Yet by resorting to mention of Hitler so early and often, Snyder risks sapping the sort of resistance he wants to encourage.This is Thomas Meany using Godwin's Law to stop discussion; but, as I wrote last week, what if the discussion is about actual nazis?
Way back in my first list of parallels between WBD and Htler (or Mussolini or other despots), I noted that there are fundamental differences between the USA in 2017 and Germany in 1933.
For one, WBD doesn't have a private army of 3,000,000 thugs. For another, America doesn't have 25% unemploymnt, although to listen to WBD you'd think maybe we do.
Meany is writing in the London Review of Books, whose local readers have a much closer relationship to actual nazis than we Americans do. (In the same issue there is a hilarious essay on the burning of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford in 1926 and its surprising [to me anyway] connection to fascism. (The essayist, Richard Wilson, fails to mention that 1926 was the year of the General Strike and a high point of fascistic hysteria in England. )
Europeans have a more intimate connection to fascism in its many guises than Americans do. There are fascist regimes in Europe now. An actual fascist -- rather than the "ersatz fuhrer" (as Meany calls him) that we had running in November -- was running for president of a nation with a permanent seat on the Security Council just last week.
Snyder, though an American, has been immersed all his professional life in European totalitarianism. He understands, if other Americans do not, that fascism is qualitatively different from other kinds of totalitarianism, no matter how noisome those were.
I don't think Snyder was calling for Americans to rip up the cobblestones and turn over the streetcars to erect barricades. (It is a measure of the political difference between America and Europe that we don't have cobblestones or streetcars.) It seems to me that he was calling for Americans to remember what our civic virtues are supposed to consist of, and to renew our dedication to living them.
And to recognize a neonzazi when he rides into town.
The events of the past week reinforce all that.
I have been looking over David Low's "Years of Wrath," a collection of his cartoons in the Evening Standard during the years of fascism's first ascendancy. Europeans (or some of them) were concerned about interference in American elections even before I was born.
The strong resentment is not so obvious any more, is it?
Cynicism works like acid. The double standard that makes Republicans to dismiss Trump's questionable patterns with Russia, while so loudly denouncing Clinton before, will prove to be more damaging in the long term than anything Russia can actually do.
ReplyDeleteAgree. The parties used to have centers and the Democrats still do, though it is weakening.
ReplyDeleteThe Republicans have no morals, no center; just hyperpartisanship.
The Rooskies may not be able to do much beyond sow confusion and mistrust -- karma is a bitch, ain't it? -- but they certainly are providing plenty of amusement:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-high_trumpintel-0504pm-desktop%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.34ed30dad8d8
[Clovis:] The double standard that makes Republicans to dismiss Trump's questionable patterns with Russia ...
ReplyDeleteAnd exactly what questionable patterns would those be?
[Harry:] He understands, if other Americans do not, that fascism is qualitatively different from other kinds of totalitarianism, no matter how noisome those were.
Okay, in exactly what ways is fascism different from totalitarian communism (I repeat myself)?
And isn't it ironic that all the fascist violence and intellectual tyranny is coming from the left.
Fascism is 1) internationally aggressive and 2) dedicated to exterminating entire classes of people for who they are.
ReplyDeleteTotalitarian communism was not threatening to international borders; the Red Army never wanted to march beyond the borders of the tsarist empire. Communists murdered freely but never had any kind of ideology that condemned entire peoples to extermination for racist/color reasons.
Even in your favorite event, the Holodomor, the killing was in service of a normal state function (economic development), unlike the German attitude to the Slavs, which was intended to eliminate them no matter how much damage that did to normal state functions.
Totalitarian communism was not threatening to international borders ...
ReplyDeleteTake off you ideological blinders, Harry. Communism was every bit as internationally aggressive as it could manage. The Korean and Vietnamese wars were due solely to communism. And if the Red Army never wanted to march beyond its borders, or intimidate the heck out of the neighbors, then it had about five times as much military in the Warsaw Pact as it needed.
