If it weren’t for counter-examples, some people wouldn’t have any examples at all

But it’s true: ‘Nazi’ is short for ‘National Socialists’. So there’s that.

Is Mr Goldberg also aware that Bombay duck is not duck?

I give sweetbreads to my vegetarian friends all the time. I still don’t understand why they complain.

And it it wasn’t for disappointment, I wouldn’t have any appointments.

freshly squeezed cynic: the value of personal ownership was the reason for the slave labor camps! And but for the national socialists, the benefits of personal ownership would have been spread more widely, just as in the US before the Civil War.

Hitler believed in the need for the government to subordinate all classes to the nation. This was very close to FDR’s economic policy as well. The major difference was that FDR did not have a campaign of nationalism and irredentism, and that the National Recovery Administration was ruled unconstitutional. Hitler was also far more anti-capitalist, at least in the early propaganda of the Nazi party. Both capitalism and socialism were called Jewish plots.

Is there a list of presidents, prime ministers, kings queens and popes who didn’t believe that all classes should be subordinate to the nation? Sounds a bit like why the North fought the civil war.

The major difference was that FDR did not have a campaign of nationalism and irredentism

or exterminating the Jews. I’d say thats a pretty major difference.

Also what Walt said.

FSC@7
But Goldberg knows the sooper-sekrit kode according to which “stressed” means “pointed out the Satanic nature of.”

“pugs tend to suffer from respiratory problems more often than other dogs”
But damn are they wonderful dogs.
/Proud pug owner.
//What breeders have done to these dogs brings tears to my eyes. This is why I only adopt rescue animals.

They were both dog lovers.

Sorry, I mean socialists! Because liberal=socialist=national socialist=nazi-fascist! And anyone who says otherwise will be the first against the wall when the fascist/liberal/socialist revolution comes.

All meat eaters will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes! Yum.

_Okay, do you guys hire Watson as the inept “other side” to all of your posts, so that you look better? I can’t think of any other plausible explanation._

Watson’s contract with us is currently under review. I understand he’s received lucrative offers to poach him to comment on other blogs. But money is tight.

What did Hayek think of dogs?

A cursory search on Google reveals that Salma Hayek’s dog once saved her life so I imagine she is rather well-disposed to them.

Barry, there’s something substantial to the political similarity and the impact that FDR and Hitler both had on the Left in their respective countries.</i

I'm also trying to remember the bit about the armed gangs of FDR supporters beating up leftists on the streets in the US their subsequent deportment to concentration camps but failing.

Dogs are like schmoos – cute, lovable and very, very tasty. Everybody likes shmoos, so along the same lines, I’m sure Hitler and Roosevelt both liked dogs.

Hitler succeeded in getting the traditional bases of support for the SPD and KPD to vote for him: rural areas, workers, and small businessmen.

There’s nearly as much wrong in this sentence as there was in the bit about Apple that gave Graeber so much grief. SPD and KPD were urban-based parties (SPD still is); workers did not leave their traditional allegiance for the NSDAP; and small businessmen were about as likely to support the SPD and KPD as the NRA is to propose James Brady for sainthood.

32:

Shmoos look like they have the same texture as fufu. But, I have never eaten a shmoo. What do they taste like? If they taste like dog then I think I will stick to goat.

Damn, I have absolutely nothing to say in defense of Goldberg, to invigorate the discussion. And Watson: this is some lame trolling, man. Sometimes you just need to sit one out.

Shmoos taste like whatever it is you want to eat most right then. Or maybe like popplers.

Oh, let me see:

Brian Waddell, The War Against the New Deal
Alain Brinkley, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal
Charles Maier, In Search of Stability

Karl Polanyi, “Our Obsolete Market Mentality” 1947; and Hannes Lacher “The Slight Transformation” in Reading Polanyi for the 21st Century

Watson may be an idiot, but I think his heart is in the right place. The rest of you in this thread, and especially Holbo, are totally useless to me, even as inspiration. I have never felt for a second that Holbo has any interest in resisting neoliberalism.

Hell, Goldberg is more useful. Couldn’t find it, but just read somewhere that fascism was something like “The last Utopian resistance to the commodification of land and labour.”

Total waste here.

But what about Socks the White House cat? Socks was in the White House when Clinton was President, when the US invaded the Balkan states, which sound a bit like the Baltic states, which the USSR invaded (or annexed, or occupied, or colonised) in 1940, therefore Clinton-the-Cat-Lover was a Soviet, so liberals are communists? But Hitler hated communists and liked dogs. I’m not sure whether this terribly meaningful chain of associations and sound-a-likes helps or hinders Goldberg.

Does anyone know how Stalin felt about household pets?

Churchill, of course was a pig lover. “A cat looks down upon a man, and a dog looks up to a man, but a pig will look a man in the eye and see his equal.” When things were getting a bit much for him in 1941 or so he would go and lean over a fence at Chartwell and grunt at the pigs.

