Hi Abraham, I am following you from Thom Hartmann, thanks for the link.
Might I add, that which is not spoken aloud, is this part I assume written by Hofstadter
"These recurring episodes, these periodic “stampedes to the extreme right” appealed mostly to those who “feel they have been pushed out of their rightful place.” Then as now, right-wing extremists felt displaced and “replaced” by immigrants, unions, intellectuals, elites, special interests, socialists, communists, and especially by a ”gigantic international global conspiracy that would destroy Christian America [through] a vast, insidious conspiratorial network [led by] evil and immensely powerful characters [who] mislead, exploit, and betray” decent law-abiding Americans. Today’s far-right has clearly found their “demonic agent” in the person of Democrat-supporting billionaire George Soros. Or, more recently, in Hunter Biden."
George Soros is code for Jew, Remember the chant "Jews will not replace us", at the very origin of who the right blames their woes upon , are Jews.
I type with trepidation, every time I mention banks, financial institutions or names associated with Jews like Rothschild or Goldman Sachs, So heavy does the weight of the holocaust lay on the public discourse.
It comes to mind the words of Lord Byron in 1823. "Who keeps the world, both old and new, in pain or pleasure? Who makes politics run glibber all? The shade of Bonaparte' s noble daring?
Jew Rothschild and his fellow Christian Baring. (p.42 the Money Lenders) by Anthony Sampson in The Money Lenders, Penguin Books, 1983, 428 pages,
Stereotypes and tropes are almost impossible to overcome, and it is only with trepidation I even come near to touching them.
If stereotypes and tropes had weight, it would take a platoon of Christian nationalists to carry them.
I think we're on the same page, and I suspect you'll find many items and articles here that will ring true.
I think Hofstadter really nailed it, way back in the sixties, after watching Joe McCarthy and Goldwater and their supporters. He must be weeping in his grave at today's "stampede to the extreme right."
But he fought back with his writing, and he's my role model for this modest newsletter.
You may be surprised that some of the regulars here can (and will) reverse everything we say and point it back toward Biden and the Dems. They're intelligent articulate Americans, so I can't understand how they can be so deluded. And of course that's what think about me. But it's always a civil discourse which in itself brings some measure of hope.
There are some very sharp minds here. Unfortunately even the sharpest minds can be deluded by a Master ConMan like Trump.
But I enjoy the civil discourse; for me, that alone seems to justify and validate my (renewed) effort to provide a place for discussion, while still raising the warning of neo-fascism on the rise.
I'd guess I read Hofstadter in the early '70s, AW, and he was important to shaping my political outlook (I identify as a vanilla liberal). I think he identified and captured a key element of American political life, and I admire him still. Certainly his focus in these issues was on the contemporary Right in his day. But when he wrote of the American paranoid style he made clear it was not historically confined to the Right. It was part of populism in the late 19th century, and William Jennings Bryan would be an example. I don't recall whether Hofstadter noted that the first Red Scare was under the progressive Wilson administration, or whether he included discussion of Huey Long's Democratic (Party) brand of populist semi-fascism, but both were cases where politicians and members of the elctorate on the Left (of those times) were in the grip of this type of thinking. The anti-war marchers I joined in the '60s tended to believe that the American government was basically a puppet of shadowy business or military interests, and more recently we saw this in the capture of many progressives by the 9/11 Truther movement. While the oldest conspiracy theory, antisemitism, is obviously very pronounced on the Right these days (and many other days), it's good to recognize that it's also alive and well on the Left (and I'm not mistaking anti-Likudnik leftists for antisemites).
Of course there were real elements of truth to the notion that government was captive to non-democratic interests in the '60s, but it's good to remember when using McCarthy's followers as examples of paranoia that Liberals clung to Algier Hiss as a victim to the bitter end. And had Hofstadter lived a little longer he might have wanted to modify his portrait of Goldwater, since the senator's later career seemed to elevate his rigid stance from crank prejudice to consistent principle.
I don't want to carry this too far, because we're now at a point where right-wing conspiracy theories and extremist positions are off the charts. But I do think the line from Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump goes through William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long. It's an "American" style, not just a conservative style.
Since this blog's topic is neo-fascism I think it's appropriate to read Hofstadter primarliy as identifying precursor American right-wing trends that help put current events into focus. And after some sustained study of contemporary white nationalism and related right-wing extremism I don't want to argue that things aren't now as bad as Hofstadter pictured them. They're far worse! But I think there may be more value in trying to get behind the more obvious pathologies using the types of approaches Jonathan Haidt uses in "The Righteous Mind," to explore systematic differences in perceptions on the Left and Right. Haidt's basic idea, as I understand it, is that we can best address pathological expressions if we identify underlying frameworks that we can grant as legitimate (even if we don't endorse them), and figure out how the distorted expressions arise and how they can be ameliorated without challenging the frameworks essential to conservative and liberal identities. I think in that book the major goal is to elucidate this for the conservative case, but his later "Coddling Of the American Mind" seems directed to problems on the Left (that book I've read about, but not read--it seems to treat "woke" extremism as an expression of dysfunctional thinking more typical of Left-leaning frameworks).
