It’s a bit late to be reporting April Fools* hoaxes, but this one at Salon has to be the best ever. The premise is that the US conservative movement has gone so completely insane that David Horowitz (!!) is now, in relative terms, the voice of reason.
This sounds as if it would be impossible to pull off, but whoever Salon has writing as “Horowitz” sounds very much like the real thing, for example, “Obama has flexed the leftist muscle so nakedly and unmistakably that there isn’t a conservative left who will vote Democratic in the next election”.
The piece then quotes material supposedly sent to “Horowitz”, in which Obama is compared to Mussolini, Charles Manson and so on, and denounced as the antichrist. It looks convincing at first, but surely no serious representative of the conservative side of politics would regard Obama as comparable to Mussolini, a traitor to the United States, and so on. And the general tenor of “Horowitz” piece, while it looks sober and sound at a first reading, carries the obviously absurd implication that the leading thinkers of US conservatism are hysterical loons.
*Note: I’m sure that the piece originally appeared with an April 1 dateline, but it now has April 2.
Actually, Salon has been outdone by the Glenn Beck site. Even after looking at it for some time, I couldn’t tell if it was the real thing or a parody that had somehow hijacked the domain name.
{ 42 comments }
Maurice Meilleur 04.05.09 at 11:41 am
“The citizens outside looked from The Onion to movement conservatives, and from the movement conservatives to The Onion, and from The Onion to the movement conservatives again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
Steve LaBonne 04.05.09 at 2:18 pm
This phenomenon is analogous to Poe’s Law for religious fundamentalists.
Michael Bérubé 04.05.09 at 6:26 pm
Aahhhhhh! You made me click the link and read a sentence that begins, “Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn. . .”! Now myu eyes atre bleeedfing anmdI canot see teh keuyboarfd
Zephyrus 04.05.09 at 6:27 pm
Poe’s law is interesting. But is it a statement that religious extremism must always indistinguishable from parody? Or an empirical statement that it is easier for a parodist to pick up on the particular vocabulary and rhetoric of fundamentalist argument than it is to do so for other schools of thought?
Maurice Meilleur 04.05.09 at 8:07 pm
Zephyrus, maybe it’s an empirical claim similar to one made by Arthur C. Clarke about technology and magic: in the case of religion, that sufficiently advanced religious zealotry and credulousness is indistinguishable from the parody of said zealotry and credulousness.
As for Horowitz, it’s all about the crazy. Even striking the contrarian pose to throw the liberals of Salon off their guard is part of the crazy.
Maurice Meilleur 04.05.09 at 8:12 pm
You know, maybe this is a defensive move on Horowitz’s part–he is seeking some state of crazy so advanced that no parody of his crazy could ever sting. Like forcing the atoms of your body to undergo fusion in order to protect against sunburn. Or something.
e julius drivingstorm 04.05.09 at 8:39 pm
The neocon in my office espouses rightwing talking points usually the day before you hear them in the media. A few days ago he said: “So many learned people are opposing Obama’s policies…”
Maybe the new meme will be the liberal elite against the learned conservative.
Slocum 04.05.09 at 9:07 pm
Yes, now it’s the conservatives who see the nation sliding into fascism. But quite recently, of course, it was the progressives. I must have missed the series of CT posts which poured the appropriate ridicule those many nutty progressives who took the idea of a fascist coup in the U.S. seriously (does anybody have a link?) Here, for example, is Naomi Wolf on FireDogLake from just a little over a year ago:
But, of course, the other Naomi was the one widely known for her imminent-descent-into-fascism predictions:
I’m sure that CT must have had great fun with absurdities that made such inviting targets, but Google just can’t find the right posts.
Michael Bérubé 04.05.09 at 9:29 pm
I dunno about everybody else at CT, but it seems to me there might be a difference between talking about “fascism” with regard to torture, indefinite detention, and the theory of the unitary executive, and talking about “fascism” with regard to the restoration of a 39.6 percent tax bracket. Just a thought.
Henry 04.05.09 at 9:34 pm
And here we go for another merry-go-round on the good old Will-You-Condemn-a-thon ….
Righteous Bubba 04.05.09 at 9:36 pm
Yes, now it’s the conservatives who see the nation sliding into fascism. But quite recently, of course, it was the progressives.
For no reason at all!
An excellent comment from djw.
engels 04.05.09 at 9:37 pm
Yes, Slocum, because by simple logic anyone who holds that the accusation ‘X is a fascist’ is ridiculous for one given X must — on pain of inconsistency — hold the same opinion about its application to any given X.
