"Paul Krugman is telling us that he sees himself as waging war against a political movement that represents the reincarnation of the Third Reich." - Stuart Schneiderman by George Dance
(libertarian)
Friday, January 14, 2011
On January 11, New York Times correspondent Paul Krugman introduced a new rule for comments to his column: "3. New rule, if you haven't seen it: Nazi/Hitler references are out unless clearly relevant." (1) That won him plaudits from some in the Jewish community; for example, from the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, which wrote in an email:
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got it right in barring gratuitous references to Hitler or the Nazis in comments responding to his blog posts.
As survivors, we have long spoken of the malignant impact that trivialization of the Holocaust has had on the profound implications for education, history, and memory that come from invoking the tragedy of the Shoah. This becomes particularly important in the current political climate where the propriety of what is acceptable in public discourse has come under renewed scrutiny. (2)
Even those of us not personally affected by the Holocaust can welcome that rule. As a long-time poster on Usenet I am familiar with how "Hitler" and "Nazi" references can creep into any debate. Indeed, there is a semi-humorous law Godwin's Law of usenet which states that ""As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In many if not most cases these comparisons are strained, gratuitous, and insulting. Indeed, one famous corollary to the law itself often called Godwin's Law' is that "once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress." (3)
Such a step looks especially appealing in the wake of last Saturday's mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, in which Rep. Gqbrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head and six bystanders, including a nine-year-old, were killed.
Earlier in the week I wrote about Krugman's January 8 Times column, on which he blamed that day's mass shooting in Tucson, Arizon on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, drawing a parallel with with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. (4)
The next day, he returned to that theme: "I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton's election in 1992 an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again."
However, Krugman added a new villain Congressman Michelle Bachmann and a new term for the political hatred: "eliminationist rhetoric."
"And it's the saturation of our political discourse and especially our airwaves with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.... Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be "armed and dangerous" without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P. (5)
Lest the "eliminationist rhetoric phrase be missed, Krugman uses it a second time: "It's really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what's happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual" (which all the evidence to date indicates that it in fact was)? (5)
Krugman has used the phrase before. Last March, just after the health care bill was passed, he wrote: "What has been really striking has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the G.O.P., coming not from some radical fringe but from the party's leaders." Krugman singled out John Boehner (now House speaker), the unnamed "chairman" of the "Republican National Committee" (Michael Steele), and of course Sarah Palin (for her "map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight" that I wrote about earlier this week). (6)
So what is eliminationist rhetoric'? Michael Moynihan of Reason magazine tells us:
If your dictionary is unfamiliar with the word eliminationist, that's because of the term's recent vintage, coined in 1996 by Harvard political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. In his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Goldhagen argued that far from being bullied and terrorized into allowing its government to commit genocide in their name, most Germans were imbued with an eliminationist hatred of Jews i.e., a desire that Jews be eliminated from Aryan society which transitioned smoothly into an exterminationist orgy of violence. (7) [italics in original]
Blogger Stuart Schneidermann is blunter:
"Eliminationist' is not an innocent word. It has a context, and within its context, it is code for: Nazi.... It refers to the Nazi propaganda that paved the way for the Holocaust." (8)
In his 2009 volume Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe, Aristotle Kallis
distinguishes between four stages of eliminationism: the construction of difference between us' and them', the conclusion that the others' are threatening the community, the identification of certain attributes with a physical person and the out-group representing it, and the turn to physical elimination as a desirable solution....
In Europe, the eliminationist drive' was rooted in modern society and a radicalized ultra-nationalism. The Holocaust, put into practice by ordinary Germans' and supported by native collaborators, for example by underground militias and local state administration, marked the peak of this eliminationism. (9)
Moynihan, who searched the Times last March for uses of the term, reported that: "Of the 40 references to "eliminationism" in the Times archive, all but one refer to the destruction of European Jewry. The sole standout is Krugman, who, as we have seen, is referencing the Republican Party's opposition to health care legislation." (7)
So there we have it. "Eliminationist rhetoric" means Nazi rhetoric, those accused of using it (Tea Party members and Republican office holders) are being called neo-Nazis, and their agenda is being claimed to be the destruction of Jewry. Says Schneidermann: "By using the word, Paul Krugman is telling us that he sees himself as waging war against a political movement that represents the reincarnation of the Third Reich." (8)
That does explain why Bachmann was named (in January) by Krugman while Michael Steele was not (in March). As an African-American, Steele does not fit easily into the Republicans-are-Nazis paradigm. On the other hand, with her German name (even if by marriage), Bachmann can be slotted in neatly.