That’s probably all you have to know about Churchill to know the man right there.

I am, myself, a cat lover, and uncertain in whose political company this places me.

Death. Or, rather, DEATH (from the Discworld books). Which is excellent company to be in.

The rest of you in this thread, and especially Holbo, are totally useless to me, even as inspiration.

We’re here to be useful to Bob?

News to me.

49: this guy, also too. Which just goes to prove . . . hell, I don’t know.

“Damn, I have absolutely nothing to say in defense of Goldberg, to invigorate the discussion.”

Now if “invigorate the discussion” isn’t a superb euphemism for trolling ?!! I’m going to borrow it.

Doug is correct, and I was wrong about the shifts in voting during the Weimar period: (KDP+SDP) is a near constant, with the NSDAP mostly pulling seats from the right wing parties and eventually the center. I apologize for misleading everyone here about the elections. but I still think that after August 4th, 1914, the SDP was a nationalist party. The Freikorps were after all, endorsed by the SDP lead government to crush the Bavarian Republic. German nationalism also viewed capitalism with suspicion: the DAP, a predecessor to the NSDAP called for profit sharing to ease the division into classes that divided the German nation. Why posters are ignoring the reality that authors like Reich (before he went crazy) actually saw around them is beyond me.

Mr. T. Flip: thanks for brightening my day with that nutpick. Good stuff!

Watson, whatever the SDP was in 1914, I think the ultimate trump card will be that they were the only party* to actually vote against the Enabling Act, and many of their elected members paid for opposing Hitler with their lives. When it was required to pick sides in a battle for all the marbles, the right (and centre) sided with the Nazis, and the left opposed them, even knowing the high price they would pay. All the rest is hand waving after the fact.

* – One expects the KDP would have voted against it too, had they not all been in jail or in hiding by that point

(There’s a memorial to members of the Reichstag who died for opposing Hitler:
http://meiadeleite.com/2012/02/13/walking-on-history-iii-the-reichstag-memorial/)

What I think is missing in this thread is an analysis of the similarity between Watson and Hitler.

His handle is obviously a reference to Sherlock’s sidekick Dr Watson, currently being played by Martin Freeman in the BBC series. Who was Hitler’s sidekick? Martin Bormann. Therefore it’s obvious Watson’s name and his boring posts are a hidden reference to Martin Bormann.

This reminds me of a conversation I overheard on the tube in 2003 between an elderly Jamaican guy and his friend: “What I can’t understand is why the Republicans want to fight with the Republican Guard.”

I am, myself, a cat lover, and uncertain in whose political company this places me.

Ernst Blofeld.

@66: See also Robert Jordan talking to the Spanish Republicans in For Whom the Bell Tolls:

“Are you a Communist?”

“No, I am an anti-fascist.”

“For a long time?”

“Since I have understood fascism.”

“How long is that?”

“For nearly ten years.”

“That is not much time,” the woman said. “I have been a Republican for twenty years.”

“My father was a Republican all his life,” Maria said. “It was for that they shot him.”

“My father was also a Republican all his life. Also my grandfather,” Robert Jordan said.

“In what country?”

“The United States.”

“Did they shoot them?” the woman asked.

“Qué va,” Maria said. “The United States is a country of Republicans. They don’t shoot you for being a Republican there.”

“All the same it is a good thing to have a grandfather who was a Republican,” the woman said. “It shows a good blood.”

“My grandfather was on the Republican national committee,” Robert Jordan said. That impressed even Maria.

O/T but since Hogan brought it up, has anyone ever wanted to beat Hemingway over the head with a hardback copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls for calling Robert Jordan “Robert Jordan” for TWO-THIRDS OF THE FUCKING BOOK?

Or is that just me?

(Funny quote tho, Hogan.)

Hitler’s definition of what makes a socialist:

“Whoever is prepared to make the national cause his own to such an extent that he knows no higher ideal that the welfare of his nation; whoever has understood our great national anthem, ‘Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles’ to meant that nothing in the wide world surpasses in his eyes this Germany, people and land, land and people-that man is a Socialist.” (Speech July 28, 1922)

Gee, and I always thought socialism had something to do with public ownership of the means of production in whole or in part. I guess by his own defintion Hitler was a socialist, but I don’t think many people use his definition of socialism today.

@28 Can we call in D Drezner for some Salma Hayek/Freddie Hayek comparisons

JQ – Drezner would appear to be the go-to guy for such a thing. I’m not sure he’d agree with this though: http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/dgwhayek.html

reply to Watson ladd #27

In their best electoral performance, july 1932, the Nazis only received 1 out of every 4 working class votes.

Hayek was really a liberal. You can see it in the rap video he did – he wanted less empire, and money to balance output, if only on slightly quaint terms.

Look it up.

@Flip:

“liberals being the inheritors of the Nazi political tradition”

I think Goldberg’s deep idea is that liberalism (of a Wilsonian vintage) *led* to Fascism. Sort of like saying Obama is a monkey’s *cousin* rather than a direct descendent. See? Totally different thing.

