60 years. If they are a race of super intelligent aliens from beyond the stars, we will never know it, so there is no point in contemplating that option.
Paleocons, like Paul Gottfried, have suggested that communism may have an appeal to Christians that fascism lacks. That is, communism in the abstract is inclusive, universal and egalitarian. These are concepts that you find in Christianity, at least in the general sense. Anyone can become a Christian and everyone is equal before God. The Social Gospel sounds a lot like neo-Marxism and post-colonial socialism. Liberation Theology in South America is explicitly Marxist. The current Pope is out of this movement.
The problem here, of course, is that, in Europe, the Latin countries were explicitly Catholic and fascist. In fact, some scholars argue that fascism is an outgrowth of Catholic ideas like corporatism and localism. Spain under Franco was both Catholic and fascist. Portugal under Salazar was also Catholic and fascist. Of course, Mussolini’s Italy was very popular with American Progressives until the outbreak of the war. The best you can argue is that fascism seems to have had less appeal to Protestant academics that Bolshevism.
The elephant in the room is that this argument connecting communism with Christianity is made almost exclusively by Jewish anti-communists. This could simply be an example of the strange lack of self-awareness among Jews. That is, they are instinctively trying to shift the focus from their coreligionists, who are wildly over represented in Bolshevism, by laying the blame on Christians. All the best Christmas songs are written by Jews, so maybe they know something about how to sell this to Christians. Who knows.
The fact is, the anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic arguments explaining the popularity of Bolshevism versus the demonization of fascism, don’t hold up under scrutiny. Both answers have some truth to them, but they don’t provide a complete answer. A big reason is that no one, especially anti-fascists, can provide a workable definition of fascism. In the book Fascism: The Career of a Concept, the aforementioned Paul Gottfried does an excellent job explaining the various and contradictory definitions of historical fascism.
This is why conservatives fall for the “liberals are the real Nazis” stuff peddled by grifters like Dinesh D’Souza and Jonah Goldberg. Fascism is a poorly defined political movement that can mean just about anything at this point. Even in the interwar period, the various fascist movements had some things in common, but they also had things in common with the Bolsheviks. After decades of anti-fascist proselytizing, fascism is simply a catch-all term for that which the Left currently finds upsetting or threatening.
As is often the case, the reason for the relative cultural positions of Bolshevism and fascism is due as much to serendipity as anything else. For example, Frankfurt School anti-fascism came packaged with the claim that America was a proto-fascist state, which made it attractive to European academics looking for a reason to oppose their new conquerors. Before long, the provincial clod-hoppers from the American academy were getting in on the trend. Anti-fascism became a fashionable pose for the bourgeois radicals.
It was also a useful dodge for leftists who could shift the focus from their own unreliability in the Cold War onto their critics, by calling them fascists. It’s a good example of how immediacy can have a far greater impact on societal evolution that design. The Frankfurt School types never seemed to contemplate the role of the pseudo-intellectual poser, but their critiques set off a chain of events leading to anti-fascism becoming a handy weapon for feckless airheads and preening popinjays to gainsay their opponents.
Another interesting twist is that the current fad of anti-fascism is probably the primary driver of the new anti-Semitism. Younger people have no emotional attachment to the events in Europe a century ago. The leftist street bullies and campus enforcers have managed to make anti-anti-fascism attractive. This has opened the door to old fascist writers and thinker that have been memory-holed for generations. Julius Evola has probably sold more books in the last ten years than in the previous fifty.
Even more critically, modern anti-fascism has made the corresponding generation of Jews reckless and stupid. The social media meme “fellow white people” is the sort of thing that never would have been noticed without the anti-fascist hysteria. Previous generations of Jews were more circumspect, careful to avoid publicly living the stereotype. Younger Jews, caught up in anti-fascism as hipster cause, have managed to define themselves as an absimiliated alien tribe, with a chip on their shoulder about white people.
Given that the West is well into a post-industrial age where intellectual capital is the means of production, it is long past time for these industrial age ideologies to disappear, but we are also in the post-Christian age. People have to believe in something, even if it is opposition to something that has not existed for three generations. Similarly, opposition to the hauntology of anti-fascism, is providing a breeding ground for a new politics and a new metaphysics that exists outside the strictures of prevailing orthodoxy.
Forget “anti”-fascism, forget even “anti”-racism, the only thing is AntiWhitism.
ALL whites are “fascist” “racist” “Nazis” unless they support White Genocide thru MassInvasion.
J created Communism and later AntiWhitism. Thanks to USEFUL WHITES, JFK signed the White Genocide Act, and only HALF A CENTURY later, winner against all odds “Hitler” Trump is reconsidering it.
USA 1965 = 90% white
USA 2015 = 50% white (newborns)
NB. Would Trump have won if not for Merkel’s (“George” Sauron’s) 2015-super-invasion-exploit?
You wrote:
“There’s another problem and that is the assertion Jews have the power to bewitch and beguile the masses. Even accounting for their exceptionalism, Jews are still 2% of the American population. Unless they are a race of super smart aliens with the ability to control minds, like the John Carpenter film The Live, it’s unlikely that they have controlled the debate for 60 years. ”
Jewish people OWN about 90% of the media in the USA.
http://tapnewswire.com/2015/10/six-jewish-companies-control-96-of-the-worlds-media/
It’s VERY easy to “beguile” the masses when the only hear/read one side of every story.
Now you know. Have a great day! 🙂
Whatever one thinks of the Jews, remember, they do not have Jewdi Mind Control. Not all Soviets were Jews, nor are all Americans.
Guevara was not just a murderer and a communist, he was an over the top racist. He really hated blacks. Read his diary and even David Duke would squirm over some of the things Guevara said about blacks
One of the inconvenient truths memory holed by the left is that Batiste was black.
Exiting the Vampires’ Castle was simply an instance of premature anti-anti-fascism.
My two favorite movies on this topic are:
“The Damned” : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064118/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_2
“The Conformist”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065571/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
A pitch-perfect soft sell, Zman
This is how ya slow walk ’em
And a huge thank you to Ursula for directing us to @TOOAJoyce and the Flowerman project in 1947.
The Frankfurt School was a small part of that; apparently, “pathological altruism” isn’t genetic at all. Revolutionary stuff there, Ursula.
All these academic theories are well and good, but regarding the question Why is fascism evil and Bolshevism gets applauded, for the average leftist American zipperhead, the answer is just two words: Star Wars. This dumb little sci-fi movie is about as deep as their metaphysics really goes.
The naive Manichaean “Star Wars” has Nasty Mean Bad Guys in charge of everything, and We are the hippy-dippy Good Guys, bravely fighting back from our little communitarian caves in Berkeley. Never mind that the fascists, by equating the State with the Volk, viz. the actual ethno-religious-racial “community,” were the real communitarians. Their little leftist fish-brains can’t process that far.
Add in generations of increasingly brutal and hateful propaganda about Holocaust, Slavery, and Civil Rights Movement (viz., the Only Three Things That Ever Happened in the Past), and you’ve got an utterly uncritical, historically illiterate mass of zombie Goodwhites marching straight over a cliff, while on the sidelines the Happy Merchants are at hand-rubbing speeds fast enough to travel back in time.
Hey man, we may be extinct, but at least, like, we weren’t Nazis.
Great summation. If only Z (wasn’t that a movie about Greek Fascism?) could see what Zippy does. Perhaps he takes himself too seriously – or not seriously enough! Or both simultaneously. Or successively. Or neither, both ways again. What did, was it Chesterton, say? Angles can fly because they take themselves lightly. I meant to say Angels but perhaps my hand was guided….
Congrats Lugh on the worst comment in the history of the internet.
Apparently Z asked this question to exhaust everyone.
Quite! Going around in circles get tiring, even for Nascar hillbillies.
But! We’re not allowed to say,
“Communism was a Jewish thing, fascism was gentile”, because aliens. Verboten!
It’s a very good essay. You’ve really got to read Gregor’s book; Marxism, Fascism and Totalitarianism. Executive summary: Fascism was a socialism for identitarians. Hence the battle between Fascism and Socialism/Communism was really a battle between different types of socialism.
I think Fascism can be given a fairly precise definition. Let us hearken back to the words of the creature who gave us the term: Benito Mussolini –
* All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.
* Fascism is a religious concept.
* Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is
a merger of state and corporate power.
In other words Fascism is a religion of the State, which is considered all-powerful, and it appropriates the economic power of business and industry to serve the state religion. As the historical record suggests, Fascism as practiced is totalitarian and utterly hostile to notions such as individual liberty. Seen from this perspective, Fascism differs from its cousin Socialism in that it has total control over private business, rather than going to the inconvenience of actually taking over the means of production. Fascism is two steps short of Communism because it does not actually abolish private property, but leaves it in the hands of people kept on a very short leash, whose property can be expropriated for administrative convenience at any time. There is a certain ghoulish brilliance in Fascism, for it avoids the responsibility of actually running businesses, making it easy to attribute any failures to the business folk under the thumb of the State. It avoids the much greater administrative structure required to actually administer in detail industries as was attempted in the former Soviet Union.
Fascism is the flavor of totalitarianism most likely to some degree of durability. In Socialism and Communism, the problem of keeping people working to feed the State is insoluble without enormous administrative surveillance and the real threat of a bullet in the back of the head for insufficient revolutionary ardor and energy. Fascism can identify those people with the ability to produce/create and leaves them no choice to do so but by wearing a short leash whose other end is held by the State, with the benefit of having a measure of wealth and just enough latitude to produce things the State wants. I have argued that for this reason, all totalitarian regimes converge toward Fascism in the end; otherwise, they burn out rather quickly, just as did the Committee For Public Safety, Mussolini’s own failed attempt, and Pol Pot’s savage rule.
Yeah, Walking, fascism isn’t much hemmed in by utopian ideology, so, when circumstances change, its leaders can easily adjust on the fly.
In NS Germany, Hitler could proclaim Jews to be “honorary Aryans”.
Money talks, BS walks.
The individual is nothing alone, without a community he cannot be an individual. As the Ancient Greeks said, a man alone is either an animal or a god. And let’s face it, far more likely to be the former. Thus Ayn Rand tricked generations of gentiles into misunderstanding their own history and traditions. And once the Jews got control over advertising, they piled on! The Marlboro Man!!! The Duke!
Then the Nazis certainly did qualify as fascists. They had a council, 12 guys I believe, and every business in Germany had to pass muster.
Hitler and Mussolini lost the war. Stalin was on the winning side at the end. Mao’s ruling class has not been overturned.
The only thing history despises is he who loses the war.
“Why is the former the symbol of evil, while the latter is still popular?”
