Brownshirts in America: Paul Craig Roberts

[plover]

From Paul Craig Roberts (Assistant Treasury Secretary under Reagan and former contributing editor for the National Review):

http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts75.html

Bush’s supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.

[...]

In language reeking with hatred, Heritage Foundation TownHall readers impolitely informed me that opposing the invasion of Iraq is identical to opposing America, that Bush is the greatest American leader in history and everyone who disagrees with him should be shot before they cause America to lose another war. TownHall’s readers were sufficiently frightening to convince the Heritage Foundation to stop posting my columns.

Bush’s conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and to demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country.

[...]

[While David] Brock [author of The Republican Noise Machine] is as blindly committed to his causes as the rightwing zealots he exposes are to theirs, ... [he nevertheless] makes a credible case that today’s conservatives are driven by ideology, not by fact. He argues that their stock in trade is denunciation, not debate. Conservatives don’t assess opponents’ arguments, they demonize opponents. Truth and falsity are out of the picture; the criteria are: who’s good, who’s evil, who’s patriotic, who’s unpatriotic.

These are the traits of brownshirts. Brownshirts know they are right. They know their opponents are wrong and regard them as enemies who must be silenced if not exterminated.

[...]

By substituting fiction for reality, the US media took the country to war. The CNN and Fox News "journalists" are as responsible for America’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq as Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.

With a sizable percentage of the US population now addicted to daily confirmations of their resentments and hatreds, US policy will be increasingly driven by tightly made-up minds in pursuit of unrealistic agendas.

 

[Zantra]

I believe they call them sociopaths in laymens terms.. DEEE NIAL

 

[kat]

Brownshirts on the March
10/12/04 | Phil Brennan


They were the thugs Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) used in their drive to power: beating up opponents; destroying polling booths; driving off opposition party voters at the polls; stealing ballot boxes; attacking and trashing opposition party headquarters; and generally brutalizing anybody who dared to oppose their beloved fuehrer.

The SA, or Sturmabteilung, also called 'Brownshirts' were Nazi terrorists in uniform dedicated to intimidating and brutalizing any groups or individuals who stood in their way.

They are of course long since dead, most having been butchered by Hitler's new corps of thugs, the SS, after the SA had outlived their usefulness.

In this election year of 2004 we are witnessing a rebirth of the same kind of political thuggery, this time acting in behalf of the National Socialist Democrat Abortion Party (the new NSDAP).

Consider: "Protesters ransack a Bush campaign headquarters in Orlando, Florida," wrote Wednesday on the Web columnist Kim Weissman. "Bush campaign workers are assaulted in Miami. Shots are fired into Bush campaign offices in Knoxville, Tennessee and Huntington, West Virginia. Republican headquarters in Bozeman, Montana are vandalized, for the second time in a week. The window of the Bush campaign headquarters in Bellevue, Washington is smashed, the office burglarized and computers containing campaign plans are stolen; cars with Bush bumper stickers are vandalized and campaign signs are painted with swastikas and burned."

This kind of unrestrained thuggery is going on all across the nation, and the thugs are all supporters of the new NSDAP - all of them acolytes of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, no matter how loudly the Democratic candidates disavow them.

Wrote Kim: "Scenes such as these used to be the stuff of evening news reports about elections in foreign nations struggling to achieve liberty and representative government; but thanks to the unending torrent of hatred spewed by Democrats and leftists and magnified by the media, these events are now taking place in our own neighborhoods."

Think about it - the mainstream media elite has not bothered to report on this widespread organized brutality. Imagine what their reaction would be if it was being carried out by supporters of George Bush and his Republican colleagues.

Kim Weissman put it this way:

"If such criminal violence had been directed against Kerry campaign offices and workers, the media would be in full-throated hysteria, Democrats would be screaming "hate crimes" and demanding investigations by the Justice Department, and they would also probably seek to involve the U.N. Civil Rights Commission, claiming this to be an organized civil rights violation designed to inhibit voter turnout (with more faith in non-democratic foreign organizations than in their own countrymen, Democrats have already succeeded in getting international monitors to supervise our upcoming election)."

Writing in National Review Online Stanley Kurtz revealed incidences of NSDAP neighborhood terrorism. "Plenty of folks told me that their cars had been keyed, dented, or had windows smashed in for carrying a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker. Nasty notes left on the windshield are common. And some drivers get cut off in traffic and flipped off by cars sporting Kerry bumper stickers. One fellow said a couple of young guys pulled up next to his 64-year-old mother's car and signaled her to roll the window down. When she did, they screamed, "Bush is a F***ing MORON!"