One wonders, though, how neatly Bachmann's rhetoric fits Krugman's paradigm. So let us look at the full quotation from which Krugman pulled those three words ("armed and dangerous"), which turns out to be from a promotion for a seminar:
But you can get all the latest information on this event, this ... a must go to event with this Chris Horner. People will learn ... it will be fascinating. We met with Chris Horner last week, 20 members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people we the people are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that's why I want everyone to come out and hear. So go to bachmann.house.gov and you can get all the information. (10) [stress added]
So: in Krugman's world , Michelle Bachman plans to incite a new Holocaust by giving seminars on cap and trade legislation? .
Writes James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal,
"if Krugman had said the words "armed and dangerous" were ill-chosen, we would have agreed. If he had said they were irresponsible, that would be a legitimate opinion, albeit one we would be inclined to discount as partisan. But that is not what he said. Krugman, who recreationally burns politicians in effigy, described Bachmann's comment as "eliminationist rhetoric." That is flatly fraudulent.
If the broader claim that the "rhetoric" of Republican politicians and the nonliberal media was to blame for last Saturday's act of mass murder is true, why can't it be presented without false factual assertions? Krugman's little lie undermines the big lie he and his newspaper are attempting to purvey. (11)
The question has to be asked: Is Krugman deliberately lying? Or does he believe his own rhetoric? It is disturbing if the first alternative is true; but if the second is true, then it is equally so. As Schneidermann puts it:
You have to start thinking that Krugman seems to be living in an alternative universe, a universe where the Gestapo is coming to get him, where Neo-Nazi Republicans are running extermination camps like Gitmo, and where the Tea Party is rife with anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli fervor.
You might want to say that none of it is true, and that the Tea Party is rife with pro-Israeli sentiment. Where the vast majority of Israelis thought that George Bush was a great friend of their nation, the vast majority today believe that Barack Obama sides with the Palestinians.
Again, these are mere facts. They do not carry weight when placed next to Krugman's alternative universe. (8)
Factual or not, Krugman's use of the term eliminationist rhetoric sends a clear message to the Jewish readers of his column that the Tea Partiers and the Republicans are neo-Nazis bent on a new Shoah while leaving most of the goyim remain mostly blissfully unaware of his real intent. And now, with Krugman's new rule no-Nazi-references rule, that cannot even be explained to the goyim who do read his column.
(1) Paul Krugman, "Notes to Commenters", Jan. 11, 2010. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/notes-to-commenters/
(2) Ron Kampeas, "Paul Krugman's no Nazi rule", Capital J, JTA, Jan. 11, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2010. http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2011/01/11/2742507/paul-krugmans-no-nazi-rule
(4) "Pin this on the Tea Partiers", Nolan Chart, Jan. 11, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2011. http://www.nolanchart.com/article8259.html
(5) Paul Krugman, "Climate of Hate", New York Times, Jan. 9, 2011. Web, Jan, 13, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/opinion/10krugman.html
(6) PaulKrugman, "Going to Extreme", New York Times, Mar. 26, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/opinion/26krugman.html
(7) Michael C. Moynihan, "Red America, White Power", Apr. 1, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2011. http://reason.com/archives/2010/04/01/were-all-racists-now
(8) Stuart Schneiderman, "Paul Krugman on Eliminationist Rhetoric", Had Enough Therapy? blog, Jan. 12, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2010. http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2011/01/paul-krugman-on-eliminationist-rhetoric.html
(9) "Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe", Oxford Journal of German History, 28:1, 115-117. Web, Jan. 13, 2010. http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/1/115.full
(10) Dave E., "The Art of the Factual Lie", Fish Fear Me, Mar. 23, 2009. Web, Jan. 13, 2011.
(11) James Taranto, "Big Lies and Little Ones," Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2010. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704803604576077892006683586.html
On January 11, New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman introduced a rule for comments to his column: "3. New rule, if you haven't seen it: Nazi/Hitler references are out unless clearly relevant." (1) That won him plaudits from some in the Jewish community; for example, from the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, which wrote in an e-mail:
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman got it right in barring gratuitous references to Hitler or the Nazis in comments responding to his blog posts.
