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Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

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Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#101

Post by deciplex »

danjayh wrote: post #44
sandworm101 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. She obviously never imagined the state of American politics today. A good chunk of them now openly want a "strongman" in the high office. The degree to which they want to be bullied by those they elect boarders on socio-political masochism. So I disagree with Thompson. To say that people don't see the…

Totally agree. The current congress welcomes Obama's use of (likely illegal) executive orders to accomplish things, because it means they can avoid responsibility and accountability. They don't fight to retain their constitutionally granted powers, because all they really want it somebody else to do the dirty work -- end result is they allow unprecedented levels of executive control to go basically unchecked ... and…

And, there is a cap on the maximum number of voters who could possibly give a damn at any given moment. Most of the people who would raise concerns about these executive orders will not be too concerned about overreach by the executive once the next Republican President is in office, nor is it likely they spoke up when the last one was in. And so it goes.

That's the true danger in divisive politics - when seeing that 'your team' scores points while they can becomes more important than good policy and governance.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#102

Post by emgoldstein »

dang wrote: post #97
BogusIKnow wrote: post #58

"Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893 – 30 January 1961) was an American journalist and radio broadcaster, who in 1939 was recognized by Time magazine as the second most influential woman in America next to Eleanor Roosevelt. She is notable as the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany in 1934 and as one of the few women news commentators on radio during the 1930s. She is regarded by some as the "First L…

Dorothy Thompson is a fascinating and important historical figure, hugely famous in her prime, but much diminished when she died and largely forgotten now. She is due to be rehabilitated. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen in the next few years. I've been told that http://www.amazon.com/American-Cassandra-Life-Dorothy-Thomps... is a good bio.

Thompson, like many (if not most) American journalists of her time, was a Stalin apologist in the Duranty circle:

http://spartacus-educational.com/USAthompsonD.htm

I'm not sure any intellectual who collaborated with Hitler should get points for warning the world about Stalin. Or vice versa.

If Harper's had written an article called "Who Goes Bolshevik" in 1941, it could have been much shorter: "pretty much everyone." Or at least, everyone who mattered. If you wanted the truth about Stalin in 1941, you'd do much better with the Voelkischer Beobachter than the New York Times.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#103

Post by danieltillett »

olavk wrote: post #82
danieltillett wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to nitpick John, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by Hindenburg. The nazi party never won an election in their entire history.

The Nazi party was certainly the winner or the election in July 1932, where it became the largest party in the parliament. In March 1933 elections it became even larger, with 44% more than twice the size of the second largest party, the SPD. It just never had an absolute majority - the parliamentary act which effectively gave the party dictatorial powers was supported by the conservative and center parties.

I guess we can argue over what it means for a political party to win, but the Nazi party were never able to gain the support of the majority of the German people.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#104

Post by batz »

rdiddly wrote: post #66
batz wrote: post #5

The essence of any totalitarian strategy is to seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. The secret is to then reward people from the majority for denouncing and replacing members of the minority for not being zealous enough, so that they…

I appreciated the dispassionate detachment of the comment. Like others, I'm a little suspicious of your "feminism annexed academia" bit (though not in the same kneejerky way). But what I really wonder is, could you expand on "why Occupy failed?" I've never really viewed it through that lens. Here, I'll give it a go. Certainly the unifying mythos was there - the 1%/the 99% - and by the way this isn't preposterous. But…

The point of a preposterous myth is that it is a wedge issue that allows the majority to identify "enemies" and dangerous dissidents, because intelligent people just can't help themselves. It creates a target rich environment for the truly contemptible who will inform on, denounce, and betray their neighbors for a few extra rations or a commendation from some apparatchik, maybe just a fellowship.

An absurd dogma causes trouble makers to self-select out. The "%1/%99" trope was cheap demagoguery, and to this day reliably identifies skeptics as discreditable "liberarians," or "tea baggers," and "probably racists."

Occupy had no resources to distribute, and no ultimatum for the upper middle classes, so as a revolution it was a dud. Post-modern feminism has been a successful revolution (unless it's counter-revolutionary to say the revolution has ended already, comrade)because its resource was essentially sex, whereby male academics and administrators were convinced that being a "sensitive new age guy" would get them laid, and that critical theory was something more than gibberish.

This ushered in a generation of cultural studies programs that exist primarily to legitimize the victimization claims of groups who incorporate an anti-capitalist mandate into their demands for public money. Governments are cool with it because 1. they are non-violent demands for more revenue, and 2. government defers to those academics as "expert" policy advisers. It's a bit of a circle squirt.

BLM has the chance to be a successful revolutionary movement, much moreso than the Oregon ranch guys or some of the militias, but they haven't got the formula down yet. I don't want to help because all these movements have totalitarian aims, as from their perspective it's ok if it's a dictatorship of "good" people.

Have fun storming the castle!