Because we didn’t have a third world war. The entire identity of the modern world is built on WW2 and its aftermath. If there hadn’t been any nukes and we’d have naturally had a third world war in the 1960s or 70s with the defeat and occupation of the Soviet Union, the culture would have shifted to include the Soviets on the level of the fascist threat from the previous generation. We never conscripted an army and invaded the Soviet Union the way we did with Germany. We never occupied any Soviet cities or liberated any Soviet gulags. Instead of a hot war that would have made the communists another enemy we outright defeated like the nazis, we had a Cold War that was fought in the background. Our elites got used to the situation and weren’t really going to shake everything up for ideology; they expected it to go on forever. When the Soviets finally did collapse, a lot of our government wasn’t in a rush for it to happen.
“Paleocons, like Paul Gottfried, have suggested that communism may have an appeal to Christians that fascism lacks.”
For people looking to fill the gap where redemptive religion used to be, the Utopian idea of everyone reaching the promised land of peace and universal brotherhood in this world is appealing. It also helps that it’s all ultimately “over there”. The believers here get a nice story to comfort themselves and don’t have to see any of the messy consequences. As long as it was in Russia or the Third World, it can remain something idealistic that fills the longing where God used to be. If actual communism broke out anywhere near any of those same people in the west, they’d try to flee the country after a week.
“Even more critically, modern anti-fascism has made the corresponding generation of Jews reckless and stupid. ”
It always feels like the idea of American Jewry in a lot of people’s minds is permanently stuck in 1959. In the last 50 years, its been a community that has been hollowing out, is in decline outside of the Orthodox and is highly intermarried and assimilated. When the bulk of them act like brainless hipster liberals, its because they are just brainless hipster liberals. The main thing American Jewry is known for in the Jewish world is being the richest and most ignorant Jewish community in human history. The people you are talking about are a bunch of Mark Mezvinsky’s; tribal membership is background material. Its like being Italian or Irish in America – some holidays and such, nothing to be ashamed of but when he married Chelsea Clinton, he was more concerned about the catering being vegan than that his wife to be wasn’t Jewish.
Very good, Brooklyn.
If there’d been TV coverage of US troops in the Kremlin, this would’ve been legendary, akin to footage of Japan’s surrender on the Missouri.
“they are just brainless hipster liberals…. the richest and most ignorant Jewish community in human history” is classic.
Feinswine’s conduct in recent months may well become the exclamation point on this.
And it was otherwise for Ivanka and Jared. He’s Chabad and they believe they are destined to rule the world. The Orthodox are moving into the World to replace the degenerates. All the worst for us.
A lot of comments are referencing fascism without first defining it. That was a point made in Z’s post. Fascism has strong connotations of Hitler & Mussolini, and everyone agrees that it’s bad, but that still bypasses the definition. I’ve always understood fascism as the marriage of government with corporate power, with nationalistic overtones. It differs from socialism/communism in that private property is sanctioned, and can be more successful than communism because corporate wealth helps underwrite government initiatives (like war) and aids in the reach of propaganda. Both socialism and fascism are leftist tendencies, but to my mind fascism is the path for the intelligent leftists, while socialism is for those who live in dreamworld. (I’m defining leftist as tending toward powerful authoritarianism.) I’m sure someone can refine that definition but I think its close. Need to read Gottfried’s book.
Fascism is Nationalism. Full stop. It’s economics will be what serves the Nation. And that means a mix of Capitalism and Socialism. Full stop. But not our Capitalism since they must be loyal. And not Marxist Socialism either. It’s not Left or Right. It’s another line altogether.
Are the Amish Left or Right? They live in their own homes and have their own private farms. Yet they work together and own things in common. See the problem? Same with Fascism. It is its own line – and not just a midpoint in the current line of private/public.
Do you know what a Fasce is? It’s a stick. The Culture Hero, Cincinatus, thus taught the early Romans: He picked up a single stick and broke it. How weak the individual alone is. He picked up a bunch of sticks and tied them together, and then tried to break them. He could not. So it is with Society. Together we are strong. Thus, Fascism. The sheaves of wheat tied together? The double headed axe? The eagle looking forward and back? Maybe you’ve seen some of this in public buildings? Or on old coins? Fascist iconography/
Rubin interviewed Claire Lehmann (Quillette) last week. She spent a lot of time politely talking about the problems on the left, But when it comes to describing the problems on the right the tone shifts and she’s fully in support of throwing people into the void for being alt-right, because all alt-righters are racist nazis and simply awful humans. blah blah blah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afmxd42UNZA&feature=youtu.be&t=43m25s
Silly, SILLY girl. She needs to shut her pie hole and just go back to the kitchen where she belongs.
And put on more modest clothes.
Her feminism is showing.
I watched a bit of her response. He asks what the Alt-Right is, and though she’s editor of an ideas magazine, isn’t the least bit interesting about it. “Something something, white nationalist, blehrg blerhg, they send death threats.” She sounds like a stoned beauty contestant when she answers, lol. I must say I’d marry her at the drop of a hat.
Really good, as usual, Lance, esp. on over-representation of Jews everywhere, and on “take one or two passages from a major religion way out of context”.
That’s quite how propaganda works.
If a religion lasts long enough, it will, by the nature of things, spawn “heresies” which push buttons, to grind “precious” axes.
This is esp. likely, in places (e.g. Europe) where you get a whole bunch of distinctive Nations (esp. with different languages) in a fairly small area.
Esp. when the small area is close to other vibrant cultures, as Europe is to those of the Middle East.
Senor Zed,
Just a recommendation, but I think it is important for everyone on our side of the divide to stop using Wikipedia unless there is no other choice. By providing links, we are supporting the very organizations that hate us. Please try using infogalactic whenever possible.
I am really glad to see that you are being discussed and referenced much more these days – must feel like you are doing something right, huh?
Interesting tid-bit: the content of wikipedia is open source. There is already an alternative called “Infogalactic” (I think).
They often have great introductory articles. Most people here would be helped by googling “Fascism” and reading what they have to say. I mean instead of just making up stuff or fantasizing about how “left” or “right” Fascism is when those words don’t apply at all.
The reason Nazism is vilified and Bolshevism is not is (a) Bolshevism won, and (b) the ruling class of the west has been leftist ever since the Whigs.
As for Jews being overrepresented in the Bolsheviks: sure, they certainly were. They were also overrepresented in the Nazi party, especially considering its disposition. Jews are consistently and highly overrepresented in every elite group and institution that is not explicitly anti-Jewish, and even then they tend to be somewhat overrepresented. Bolshevism was as elite as you could get in that place and at that time. Being a Communist opened many doors for you in both the USSR and the USA.
Recall that, to a leftist, the ends always justify the means. It’s not about the body count, it’s about WHY Nazis killed people vs. WHY Bolsheviks killed more people. The Bolsheviks were killing for Equality, therefore those deaths – in the mind of a leftist – are moot. Any good leftist would be happy to repeat the cycle all over again, and isn’t the slightest bit embarrassed when we end up with, for example, Venezuela.
Which Jewish anti-communists make the argument that communism is an extension of “Christianity”? Several do make the argument, quite convincingly and with plenty of primary sources, that the religion of equalism (AKA: secular humanism, universalism, or just liberalism) is directly descended from certain denominations of Christianity, namely the quaker/puritan movements. Many Christian and secular anti-communists even refer to SJWs as neo-puritans. But to characterize this as a self-serving indictment of all Christianity is like saying that classifying O157:H7 as e.coli is an indictment of all bacteria by self-serving virus apologists. It’s nonsense.
Judaism has spawned many of its own harmful doctrines; for example, neoconservatism is little more than a militaristic mutation of “tikkun olam” and has a pretty high body count of its own. Equalism happens to have its roots in certain Protestant offshoots; it’s a modern mutation (or corruption, if you prefer), and there’s practically no difference between Mainline Protestantism and liberalism.
The majority of these horrendous ideologies tend to operate the same way: take one or two passages from a major religion way out of context (tikkun olam, love thy neighbor, neither jew nor greek, etc.), and use that principle to manipulate and bully the genuinely religious while building up lots of other poisonous over-intellectualized doctrinaire bullshit around it.
So let’s keep them out next time, right? Since they are ultimately only out for themselves, right?
The following is a list of films dealing in some way with the Holocaust:
1. Schindler’s List (1993)
2. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
3. Life Is Beautiful (1997)
4. Kapò (1960)
5. Holocaust (1978– )
6. The Pianist (2002)
7. Train of Life (1998)
8. Fateless (2005)
9. Playing for Time (1980 TV Movie)
10. The Grey Zone (2001)
11. Seven Beauties (1975)
12. Europa Europa (1990)
13. The Counterfeiters (2007)
14. Amen. (2002)
15. Angry Harvest (1985)
16. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)
17. Divided We Fall (2000)
18. Conspiracy (2001 TV Movie)
19. Landscape After Battle (1970)
20. Anne Frank (2001)
21. Uprising (2001 TV Movie)
22. Escape from Sobibor (1987 TV Movie)
23. Das Boot ist voll (1981)
24. God on Trial (2008 TV Movie)
25. Defiance (I) (2008)
26. Jacob the Liar (1974)
27. The Ninth Day
28. A Love to Hide (2005 TV Movie)
29. The Diary of Anne Frank (1959)
30. The Wall (1982 TV Movie)
31. Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal Story (1989 TV Movie)
32. Triumph of the Spirit (1989)
33. Bent (1997)
34. The Island on Bird Street (1997)
35. Sunshine (1999)
36. The Shop on Main Street (1965)
37. The Pawnbroker (1964)
38. The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009 TV Movie)
39. The Hiding Place (1975)
40. The Final Solution: The Wannsee Conference (1984 TV Movie)
41. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
42. Rosenstrasse (2003)
43. Nackt unter Wölfen (1963)
44. Gebürtig (2002)
45. David (1979)
46. Max and Helen (1990 TV Movie)
47. Murderers Among Us (1946)
48. Edges of the Lord (2001)
49. The Aryan Couple (2004)
50. The Truce (1997)
51. The Devil’s Arithmetic
Now, name the last movie about the Holodomor you remember seeing at your local theater.
Hey, you left out “The Day the Clown Cried”. Unforgivable! Well, I guess it’s sort of forgiveable, since very few have seen it.
In fairness (and I fully agree about the political weaponization of the Holocaust, in cinema as in everywhere else), though, you have to admit that sinister Nazis hunting down saintly Chosenites who use their wits to evade and escape, is much more melodramatic than a) the (((Commissars))) come to your farm and steal your grain, then b) everybody slowly starves.
They also make more movies about Irish emigration than the Irish famine (which, btw, was also a deliberate genocide), for the same storytelling reasons.
that Jerry Lewis reference was fukkin gold!