"Apparently, Bush-Cheney cars are routinely keyed in places like liberal Seattle. And liberal Bethesda, Md., has reportedly seen a rash of spray-paintings of Bush yard signs (with Kerry signs left intact). One pro-Bush family in liberal West L.A. had its yard sign stolen six times. Theft, spray paint, or just tearing to shreds are the weapons of choice against yard signs, but one Bush-Cheney sign was actually set on fire. Even in conservative Idaho, Bush-Cheney cars get keyed. And in conservative Houston, parking while visiting a friend in the liberal midtown section can mean a keyed car. Apparently, these attacks are so common that you can now buy a T-Shirt with a picture of a slashed-out Bush/Cheney logo and the legend, "A person of tolerance and diversity keyed my car."

At the root of all this is the almost total domination of the Democratic party by self-proclaimed "progressives," a code word for socialists once used by the members of Moscow's subservient American communist party to identify each other.

No matter how you describe it, Socialism is a coercive ideology that cannot survive without ultimately resorting to force to enforce its totalitarian doctrines.

Violence is socialism's ultimate weapon.

In its name, hundreds of millions of people were murdered by such socialist regimes as the Soviet Union, the Chinese communist government, Castro's Cuba and Hitler's National Socialist (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - NAZI) party among others.

In their eyes, anyone opposing socialism is an enemy of progress and must be dealt with accordingly. The stronger the opposition the stronger must be the measures against it.

Mr. Kerry and his kewpie doll running mate would deny that they are socialists, but one quick look at their programs, or as Kerry puts it, their "plans," and you see they have got Karl Marx written all over them.

Their catalogue of plans is a litany of government programs. Individual businesses small and large do not provide jobs - in their administration they will (note how Saddam's socialist Ba'athist party did it - 60 percent of the working people of Iraq worked for the government).

You name it - health care, education, scientific research - no matter what the issue, their plan calls for the government to handle it. That sort of thing has a name - it's called socialism. It starts out as socialism lite. But it has been truly said that when you go socialist you have to go all the way - you can never be half-socialist any more than you can be half-pregnant. And history shows that sooner or later socialism lite becomes socialism heavy.

The Brownshirts are on the march, and the banner they carry is a Kerry/Edwards campaign poster - and that tells us plenty about what the new NSDAP is all about.


As you can see propaganda relying on emotional catch phrases...works both ways. Unfortunately, there actually HAVE been numerous attacks on republican campaign headquarters.

 

[russ_watters]

plover, some crackpots think everyone is a crackpot (its one of the key indicators). In reality, most people aren't, and the opinions shown in that article (interesting that they don't include quotes...) are not representative of conservatives.

 

[Zantra]

plover, some crackpots think everyone is a crackpot (its one of the key indicators). In reality, most people aren't, and the opinions shown in that article (interesting that they don't include quotes...) are not representative of conservatives.

So you're saying because I believe that no weapons of mass destruction were found, because I believe that no solid, al Queda ties were ever made to Saddamn(the ones that were fell apart) and because I believe that this was the main reason for the war, going around the UN, and giving the majority of the rest of the world the finger- because I believe those to be true undisputed facts, and that those who don't follow that logic are crackpots, I'm a crackpot?

I mean, if I'm wrong, please clear it up for me. Because to me it souds as if these brown shirts are going through self reinforcement to delude themselves into believing their own truths in the face of any contradictory scientific or factual evidence...

and I really think this is all self explanatory. So help me understand what your point is Russ..

 

[the number 42]

Brownshirts on the March
10/12/04 | Phil Brennan

In this election year of 2004 we are witnessing a rebirth of the same kind of political thuggery, this time acting in behalf of the National Socialist Democrat Abortion Party (the new NSDAP).

Consider: "Protesters ransack a Bush campaign headquarters in Orlando, Florida," wrote Wednesday on the Web columnist Kim Weissman. "Bush campaign workers are assaulted in Miami. Shots are fired into Bush campaign offices in Knoxville, Tennessee and Huntington, West Virginia. Republican headquarters in Bozeman, Montana are vandalized, for the second time in a week. The window of the Bush campaign headquarters in Bellevue, Washington is smashed, the office burglarized and computers containing campaign plans are stolen; cars with Bush bumper stickers are vandalized and campaign signs are painted with swastikas and burned."