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#105

Post by fnovd »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #78
fnovd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The War on Drugs is disproportionately hurting minorities Agreed. > I don't think you can frame it as the machinery of minority oppression. Erm, what? So you're saying that, while the War on Drugs disproportionately hurts minorities, it's not a machine of minority oppression? I can't wrap my head around that. Any discussion I hear about race always takes me back to the old Atwater quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

The form of your argument seems to be that if a policy has a race/sex disparity in impact then it's inherently racist/sexist. Let's go for the reductio ad absurdum. We have a choice between two policies. The first says if you're accused of being a child's parent and you can prove with a genetic test that you aren't then you don't have to pay child support. The second says if you're accused of being a child's parent t…

> The form of your argument seems to be that if a policy has a race/sex disparity in impact then it's inherently racist/sexist.

No, the form of my argument is that a policy can be implicitly racist without being explicitly racist. A law banning rap music from the radio won't appear racist if your only criteria for a racist policy is explicitly mentioning race. This is why I included the Atwater quote.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#106

Post by dang »

emgoldstein wrote: post #102
dang wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dorothy Thompson is a fascinating and important historical figure, hugely famous in her prime, but much diminished when she died and largely forgotten now. She is due to be rehabilitated. I'd be surprised if it didn't happen in the next few years. I've been told that http://www.amazon.com/American-Cassandra-Life-Dorothy-Thomps... is a good bio.

Thompson, like many (if not most) American journalists of her time, was a Stalin apologist in the Duranty circle: http://spartacus-educational.com/USAthompsonD.htm I'm not sure any intellectual who collaborated with Hitler should get points for warning the world about Stalin. Or vice versa. If Harper's had written an article called "Who Goes Bolshevik" in 1941, it could have been much shorter: "pretty much everyone."…

I don't know the details but that link doesn't come close to establishing that she was a Stalin apologist.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#107

Post by bzbarsky »

Animats wrote: post #26

It's been a while since the last big, successful, popular, dictatorial, charismatic movement like Nazism. Putin comes closest, but he came to power as an insider, with Yeltsin supporting him. ISIS is religion-based, (even though it was designed by a former Iraqi colonel who wasn't very religious [1]) and those work differently. There are warlords in sub-Saharan Africa, but they're usually not popular leaders. Remembe…

Big, successful, popular, dictatorial, charismatic movement like Chavism, say? It really hasn't been that long since then. You could argue that it's "not like Nazism", I guess, in the details of interactions between the government and private industry, but in terms of taking and holding on to power it's quite the same.

And I'd quibble with your distinction between religion-based and non-religion-based movements. The whole point of movements like Nazism is that they act in much the way religion does. More like creating a new religion that co-opting an existing one, of course; maybe that's the difference you were getting at?

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#108

Post by Kalium »

32bitkid wrote: post #68
sandworm101 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. She obviously never imagined the state of American politics today. A good chunk of them now openly want a "strongman" in the high office. The degree to which they want to be bullied by those they elect boarders on socio-political masochism. So I disagree with Thompson. To say that people don't see the…

I know it's fashionable to have a defeatist view of current american politics, but I honestly don't see how the current political climate in the United States is any more dysfunctional than the American political machinations of the early 1900's that led to the election of Teddy Roosevelt, a notorious "strongman" in high office, who after being "disappointed" by his chosen successor, and then friend, Taft decided to…

My personal touchstone for American political dysfunction is the election of 1860. No matter how this election ends, I don't think the result is likely to be a civil war.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#109

Post by _nedR »

wildmusings wrote: post #15
seiji wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

seize some resources, invent a necessarily preposterous myth, then in exchange for demonstrating belief in the myth, re-distribute the resources arbitrarily among a minority of people who are easily replaceable and know it. Startups? how these assholes seize power. It's through charismatic promises of future rewards Startups.

Yes, but the difference is that a business's success requires continual voluntary mutually-beneficial exchanges (aka sales). And before they make a profit, they're only risking money that's theirs to risk. None of these things are true about politics, which is fundamentally about control of coercive power.

Calling attention the differences is not particularly insightful (Who in their right mind would compare startups to dictatorships to imply that they are one and the same).

But Seiji's calling attention to the similarities provides good insights.

Also the difference you list is not actually that much of a difference. Sure, politics is about control of coercive power, but so are businesses (especially the most succesful ones). Politics is also about negotiations, deals, showmanship, exchanges for mutual benefit(unless you are naive about how politics really works) - aka sales. Furthermore both radical movements and startups need to fund-raise and rally volunteers during their early days, and both do so on little more than the promise of dreams.

They are both equally unlikely to succeed. But when they do, their impact is profound (often one is profoundly good and the other is profoundly bad). I could think of more going down the tangent created by the parent.

Re: Who Goes Nazi? (1941)

#110

Post by selestify »

batz wrote: post #104
rdiddly wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciated the dispassionate detachment of the comment. Like others, I'm a little suspicious of your "feminism annexed academia" bit (though not in the same kneejerky way). But what I really wonder is, could you expand on "why Occupy failed?" I've never really viewed it through that lens. Here, I'll give it a go. Certainly the unifying mythos was there - the 1%/the 99% - and by the way this isn't preposterous. But…

The point of a preposterous myth is that it is a wedge issue that allows the majority to identify "enemies" and dangerous dissidents, because intelligent people just can't help themselves. It creates a target rich environment for the truly contemptible who will inform on, denounce, and betray their neighbors for a few extra rations or a commendation from some apparatchik, maybe just a fellowship. An absurd dogma caus…

What about the Soviets? I guess they offered political power.
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