I think it's not going to help deal with conspiracy thinking on the Right to ridicule or demonize it (although it's really hard not to rise to that bait with things like Pizzagate, QAnon, and MTG's fantasies). I see the task for vanilla liberals like me to be figuring out how to understand the paranoia well enough to find tactics to peel away some portion of its captives, layer by layer, understanding that the goal isn't the impossible task of eradicating it--we all fall into conspiracy theories from time to time . . . and there are conspiracies, so that's not a vestigial survival trait--but only of keeping political paranoia at levels consistent with a generally healthy society. What I've read of your posts seems consistent with that, but it's easy to fall into caricature of the Right when some of its leading figures seem so heavily into self-caricature right now (witness the legal defenses of Alex Jones, Sydney Powell, and others that their public statements are prima facie parodic).
Just a final note. Although it's not specifically focused on neo-fascism, you might find some interesting source material on the References page at this site concerning contemporary American white nationalism: https://corebloomington.org/ .
Jonathan, When I heard Jonathan Greenblatt complain about antisemites on the left, I recoiled and rebelled, in my cloistered world, I have never heard or seen such things, until HAMAS rolled, flew and sailed out of Gaza to murder, rape, torture babies, infants, toddlers, women the elderly, And our universities erupted with semi sentient students, who lacking critical thinking skills should never have been enrolled in college for it is a waste of time and money.
Heretofore I was champion of student loan forgiveness, but not anymore, it is a waste of taxpayer money, to let these idiot ingrates off the hook.
WTF are we doing sending kids off to university, only to have their febrile minds filled with crap by professors who are as ignorant of reality and brainwashed as they.
I considered myself a progressive till this, and now I don't know what I am.
Mssr Greenblatt would call me an antisemite, because I blame the Israeli radical right, the bloodthirsty and heartless orthodox settlers and Bibi as well for the curent situation.
Despite the role of these madden religious freaks in Israel. I blame HAMAS for the damage done to Gaza and every Arab life lost,
Just as I blame Hitler for every building demolished and every life lost.
This is some bullshit to criticize someone for defending themselves, and trying to protect themselves from they who hate them, and try to prevent them that they cannot come back and attack them again.
If we and theEurope had taken that attitude towards Germany (the poor innocents killed by the war their leader started, then there would be no UN, No EU, No NATO, and Europe would be under the jackboots of a NAZI regime, or more likely under the jackboots of the USSR.
Hello, Mr. Farrar. My name isn't Jonathan, but it looks as though you were replying to my comment on this year-dormant thread on AW's Substack, so I'm going to take the opportunity to respond to what you wrote.
I share your general orientation on the current situation. As I wrote last year, I'm a vanilla liberal and my view towards the Likudnik governments of Israel and towards Hamas seem similar to yours. In some respects, though, I differ on my understanding of what's been happening on campuses and the behavior of students.
People of college age and somewhat beyond have not lived any part of their politically conscious lives in an era where Israel was not dominated by Likudnik policies. Their understanding of Zionism is shaped by the attitudes they have seen reported since Likud returned to power after Sharon's untimely collapse in 2006 and the 2009 defeat of his Kadima party, which was a reformist element of Likud with an understanding of the long-term destructive impact that the extreme policies that Likud had normalized. They know little or nothing about the history of Israel, the original liberal vision of Zionism, or the long history of extremists on both sides pursuing the most forms of nationalistic violence to arouse hatred of the mutual out-groups and stifle constructive accommodation between the two parties to the conflict. The wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, the failed peace initiatives of Oslo, 2000, and 2008, are all framed in terms of conditions where only Israel has seemed to have meaningful agency, and it has been exercised in pursuit of an increasingly extreme agenda. They are students, but not students of Middle Eastern history, and the narrative they know is a comic-book version that makes simple sense of what they have seen for the past decade and a half. The history of the century before, which has been lying dormant under every square foot of the stalemated conflict, has lost all relevance for them.
Rigid Israeli government policies since 2009 (and in Likud-dominated periods before) have allowed the caricature of Zionism as a Jewish supremacist form of colonial domination to flourish, and repeatedly cast the sporadic and ineffectual violent of Palestinian resistance against the overwhelming superiority of the IDF, with these students' own country, the US, sustaining and strengthening that superiority, leading them to feel a sense of responsibility for it.
If that is all you personally know of Israel, it is understandable to see the current situation in caricatured terms, to believe that the moral equations are simple and one-sided, and to find strategies to somehow dismiss the extremity of Hamas's commitment to the destruction of Israel, the savagery of its actions on October 7, and the cynicism of its leaders' willingness to pursue goals that reinforce their personal stature at the expense of the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians. They conflate the deprivation of Palestinian political agency by Israel with an erasure of moral agency by Hamas and its followers, who somehow can no longer be viewed as ethically responsible for their actions. When Hamas says, "From the River to the Sea" it means the slaughter of the Jews in Israel and beyond; when students chant it as they march there may be some who invoke that meaning, but for most they think they are promoting a vision of equal justice in a future state that gives neither the Jews nor the Palestinians determinative power over the other. They do what we all do when our political passions are raised: they find ways to ignore, dismiss, minimize, or rationalize evident facts that conflict with the narrative they have internalized as the basis of self-righteous impulses. They have no experience with real antisemitism, so they cannot detect the ways in which "anti-Zionism" and "liberationist" slogans are being used as disguises for it. Like all of us, their understanding is limited by their life experience.