This kind of unrestrained thuggery is going on all across the nation, and the thugs are all supporters of the new NSDAP - all of them acolytes of the Kerry/Edwards campaign, no matter how loudly the Democratic candidates disavow them. ...

The Brownshirts are on the march, and the banner they carry is a Kerry/Edwards campaign poster - and that tells us plenty about what the new NSDAP is all about.


As you can see propaganda relying on emotional catch phrases...works both ways. Unfortunately, there actually HAVE been numerous attacks on republican campaign headquarters.

Heil Kerry/Edwards? Hmmm. Reminds me of the Python sketch about 'Hell's Grannies' mugging teddy boys.

 

[plover]

plover, some crackpots think everyone is a crackpot (its one of the key indicators). In reality, most people aren't, and the opinions shown in that article (interesting that they don't include quotes...) are not representative of conservatives.

The guy who wrote this is a conservative, so I don't see how you can think this is intended as an overall characterization of conservatives. I think it's interesting that even Heritage Foundation types are getting burned badly enough by these folks to get scared.

If you know something about this guy that would indicate he has turned into a crackpot since his tenure in the Reagan administration, it would be more useful to indicate that rather than to make vaguely condescending generalities. As it stands, it's not even obvious that you looked at the post carefully enough to see who wrote it ("they don't include quotes").

You also obviously didn't follow the link to the full article, which does include at least one quote and http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/bovard3.html .

 

[plover]

kat:
The difference is that the piece I posted isn't partisan hackery. It's a conservative's misgivings about the people in his own audience.

"National Socialist Democrat Abortion Party"
I'm supposed to take this seriously?

 

[Gokul43201]

More words from Phil Brennan :

Should Kerry win, abortion will survive for four more years, millions more of unborn humans will be chopped to pieces and vacuumed from the womb body part by body part, scalded to death, or have scissors thrust in their skulls and their brains sucked out, and their blood will be on the hands of Kerry's voters. They will become his accomplices in the killing of the innocent.

 

[russ_watters]

So you're saying because I believe that no weapons of mass destruction were found, because I believe that no solid, al Queda ties were ever made to Saddamn(the ones that were fell apart) and because I believe that this was the main reason for the war, going around the UN, and giving the majority of the rest of the world the finger- because I believe those to be true undisputed facts, and that those who don't follow that logic are crackpots, I'm a crackpot?

I mean, if I'm wrong, please clear it up for me. Because to me it souds as if these brown shirts are going through self reinforcement to delude themselves into believing their own truths in the face of any contradictory scientific or factual evidence...

and I really think this is all self explanatory. So help me understand what your point is Russ..

Huh? I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you sure you read my post correctly?

The guy who wrote this is a conservative, I don't see how you can think this is intended as an overall characterization of conservatives.

Three reasons: first, it would be pretty pointless to write an article that is totally irrelevant - as it would be if Heritage Foundation types are a tiny, irrelevant minority (which they are). Second, the first sentence you quoted says it quite explicity: "Bush supporters..." How many Bush supporters? It doesn't say, but the way its worded, it implies that's all Bush supporters. If it said 'A tiny, irrelevant fraction of Bush supporters...,' that wouldn't make you want to keep reading, would it? Third - what you just said - that he is/was a conservative (was he?), makes him an implied authority on how conservatives - all conservatives - think.

The guy who wrote this is a conservative...

Where does it say that? It says he worked in the Reagan administration: that does not mean he's a conservative today and the language and grammar (identifying conservatives in the 3rd person, ie "today's conservative") implies he's not. A quick search for info gives no definite answer, but implies via his afiliation with several think tanks, that he's a liberatarian. That he used to write for the Heritage Foundation implies that he has some conservative ideas, but he certainly has some things in common with liberals. It seems some liberatarians are able to ride both fringes at the same time on different issues.

If you know something about this guy that would indicate he has turned into a crackpot since his tenure in the Reagan administration, it would be more useful to indicate that ...

Well, I did give some good reasons, but more: comparing others to Nazis is another dead giveaway. Associating with other crackpots is a good indicator. Making blanket generalizations (implied or explicit) that are false is a dead giveaway. Inflamatory rhetoric is a dead giveway.

My boss is further to the right than Rush Limbaugh. Seriously. He's the type of person Roberts is talking about. He's also the only person I've ever met anywhere near that far right. Polls show quite clearly that most Americans are moderates, not on the fringes of either party.