Ann Arbor officially got 9.6 inches of snow last night, but it looks like a foot, and it is the heavy wet kind, so I am sick of shoveling. Besides, what’s the point of shoveling out my driveway when the street in front of the house has not been plowed? I can’t go anywhere, as my car is not snow-worthy.
So I am snowed in, but I can still read blog posts, and what I have been reading lately gives me the creepy feeling of being increasingly cornered by hyperbole which borders on outright lunacy.
Like, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker’s attempts to cut back on the high cost of unionized state employees are seen — seriously — as Nazism, and he is portrayed repeatedly as Hitler. It would be one thing if this were just overwrought hysteria, but Ann Althouse went to the trouble of interviewing one of the sign carriers, who really does believe that Scott Walker is just like Hitler. Yeah? I would like to see her explain to elderly concentration camp survivors and people whose parents were gassed and burned by the Nazis how the horror of what happened to them was the moral equivalent of ending the automatic deduction from state workers’ paychecks and making the unions collect the dues themselves.
The other night a friend (heretofore always reasonable) started spouting Noam Chomsky at me. I began to wonder whether no one feels obligated to be reasonable any more because there is so much unreasonable nonsense being spouted. Birthers, truthers, religious loons, atheist loons, enivronmentalist loons — all these and more just vent freely, and there is no consensus on what constitutes reason, sanity, or even civility. I want to think that most people are nice, because most of them are. (Even radical Muslims are nice on an individual basis. Just don’t go near them when they gather on a Friday by the million….)
Andrew Sullivan (whom I am not supposed to link lest I upset commenters who claim that when I link him I am allowing him to take over this blog) characterized Glenn Reynolds as “hard right”– apparently because he linked this post from Prof. Jacobson lamenting the fact that a million Egyptians poured out into the streets to listen to (and cheer for) radical Islamist nutjob Yusuf al-Qaradawi:
…over a million Egyptians turned out in Tahrir Square last Friday to cheer the vile anti-Semitic Sunni cleric Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who had been exiled by Mubarek, and who espouses the fundamentalist Islamic view that Jews must live as Dhimmis under Islamic control. Instead of accurately reporting the significance of this event, The New York Times whitewashed the cleric as someone who supports a “a pluralistic, multiparty, civil democracy.”
Here is the video of the rally (in Arabic, via Israel Matzav) with the crowd chanting:
“To Jerusalem We go, for us to be the Martyrs? of the Millions.”
Great. So it’s now “hard right” to object to (or even link objections to) a million anti-Semites rabidly yelling in the street.
If objecting to mob anti-Semitism is “hard right,” then what, pray tell, would “hard left” be? Breaking into chants of “DEATH TO THE JEWS”?
How am I supposed to make sense of this? Should I just get with Andy’s plan, and stop calling Glenn a libertarian?
I mean, rather than complain about the nuttiness, perhaps I should just join with the flow. Fortunately, as it happens, for years I have been methodically documenting Glenn’s “hard rightness,” especially his well-known historical ties to Benito Mussolini.
And just last week I unearthed a new picture, showing the two of them late in the regime. As is the case with any research into The Truth, there is no stopping the True Truth from continuing to surface. And while Glenn admits that he has tried to get his minions to bury the truth and sanitize the Internet, even Glenn must concede that there are always telltale traces and fragments that indelibly remain. Such was the case with a very old, quite blurry photograph — the original of which is probably long suppressed. It shows Mussolini listening very carefully to a man who is speaking:
Even though the quality is poor, if you look carefully you will see that the man bears a striking resemblance to Glenn Reynolds.
What truer proof of hard rightness could there be than that?
UPDATE: Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for linking my explanation of “the true meaning of ‘hard right.’” A warm welcome to all, and I especially appreciate the valuable insights and speculations.
I’m taking Glenn’s comment to mean that my true meaning is open to interpretation.
His silence on the incriminating picture speaks volumes, though!
Comments
30 responses to “True and hard proof of “hard right” Trutherism”
The real reason you should never link Sullivan is that he is The Last True Conservative. As such, he is a living rebuke to those posers who claim the title. Me, for example – I call myself conservative, yet every time Lone Conservative Sullivan explains what I really believe in, I can find no resemblance to my actual thoughts and beliefs.