I have always regarded myself as a Zionist, but if "Zionism" meant to me what young people have seen over the past fifteen years, which defines the term for them (but not for me), that would not be true.
So I feel condemnation for the Hamas leadership, deep anger at the Likudniks and their allies, disgust at the savagery of Hamas fighters, dismay at the willful ignorance of West Bank settlers. But looking back at the 1960s, when I was in the streets with adolescent self-righteousness about civil rights and the war--and fortunate in retrospect that I had far simpler moral grievances to protest--I can understand how the judgment of these students has simply been overwhelmed by the prolonged and morally complex history of the conflict in the Middle East. And I have to say that while I'm distressed at the simplistic response of some college faculty on the Left, I've had the opportunity to discover that there are college faculty on the Right just as simplistic, but whose ignorance is flying under the radar, obscured by the medieval brutality of the Hamas attack.
Thanks for the insight. I quite agree with you, and of the same mindset in regards to the Likkud, which I describe as Orthodox Settlers. I
I know the history of Israel and know that the Nakba is a myth. The Arabs brought it on themselves, when they attacked Israel in force no sooner than the UN was declared a nation, and the Jews had bought every hectare of land from the Arabs. Of course the winner (Israel)
claimed the land of the people that attacked them, they needed a buffer, and the Arabs not learning a less and motivated by the antisemitism in the Quran and haddiths, attacked Israel again and again in 1956, 1967,1073, 2006 and finally Oct 7 each time Israel had to claim more land, like the Golan Heights, to preserve their nation.
And once again the Arabs bring hell down upon themselves. HAMAS is to blame for every building, every person lost. As is Yahoo and the Orthodox settlers.
Here is what pisses me off about the new left, those professors and students, who are pro Arab and anti Jew (that is what they are).
They are quick to pile onto the streets to condemn Christians (but don't go around killing or threatening them and in no way are they so vociferous) for their misogynistic, homophobic, and theocracy. And (until Trump and his humpers) gain power, Islam is the most misogynistic, homophobic theocratic of regimes. This brainwashed bleeding hearts have been silent as Iran has persecuted it's peoplem, locked up and killed young women and girls, who don't want to be confined by the hijab, chador and niqab.
These assholes have swallowed the bullshit pumped out by the Marxist and Putinist professors, as well as their Muslim peers, especially those here on a student visa.
These students would fare well in Israel, but not in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, even Indonesia.
If Islam oppresses and kills women and gays it is OK, but not if Christians do the same, and the fools overlook the evils, the slaughter, the rape and murder of women and children by Arab s and condemn the Jews for defending themselves.
I am not a Jew, and in the past, and even today, considered an antisemite by the likes of Johnathan Greenblatt of the ADL, which is the Jonathan I was referring to in my response.
IMO the ADL, Likkud, Orthodox Settlers are counterparts, comrades, to Dominionists (Christian Reconstructionists- Mike Johnson - Pence and Cruz for example), as are Muslims.
Sure there are some secularized Muslims, who don't follow the rules laid down by Mufti's and Ayatollahs, who aren't homophobic and misogynistic and are as Muslim as an atheist (like me) who observes Christmas and Thanksgiving, not because of religion, but because of tradition.
One example is Irshad Manji, not only female, muslim but a lesbian. She insists on being identified as Muslim, but wouldn't last a day if she lived in Iran, the Kingdom, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen. Malyasia or Pakistan.
There are secular Jews by the millions, they celebratetheir identity and holidays, even circumcision but you don't see them wearing yamalka's, the kippa, beards, funny hats, rocking back and forth on the wailing wall or using their religion to persecute Christians and Muslims, like they have persecuted Jews, and per their sacred text, Muslims have a religious duty to genocide the Jews, the haddith of al Bukhari, sahih 1295 and 1296, book 56, haddith 139 al Bukhari.
I was Christened Presbyterian at birth, baptized Southen Baptist at 17(under duress) and converted to Catholicism to marry a Catholic, but religion has never been a part of my identity, just a thing like joining the service, and that has never been a part of my identity either, though I retired after 26 years.
Robert, that is a very thoughtful analysis of the what & why of the current seemingly-pro-Hamas protest movement on college campuses, as well as a succinct and insightful history of age-old Middle East conflicts, especially regarding Israel's own internal political dynamics.
Personally, I've always doubted any political solutions in the Middle East, and sadly, I always expected an inevitable blood bath.
Hamas's "medieval brutality" on Oct.7 will live in infamy in Israeli history, but the "collateral damage" in Gaza that plays out on TV every day will also shape future generations of Palestinians (as well as Israelis and citizens of the world). So in the long run the odds are against any enduring political or military solution.
However, I can foresee one "positive outcome" arising from all of this tragedy, namely, an international effort to "rebuild" Gaza into a safe, modern democratic state, like Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Maybe I'm too optimistic.
The original post was a review of Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style in American Politics" and how well it explained and forecast the power of far-right movements; someone recently called it the "Tyranny of the Minority." Your discussion with our newly-arrived friend William suggests that this phenomenon is not confined to American politics.