OT: Fatty Goldberg looks like he is trying to creep back from his previous virulent anti-Trumpism. Maybe. Didn’t read his article, but the tag line indicated it was supportive of Kavenaugh.
Funny. Can we make it Fatty McGoldberg?
Hey, now, Fatty’s ok.
I mean, at least he’d make a stylin’ lampshade, amirite?
McHungus: (Arrogantly demands answers to a series of blustery, confused, semi-nonsensical questions.)
LF: (Patiently attempts to answer same.)
McHungus: (runs away, gracelessly sputtering unfunny insults to cover his retreat.)
Did I leave anything out?
“Both answers have some truth in them, but they don’t provide a complete answer.”
Fallacy of the Naive. In the exceedingly messy and bedeviled sphere of human affairs, a tidy, “complete answer” to any question large enough to be worth pondering is rare indeed.
Some people here are doing some excellent historical excavation about these issues, so credit where it’s due. But sadly, I think the current crop of Americans are so historically blank-minded and ignorant of the past that historical researches, though true, are not realistically useful explanations as to what’s going on in these tiny, tiny minds. He who controls the past controls etc. And if the past can be occluded successfully… (cue sound of much Merchant hand-rubbing).
American political thinking and general public discourse has become almost unimaginably infantile, sentimental, emotional, and hysterical. This is not helped by the fact that English is an inherently sloppy, imprecise language. Fascism, like “racism,” has become a big, over-broad, sloppy, functionally useless word; it’s no longer really a word or a useful political term of art, it’s just a cudgel, used by stupid people to whack other stupid people. As Z-man observes,, in functional present reality, “fascism” just means “whatever leftists don’t like.” Just as “anti-semitism” functionally means whatever Jews don’t like.
no, English is the most expressive language existent. People may be sloppy in its usage, but that is on them.
Actually, English is an amalgam of Greek, Latin, old German, ancient Britain (and maybe a few more I left out). That’s why we have “height” which is German, and “altitude” which is Latin.
“Expressive” does not equal “precise”. Just look how sloppy you’ve been, right out of the gate. Now imagine your average bugman’s ability to think or speak with even a jot of precision.
“English is an amalgam…”
Is your day job Assistant Vice President of Making Other People’s Points FOR Them?
Hey, will you look at that. I guess English is indeed an expressive language, at least.
please professor, give us some examples that show how English is an inherently sloppy language.
Also, show me how a language with low expressiveness can also be precise. Show us how precision is possible in a limited language like native Hawaiian, or one of the African click languages.
Sorry you are butt hurt because someone pointed out you talk shit.
Well said. Almost ashamed to admit it but I think McHungus is probably more hungus than the rest of us.
Awfully anal today, snookums, with all the poopy insults. Are those “expressive,” or simply childish? You can’t answer, because you don’t have a clear (read “precise”) idea in your head of what you mean by “expressive”. This is clear because you wrongly have some zany relation in mind between expressiveness, precision, and the “size” (whatever that means — see?). Native Hawaiian is perfectly “expressive” for the needs of a small, backwards island kingdom with few things to talk about. Speaking of tiny island, you probably have no idea how expressive Gaelic is. You’re tripping all over yourself — not because you’re stupid (clearly aren’t), but because you’re speaking… in an imprecise language. Note, many other tongues are no better, but my point above was not to give a linguistics lesson but to address an angle of the OP.
But since you asked for examples, here are three.
1. What is the qualitative or metaphysical or functional difference between “freedom” and “liberty”? Some people think there is none, some do, but those who do can’t agree what it is.
2. “All men are created equal.” One of the most troublesome sentences in American history. Sure, there’s a long-winded Lockean explanation but nobody knows it and no one believes it. And don’t complain that Jefferson was a lazy writer, because his next two assertions are crystal clear.
3. “Capitalism.” WTF? We have this one word for at least a dozen forms of economic activity, which the language tricks us into assuming are the same thing. Sure, we could modify it, viz. “finance capitalism,” but we rarely do, and the sloppiness of the word informs/distorts our thinking.
Ca suffit?
“
No. Agree with Lester Fewer.
English is a living language that could be somewhat precise, but because of the dumbing-down of the masses, it continues to lose that quality.
Latin (particularly Ecclesiastical Latin) is VERY precise. And it is exactly because of its “dead” i.e. “fixed” and no longer changing status, that it is still used at Mass.
The references that the commenters are making to Christianity (ie Catholicism for the most part, until Henry couldn’t keep his Johnson under control in the 1550’s and Martin Luther changed the Bible to suit his own liking), as related to late and mid-20th Century developments in political and social philosophy, I think are directly related to the Communist and Freemasonic infiltration of the Church, starting in Ernest around the early 1800’s. And then after that with Vatican Council II, (the 60’s cultural revolution is a direct result/correlation) everything REALLY became a sh*t show for the West.
again, give an example. and try not to meander off into other stuff along the way. You know, something more than your opinion.
Well aren’t you quaint, McHungus.
I didn’t realize that giving an historical summary that’s directly related to Z’s post about political philosophy was an opinion.
Interesting.
I’ll have to remember to call you out on all future grammatical and English expression mistakes henceforth, since clearly you know more than I do on this subject.
Guess i’ll have to go study more classical -rather than ecclesiastical- Latin, so as to more precisely express myself in the future here.
And i’ll assume you will understand it, since you must be more articulate than I.
Carrie: “English is a living language that could be somewhat precise, but because of the dumbing-down of the masses, it continues to lose that quality.”
Yeah, plus the Irish, English, Americans and blacks can’t help but get irreverently creative with words. As it’s said, a living language.
At higher levels there’s also a fearful habit of keeping things vague, so as to avoid “traps” or being thought narrow on a topic. Sophisticates equate vague with subtle. You’ll never hear an interview with an educated person where he doesn’t compulsively use the modifiers, “a sort of”, “a kind of”, “almost an”. Rather than simply commiting to the right word. How crude that would be.
Professor Dickhead: “There was a certain bohemian aspect to it all. A sort of hippy nostalgia if you will.”
Normal guy: “It was bohemian.”
More sock puppets today. could it be Tranniedancer in disguise?
Fester, put down the crack pipe, you are rambling terribly. The only thing you have demonstrated today, is a severe case of logorrhea. I accept that you love to yap, and will leave you to it.
I am learning so much outside of my limited interests here.
Thanks Carrie, and all!
Glad we caught McHungus in one of his rare good moods, eh?
It’s simpler than that. Hitler lost, Stalin (and thus all communists) and Mao won. Soviets (now Russians) and Chinese get to write their own histories, so S&M get the “mistakes were made but they were great men and patriots” treatment.
It’s at that point that the Jews come in, with an obvious grudge making them the keepers of the anti-Hitler flame. That’s why they won’t let anyone examine the Holocaust “like any other historical event” As Hitler himself said at the time, “Who remembers the Armenian massacres?”
The events over the last couple years have seen the “Nazi” meme move over (like the Overton window?) to encompass all Whites. The initial story was “heroic democracies beat the fascists.” now all Whites are implicated. (Goldhagen and others with their “antisemitism is a white/european/christian mental illness”) Thus, Whites now get the Hitler treatment: tear down the Confederate statues, Jefferson was a Nazi, etc.
But when a single group like white Europeans becomes so responsible for so much killing against out groups, does not its right to exist become questionable at some point? Isn’t there a point where we can all agree that whites were better simply peacefully bred out against the rising African population in order to assure a safe, peaceful future for humanity? It seems that if I were white, looked in the mirror, recognized the enormity of the holocaust and colonialism, I would be leading the charge against my own group. I think this is the logic that motivated the pelosis and Clintons.
Most people killed by white Europeans were other white Europeans.
that guy is a troll, shows up every couple of months. has a micropene and idolizes the brown savage (uncut only).
Well said. We helped defeat their enemies and they then began working on us until we were made into their enemies. Nice, real nice. They won WW2, they and their Globalist Mason allies. We lost, and were and are utter dupes. Power can only come by admitting our complete degradation. Call it repentance…..
I don’t know Zman. Jewish opposition to Stalin’s late, brief anti-semitism, and the (presumably soft) anti-semitism that came after Stalin in the USSR (I haven’t read anything on it), does not necessarily equate to throwing in the towel on all Marxism, or even on Marxism-Leninism. I think an amalgam, of Christian spawned universalist and egalitarian ideas among gentiles (I’m particularly thinking about the 20th century American WASP elite, like the men who staffed FDR’s administration), and Jewish predilection for radical universalist ideologies in which their ethnicity may hide (or not find themselves facing a hostile majority bloc), explains this issue.
“…it is long past time for these industrial age ideologies to disappear.” I still find the writings of Sorelians, German Conservative Revolutionaries, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, and the like very intriguing, inspiring, and pertinent. Even the National Bolshevism of the circle of Junger and Niekisch fascinates me (I have no illusions about any economic arrangement beyond heavily regulated capitalism being feasible). I still think there is plenty of value there to be salvaged, in building a new Right that is actually worth something.
Stalin turning against the Jews didn’t turn the Jews anti-communist, it just turned them anti-Stalinist, which left them mostly as Trotskyists. Ever wonder why most neocons are ex-Trotskyists?
It’s just a vehicle of ethnic advancement, guy. They don’t believe things the way we do. Tomorrow they’d be Monarchists if it helped the Jews. They believe in themselves in other words. We could learn a lot from them in this. By some estimates, National Socialism was the same thing for Germans and ultimately perhaps, the White Race. We actually believe in things that harm us. That’s not an issue for them – never going to happen except by mistake. As Jefferson said, Survival is the first morality.
The Hammer and Sickle was a potent emblem as well. It has been temporarily retired for rehabilitation. Stay tuned.
Dutch, the Hammer and Sickle (and most other political emblems) is nothing as a potent emblem, compared to the Swastika.
As the 2nd verse of “Die Fahne hoch” proclaims, “Es schau’n aufs Hakenkreuz voll **Hoffnung** schon Millionen!”
It helped much, that Hitler had the Swastika “spinning” in a *clockwise* direction, implying that the NSDAP represented moving forward in time, away from the trauma of the (esp. recent) past.
“Swastika = *True* Progress”!
His foes’ stuff was infantile by comparison.
Judas priest, Jaqship and deBeers are killing it today.
Such a high level on display here.
Communism gets a pass because it has escaped the intense media saturation that was/is being used on fascism. And since that swastika was a fabulous symbol of everything evil, it gets splashed about everywhere. It’s on the covers of thousands of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Hollywood continues to churn out antifa agitprop starring Nazis. Magazines devote tons of ink to antifa themes. Television used to feature weekly dramas like Combat! and The Gallant Men (eagerly watched by me). And the stuff is still being created and disseminated. Antifa agitprop is simply part of the media air we breath: news, sports, entertainment, fashion, art, and even architecture. The barrage will not stop until we end it.