Jim Harrison 04.06.09 at 1:54 am
I never seriously entertained the thought that Bush et. al. were fascists or were going to install a totalitarian regime. What I did think was that they were taking some of the steps that led other countries down that road and that they were setting a great many terrible precedents. Bush was obviously not Hitler. In some ways, however, he was quite reminiscent of the Kaiser, and the America he apparently desired and worked to create was not like the Third Reich but was rather like the Second, a blustering, incompetent state head-over-heels in love with brutality. (I admit, by the way, that one could make a least as good an argument for Napoleon the Third’s France as the true analogue of Bush’s America. If so, that may just turn out that what we may have here is a case in which it will be the first time that was the farce.)
Tom West 04.06.09 at 2:13 am
dunno about everybody else at CT, but it seems to me there might be a difference between talking about “fascism†with regard to torture, indefinite detention, and the theory of the unitary executive, and talking about “fascism†with regard to the restoration of a 39.6 percent tax bracket. Just a thought.
I figure Bush was 10 times further along the path to fascism that Obama. Unfortunately, that’s .01 compared to 0.001. In either case, using the ‘f’-word basically paints the speaker as a partisan who can be safely ignored by anyone not already solidly in the same camp. (I suspect that in the mainstream people’s minds the f-word is reserved for those planning the end of democratic elections.)
Horowitz knows this and is trying to stop his fellow conservatives from getting themselves ignored. Some on the left tried to do the same with those making the ‘Bush=Hitler’ business. The thing he forgets, of course, is that if you’re a journalist already known as partisan, you’re audience is probably only ‘your’ crowd, in which case catering to their prejudices makes strong economic sense. It may not help your side win elections, but it does help you keep your job.
(By the way, I think it’s the massive gov’t intervention in the private markets that really has the wingnuts going, not a tax hike.)
vanya 04.06.09 at 2:53 am
The only thing you can say in Horowitz’ defense is that he has actually socialized with black people during his life. I think the prospect of a black president is not quite the unimaginable nightmare for him that it is for the rest of the wingnuts, and he may not viscerally understand why his fellow travellers are so apoplectic.
Colin Danby 04.06.09 at 4:36 am
“not exactly the antichrist”
Who says H’z can’t do nuance?
Zamfir 04.06.09 at 7:06 am
“Obama has flexed the leftist muscle so nakedly and unmistakably that there isn’t a conservative left who will vote Democratic in the next electionâ€.
You guys have to help me understand American politics. I thought conservatives where pretty much defined as people who would not vote Democratic?
bad Jim 04.06.09 at 9:49 am
It might be enough to note that various versions of Confederate flags are still flown over state capitals throughout the south, and to note as well that the chief differences between the U.S. and Confederate constitutions dealt strictly with slavery, but that the commonplace modern celebration of southern heritage insists that slavery was irrelevent to the “War of Northern Aggression”.
More modern dissensions include Darwin and Roosevelt, but it isn’t only the 19th and 20th centuries that the conservatives would prefer to erase. They’d rather roll it back to the age of faith, undoing Galileo and Harvey (restoring the heart to its place as an organ of emotion).
I find it encouraging to encounter the ideologues of the right dreaming of domination, fuming in frustration, lying in the gutter. Had they been slightly more practical they wouldn’t have found themselves in that situation, and even now we’re struggling to escape their embrace.
John Quiggin 04.06.09 at 9:54 am
Zamfir, Horowitz claims that conservatives voted for Obama. I think this is a manifestation of the “centre-right nation” meme. That is, since (by assumption) the median American is conservative, a Democratic victory must mean that conservative Americans have either been deluded by MSM trickery, or have decided to punish the GOP for inadequate fidelity to the cause.
Zamfir 04.06.09 at 10:17 am
Is there a Democratic mirror image of that position, with people talking about Bush-voting liberals?
From the outside, I have serious trouble seeing much coherence in either liberal or conservative positions beyond the mapping on the parties.
John Quiggin 04.06.09 at 10:46 am
Z, I didn’t mean to imply that Obama-voting conservatives actually existed, and after 2000 there were no Bush-voting liberals . I agree that “conservative” in the US sense has little coherence, being more a tribal affiliation than a political or philosophical viewpoint. OTOH, if you interpret “liberal” as a convex combination of the European terms “liberal” and “social democrat” you won’t be far wrong, and, as a group, US liberals aren’t noticeably less coherent than (in their current dishevelled state) European social democrats.
