Jonah Goldberg goes in search of swastikas
August 07, 2009 10:49 am ET by Eric Boehlert
Funny if it weren't so sad.
Conservatives like Goldberg claimed Nancy Pelosi got it all wrong when she claimed anti-health care mini-mob members showed up with swastikas. The nerve of that woman! In fact, Goldberg wrote an entire name-calling column about Pelosi was sooooo wrong about the swastikas comment. She was "lying."
But then Goldberg got emails this morning confirming that, yeah, that's what some mini-mob members did:
So he went to work [emphasis added]:
Alan Colmes, for instance, says this is proof that Pelosi told the truth. But, wait a second. This is a single picture of a swastika. It also happens to have that red line through it. By this standard, similar anti-smoking signs are pro-smoking and anti-KKK protestors with the KKK crossed out with a line are also pro-KKK.
Pelosi's comment very clearly gives the impression that these protestors [sic] are carrying swastikas in a very different way.
Rather than doing the adult, common sense thing and actually agree that introducing Nazi references into the health care debate is, y'know, wrong, Goldberg, professional apologist and fact-checker's nightmare, tried to explain how the Nazi stuff wasn't really that bad.
By the way Jonah, this was from an Austin mini-mob. Can you please explain how this protester was "carrying swastikas in a very different way"?
Goldberg claimed Pelosi was "lying" when she referenced swastikas. That she engaged in "dishonesty, slander, and idiocy."
And now we know the entire premise of Goldberg's column has been shown to be false.
UPDATED: Glenn Greenwald details the glaring double standard that Goldberg and friends are engaged in after they spent the Bush years emphatically denouncing any Nazi reference in our public debate.
UPDATED: Huffington Post has more evidence that Goldberg must have missed before he penned his trenchant column claiming Pelosi was "lying" about mini-mob swastikas.
Here's a young mini-mob man with an Obama T-shirt that reads "Hitler Gave Great Speeches Too":
And here's a precious snapshot of a mini-mob kid in a stroller carrying a Nazi-flavored sign:
UPDATED: A belated reminder that Goldberg is incensed that it was Pelosi who introduced the deeply divisive notion that Obama critics were in any way connected to Nazism. That it was Goldberg who thought it was a "slander" to unfairly tag anyone in American politics with a Nazi reference.
Whatever.
Good thing the 'liberal' media is here to explain how protesters carrying swastikas aren't really carrying swastikas, and how, even if they are, it's okay if you're Republican...
The little peace in me
Will die
For this is not america
Blossom falls to bloom
This season
Promise not to stare
Too long
For this is not a miracle
There was a time
A storm that blew so pure
For this could be the biggest sky
And I could have
The faintest idea
Snowman melting
From the inside
Falcon spirals
To the ground
So bloody red
Tomorrows clouds
A little piece of you
The little piece in me
Will die
For this is not america
There was a time
A wind that blew so young
For this could be the biggest sky
And I could have the faintest idea
This could be the biggest sky
This could be a miracle
This could be etc
David Bowie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3osvs63aPUs
This song has been running through my head since last night and, frankly, it makes me want to cry.
On the left, people who have decried derisiveness and labels, who despise the rhetoric of hate that comes from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, demean themselves by engaging in the same sour practices - no matter who or what you think the opposition is, they are not monolithic. They may be misguided, misinformed, even misanthropic, but do we advance the discussion by labelling them, by applying derisive stereotypes to them? I would say that we do not.
On the right, people who claim to be loyal Americans have taken to claiming some sort of franchise on loyalty. People who cry for their rights of free speech step all over others right for the same. None of this advances the discussion. It very truly is a politics of division.
The labelling and name-calling is sickening and it is counter-productive. Liberals are not monolithically socialist, nor are conservatives monlithically racists. Our president is no closer to a Nazi than the last president (or the one before that, or the one before that).
When we see elderly people shouting at these town hall meetings because they fear that the government is going to tell them when it is time to die, they are not stupid, they are victims. They are victims of a debate that is not happenning, of lies that cannot be dispelled through the din. (And they very truly are lies - the "end of life" counselling that is being spoken of is not mandatory and does not involve the government at all - this is merely a provision to allow such counselling to be charged to Medicare and it was introduced by a Republican.)
The bottom line is that we bring nothing to the table if we only bring labels. Yes, there are racists and socialists and liars - and there are demons of every conceivable type on both sides of every issue. But our common enemy is ignorance. Education is the only cure for ignorance. It cannot be accomplished through mob rule - from either side.