And it all begins to make sense when you see who actually runs Hollywood.
Watch the old propaganda cartoons they used to churn out to drum up support for the war. They were able to portray the National Socialists as barbaric animals to their own kind living in the States. They were able to convince the European in America to murder without mercy the proud German fighting for the independence of his homeland against the Bolshevik menace.
It’s why they relentlessly push the Holocaust narrative in movies, public school, and in politics, because White people must submit to this Jewish prison of multiculturalism and ceaseless tolerance for the foul and degenerate or else you’re socially (and more recently, financially) ostracized as a big, bad “Nazi” that will automatically commit genocide once in power.
“Outside of prison, Nazis are considered the worst thing possible, even worse than child molesters.”
One might read that at “other than prison, Nazis are…” meaning you are comparing prison and Nazis as bad things, Nazis being worse than prison. Of course, that’s not your meaning. YOU mean, “If you’re not in prison, Nazis are the worst thing…” Because, of course, in prison “Nazi” is or is associated with White gangs, who must be feared, or at least respected. OUTSIDE prison, Nazis aren’t allowed to do the sort of things that would make them feared or respected. Nazis are not allowed to punch, only to be punched. Perhaps we should change that…
“There’s another problem and that is the assertion Jews have the power to bewitch and beguile the masses. Even accounting for their exceptionalism, Jews are still 2% of the American population. Unless they are a race of super smart aliens with the ability to control minds, like the John Carpenter film The Live, it’s unlikely that they have controlled the debate for 60 years. If they are a race of super intelligent aliens from beyond the stars, we will never know it, so there is no point in contemplating that option.”
This paragraph dismisses the real argument of what effects upon a unknowing populace a century’s worth of Jewish control of mass media can unleash. It’s not too inaccurate that this could translate to modern day mind-control. Whites in the West have had the notion that the news is a dedicated, benign (if not beneficial) arm of society that relays critical information to the masses instilled into their minds for such a long period of time that to question these mass media entities has become modern day heresy punishable by de-personization from the public square, and, in some cases, imprisonment (EU – soon to be US).
This 2% of the population is extremely tribalistic and nepotistic, helping their fellow Jewish compatriots into high positions of power and status over their host nation once they have infiltrated. Look at the vast overrepresentation of Jews in Congress, media, and the Supreme Court. For 2% of the population, they sure are effective at gaining power.
While you present this idea as something that should be laughed off, there really is a massive nugget of truth to be seen by the results of parasitic control of mass media on a population: degradation of tradition, devaluing of virtues once held dear, miscegenation, celebration of vice and degeneracy, etc. This is done on purpose. It is the will, and dare I say biological imperative, of the eternal outsider, the Jew, to do this to whatever host nation allows them to operate. There’s a reason they have been kicked out of 109 nations over 300 times throughout history. There’s a reason the National Socialist movement was born out of the filth of the Weimar Republic and the aftermath of WW1.
Agree 100%. How could he have missed this? Archimedes said, “Give me a lever and I will move the world”. The mass media is just such a lever and the Jews got control over it. They could be far fewer than 2% and still control us as long as they keep their grip on the lever. Americans got on with their lives after the Civil War and when they looked up, they realized the Jews already had the papers. Then they got the Banks with the Federal Reserve Act – and then began the horrors of the 20the Century: the Depression, WW1, WW2, Civil Rights, Bussing, Porn, Gays, etc.
Indeed, Carpenter’s “They Live” is a fine symbol for what has happened to us. They live. We sleep. We sheep. Z dances around the Truth and then dances away from it. Perhaps it’s too simple and/or horrible for him to accept? Or he has Jewish friends or relatives? The usual Human, all too Human, type stuff?
The Rosetta Stone is over at Occidental Observer, linked to by Ursula a couple of days ago.
A vast project, thousands involved and career focused, and in their own words with millions of pieces of propaganda. Hundreds of thousands of graduates to this audacious, deliberate project since 1947.
None of this was an accident or a quirk. You were right after all.
Here you go:
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2018/09/23/modify-the-standards-of-the-in-group-on-jews-and-mass-communications-part-one-of-two/
Bolshevism get a pass because even after Stalin purges jews still remained indebted to the Soviet Union for defeating NS Germany for them. Off course they left the URSS for Israel and the USA but they still pride themselves of killing the Czar and his family and stating the Revolution:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Yurovsky
Turning the question around, why do so many people find Stalin boring? The dirty little secret of all of this, is that Hitler will be remembered forever, he is immortal now. Stalin is just another drunk Russian, with a bad temper.
What historical figure in the last 500 years compares to him in significance?
Bernays was right. It’s all in the marketing.
Adolf was charismatic in the extreme, Joe was not. And in the estimation of Simon Weil, Adolf was a political genius and to be underestimated at your peril. So this was a one man show, while Joe was a bureaucrat at heart and in fact. As was the other Adolf, Eichmann. Bonaparte too falls into the first camp. Marxism is the ideology of the bureaucrat. All revolutionaries become bureaucrats, including Fidel.
I wonder if Mel Brooks ever tried writing a comedy about the USSR, but couldn’t find a humorous angle? Are there any popular works that present the USSR in a humorous vein?
Well there was Boris and Natasha from “Rocky the Flying Squirrel” and a bad 70s sitcom set inMoscow (I should shoot myself for knowing that). Russian commies are often presented as bumbling comic minor figures in works that are mainly about something else. And there’s the great back cover of the Ramones “Rocket to Russia”. it pops up, but never as strongly as “Springtime for Hitler”.
heh i forgot about the cartoon! good call.
Best book I’ve read on Hitler’s political instincts and development is “Becoming Hitler” by Thomas Weber. Heavy close focus on his readings, associations, who influenced him, and his political weaving through the complexities of post war Bavarian politics.
Stalin was a fox though – and had great one liners like: One has to be a very brave man not to be a hero in my army.
“What historical figure in the last 500 years compares to him in significance?”
I’ll bite…Martin Luther. The protestant reformation is still going strong.
no, not even close.
And he wasn’t a Russian but rather a Georgian from the criminal class. The young Stalin was once seen to run down the street in a high state of excitement yelling, I’m gonna work for the Rothschilds. True story. Who else funded the Revolution but the Jewish bankers? It got away from them in the end of course.
Nichola Tesla and his nemesis Thomas Edison. Either is more significant than Hitler-Stalin-Churchill-Mao-FDR combined.
hahaha I almost thought you were serious there for a second.
People like free stuff and don’t want to think about where it comes from.
When Obama was asked how he was going to pay for free stuff, he said, we’ll print more money.
Marxism, Communism, Socialism, etc. are easy sells.
I do agree that, at it’s heart, Christianity opens to the door for collectivism. We are all equal in the eyes of god. We are all God’s children. Christianity is dying. Or at least it’s dying in Europe and the United States. There are those that believe “The State” will replace religion. I can’t help but think that collectivism withers on the vine without Christianity. Why are we all equal? Without religion, and Christianity in particular, the answer is we’re not.
That’s assuming that collectivism, as described by the communists, is a real thing, and not simply a maguffin to suck people into a totalitarian dystopia.
Just because you may treat people fairly, and accept things at their face value, as presented to you, that doesn’t mean those who are proffering such things are honest and what they appear to be.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism have absolutely nothing to do with Christianity. People who claim this either have little to no understanding of either Marxism OR Christianity, or else they are looking to deceive, or else to (((deflect blame from its real source))). Huh, never seen THAT card trick before.
Think of the similarities between Communism and the Tai-ping Rebellion, which was raging while Marx was still writing his cranky murderous nonsense. Well, more on that later, if anybody cares enough to discuss it.
Does Marxism use the Christian concept of equality as a foundation for their bullshit? By that, i mean does Marxism pervert the Christian concept of equality for its own ends? If the Christian concept of equality was erased where would that leave Marxism?
Mcleod, it’s not just Christianity that opens to the door for collectivism, and **hyper-equality**. **Democracy** does the same thing.
Bolshevism insists on “complete” human equality, and this insistence fits into democracy very well indeed. If Bolshevism ends up needing a Stalin to run things in emergencies, that’s “a bug”, not “a feature”.
By contrast, fascism was utterly explicit on the supreme need for inequality, i.e. for a Führer, Duce, or Cuadillo to personify the nation, not as a bug, but as a feature.
Moreover, Bolshevism pays (at least) lip service to the idea of equality between the nations and races, in the name of international Solidarity, and in the interests of world Peace.
It is very easy to argue that, in the nuclear Age, international Solidarity is crucial to human survival, and that explicit militarism is the shortest road to Armageddon.
By contrast, all well-known forms of fascism imply the priority of one nation over others, usually in an explicitly *militaristic* vein, and imply or specify disdain for any sort of world-wide Solidarity.
And, the most infamous form of fascism is renowned, for emphatically espousing the starkest possible **inequality** of the races.
Thus, fascism goes against virtually all implicit shibboleths of democracy, esp. in the nuclear age.
Whereas, Bolshevism “seems”, in at least some crucial respects, consistent with democracy.
(Only specialists in fascist history, or in WWII, know that Mussolini was actually deposed, by a “democratic” vote of the Grand Fascist Council.)
Fascism per se is not about race. That the difference between it and National Socialism. Franco didn’t like the Nazis but the West refused to help him, so he accepted their aid in his struggle against the Communists. But obviously race is there: just google the etymology of Nation. You can’t have a nation with all different races in it. Thus National Socialism goes a bit deeper and sees more clearly, though they otherwise run parallel quite a bit.
Bishop Fulton Sheen: The old Monks shared what they had in common because they loved God and thru God, each other. But making people share everything in common will not enable them to love each other or God. Communism puts the cart before the horse.
Nice. Very nice. Like making them share living spaces, the loss of free association.
I have a theory I’ve been trying to brow beat into something useful. Mass movement ideologies can be best understood by their founders.
Mussolini was a socialist who grew up in the post unification Italian tradition: republicanism, worship of Garibaldi’s martial prowess, and socialism. When WW1 broke out, Mussolini signed up becuase of the martial spirit of Italy but in contrast to the general strike ordered by the comintern. This evolved into the nationalist socialist platform of the early fascists that led to fights in the streets with communists. Eventually, fascism adapted more right wing views becuase it took power legally. Fascism requires a bunch of veterans who need jobs but dont actually hate their country.
