January 18, 2011

O'Reilly's Willing Executioners?

Some perceptive critics, such as Michael Moynihan and Chris Roach, have noticed an extraordinary term that Paul Krugman, the most influential pundit in America, used twice in his "Climate of Hate" column: "eliminationist." 

Krugman opined:
It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. ... The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary. And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence. ... Of course, the likes of Mr. Beck and Mr. O’Reilly are responding to popular demand.

Where did Krugman get the word "eliminationist?" Moynihan noted in Reason this recurrent theme in Krugman's vocabulary in 2010:
If your dictionary is unfamiliar with the word eliminationist, that's because of the term's recent vintage, coined in 1996 by Harvard political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. In his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Goldhagen argued that far from being bullied and terrorized into allowing its government to commit genocide in their name, most Germans were imbued with an eliminationist hatred of Jews—i.e., a desire that Jews be eliminated from Aryan society—which transitioned smoothly into an exterminationist orgy of violence. ...

Of the 40 references to "eliminationism" in the Times archive, all but one refer to the destruction of European Jewry. The sole standout is Krugman, who, as we have seen, is referencing the Republican Party's opposition to health care legislation.

Google's Ngram notes a tiny number of instances of the word "eliminationist" showing up in books before Hitler's Willing Executioners, but almost all usage since the 18th Century has come, as Moynihan says, following Goldhagen's book.

Here are the top examples of the term "eliminationist" from Ngram:

  1. David A. Neiwert - 2009 - 281 pages - Preview
    Drawing from his extensive reporting on right-wing groups, David Neiwert argues that the conservative movements alliances with far-right extremists have not only pushed the movements agenda to the right, but have become a malignant ...
    books.google.com - Add to My Library
  2. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen - 2009 - 658 pages - Preview
    The price paid by those practicing eliminationist politics owing to actions taken by the international community has, ... The current international political system, in which eliminationist politics is embedded, is, whatever its ...
    books.google.com - More editions - Add to My Library
  3. Aristotle A. Kallis - 2009 - 413 pages - No preview
    Drawing on the latest research into the ideological dynamics of fascism, Aristotle A. Kallis? fascinating new book is a major contribution to the understanding of the Holocaust, and the mass murder and genocide committed by Fascist regimes ...
    books.google.com - More editions - Add to My Library
  4. Helmut Walser Smith - 2008 - 246 pages - Preview
    5 eliminationist racism In Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, ... Eliminationist anti-Semitism, to take Goldhagen's term, cannot be said to be representative of public opinion in Imperial Germany, ...
    books.google.com - More editions - Add to My Library
  5. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen - 1997 - 634 pages - Preview
    2 THE EVOLUTION OF ELIMINATIONIST ANTISEMITISM IN MODERN GERMANY EUROPEAN ANTISEMITISM is a corollary of Christianity. ... Eliminationist ...
    books.google.com - More editions - Add to My Library
  6. James Waller - 2002 - 316 pages - Preview
    You lived in a culture permeated by eliminationist antisemitism, and both its expression and its lack of expression ... Was Eliminationist Antisemitism the Central Motive for the Holocaust? Even if we accept the spurious concept of a ...
    books.google.com - More editions - Add to My Library

Krugman's obsession reminds me of Dick Cheney's "One Percent Doctrine" of how the threat from a "low-probability, high-impact event," such as Al-Qaeda getting a nuclear weapon, justified things like the Iraq Attaq. Similarly, if there's a one percent chance that Bill O'Reilly's show will lead to "eliminationism," well, that justifies ... Well, it would certainly be interesting to hear Dr. Krugman's inner opinion on just what a one percent chance would justify in response.

97 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sort of like the pot calling the kettle black, n'est-ce pas?

Anonymous said...

The last week reminds one of "To Kill a Mockingbird", but in a weird photographic negative way.

Someone innocent is being blamed for a crime in both cases. m

Garland said...

It would justify eliminationism!

Simon in London said...

Krugman's approach seems a good example of Hitler's Big Lie - hysterically accusing the other side of what you yourself are doing, as with the Nazis accusing Poland of aggression, in order to justify aggression against them. Auster has been talking about this a lot recently re the media reaction to Tucson.

Re the supposed 'Eliminationism' of the Germans; back during the Rwandan genocide I was struck by the contrast with Nazi Germany. In Rwanda the Hutus eagerly responded to radio calls to massacre their Tutsi neigbours, and also kill any Tutsis who objected. By contrast the Nazis kept the Jewish genocide secret from their own population, allowing at least for 'plausible deniability' - it was possible for German civilians to 'not know' it was happening.

The implication to me is that the Hutus were indeed Eliminationist in Krugman's usage, but the Germans were at most highly ambivalent about the extermination of the Jews. Similarly, after WW2 the Americans forced German civilians to visit nearby death camps to confront the horror. This would have been entirely ineffective if the average German were truly full of blood-lust; their reaction to the dead bodies would have been that of the committed Nazis: "Pity we didn't finish the job".

Supposed German 'Eliminationism' is not exactly a Blood Libel; Germans were and are often anti-Semitic (as well as anti-Slavic, anti-Gypsy et al). But it ignores and conflates all the stages of dislike, so that there becomes no difference between mild resentment and boiling blood-lust. This seems to be common in Jewish-American rhetoric. Is this behaviour itself a reaction to the Holocaust, or a pre-existing ethnic characteristic?

Shouting Thomas said...

I watch O'Reilly when I can.

This characterization of O'Reilly is off the wall. He is center right, like most Americans.

I've never heard him advocate any sort of violence.

On most issues, O'Reilly does the standard Fox thing. He has a liberal and a conservative on to debate.

Where in the hell is Krugman getting this stuff?

RandyB said...

I don't think conservatives should poo-poo the legitimate part of the complaint about the use of firearm language.

Remember in Summer 09 when there were town hall meetings about health care reform, some people were showing up outside to protest carrying firearms, for no other reason than they could? Things like that, combined with things like Palin's comment about "reloading" DOES send the implicit message "we consider some liberal policies to be acts of tyranny that would justify violent insurrection on the part of us 'real' Americans."

The distinction to keep separate is the view held by some minority advocates that "words can kill." This doctrine has been used to justify things like offensive speech codes that are described as a means to non-protect the right to call a black person the N-word, but whose deliberate vague and expansiveness can be used to claim statements like "blacks' problem isn't racism, it's fatherlessness, crime, and low priority on education" are hurtful to their self-image.

Conservatives need to keep actual violence out of our language, so people can't claim our social and political positions fall into the same category.

Bantam said...

Unfortunately, Goldhagen's landmark opus is already 15 years old, although still commanding $0.09 at Amazon.

Lest we forget our collective guilt in the *history event* this new book is out just in time to remind us how evil was - is? - "the entire German people".

Tom in VA said...

Another term I heard recently on a liberal talk radio program was "stochastic terrorism." There's a recent posting on "The Daily Kos" by a person dubbed "G2Geek" that defines it thus: "Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to stir up random lone wolves to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.

This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.

This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings."