As survivors, we have long spoken of the malignant impact that trivialization of the Holocaust has had on the profound implications for education, history, and memory that come from invoking the tragedy of the Shoah. This becomes particularly important in the current political climate where the propriety of what is acceptable in public discourse has come under renewed scrutiny. (2)
Even those of us whose families were not personally affected by the Holocaust can welcome a rule like that. As a long-time poster on usenet I am familiar with how "Hitler" and "Nazi" references can creep into any debate. There is even a semi-serious law of usenet -- Godwin's Law -- which states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In many if not most cases such analogies are strained, gratuitous, and insulting, cheapening both the debate and the comparison. Indeed, one famous corollary to the law -- itself often mistakenly called 'Godwin's Law' -- is that "once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically 'lost' whatever debate was in progress." (3)
Any moves to make today's rhetorical climate less toxic are especially appealing in the wake of last Saturday's mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, in which Congressman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot in the head and six bystanders, including a nine-year-old, were killed.
Earlier this week I wrote about Krugman's January 8 Times column, in which he blamed the shooting on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, drawing a parallel with the militia movement and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. (4)
The next day, Krugman returned to the same theme, writing: "I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton's election in 1992 -- an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again." (5) In that second column, Krugman introduced a new villain -- Congressman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) -- and a new phrase, 'eliminationist rhetoric':
"The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric.... And it's the saturation of our political discourse and especially our airwaves with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.
"Where's that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let's not make a false pretense of balance: it's coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous' without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P." (5)
Lest the 'eliminationist rhetoric' phrase fall under any reader's radar, Krugman used it a third time: "It's really up to G.O.P. leaders. Will they accept the reality of what's happening to America, and take a stand against eliminationist rhetoric? Or will they try to dismiss the massacre as the mere act of a deranged individual" (which all the evidence to date indicates that it in fact was)? (5)
Krugman has used that phrase before. Last March, just after the health care bill was passed, he wrote: "What has been really striking has been the eliminationist rhetoric of the G.O.P., coming not from some radical fringe but from the party's leaders." Krugman singled out John Boehner (now House speaker), the unnamed "chairman" of the "Republican National Committee" (Michael Steele), and of course Sarah Palin (for her "map literally putting Democratic lawmakers in the cross hairs of a rifle sight"). (6)
What, then, is 'eliminationist rhetoric'? Michael Moynihan of Reason magazine tells us:
If your dictionary is unfamiliar with the word eliminationist, that's because of the term's recent vintage, coined in 1996 by Harvard political scientist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. In his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Goldhagen argued that far from being bullied and terrorized into allowing its government to commit genocide in their name, most Germans were imbued with an eliminationist hatred of Jews -- i.e., a desire that Jews be eliminated from Aryan society -- which transitioned smoothly into an exterminationist orgy of violence. (7) [italics in original]
Blogger Stuart Schneiderman is blunter: "'Eliminationist' is not an innocent word. It has a context, and within its context, it is code for: Nazi.... It refers to the Nazi propaganda that paved the way for the Holocaust." (8)
In his 2009 volume Genocide and Fascism: The Eliminationist Drive in Fascist Europe, Aristotle Kallis
distinguishes between four stages of eliminationism: the construction of difference between 'us' and 'them', the conclusion that the 'others' are threatening the community, the identification of certain attributes with a physical person and the out-group representing it, and the turn to physical elimination as a desirable solution....
In Europe, the 'eliminationist drive' was rooted in modern society and a radicalized ultra-nationalism. The Holocaust, put into practice by 'ordinary Germans' and supported by native collaborators, for example by underground militias and local state administration, marked the peak of this eliminationism. (9)
Moynihan, who searched the Times last March for uses of the term, reported that: "Of the 40 references to "eliminationism" in the Times archive, all but one refer to the destruction of European Jewry. The sole standout is Krugman, who, as we have seen, is referencing the Republican Party's opposition to health care legislation." (7)
So there we have it. 'Eliminationist rhetoric' means Nazi rhetoric, those accused of using it (Tea Party members and Republican office holders) are being called neo-Nazis, and their agenda is being claimed to be the destruction of Jewry. Says Schneiderman: "By using the word, Paul Krugman is telling us that he sees himself as waging war against a political movement that represents the reincarnation of the Third Reich." (8)
That does explain why Michele Bachmann was named by Krugman (this January) while Michael Steele was not (last March). As an African-American, Steele does not fit neatly into the Republicans-are-the-new-Nazis paradigm. On the other hand, with her Germanic name (even if only by marriage), Bachmann can be slotted in easily.
