The voice of intelligence ... is drowned out by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all it is silenced by ignorance. --Karl Menninger
34 comments:
They say ignorance is bliss! I question the total control of health care by the government for many reasons but the ignorance shown in this video is sad. The comparison's to Hitler I find offensive. I think it's great that they are protesting something they feel so strongly about, I just wish their information wasn't based on fear and ignorance rather than facts.
Wow. How can he be fascist and communist all at the same time? I have a history degree and fascism is a far-right wing extreme. Communism is the far left extreme. You can't be a fascist communist. It's sad that people will make total asses of themselves on video like this.
Well.
That was depressing.
Reality is he most likely lusted over his 15 minutes of fame...and this is what he did with it...
OMG, that's the opposition? How can they have any credibility?
The stupid! It burns!!!!!
Jennifer: Very true. I remember some idiot with an Obama = Hitler sign at the local "tea party"
Handsome: Well, communism does fit the definition of fascism: "A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
Thayer: That's the opposition, as idiotic as the Bush = Hitler nuts from 5 or so years ago.
Of course Grand Daddy Prescott did business with the Nazis helping to build the Bush family fortune.
But what the heck.
Business is business.
But it helps explain the Bushian authoritarian streak.
One other thing kinda sorta gnaws at me in this Fascist = Communist bit of confusion is the not insignificant role played by the concept of private property played in each system.
It's fundamental.
And opposite in each system.
Take it as a compliment to our side Shaw. The right wing intellectuals know they can't defeat us with facts and logic. So they send in the clowns.
Ah yes, the old Bush family and Hitler connection myth. As if it has anything to do with anything. And it plays on the ignorance of the fact that trade with Germany in the period between the wars was common. Sorry, the Bush = Hitler comparisons still don't fly. Just as the Obama = Hitler ones do not fly if someone similarly played on ignorance.
Handsome, you should ask for your money back on that history degree, if you think fascism is a right-wing extreme. It never was. Jennifer's definition is a pretty good one.
Brush up on your history of the 1920s and 30s, and you'll find progressives and socialists singing the praises of fascism, and fascists returning the love. That didn't change until Stalin put the word out that any competitors to the USSR-led international socialism movement were to be demonized.
This video was disturbing to me. No wonder the Right are being called Loons. I am glad people are speaking out, but I think it could be done in a more civilized manner. These people were just ranting. If they want to be taken seriously, then they need to express themselves in a clear, decisive manner. Not like this:
If you’re really sick. Go home and die.
We are not going to stop until we take down this government.
Did you take your Prozac today?
I want Cuba where I can get tissue paper.
Of course, if all those folks were astroturfed, as you originally claimed, they'd all be giving the same message, following a script. I guess the only astroturfing is coming out of the White House.
Gordon: Right. The whole thing is true grass roots. Unfortunately, there's some quack grass growing there too.
DMarks: Yes, there is. Ignorance and misinformation is not solely confined to the left!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
This nicely illustrates a 'business is business' view of the world.
Bye the bye. Put down the Jonah Goldberg.
Fascists during the 1920's were staunch anti-communists. It's one of the basic beliefs Gordon. Present from the beginning in Italy in 1919. Mussolini. Franco. Hitler. Salazar. etc. ALL staunch anti-communists. That isn't to say fascist regimes weren't above playing politics with their ideological foes as needed to further their own ends.
Kind of like the US really.
Yes, the fascists were anti-communist, but that's because the communists were in competition for the loyalty of the worker. Read the party platforms. They're very similar.
Talking about being IGNORANT!
Where is the outrage?! Where is the protest?!
This latest Obama transgression is the WORST so far. How DARE this arrogant BASTARD assume he can address other people’s children with his ideas just because he’s the president.
As I read the stories about it on the other blogs my attitude was, eh, doesn’t apply to me so I don’t really care. My kids are of college age, they don’t have to deal with this.
But the truth is I do care. The brazen arrogance of President Barrack Hussein Obama has finally rattled my nerves and got under my skin!
There are TWO things about the president’s inane, last minute, impulsive idea to address the nation’s children that are just WRONG.
First, in the history of parenting and teaching, none of America’s children have been prepared for this scenario. Parents and Teachers are the primary, co-operative guides of children. Through the years they’ve given each other charge over teaching the children.
Children are taught by both sets of authorities, their parents and their teachers, they are to always respect and listen to both. Among the parenting authorities come grandparents, aunts, uncles etc. Among the teaching authorities come the principal, additional teachers and other school officials.
Most children get these relationships and how they are to respect it, as it is reinforced almost daily through different episodes in their school and home lives. To suddenly have their senses accosted by a man in the white house, disconnected from what they’ve been taught and by whom, is just WRONG.
There is a second thing WRONG with this idea that President Obama is forcing on America’s public schools September 8, just three days before we honor the memory of almost 3,000 Americans killed on 9/11.
