Quotulatiousness

January 24, 2020

“Sorry, Boomers. Just because you’ve been told your entire lives that you’re killing the planet, that doesn’t mean it’s true”

Filed under: History, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Talk about a golden oldie! Does anyone else remember the portentious “Doomsday Clock”? It was devised shortly after WW2 as a handy visual and rhetorical prop for various unilateral disarmament, Soviet agitprop, and general anti-Western civilization groups to use. It’s apparently still being used to pretend we’re facing yet another potentially world-ending crisis:

Remember the Doomsday Clock? It’s a symbolic clock created by a group of scientists in the 1940s, supposedly indicating how close the human race is getting to Armageddon. Originally the clock was set to seven minutes to midnight, and when the clock strikes 12, we’re all dead. That’s the idea, anyway. This corny propaganda tool reached its pop-culture zenith in the ’80s, when everybody from Midnight Oil and Iron Maiden and Sting to DC Comics’ Watchmen were predicting catastrophe by referencing the Doomsday Clock. People love to be scared about the end of the world, and a lot of artists made a lot of money by exploiting that. Nobody ever lost a buck fearmongering.

But you’re reading this right now, which means we’re all still here. Doomsday hasn’t come. So of course, that must mean … it’s just that much closer!

[…]

And this means as much as it’s meant for the past 70-odd years: nothing. Real clocks are instruments of science; the Doomsday Clock is an instrument of the arbitrary whims of some scientists. It might as well be the Doomsday Dartboard. Do you really think we’re any closer to planetary doom than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Chernobyl disaster, or the premiere of MTV’s The Real World? You’ve got all those brainiacs gathered in one place, and not one of them has read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”

We scoff at Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite and other doomsday cult leaders, but at least they had the courage of their convictions. If these scientists really believe we’re all doomed, why are they sticking around? If Al Gore actually believes all hope is lost, why is he still living in huge mansions and jetting off to Davos? As the great Glenn Reynolds says: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when the people who say it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.”

December 31, 2019

QotD: Canadian journalism

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… a Canadian Journalist’s main job is to smooth over any rough spots and shush away worries as the Liberal government plunders the public purse to pay for technocratic solutions to problems we didn’t know we had while adopting a laissez-faire attitude to the problems we do have. If the Opposition has a point, it falls to a Canadian Journalist to correct the record and say that, well, actually, no they don’t.

Josh Lieblein, “Hack or Flack: Aaron Wherry Edition”, Raving Canuck, 2017-11-29.

December 11, 2019

Franco-Prussian War | Animated History

Filed under: France, Germany, History, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The Armchair Historian
Published 4 Feb 2018

What was the Franco Prussian War?

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@ArmchairHist

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Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/event/Fran…
http://francoprussianwar.com/
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http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/e…
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/hist…
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Music: Music: Antonio Salieri: “Twenty six variations on La Folia de Spagna“

December 4, 2019

The British Blitz Spirit is a Myth – WW2 – War Against Humanity 005

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

World War Two
Published 3 Dec 2019

Strategic bombing was used to destroy the popular support for their governments war effort, and the British boosted that their resistance to bombing was an unique trait. But both are false, based on lies and propaganda.

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Hosted by: Spartacus Olsson
Written by: Joram Appel and Francis van Berkel
Produced and Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel and Joram Appel
Edited by: Karolina Dołega

Thumbnail Colorization by:
– Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/

Colorizations by:
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/

Sources:
– Imperial War Museum: D2168, D1623, D2956, 36206, D1587, D2154, D2157, HU36143, HU 36199
– Deutsche Fotothek, 0000436
– Noun Project: Natural Disasters 1674928 By Claudia Revalina, ID
noun_prisoner 63221 By carlotta zampini, IT, Bomb by P Thanga Vignesh
– Toni Frissell, Abandoned boy, London, 1945
– Battle of Britain, film from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Archive by Screenocean/Reuters https://www.screenocean.com.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

World War Two
7 hours ago (edited)
Having spoken to many British people while researching this episode, I realised that many in the United Kingdom still grow up with the idea that the perseverance in the face of constant bombing was something uniquely British, and that the so-called “Blitz Spirit” caused people to proudly face Hitlers bombs and transcend class-differences, and that bombing actually boosted their morale. However, research – half of which was done by Francis who is from Britain as well, shows that this idea is mainly based on propaganda. Furthermore, it is still considered controversial to doubt Churchill’s war cabinet’s policy of mass bombing German cities to force them out of the war. However, the effectiveness of this too has been proven to be based on falsehoods and lies. The true effectiveness of strategic bombing was already known to Churchill’s advisors during the war. Feel free to enter discussion about this in the comment section, but keep it civil and back up your arguments with examples and sources wherever possible.

Cheers,
Joram

December 3, 2019

“Useful idiots” during the Cold War

Filed under: Economics, History, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Robert Reilly reviews Judgement in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity by Vladimir Bukovsky, which has recently been republished in English:

Krushchev, Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders review the Revolution parade in Red Square, 1962.
LIFE magazine photo by Stan Wayman.