Abraham. I too do not see any solution to the problem in the mid east because it is religious and a sacred duty of Muslims to war against and oliterate the Jews, meaning of course the state of Israel.
There is evidence of what a "two state" solution looks like, plain and in your face HAMAS, who has declared that they are a nation of martyrs (martyrs and martydom are glorified in Islam, except by the leaders who will not be martyred, and the leader of HAMAS bragged that they will come back again and again, until the Jews (Israel) are obliterated (Preamble to the HAMAS covenant.
Integrating the Arabs into a one state is suicide. America is already committing suicide, between leftist students and professors, and the white racist,, evangelical Trump humpers, it is all but over.
Until Jews, Christians and Muslim can adopt secularism, keep their religions for purposes of ritual and tradition, but shed the anti human bullshit, we are doomed.
I think you're too optimistic, AW, but we can't live without hope so I'll join you in yours. This exchange on such an old thread is surely only going to be among you, me, and Mr. Farrar, and I think we all actually share a basic vewpoint.
Robert. I like you, so am leery of antagonizing you, but I don't get the we can't live without hope bit.
I live very well without hope. Zen my friend, the Serentity prayer. I know that I can't change the world, I can't change the future, but I am prepared to do what I have to do to survive.
Hope is why the girl crawls into a 55 gallon drum, which a serial killer will seal.
Hope is why a person digs their own grave.
Hope is what a person climbs the steps to gallows, gibbet or guillotine.
Hope is disheartening and disappointing.
How egoist and narcissistic humans are. We ask what is the purpose of life, as if we are something special, purposefully created for a purpose.
When the fact is that we have the same purpose as the animals we slaughter to eat, and the rest of life, whose purpose, animal or vegetable, is to recycle energy.
I have a purpose but it is not divine or special, so do all of us, to feed the cycle of energy.
Not antagonized, William. You're right, we can live without hope, but it's a downer. Hope is free and it makes breakfast taste better (good whiskey does too, but it's expensive and socially counterproductive before 5pm). And the good news is that many a hopeful girl has never even considered climbing into a 55-gallon drum.
You, I and Robert share the same concern and fear. Those who have a chance of stopping the threatening tide, are incompetent, wishful, compromised, complicit and don't want to appear aggressive and by that the tide will overwhelm us, I fear.
We will see in 11 months, but I don't expect much from the "hopeful" not grounded in reality, but ride the wish horse, and will sit out the election or vote for Trump by voting for RFK jr, Jill Stein, Cornell west or some stalking horse the Republicans put forth as No Labels.
Thank you for this book review of work by HOFSTADTER. Many of us wonder why so many will vote against their own self-interest, especially against their own economic self-interest. Hofstadter has certain given this issue deep thought. On a simple but not simplistic level, we would do well to examine the issues of how people gain and/or lose self-esteem and self assurance. And, as if they were ones own children, not treat them as "despicable" and stupid. We need a wise politician to address this dilemma. Hofstadter foresaw how seriously this "status politics" of deep resentment can affect our whole way of life--American Democracy as described in our Constitution.
That book really did a good job of explaining a tough question, why people vote against their own self-interest. Many if not most of Trump's devoted followers are low income, low education, low employment people; he said he'd take away their health insurance and they voted for him anyway. I could never understand that. But Hofstadter explained it way back then, and I think it still holds true today.
There's another book on the same topic that I'll probably review this week, called The True Believer, written in 1952 by Eric Hoffer. He was a poor day-laborer who spent his evenings in public libraries (sometimes to keep warm) and he read tons of books and wrote 4 himself; he understood these "true believer" folks because he worked among them. Similar to Hofstadter's explanation, but Hoffer adds something that also holds true today.
Like you say, it's important to understand the whole issue of self-esteem and self-assurance; that's what Hoffer writes about. People who are society's "nobodies" fall for the Leader who gives them that sense of purpose and belonging and strength and identity; that's was Trump's secret to winning all those folks.
So thanks again for your response to Hofstadter's book. There's too much name-calling and closed-minds; we've got to try to understand these people. That's why I do this work.
Abraham. I can understand why Trump's cult votes against their own self interest.
The culture war is more important than their own well being.
Alexandria Pelosi, daughter of Nancy and a documentarian, produce a documentary in 2009, Right America: Feeling Wronged – Some Voices from the Campaign Trail
In it she interviewed a stereotypical red neck, bib overalls, lawn (if it was such) littered, tooth less and an IQ south of 90. When she asked why he as opposed to food stamps, he said "them lazy nigrah good for nothings get them", When she responded, but you do too, his response was "that's different I earned them"
This is Trump base, all I can say that they are frightened little people, afraid that they have lost their supremacy and power over those that believe are infeior, be they people of color, "feminazis', atheists,agnostics and LGBT,
In their world, only white Christian males, should be in power, fools like Clarence Thomas are mere tools, but he doesn't give a damn, because he got his.
Hi Abraham, I am following you from Thom Hartmann, thanks for the link.