Shane H 04.06.09 at 11:32 am
In other news, clicking those links has to amazon has seriously thrown off my personalized recommendations.
JoB 04.06.09 at 11:53 am
Let me propose the more appropriate ‘Joe’s Law’: any group of extremists is eventually led by a bunch of money-hungry idiots that know extremists are never a majority – but will pay through their noses as long as the idiot is vocal about them being the silent majority.
Unfortunately there are idiots that realize nobody needs a majority to treat everybody else as a minority.
Maurice Meilleur 04.06.09 at 11:55 am
Related to the original post but o/t, Salon has started a new feature: ‘Ask a wingnut’, written by a ‘Glenallen Walken’, the pseudonym of a ‘real live conservative and former Bush official’ who will ‘bridge the cultural divide and answer questions from liberals about why conservatives think and do what they think and do’. Judging from the first installment, this apparently means ‘supply stock movement-conservative answers to inane questions’. Seriously: the first question was, ‘Dear Wingnut: Do conservatives really think it’s the media’s fault that the GOP lost in 2006 and 2008?’ I bet you’re on the edge of your seat now, wondering what ‘Walken’ had to say in response.
I wish I could say I was surprised that Joan Walsh let this stinker through–after all, she ran Horowitz’s piece (and DH used to appear regularly in the magazine, remember?), and she does untie Camille Paglia’s straitjacket every couple of months to let her pound on a keyboard for a few thousand ‘words’–but really: Are we in danger of forgetting what movement conservatives (not ‘real live conservatives’ at all, actually, on any meaningful definition of the word) think about anything? So much in danger that we need another outlet where we wind one of these knuckleheads up and watch him go? It’s a worthless exercise considered as a contribution to political discourse, and ‘Walken’ is such an anodyne writer that it fails as entertainment as well. At least with Limbaugh and Coulter you have the excitement of wondering if they’ll get spittle on you. (They’re like the Gallaghers of political punditry.)
Slocum 04.06.09 at 12:41 pm
I dunno about everybody else at CT, but it seems to me there might be a difference between talking about “fascism†with regard to torture, indefinite detention, and the theory of the unitary executive, and talking about “fascism†with regard to the restoration of a 39.6 percent tax bracket. Just a thought.
But, of course, the claims were not just about Gitmo but that we were in real danger of Bush and Cheney using a new war with Iran as a pretext for declaring a state of emergency and seizing dictatorial powers. That’s the absurd silliness I’m talking about.
On the other side, from Obama we’re certainly seeing no sign of him having a taste for reductions in executive power (few presidents do), and any case for ‘fascism’ would not be based on a 39.6 percent bracket, but rather rapidly expanding government control of the economy (hiring and firing executives, replacing company directors, setting limits on executive pay):
“In the category of riding lawn mowers, it’s John Deere yes, and Toro no”
http://www.hulu.com/embed/7EVPmI7sOTkbZDtaqOSlgQ
But still, the idea of a descent into fascism is as silly as it was when Bush was president.
From my libertarian perspective, the worst fascist tendencies in the U.S. are those associated with the war on drugs–masked, paramilitary police squads kicking in doors in the middle of the night. And these are abuses that are carried out by state and local authorities rather than the federal government, and are supported by both political parties and majorities of voters. But as bad as these things are (and they’re very bad), they’re not the first steps on the inevitable, goose-stepping march to full-blown fascism.
dslak 04.06.09 at 1:06 pm
Except that still isn’t anything close to fascist, since that power is only be exercised over executives of companies whose primary stakeholders are the government!
So it’s still sillier now to talk about a descent to fascism now than it was when Bush was president.
Jason 04.06.09 at 1:40 pm
Seems to me that best practice guidelines for governance have asked for outside directors on boards, shareholder action on remuneration, signed auditor statements released to shareholders, and other such controls for quite some time now. So I’m not sure why, should specific companies (not the whole “economy” – or is the economy reducible to a few boards?) ask for these type of investment, some sort of white squire approach by gov’t is distasteful to proponents of the market. Does the gov’t intend *never* to give up its stake? Is it going to now accept a hostile takeover offer from itself?
I was too young to remember about non-rapidly expanding government control of the economy, but: did people lose it on Ford for signing ERISA? Just don’t see the controversy. I saw a few companies ask the government for a bajillion dollars, and the government said yes, and then starting talking about some requirements – most of which I would’ve assumed made more sense to people than half-measures like “you will not arbitrarily revise your compensation practices to protect executives with options gone underwater.” ( Or any other staff: cf. Intel’s recent announcement to reprice.) So to replace the “fascism” argument with “the promise of more fascism to come” argument based on some immediate restructuring of compensation seems kind of silly. Propose a “King Ralph” scenario for running these companies to 90% of any demo and you’d see far more culling than this administration has done, imho.