Judgment In Moscow contains autobiographical elements but is principally concerned with providing and analyzing documentary evidence for what should have been the USSR equivalent of what the Nuremberg Trials had been for Nazi Germany. In 1991, Bukovsky returned to the Soviet Union to take part in the “trial of the communist party” that was held in 1992. In an audacious move the Communist Party had sued then-President Boris Yeltsin to get its property back. To prepare a defense, Yeltsin ordered that the secret Central Committee archives be opened to Bukovsky. The order was obeyed, but only partially and for a short time. The trial fizzled, but Bukovsky, with the aid of a hand-held scanner, was able to gather many thousands of pages of top-secret Central Committee and Politburo documents and get them out of Russia. Some of these key documents are what we have in this priceless book. They are eye-opening.

During the Cold War, we had to speculate as to why, for instance, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and how the decision was made. Now we know for certain. Bukovsky provides the minutes of the Politburo meetings in which the invasion was decided. The Reagan administration was highly skeptical of détente and was therefore criticized for war-mongering. The skepticism was well-placed because, as the documents reveal, détente was simply a façade for advancing Soviet power and manipulating Western publics and governments against the Reagan plan to place Pershing IIs and cruise missiles in Europe to defend it against burgeoning Soviet power, including the SS-20s.

The revelations of the extent to which the Soviet Union manipulated the “peace” movement in the West should be an embarrassment to its participants, who may have been too naïve at the time to know how they were being used. Others, of course, acceded to being used, or even cravenly sought to be used. The names of some of these useful idiots are in the documents.

Another thing these documents disclose, much to the embarrassment of many American Sovietologists, is that there were no “hawks” and “doves” in the Kremlin — a premise on which they had banked their academic careers. The unanimity of the Politburo decisions reveals that the senior Soviet leaders were all of one stripe. It was to their advantage to create the impression that there were hawks and doves so that they could game the policies of Western governments and the opinions of its publics. For instance, providing Western credits to the USSR — it was thought by many so-called Russian experts in the West — would strengthen the doves in the Kremlin, whereas denying credits would empower the hawks. By buying this line of thought, the West was induced to keep the Soviet Union on life-support for more than a decade past what would have been its earlier collapse, according to Bukovsky.

No one was a greater master of this deception than Mikael Gorbachev. The minutes from many Politburo meetings chaired by Gorbachev show that glasnost and perestroika were façades constructed to ensure the continued existence of the Soviet Union through even more Western subsidies. And it worked to the extent that credits and subsidies ballooned under the Western illusion that Gorbachev had to be supported to ensure his success — ignorant of the fact that Gorbachev conceived of success in ways inimical to Western freedom.

H/T to Blazing Cat Fur for the link.

November 26, 2019

QotD: The “Glorious Revolution” of 1688

Filed under: Britain, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

William of Orange masterminds a coup d’état known here as the “Glorious Revolution” (1688), and installs himself as King of England. My teachers made it sound as if the English elite suddenly decided one day that they wanted a different king, found William of Orange in a mail order catalogue, liked the look of him and had him delivered the next day, in a state of great amazement and gratitude. In fact, William bossed the entire operation, albeit with plenty of English support. It is worth noting that William achieved a successful cross-Channel invasion of England, so all that stuff about England not having been invaded since 1066 is quite wrong.

Brian Micklethwait, “Navigating individuals”, Samizdata, 2004-10-04.

November 24, 2019

QotD: The persistence of culture

Filed under: Education, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The trick to this is not only to give [the people] a fake history. Every tinpot dictator does that. The trick is to give them a fake history starting in kindergarten, that is painted in primary hues and comic-book complexity. There are good guys (the oligarchs who would design society to be more fair) and bad guys (usually capitalists and greedy, they want to “exploit” everyone, which only works if you believe in fixed pie economics and that everyone gets a share at birth, an economic idea so stupid you have to be indoctrinated from birth to believe it.) And everything is explained by “laws” and top down action. Though this history talks about mass movements, and “the people” they don’t actually take THE PEOPLE into account, not with any depth and complexity. The people in this narrative, the entire culture, in fact, is moldable, like butter to the sculpting knife of the powerful.

Societies don’t work that way. Culture doesn’t work that way. In fact culture is so persistent, so stubborn, it leads people to think it’s genetic. (It’s not. A baby taken at birth to another culture will not behave as his culture of origin.) It changes, sure, through invasions and take overs, but so slowly that bits of older cultures and ideas stay embedded in the new culture. It has been noted that the communist rulers of Russia partook a good bit of the Tsarist regime, because the culture of the people was the same and that came through. (They just dialed up the atrocities and lowered the functionality because their ideology was dysfunctional. They blame their failure on Russia itself, but considering how communism does around the world, I’ll say to the extent countries survive it’s because of the underlying culture.)