Might I add, that which is not spoken aloud, is this part I assume written by Hofstadter
"These recurring episodes, these periodic “stampedes to the extreme right” appealed mostly to those who “feel they have been pushed out of their rightful place.” Then as now, right-wing extremists felt displaced and “replaced” by immigrants, unions, intellectuals, elites, special interests, socialists, communists, and especially by a ”gigantic international global conspiracy that would destroy Christian America [through] a vast, insidious conspiratorial network [led by] evil and immensely powerful characters [who] mislead, exploit, and betray” decent law-abiding Americans. Today’s far-right has clearly found their “demonic agent” in the person of Democrat-supporting billionaire George Soros. Or, more recently, in Hunter Biden."
George Soros is code for Jew, Remember the chant "Jews will not replace us", at the very origin of who the right blames their woes upon , are Jews.
I type with trepidation, every time I mention banks, financial institutions or names associated with Jews like Rothschild or Goldman Sachs, So heavy does the weight of the holocaust lay on the public discourse.
It comes to mind the words of Lord Byron in 1823. "Who keeps the world, both old and new, in pain or pleasure? Who makes politics run glibber all? The shade of Bonaparte' s noble daring?
Jew Rothschild and his fellow Christian Baring. (p.42 the Money Lenders) by Anthony Sampson in The Money Lenders, Penguin Books, 1983, 428 pages,
Stereotypes and tropes are almost impossible to overcome, and it is only with trepidation I even come near to touching them.
If stereotypes and tropes had weight, it would take a platoon of Christian nationalists to carry them.
Welcome William
I think we're on the same page, and I suspect you'll find many items and articles here that will ring true.
I think Hofstadter really nailed it, way back in the sixties, after watching Joe McCarthy and Goldwater and their supporters. He must be weeping in his grave at today's "stampede to the extreme right."
But he fought back with his writing, and he's my role model for this modest newsletter.
You may be surprised that some of the regulars here can (and will) reverse everything we say and point it back toward Biden and the Dems. They're intelligent articulate Americans, so I can't understand how they can be so deluded. And of course that's what think about me. But it's always a civil discourse which in itself brings some measure of hope.
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
De Nada, companiero.
I am so unorthodox, that they probably can't figure me out.
There are some very sharp minds here. Unfortunately even the sharpest minds can be deluded by a Master ConMan like Trump.
But I enjoy the civil discourse; for me, that alone seems to justify and validate my (renewed) effort to provide a place for discussion, while still raising the warning of neo-fascism on the rise.
I'd guess I read Hofstadter in the early '70s, AW, and he was important to shaping my political outlook (I identify as a vanilla liberal). I think he identified and captured a key element of American political life, and I admire him still. Certainly his focus in these issues was on the contemporary Right in his day. But when he wrote of the American paranoid style he made clear it was not historically confined to the Right. It was part of populism in the late 19th century, and William Jennings Bryan would be an example. I don't recall whether Hofstadter noted that the first Red Scare was under the progressive Wilson administration, or whether he included discussion of Huey Long's Democratic (Party) brand of populist semi-fascism, but both were cases where politicians and members of the elctorate on the Left (of those times) were in the grip of this type of thinking. The anti-war marchers I joined in the '60s tended to believe that the American government was basically a puppet of shadowy business or military interests, and more recently we saw this in the capture of many progressives by the 9/11 Truther movement. While the oldest conspiracy theory, antisemitism, is obviously very pronounced on the Right these days (and many other days), it's good to recognize that it's also alive and well on the Left (and I'm not mistaking anti-Likudnik leftists for antisemites).
Of course there were real elements of truth to the notion that government was captive to non-democratic interests in the '60s, but it's good to remember when using McCarthy's followers as examples of paranoia that Liberals clung to Algier Hiss as a victim to the bitter end. And had Hofstadter lived a little longer he might have wanted to modify his portrait of Goldwater, since the senator's later career seemed to elevate his rigid stance from crank prejudice to consistent principle.
I don't want to carry this too far, because we're now at a point where right-wing conspiracy theories and extremist positions are off the charts. But I do think the line from Andrew Jackson to Donald Trump goes through William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long. It's an "American" style, not just a conservative style.
Since this blog's topic is neo-fascism I think it's appropriate to read Hofstadter primarliy as identifying precursor American right-wing trends that help put current events into focus. And after some sustained study of contemporary white nationalism and related right-wing extremism I don't want to argue that things aren't now as bad as Hofstadter pictured them. They're far worse! But I think there may be more value in trying to get behind the more obvious pathologies using the types of approaches Jonathan Haidt uses in "The Righteous Mind," to explore systematic differences in perceptions on the Left and Right. Haidt's basic idea, as I understand it, is that we can best address pathological expressions if we identify underlying frameworks that we can grant as legitimate (even if we don't endorse them), and figure out how the distorted expressions arise and how they can be ameliorated without challenging the frameworks essential to conservative and liberal identities. I think in that book the major goal is to elucidate this for the conservative case, but his later "Coddling Of the American Mind" seems directed to problems on the Left (that book I've read about, but not read--it seems to treat "woke" extremism as an expression of dysfunctional thinking more typical of Left-leaning frameworks).