Note the last phrase, "similar to the Tucson shootings." Apparently G2Geek is intellectually honest enough to allow for the possibility that Loughner's motivations are all inside his own skull. He's not shy about making a direct comparison between Beck et al and Bin Laden. Can we devise some corollary to Godwin's Law regarding UBL?

Anonymous said...

Oi,

Has anyone noticed the number of violent metaphors George Lakoff refers to in "Metaphors we Live By". I've never met anyone so deranged as to believe "I will shoot down your argument" as suggesting I will use guns and ammo.

If people want to play word games with me, they better not bring a knife to a gun fight.

RKU said...

I'm not sure what point is being made here. Some Harvard academic coins a relatively new term in 1996, and it gradually gets into circulation over the years, including in the pages of the NYT. Krugman now happens to use it one of his columns, thereby perhaps indicating he reads his own newspaper, or at least he associates with people who do. So?

I really think this whole repeated line of argument is pretty ridiculous, namely the claim that Left and Right have been equally associated with violence or violent rhetoric in recent American society. As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society. If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons, I think the numbers drop to almost nothing. That compares to quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence on "the Right," not to mention all the wars and resulting million-plus deaths which "the Right" started and wholeheartedly supported in the 2000s, plus blood-curdling charges of "treason" and "traitor" against anyone who objected. Now you yourself eventually took issue with some of this, but 90% or 95% of the audience of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Hannity don't, so it's just foolish to defend them.

Seemingly arguing that Krugman's rhetoric is anything like as heated as that of the numerous rightwing columnists let alone the radio talkers is just silly and makes you look ridiculous. At the very least you should try to locate a liberal columnist who employs more violent language, but then you'd have to use a totally obscure one, which would defeat your point. By constrast, lots of very prominent conservative (or "conservative") columnists use extremely violent rhetoric all the time.

Polichinello said...

Where in the hell is Krugman getting this stuff?

From the place where his legs meet.

Black Death said...

From a recent Pat Buchanan column:

But Barack Obama, talking tough in 2008 about how he would deal with Republican attacks, himself said, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. ... Folks in Philly like a good brawl."

In 2010, Obama called on Hispanics to join him and "punish our enemies." Harry Reid in 2009 called Tea Party critics "evil-mongers" who disrupt town-hall meetings with "lies, innuendo and rumors."

....

But I guess this doesn't have anything to do with Krugman's eliminationist rhetoric.

Anonymous said...

Projection.

ben tillman said...

Things like that, combined with things like Palin's comment about "reloading" DOES send the implicit message "we consider some liberal policies to be acts of tyranny that would justify violent insurrection on the part of us 'real' Americans."

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a fact.

You are forgetting that we hold the moral high ground. We never seek to force them to live with us under our rules; it's always the other way around. We would be pleased to separate and let them govern themselves in accordance with any and all "liberal policies" they see fit to adopt.

Conservatives need to keep actual violence out of our language, so people can't claim our social and political positions fall into the same category.

How we are portrayed has little to do with how we act. The reason to avoid violence (and discussions of violence) is that it would have bad consequences for the speaker. We don't need conservatives ending up interned or interred.

Anonymous said...

Krugman is getting more and more shrill, isn't he? I would not be surprised of he spontaneously foams at the mouth these days.

Anonymous said...

Open carry is gauche IMO. We have local "conservative" leader who ostentatiously wore her Glock on her belt, slid farther to the front than is practical in real shooting. The local media were both thrilled and repelled, and plastered the attention whore's pic in a cover story. She had just broken up with hubby and was lovin' it.

Why can't my side just be cool..

Henry Canaday said...

"There is nothing quite so enjoyable as a huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm."

- Anthony Trollope, "Can You Forgive Her?"

carol said...

The MSM don't like O'Reilly because he does not play the humility game, comes on strong, doesn't try to soften his edges, speaks in declarative sentences..kinda 'hot' for TV and I never watched him much. I liked him better on radio. But in our Oprah-ized culture he just does everything wrong.

Severn said...

Of the 40 references to "eliminationism" in the Times archive, all but one refer to the destruction of European Jewry. The sole standout is Krugman, who, as we have seen, is referencing the Republican Party's opposition to health care legislation.


This is becoming a very common trope on the left though. They now use "eliminationist" to describe the right's attitude to everything the right opposes. Are you against illegal immigration? Then you're an "eliminationist". Opposed to gay marriage? Ditto. And so on for practically every policy position taken by the right. If you oppose something the left favors, you're analogous to the Nazis.

Chicago said...

The further back in time WWII becomes the more I hear about it; I can't go a day without it being referenced in some way by those trying to appropriate it for their own purpose. Anything bad in this world must in some way be likened to the nazis, even if the analogy has to be really stretched beyond recognition. It just shows how shallow and unimaginative public discourse has become in this country; it's like a one-trick pony doing the same one thing over and over again.

Anonymous said...

Steve as you have guessed, Krugman himself is not 100% well in the head.

People who studied with him in MIT generally have four impressions of him: bright, arrogant, disagreeable, weird. The only exception is the secretary, who liked him (class thing?).

For instance, he generally didn't look people in the eye, and didn't always respond when talked to.

One anecdote involves a Latin American graduate student (later top government position) who said hi to Krugman. As usual, Krugman didn't reply. So the Latin-American guy pushed Krugman onto the snow, went up to him, and again said hi. This time Krugman replied.

Krugman has clearly developed a obsession of sorts with the Republican party.

/Guy_Incognito

Whiskey said...

You are unfair to Cheney. In your daily life, you follow his doctrine. Auto accidents for middle class White guys are low probability events: yet I am sure you buckle your seatbelt and choose a safe care with airbags.

And there is a huge difference between accusing ordinary White Americans of being filled with hatred and proto-genocide, and preparing for non-State actors to get their hands on WMD technology. Considering the nature of Pakistan I'd say Cheney's estimate is off, more like 20% at least Al Qaeda gets nukes.

After all, the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide was not stopped by the UN, strong letters of regret, human rights groups, or any of that. It was stopped by GIs and the RPF going in and killing the killers. [Simon is quite correct, the real willing executioners were Black Rwandan Hutus.]

Whiskey said...

Stochastic Terrorism is indeed a strategy ... of the LEFT.

They've been begging for someone to kill Palin for ages, Loughner hated Bush (there were two plays, three novels, and two movies about Bush's Assassination, "the Assassination of George W. Bush" won the Grand Prize for best film at the Toronto Film Festival), "get in their faces," "punch back twice as hard," "bring a gun" and all the rest of the stuff Obama said was encouraging to his followers pre-disposed to commit violence.

Anonymous said...

Simon in London wrote:
after WW2 the Americans forced German civilians to visit nearby death camps to confront the horror

Actually, as the Americans permitted free investigation in the western occupation zones, it was soon uncovered that none of the camps in the west were "death camps".

The alleged "death camps", extermination camps, were all out of the way and inaccessible, in that part of the Soviet sector that Stalin annexed to his new puppet of Red-Poland.

Very few Germans or Americans or Westerners visited till the 1980s when things started to open-up.

Anonymous said...