He’s not the only one, of course – my ex-wife was extraordinarily proficient in telling me what I really thought and meant. Difference is, I can’t divorce Excitable Andy.
Eric,
I think we’re coming unglued. And not just there. And I wish I knew why. Stress, yes, but where does it start.
And oy, more pictures of Glenn? Next you’ll start uncovering pictures of my past or — shudder — my cats’ past.
‘lanched
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/115460/
what, pray tell, would “hard left” be? Breaking into chants of “DEATH TO THE JEWS”?
Yup. Same goes for “DEATH TO ISRAEL” or “DEATH TO THE NEOCONS” or…pretty much any broad calls for death like that.
If the dude’s not chewing on an an un-smoothied puppy thigh bone, I am not Frank J. Fleming.
Oh, and several hobos will not be sacrificed tonight.
Dear Lord! It’s only Monday.
Their armory has become depleted to the point that their only hope is to marginalize that with which they cannot rationally compete. The famous “Are so! Am not!” argument.
Steve,
Has your wife ever considered opening a movie theater? Might work for Andy too!
I’m fairly certain that breaking out into chants of “death to the Jews” is appropriate for mainstream leftists. To be hard-left I think you have to actually kill several people, it’s kinda tough to classify the “hard” edge of a group which cannot understand why others have a problem with their lionizing a psychopath like Che Guevara.
I’m not sure how to define Hard Left, but apparently Hard Right means anyone to the right of, say, Michael Moore. Or maybe Mao or Pol Pot.
I’m really tired of seeing this same play into the hands of the leftists. Showing The Blogfather in a picture with Il Duce does not indicate anything far right. Il Duce and his fascist friends were far left, only not as far left as the favored lenin and Uncle Joe. The left has spread this fertilizer far and wide, to the point that rational people are willing to have the discussion on their grounds.
Republics are center, Theocracies are right, socialists and commies fight each other to decide who is further left.
Lord help you when you have a theocratic-socialist government.
They’d better stop pushing, or things are going to get ugly.
Hmmm, I suspect that really, really hard right people don’t blather on blogs or do street demonstrations. They are probably organized into a classical cell organization and are organized around a true litmus issue. Yes, they want to end the subzidies for das peanut farmers because ze price of the peanut butter in das stores is vay to high!
Everybody knows Mussolini was actually a leftist. It wasn’t called the Italian Social Republic for the alliteration, after all.
I heard Glenn Reynolds was Otto Skorzeny’s second-in-command when they rescued Benito. I also hear he personally blended the puppies of the Ariete Division’s officer corps for an energy snack after the Battle of Rome 1943.
“I began to wonder whether no one feels obligated to be reasonable any more because there is so much unreasonable nonsense being spouted.”
That, and because people have started believing that calls to “be reasonable” are like calls to “be civil” — cloaked ways to delegitimize the arguer rather than engage with the argument.
Reasoned argument requires the assumption of good faith on both sides. The rapid decline in the willingness to make this assumption — for either side — is what’s really depressing me these days.
Your terminology is faulty here. Mussolini was not hard right, rather he was hard left. Before the First World War he was violently anti-Catholic and editor of the journal of the organization that became the Communist Party of Italy in the 1920s. (They threw him out when he supported Italy joining the allies in that war.) His fascism is very much like the Clinton-Obama idea of having czars organizing each industry and the modern Democrat scheme of crony capitalism. (for example: legislature passes incomprehensible laws without reading them, government grants exemptions to them to corporations that support it.)
Mussolini and fascism were far closer to modern socialism than to conservatism or libertarianism.
Even the Nazis (National Socialist German Workers Party) were at first violently anti-capitalist, particularly Roehm and the brown shirts (SA). In 1935 Hitler murdered Roehm and disbanded the SA, concentrating his venom on despoiling the Jews. With rich guys buying off the Democrats, that seems like the direction that the modern left is going today!
To be sure, they have not gotten there yet.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you appear to be linking “hard right” with Benito’s fascism, and, thus, equate the hard-right to fascism. Did I misunderstand your comments?