I think right-pundits just assumed Hillary would win and set their phasers on kill two years before the election, and now have all this fascism-with-a-friendly-face material piled up only to sell it to Beck at low, low prices. When there’s a pundit bailout, then maybe talk about gov’t overreach. Of course it’ll be the NRO that gets all the money, but…
Phill Hallam-Baker 04.06.09 at 1:40 pm
Does Horowitz really think that Stem Cell research is going to drive voters away from Obama? If so he is as deluded as the people he is calling delusional.
Fact is that Obama did exactly what he said he would on stem cell, and what the vast majority of the population support. Catholic bishops can fulminate all they like, the fact is that their parishioners do not follow their political directives – if they ever did. The more Catholic a state is, the more likely it is to be Democrat. At this point Specter is the only Republican I can think of offhand who represents a state or district with a large Catholic population.
On the Evangelical side, those folk were never going to vote for Obama anyway. And at the end of the day Obama will be just as black come 2010 and 2012.
On the issue of spending, Bush proved that no Conservative voter gives a damn. He spent money without thought or care. Methinks that Hoovernomics are not an election winner.
But more than that. The way the GOP field is shaping up, Sarah Palin may well be the most credible candidate. That is why they have been trying to promote Bobby ‘Volcanoe’ Jindal.
Paul 04.06.09 at 2:56 pm
Obama is popular in this country and in Europe at the moment, but I want to see if in two years time he will still be the darling of the media and the people. Events have a way of determining what history recoerds about a man.
Slocum 04.06.09 at 4:20 pm
Except that still isn’t anything close to fascist, since that power is only be exercised over executives of companies whose primary stakeholders are the government!
No, that power is to be exercised over any company that has accepted bailout funds (and recall that some banks were coerced into accepting funds to avoid stigmatizing those that really needed it). Reportedly, to avoid government control, some banks are reportedly trying to return the funds and are meeting resistance from the Obama administration. Perhaps you don’t believe that report — but it strikes me as quite plausible that the Obama administration would not want to see banks bailing out of the bailout program. And it’s consistent with Obama’s comment to the bankers that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks (which is a bit too close to a ‘nice business you got there…’ comment for my taste).
And although so far we are talking about finance and autos, would we really surprised if government bailouts and government control were extended to more industries as the downturn continued? There are already proposals for bailing out newspapers, for example. Wouldn’t it worry anybody if the government started exercising the same level of control over the NY Times or Tribune companies as it does over GM (or would most CTers welcome that?)
So it’s still sillier now to talk about a descent to fascism now than it was when Bush was president.
Chances of any given American being declared an enemy combatant and sent to Gitmo under Bush? Somewhere on the order of 1 in 100,000,000. Chance of any given American being caught up in the war on drugs? Many orders of magnitude higher than that. Chances of any given American being impacted by government control of business? ~100%.
Talking about any of this as being equivalent to Hitler or Mussolini (or, hell, even Putin) is silly–but in terms of impact on ordinary lives, the expansions of government power under Obama are going to have a more pervasive impact.
Righteous Bubba 04.06.09 at 5:00 pm
Hard to see how it’s more pervasive than the previous government’s house of cards collapsing.
John Protevi 04.06.09 at 5:28 pm
Chances of any given American being impacted by
governmentbusiness control ofbusinessgovernment? ~100%. Fixed.As a friendly amendment to Righteous Bubba, let me ask you, slocum, to please explain how “any given American” hasn’t been hugely “impacted” already by various deregulations / privatizations (i.e., corporatization of the society) done under the free-market figleaf?
MarkUp 04.06.09 at 6:00 pm
Are subsidies preemptive bailouts?
james 04.06.09 at 6:47 pm
Phill Hallam-Baker – “On the Evangelical side, those folk were never going to vote for Obama anyway. And at the end of the day Obama will be just as black come 2010 and 2012.”
This is considered a reasoned argument? A blanket statement containing no supporting facts, that alludes to racism by approx 100 million people. Is it not more likely that Evangelical issues with Obama are that Obama has liberal political policies while Evangelicals tend to favor conservative political policies?