I think it's not going to help deal with conspiracy thinking on the Right to ridicule or demonize it (although it's really hard not to rise to that bait with things like Pizzagate, QAnon, and MTG's fantasies). I see the task for vanilla liberals like me to be figuring out how to understand the paranoia well enough to find tactics to peel away some portion of its captives, layer by layer, understanding that the goal isn't the impossible task of eradicating it--we all fall into conspiracy theories from time to time . . . and there are conspiracies, so that's not a vestigial survival trait--but only of keeping political paranoia at levels consistent with a generally healthy society. What I've read of your posts seems consistent with that, but it's easy to fall into caricature of the Right when some of its leading figures seem so heavily into self-caricature right now (witness the legal defenses of Alex Jones, Sydney Powell, and others that their public statements are prima facie parodic).
Just a final note. Although it's not specifically focused on neo-fascism, you might find some interesting source material on the References page at this site concerning contemporary American white nationalism: https://corebloomington.org/ .
Jonathan, When I heard Jonathan Greenblatt complain about antisemites on the left, I recoiled and rebelled, in my cloistered world, I have never heard or seen such things, until HAMAS rolled, flew and sailed out of Gaza to murder, rape, torture babies, infants, toddlers, women the elderly, And our universities erupted with semi sentient students, who lacking critical thinking skills should never have been enrolled in college for it is a waste of time and money.
Heretofore I was champion of student loan forgiveness, but not anymore, it is a waste of taxpayer money, to let these idiot ingrates off the hook.
WTF are we doing sending kids off to university, only to have their febrile minds filled with crap by professors who are as ignorant of reality and brainwashed as they.
I considered myself a progressive till this, and now I don't know what I am.
Mssr Greenblatt would call me an antisemite, because I blame the Israeli radical right, the bloodthirsty and heartless orthodox settlers and Bibi as well for the curent situation.
Despite the role of these madden religious freaks in Israel. I blame HAMAS for the damage done to Gaza and every Arab life lost,
Just as I blame Hitler for every building demolished and every life lost.
This is some bullshit to criticize someone for defending themselves, and trying to protect themselves from they who hate them, and try to prevent them that they cannot come back and attack them again.
If we and theEurope had taken that attitude towards Germany (the poor innocents killed by the war their leader started, then there would be no UN, No EU, No NATO, and Europe would be under the jackboots of a NAZI regime, or more likely under the jackboots of the USSR.
Hello, Mr. Farrar. My name isn't Jonathan, but it looks as though you were replying to my comment on this year-dormant thread on AW's Substack, so I'm going to take the opportunity to respond to what you wrote.
I share your general orientation on the current situation. As I wrote last year, I'm a vanilla liberal and my view towards the Likudnik governments of Israel and towards Hamas seem similar to yours. In some respects, though, I differ on my understanding of what's been happening on campuses and the behavior of students.
People of college age and somewhat beyond have not lived any part of their politically conscious lives in an era where Israel was not dominated by Likudnik policies. Their understanding of Zionism is shaped by the attitudes they have seen reported since Likud returned to power after Sharon's untimely collapse in 2006 and the 2009 defeat of his Kadima party, which was a reformist element of Likud with an understanding of the long-term destructive impact that the extreme policies that Likud had normalized. They know little or nothing about the history of Israel, the original liberal vision of Zionism, or the long history of extremists on both sides pursuing the most forms of nationalistic violence to arouse hatred of the mutual out-groups and stifle constructive accommodation between the two parties to the conflict. The wars of 1948, 1967, and 1973, the failed peace initiatives of Oslo, 2000, and 2008, are all framed in terms of conditions where only Israel has seemed to have meaningful agency, and it has been exercised in pursuit of an increasingly extreme agenda. They are students, but not students of Middle Eastern history, and the narrative they know is a comic-book version that makes simple sense of what they have seen for the past decade and a half. The history of the century before, which has been lying dormant under every square foot of the stalemated conflict, has lost all relevance for them.
Rigid Israeli government policies since 2009 (and in Likud-dominated periods before) have allowed the caricature of Zionism as a Jewish supremacist form of colonial domination to flourish, and repeatedly cast the sporadic and ineffectual violent of Palestinian resistance against the overwhelming superiority of the IDF, with these students' own country, the US, sustaining and strengthening that superiority, leading them to feel a sense of responsibility for it.
If that is all you personally know of Israel, it is understandable to see the current situation in caricatured terms, to believe that the moral equations are simple and one-sided, and to find strategies to somehow dismiss the extremity of Hamas's commitment to the destruction of Israel, the savagery of its actions on October 7, and the cynicism of its leaders' willingness to pursue goals that reinforce their personal stature at the expense of the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians. They conflate the deprivation of Palestinian political agency by Israel with an erasure of moral agency by Hamas and its followers, who somehow can no longer be viewed as ethically responsible for their actions. When Hamas says, "From the River to the Sea" it means the slaughter of the Jews in Israel and beyond; when students chant it as they march there may be some who invoke that meaning, but for most they think they are promoting a vision of equal justice in a future state that gives neither the Jews nor the Palestinians determinative power over the other. They do what we all do when our political passions are raised: they find ways to ignore, dismiss, minimize, or rationalize evident facts that conflict with the narrative they have internalized as the basis of self-righteous impulses. They have no experience with real antisemitism, so they cannot detect the ways in which "anti-Zionism" and "liberationist" slogans are being used as disguises for it. Like all of us, their understanding is limited by their life experience.
I have always regarded myself as a Zionist, but if "Zionism" meant to me what young people have seen over the past fifteen years, which defines the term for them (but not for me), that would not be true.