Marx, on the other hand, was the son of upper middleclass Germany. Just rich enough to be comfortable but not enough to have power. He then lived off his sugar-daddy Engels and wrote his ideology by reading government reports that were twenty years out of date. All Marxism requires is children of a comfortable middleclass that want power but dont want to work or leave University.
Guess what we have had more of since the sixties?
Let me help you out a little bit here. Only Germans could be NAZIS, while communism is open to all the garbage of the world. That right there limits your appeal.
Fascism is particular, but the conditions that generate it can emerge in any industrial society. Julius Malema of South Africa is the first “Afrofascist” even though he will never admit it. The dysfunction and de-industrialization that the ANC has presided over is quite similar to the conditions in Italy after the First World War. They even have their own “stab in the back myth” where De Klerk and international finance prevented them from killing all the Boers.
There’s a lot here, Zman, and perhaps it’s a prologue to more targeted reflections. But I think you’ve underemphasized the extent to which the characterization of Hitler himself is essential to the unique cultural position Nazism holds in modern culture, as THE locus of evil.
Some years ago I read a “parallel biography” of Hitler and Napoleon, and what struck me most about the comparison was how it made Hitler’s rise to power seem utterly conventional. That is, his path, goals, personality, and even his end were uncontroversially recognizable as those of a tyrant like Bonaparte and other figures in history. He was a bad guy, sure; but one example of a well-defined category of political actors, documented as far back as Machiavelli and Xenophon.
What I had *expected* to find, having been immersed in late 20th-century culture, was a portrait of a demonic, insane, and above all unique “dark lord,” like you’d find in a Gothic novel or sci-fi movie. But that wasn’t the case at all. Indeed, everything I had previously seen in the “How to explain Hitler” literature–the Oedipal psychologizing, the belittling theories about his sexual abnormality, the anecdotes explaining the origins of his hatreds, the condemnation of the entire prior history of the German people–all of it was (I realized) irrelevant to understanding Hitler’s rise.
Obviously, to cast someone as history’s emblem of Supreme Evil–not just as one villain among others, but as uniquely and incomparably wicked–is a significant *cultural* project. Under this status, everything attached to Hitler is personalized with his Devil’s face. By contrast, nothing remotely like this has ever been done with Soviet Communism, which at worst is considered an evil “system”–that is, an impersonal, amorphous force whose practitioners are not ultimately accountable for the damage it has done. All the talk on the Right about Stalin amassing a bigger body count is meaningless by comparison: There can only be one cultural emblem of Evil, and Hitler’s the One. The relative “rankings” on the Evilometer of Nazism and Bolshevism follow from that, however arbitrarily.
I am curious about the role of Napoleon as the personification of evil in popular Western culture, at least until such time as Hitler showed up. Do these caricatures fade when those who lived under them die off, or do they get twisted further when there is no one around any more to set people straight? Hitler is crossing over from a man people remember, to one no one has ever met or been exposed to first hand, in the context of his times, right now.
Napoleon knew about the Jewish drive for power via Banking. He realized that putting one in a conventional prison would solve nothing: he would just continue to run his empire from his cell. So he put him in solitary confinement forever.
and they were both corporals!
interesting parallels between france and germany, following the same path, about a hundred years apart.
But the Napoleon name still obviously had resonance in the French culture, Louis Napoleon and the Second Republic and so on. Not sure what the rest of Europe made of all of that. We made sure to vilify Hitler to the point that even the Germans would reject him.
All languages and cultures have a term for “boogeyman”, which is a catchall reference for an amorphous or vague threat of some kind, and the word essentially functions as both an alarm and a teaching aid. This probably dates to the origin of language itself and encompasses the range of existential threats routinely encountered in the jungle. I imagine that tribal elders and parents used the word to scare their young into adopting cautionary protective habits. Fascism is the new incarnation of boogeyman.
except that Fascism actually exists.
Fascism the word exists, but it’s definition is anything but clear and precise. Rather, the application of the word in modern contexts is fluid, variable, and ultimately meaningless. Hence the similarity with the imaginary boogeyman term. Fascism the word is now only useful in propaganda and sloganeering.
Fascism is not truly dead, the ideal fascist state arguably exists in Singapore. It doesn’t use the name of fascism, but look at the PAP logo and try to deny that it was inspired by the BUF. Lee Kuan Yew explained the truths of multi-ethnic and religious societies better than any Westerner.
A dream not of the totalitarian states of the 20th century, but of a constitutional authoritarianism needed to manage unstable rootless societies.
Democratic socialism, meet constitutional fascism
The real trick in Singapore, was making it work in a multi-ethnic society.
I would argue that Japan and Israel are also very to Fascism.
The Israeli economy is much less state-directed than it used to be. Netanyahu in many ways imposed this from above, taking his experience living in the US in mind. There is no counterpart to Temasek.
It’s not apparent today, but this will become an issue when Israel re-aligns away from Europe and towards its Arab neighbors. The Israeli businesses have been beneficiaries of “involuntary protectionism”, Lebanese would eat their lunch if they could.
Japan’s economy is quite state-directed, but the corporations have a feedback loop via the ruling party. They preserved their manufacturing base, which is admirable. One odd aspect they have is the US written constitution gave them a parliamentary system at the national level, but directly elected Governors at the state level.
Japan as well despite copying our externals. Corporations must not hurt the Japanese Nation. They are guided by a Council that insures that they don’t – thus no surging millions of 3rd World cheap labor to undercut their own People. What despicable traitors our own Elite are by comparison. Fascism? We need it.
The philosopher, John Gray writes in his book “Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia” that prior to the enlightenment the belief in utopia/leftist ideologies was expressed in Christian groups and sects. Prior to the enlightenment the revolution was the belief in the apocalypse. A totalt destruction of society were only the true believers would survive. In many ways i think that Grays point is that reason didn’t come with the enlightenment it just made another framework for beliefs. Communism was a such belief. Grays book is a long attack in the neo-con driven foreign policy in after the cold war that he sees as utopian apocalyptic religion.
Actually, there were some organizations that started as a response to Soviet atrocities. The John Birch Society, for example, was such a group, though it certainly was not the same as the lawless thugs of BLM. It got strangled in the cradle by the Buckleyite right police.I think you can make an argument that until Trump, anything that smacked of right wing populism was killed off by establishment conservatives.
Why is the former [i.e., the Nazis] the symbol of evil, while the latter [i.e., the commies] is still popular?
Surely, the fact that the UK and US twice fought long and emotionally draining wars with Germany — the second with Germany in a “fascist” guise looking out for revenge that made it possible to retcon the first one — means that the fascists have been viewed as ideologically repulsive for more than a century. “Fight for democracy” and all that. As for the Bolshevik bloodshed, it was a lot less “splashy” and took place behind closed doors that stayed closed for a long time. Anti-commie: “Boy, that Holodomor was just as murderous as the Holocaust.” Normie: “HolodoWhat?”
True, but the Cold War was not nothin’. It lasted decades longer than the war with the fascists. Int he 50’s and 60’s, school children in America were taught to huddle under their desks and wait to be incinerated by Soviet nukes. That should have left a deeper impression that a short war with the Nazis.
The point is, you can make a good case for why fascism was demonized. You can make a good case for why Bolshevism got a free pass. It’s just really hard to make both arguments at the same time. It’s as if the western mind has been split in two.
It made an impression on me, I hate Russians. But even as a kid I wondered how squatting under a desk would help when the mushroom clouds went up.
Your school desk had a magic radiation shield. Didn’t you know that?
I went to Catholic school in the sixties and never was there a emergency drill to hide under desk.
Of course, when certain nuns came around I learned on my own.
David, if I were a Catholic school kid (especially male) I wouldn’t get under a desk on my hands and knees, either.
We never had any such drills in the’50s or ’60s, so I suspect they are largely urban legend.
I just told you I did these drills as a kid. They scared the shit out of me.
Are you sure? Maybe it is like the moon landing and you were tricked into thinking it happened.
We had two of them. I remember them both. The odd thing to me was that they were framed as “earthquake or other emergency” drills, but we were coached to immediately get under our desks if they told us to over the monitor. If it had been an earthquake, instructions from the monitor would have been pointless. Teacher didn’t like the questions I asked about it.
Bomb drills are no urban legend. My elementary school in Michigan, built in the early 1950’s, had tunnels running under the building. I went to school there from ’58 to ’63. Of course, we had fire drills: line up and march outside.
And we had tornado and H-bomb drills also. There were different bell codes for tornado drills and H-bomb drills but they used the same routine: march down the stairs and into the tunnels. We were lined up against the wall, and told to sit. Then they’d close doors and turn out the lights. Teachers with flashlights walked up and down the lines. We were forbidden to speak. No noise allowed. I remember how quickly the air became stifling and hot.
Every Saturday, at noon, we’d hear the test of the air raid siren. That shit was real.
JWM
We had them in the 60’s. Thank God for my desk. I could have died without it. We were only 100 miles from SAC and everyone knew SAC would be hit first. They explained it over and over how the Russian bombers would come in.
They taught us about great circles and how the Russian bombers would come over the North Pole as the shortest route. Once they struck SAC we had less than an hour to get under our desk. The B-52’s from SAC would have long been in the air on the way to Moscow and elsewhere before the Russians took out the base. My Dad had plans for a bomb shelter and was talking to contractors about building it. Is that any crazier than talking about CW2?
I was in elementary school in Beaumont, Texas during the Cuban missle crisis and within the potential strike range of the Soviet missles. We had regular missle incoming drills. I remember very clearly the duck under the desk or huddle in the hallway and especially don’t look at the flash exhortations.
“True, but the Cold War was not nothin’.
_______________________________
However there were active, organized, committed, and politically-effective Communists in the US long before — and also during — the cold war. This was not true for fascists.
What fascists may have existed in the US were were strongly suppressed during WW2, as one would expect. Not so for the Communists. After all, the Soviet Union was our ally. The Communists, who flourished before and during the war, simply went underground in the following years and continued infiltrating other organizations and institutions.
Today’s Democrat party, antifa, and BLM are descendants of those Communists. They may seem cargo-cultish sometimes, but their political genes go straight back to Marx, with side trips through Mao, Stalin, and Trotsky. And also, as another commenter mentioned, through the Spanish Civil War.
The Communists of history were always ranting about reactionaries. The fascists, when they arose, were labeled the reactionaries of the day and were vilified as such. So it’s no surprise that today’s Communists, in their various guises, rant about fascists also, applying that label to anyone they do not like.
OK, Zman, but every educated person knew that the role of Fascists in winning the Cold War was beans, compared to the gargantuan role played by the Sovs (and some Reds in, say, France, c. 1943-44) in WWII.
Even Buchanan concedes as much.
Had Franco done something famous to clearly help win the Cold War, he may’ve helped rehab the rep of fascism.
