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Liberal Fascism

• Hitler Was Nice to His Dogs -- and Maids
  From the Daily Mail: History has condemned him as the megalomaniac who brought death and misery to millions. But for one woman, the name Adolf Hitler evokes a smile not a shudder. She is Rosa Mitterer, who worked as a maid for the Fuhrer at his mountain retreat in Bavaria in the 1930s. Rosa is 91 and until now has kept a vow of silence about her experiences. She has chosen to break it after realising she is the last survivor of the circle who served the tyrant in the years before he launched the Second World War. nd her verdict on her former master: 'He was a charming man, someone who was only ever nice to me, a great boss to work for. You can say what you like, but he was a good man to us.' Rosa's remembrances of life at the court of the tyrant make gripping reading. She saw leading Nazis come and go. Himmler, the evil party secretary; Bormann, whom she described as a 'dirty pig'; and the club-footed, sexually-obsessed propaganda minister Goebbels. Rosa went into Hitler's service at the age of 15 in 1932 when she was Rosa Krautenbacher. Her sister Anni had worked as a cook at Hitler's Berchtesgaden retreat since the late 1920s. 'She said he needed a housemaid and I would fit the bill,' Rosa recalled. 'I remember so clearly the first day I spoke to him in the kitchen. I said I was Anni's sister and that made him smile, because Anni was his favourite. I only ever knew Hitler as a kindly man who was good to me.'
• Re: I'm #1
  From a reader: Jonah, You should mention that the "Editors' Favorites" of course encompass all the usual progressive sacred-cows:  FDR, RFK, JFK, anti-Nixon, anti-Jefferson (the Hemingses?)...and comic books.  Because Lord only knows, a recap of comic-book history is more compelling and critical to current philosophical/historical/political thought than a book on the primary political force of the 20th century.  Idiots.  We are surrounded by idiots. For the record, I dissent on the comic book part.
• Was Hitler Racist?
  I'm not sold. Hitler was very inconsistent about lots of things, but he was certainly a consistent anti-Semite, which makes him consistently racist in at least one sub-category of racism. I don't think anti-Semitism is necessarily racist. There's theological and cultural anti-Semitism. But, Hitler's anti-Semitism was certainly biological. Still, as always, Ray is interesting. Was Hitler a racist? "John Ray has now gone too far. Pointing out that Nazism was simply an extreme version of prewar Leftism was fine but denying that Hitler was a racist is right off the planet". That is the sort of reaction I expect to the above heading. But as Eddington said, the universe is not only stranger than you imagine but it is stranger than you can imagine. And the truth is that Hitler's ideas about race were pretty similar to the thinking of Leftists today. We all know that Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat but what have you ever read about what his conception of race was? You may be surprised. Although in his speeches he undoubtedly appealed to the nationalism of the German people, Locke (2001) makes a strong case that Hitler was not in fact a very good nationalist in that he always emphasized that his primary loyalty was to what he called the Aryan race -- and Germany was only one part of that race. Locke then goes on to point out that Hitler was not even a very consistent racist in that the Dutch, the Danes etc. were clearly Aryan even by Hitler's own eccentric definition yet he attacked them whilst at the same time allying himself with the very non-Aryan Japanese. And the Russians and the Poles (whom Hitler also attacked) are rather more frequently blonde and blue-eyed (Hitler's ideal) than the Germans themselves are! So what DID Hitler believe in? In his book Der Fuehrer, prewar Leftist writer Konrad Heiden corrects the now almost universal assumption that Hitler's idea of race was biologically-based. The Nazi conception of race traces, as is well-known, to the work of Houston Stewart Chamberlain. But what did Chamberlain say about race? It should not by now be surprising that he said something that sounds thoroughly Leftist. Anthropologist Robert Gayre summarizes Chamberlain's ideas as follows: "On the contrary he taught (like many "progressives" today) that racial mixture was desirable, for, according to him, it was only out of racial mixture that the gifted could be created. He considered that the evidence of this was provided by the Prussian, whom he saw as the superman, resulting from a cross between the German (or Anglo-Saxon "German") and the Slav. From this Chamberlain went on to argue that the sum of all these talented people would then form a "race," not of blood but of "affinity."
• #1
  I'm pleased to announce that Liberal Fascism was the #1 history  book of 2008 according to Amazon customers. I am very grateful, particularly to the folks at Amazon who decided to brave the loony bird rapids of the comments section over there. Maybe there's something profound or self-serving to say about the dichotomy between editors and readers, but I'll leave that to others.
• More on Zizek & Fascism
  From a reader: Jonah, Slavoj Zizek's observation of political correctness as a liberal version of the politics of fear is interesting, but his conclusions are downright fascist--he presents a twist on the End of History argument that the end of ideological clashes and the triumph of democracy and capitalism throughout the world has turned us in the West into nihilistic Last Men, concerned only with our own comfort and security. This is expressed as a liberal dysfunction through fear of racial or homophobic harassment and the desire to regulate written and spoken language through anti-discrimination codes and hate speech laws. Liberals accept the strange and alien "other"  by accepting the positive attributes, while ignoring the malignant properties. This could be global Islamism as a peaceful, organic New Age mythology absent the awful reality of forced marriages, honor killings, or suicidal terrorism; or its related tendencies like smoking without inhaling or male homosexuality as a charming cosmopolitan "lifestyle" without the narcissism, indulgence and body worship of gay culture (same goes for hip-hop music).  Now he's snagged the audience. The answer to this problem? Zizek proposes extreme intolerance and violence that would bring out the hidden reality of the world. Religious fundamentalism is one source of legitimate resistance, but as Adam Kirsch points out, Zizek's ideal alternative - presented in a rather insidious manner at that - is nothing less than a Stalinist state of terror. Kirsch quotes Zizek explaining that even if Jews really did the things accused of them by the Nazis, the hatred would still be pathological. Even if reports of rapes in New Orleans during Katrina were true, reporting such things would still be motivated by "racist prejudices...we would be dealing with what could be called lying in the guise of truth: Even if what I am saying is factually true, the motives that make me say it are false." Truth becomes false. Your other reader response hit the nail on the head, I think. That liberals would be tricked by this is probably the result of an inability to process real totalitarianism. It gets a little crazier if you process Zizek's view that Stalinism, unlike Nazism, is equal opportunity. No need for a Nazi to put a Jew on trial, a Jew is by definition guilty. If one is put on trial in the Stalinist system, you can plead guilty and be shot, or you can plead innocent. But if you do, then you must be guilty! You're expressing an individualistic mentality! That everyone is at risk of being murdered exposes the system's authentic revolutionary nature. With much respect,
• A Video Review of LF
  Nifty!
• Hollywood Supports the NRA
  There's this: And of course this:
• A Short History of the NRA
  I posted some of these links a while back, but people keep sending me them so I figure some folks missed 'em the first time around. For starters:
• Zizek & Fascism
  From a reader: Jonah,   I'm sure you're aware of Adam Kirsch's article on the Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek in The New Republic.  Did you notice Kirsch almost tripping into your LF thesis as he calls Zizek a fascist, while at the last falling back into the description of fascism as a phenomenon of the right ("He is willfully blind to the old and obvious conclusion that totalitarian form accepts content from the left and the right")?   It isn't the main point of the piece, but Zizek's standing as academic flavor of the month has been particularly noticeable in theological circles (