So I feel condemnation for the Hamas leadership, deep anger at the Likudniks and their allies, disgust at the savagery of Hamas fighters, dismay at the willful ignorance of West Bank settlers. But looking back at the 1960s, when I was in the streets with adolescent self-righteousness about civil rights and the war--and fortunate in retrospect that I had far simpler moral grievances to protest--I can understand how the judgment of these students has simply been overwhelmed by the prolonged and morally complex history of the conflict in the Middle East. And I have to say that while I'm distressed at the simplistic response of some college faculty on the Left, I've had the opportunity to discover that there are college faculty on the Right just as simplistic, but whose ignorance is flying under the radar, obscured by the medieval brutality of the Hamas attack.
Thanks for the insight. I quite agree with you, and of the same mindset in regards to the Likkud, which I describe as Orthodox Settlers. I
I know the history of Israel and know that the Nakba is a myth. The Arabs brought it on themselves, when they attacked Israel in force no sooner than the UN was declared a nation, and the Jews had bought every hectare of land from the Arabs. Of course the winner (Israel)
claimed the land of the people that attacked them, they needed a buffer, and the Arabs not learning a less and motivated by the antisemitism in the Quran and haddiths, attacked Israel again and again in 1956, 1967,1073, 2006 and finally Oct 7 each time Israel had to claim more land, like the Golan Heights, to preserve their nation.
And once again the Arabs bring hell down upon themselves. HAMAS is to blame for every building, every person lost. As is Yahoo and the Orthodox settlers.
Here is what pisses me off about the new left, those professors and students, who are pro Arab and anti Jew (that is what they are).
They are quick to pile onto the streets to condemn Christians (but don't go around killing or threatening them and in no way are they so vociferous) for their misogynistic, homophobic, and theocracy. And (until Trump and his humpers) gain power, Islam is the most misogynistic, homophobic theocratic of regimes. This brainwashed bleeding hearts have been silent as Iran has persecuted it's peoplem, locked up and killed young women and girls, who don't want to be confined by the hijab, chador and niqab.
These assholes have swallowed the bullshit pumped out by the Marxist and Putinist professors, as well as their Muslim peers, especially those here on a student visa.
These students would fare well in Israel, but not in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Malaysia, even Indonesia.
If Islam oppresses and kills women and gays it is OK, but not if Christians do the same, and the fools overlook the evils, the slaughter, the rape and murder of women and children by Arab s and condemn the Jews for defending themselves.
I am not a Jew, and in the past, and even today, considered an antisemite by the likes of Johnathan Greenblatt of the ADL, which is the Jonathan I was referring to in my response.
IMO the ADL, Likkud, Orthodox Settlers are counterparts, comrades, to Dominionists (Christian Reconstructionists- Mike Johnson - Pence and Cruz for example), as are Muslims.
Sure there are some secularized Muslims, who don't follow the rules laid down by Mufti's and Ayatollahs, who aren't homophobic and misogynistic and are as Muslim as an atheist (like me) who observes Christmas and Thanksgiving, not because of religion, but because of tradition.
One example is Irshad Manji, not only female, muslim but a lesbian. She insists on being identified as Muslim, but wouldn't last a day if she lived in Iran, the Kingdom, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen. Malyasia or Pakistan.
There are secular Jews by the millions, they celebratetheir identity and holidays, even circumcision but you don't see them wearing yamalka's, the kippa, beards, funny hats, rocking back and forth on the wailing wall or using their religion to persecute Christians and Muslims, like they have persecuted Jews, and per their sacred text, Muslims have a religious duty to genocide the Jews, the haddith of al Bukhari, sahih 1295 and 1296, book 56, haddith 139 al Bukhari.
I was Christened Presbyterian at birth, baptized Southen Baptist at 17(under duress) and converted to Catholicism to marry a Catholic, but religion has never been a part of my identity, just a thing like joining the service, and that has never been a part of my identity either, though I retired after 26 years.
Robert, that is a very thoughtful analysis of the what & why of the current seemingly-pro-Hamas protest movement on college campuses, as well as a succinct and insightful history of age-old Middle East conflicts, especially regarding Israel's own internal political dynamics.
Personally, I've always doubted any political solutions in the Middle East, and sadly, I always expected an inevitable blood bath.
Hamas's "medieval brutality" on Oct.7 will live in infamy in Israeli history, but the "collateral damage" in Gaza that plays out on TV every day will also shape future generations of Palestinians (as well as Israelis and citizens of the world). So in the long run the odds are against any enduring political or military solution.
However, I can foresee one "positive outcome" arising from all of this tragedy, namely, an international effort to "rebuild" Gaza into a safe, modern democratic state, like Phoenix rising from the ashes.
Maybe I'm too optimistic.
The original post was a review of Hofstadter's "Paranoid Style in American Politics" and how well it explained and forecast the power of far-right movements; someone recently called it the "Tyranny of the Minority." Your discussion with our newly-arrived friend William suggests that this phenomenon is not confined to American politics.
Abraham. I too do not see any solution to the problem in the mid east because it is religious and a sacred duty of Muslims to war against and oliterate the Jews, meaning of course the state of Israel.
