Posted by
Always To The Right on Friday, October 16, 2009 3:44:29 PM
The casually-dropped Nazi smear is perhaps the best single indicator
that a speaker is both a political and historical idiot – which is one
reason we’ve seen the Lyndon LaRouche acolytes using it with wild
abandon over the summer. However, it seems that anyone can play, even
(perhaps especially) leading thinkers of Academia like Noam Chomsky,
who must have channeled his inner Ward Churchill
in San Francisco this week. Chomsky told a Commonwealth Club crowd
that Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and “right-wing media” herald the
new coming of Naziism
Where to start with this serial string of idiocies? First, Germany
in the 1920s was hardly “at the peak of Western civilization.” Its
economy had collapsed, its social structures had collapsed, and its
national identity had been crushed by unexpected and humiliating defeat
in a near-existential war that their “peak” civilization thought they
had won. It was a disaster waiting for a bigger disaster, just as
Versailles was a peace treaty looking for a bigger war. The entire idea
of the Weimar government had little support with Germans, who wanted a
monarchy — and failing that, a strongman.
But even more, “anger” and “opposition” do not equal “Naziism” or
“fascism”. Context is rather important in that analysis. The Nazis
did not come to power by tapping into a deeply-seated notion of limited government, after all. They satisfied that urge for a charismatic leader who would reorder society through a fuehrerprinzip that
would get the trains to run on time, succeeding because of that
disregard for a Weimar constitution more or less imposed on them by
their enemies and the political and economic chaos it created.
Regardless of what one thinks of the very, very different styles of
Limbaugh and Savage, neither one pump for greater government control of our lives; in fact, the very reason both get exercised is to fight that creeping intrusion.
The only way anyone can make this argument is either by breathtaking
intellectual dishonesty or sheer ignorance of 20th-century history and
current events. In this case, perhaps it’s both.