Progressive Kristallnacht

Published by

Clarissa

January 25, 2014

Wall Street Journal has outdone itself:

Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?

Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its “one percent,” namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the “rich.”

Don’t people realize that the moment they say that something is like Kristallnacht / the Holocaust / slavery / rape, etc., nobody in their right mind wants to follow their argument about anything ever again?

And it’s easy to dismiss this particular letter as written by an ultra-conservative weirdo. But how many Liberals do exactly the same thing?

This love for melodramatic and offensive comparisons is a truly bipartisan affair.

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17 responses to “Progressive Kristallnacht”

David Bellamy

January 25, 2014

This particular case is indeed over the top, bordering on ridiculous. But, people must be free to draw parallels to historical situations. If something like Nazism arises, we need to be able to identify it. So many people seem to want to censor any such comparison.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 25, 2014
  
  I am yet to encounter this sort of comparison that is not over the top. Remember the recent PETA scandal? It’s the same thing.
  
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David Bellamy

January 25, 2014

PETA is indeed beyond absurd. They are also dangerous and need to be monitored continuously by sensible people.

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Rebecca Schuman

January 25, 2014

WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE RICH TECHIES?

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 25, 2014
  
  Yes, they haven’t been greeted with enough deference. This is tragic.
  
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musteryou

January 25, 2014

It seems to be an American trait not to be able to keep a sense of proportion about anything. It’s weird how one can talk about various things unrelated to the American and his circumstances and he always finds a way to bring it back to himself. Always he is the one who is suffering. Always, he is the one with the more complex dilemma to be solved. It’s an inward-looking trait that assures he will never understand much about the broader universe.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 25, 2014
  
  SO TRUE.
  
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hkatz

January 25, 2014

I’ve come across quite a few people, mainly online and but also offline (which happens to be in the US), who like to think that they’re facing the greatest challenges ever and living in the worst times ever. They like to think of themselves as heroes for enduring what no one else has endured. This is their narrative, and when they fight back (or lash out incoherently) at whoever they think is hurting or oppressing them it’s usually in petty ways, but in their mind those petty deeds are epic. They will be if not the greatest generation then a great generation that their grandchildren talk about, the heroes of the age (but what do they do that’s really momentous?). Beneath their cries of doom and pessimism about civilization, there’s a mix of self-pity and self-aggrandizement. They enjoy seeking out the most obnoxious, exaggerated metaphors and appropriating horrors that have been visited on other people. They’re enjoying themselves as the beleaguered heroes.

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1. Clarissa
  
  January 25, 2014
  
  Oh yes. You have described this phenomenon perfectly.
  
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John Hayden

January 26, 2014

Good discussion. Nothing should ever be compared to Hitler or the Holocaust. Nazism as a political philosophy, I believe, is still alive in various places in the world, and needs to be reported objectively. Individuals or groups that self-identify as Nazis should be monitored appropriately by authorities and media. It’s slanderous to label an opponent as a Nazi unless they are a member of a Nazi Party or a self-proclaimed Nazi.

People should also be careful not to mistakenly use the terms fascism and Communism.

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1. J. Otto Pohl
  
  January 26, 2014
  
  I strongly, militantly, and with my energy disagree with this. There are all kinds of things that can be fruitfully compared with the Holocaust. The Armenians and Rwandan genocides for instance, and there has been some good scholarly work on this. See for instance Robert Melson’s comparative work on the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust. I think Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands and Robert Gellately’s Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler in the Age of Social Catastrophe do a good job of comparing the Soviet Union under Stalin and Germany under Hitler. If historians can’t make comparisons to Hitler or the Holocaust then a huge amount of really good scholarship, including a lot of stuff that is very accessible to the general public such as Snyder and Gellately both of which I use for undergrads here, becomes invalidated for no good reason.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    January 26, 2014
    
    Of course, historians should make comparisons. But this wasn’t what I was talking about. I was referring to people who stub a toe and then melodramatically compare their “suffering” to things that should not be brought into such conversations.
    
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  2. John Hayden
    
    January 26, 2014
    
    The very real — and well documented — genocides that continue to happen are tragic and horrid crimes against humanity and sins against humanity. These atrocities, when verified and documented, stand on their own in history. Little if anything is gained by “comparing” or measuring one case of genocide against another. They’re all horrible, and facts speak for themselves. I include the centuries of war to wipe out the American Indians, when I use the word “genocide.”
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      January 26, 2014
      
      ” I include the centuries of war to wipe out the American Indians, when I use the word “genocide.””
      
      – Of course. There is no other name for it.
      
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  3. J. Otto Pohl
    
    January 27, 2014
    
    It is simply not true that there nothing to be gained by comparative history including comparing cases of genocide. I mentioned some of the works that have done this above. Snyder’s work tells us far, far, far more than two non-comparative works on Nazi and Soviet atrocities in the Bloodlands would have. Likewise Melson’s work comparing the Armenian genocide and Holocaust unearthed insights that had not been revealed by the vast literature written solely on one or the other cases. The uniqueness advocates led by Lipstadt had by the turn of the century been thoroughly marginalized in Holocaust and genocide studies and for very good reasons.
    
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J. Otto Pohl

January 26, 2014

The author of this particular letter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in France in 1996. He killed a French doctor. He claims that the $10,000 fine levied on him by the French court (no jail time for killing a man?) was a horrible travesty and injustice despite the fact that he owns a boat worth $130 million. So his penchant for self centered whining and hyperbole and ignoring and minimization of real suffering is not surprising.

http://gawker.com/269896/tom-perkins-manslaughter-conviction

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FD

January 26, 2014

There’s a reason Godwin’s law is one of the wider known internet ‘rules’.

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