Gordon-
Indeed. Both ideologies are handy for totalitarians. No question.
And both avidly sought workers to join their cause. That said they are not identical and cannot be used interchangeably. They are competing world views. Mussolini himself described fascist Italy (the 1st fascist regime) as 'the corporate state'.
Communists aren't Fascists. And vice versa.
It merely confuses the issue. Which, of course, is the point.
Throw enough mud and some is bound to stick. And of course the more varied and more extreme the criticism of this middle of the road Democrat we elected President the better for his political foes.
Eddie-
Chill. A little pep talk about working hard and staying in school won't really bring down the republic. I promise.
As Barney Frank so beautifully put it last week, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?"
Eddie,
Do us a favor and research the fact that other presidents have addressed children. Also the president's message will be about learning and staying in school.
I don't know where you get your information, but it's wrong, and you're getting yourself worked up over nothing and listening to ill-informed people whose mission is to denounce and demagogue EVERYTHING this duly elected man does.
Get a hold of your paranoia, man. There is nothing wrong with a president wanting to talk to America's children.
I'm sure if it were a conservative president doing this, you'd think it was a heckuva good idea.
You and many others still won't accept the fact that a majority of Americans voted Mr. Obama in as their president. You have to come to terms with the other fact that that was more than half the country.
Is there anything that doesn't get these righties in a rabid frothing rage?
The president's going to talk to the nation's school kids to encourage them to stay in school and do well, and the fruitcakes call it indoctrination?
That bunch of fringies are mentally ill, and people like Beck and Limbaugh encourage their lunacy.
That Eddie guy is a perfect example of crazy paranoia.
Gordon: Yes, the fascists were anti-communists. While the communists fully embraced the ideals of fascism. They just didn't call it fascism.
The battle between these two branches of socialism was not a matter of opposite ideologies being pitted against each other. They were pretty much the same. Subtly different branches of socialism that were the more the same the more you look closely at them. It was like a turf war between the Gotti's and Gambino's, only with hundreds of thousands of times more bodies.
Arthur: Communists are indeed fascists. See the definition I quoted above. Are there any of these characteristics of fascism NOT held by the likes of Stalin, Mao, Castro, Lenin, Pol Pot, etc? Again, the definition of fascism:"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism."
The mention of a "corporate state" is a mere distraction and not a difference, as this is refined into its purist example under communism (in which the state is entirely one corporation).
Communism and fascism are not "competing world views" once you look below a very thin veneer of surface words.
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Also, we did not elect a "middle of the road" Democrat. We elected a leftist. Even though he is not a Communist, certainly. He's still on the left-side, not the center. Time to dispense with lying about the President. Obama is no more "middle of the road" than Bush was. In such matters, it is of benefit to measure from the center of the actual political spectrum, rather than consider one's own view to be the center.
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Thanks for the opinion piece from the newspaper. I can find similar "journalism" proving that Obama is a communist from similarly biased journals. But that is phony just like the cooked Bush = Nazi claims. It's for you time to stop siding with the kooks. After all, you don't see any serious commenter here, even on the right, defending the Obama = Hitler crap.
(No one here is putting down or insulting any Goldberg, so your adminition sure seemed odd).
Eddie,
What was George Bush doing on 9/11 while planes were flying into the WTC and Pentagon?
He was TALKING TO CHILDREN!
Wonder what he was telling them?
I have been teaching for almost 29 years and recall discussing President George H. W. Bush's address to students with my 8th grade public school Social Studies class without one parental objection.
Twenty nine years later I will be joining my current students as we watch President Obama's address in the auditorium of the private Christian school in which I am now a teacher.
I find it perplexing that we hold the leaders of our country to different standards based upon who we voted for. As an educator, I have always stressed to my students that the leader of our country does not have to have our approval but should always have our respect and that there is a difference between the two.
I am appalled that adults would encourage their children to demonstrate such disrespect toward our nation's leader. As a teacher I can assure you that I can name at least 100 other topics, opinions, conversations, ideas, suggestions, situations, etc, that your children are exposed to every day that you should be far more concerned about.
I can also assure you that if parents devoted as much attention to more important areas of their children's education as they are to this topic we just might be on the road to educational progress. I am fortunate that I work within an educational institution where the administration and PTO are a very mixed group of individuals who always put educational benefit above personal interest.
I am also fortunate that I have the privilege to teach my students the accurate historical truth about the terms and names that are so loosely and irresponsibly used today - socialism, Nazi, Hitler, education camps, indoctrination, etc. Sometimes I get the feeling that what we really attempt to shield our children from, even if unintentionally, is the truth.
dmarks typed:
'The mention of a "corporate state" is a mere distraction and not a difference, as this is refined into its purist example under communism (in which the state is entirely one corporation).'