OT

JOHN SIMON HAS HIS OWN BLOG.

http://uncensoredsimon.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

Simon on Spiderman the musical.

http://uncensoredsimon.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=1

Chief Seattle said...

Guys like Krugman are the definition of preparing to fight the last battle. He lives in a country that's been nothing but good to his people, has a separation of church and state written into the constitution, has legal protections for every conceivable minority. And let he's always looking over his shoulder for the busses to the gas chamber.

Meanwhile China is eating our lunch and there's not so much as a tariff. Wall Street is stealing with ever greater impunity and government cooperation. Oil is running out. States are going bankrupt as our country floods with people who are a tax-drain from day one. But it's always about battling the white guys just waiting to take you to Aushwitz. Talk about paranoia.

none of the above said...

The stochastic terrorism idea is interesting, but I'd like to see some data on it.

But it's not much of a threat, honestly. Bin Laden and Awlaki may be having some of this kind of effect (as with the Ft Hood wacko), but this sort of attack can't ever come close to threatening the country--one or two guys with guns can create a disaster on the level of a really bad car wreck, but they can't bring down a billion dollars worth of real-estate, kill 3000 people, and shut down civilian air travel for a week. Even if you could somehow turn up the heat to the point that you got ten such wackos a year carrying out these attacks, your total effect would be relatively small. (Even rare 9/11 scale attacks don't remotely threaten the existence of the nation, though they're destructive and nasty.)

If there's some meaningful way to measure how inflammatory political discussion is, then we could in principle try to measure whether this tracks with number of mass shootings or political assassination attempts. But those are both incredibly rare events, so there's not much data, and so we'll almost certainly be able to find *dozens* of plausibly-relevant variables that are positively correlated with number of mass-shootings or assassination attempts, even if there is no meaningful relationship at all.

Anonymous said...

I think Krugman is using the term in the same way as The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right by David Neiwert.

Anonymous said...

Looks to me like Serbians got eliminated out of Kosovo thanks to out-of-control Muslim migration. Is that what Krugman wants for all of Europe or much of America--to illegal Mexicans?

Truth said...

"After all, the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide was not stopped by the UN...It was stopped by GIs and the RPF going in and killing the killers. [Simon is quite correct, the real willing executioners were Black Rwandan Hutus.]

At the Holocausst, also? Darn blacks are evil!

Simon in London said...

anon:
"Actually, as the Americans permitted free investigation in the western occupation zones, it was soon uncovered that none of the camps in the west were "death camps"."

Yeah, I know - I considered writing "concentration camps", but the salient point was the mounds of dead bodies, so I stayed with 'death camp'.

Simon in London said...

Anon:
"I love the recent right-wing discussions of "projection". Supposedly the left is projecting violent movtivations onto the far right, who are completely innocent, because of the left's desire to commit violence"

Obviously there are some people on the right, or far right, prepared to countenance violence, just as there are on the left. But what's remarkable to me is how the Left accuses as peaceable, MLK-exhalting a milquetoast as Glenn Beck of being a violence-mongering white supremacist.

There are very few mainstream right-wing commenters on the US Right who use anything like the vicious rhetoric routinely employed on much of the mainstream US Left commentariat. Anne Coulter is the only one I can think of offhand. Michelle Malkin is accused of such, but from what I've read of her the homicidal hate towards her seem mostly due to her being female and conservative. Since 2008 Sarah Palin has acquired the same role.

BTW it's possible to countenance armed resistance without countenancing terrorism. You do (eg) marching and drilling so you show the other side you are ready to fight, so you don't have to fight. Ulster Unionist leader Edward Carson was a master of this conservative tactic, which stopped the absorption of Ulster into a united Ireland without need for any actual violence.

Anonymous said...

I saw the O'Reilly Factor the night when he made the joke about cutting off the head of the Washington Post journalist. I used to work for the Post so I guess I should be sensitive to anyone advocating death to Post employees. But in context it wasn't very troubling.

O'Reilly was complimenting Megyn Kelly on her election night anchoring success. Apparently a Post editorial writer named Dana Milbank had attacked Kelly on some very tenuous grounds. O'Reilly was outraged (he's particularly good at outrage) at the unfairness of Milbank.

Then they segued into some suit over Sharia law by CAIR. Kelly, who is one of the many gorgeous female lawyers on the Factor pooh-poohed the lawsuit. She said there wasn't much real danger in an American court allowing Sharia rulings on things like honor killings.

At that point O'Reilly asks; "Can we behead Milbank under Sharia law?". Then they both speculated that the leftist press would soon report that that O'Reilly was advocating killing Washington Post writers.

I had to look this up and watch the video on the Huffington Post. He was talking about Sharia not Milbank. Milbank was just the guy they had been discussing in the preceding segment. It was a rhetorical question in jest to ridicule Sharia extremes.

Krugman is quite wrong about O'Reilly versus Olbermann and Maddow. They seethe with hatred. Maddow seems to run an anti-O'Reilly clip every night. Olbermann calls O'Reilly "The Worst Person in the World" routinely. O'Reilly distains to mention them except to joke about their ratings.

They hate and fear O'Reilly. Some of that goes back to the late term abortionist Dr. Tiller - whom O'Reilly among others called "Tiller the Baby Killer". It is an article of faith on the left that O'Reilly more or less had Tiller assassinated.

Personally I've never been that concerned about abortion. America has an abortion rate at just about the average for developed countries. When I was a teenager it was different. The Catholic Church had a very rigid policy in those days. In the Otto Preminger movie "The Cardinal" the protagonist allows his sister to die in childbirth rather than save her life with an abortion. The movie's message supported his action and her death.

Nobody thinks that was anymore. Early abortion to save the mother's life or in a case of rape or incest just isn't very controversial.

However, there still is a lot of controversy over late term abortion. No, that's not quite right. There is a consensus in the US that late term abortion is wrong. There are only three clinics in the US that do such abortions. One of them was run by Dr. Tiller.

O'Reilly ran a long series of editorial attacks on Tiller and then one day someone killed him. The left naturally blamed O'Reilly. But Tiller had had his clinic fire bombed twenty years before O'Reilly ever mentioned him on the air. Tiller had been an assassination target for years. Had O'Reilly somehow gotten Tiller's clinic closed, it might have saved his life.

This term "eliminationism" seemed very obscure to me but after an hour or two of Google and YouTube, I begin to understand.

Albertosaurus

Anonymous said...

Bill O'Reilly isn't that conservative anyway. He's a pretty mainstream establishment Republican. Definitely more liberal than a lot of people on the right.

O'Reilly is a loudmouth, so maybe that's what infuriates Dr. Krugman.

Anonymous said...

I kinda agree with RKU upthread -- you're hanging altogether too much significance on the exact etymology of the word eliminationist.

It's not terribly different from the hysteria raised over Palin's use of "Blood libel", where the historical meaning of the phrase was seized upon to advance a smear attack.

Now I don't see a use of "eliminationist" which isn't designed to tap into some moral panic; some level of over-the-top hysteria seems pretty much built in. But I think that it's not really reasonable to insist that it can't have a broader meaning than something essentially identical to one expressing the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jews.