This is not America.
Anyone want to bet that it was introduced to stir up exactly the kind of pandemonium we've seen?...
It is obviously being used now for an entirely different purpose - and no amount of pushback from the Dems seems to be dong any good.
To allow yourself to be victimized this easily and this transparently, you have to be, at least, a little bit stupid, and a fair bit fearful.
To call these people "victims," gives them far too much credit, especially since they are a significant part of the "din" that makes meaningful debate not happen.
You make some good points, but I have to strongly disagree with this statement. Treat these people (and I know many of them) as the adults they are. They are not victims: they are truly, profoundly, self-willingly stupid. A stupidity based equally on hate and fear, a stupidity that despises reason and creativity.
OK, off my soapbox!
So... the shwasticaka's are x'ed out... so they're saying "No" to nazism...
In a protest against the Democratic Parties helatch care plan, which they are also saying "No" to...
And somehow that means that they're NOT syaing the dem's are fascist?
Or does he really this that our problem with these idiots were that THEY were being nazi's.
Take Goldberg off life support. He's already brain-dead.
It's just so sad that ANYONE can fall for this crap who doesn't have something diagnosable wrong with them.
These people are carrying signs equating what the administration is trying to do to fascism. Yes, it's over the top - but then again, the left - including Media Matters, I might add - spent the last 8 years making all sorts of Bushitler claims, so I think you should ponder the glass house you're living in before you toss too many stones.
The people carrying those signs learned this form of protest over the last 8 years from your side. So congratulations: you're part of the problem.
The birthers, teabaggers, assorted fruits and nuts etc. are engaging in classic fascist tactics -- in the name of fighting what they regard as creeping fascism.
You can't get much more American than that.
Just as the right has made a living out of constantly projecting their traits onto the other side (I'm projecting? Maybe you're projecting!).
and using the word "Orwellian" to describe attempts to remove deceptive doublespeak.
and describing efforts to expose misinformation and propaganda as "snitching" , or comparable to Nazis.
I have no problem with people whose ideology is different from mine, but the GOP cult seems to be more at odds with reality every day.
But as your reference to Liberal Fascism shows, Goldberg doesn't believe this. When Pelosi said they were bringing swastikas, his natural assumption was that she was calling them Nazis because that's what public debate is all about. When it turns out that they were bringing swastikas not out of Nazi solidarity but to compare Democrats to Nazis, this doesn't mean that she was telling the truth and was just referencing the fact Democrats are being called Nazis. It's really just another layer of her lies, because by cleverly making the technically true claim that people had swastikas she was actually deliberately tarring patriotic Americans who were exercising their First Amendment rights -- not to mention fulfilling their patriotic duty -- to call the president a Nazi. The much more rational explanation -- that she was criticizing them for bringing swastikas in order to compare the Dems to Nazis and didn't explain her full thinking because she had 10 seconds to answer the question -- just doesn't enter the realm of possibility for him. After all, why would she bother pointing out that protesters are comparing Dems to Nazis when there is nothing wrong with that in the first place?
And the overwhelming majority of us, here in the middle, look left and right and don't see a glimmer of a difference between the fascist mobs surrounding us.
sample images
You really have no authority to dismiss any of these comparisons.
This article is about Jonah Golderg being a lying, hypocritical fool.
1. People who compared Bush to Hitler were roundly criticized in the most demonizing terms by both left and right.
2. People who compared Bush to Hitler WERE WRONG.
That's the important thing. I admit fully that I myself was quite worried about Bush's potential totalitarian impulses. The language of his speeches, the labeling of opponents as anti-American, the incredible breaches of the Constitution. Hell, Bill Safire was worried about it too, and he got called a liberal for it. But, as I said, the important thing is that we were wrong. Bush wasn't Hitler, he abdicated power peacefully in accordance with the will of the American people, and now we have a new president. So when conservatives bring that up as some sort of justification for calling the President a fascist, it's just moronic. It doesn't explain how that's supposed to justify something they considered reprehensible as recently as last frigging year, and Bush/Hitler was an inaccurate comparison too. So what's your point?
People were very fond of declaring that 9/11 was just like Pearl Harbor, but the Reichstag Fire comparison holds up a lot better as there were no threatening foreign armies at America's doorstep in 2001.
You made Jonah Loadpants run screaming to his Mommy.