One wonders, though, how well Bachmann's actual rhetoric fits the paradigm. So let us look at the full quotation from which Krugman pulled those three words ("armed and dangerous"), which turns out to be from a radio promotion Bachmann did for a seminar:
But you can get all the latest information on this event, this ... a must go to event with this Chris Horner. People will learn ... it will be fascinating. We met with Chris Horner last week, 20 members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people we the people are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that's why I want everyone to come out and hear. So go to bachmann.house.gov and you can get all the information. (10) [stress added]
So: in Krugman's world, Michele Bachmann plans to incite a new Holocaust by hosting seminars on cap and trade legislation? .
Writes James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal,
if Krugman had said the words "armed and dangerous" were ill-chosen, we would have agreed. If he had said they were irresponsible, that would be a legitimate opinion, albeit one we would be inclined to discount as partisan. But that is not what he said. Krugman, who recreationally burns politicians in effigy, described Bachmann's comment as "eliminationist rhetoric." That is flatly fraudulent.
If the broader claim that the "rhetoric" of Republican politicians and the nonliberal media was to blame for last Saturday's act of mass murder is true, why can't it be presented without false factual assertions? Krugman's little lie undermines the big lie he and his newspaper are attempting to purvey. (11)
The question has to be asked: Is Krugman deliberately lying? Or does he believe his own poisonous, us-vs.-them rhetoric? The first alternative is disturbing, but the second is equally so. As Schneiderman puts it:
You have to start thinking that Krugman seems to be living in an alternative universe, a universe where the Gestapo is coming to get him, where Neo-Nazi Republicans are running extermination camps like Gitmo, and where the Tea Party is rife with anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli fervor.
You might want to say that none of it is true, and that the Tea Party is rife with pro-Israeli sentiment. Where the vast majority of Israelis thought that George Bush was a great friend of their nation, the vast majority today believe that Barack Obama sides with the Palestinians.
Again, these are mere facts. They do not carry weight when placed next to Krugman's alternative universe. (8)
Factual or not, Krugman's use of the term 'eliminationist rhetoric' sends a clear message to the Jewish readers of his column that the Tea Partiers and the Republicans are neo-Nazis bent on a new Shoah, while leaving most of the goyim blissfully unaware of that subtext. And now, with Krugman's new no-Nazi-references rule for his comments section, that cannot even be explained to the goyim reading his column.
---
Sources:
Photo:Paul Krugman at the 2010 Brooklyn Book Festival, Sep. 12, 2010. Photo by David Shankbone. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-3.0) License. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_Krugman_2_BBF_2010_Shankbone.jpg
(1) Paul Krugman, "Notes to Commenters", Jan. 11, 2010. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/notes-to-commenters/
(2) Ron Kampeas, "Paul Krugman’s no Nazi rule", Capital J, JTA, Jan. 11, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2010. http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2011/01/11/2742507/paul-krugmans-no-nazi-rule
(10) Dave Evers, "The Art of the Factual Lie", Fish Fear Me, Mar. 23, 2009. Web, Jan. 13, 2011. http://fishfearme.blogs.com/fish_fear_me/2009/03/the-art-of-the-factual-lie.html
(11) James Taranto, "Big Lies and Little Ones," Wall Street Journal, Jan. 12, 2010. Web, Jan. 13, 2010. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704803604576077892006683586.html
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Posted By: Bill Gee
Date: January 14, 2011 07:30:29 AM
Nice work - well researched and nicely balanced. There are some who believe that the Tea Party's alliance with the more radical arm of the Conservative movement could lead to the rise of a fascist state, but I am more of the opinion that their alliance with that element will eventually lead to its downfall.
Case-in-point - Political historians attribute The Reform Party's (1996-2000) downfall to its nomination of ultra-conservative, Pat Buchanan in the 2000 Presidential race. Many mainstream Republicans, mostly in "Blue" and "Battleground" states, are already fearing the same "moderate backlash" that killed that short-lived Party, so they've started to work on alienating themselves from the Tea Party as much as they can without losing the votes of their base.
The next day, Krugman returned to the same theme, writing: "I remembered the upsurge in political hatred after Bill Clinton's election in 1992 -- an upsurge that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. And you could see, just by watching the crowds at McCain-Palin rallies, that it was ready to happen again." (5) In that second column, Krugman introduced a new villain -- Congressman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) -- and a new phrase, 'eliminationist rhetoric':