Simon in London said...

anon:
"it's not really reasonable to insist that it can't have a broader meaning than something essentially identical to one expressing the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jews."

What other meaning has been offered?

Severn said...

RKU said...

I'm not sure what point is being made here. Some Harvard academic coins a relatively new term in 1996, and it gradually gets into circulation over the years, including in the pages of the NYT. Krugman now happens to use it one of his columns, thereby perhaps indicating he reads his own newspaper, or at least he associates with people who do. So?


Are you actually as stupid as you pretend to be? I don't really think you are. I do think that, as a good little Nation reader, you find it expedient to feign ignorance on many occasions.


As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society. If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons, I think the numbers drop to almost nothing. That compares to quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence on "the Right

Really? Why don't you dip into the SPLC archives and let us all know what they think had been the "quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence" coming from the right".

Severn said...

It's not terribly different from the hysteria raised over Palin's use of "Blood libel", where the historical meaning of the phrase was seized upon to advance a smear attack.

There is no "historical meaning" to the phrase. The recent nonsense is just another instance of Jews attempting to control the use of language.

Anonymous said...

Re projection: Eliminationists on the left do not necessarily need to follow the Khmer Rouge path. When you control the institutions and the organs of state power you can be far more subtle.

If the right occasionally indulges in eliminationist fantasy, I would say the left engages in ongoing and diligent 'CASTRATIONIST' activism.

Gilbert Pinfold.

icr said...

If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons, I think the numbers drop to almost nothing-RKU

Blacks are an essential part of the liberal-minority coalition. So you could argue(as Moldbug does) that "The Cathedral" depends on the black lumpenproletariat to do its dirty work-the SWPL's rule and play the role of being Morally Superior.

SFG said...

"But it ignores and conflates all the stages of dislike, so that there becomes no difference between mild resentment and boiling blood-lust. This seems to be common in Jewish-American rhetoric. Is this behaviour itself a reaction to the Holocaust, or a pre-existing ethnic characteristic?"

Have someone wipe out 2/3 of your family tree and then see how rationally you behave. It's stupid, of course, to conflate Pat Buchanan and Adolf Hitler, but given the circumstances I'm hardly surprised the ADL behaves this way. Doesn't mean you have to take them seriously.

"Why can't my side just be cool.."
Conservatives have to be media whores just like liberals to get attention. Heck, even more, the media doesn't like them.

"One anecdote involves a Latin American graduate student (later top government position) who said hi to Krugman. As usual, Krugman didn't reply. So the Latin-American guy pushed Krugman onto the snow, went up to him, and again said hi. This time Krugman replied."
*That's* obnoxious. In the right circumstances, you could be charged with assault.

Yeah, Krugman probably has Asperger's, but so do a lot of these math-science people. I don't think it automatically destroys your credibility. A lot of people think Newton and Einstein had it too.

BTW, remember the New Yorker profile of him (linked to here) that suggested his wife was convincing him to go all far-left?

Juan said...

The Krugman political logic is much like his economic logic.

Political logic:

If whites try to PRESERVE their own power and heritage in their own lands, they are ELIMINATIONISTS.

Economic logic:

If Americans try to KEEP the money they've earned in their own pockets, they are ROBBERS.

Anonymous said...

RKU said:As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society. If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons, I think the numbers drop to almost nothing.

Your question is a setup. Of course you are confident that anti-government left-wing terrorists haven't been active since the 1970s. But you really need to look at the reasons why.

Up through the 70s, the left thought of itself as outside government, and violence against that government was justified. Today, you guys are firmly entrenched in government. You pretty much own the judiciary, academia and the media. Therefore, it is less likely that you guys will engage in terrorist activity against this government or mainstream institutions.

Yes, the republicans might occupy the white house or congress from time to time , but they haven't really pushed back too much of the leftwing agenda. The general progression in this nation is a march towards the left. The republicans only slow this up from time to time.

Right-wingers today are the outsiders. They are the ones who see the government as not acting in their interests much as you guys did 40 years ago. So it is really no surprise that the right is upset today. The real surprise is that there haven't been more violent outbursts. In the heyday of left-wing terrorists acts, an ROTC building was going up in smoke every month.

However, this doesn't mean the left is not engaging in terrorism. It just means they aren't attacking the government. There is no doubt they are engaging in terrorism against the center and right. As reported earlier, the UK Labor Parted wanted to"rub the Right's nose in diversity"

How many other polices has the left enacted to rub our noses in it? From immigration to affirmative action to PC thought police, the left has been terrorizing the peoples of the West for 40 years.

Anonymous said...

>For instance, he generally didn't look people in the eye, and didn't always respond when talked to.[...] a Latin American graduate student (later top government position)[...] said hi to Krugman. As usual, Krugman didn't reply.<

Interesting. We must assume that Krugman was not preoccupied and isn't hard of hearing, but this assumption isn't far-fetched. I have observed people committing this evidently motiveless yet deliberate action of contempt a good number of times, and in all cases the people were Jewish men.

The eye thing is less common in my experience. Only once did I see that continual hummingbird flutter of the iris, but it has stayed in my memory for years. (The person was facing me squarely and we were talking about work in an apparently cordial way; but the iris could not attain my gaze in the first place, much less hold it. The person was an active and respected surgeon, very likely without serious vision problems.)

Another annoying fellow was a middle-aged film director whom I saw being interviewed on TV. After every question from his interviewer, this jerk paused for not less than 15 seconds before s l o w l y repeating the question and then replying. All my "etiquette outrage" alarm bells were clanging at this behavior. (Well, I was younger then.)

What is this? Asperger's? But Asperger's is eliminated from the latest and grandest DSM. Is it incipient paranoid schizophrenia? Probably not. Are these people scared to death of anyone outside their own tight little group? Do they entertain exterminationist feelings toward certain people and these feelings, on occasion, block normal interactions or cause impairing guilt? Are they just assholes?

As to the political thing, yes, it's projection of the most classically Freudian kind. The Left is responsible for 100+ million civilian deaths in the past century. Its doctrines are fundamentally anti-human and inevitably totalitarian. Recently, it is responsible for the toppling and genocide of America's founding stock through such otherwise inexplicably crazy policies as unlimited immigration. The Civil Rights movement unleashed an historic crime wave and defended it as morally justified. Very symptomatically Susan Sontag snarled, "The white race is the cancer of history" and of course we have Uncle Tim's post-election ejaculation. The beat goes on -- but now, the worm has turned slightly and people are fighting back, if only with orderly political rallies and sorta blunt speech. This enrages the Left. It wants supine victims at least, and willing suicides ideally.

Are Krugman et al. challenging us to a Civil War, or leaping to what they think is the fundamental in the hope of suppressing us: "so you want to kill us, then?" There is a word for shameless behavior of this kind.

Anonymous said...

