Disingenuous Basterds: The oligarchs’ campaign to depict their critics as Nazis

http://pando.com/2014/01/26/disingenuous-basterds-the-oligarchs-long-campaign-to-depict-their-critics-as-nazis/

by _pius • 12 years ago

35 28 12 years ago

hirundo5• 12 years ago

Never forget, the Jews say of the Shoah. It becomes harder to keep that promise if it's seen as uncivil merely to draw comparisons to that era. And it's important that the promise be kept. One can accuse someone of an intolerance akin to Nazi supporters without accusing someone of wanting to re-enact the Shoah. And it's certainly reasonable to analogize contemporary attempts to level the 1% with the corollary attempts in Germany in the 1930s. That analogy is not the same as to depict Occupy sympathizers as Nazis. When it is taken that way it's likely simply an attempt to divert serious contemplation of the actual similarity between the motivations driving those two movements.

ItendToDisagree7• 12 years ago

How is asking for 'the rich to pay their share' a corollary to any Nazi actions? Am I missing some examples that I should know about of the Nazi's exterminating wealth and industry (rather than what they misguidedly considered 'undesirables' for racial purity reasons)?

hirundo5• 12 years ago

Nowadays the language of 'social justice' (e.g. asking the rich to pay their share, when in a progressive tax regime they pay far more than that) is used to justify leveling behavior whereas in Nazi Germany the language of 'racial purity` was used towards the same ends. The verbal justifications change, but the underlying urge to evade one's own accountability for one's relative lack of success does not.

winstonsmith• 12 years ago

And it's certainly reasonable to analogize contemporary attempts to level the 1% with the corollary attempts in Germany in the 1930s.

It's not reasonable; it's quite perverse -- you seem to be confusing the Nazis with the opposing parties of the time. The opposing parties were for the elimination of class differences while the Nazis where explicitly for preserving them.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism :

This involved the idea of uniting rich and poor Germans for a common national project without eliminating class differences (a concept known as "Volksgemeinschaft", or "people's community"),

Essentially, the Nazis suppressed class based anger and encouraged homicidal racism and xenophobia. The Nazis were the defenders, not the oppressors, of the wealthy.

hirundo5• 12 years ago

They simply found an alternative richer class to steal from, so found it convenient to become national socialists instead of communists. It's Willie Sutton's (apocryphal?) logic that he robbed banks because that's were the money is. Though the Jews didn't have all the money, they were the ones most politically convenient to take it from. A bank with fewer guards, so to speak. The rhetoric is far more fluid than the motivation.

chetanahuja• 12 years ago

"And it's certainly reasonable to analogize contemporary attempts to level the 1% with the corollary attempts in Germany in the 1930s"

Yeah... I don't think you understand what the words "certainly" or "reasonable" mean if you feel that statement counts as "certainly reasonable".

slurry• 12 years ago

Pando.com is making a big play on this kind of class-focused journalism. Mainstream outlets will do it from time to time, but mostly as a sideshow to the conventional liberalism of the Red/Blue culture war.

America has a lot of liberal news outlets, but not many left ones.

I am genuinely curious how this experiment will play out.

pstack• 12 years ago

If we keep the guy making $30k outraged at his neighbor earning $150k and we keep the guy making $150k angry at the hippy kids and then we wrap it all up in My-Team vs Your-Team two-party politics, we can keep the masses occupied and distracted.

walshemj6• 12 years ago

Yep divide and rule - instead of actually addressing the real issues in SF poor planing at a to low minimum wage.

Being cynical I wonder if the influx of techies has also interrupted some ones nice political machine.

walshemj6• 12 years ago

The problem is the the USA never developed a proper center left party in the European or UK model.

So now the only progressive's that get any air time are the raving fringe nutters - who chase after "castles in the air" and not real substantive issues that impact the average working stiff and include the shop worker on 30k and Googler's on 150k in the definition of working stiff

which damages everyone in the USA

ItendToDisagree7• 12 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong... But didn't the Nazi's actively protect their 'rich leaders of industry' as long as they toed the line (Farben, Krupp, Etc)? They even provided them with concentration camp victims as slave labor at points.

When did the Nazi's persecute the rich? Or is this just more "something something Nazi" rhetoric being used blindly?

walshemj6• 12 years ago

They persecuted the rich owners of department stores - small shop keepers where a substantial target market for the NAZI party (source Kershaws bi of Hitler)

ItendToDisagree7• 12 years ago

The point I was getting at is, was this because they were Jewish (or some other 'undesirable') or because they were rich/successful? Because it seems (at least some) Aryan heads of business/industry were in fact helped greatly by the Nazis.[0]

Was the persecution because the Nazi's were 'socialists' or because they wanted to steal from what they considered lesser humans? The intention is what I wonder about.

[0] http://archive.adl.org/braun/dim_13_2_forgetting.html

rakoo• 12 years ago

This has nothing to do with Nazi's riches, just like it has nothing to do with today's jews. The parallel he draws is simple:

- Nazi's attacked a minority, the jews

- Current society attacks a minority, the riches

- Therefore, current society is literally le hitler.

Whether that theory is valid or not is another topic (I believe his point was to raise attention, not truth)

ItendToDisagree7• 12 years ago

Agreed. I'm not commenting on the author per se. I'm more commenting on the comments he addresses, some of which seem to imply that the Nazi's were anti-rich/anti-business.

Up-voting as your comment very much helps clarify what I'm curious about.

sentenza• 12 years ago

In Germany we call what he did a "Nazivergleich". I cannot remember one as bad as his being uttered by a public figure over here in the last few decades and quite a few public figures had to apologize/step down because of Nazivergleiche that were way weaker.

I don't want to reiterate everything I vented in the previous discussion of this incident[1], but the point is:

You DO NOT invoke the Holocaust to draw attention on something else.

The holocaust is of central importance to the history of the western world. A Germany that, at the turn of the century, was a beacon of science, industrialization and even free thought, took only fourty years to transform into a state where it was possible to conduct industrialized genocide without much opposition.

This is not to be taken lightly, but to be contemplated and internalized. It is not to be invoked just to make a conversational point. AND YOU DON'T USE IT TO DRAW ATTENTION TO YOURSELF.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7121533

michalu• 12 years ago

Nazi's didn't but communists did. They've took away all property and jailed entrepreneurs, intellectuals were sent to labor camps on the grounds of "class warfare".

Perkins picked a wrong analogy.

walshemj6• 12 years ago

Well to be contrarian his comments about progressive radicalism echoing the socialism of fools in pre ww Europe is actually quite strong.

Trouble is he obviously doesn't have enough historical background I wonder if my comrade Dr Flett might be able to suggest a reading list

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alanjohnson/100255874/nico...

anon20140126• 12 years ago

The comparison to Kristallnacht, while inflammatory, isn't that absurd. Tactically their conduct is very similar to the early SA.

The Nazis began as a street gang. They saw themselves as socially and economically marginalized by the "other". Jewish business owners were cast as foreign outsiders responsible for German economic suffering. They smashed store windows and sought to intimidate Jews.

"Die techie scum" "Get the fuck out of Oakland" "Kauf nicht bei Juden!"

Once you identify your opponent as less deserving of rights, to be attacked with impunity, the barriers to violence slip away.

Disingenuous Basterds: The oligarchs’ campaign to depict their critics as Nazis

Related Stories