Of course the whole idea of the shell game is to help you lose your place in the argument, leaving only the vague association of nasty brutish Nazis with the L word.

‘Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles’

For NichtDeutschenLangenSprechers, that means “German, German Overalls”, which explains a lot.

@87: And Jackson was a Democrat!!!! (Yes, right wingers actually do argue that belonging to a party with the same name as the modern DP makes you the same. Hey, it’s the only way they can connect themselves to Lincoln without everyone falling down laughing…)

Should have been, “three people who have never been in Jonah Goldberg’s kitchen”.

We’re about a week away from strange new respect for Liberal Fascism when we realize that it was merely the pop book that would free Jonah to write the book he really wanted to write: The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. Sample teaser observation —

Diversity is strength: Cool.The NBA should have a quota for midgets and one-legged point guards!

‘Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles’

For NichtDeutschenLangenSprechers, that means “German, German Overalls”, which explains a lot.

Lots of good stuff on this thread, but this wins it. Made me laugh out loud. Cheers.

Pam Gellar. Michelle Malkin. John Derbyshire.

I was in the same graduating class with Malkin, when she was a Heritage Foundation point-person for the anti-PC war. . . Except for once championing an African-American bar in Seattle (unfairly shut down by the police – she supported it on anti-government intrusion grounds, but at least acknowledged the possibility that black people could be victims of racism) she hasn’t changed a bit.

I’m with Seth @84 Commie, Pinko, and faggot have all lost their sting as adjectives used with liberal. Onward to Fascist Liberals!!
Too bad Rush looks so much like Jaba or we could be Hutt Liberals.

The Socialism that we want has nothing at all to do with the international-Marxist-Jewish leveling out process.

The level of cognitive dissonance necessary to support a concept of a population of dastardly socialist usurers would be astonishing to anyone nowadays who hasn’t had long-term exposure to the use of the word Islamofascist.

@99
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights…. [The King] has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms…”
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America, In Congress, July 4, 1776

@Barry Fried

True that, and it is a very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

We have a winner.

Turns out that Adam Bellow (amazingly, Bellow fils), edits Jonah’s crap. although without much real success. Takes a nepotist to know a …
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2007/03/jonah_where_art_thou.html

All right, they’re not technically nepotists. Just two guys born with right-for-mediocrities-to-work-in-conservative-publishing-based-on-their-parents’-success credentials in their mouths. But, oh Christ-on-a-cracker, I see that Bellow’s book is In Praise of Nepotism.

FWIW, Watson Ladd @27 says: Hitler succeeded in getting the traditional bases of support for the SPD and KPD to vote for him: rural areas, workers, and small businessmen. FDR was supported by the CPUSA, which lead to its terminal decline. The possibility of such changes in support was due to an openness to anti-capitalism both by Hitler and FDR, and the Left in both cases failed to understand its impending self-annihilation.

Richard Geary @ Nottingham University says:

although there was some defection of former SPD voters to the Nazis, there was little desertion from the KPD. Most local studies of the labour vote further suggest that most defections from the SPD benefited the Communists rather than the Nazis.

Rather than defeating the Left by ideological-electoral means, Hitler applied other resources such as the first German concentration camp and a fair quantity of lead to its terminal decline. If this is to be regarded as ‘self-annihilation’, then maybe WL has an answer to bexley:

Watson Ladd @10: The major difference was that FDR did not have a campaign of nationalism and irredentism

bexley @14: or exterminating the Jews. I’d say thats a pretty major difference.

However (this relevant to the ‘Skeletons in the Imperialist Attic’ thread) besides Nazi ‘irredentism’, there’s the ‘naked military expansionism aimed at colonising Russia’ side of things, noted in point 10 in the (1932) Atlantic article’s list: France, he urges, must be broken before Germany can undertake to conquer land from Russia (the only possible source).

I reckon someone would have mentioned this to Stalin by 1939.

The man, we are told by one worthy, was “an artist”, and said worthy “loved him for that”.

Hitler! Now zere was a painter!

If liberal fascism can be defined as the ideology of an industrialized state which exports its surplus population to its colonies, thereby avoiding the more extreme social dislocations which an industrial revolution provokes, then those industrial states which lost their colonies or never developed a colonial system to begin with were forced to face the social consequences of a revolution from above (fascism) or a revolution from below (communism). Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain at one extreme, and Russia and China at the other.

Via Atrios we note that Goldberg is hawking his book about the tyranny of clichés with a top five list of clichés those dumb liberals lean on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/top-five-cliches-liberals-use-to-avoid-real-arguments/2012/04/27/gIQAFR1zlT_story.html

“Liberals insist that they live right downtown in the “reality-based community”

Why in the name of God would he use a Karl Rove quote to attack liberals. (And conservatives own up to their ideology? Adam Smith and Edmund Burke ties? I’m only two paragraphs in and this is already painful)