As to the political thing, yes, it's projection of the most classically Freudian kind. The Left is responsible for 100+ million civilian deaths in the past century. Its doctrines are fundamentally anti-human and inevitably totalitarian. Recently, it is responsible for the toppling and genocide of America's founding stock through such otherwise inexplicably crazy policies as unlimited immigration. The Civil Rights movement unleashed an historic crime wave and defending it as somehow morally justified. Susan Sontag symptomatically snarled, "The white race is the cancer of history" and of course we have Uncle Tim's post-election ejaculation. The beat goes on -- but now, the worm has turned slightly and people are fighting back, if only with orderly political rallies and semiblunt speech. This enrages the Left. It wants supine victims at least, and willing suicides ideally.

Are Krugman et al. challenging us to a Civil War, or leaping to what they think is the fundamental, in the hope of suppressing us: "so you want to kill us, then?" There is a word for shameless behavior of this kind.

TangoMan said...

As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society. If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons, I think the numbers drop to almost nothing. That compares to quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence on "the Right," not to mention all the wars and resulting million-plus deaths which "the Right" started and wholeheartedly supported in the 2000s, plus blood-curdling charges of "treason" and "traitor" against anyone who objected.

You'd really help you argument if you didn't just assume that everyone accepts your word for the following statement - "quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence on "the Right,"

As for your claim about the left not engaging in ideological violence consider that ends can be achieved via diverse means. Hate speech laws. Restrictions on freedom of association. Ruling out secret ballots in union elections. Increased taxes with proceeds directed to redistribution. School busing. Legislation forcing banks to enact social mandates designed to increase minority home ownership.

This is all violence in the name of ideology with the agent of violence being the state and the violence being characterized by the punishment for ideological transgression or compulsion in order to comply with ideological preferences.

When I started reading your comment I thought you were restricting your comment to individual acts of violence and I thought that you were being willfully blind by completely ignoring anti free trade marches, anti-war marches, and the like but then you also invoked state action and here you completely overlook how ideology, when tied to the authority of the state, can impose violence (taking your income, sending you to prison for not submitting to the will of the majority, forcing you to send your children to particular schools, forcing you to hire people you don't want to hire) on people that has many of the same negative consequences as physical violence. Even if we look at the ultimate definition of violence, losing one's life, one can tally up the dead from the Neocon initiated wars and then compare them to the dead that resulted from DDT bans inspired by liberal ideology. Dead is dead. Misguided government policy which doesn't account for unintended consequences can create direct deaths or indirect deaths.

If you want to advance the notion that the Left has clean hands on the issue of violence, then your comment hasn't moved that thesis forward by even an inch.

JSM said...

"Have someone wipe out 2/3 of your family tree and then see how rationally you behave."

Exceeeeeeepppppt, it was *Americans* who liberated the camps. Where's the gratitude?

Surely you can trust the people who saved your life not to do what they saved you from.


" It's stupid, of course, to conflate Pat Buchanan and Adolf Hitler, but given the circumstances I'm hardly surprised the ADL behaves this way. Doesn't mean you have to take them seriously."
Wish we COULD just not take them seriously, but they've got the bullhorn and the people who make laws that affect me and mine DO take them seriously

TangoMan said...

As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society....

You'd really help you argument if you didn't just assume that everyone accepts your word for the following statement - "quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence on "the Right,"

As for your claim about the left not engaging in ideological violence consider that ends can be achieved via diverse means. Hate speech laws. Restrictions on freedom of association. Ruling out secret ballots in union elections. Increased taxes with proceeds directed to redistribution. School busing. Legislation forcing banks to enact social mandates designed to increase minority home ownership.

This is all violence in the name of ideology with the agent of violence being the state and the violence being characterized by the punishment for ideological transgression or compulsion in order to comply with ideological preferences.

When I started reading your comment I thought you were restricting your comment to individual acts of violence and I thought that you were being willfully blind by completely ignoring anti free trade marches, anti-war marches, and the like but then you also invoked state action and here you completely overlook how ideology, when tied to the authority of the state, can impose violence (taking your income, sending you to prison for not submitting to the will of the majority, forcing you to send your children to particular schools, forcing you to hire people you don't want to hire) on people that has many of the same negative consequences as physical violence. Even if we look at the ultimate definition of violence, losing one's life, one can tally up the dead from the Neocon initiated wars and then compare them to the dead that resulted from DDT bans inspired by liberal ideology. Dead is dead. Misguided government policy which doesn't account for unintended consequences can create direct deaths or indirect deaths.

If you want to advance the notion that the Left has clean hands on the issue of violence, then your comment hasn't moved that thesis forward by even an inch.

Svigor said...

I really think this whole repeated line of argument is pretty ridiculous

What's ridiculous is assumption that others should accept the way you're framing it:

the claim that Left and Right have been equally associated with violence or violent rhetoric in recent American society

[...]

there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society. If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons

Why should we accept your criteria (?):

1. Must be recent.

Why? Liberals keep bringing up Nazis any chance they get, even though Commie violence started before Nazi violence, ended after, and far exceeded Nazi violence.

2. Must be "ideologically motivated." Why? Why not just violence by leftists? Why not just violence on behalf of leftists? Why not violence given cover by leftists?

3. No blacks. Why? Makes no sense to me.

not to mention all the wars and resulting million-plus deaths which "the Right" started and wholeheartedly supported in the 2000s, plus blood-curdling charges of "treason" and "traitor" against anyone who objected.

So, now we're into the scare-quotes game? Where the neocon (in-truth-liberal) GW's wars go into the anti-paleocon column? And never mind that paleocons opposed these wars?

Now you yourself eventually took issue with some of this, but 90% or 95% of the audience of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Hannity don't, so it's just foolish to defend them.

No need for the "eventually" part in reference to me or my camp. WNs were vehemently opposed to Iraq Attaq II from before the rumors started emanating from GW's administration; we were predicting Iraq Attaq II and cursing the Neocons beating the war drums long before anything real coalesced.

Unlike Democrat congresscritters, of course, who actually voted for war over and over and over and over and over...

So, if you want to go framing things as you have, but with the addendum "'right-wing' does not include paleocons, isolationists, ethnopatriots, WNs, etc.," the be my guest. Otherwise, just drop it already.

The remainder of your point, that right-wingers actually have something to be pissed about, and left-wingers (who control the whole show) don't, still stands of course.

Svigor said...

bring down a billion dollars worth of real-estate, kill 3000 people, and shut down civilian air travel for a week.

This is the sort of violence leftists enable. Ethnopatriots or WNs sure as hell wouldn't have given those fellas visas.

That's why RKU has to frame his arguments so carefully.

Svigor said...

"After all, the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide was not stopped by the UN...It was stopped by GIs and the RPF going in and killing the killers. [Simon is quite correct, the real willing executioners were Black Rwandan Hutus.]

At the Holocausst, also? Darn blacks are evil!


It's convenient, which killers we send our killers after. 30m+ Russians (with lots of Jewish killers)? No biggie.

Svigor said...

Re projection: Eliminationists on the left do not necessarily need to follow the Khmer Rouge path. When you control the institutions and the organs of state power you can be far more subtle.