Slocum 04.06.09 at 6:52 pm
As a friendly amendment to Righteous Bubba, let me ask you, slocum, to please explain how “any given American†hasn’t been hugely “impacted†already by various deregulations / privatizations
Well, they have been impacted by deregulation — and on the whole, the benefits have been huge since the time I was a kid — when, for example, airlines and telecommunications were heavily regulated and, as a result, greatly over-priced. And that has happened because, unlike what it is doing with GM, the government did not intervene to subsidize and prop up the many high-cost, hidebound legacy airlines that have disappeared (to no ill effect on the traveling public).
(i.e., corporatization of the society)
The truly scary combination is corporations and government in bed together — government using corporations to reward supporters (hello Freddie and Fannie) and corporations using government subsidies and regulatory power to assure profits protect themselves from competition (ADM and ethanol, for example, or the big boon that big tobacco companies derived from the tobacco settlement). The greater percentage of GDP accounted for by government and the more accepted it becomes for government to engage in hands-on management of company operations, the worse this is all going to get.
Lefties sometimes notice the effects, but they never grasp the cause:
“Two years in Washington have started to make me feel jaded. I’ve come to expect that even nobly conceived laws will be manipulated and distorted for private ends. But once in a while I hear a story that gives me the queasy feeling that I’m nowhere near cynical enough.”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090420/hayes
He’s right — he’s not cynical enough. The ‘nobly conceived laws’ are generally lobbied for from the beginning by interests who fully understand how exactly they will benefit and they are forwarded by legislators supported by those interests. The ‘noble conception’ is convenient to provide cover and plausible deniability of the actual motives.
I do not understand how anybody can look at Obama’s shameful history with corn ethanol and have faith that his various green energy initiatives will also not turn out to have for more political than environmental impact.
Righteous Bubba 04.06.09 at 7:02 pm
Like the heightened ability of one parent to stay home?
Phill Hallam-Baker 04.06.09 at 7:09 pm
James,
I think you underestimate the extent to which racism underlies the modern political ‘evangelical’ movement which has nowhere near 100 million members. Not every Christian is evangelical and not every evangelical is a fan of Pat Robertson and the rest.
For years the Republican party has courted the South through coded references to racism and racist organizations. And the ‘evangelical’ political movement was founded to exploit the same resentments.
Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’ was nothing more than a cynical pandering to racism to build a governing coalition. The Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition were simply more cynical attempts to build a political platform through exploiting the same prejudices, only that time round throwing religion in as well.
I consider the last part of the strategy to be particularly contemptible. You ask for supporting facts, what supporting facts does the Pope or Pat Robertson bring to the table? They rest their claim to political and moral authority on a purported role as mediator (sole mediator in the case of the Pope) to an entity the rest of us cannot see.
By their fruits shall ye know them. Those who claim political authority for a platform of bigotry and hatred may be talking to their imaginary friend or they may be talking to Satan. I do not think it very likely that any supreme deity I would be interested in a conversation with would have much time for them.
Phill
John Protevi 04.06.09 at 7:12 pm
Well, they have been impacted by deregulation—and on the whole, the benefits have been huge since the time I was a kid
And now that you are not a kid, how do you feel the current effects of Gramm-Leach-Biley of 1999?
Lefties sometimes notice the effects, but they never grasp the cause
Indeed, if there is one thing lefties are noted for, it’s their inability to get to the roots of corporate lobbying. How well I remember the endless complaints that I wasn’t being cynical enough in analyzing and denouncing the corporate purchase of government.
John Protevi 04.06.09 at 7:14 pm
Feel *about* the current effects of Gramm …
commie atheist 04.06.09 at 11:34 pm
Well, they have been impacted by deregulation—and on the whole, the benefits have been huge since the time I was a kid—when, for example, airlines and telecommunications were heavily regulated and, as a result, greatly over-priced. And that has happened because, unlike what it is doing with GM, the government did not intervene to subsidize and prop up the many high-cost, hidebound legacy airlines that have disappeared (to no ill effect on the traveling public).
That has to be either outright snark, or else written by someone who has not flown coach in the past 20 years.
commie atheist 04.06.09 at 11:40 pm
For some reason I’m reminded of Sir Allen Stanford’s complaint:
Stanford said the government action to seize his assets had left him with little money and few changes of clothing. He was forced to fly on a commercial plane for the first time in almost two decades after the government seized his fleet of six private jets.
“They make you take your shoes off and everything, it’s terrible,” he complained about the airport security that apparently came as a surprise to him.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/WallStreet/Story?id=7270405&page=2
Righteous Bubba 04.09.09 at 2:51 am
Note that in comment 960 of this thread Charles Johnson pulls out the Obama Derangement Syndrome card.
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