Instead, *all* of the famous heroes of that victory were (said to be) good citizens of democracies.
Hell, Tito (and even Mao?) get as much credit for the Sovs’ collapse, as does Franco!
And, of course, there’s the Commie Gorby.
Had Stauffenberg managed to end WWII 9 months before it actually did end, you may’ve seen a different attitude thereafter, at least toward Conservatives.
Even so, by the time the 20 July 1944 story became well known, the rep of the Reds’ role in WWII was already *so* well known.
Zman, you have been on fire lately. This is a great essay, but you really need to somehow pin or front-page your Letter to Civnat essay. That one is probably the most salient and consequential essay you (or anyone else on the right) has written in years. Don’t let it disappear down the thread.
Only one quibble with your essay: there is no such thing as a post-industrial age. The West is modern, and modernity requires industry. Through the magic of global finance, much of which is (((global finance))), the West has simply outsourced the dirty, industrial part of our economy to the developing world.
+1 on the CivNat essay. It needs to be pinned to the church door.
“Zman, you have been on fire lately.” Everyone always says this. When has he ever not been on fire? He probably blogs out of a burn ward.
Agree about the CivNat essay. I’d hate to see it forgotten about. I reckon Z’s a guy who can write brilliantly yet fast. With that on-the-fly ability they’ll be some errors and sloppy thought at times. It would be great if he’d really perfect that essay and yeah, repost it as a sticky or something.
I plan on making copies and placing them around town. I was gonna do it on a campus nearby. But those kids are too far gone. I’m now thinking about places where more normal people hang out.
But actually, 2% of the population that controls the media, Hollywood and major academia can certainly control the dialogue..In the 1950s, Jews didn’t control any of those things, and there was virtually no demonizing of the Nazis or talk about a Holocaust.
They already had the Papers. If they hadn’t we would had never fought in WW1 or WW2. There were huge Anti-War movement before both Wars. All down the memory hold since those were good wars and those movements don’t fit the narrative.
As for the rest of media, Walt Disney warned us about the Jewish takeover. But we didn’t listen and soon lost Radio, Movies, and TV as well. Lookitup.
I get the feeling you have one record, and it has one song on it; playing over and over again in your head.
Thanks Lugh.
Funny, I hear the same jingle in my head, too.
Still, this discussion has been much more interesting without that single beat.
Kudos to the commentors (including Lugh), and the Z.
Trotsky defined fascism as the mass mobilisation of the petite bourgoisie
i would say it was more like the melding of the working class and the bougies.
Fascism & Communism were sibling rivals from the same family tree. Half-baked rationales for why we get to tell you what to do. We Are the Boss of you. It seems like Fascisms big sins were three-fold. Attacking brother Communism first, not being global enough (more a Nationalist than Globalist Faith). More Importantly: Fascism Lost.
It’s easy to hate the loser. Mock the ones who no longer exist. Hitler is an imaginary boogeyman. Been dead long time. Unless you encounter an actual Aryan Brotherhood believer, mocking Nazis has no real cost. Commies won the family feud. They have long memories and won’t hesitate to kill. Anybody. Anywhere. Any time. Cartels in Mexico get lots of respect because of that Ethos. Or Deathos…
Severian quotes: “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in one sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.” — Henry Hazlitt.
Have never heard that one. Envy/hate is a powerful force. Like Fire it must be fed. Commies adapt. There is Always Always something to be envious/Angry/Hate-Y-ous about.
You can even take turns featuring ‘somebodies’ favorite Hate subject. Amuse the peons as it were. Today we pander to this sub-group of morons & their Favorite Hate. Thursdays scheduled Hate topic will be determined by events. That piss us off…..
Fascism and communism are about 98% the same thing. Both feed on the idea of hating the people around you that are not your allies, and arbitrarily taking everything from them, including their lives. Quite a few people align themselves to that sort of thinking. Given that fascism lost and communism “won”, those aligning with this sort of thinking get to adopt communism (under the guides of “socialism” and “democratic socialism “) for themselves and project such attitudes on those who they hate by calling them fascists. The mentally weak can include tribalism, greed, hate, and projection all rolled up in one pre-sorted package. And many do.
I don’t understand how one could read the texts of Marxism-Leninism, and the texts of the virtually any school of interwar European fascism, and conclude they are 98% the same thing.
Both use a top-down approach of telling you what to do and how to live. Fascism is honest about it, in that it recognizes national identity and seeks to strengthen it for the benefit of the culture. It also is honest about the necessity for everyone to pitch in and sacrifice, for the benefit of all. Communism acts like a giant Santa Claus, passing out the goodies to those who play along, and seems to deny human nature in its leveling and atomizing of people. So maybe that is more than 2%. But at the street level, both ideologies extol an “in crowd” and an “out crowd”, and ultimately end in destruction and liquidation of the out crowd. Our dilemma is finding a way, both personally and as a culture, to avoid these outcomes. Unfortunately, we are being forced into a corner where we are going to need to adopt the mores and attitudes of the culture we live in, which is completely the “in crowd” “out crowd” thing. The genius of our system and culture has been to reconcile the differences in a mostly civil fashion. All that is out the window now.
Individuals didn’t conquer the Wild West or the Wild East either. Whites fought the Indians together with lots of help from the “GOVERNMENT”. The Marloboro Man type individualism is a vile myth sold to gullible Whites by the Tribe. Individuals along don’t worry them a bit. But people working together as One? Why that’s what they do! Cooperation will always come out on top over mindless competition, be it in the Business of War or the War of Business. Hint: low interest loans to fellow Tribesmen – shhh!
tell us where they diverge by more than 2%
Read from old ‘Progress Publishers’ volumes enunciating the principles of Marxism-Leninism, then read any of the interwar “fascist” milieu, including Niekisch’s National Bolschevism, and tell me they aren’t radically opposed. Are we to plug in the old Catholic Counterrevolutionaries (“proto-fascists” like de Maistre and Donoso Cortes) into this wave of the hand?
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I detect National Review/Russell Kirk/Friedrich von Hayek “you’re not bourgeois individualists like us” sentiments. Democratic-capitalism, and the bourgeois individualist pseudo-right, have spectacularly, colossally failed. The healthiest portions of the West are those regions that were shielded from it via the USSR (East Germany, East Europe, Russia). It’s past time for radical rethink, and for a militant creed. Millions of Europeans fought and died like men out of Lycurgas’ Sparta for “fascism”. The ideas and men they opposed have been proven basically correct. To look at that world, and contemptuously say, “you’re just communists”, is, to me, nonsense.
*”The ideas and men they opposed have been proven basically correct.”
Excuse me, read “They have been proven basically correct in their choice of enemy men and ideas.”
Alain de Benoist has extensively and quite approvingly reviewed, and caused to be republished, works by the early Junger, Ernst Niekisch in his National Bolshevist years, the Sorelians of the Circle Proudhon, and I’ll wager other such thinkers as well. Is de Benoist relegated to the “communist-fascist” camp? Where does Maurras and his Action Française, or the heavily Catholic traditionalist Vichy regime stand in all this?
By not knowing what they are talking about is how.
Kind of like the US is today, wow now how did this happen.
Boy, lots of words for a pretty simple thing. In the public mind, fascism killed for mean, selfish reasons. Communism killed for a good cause.
That kind of ties in with relating communism to Christianity. Communism is more universalist, and more focused on materially helping the poor (although there was of course no real shortage of emphasis on the latter within fascism, seeking to unite the people within the nation into a solid community, all working for the benefit of the whole).
If Gibbon is correct that Christianity, in part, took down Rome, as the universality of Christendom tore up the social fabric of Rome, then perhaps the universality of communism will similarly rend the social fabric of the West. I shudder to think of Marx as being held up as some sort of God, and the corpse of Lenin being paraded around as a kind-of disciple. But stranger things have happened.
Republican Rome was the essence of good for all under a rather rigid political and social structure. Christianity offered a place for all at the table, despite economic and social differences. Communism says that those who play by a certain set of rules get everything, and the rest get nothing. One of these is not like the others.
Are you saying that the mere existence of Christianity weakened Rome, or that the adoption of Christianity as the state religion did it?
Great question, my reflex answer is that Rome was coming apart anyway, and Christendom offered a bottom-up alternative. Constantine understood that, and incorporated that into his rule. Or maybe the whole Christian saga simply grabbed him at a personal level. Rome appeared to be going down the tubes anyway, so people grabbed on to something else. As to the modern parallels, I am not sure about Rome, but I feel like our own culture has gotten a bit fragile, but it is certainly being pushed, hard, over the cliff by some powerful and malevolent forces. Our daily discussions here are an attempt to crowdsource, from the red-pilled, what is actually going on and what we can do about it.
Once you control the media, you can lead people around by the nose. The economic miracle of Nazi Germany is never discussed obviously, and won’t be until the Jewish grip on Academia and the Media is broken. Hitler was all for the common man and still believed in Hierarchy. A contradiction? By no means. We love our feet after all – or should – and the common man is the feet of society. Now the Elite want Black or Brown feet because they are cheaper, but such feet will take them where they know not where, before they crumble. Metal can be joined to metal, but there is no way to smelt clay and metal together.
one man’s “economic miracle” is another man’s “gangster government”. There was no such thing, that’s why they went to war — for the loot.
Rubbish. They kicked out the Jewish Bankers and ended the reign of Usury. That’s always the first step. They made lots more after that – and quickly.
Yeah, the Nazi’s went on to invade/occupy something like 22 countries, for resources.
And loot.
Kind of rhymes with usury.
>Anti-fascism evolved from an academic fetish among Frankfurt School members into a cult of sorts in the 60’s and 70’s
I must disagree. The key event was even earlier than WW2: the Spanish Civil War. Virtually all Anglosphere intellectuals heavily supported the Reps, vilifying the Nats.
The SCW is extremely important because that was the key even when it was decided that Liberals are going to ally with Bolsheviks and serious Conservatives with Fascists. It was not obvious at that point! A more individualistic, more aristocratic 19th century liberal tradition was still alive, that hated Bolshevism. And the Conservatives (Monarchists) and Fascists (Falange) generally hated each other, shooting, bomb-throwing, happened. Just as much as on the Rep side the favorite hobby of Communists was killing anarchists.
The Monarchist-Falangist division was just about what you would expect. The Fascists were effectively a leftist heresy. Yes, nationalist, and all that, but believed in “progress” in which the aristocrats and capitalists are merely obstacles to “progress” and wanting a new order where basically any peasant who climbs the Falangist hierarchy gonna have higher status than them.
But at the end of the day the Falange and Monarchists learned to work together, mostly because Franco was kind of neither but could play both sides. And they had to, because it all began with Liberals allying with Communists.
