Monday, August 13, 2018

A thorough Dinesh D'Souza takedown

Gee, David Frum gives a good history of D'Souza's decline in this piece at The Atlantic.    He includes a link to historian Kevin Kruse, who uses his twitter feed to set out very detailed corrections to D'Souza's ridiculously inaccurate historical claims.

It would seem that D'Souza is largely behind one of the most successful wingnut memes (at least, in the minds of bubble world wingnuts) about the Nazi Party being really Left wing and a forerunner to today's Democrats.    I find the popularity of that one particularly hard to credit, but as Greg Jericho said last weekend,  denial of climate change has become a "crossing the Rubicon"  for wingnut conservatives into the world where anything is believable, as long as it is told to them by a member of their own tribe.  (The tribe that gaslite themselves, using the modern technology that was meant to open people's minds, but has had the opposite effect for so many.)

I liked this part of Frum's article in particular:
There is obviously much for a conservative to criticize in the Obama record at home and abroad. Unlike Bill Clinton, who in many ways ratified the legacy of Ronald Reagan, Obama repudiated it. Yet an annoying thing for those who disliked Obama’s politics: He is at the same time a genuinely high-quality personality—intelligent, considerate, dignified, and self-disciplined. Those who hated him were deprived of any rational basis to despise him. Lacking a rational basis, they reverted to irrationality instead.

Which is how the Dinesh D’Souza who in 1995 proclaimed “the end of racism” in America could react to a humorous 2015 photograph of Obama playing with a selfie stick: “YOU CAN TAKE THE BOY OUT OF THE GHETTO … Watch this vulgar man show his stuff, while America cowers in embarrassment.”   

Even as D’Souza published books attributing all American racism to “the Democrats,” his own writing seemed gripped by an ever less controlled and concealed racial animus.



6 comments:

not trampis said...

Lets call it the Kates syndrome only in this instance he actually had a decent academic reputation

Jason Soon said...

Umm I don't know exactly what he says, and comparing them to the Democrats goes too far but Nazi was short for National Socialist Workingmen's party. They were an anti-capitalist group originally, big business being synonymous with Jews in their eyes. When Hitler took it over the original socialists were sidelined and Goering who was a war hero had to be brought in to reassure the businessmen but yes it is fair to regard it as essentially of the Left more than of the Right

not trampis said...

Soony close but no cigar. Strasser more influential which is why Hitler had him killed in the night of the long knives.

Pseudoerasmus demolished the myth the nazis were left wing. for a start profits as a % of GDP rose to almost record levels. They also indulged in privatisaion which i have written about
If only Soony read more!!

Steve said...

Jason, I don't want to get in the middle of a dispute between you and Homer about it, but your argument at least allows for nuance (although I would say it seems to rely more on where the Party started rather than where it ended up). Nuance is fine: I think that it's obvious that Nazism came out of a hotbed of European ideology and turmoil and wasn't "pure" on a simple Left/Right scale that's oversimplified in the first place.

But the gross over-simplification of Nazism and socialism for political demonisation purposes that D'Souza engages in has been adopted not by the equivalent of young, stupid Leftists who like to call anyone a "fascist", but by older voters and politicians who were supposed to have more sense.

John said...

Jason,


Last week I was thinking about the Left-Right spectrum and came to the conclusion that attempting to identify Nazis as left wing or the "extreme right" as conservatives\right wing misses the point. They are first and foremost assholes who adopt positions to garner more power rather than operating with any coherent perspective. They may appear to be more Left or Right but the fact that they adopt some positions of the Left or Right does not mean they should be measured on that spectrum. So my position is like Steve's, these groups stand alone and don't belong on that spectrum.

not trampis said...

look up Nazi political economy on his or my blog. comments are good as well.