(no subject)

[fpb]

Anyone who thinks that I was too harsh about Jonah Goldberg's repulsive and politically motivated rewriting of my own country's history ought to read today's Thomas Sowell column, where it is taken entirely at its own valuation and highly recommended as summer reading for the children of conservatives. This unhistorical, culturally imperialistic propaganda, that distorts my country's and my continent's history in the service of provincial American concerns, is going to enter the bloodstream of a whole American party, If it has not already done so. This will increase further the mutual incomprehension between USA and Europe, because you cannot stand on your two hind legs and inform anyone who knows anything of continental history - France, Italy, Germany, etc. - that Nazism and Fascism were "left wing". This sort of rubbish, especially if spoken with the arrogance of Goldberg and Sowell, will increase European contempt for American viewpoints and culture. Do we really need this sort of trash further complicating our already difficult relationship, and all for the sake of a few Republican votes in the next election?

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Suuurrrrre Hitler was a true Socialist. He also was a true Christian and a true Pacifist - and I could quote you long and eloquent passages on both from his own speeches. To quote CS Lewis, I did not realize that I would have to deal with the disarming naivety of critics who quote as gospel things said by the master of lies to his army during war speeches. In all your readings about Hitler, did you never come across anything that suggested that truth was not exactly sacred to him? Have you never realized that he was always using words as weapons, and primarily to displace his enemies, deprive them of the ground to criticize him, and possess this ground himself - however unsuited he may have been to it? Hitler was out to destroy Christianity, but also to claim its mantle for himself. Hitler was out to create a militarized world, but he repeatedly made the most ardent, the most touching confessions of love for peace, and never stopped trying to pretend that he had simply been forced into going to war. And if you think that your way of taking Hitler seriously in his claim to Socialism is any different from that of anyone who would take his claim of pacifism seriously, compare your attitude to that of NIcholson Baker - a writer who has recently published an anthology (!) of contemporary texts trying to prove that Britain and Churchill were the warmongers and that Hitler was left with no choice but to react to their aggression.