Increasing the size, reach, and scope of a government pushes a state to the left. The extreme version of this is totalitarianism and dictatorship, or, extremely hard-left. The polar opposite to dictatorship isn’t democracy. It’s anarchy, or, a complete lack of any government.
In my estimation, the extreme right want no government, ever, in any way, shape or form. Obviously, contemporary conservatives don’t call for that, but do call for reduced scope and reach of government, putting them center-right.
Fascism, I would say, falls in left-leaning part of the spectrum describing government size. The left has co-opted the language over the past few decades, convincing people that extreme right = nationalism and violence.
Not so.
I began to wonder whether no one feels obligated to be reasonable any more because there is so much unreasonable nonsense being spouted.
I have another reason for you.
The traditional “sensible middle” – through naivete or duplicity – has been utterly co-opted by the ruling class.
And more or less everyone who is not part of that class has pretty much figured this out by this point.
The ranters are all those who have been, or are about to be (see e.g. the Wisconsin public unions) thrown out of the lifeboat.
Two disturbing possibilities:
1) the disparate voices engaging in crazy talk never find common ground.
2) they do.
It’s my understanding that Reynolds came upon his assorted avarian skills while working Henschel 126’s out of Mellaha, back in the day.
God knows why he decided to chew puppy femurs. Probably after accidentally uncovering a remnant of CARTHAGE BLUE HADES left by SOE’s BOFH.
A chacun son gout, I suppose.
Yes, that’s Reynolds. I saw him there.
Good thing Reynolds wasn’t wearing his “I had an abortion” tee shirt in that picture. That would’ve made the “hard right” meme a tougher sell.
Holy Cow!
Wasn’t there a film about Glenn Reynolds and the big Benito sometime ago? I think it was called:
Puppy Blending with Mussolini.
‘m not sure how to define Hard Left, but apparently Hard Right means anyone to the right of, say, Michael Moore. Or maybe Mao or Pol Pot.
The harder left, the bigger the government all the way to totalitarianism. The harder right, the smaller the government all the way to anarchy. I’m not sure it’s any more complicated than that.
There is nothing inherently violent or hateful about either side, despite what liberal will try to tell you, but you can guess which has more blood on it’s hands.
Mussolini, right wing?
The only characteristic of Italian fascism and of Il Duce himself which resembles right wingism as we understand it today was a genuine and sincere partiotism. Everything else about the agenda was socialsim and ultra-progressivism.
Were Spellcheck to strike, he’d point out that it’s “patriotism”, not “partiotism.” D’oh!
There is book entitled “Why We Hate America” that came out of the UK about 7-8 years ago which at one point refers to the “Far, far right wing NY Times columnist Thomas Freedman!!!!! Not just far. Far, far. Take THAT Reynolds – you mere Hard Right pipsqueak!
Andrew Sullivan is nothing more than a tool for liberals and the Democrats. He goes with their talking points. Just today he’s backing down in his lukewarm support of Gov. Walker by taking up the union/liberal lies that Walker was supported by the Police & Firefighters unions, and that therefore Walker is corrupted by favoritism to his backers.
Sullivan has an agenda, and if it conflicts with past positions he’s held, then he changes to conform to the new agenda. He just doesn’t have the guts to admit that years of rubbing elbows and other body parts with liberals has finally rubbed off, and he’s become one of them.
Ever notice that MSM panels often have Andrew Sullivan on as their conservative spokesman, when any real conservative knows he is not one. At best, Sullivan is a libertarian leaning moderate, at worste a leftie apoligist, posing as a conservative.
It would be reasonable to have Sullivan on as a moderate, in between a real conservative, and a leftist. But to present him as an authentic conservative just shows how bizarre and out of touch the MSM really is.
In the photo, that isn’t Mussolini – it’s Helen Thomas. This photo was taken just before she broke out into a primordial scream “DEATH TO THE JEWS!”
The only reason Mussolini is thought to be a Right Winger is because Josef Stalin said so.
But from Stalin’s perspective, everyone in the world, everyone who isn’t Stalin, is a dangerous right-winger.
I suppose it’s like a politician’s habit of naming a thing the opposite of what it really is: saying Tax Collectors are the Revenue department and censors are the Ministry of Truth.