Love Me, I’m a (Barney Frank) Conservative . . .
Posted on August 24th, 2009
by Clark Stooksbury |
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I see that the Sniper’s Tower, specifically Richard Spencer, has taken aim at my Barney Frank post. He hits his target a couple of times: I do subscribe to Mother Jones , and I haven’t contributed to discussions about health care.
The meat of Spencer’s problem with my brief post lay in the final two paragraphs:
I generally don’t go in for the whole “Liberal Fascism” thesis, but there’s no question that it contains a kernel of truth. For people like Frank, Stooksbury, and other MoJo subscribers, “Nazism” is just another word for anti-Semitism and intolerance—vile, contemptible nonsense that should never be associated with an American President. (In this regard, I like how Barney fretted over the “defacing” of the Obama icon with a Hitler mustache.) But the fact is, it wasn’t called national socialism for nothing, as Hitler & Co. were into massive public works projects, a “4 Year Plan” for industry, the banning of public smoking, euthanasia, and, yes, many aspects of socialized
medicine
. I think Ernst Notle is mostly correct when he contended that Nazism was a “right-wing imitation of Bolshevism.”
Put simply, that woman in Massachusetts was getting at something with her image. And it’s rather ridiculous for someone like Stooksbury, who’s uninterested or incapable of making a “substantive” contribution to the healthcare debate, to annoyingly act like he’s some enlightened gatekeeper who can tell everyone what they can and cannot say.
I’m aware that the Hitler regime had smoking bans, public works programs, etc. But Hitler and Nazism are better known for other elements such as aggressive war and genocide. Hold up a picture of Hitler and people tend to think of Auschwitz, not the Autobahn. It would have made more sense for Frank’s interlocutor to have held up a picture of President Obama made up to look like Olof Palme or Francois Mitterand. Margaret Thatcher is known as an opponent of big government, but she presided over Britain’s National Health Service for more than ten years. None of these figures are representative of unvarnished evil, though I assume that neocons execrate the first two.
So I can’t see how the young woman was “getting at” anything other than looking silly by likening government run health care to Nazism.
Filed under: Conservatism
People who publish pieces from Robert Stacy McCain should not be arguing about substance. They have no leg to stand on.
I couldn’t have said it better.
Jonah Goldberg has much to answer for. A lot of this Obama and the American left = Hitler is inspired by Goldberg’s book. The book itself is just a comic book retelling of adult works by Erik von-Kuehnelt-Leddihn and others. Nazism like Italian Fascism, did grow out of the left. A good understanding of the philosophical divide between Marxism and German National Socialism can be had by reading Spengler’s, Prussianism and Socialism. Good luck finding a copy by the way.
Rather than becoming censors of the woman with that unfortunate sign, we need to help her understand that the managerial state run on collectivist principles is her enemy and ours. That said, we also need to understand that in order to motivate people, we need simple, understandable symbols that ordinary people can focus on and be motivated by.
“People who publish pieces from Robert Stacy McCain should not be arguing about substance. They have no leg to stand on.” - Hilarious.
I appreciate the nod to the semi-leftist roots of Nazism and Fascism, Thomas. Marx was a left-Hegelian, and the Nazis have been purported to be intellectual descendants of the right-Hegelians.
Anyone who equates socialism with fascism is forgetting a simple, yet central, element of one that the other lacks: while socialism tends to push for class conflict and a redress of grievances, fascism bandies about the extremely conservative concept of “class collaboration”, which is essentially the Orwellian-style term for applauding class distinctions and social stratification.
To be fair, “really existing socialism”, in all its forms ranging from the USSR to Denmark, don’t practice class warfare at all. But while Denmark takes a redistributionist approach that hews to socialist concerns for the poor, one-party-state socialist governments tend to replace the previous ruling class with the new governing body.
The “communism” of China is an excellent example: the only arguably socialist element of that regime, and its ilk, was the famous “iron rice bowl”. Ironic, I suppose, that the “leftist” totalitarian states of the 20th century were essentially technocratic, centralized welfare states on overdrive - blithely destroying the earth, and civil liberties, while providing a modicum of government services to handle the burgeoning legions of the poor.
The philosophical basis of National Socialism in Germany is obscured by that movements brief life. It is further complicated by Hitler’s easy disregard for such principles as the Nazis had. Frankly the whole matter of left and right Hegelians is an artificial distinction produced after Hegel’s death.
