My late brother used to tell the story of asking in Sunday school whether we were descended from apes or Adam and Eve. The teacher (a nun) answered, "well, some people descended from Adam and Eve," and then, as she gestured to the only black kid in the class, "some people descended from apes." (Even at 9, my brother was shocked. So were my parents. No more Sunday school for him.)
I'm almost surprised I haven't heard this theory from creationists trying to fake a respect for science by acknowledging this as a possible explanation for the human fossil record. It would jibe with an ongoing strategy of selectively co-opting elements of the opposition, and in the course of so doing blatantly misappropriating and rewriting history. Glenn Beck tries to claim the mantle of Martin Luther King, as Rand Paul imagines that he would have marched on Selma. Opposite Day has been proclaimed across the land--even seemingly immutable mathematics are not safe, as Senators Kyl and McConnell insist that cutting taxes does not reduce revenue or increase the deficit.
Majority rule is a thing of the past: 41 senators hold the country hostage via a perpetual filibuster. Our mixed-race President is called a racist by the very people who hold posters depicting him as a witch doctor at all-white rallies. There are 5 job-seekers for every job opening, yet their unemployment benefits are somehow the cause of the deficit. BP offers 20 billion for the destruction of the gulf; and Obama is "shaking them down."
Up is down and down is up. On the right, the ability to accurately perceive reality has been compromised. Ideology has become pathology.
It's as if fear--of change, of dark skin, of foreign languages and poor people--has created a virus in the body politic. When an Alabama legislator with a confederate flag on his pick-up truck runs campaign commercials starring Abraham Lincoln, you know the virus rages unchecked.
A completely fictional narrative can take root as a functional reality. By 1939, a huge majority of Germans took as gospel truth a completely imagined Jewish conspiracy to control the world and persecute a totally invented "Aryan race." The mania took root in the last years of the Weimar Republic, nurtured by the upheaval of massive economic dislocation. Exhausted by the First World War, the rest of Europe offered no forceful counter-narrative. Even the moral indignation at German anti-Semitism led to a mere pittance in the number of Jewish emigrants accepted by attendees of the Evian conference of 1938. When talk is cheap, human life can be even cheaper.
The rise of the viral right here has fostered the same kind of fevered imaginings. The demonization of A.C.O.R.N. evokes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Fox's insistence that three--count 'em, three--"New Black Panthers" pose an imminent threat to white babies has the familiar ring of the accusation that Jews thirsted for the blood of Christian infants. Considering lists of the undocumented circulating in Utah cite the due dates of pregnant women, it would seem it's the brown babies who need to be afraid.
As the son of a woman who grew up under the occupation of France, I have always been fascinated by the Second World War. Volumes have been written asking how the German nation could have gone collectively mad--and there isn't an explanation that fully satisfies. All we really need to know is that mass hysteria can make for very nasty history.
I understand that our President prefers consensus to confrontation, but his fear of being cast as the "angry black man" is leaving a vacuum. Keith Olbermann does a mean Edward R. Murrow, but his ratings don't compete with those of Herrs Limbaugh or Beck. Only Obama, with his mastery of oratory and possession of the bully pulpit, can hope to give voice to a forceful narrative of uncompromising truth. He doesn't have to be hostile, just unrelenting.
Someone besides Joe Wilson needs to cry out: "You lie!" The time is now, before it's too little, too late.
Follow Mark Olmsted on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MarquisMarq
OK, I will oblige. Your writing is good, but the various areas to attempt to cover in it have little to do with each other and nothing to do with the title of the "entry".
For instance, the title, "The Evolution of Fascism, Then and Now", implies that you are going to reveal the differences, or the sameness, of then and now, but you do not. You list your knowledge of a few events, but do not connect them. Your Brother's Nun had exactly what to do with the rise of Nazism in the 1930's? Nothing? OK.
Then what did you intend to accomplish by implying that creationists are racists? And, I don't know that anyone has. "ongoing strategy of selectively co-opting elements of the opposition". More likely, people like Beck are selecting elements that the left have abandoned in favor of divisive rhetoric.
And no one is comparing Obama to a witch doctor at any rally, let alone your fictional "all white" rallies.
You are simply practicing more divisiveness in support of progressive ideas that have a long history of failure as a form of governance.
Mr. Breitbart has offered $100K to anyone who can provide video of racist slurs hurled at congressman as they went to vote on HCR. He still has his money.
One minor point I just noticed - I was reminded elsewhere that "monopoly of violence" is one of the primary factors defining a state. The current assertion by Anti-American Fascism that the Second Amendment includes a supposed "right to overthrow the government" - negating one of the foundations of our state - strikes at the very existence of the United States of America.
I had the misfortune of spending several months following Yahoo news, where the typical thread resembles what one imagines a KKK meeting is like. They are many people who intend the end of our nation, and they do appear to largely overlap with the baggers.
I am very grateful our President had the wisdom to keep the Patriot Act. I imagine he may have been able to anticipate what was coming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E9X_AcpHbA
To quote the program,
"Most people think the Nazis a little absurd here, too obsessive there. But, perhaps, the time for thinking is over."
"Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness."
You are adding to the problem by calling the "viral right" Germans and racists.
On the other hand, some corporate CEO whose Daddy sent him to business school, who loses billions of dollars on market speculation, still gets paid 80 times what said laid-off worker was making. And you think he's the admirable, productive citizen?
He's the parasite, not the working stiff who applies for every single job she can. As for being a racist, I did not accuse rich people of that. I accuse the pundits at Fox News, frothing at the mouth, convincing working people that they are each other's enemy based on language and skin color when they are on the same side. If that makes me a Marxist, fine. (At least I've read him. Something we smarty-pants bloggers do. READ.)
What working in a tobacco patch has to do with the authority to determine racism is beyond me, but don't you worry. I've been to prison. I saw way up close all the hate we were supposed to feel toward each other. I didn't drink that kool-aid, but most did. And the most virulent brand of it always came from the other whites.
Ahhhh, It must be nice to have such a short memory. It was just 4 short years ago the the Democrat minority in the US Senate had a stranglehold on any meaningful legislation. I've read where at least 4 times, Democrats stopped any changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And as we all know now, these two Democrat babies were the pillars that the financial markets revolved around. Many investment firms and average Americans retirement accounts were all dependent on Fannie and Freddie. When they failed, the entire house of cards that Democrats built and Republicans were too wishywashy to stop, came tumbling down into the recession we have today.
Thank you Democrats and cowardly Republicans. We are now paying for your stupid self-serving and short-sighted money grabs.
The idea that there was any impetus for any financial reform under Bush is ludicrous. Trillions were shifted to the rich with his tax cuts while deficits ballooned with two unpaid wars. Fannie and Freddie Mae may have been part of the problem, but its the deregulation-mad casino capitalism that was clearly the source of the meltdown.
I don't think much of either major party, or the libertarians either for that matter, but you seem to be rewriting history in claiming the financial markets revolved around Fannie and Freddie.I also don't think you are wholly accurate in suggesting the democrats would allow no change to Fannie and Freddie. You're also ignoring what those changes were, which is more than a little piece of the issue.