I was listening to an American talk radio jockey joke about us killing an entire race of people in revenge. Joking about turning their country's deserts to vast fields of glass. Laughing about it. It was all just a joke. Genocide as a casual weekday afternoon drivetime joke. It was not liberal anger that simmered inside of me at that moment. It was human anger. It was fear, too.
World War II was the world arrayed against countries who we ultimately found had turned to the question of a race of people they didn't like and dealt with it through genocide and terror. America was the leading country prosecuting that war. American soldiers wept as they saw the skeletal figures standing hollow-eyed at the fences of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz. We are the country who has acknowledged our own pogroms of Native Americans and Africans and made at least some effort to deal with it, to make it right. I know the effectiveness of those efforts can be questioned...but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how what I can only think of as Fascist ideology having crept while we weren't looking into the public dialogue.
I'm not the only person to notice, that's for sure. Here is the most in-depth article I could find on the subject - Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An exegesis.
I am not saying that Republican = Fascist. That's a tried and true, not particularly intelligent liberal attack on the opposition. In fact some more rabid conservatives have actually turned and hurled it back at liberals. Historically, America needs that balance of conservative and liberal thought. It has worked for us. As a matter of fact, I believe that there are a good number of classically conservative thinkers who find the slow infiltration of people who would even joke about the genocide of another race, another nationality appalling. In an effort to continually hammer away at what they think is a pro-America standpoint, a handful of far-right conservatives as exemplified by that radio talker have slipped over the line from good solid American conservative into Hitler's territory.
The Baath party run by Saddam Hussein in pre-war Iraq was a fascist organization - see The Syrian-Iraqi Baath party and its Nazi beginnings. On the strength of that knowledge alone a war against such an ideology is easy to defend. But when Americans with public positions of any kind can even joke about something like genocide we have begun to deteriorate in our own way. I know, you may think I'm a day late and a dollar short. But better late than never. It could also be said that perhaps I'm making way too much out of it. It was a joke, fer chrissakes. Jokes are like myths, though...they often containt a fragment, a grain of truth. Grains in the guts of oysters cause pearls as nacre metastasizes around the source of irritation. Shouldn't we all be wary of the slow-growing pearls of evil in our own heart as a culture?
Article comments
1 - Anthony
It truly makes the skin crawl. Whatever happened to thought? To reason? To enlightenment? This group identity that is common among these conservative talk show hosts and their listeners is, in my opinion, extremely dangerous...for the reasons you mention above. These pundits, and the religious radical conservatives that they speak for, are busy nowadays propagating facism in America (if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...)
2 - Eric Olsen
very fine and thoughtful Steve, I despise demagogues, baiters, and sensationalizers of all kinds. Talk radio is the worst, but TV isn't far behind. But how do you save people from themselves? People listen to and watch this shit - if they didn't no one would put it on the air.
3 - Vic
Unfortunately, moderation does not get ratings... extremism does. No matter which side.
BTW, race is not the problem... the religion is. Islam is not the "religion of peace" that many people have been told it is.
I highly recommend Robert Spencer's Onward Muslim Soldiers which explains that one of the central tenets of Islam is Jihad.
There can be no mediation, cooperation, or negotiation with radical Islam due to their core religious beliefs which will never be swayed.
Vic
4 - Steve
Victor - I am fully aware of what you say, and do tend to believe that what we battle over there is a mindset formed in the harsh fires of a radical religious mindset. I will check out the book you recommend. I also believe that you are correct about no compromise with Islam. If you assumed as I tried to dissuade the reader from assuming that I was a run-of-the-mill liberal writing another anti-war screed, you were wrong. If nothing else I defended the actual deposing of Saddam. My concern is precisely what I said, and it's embodied by the Nietzsche quote. Yes, radical Islam is the monster. The terrorists who continue to kidnap and humiliate and kill westerners who aren't even working for the military are monsters. My point, however, is that in our drive to support this war a certain rhetoric is being accepted that I think would have been appalling to many of us 10 years ago. When I hear some Talk Radio idiot glibly discussing genocide as a solution to the recurring problems over there I am not hearing the voice of reason. The Republican party I grew up with and loved back in the Reagan era - there's an admission for you to chew on - was not the one I see certain nasty aspects of now.
Stay in Iraq and make sure democracy takes hold? Cool with me. Gut the infrastructure of radical Islamic terrorist groups? Yep, go for it, scatter them to the 4 winds and hound every one of them to a jail cell or their deaths if necessary. Kill 'em ALL and let Allah sort 'em out? NO. Then we have become the monster. That's my basic, bottomline point.
5 - Eric Olsen
again, very sensible Steve and very similar to my own positions
6 - Mac Diva
With someone like Boortz, I think part of the scheme is to hide that he is not an intelligent or well-informed person. If he lets someone other than his worshipers speak, that will become clear. So, only the fan club is allowed a peep.
Talk radio is it gives the impression that American political discourse is much farther to the Right than it is. Blogs do the same thing. It is no accident that the people who hail them most are to the Right of Attila the Hun. Liberal bloggers have largely laid down with them and don't even realize they got up with fleas.
7 - Vic
Steve,
Well put. One of the problems with radical Islam is how tightly it's interwoven with the moderate version as far as clerics who preside over mosques.
Vic
8 - Psi
The idea you post about Liberals being accepting of people is a complete Joke, I know of no other group that tries to impose their will on others more than the liberals through Political correctness, for example the recent attacks on the Got Milk adds here in Atlanta because the "Poor and Homless" Cant afford Cookies so Got Milk had to remove their Posters with Cookie scented strips on them.
As a Libertarian who values Freedom I find nothing more offensive or dangerous than Liberals. Not to mention your idea of the Liberals being accepting of other people regardless of skin color goes against the history of their parent party the Democrats who were the major opposition to Civil Rights back when the movement began.
I could certainly go on and adress the fact that your entire rant is based off of a joke you heard which obviously cannot be taken seriously which you did take seriously but I have pretty much already adressed the issue of people like you and the Libs trying to control others through Political Correctness and as I said it makes me sick.
9 - debbie
interesting website-
obviously an uneducated group even if you just listen to the news. i have no problem with bombing iraq and possibly. these muslims-believers in the peaceful religion of islam- want
to kill you, eliminate you because you are an infidel. period. we are in germany now and you should see the problems europe has with their muslims and all aliens that work here. america is
easy compared what europe does to travel and work
here. open your eyes to the real world and realize what a great place the united states is.
your wanting to supress speech because you think its wrong or is evil sounds fascist to me!
later