I have a great deal of first hand experience to go on.
Communists murdered freely but never had any kind of ideology that condemned entire peoples to extermination for racist/color reasons.
The murdered are just as dead, no matter their race. A hundred million sacrificed to Marx's ravings would undoubtedly agree, except they are so very dead.
So communism is internationally aggressive, and freely murders entire classes of people.
There is only one difference worth mentioning between communism and fascism: that former insisted it was entitled to lead a world revolution. Fascism, in contrast is limited by land and blood. But in as much as they are both totalitarian collectivisms, they inevitably end up in savage repression and mass murder.
Even in your favorite event, the Holodomor, the killing was in service of a normal state function (economic development) ...
Good lord, that is in the running for the most ignorant, and morally obtuse statement I've heard this century. Are you going after Duranty's Pulitzer?
Here is an excellent argument against your incontinent slinging of the fascist slur.
ReplyDeleteDunno who Johnson is but he doesn't know what fascism was/is and he is attacking a caricature of postmodernists, who are, anyway, not the people who think Trump is acting in the way fascists did (with the exception of the private armies).
ReplyDeleteAs for Vietnam, you need to get it through your head; bolshevism was dying until the Nazis forced the Red Army out of the confines of the tsarit state. Fascist armies were actually invading and overthrowing governments, something that communist plotting failed ever to achieve.
The list of fascist victories: Manchuria, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Austria. The list of communist victories: ------
Then came general war and communism was saved for two generations.
As for Vietnam, you need to get it through your head; bolshevism was dying until the Nazis forced the Red Army out of the confines of the tsarist state.
ReplyDeleteBollocks, Harry. Once again, you fail to cite a single source for information you can't possibly know first hand; so by all means do so, or I can only conclude you are blowing it out your hat.
Also, you can't possibly know the outcome had France and Britain pipped Hitler at the post (amazing how you ahistorically rob Stalin of any agency in this). Who the heck knows what would have happened had the USSR not been weakened by WWII? Somehow concluding that it would have given up on its core goal of inciting communist revolutions across the world is either a mark of self delusion, or Duranty-like sycophancy.
The list of fascist victories: Manchuria, Albania, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Austria. The list of communist victories: ------
Wrong. Sheesh, for someone who gets as snotty as you do -- rarely justifiably -- about others' knowledge of history, you are glaringly ignorant.
And you have yet to define fascism, other than a slur to throw at Trump, and Clint Eastwood, and just about anyone else who isn't a prog that you haven't already called a racist. And many of them, too.
'you can't possibly know the outcome had France and Britain pipped Hitler at the post '
ReplyDeleteI know they didn't; I know both governments supported fascism as the best antidote to communism. What agency did Stalin have?
I did define fascism, more than once; and referred to Nolte's study.
Harry, you weren't there.
ReplyDeleteYour evidence free pronunciamentos completely ignore Stalin's agency. What were his conditions? Were they onerous, or sensible? Given that the future was yet to happen, but the Holodomor and purges were already history, on what basis should the French and the British preferred Stalin to Hitler?
At the dawn of 1939, who had murdered the most people: Hitler, or Stalin?
I did define fascism, more than once; and referred to Nolte's study.
Then by all means provide links. It is common, and easy, courtesy. Which means the failure to do so is a sure sign of dishonesty.
It's a sign of your tiresomeness.
ReplyDeleteIf you wish to pretend to discuss the well-known (to me anyway) events of the interwar years, you are going to have to pretend to know the events. I know them in detail. It is not my purpose to write a history of the interwar years in snippets.
Churchill said there was a time when Hitler could have been stopped with the stoke of a pen. That was not the case for the USSR.
At the dawn of 1939, which states were international aggressors? Only the fascists.
Skipper,
ReplyDelete----
And exactly what questionable patterns would those be?
----
Who knows?
