Jonah Goldberg

[fpb]

Not so long ago, I got into trouble with several of my more conservative friends by making a no-holds-barred attack on Jonah Goldberg's view of recent European history. One of my main points was that Goldberg rewrote history for purely partisan reasons.

Now Mr.Goldberg has come out with a piece so monstrous in its tribal atrocity, so completely beyond the pale, so appalling in its demonization of political enemies, that one wonders whether any of his supporters could possibly bring themselves to defend it: http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2008/08/15/nightmare_on_dem_street.

I have no words bad enough for this kind of production. Treating a human being, even a bad human being, as a monster from a horror movie, revelling in the imagery of hacking, cutting, killing, destroying the monster, seems to me completely impossible to justify. Now, I find Clinton detestable in many ways (his public declaration that he would not take on any public servant who opposed Wade vs.Roe was unforgivable), and I have been known to giggle at the discomfiture of his wife. But there is a difference. I have been accused of dehumanizing my enemies; but I swear that at the most raging depths of my fury, in the most shameful of my outbursts, it never even occurred to me to use about the worst of my enemies the kind of language that Jonah Goldberg uses - it really seems as if he does - as a witticism. Yes, may God forgive and endure us all: he really seems to think that he is saying something funny and that we should be laughing. He means to brighten our day.

This is the man who argued that socialism and Fascism are so similar that there is no great need to draw much of a distinction; indeed, who talks of "Liberal Fascism" as if Liberals routinely murdered their enemies in the streets, locked them up in concentration camps, or sent them to starve in lonely islands. This is the man who could see no difference between any political opponent and a murderous enemy. And no wonder; because I have seen the kind of mind on display in this article before. I have seen it in Il Popolo d'Italia, in the Voelkischer Beobachter, and in Der Sturmer.

Comments

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Y'know what?

I take back my light hearted response, because I finished reading your post--once again, you played the Nazi card. On the Jewish guy. Whose arguments you will not even bother to read.

I thought you were being foolish-- like PETA getting angry about Tom and Jerry.

Now, you're just being disgusting.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you are not willing to get through your head that there are ways you simply do not refer to living human beings, however detestable, then you are being much worse than disgusting. You are being the kind of person in whom party passions completely trump common humanity. Please, think about it, instead of automatically springing to your hero's defence. Suppose it had been a left-winger who had used the same language about, say, Rush Limbaugh (who draws that kind of hatred from the more unbalanced and party-minded opponents), would you treat it in the same way? I doubt it. And if you think that Jews cannot be called Fascist, you are not living in the real world.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Go look into a mirror-- you are accusing a guy of being a mass-murdering totalitarian who tried to wipe out all those of the ancestry which the guy is because you didn't like or didn't get the metaphor.

He is not my hero, and you, sir, are deranged on this matter.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And you are putting words into my mouth. I am indeed accusing Goldberg of having a Fascist mentality; just as I accused Frank Miller, if you remember, of the same attitude. I am accusing Goldberg of being the kind of person who is incapable of seeing political opponents except than as enemies. This is the Fascist mentality. I did not accuse him of murder or violence, and neither did I accuse Mr.MIller of the same thing. Most Fascist supporters aren't murderers, and in any case I regard Miller and Goldberg as unconscious rather than wideawake Fascist-type minds. But I do argue that to treat an opponent as an enemy to be treated with the loathsome kind of brutality that mr.Goldberg allows himself - and even finds funny - is Fascistic, and will one day lead to someone taking his irresponsible talk seriously.

Tell me, if you were starting from his article alone - and please pay attention to what I am saying instead of putting words into my mouth - if you were starting from his article alone, would you find the murder of either of the Clintons reprehensible?

One last point. This is the kind of disgusting bigotry found daily in Markos Moulitsas' site. It is "Chimpy McHitler" stuff. If you allow yourself to indulge in it, you have no right to complain when the Kis Kids debate which Republican they want to have a deadly cancer, or laugh themselves sick over Tony Snow's death. You are doing the same things as - not your opponents - but your worst enemies. You have become what you hate. Please, as my friend, I beg you to think about it.