Er. No. It's sort of basic that the Communard controls the means of production where fascists encourage private ownership within government limits of course. This is THE difference and its is fundamental. There's a reason Marx chose 'Das Kapital'.
But have your fun anyway. Each blurring of important distinctions and exaggerations you make prove Shaw's point at the top of the thread. Obama is, by any reasonable standard, a middle of the road Democrat. Domestically he isn't far from Dick Nixon. Sadly.
The mention of Jonah Goldberg was in reference to Gordon's recent rave up over the book "Liberal Fascism' . Goldberg's 'scholarship' is, of course preposterous.
And the piece from The Guardian isn't an 'opinion piece' at all. It's a balanced news story. Sorry. But Prescott did business with the Nazis when he should have known better.
Arthur: The discussion of the minor differences between communism and fascism are independent of the point Shaw made, since we are all in agreement (including us nontroll conservatives) here that the Obama = Hitler comparisons are way out of line.
You are confusing this discussion by connecting it to a Hitler = Obama stance that no-one here has.
As for private property under communism, the Stalins, Pol Pots, Kims etc enjoy extensive and quite maximized private property rights. Even if they use the "control the means of production" rhetorical trick that socialists use to justify the rulers having as much of the nation as their own personal property as possible. There is a difference between communism and the type of fascism that isn't communist. The non-communist fascists are not nearly as clever at flowery pseudo-intellectial rhetorical tricks to disguise their fascism as the communists are.
Glad you modified the "middle of the road" thing. A "middle of the road Democrat" is different from just plain "middle of the road". That means he's driving in a side lane and not straddling the center line. Yes, just like Nixon.
dmarks-
I'm not confusing any discussion.
That's your job around here and your take on private property and Fascism = Communism has done exactly that.
Go to it.
I have a headache.
There's always private property. In fascism, most is owned by ruling elites. In communism (a subset of fascism) it is just about all owned by ruling elites. That is still "most".
"Communism = fascism" is not perfectly accurate. As the relationship is more of one where the first is a subset of the other.
(And to again short-circuit misclaims that others might make, I am not calling Obama either of these, and condemn the Obama = Hitler signs.)
For Handsome, by the way, there are other instances where fascism meets communism. Consider the dictator of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez uses the hate speech of communism (crushing people's rights in the name of worker revolution, quoting Marx) along with the hate speech of non-communist fascism (i.e. populist rabble rousing that names Jews as scapegoats, very nationalist/aggressive rhetoric). Slabodan Milosevic also merged these two "camps".
The two groups (communists and non-communist fascists) have also found a lot of common ground and have a lot of overlapping rhetoric and agendas in the fringe parties of post-Soviet Russia).
It is no surprise that these very similar but not exactly the same ideologies can easily merge and overlap. Like a Stalin-Hitler past that doesn't end for a while.
Just so you know, Arthurstone, the "corporate state" that Mussolini described doesn't mean that corporations (business entities) ran things. Rather, corporatism describes an economic system in which the owners and labor, as well as farmers and guilds, all cooperate under the direction of the state.
DMarks, what I find interesting about fascism/socialism/communism in the early 20th century is that Jews were overrepresented in all of them except one: National Socialism. That was Hitler's particular fetish.
You do see more anti-semitism in other fascist movements nowadays, as you pointed out with Hugo et al.
Gordon: The relative tolerance for Jews in the main communist (Soviet controlled) eventually came to an end. Remember Stalin's "Doctor's Plot", and in decades after, the USSR became increasingly antisemitic.
It is also interesting to look at Chavez' main predecessor Salvador Allende. Like Chavez, Allende was a Stalinist who won a "Democratic" election and proceeded to try to wipe out the competition through various thuggery and legal tricks, to become a President for Life. But if there is one thing to be said for Allende, he sometimes stood up for Jews.
This is in contrast to Chavez' government in Venezuela recently calling for a mass action in which the common citizens would confront and "challenge" Jews that they might see in public. Is this a call for another Krystalnacht, or what?
Good points, DMarks.
Chavez himself doesn't worry me; his shelf life is limited. I dislike how he works at creating clones of himself, most recently in Honduras. I really can't believe that the administration is so foolish as to support the dictators and wannabe dictators. And I'm not the only one; a lot of Democrats are shaking their heads over this one.
I'm not so sure his shelf life is limited. Chavez is relatively young, and full of hate and energy. He is itching for new wars all around Latin America.
Remember Fidel Castro. Some thought his shelf life was limited too. But still he kept going and going and going, and had a major part in tens of thousands of deaths in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and other places.
Fidel had the money of his Soviet controllers in order to finance aggression. Chavez has the oil money.
The only thing that gives hope in the situation is that while Castro was an instant pseudo-monarch with complete control, there is still a lot of independence alive in Venezuela. Of course, it dwindles as Chavez wipes it out (look at his current liquidation of independent media), but the country could still one day re-assert sanity and toss him out.
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