BINGO. The emperor wiggles his lil' pinky and gets far more for his efforts than any right-winger with a gun.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve. It looks like five Nobel laureates have finally caught up to you and vdare!

http://www.slate.com/id/2281097/

Anonymous said...

"*That's* obnoxious. In the right circumstances, you could be charged with assault."

I think it is far more obnoxious to ignore another student who is trying to be friendly to you. Do you understand why Krugman ignored the other students? In part because he is nuts, and part because he felt superior to people less smart than him.

Krugman suffer from (mild) mental problems, combined with a lack of character. What Krugman is doing is not appropriate behavior for a public intellectual. He is becoming Olberman with a John Bates Clark.

Economists other than the most ideological ones have already lost respect for Krugman.

"Yeah, Krugman probably has Asperger's, but so do a lot of these math-science people."

Those Asperger-math people do not generally get to went their political feelings or descent into madness in the largest papers in the country.

Mr. Anon said...

"SFG said...

Yeah, Krugman probably has Asperger's, but so do a lot of these math-science people. I don't think it automatically destroys your credibility."

Krugman is not a "math-science" person. He is an economist. Economics is to math and science what movies are to reality - an extended exercise in make-believe. Economics is only a pretend science.

Mr. Anon said...

" Simon in London said...

anon:
""Actually, as the Americans permitted free investigation in the western occupation zones, it was soon uncovered that none of the camps in the west were "death camps".""

Yeah, I know - I considered writing "concentration camps", but the salient point was the mounds of dead bodies, so I stayed with 'death camp'."

Given that lots of people died there, I think it's fair to call them death-camps. They were just retail outlets, rather than wholesale.

Anonymous said...

"As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from 'the Left' over the last few decades in American society...."

The often violent takeover of entire communities by illegal aliens, the massive increase in black-on-white crime, increase in interracial rape, ethnic violence caused by multiculturalism & diversity-mongering, and the suicidal self-loathing among whites(a kind of self-directed psychological violence)are the result of liberal-leftist social, cultural, and political policies.

Mr. Anon said...

"RKU said...

As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society. If you exclude the category of blacks killing people, occasionally for ideological reasons, I think the numbers drop to almost nothing."

And if you exclude the category of right-wing killers like Timothy McVeigh, then the numbers drop to almost nothing on the right-wing too. So?

There is a ceaseless, strident campaign blasted from virtually every media outlet in this country to the effect that this country was and is irredeemably racist, and it has motivated many blacks to kill whites. There is your left-wing army of killers carrying out a left-wing stochastic terrorism. And the numbers are pretty lopsided. You're attempt to explain away the violence engendered by YOUR side is blatantly wrong.

RKU said...

Anonymous: Your question is a setup. Of course you are confident that anti-government left-wing terrorists haven't been active since the 1970s. But you really need to look at the reasons why.

Up through the 70s, the left thought of itself as outside government, and violence against that government was justified. Today, you guys are firmly entrenched in government. You pretty much own the judiciary, academia and the media. Therefore, it is less likely that you guys will engage in terrorist activity against this government or mainstream institutions.


Well, I'd hardly identify myself as a "leftist"---ha, ha!---but otherwise I pretty much agree with this analysis, and was thinking along similar lines when I made my own comment. It's absolutely true that the "multi-cultural establishment" today totally dominates American society despite periodic "conservative" election victories, and the festering resentment at that total and seemingly endless domination certainly explains much of the violent rhetoric and occasional violent action by rightwing opponents. But that's exactly my point.

Explaining *why* political violence is so overwhelmingly found on the "Right" in recent decades (blacks excluded) is very different than pretending otherwise. For example, during the late 1960s far greater political violence tended to occur on both sides, perhaps with an edge to the Left, and in some earlier eras, such as around 1900 or in the 1930s, violence was overwhelmingly greater on the Left.

But suppose someone makes the simple factual claim that in 2003 America attacked Iraq. Does it make any sense to respond: "That's not true! In 1990, Iraq attacked Kuwait!"...

RKU said...

Svigor: "3. No blacks. Why? Makes no sense to me."

It's simply a matter of principal-component analysis, which is a useful way to better understand what's really going on in lots of situations.

Now it's true that blacks are generally regarded as being "on the Left" and blacks also commit an awful lot of violence, so it's correct to say that "the Left" commits lots of violence. But then when you separate out the black violence, you discover that there's almost nothing left, which is probably a useful fact to know.

Suppose, for example, we chose to examine the social behavior of those American racial minorities whose formal name begins with "A", namely African-Americans plus Asian-Americans. When we looked at the official statistics, we'd see that this particular "group" commits a huge fraction of all the street muggings in major cities and has a very high rate of welfare-dependency, but *also* is massively over-represented at Harvard and among National Merit Finalists. What strange and contradictory social indicators---a real mystery! But once we did some simple PCA, we'd discover this "group" actually consistents of two separate sub-components, which have almost nothing in common, and the mystery completely disappears. PCA is a very useful means of deciding how to organize data in the most sensible way.

Anonymous said...

RUH-ROH:

Federal Government to Analyze 'Disparate Impact' of School Discipline on Minorities
Written By: Sarah McIntosh
Published In: School Reform News
Publication date: 01/18/2011
heartland.org

Officials at the U.S. Justice Department and Education Department say closer scrutiny of school discipline cases will be a high priority for 2011. The department announced it would use a "disparate-impact analysis" to help determine whether minority students are disproportionately punished at school.

"Regrettably, students of color are receiving different and harsher disciplinary punishments than whites for the same or similar infractions, and they are disproportionately impacted by zero-tolerance policies - a fact that only serves to exacerbate already deeply entrenched disparities in many communities," said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights..

Radical Bill said...

One more, on eliminationism - it's just Joos being Joos - they can't get the thought out of their head, whether it's because they want to do it to the Palestinians or, truly, because it cut so close to them. But I remember reading one article that pointed out that 'A Bug's Life' was about bullying, where the Jewish knock-off 'Antz' was about the threat of genocide. I think the writer gave a couple other examples. Having said that, I myself ... no, actually I don't want to eliminate anyone, in my fantasies I would just make clean deportations.

Anonymous said...

Hey, it's the Blitzkrug.

Anonymous said...

RKU said, But suppose someone makes the simple factual claim that in 2003 America attacked Iraq. Does it make any sense to respond: "That's not true! In 1990, Iraq attacked Kuwait!"...

But suppose someone makes the simple factual claim that in 2011 blacks are treated as first class citizens and a black man is the president. Does it make any sense to respond: "That's not true! In 1864 blacks were still slaves and did not receive full civil rights until 1964!"

The Right, along with the Center, are being forced to pay because of the logic of the above statement. It is the Left through its vengeful policies that are terrorizing the Right and Center.

It is the Left not the Right that has been getting the better of the other. Jesse Jackson once said the following about blacks and racism. He said that blacks cannot be racists because they do not have power over whites.

In that sense it would seem that the Left, not the Right, are the true terrorists because the Left has power over the Right, and they exercise that power constantly.

ATBOTL said...