At the dawn of 1939, which states were international aggressors?
ReplyDeleteAt the dawn of 1939, which states were attempting to foment revolutions?
And since you won't provide a link to your definition, or your name dropping, I'll assume that for you "fascist" is an all purpose slur that doesn't really mean anything at all.
Clovis: ?
I know they didn't; I know both governments supported fascism as the best antidote to communism.
Nonsense. Stalin was the one who conducted secret negotiations with Hitler while poisoning the well with Poland, Britain and France.
You don't know what you are talking about. Years earlier, Members of Parliament stood and cheered when it was annouced that Fascist planes had bombed British ships.
ReplyDelete'At the dawn of 1939, which states were attempting to foment revolutions?'
Italy, Germany and Japan. among others. I see you have not read Ciano's diaries.
Skipper,
ReplyDeleteDid you read the link? If yes, pkease follow with this one.
Italy, Germany and Japan. among others. I see you have not read Ciano's diaries
ReplyDeleteAs always, name dropping doth not an argument make.
In which countries were Germany, Italy, and Japan fomenting revolution. Other than, Germany, Italy, and Japan, that is.
Compare and contrast with communism.
[Harry:] You don't know what you are talking about. Years earlier, Members of Parliament stood and cheered when it was annouced that Fascist planes had bombed British ships.
ReplyDeleteAs I have shown in this thread and elsewhere, linking is easy to do. Are you too stupid to figure it out, or are you making stuff up?
Clovis: I read your link. What has impressed me most, and continues to do so with this story, is the extremely lopsided ratio between anonymous allegations and substance. It's almost as if Harry was writing all those stories.
ReplyDeleteDoesn't mean they are wrong, but given the seeming leakfest that has been going on, one would expect substance to make regular appearances. Provided it exists, of course.
China, Croatia, Philippines, DEI, Spain, Greece, Norway, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Bulgaria etc.
ReplyDeleteAnybody who has to ask the question has disqualified himself from the conversation
'As I have shown in this thread and elsewhere, linking is easy to do.'
ReplyDeleteNot necessary if one is discussing a subject with someone who knows it also. Not every piece of information is on line.
I was surprised to be able to find a reference to the cheering, as I learned about it from The Week, a Stalinist publication not available on line (and difficult to find on paper). You wouldn't have believed me anyway. But perhaps Orwell will carry weight.
http://orwell.ru/library/articles/criminals/english/e_crime
I could do this for every one of your childish and ignorant comments but I have better things to do with my time.
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ReplyDeleteChina, Croatia, Philippines, DEI, Spain, Greece, Norway, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Bulgaria etc.
ReplyDeletePro-tip, Harry: those were not instances of fomenting revolution; those were invasions. Different thing altogether.
Not necessary if one is discussing a subject with someone who knows it also. Not every piece of information is on line.
Not everything is, but close as darnnit. The interwar period has certainly been the subject of sufficient interest to historians that there must be information you can point me to.
That, once again, you don't strongly suggests you are making stuff up. Or perhaps you have learned not to link to sources that either directly contradict whatever silly point you are trying to make, or don't address it in the first place.
Remember "Tea partiers chanted 'let him die'"?
As is the case here. Orwell is indeed a fine writer, one of the best. But "Who are the War Criminals" isn't even close to being on point.
No surprise. Your internet mode for years now has pretty been much baseless slur alternating with fantastical assertions, all backed up by pathetic evasions.
Skipper never head of fifth columnists.
ReplyDeleteI'll be pleased to discuss the issue with anyone who knows enough to do so. Skipper, you don't qualify.
It bears repeating:
ReplyDeleteNo surprise. Your internet mode for years now has pretty been much baseless slur alternating with fantastical assertions, all backed up by pathetic evasions.
You can leave if you want.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise. Your internet mode for years now has pretty been much baseless slur alternating with fantastical assertions, all backed up by pathetic evasions.
ReplyDelete