So this is where we get our current political setup. That while in some ways Communists have more in common with Fascists, at the end of the day they end up allying with Communists, seeing Fascists as the arch-enemy and Conservatives as kind of Fascist-Lite. It could have happened differently. Maybe the two older, more aristocratic 19th century ideologies, Conservatism and Liberalism lining up against the two modernist mass ideologies, Communism and Fascism. But it is not how it happened and it was decided in the SCW.
This is why the favorite antifa motto is still “no pasaran”. They shall not pass. (They passed, of course. It is very typical thing that they aren’t interested in reality.)
Well, duh, the difference in public attitudes between Nazism and eastern communism is obviously that the Nazis were anti Semitic. Glen beck like hand waving over body counts falls on deaf ears politically because it has nothing to do with the first commandment but rather who the victim was.
More deeply, the reason for the anti Semitism of Nazi germany and of the Hungarian revolution was the Jewish character of early Bolshevism. It was a reaction to a common perception of the day. But many things were happening on a daily basis back then. I had read of a communist uprising in Bavaria led by a Jewish individual where they seized a few provinces and executed all the nobility. Can’t provide a ref on that. The bombing of the reichstad, if not a hoax, is another example. The great Hungarian Jewish mathematician John von Neumann always said that the reasons for the Hungarian uprising and Nazism were not anti Semitism but a reaction to communism.
I think this was the reason right wing Hungarian Jews were often highly militant about communism. Von Neumann urged for immediate nuclear war against the Soviet Union, and Edward teller was instrumental in the creation of the hydrogen bomb. Many peers regard teller as a demon for this, but I believe that was his motivation, to fight against the popular perception of Jews being in league with the communists.
Of course, anti-Semitism existed prior to Bolshevism (although much stronger in France than in Germany), but there’s little doubt that, had the Russian Revolution never occurred, Hitler would never have come to power, and the Holocaust would never have happened . Even such a mainstream figure as Winston Churchill believed this.
As an old Russian Jewish saying had it “The Trotskeys make the Revolution, the Bronsteins pay the bill!”
Yeah, Toddy, this, and the (disproportionately Jewish-led) SPD’s being stuck, with having to eat the Allies’ ultimatum on the Versailles war-guilt travesty.
Wilson should’ve stayed home, rather than lend his name to that joke.
While “the Jews” got a brutally bad rap for that super-tough decision (to not try to defy this Diktat), the Germans’ rage at this Diktat is, ahem, rather more understandable, than is the Dems’ recent infantile performance about Russian Hacking.
(Obama’s wanton ambush of Russian diplomats, on 2016-17 New Years’ weekend, should’ve been enough for him to’ve been impeached, even with him leaving within weeks.)
This degenerate infantilism did much, to clinch my drift into the direction of the alt-Right.
I attribute most of it to indoctrination posing as really poor education. There are actually people wearing blackshirts and forming street mobs to beat-up “fascists” without seeing the irony.
The reason Bolshevism succeeds where Fascism fails, I believe, is that Bolshevism turns Envy from a vice to a virtue. Fascism may say that we Germans (Italians, Spaniards) have a right to rule the world, but in practice it’s concerned with the fate of a specific group in local conditions. Bolshevism can make a kommissar out of anyone, though — just say the right things about loving the proletariat, and you’re free to vent your hate and envy onto anyone you choose. “The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in one sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.” — Henry Hazlitt.
I think you’ve absolutely nailed it.
That is essentially the argument made by guys like Paul Gottfried. Marxism succeeds because it appeals to the egalitarian instincts of Christians. Bolshevism is inclusive, while fascism is exclusive. That does not explain, however, why anti-fascists keep trying to reanimate the corpse of fascism, after it has been dead for generations. Even today, Marxism is more of a threat to democracy than fascism. Yet, exactly no one makes a fetish of anti-communism now, but anti-fascism remains popular on the Left.
Aesthetics. Seriously. The Nazis looked cool — they’re the prototype for Darth Vader. That’s someone you fight! The Bolsheviks, by contrast, look like… Bolsheviks. Take away the blue hair and the nose ring, and your average professor — dumpy, bowl haircut, clodhopper shoes, off-brand chinos — could be a Bolshevik from 1950 (or a longshoreman from 1915, as those were the model). For a generation as historically ignorant as the current one, aesthetics is all you need. (It’s the same reason they make such good video game villains).
thank you Hugo Boss (designer of the SS uniforms). has there ever been a more stylish look, for uniforms?
Spot on, Severian. See my reply to Zman above, at 11:14 a.m.
And add Nazi music, and Hitler’s quote “If you want to understand National Socialism, you must understand Wagner”.
Was Stalin, or Vader, ever shown entering a hall with *wildly* cheering devotees, to the tune of a rousing march like the “Badenweiler”?
Or were either ever shown walking down a street, as their followers sang a haunting song like “Volk ans Gewehr”, it having such vivid lines as
“für Hitler und Freiheit und Arbeit und Brot — Detschland erwache, ende die Not!”?
The Nazis would put on a show, worthy of Wagner’s ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk.
Nobody will ever surpass them in this visceral regard.
And, see my reply to Dutch at 12:00 pm, about the Michael Jordan of political/ religious symbols, The Swastika!
The famously shy and retiring Stalin
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODA5nXhv-c
The Bolshies had great overcoats though.
As nice as the ones the Gestapo had?
From a purely practical standpoint – I don’t think there’s a more clear distinction that you can make than to compare the current crop of self-proclaimed socialists and communists and their embrace of all that is non-productive – and the “old school” Communists and especially the National Socialists of the Nazi era – and their treatment of who they perceived to be non-productive or downright destructive to society.
The Bolsheviks seemed to at least understand that people had to work – or society would fail. The Nazis definitely understood that non-productivity was detrimental to a healthy society – and took immediate steps once they were in power to get rid of the occupants of mental hospitals and other “undesirables”.
Compare that against the current day left wing – which rests it’s entire power base on the non-productive – and actively seeks to import more. Ever since I reached the point where that dynamic full sunk into my thinking – I’ve wondered when we would finally reach that point that point in time Thatcher referred to when she made her comment about “running out of other people’s money”.
The left has evolved to now making outright attacks against white men – which are the one demographic in our current society that still has overall productive output.
It seems like there was at least some semblance of logic behind the old form of Nazism and Communism. The current left has lost all connection to any form of logic – and it’s become just a pure power play based on numbers and hatred. I fail to see how this has any staying power whatsoever. They might actually gain power – and then very shortly after that we’ll devolve into Venezuela North as the entire edifice eats itself.
I’ve mentioned my complaint to Paul, but he is strident in his age. To repeat it here: I see no historical suggestion that either protestants or catholics generally gravitate toward Marxism. Trivial sects of both have promoted a social Marxist gospel, but in general their versions of Marxism were distinct flavors of their religion and didn’t get on well with Bolsheviks.
What Paul won’t say is that our idealism is Marxist and Bolshevism distilled. We want to be a distinct commissar class above a clearly subordinated mass of others. We expect to rule via moral authority and we demand collective ownership of anything we do not directly wish to posess (land in particular – see the Israeli leasing system). I was born to two parents on kibbutz and there I will probably retire and die with my own children nearby. What percentage of Christians live any part of their lives in communal arrangement? Vanishingly few.
The truth is that Bolshevism is old hat and largely irrelevant in our age, but it is too near and dear to our souls to be burned. Tikun Olam.
Then what Isaac is saying is “Englishmen in Tahiti.”
They banned the perfectly suited local cloth and clothing styles of the islanders and tried to make them Protestants. English culture and religion was too alien and bizarre for it to take, even though it worked well for Englishmen.
You’ve finally found someone who can do “Communism” right- the people who came up with it. And only them. Israel, after all, is a rather successful nation.
Because Fascism is just a fancy European word for something that is utterly natural: Nationalism. And yes, that tends to mean Racism – google the respective etymologies of Nation vs Country. So if the Jews can equate Nationalism and Fascism in the popular mind, and they are correct to do so theoretically, then they don’t have to start from zero since they have already conditioned us against “Fascism”. This kind of substitution is a step beyond the simple Pavlovian response, called Operant Conditioning I think. They are very well represented in both psychology and advertising you see – the latter being “a black art” and the former becoming more and more of one all the time.
A concrete example: in popular films like James Bond, they (the Jews who also control Hollywood – sorry but it’s true!), they began to equate Russia with Nazi Germany more than a decade ago. Why waste the conditioning? Use what has already been developed and become a staple in popular culture.
In some sense, the Soviet Union won the Cold War: everything the Western intellectual believes is nothing but Soviet agitprop.
Indeed. Read Witness by Whittaker Chambers. That really brings your point home
that must be why they broke up.
Someone on twitter said the intelligence services of the US and Soviet Union succeeded in infiltrating each other’s government so well that they’ve essentially switched ideologies. Kind of like Freaky Friday but with superpowers.
I knew a (((girl))) in the 1980s whose father was a relatively senior CIA figure. I learned from her that one of his signal achievements was having authored an internal agency paper praising Maoism as a great success.
was her last name Brennan?
I wish I could find out who said that because several of the”old soldiers” who I have the pleasure of knowing have said the same thing. Also why they find it so difficult to persuade the young.
Because the roots of Communism are in the West – places like Manhattan. Who do you think funded Communism? Or do you believe that peasants armed with pitchforks and workers with hammers overthrew Russian and Old France? It just doesn’t work that way. The Bankers, the Jewish Bankers, funded Communism. American Troops were fighting for their own ultimate destruction in WW2. Now the rest of Capitalism has caught up and almost all the Big Corporations are on board with the “Left”. Obviously Left and Right thus cease to have their old meanings at this point.
Not the Soviet Union, the ComIntern. For a true believer socialist the nation state is, to borrow a phrase from Erdogan the Turk, a train you ride to a certain destination.
“Why is the former the symbol of evil, while the latter is still popular?”
——————————————————————————————
The Bolsheviks and Communists USE the underclass. The marginals, the lunatics, the psychopaths. That is why the liberals and democrats are trying to flood us with them. There aren’t enough locally, they have to import them from other countries in order to take over. They are getting close to that too – they openly discuss dispensing with the checks and balances and due processes that keep them out of power.
Fascism dispenses with the underclass. While the weak are not killed and eaten (contrary to Lefty myth and lore) they are despised. There is no free ride in Fascism, everyone is expected to work, everyone is expected to contribute, and only the best work is recognized. There is a reason those guys went from poverty and rubber boots to Messerschmidts and jackboots in only 5 years.