"That compares to quite a bit of ideologically motivated violence on "the Right," not to mention all the wars and resulting million-plus deaths which "the Right" started and wholeheartedly supported in the 2000s, plus blood-curdling charges of "treason" and "traitor" against anyone who objected. Now you yourself eventually took issue with some of this, but 90% or 95% of the audience of O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Hannity don't, so it's just foolish to defend them."

The neocons were the driving force for war on the right and they were aided and abetted by most mainstream liberals in Washington and the media. On the eve of the Iraq war, the elite "liberal" press and Democratic politicians were solidly in favor of invading.

wren said...

Instapundit has been all over the left's
elimininationist rhetoric
for quite a while now.

The breadth and depth is pretty amazing compared to the right, imo.

Simon in London said...

Re US Leftist violence, how about all the Environmentalist violence? Don't you guys have Animal Rights terrorists? And how about all the Jihadist terrorism, which the Left defends/justifies/downplays? Then you have the attacks and death threats on groups like American Renaissance. How often do right-wing students attack far-left speakers?

Wandrin said...

"I don't think conservatives should poo-poo the legitimate part of the complaint about the use of firearm language."

All kinds of violent incendiary rhetoric has been used by the MSM against people who supported Arizona's SB1070 law. Giffords supported the SB1070 law.

Conservatives should realise the *only* viable defense is counter attack.

RKU said...

ATBOTL: "The neocons were the driving force for war on the right and they were aided and abetted by most mainstream liberals in Washington and the media. On the eve of the Iraq war, the elite "liberal" press and Democratic politicians were solidly in favor of invading."

Well, that's certainly true, as was Svigor's previous argument that most of the "paleocons, isolationists, ethnopatriots, WNs, etc." should be exempted from this criticism. But these groups represent an extremely tiny slice of "the Right" in America, maybe something like 2% or less I'd guess. Meanwhile, I'd say that 90-95% of "the Right" falls into the FoxNews/Limbaugh/Hannity patriotard category, and was wholeheartedly behind the Iraq War.

And it's true that the Left Neocons and major segments of the liberal mainstream, especially those among the NYC/DC media/political elite, did support the war, at least at first, and thereby carried along a good deal of the liberal rank-and-file. But there was always a strong division. At the absolute peak of the war fever, I don't think even half of the self-described liberals were supportive, and the collapse then came very quickly. After all, that's how Howard Dean came out of nowhere to nearly win the 2004 nomination, and the vacant media niche that suddenly created powerful new liberal blogsites such as DailyKos. TNR's strong support for the war lost them something like half their subscribers over a 12 month period.

I think a good analogy would be with Immigration. The leading Republican/conservative elites are overwhelmingly pro-Immigration, and during most of the 2000s, their unity managed to drag along something a major portion of the distracted conservative rank-and-file, though not without ferocious opposition from a significant slice. McCain even won the nomination in 2008, just like the Democratic elites managed to give pro-War Kerry the nomination instead of Howard Dean. But at various points, the conservative elites lost control, and the strong contrary views of the conservative grassroots reasserted themselves.

I'd look pretty foolish if I went around claiming "the Right" in America was pro-Immigration, and citing the overwhelming popularity and political victories of Bush, McCain, etc. as proof, just as I'd look ridiculous if I claimed that "the Left" was anti-Immigration, and pointing to a 2% dissenting fringe element of intellectuals and activists as evidence.

During the 1930s, it was correct to say that American Communists supported Stalin. Now I'm sure you could have found lots of noisy dissenting Communists, who claimed they were the "real" Communists, that Stalin was a "fake" Communist, and that Trotsky or Bukharin or whomever had been the good guys. But they were just 2%, and most people called them Trotskyites or something rather than Communists. So if 90-95% of people in America who self-identify as "the Right" or "conservatives" have consistently followed the FoxNews/Limbaugh line for the last decade or two, that's just the definition of "the Right."

Anonymous said...

Keving MacDonald is useful in the very least for pointing out, when someone Jewish comes out with an idea that is 'good for jews' (in there eyes) other jews exuberantly and irrationally embrace it without any vetting Freud is a classic example - a quack, but a quack who undermined European Christian civilization. Same goes for Goldhagen -his work is completely unfounded but it did not receive one negative review in any MSM, norman finklestein pointed out its absurdity and that was the begining of the end of his academic and literary career.

Kylie said...

"Re US Leftist violence, how about all the Environmentalist violence? Don't you guys have Animal Rights terrorists? And how about all the Jihadist terrorism, which the Left defends/justifies/downplays? Then you have the attacks and death threats on groups like American Renaissance. How often do right-wing students attack far-left speakers?"

You're trying to smear legitimate political protest inspired by the need for social justice by equating it with mindless violence motivated by hate and bigotry.

At least, that's what Paul "Hey, I Can Spout Delusional Nonsense--I Won a Prize!" Krugman would no doubt say.

See how easy it is?

Truth said...

"It's convenient, which killers we send our killers after. 30m+ Russians (with lots of Jewish killers)? No biggie."

Still sticking up for Adolph, are we?

Anonymous said...

"ANTISEMITISM is a corollary of Christianity. "
Goldhagen said this without blinking, the media accepted it without blinking.

Anonymous said...

OT:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504744_162-20028739-10391703.html

Leftists and blacks have long said that white students do better because of 'white boys network' through tutors, fraternities, and peers, but this study shows that people who learn most study ALONE.
A frat brother may provide you with a cheat-sheet but that will only lead to long-term failure since you haven't learned to think or learn on your own.

not a hacker said...

Svigor, did you ever read "Power and The Idealists," by the noted liberal activist Paul Berman? In it, he discusses the position staked out in 2002 by Joschka Fischer, founder of Europe's Green party and at the time Germany's foreign minister. According to Fischer, the question was, "who gets to decide whether Saddam should be toppled militarily?" His answer was that humanitarian principles demanded it should be Saddam's main victims, the Kurds. So, the paleo-right might oppose the effort on the basis of sheer American interest, according to Fischer the Iraq invasion comported with all "liberal" or humanist principles and was not an aggression at all. So I ask, how do we prefer your view of Iraq as against Fischer or Berman's?

ben tillman said...

As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society.

Are you suggesting that the tax laws have been abolished? If so, I can assure you that the IRS still expects me to pay up.

Surely a smart guy like you, RKU, understands that tax collection is an act of violence. To use the technical legal term, it is "robbery". Citizens' money is taken against their will under threat of the use of force.

You may claim this is not ideological, but you are right only to the extent that this violence can be framed in terms of particularism rather than principle. Otherwise, the belief that Americans must not be permitted to govern themselves surely qualifies as an ideology.

jody said...

RKU is a moron. either that or he's hardly studied this as closely as he claims.

mexicans routinely do all the things he says politically left groups don't do. mexicans are physically violent every time they gather for political reasons.