National Socialist parties existed in Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary from the 1890’s on, and had forged the template of later Nazi party program. At least one was a member of the Second International. All were plebiscitory mass movements with unambiguously socialist language and platforms. For instance, (from the the platform of the DNSAP, precursor of the NSDAP) “The German National Socialist Workers Party is not a worker’s party in the narrow sense of the term: It represents the interests of all honest creative Labor. It is a liberty-loving and strictly nationalist party and therefore fights against all reactionary trends, against ecclesiastical, aristocratic, and capitalist privileges and any alien influence…..” If one reads war-time diaries of young Nazis, you find few greater insults than “Bourgeois” and “Reactionary.”
“Anyone who equates socialism with fascism is forgetting a simple, yet central, element of one that the other lacks: while socialism tends to push for class conflict and a redress of grievances, fascism bandies about the extremely conservative concept of “class collaboration”, which is essentially the Orwellian-style term for applauding class distinctions and social stratification.” I think that if you substitute the word Marxism for Socialism, this statement would be true. The socialism we know is not the only socialism that can existed.
This is why I stopped subscribing to TAC. Full of stuffy, boring commentary by individuals more concerned with appearing like refined intellectuals rather than actually going to the heart of the problem. If you ask me whose side I’d be on: the angry activist suspicious of government or uber-liberal Barney Frank, I’d take option 1 hands down.
[...] Stooksbury responds Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Hitler Died In 1960? [...]
Remember folks it was Barney Frank who pushed the bailout and now we have so called so-conservatives running to defense of the one of architects of the greatest theft in world history.
A point that the “angry activist”(who I happen to know and who knows more about Nazism than Mr. Stooksbury will ever know) made but the media failed to report lest anyone be reminded exactly what kind of crook Barney Frank is.
She is a single-payer advocate and the issue of the Nazi policy is the “IMAC” board modeled off the NHS’s NICE and the Nazi philosophy behind CER.
Now Mr. Stooksbury since you seem to think you are an expert on the medical system established the Nazis and you please name the program and when it established and how it operated and the fundamental logic behind the system in the economic sense?
I doubt you can because you don’t understand anything about why people are carrying the Hitler signs and it’s because the those protester who know more history than Mr.Stookbury know that Auschwitz began with the hospitals “cutting cost” to the state.
To elaborate on what Septeus wrote, I’ve seen assorted evidence that these Obama/Hitler posters came from the Lyndon LaRouche cult.
And what is the heart of the problem Anti-Partisan? Well in my humble, non-intellectual opinion, it’s that good ideas about bringing more freedom to the health care system are being drowned out by mindless name calling and rage. As a supporter of Ron Paul, I know full well how the “Nazi” charge can used by the ignorant to smear someone, even if its ridiculous. The use of words like Nazi, racist, bigot, fascist and socialist, which started on the left and now sadly has migrated to the right, has rendered such terms meaningless and devoid of any context, which robs them of any kind point. Now they are the buzz words of the childish debate we’ve desceded into on health care.
I can imagine one might feel good calling Barney Frank, who is Jewish by the way, a Nazi. But it accomplishes nothing in regards to convincing people that what you have to offer in regards to health care may be a better approach than Mr. Frank’s. Instead it make one look silly. It’s no different than chasing Seah Hannity across a snow covered New Hampshire parking lot. Theraputic? Yes! but did it win any votes for Ron Paul? Doubtful.
But I tell you what, if you agree to subscribe to TAC again, perhaps the magazine can get you a set of pom-poms along with a sweatshirt and pennant that all say “CONSERVATIVE” on it, how about that?
If some of the more outrageous characters at the Town Halls are LaRouche agent provocateurs, this needs to be made known. It sounds plausible. They just love provocative street theater.
But what will win votes for someone similar to Ron Paul? Siding with Barney Frank against a rightwing activist? Pick your battles wisely. Taking a stand against townhall rage is counterproductive. Building a populist movement means you have to reach out beyond the small circle of academic conservatives who contribute to TAC. That includes “passionate” activists who aren’t as “enlightened” as you.
I could go on and on about why I dropped TAC. One reason is every other issue was about Israel! Gets old, man! Noninterventionism means not taking ANY sides. So many paleos waste political capital constantly bashing Israel like if America took a more pro-Arab approach, you’d be happy.
The story about the Manion Forum was awesome though. Gems like that kept me going pass the first year but the boredom outweighed the strong points by time my renewal came up.
Here’s a tip: appeal to people who have GEDs instead of PhDs. Works for Hannity.