I think it’s almost Darwinian: For fascism to work, you need a highly motivated, very intelligent people. For Bolshevism to work, you need a lot of stupid, unemployable people willing to be coerced into being cannon fodder.
I see a re-match of sorts coming. I am not an anti-Semite, and I don’t have a dog in that fight… but if I were a Jew I’d keeping a very low profile right about now.
If I were a Jew I’d find Christ and be Saved. But that’s just me.
Which is exactly what Von Neuman did. An intelligent man, on lots of levels.
Yeah, but if you find Christ and become saved, you forfeit your Right of Return, and roll the dice on whether or not the Goyim will go full Shoah. It’s a tough call.
“I think it’s almost Darwinian: For fascism to work, you need a highly motivated, very intelligent people. For Bolshevism to work, you need a lot of stupid, unemployable people willing to be coerced into being cannon fodder.” Very well said.
Unfortunately, at least in the USA, it seems the damage of decades of dumbing down educational institutions might have sealed the deal for Americans. Go to your average Walmart and just witness the devolution that has transpired in this nation of unglued peoples.
As a fascist, it is very disheartening to watch the greater collective of my people be entirely absorbed by a consumerist monoculture that actively seeks to mold them into mindless, malleable drones concerned only with vain materialism and pointless sex.
Absolutely correct and fucking fantastic
Some really good observations here, Z. The double standard in academia with regard to Fascism and Communism is really remarkable. There are guys like J. Arch Getty who have made a career out of trying to minimize the number of people killed by Stalin, and he’s still at it. There are also big double standards with regard to what constitutes “killed” between the two ideologies. If anyone died because of any of Hitler’s policies, they are counted as a victim of Hitler (fair enough, IMHO). But when it comes to Communism, suddenly the definition of what counts as “killing” suddenly gets a lot murkier, so unless Stalin or Mao actually gave a written order, that has been preserved, saying “I want these people dead!”, it somehow doesn’t count. This attitude has even managed to infuriate such a good leftist as Michael Ellman, who once complained that all too many “scholars” of the Stalin era “Identify with the authorities” (i.e Communists). Amazing, but not surprising.
interesting how Mao hardly ever gets mentioned, even though he killed more (Chinese) people than the other two.
Yes. Mao was a monster, mentally unbalanced, vengeful, and depraved – he actually combined a lot of Hitler and Stalin’s worst qualities. And yet, he is defended more than Stalin is by Leftist academics. Guys like Getty may try to minimize the number of Stalin’s victims, but they don’t usually actually try to defend the guy. But Mao still has his defenders in Western academia, even though, on the lowest approximation, he killed 2-3 times as many people as Hitler or Stalin did…
Yep. I remember when the SOB croaked and Time Magazine had him on the front cover, IMS it said “death of a great man” or some such rubbish.
Typical of our MSM/Leftwing media. Just like Stalin, they adored these monsters. During the Great Depression our intellectuals and well off whites were all impressed by Stalin, many of them actually volunteered to travel to Russia to “help”, many came back bitter and disappointed. Others never came back at all.
Still the love for Stalin remained and was still there up until Solzhenitsyn published his opus. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the old joke at the time was “the only place you can find Marxism now is at American universities”.
Left wing media? You mean the Jewish owned media? How did Z Man miss that? He gets the connection between Jews and Communism, but then drops the ball about them owning the media. For want of a nail, the battle is lost!
I worked in China and Taiwan for several years as a State Department FSO. Before that (and ever since), I have been a close student of Chinese history. The scale and nature of the atrocities committed by the CCP during the period 1950-79 is something that few Westerners can remotely grasp. NO ONE is even sure of the correct number of people deliberately murdered or starved to implement “scientific socialism.” In Taiwan, I met a lot of old guys who fought under Chiang Kai-Shek (hardly a saint, by the way) against the CCP or who fled the mainland as young children after witnessing war atrocities up front and personally. They and women of the same age demographic told no shortage of horror stories about what the CCP would do after they took control of a village or town during the civil war. The madness went into hyperdrive once the CCP took control and tried to implement various campaigns, e.g. the Hundred Flowers campaign, the Great Leap Forward, etc. And all of that at the direction of Mao. The final spate of insanity was the Great Cultural Revolution and to this day there are millions of Chinese who await justice, i.e. revenge, for the shit done to their relatives or ancestors during that period. This is single biggest reason why the CCP leadership works very hard not to allow any meaningful discussion of events during those years in academia or public discourse. Many of today’s CCP leaders were young Red Guards at the time and fear what might happen to them if the people get their courage up and decide to go after the leadership. It’s why all political energies are directed toward economic growth at all costs. People working and improving their lives don’t have time to dwell on past grievances. Or so the theory goes…
Communist sympathies in the US go *at least* as far back as the FDR administration, which has been proven to have been riddled with Communist sympathizers (at best) or outright agents (at worst).
Looking at some of the history of the US in regards to the Soviets as far as just how Lend Lease was enacted and administered – highlights this fact.
This conversation between Diana West and Stephan Molyneaux goes into some of the dirty details:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5RLR77bpr4&t=4591s
The US press outright lied about things going on in the Soviet Union – for example the starvation genocide of the Ukranians.
People in the US generally have no clue as to the level of communist infiltration into the structure of the Republic – and how it has affected the general public’s thinking.
A few years back – I had a good example of this during a lunch time conversation at work. Somehow the topic turned to the Federal Reserve. One of the people we were eating with – a black guy, made the comment “without the Federal Reserve we would have communism”. So he was obviously completely unaware of the 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto. #2 is the income tax – and #5 is a central bank.
I pointed this out – and told him that the Federal Reserve is in fact a FEATURE of Communism – and as the saying goes – that’s how the fight started.
It only lasted about a minute before another guy at the table – who got out of mainland China about 20 years ago because he wanted out from under the Communist state – started going to town on the black guy.
Point here is – we’ve gotten to the point where people defend the planks of the Communist Manifesto – by claiming that without those features we’d have Communism.
The constant lying has had it’s intended effect.
A small thing, I think one reason fascism was so easily mocked was that its two main proponents, Hitler and Mussolini, were so easily portrayed as buffoons. Chaplin and the Marx Bros did that almost immediately to Hitler. Lenin and Stalin maintained a mystique because they were not as public in their personas as the other two, and were therefore more effective political actors. Of course it is possible the two ideologies lend themselves to specific personality types, so the history is unavoidable.
That’s an important point. During the war and immediately after, the fascists were lampooned. Then largely forgotten in popular culture until things started to change in the 60’s. The Nazis went from objects to be mocked, into symbols of hyper-efficient evil. Mel Brooks is the last guy to mock the Nazis and he has pointed out often that it is impossible to that today. It’s not permitted, as it is seen as trivializing evil.
Well, Zman, the Nazis went from objects to be mocked, into symbols of hyper-efficient evil, largely because showing them as hyper-efficient evil is so damn easy to do.
If someone watching the end of Triumph des Willens doesn’t get goose-bumps, when it shows Hess proclaiming “Die Partei ist Hitler….”, and the delirious crowd then chants a bunch of “Heils”, and breaks out with “Die Fahne hoch”, that someone (to overstate the case) has the soul of a mummy.
Once one sees Hitler’s ability to inspire such a response, and one adds his ability to make the Wehrmacht into the Michael Jordans of war, this turns him into, not a buffoon, but the Grand Master of inspiring quasi-religious devotion, of the most dangerous sort.
(Nobody, but nobody, ever showed the Wehrmacht as buffoons, after it gobbled up France in six weeks, via, as Guderian etc. later called it, “maneuvers with live ammunition”.)
Hitler has quite “appropriately” become the apotheosis of dangerous Charisma, and **must** be super-feared by all foes of “racism” etc., as the ultimate example of hyper-efficient evil.
Even aside from the Holocaust, the Nazis have been, and will forever be, utterly legendary.
someone should write an opera about that…oh wait…they did 🙂
Beating the French is like Michael Jordan dunking on kindergarteners. The mighty Wehrmacht failed: to take England, Russia or North Africa. Their supply chain sucked. Logistics were alien to their history of short sharp wars on their border.
have read the germans are expert on tactics, and terrible on strategy.
Whiskey, I quite respect so much of your thought, but you’re missing it here.
The Frogs gave Moltke Jr., Falkenhayn, and Ludendorff fits for four years, a mere generation before Manstein, Guderian, etc. got it done pronto.
The larger point here has nothing to do with the details of logistics, which go over the heads of Hollywood movie viewers, who are easy to sell on the view, that Nazism was *masterful* at inspiring a supremely- dangerous Martial Cohesion.
The Germans never had a strategy to win either war, let alone a grand strategy…So despite their tactical superiority on all fronts, they never had a chance of better than a stalemate, and Adolph turned that down with Russia, while the Kaiser stupidly launched a huge offensive in 1918.
Arguably so, Pyrrhus, but the key point is that Hollywood movie viewers don’t know this strategy stuff.
They just know that beating Hitler was a very tough road.
And moreover, they learn that our fight vs. him was so easy to romanticize, as the Golden Age of US unity.
Nostalgia for that unity plays a big role here.
was, and still *is*, so easy to romanticize
I’ve been a “fan” of WW2 since I was a child. As a kid all the military hardware, the battles, and the literature generated from that time just held a fascination for me. New forms of warfare (blitzkrieg and carrier warfare in the Pacific) – made it especially fascinating.
I grew up as a kid in the 60’s and 70’s – and the current toxicity of talking about the Nazis seems rather strange – since back then it was rather common to talk about WW2 and the Nazis. Relatively popular shows such as Hogan’s Heroes and Benny Hill commonly showed Germans and Nazis as buffoons. But – my sense was that there was always a deep respect there for what the Germans had done, similar to how there is a deep respect with heritage US culture for Native Americans.
You don’t jump out of an airplane screaming the name of a fabled Apache warrior – or name your airplanes and high school football teams after Native American tribes as a derisive act – it’s a sign of respect and even admiration.
My takeaway of the German’s effort during WW2 was that among certain people , there was admiration of what they accomplished. All of the technology that came out of that period – and the accomplishments of the Wehrmacht – were something that no other nation managed to accomplish during that time period. Yeah – the Allies won – but it took the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States to get it done. And the Germans decimated the Soviet Union in particular.
Which brings up the reason why I personally think the commie left has such animosity towards the Nazis and fascism – because their version actually works and only “failed” because of a massive effort on the part of it’s enemies. Whereas much of the accomplishments of socialism and communism have to be lied about – and in the end it always fails of it’s own accord, fascism/Nazism’s “accomplishments” stand on their own merits and can only be denigrated thru lying about what they accomplished.
People generally don’t like having their noses rubbed in failure. Which is exactly what fascism does to communism.