RKU is either stuck in 1970 or he's a moron. it's one or the other. which is it RKU?

jody said...

and mexicans would be a lot more violent too, if most US politicians weren't fucking taking their side on every single issue. the only issue that mexicans don't unfairly and ludicrously get their way on is a totally open border with complete and full amnesty. i mean they already get a de facto open border and de facto amnesty and even that is not enough for them.

not only do mexicans not have to obey any laws that i have to, they get brand new, special laws created specifically to help them even more, as well as a direct wealth transfer in handouts and freebies. seems like i should be the one to be upset, not them. yet they riot and euro americans don't.

it's all pretty normal stuff. NAMs would be rioting yearly if the US had not moved so far into total capitulation to NAMs.

i don't even want to think much about 2020, when the US will have had to bend over so far to pacify the growing muslim population and keep them from rioting at any perceived insult, that america will be unrecognizable. i guess all the muslims are hardcore tea partiers though, right?

Anonymous said...

"Still sticking up for Adolph, are we?"

Still trying to understand politics with an IQ of 85, are we?

Anonymous said...

RKU, when you are in a hole, stop digging.

Truth said...

"Still trying to understand politics with an IQ of 85, are we?"

Dude, tell the truth, did you really score that high?

"A frat brother may provide you with a cheat-sheet but that will only lead to long-term failure since you haven't learned to think or learn on your own."

That's absolutely right anonymous, what these poor guys don't understand is that this country is a meritocracy! All the connections, handshake deals and nepotism in the world can only get you to the middle!

Sincerely:

George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain

Anonymous said...

not a hacker said

>"who gets to decide whether Saddam should be toppled militarily?" [Fischer's] answer was that humanitarian principles demanded it should be Saddam's main victims, the Kurds. [...] So I ask, how do we prefer your [isolationist] view of Iraq as against Fischer or Berman's?<

I don't want to speak for Svigor, but if I am understanding you correctly, isn't the answer to your question rather obvious? The Kurds should do the toppling. Why does any injustice anywhere create an obligation on your part to lay down your money and your life to topple it? The correct principle should be that an injustice imposes an obligation first of all on the victims of the injustice, to defend themselves; and failing that, the obligation falls on the allies (that is, the friends, relatives, government, political allies) of the victims. What is objectionable is to claim an absolute entitlement to any help from anyone any time that you find yourself in trouble. The first responsibility is self-responsibility; the first responsibility isn't to assert that others are responsible for you. The latter demonstrates the mentality of a parasite, which is dysfunctional as well as unattractive. By dysfunctional I mean this mentality is one of the very things that ensure that its possessors will always be victimized by someone or other. Which only increases the amount of unnecessary suffering in the world. The only beneficiaries of such perpetuation of victimization and increase of misery are professional humanitarians and arms dealers, with which we are surfeited in our time.

Svigor said...

Still trying to understand politics with an IQ of 85, are we?

I took it as a (semi-inside) joke.

Anonymous said...

"It's convenient, which killers we send our killers after. 30m+ Russians (with lots of Jewish killers)? No biggie."

Still sticking up for Adolph, are we?

So I guess acknowledging bolshivik terror is now equated with being a 'nazi'?

Truth said...

"I took it as a (semi-inside) joke."

It was.

RKU said...

Jody: "RKU is either stuck in 1970 or he's a moron. it's one or the other. which is it RKU?"

Well, I think there might actually be a third possibility, but it wouldn't be too polite to raise it...

Anonymous said...

Well, I think there might actually be a third possibility, but it wouldn't be too polite to raise it...

RKU is an anti-white bigot? There, I said it.

none of the above said...

This whole debate is an exercise in confirmation bias and no-true-Scottsman-isms, because the whole point is to work out who can be smeared with the actions of rare lone nuts. Few of those nuts have a coherent ideology, since serious mental illness makes that pretty hard. But they often seize on some fragments of political or social grievance or whatever, which offers the opportunity for smearing sane people with the same grievances.

Terrorists tend to be easier to classify, since they usually have some kind of manifesto or cause or something. But nobody close to the mainstream in the US has much interest in associating with terrorists. Thus animal rights terrorists, environmentalist terrorists, and pro-life terrorists may elicit some sympathy from mainstream political movents, but they're always condemned by the great majority of supporters of those movements and everyone at the tops of them.

Silver said...

i don't even want to think much about 2020, when the US will have had to bend over so far to pacify the growing muslim population and keep them from rioting at any perceived insult, that america will be unrecognizable.

Maybe Carl Weathers will save you.

Truth said...

"Maybe Carl Weathers will save you."

Pow...Zing! Welcome to White Nationalist Planet, Jody. you make one innocent throwaway comment and you are branded an "N-" lover FOR LIFE!

Silver said...

As I pointed out previously, there's been absolutely negligible ideological violence coming from "the Left" over the last few decades in American society.

As has been pointed out previously to you that's because the (cultural) left essentially won -- despite their fervent hopes of total economic control not being realized -- and became the ruling force over people's lives. Obviously there's little need to employ violence to destroy white America if you can con white America into destroying itself.

As for what point is made by the reference to "eliminationism," well, it's basically pointing out Krugman's "tainted sources." Although I can understand where you're coming from -- sucks when the shoe's on the other foot and all that.

Silver said...

Surely a smart guy like you, RKU, understands that tax collection is an act of violence. To use the technical legal term, it is "robbery". Citizens' money is taken against their will under threat of the use of force.

Money, in the modern sense, is a social creation (I don't want to say "construct") and citizens can only acquire it by acquiescing to the rules the governing authority formulates regarding its acquisition. Naturally those rules require that there be a governing authority, and that its sustenance requires recalling a proportion of the money it creates and whose use it enables. It's not "robbery" to reclaim from someone what was never wholly his in the first place.

Truth,

"White nationalist" nothing. You can't have been paying very close attention to anything I've said if you tag me with that label first chance you get. Now, the truth, Truth, of the matter is that the forces operating against whites are in fact also operating against blacks and plenty of other non-whites. How the hell is (ongoing) hispanic immigration "good for blacks"? How is muslim immigration good for jews? How the hell is any more immigration good for anyone already established here? None of it's any good at all. But so long as it's seen to hurt whites, that seems to be enough for most people. You don't have to be a "white nationalist" to regard that as a pretty heinous double standard. (And that's just immigration. Black crime hurts blacks maybe even more than it hurts whites. But phewee, talking about black crime as black crime might play into white hands, so keep it hushed up! There are plenty of other issues for which the same analytical template applies.)

Truth said...

Yeah..yeah, Silver; but along with Jody, I liked Action Jackson!

Anonymous said...

There seems to be a lot of subtle eliminationism in the media vis a vis white males, particularly in TV commercials. It would be interesting to do a study, but it seems like about 80% of the white males in TV ads are portrayed as mentally handicapped in some way or another. Sometimes its subtle, as in the Geico commercials where the gecko usually shows the older white man how things are supposed to be. Other times, as in most FedEx commercials for instance, it's more blatant.

The cumulative effect is to show the white male as almost a cancer on the society.

Anonymous said...

An explanation of the term 'Eliminationist' and several examples from the right: http://www.commonplacebook.com/current_events/politics/eliminationist.shtm

Anonymous said...

Oops. Here is the best link on 'Eliminationism' from the author I believe responsible for its current popularity, Dave Neiwert.

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2007/03/eliminationism-in-america-appendix.html

I'm hoping for a response to that link.