There is evidence of what a "two state" solution looks like, plain and in your face HAMAS, who has declared that they are a nation of martyrs (martyrs and martydom are glorified in Islam, except by the leaders who will not be martyred, and the leader of HAMAS bragged that they will come back again and again, until the Jews (Israel) are obliterated (Preamble to the HAMAS covenant.
Integrating the Arabs into a one state is suicide. America is already committing suicide, between leftist students and professors, and the white racist,, evangelical Trump humpers, it is all but over.
Until Jews, Christians and Muslim can adopt secularism, keep their religions for purposes of ritual and tradition, but shed the anti human bullshit, we are doomed.
I think you're too optimistic, AW, but we can't live without hope so I'll join you in yours. This exchange on such an old thread is surely only going to be among you, me, and Mr. Farrar, and I think we all actually share a basic vewpoint.
Robert. I like you, so am leery of antagonizing you, but I don't get the we can't live without hope bit.
I live very well without hope. Zen my friend, the Serentity prayer. I know that I can't change the world, I can't change the future, but I am prepared to do what I have to do to survive.
Hope is why the girl crawls into a 55 gallon drum, which a serial killer will seal.
Hope is why a person digs their own grave.
Hope is what a person climbs the steps to gallows, gibbet or guillotine.
Hope is disheartening and disappointing.
How egoist and narcissistic humans are. We ask what is the purpose of life, as if we are something special, purposefully created for a purpose.
When the fact is that we have the same purpose as the animals we slaughter to eat, and the rest of life, whose purpose, animal or vegetable, is to recycle energy.
I have a purpose but it is not divine or special, so do all of us, to feed the cycle of energy.
Not antagonized, William. You're right, we can live without hope, but it's a downer. Hope is free and it makes breakfast taste better (good whiskey does too, but it's expensive and socially counterproductive before 5pm). And the good news is that many a hopeful girl has never even considered climbing into a 55-gallon drum.
As for the hope involved in climbing the steps and digging the grave, do you know this poem by Anthony Hecht: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49086/more-light-more-light ? I think it matches the mood of your messages. It's a real hope-quencher.
I met William through Robert Reich's substack, and we do indeed share the same basic viewpoint. And fear that history is taking a bad turn.
That's why I'm renewing my efforts to stimulate discussion, and continue to warn about the rising tide of neo-fascism.
At least I can say that I tried.
And thanks Robert for your continued participation.
You, I and Robert share the same concern and fear. Those who have a chance of stopping the threatening tide, are incompetent, wishful, compromised, complicit and don't want to appear aggressive and by that the tide will overwhelm us, I fear.
We will see in 11 months, but I don't expect much from the "hopeful" not grounded in reality, but ride the wish horse, and will sit out the election or vote for Trump by voting for RFK jr, Jill Stein, Cornell west or some stalking horse the Republicans put forth as No Labels.
Thank you for this book review of work by HOFSTADTER. Many of us wonder why so many will vote against their own self-interest, especially against their own economic self-interest. Hofstadter has certain given this issue deep thought. On a simple but not simplistic level, we would do well to examine the issues of how people gain and/or lose self-esteem and self assurance. And, as if they were ones own children, not treat them as "despicable" and stupid. We need a wise politician to address this dilemma. Hofstadter foresaw how seriously this "status politics" of deep resentment can affect our whole way of life--American Democracy as described in our Constitution.
Thanks for your comment Valerie
That book really did a good job of explaining a tough question, why people vote against their own self-interest. Many if not most of Trump's devoted followers are low income, low education, low employment people; he said he'd take away their health insurance and they voted for him anyway. I could never understand that. But Hofstadter explained it way back then, and I think it still holds true today.
There's another book on the same topic that I'll probably review this week, called The True Believer, written in 1952 by Eric Hoffer. He was a poor day-laborer who spent his evenings in public libraries (sometimes to keep warm) and he read tons of books and wrote 4 himself; he understood these "true believer" folks because he worked among them. Similar to Hofstadter's explanation, but Hoffer adds something that also holds true today.
Like you say, it's important to understand the whole issue of self-esteem and self-assurance; that's what Hoffer writes about. People who are society's "nobodies" fall for the Leader who gives them that sense of purpose and belonging and strength and identity; that's was Trump's secret to winning all those folks.
So thanks again for your response to Hofstadter's book. There's too much name-calling and closed-minds; we've got to try to understand these people. That's why I do this work.
Abraham. I can understand why Trump's cult votes against their own self interest.
The culture war is more important than their own well being.
Alexandria Pelosi, daughter of Nancy and a documentarian, produce a documentary in 2009, Right America: Feeling Wronged – Some Voices from the Campaign Trail
In it she interviewed a stereotypical red neck, bib overalls, lawn (if it was such) littered, tooth less and an IQ south of 90. When she asked why he as opposed to food stamps, he said "them lazy nigrah good for nothings get them", When she responded, but you do too, his response was "that's different I earned them"
This is Trump base, all I can say that they are frightened little people, afraid that they have lost their supremacy and power over those that believe are infeior, be they people of color, "feminazis', atheists,agnostics and LGBT,
In their world, only white Christian males, should be in power, fools like Clarence Thomas are mere tools, but he doesn't give a damn, because he got his.