Sarah Hoyt, “A Generation With No Past”, According to Hoyt, 2017-10-19.

November 22, 2019

To think we used to joke about environmentalism as a substitute religion…

Filed under: Environment, Politics, Religion, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

… it’s long since stopped being a joke and become all but the state religion, as Barbara Kay notes on the tenth anniversary of “climategate”:

Rayne pointed out that a cursory perusal of the Environment Canada Adjusted and Homogenized Canadian Climate Data database would illustrate that the daily summer maximum temperatures in Toronto showed no upward trend whatsoever. She further noted that a database for the WMO-certified Pearson Airport site demonstrated there was “absolutely no temporal correlation” for extreme July or August maximum temperatures between 1938 (when the database was initiated) and 2012.

In fact, there was no source in Canada then — and still isn’t — from which CAP could have plucked that ludicrous figure. University of Guelph economics professor Ross McKitrick had at that time just created his invaluable site, yourenvironment.ca, which sets out a complete temporal record of officially recorded air and pollution levels everywhere in Canada. The data for the site is culled from provincial environment and natural resources ministries, or from Environment Canada. Over many decades, no matter where you look in Canada, the graph trends remain resolutely horizontal with tiny upward and downward spikes indicating extreme weather blips.

Every layperson who identifies as an alarmism skeptic has his or her own pivotal moment, and that idiotic “news” story in the Globe was mine. When reporters and editors act like deer in the headlights in the reception and dissemination of demonstrably impossible “information,” it’s clear evidence that they have been gripped by a socially contagious virus. These are the people who in the 19th century would have believed tulip bulb prices were never going to peak, even if every single family on the planet had enough tulip bulbs to fill a half-acre garden.

The late writer Michael Crichton, author of the best-selling 2004 techno-thriller, State of Alarm, was one of the first independent students of environmentalism to define environmentalism as a “religion,” and to observe that its principal characteristic was to cater to the state of alarm he believed is an inherent human need. Its dogmatists act as though they have been appointed Morals Police. And they do not take kindly to dissent.

Al Gore, whose 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth was received with uncritical awe, (one of my friends, normally very brainy, described it as a “religious experience”) was later found by a UK court to contain “nine key scientific errors.” It was deemed rife with “serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush” and the judge ruled that the “apocalyptic vision” presented made it not an impartial scientific analysis, but a “political film.” He continues to hector the world as though that never happened from the depths of a home whose electricity kilowatt hours exceed twenty times the national average.

In 2007, environmental guru David Suzuki stormed out of a Toronto radio station interview when the host suggested global warming was not yet a “totally settled issue.” The incident revealed the mindset of the enviro-ayatollahs. (We see its 16-year-old version in little Pied Piper leader of the Children’s Crusade Greta “how-dare-you” Thunberg.) Suzuki perceived the radio host as a blasphemer, unworthy of his rational rebuttal. Suzuki actually felt enviro-infidels should be literally suppressed, and even opined that politicians who aren’t on board with his views should go to prison. You’d think a guy that far down the rabbit hole would be minding his own enviro P’s and Q’s, but like Al Gore, his real estate portfolio is humongous and his carbon footprint immense.

November 20, 2019

The Sinking of the Royal Oak

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Eoin MacFreeman
Published 19 Sep 2014

STV and History channel documentary to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Royal Oak at Scapa Flow in Scotland. With harrowing eye witness accounts from survivors. Narrated by oor Alex Norton. We will remember them.

On 14 October 1939, Royal Oak was anchored at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, when she was torpedoed by the German submarine U-47. Of Royal Oak‘s complement of 1,234 men and boys, 833 were killed that night or died later of their wounds. The loss of the old ship – the first of the five Royal Navy battleships and battlecruisers sunk in the Second World War – did little to affect the numerical superiority enjoyed by the British navy and its allies, but the sinking had considerable effect on wartime morale. The raid made an immediate celebrity and war hero out of the U-boat commander, Günther Prien, who became the first German submarine officer to be awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. Before the sinking of Royal Oak, the Royal Navy had considered the naval base at Scapa Flow impregnable to submarine attack, and U-47‘s raid demonstrated that the German navy was capable of bringing the war to British home waters. The shock resulted in rapid changes to dockland security and the construction of the Churchill Barriers around Scapa Flow.

November 6, 2019

QotD: “Fake news” is nothing new

Filed under: Books, History, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… the basic ideas of “alternative facts” and “fake news” — our updated, revved-up forms of disinformation — were not foreign to Orwell. Working at the BBC as a news producer — a fancy term for war propagandist — he heard some of the Axis powers’ propaganda as well as that of his own side (even if he kept his own hands fairly clean). He justifiably feared that the very concept of objective truth was fading from the modern world. Winston Smith’s job at the Ministry of Truth is to rewrite or “rectify” history, so that it follows the current party line, whatever it may be at that moment.

Orwell himself saw all this happen when he read Catalan newspapers as well as British ones during the Spanish Civil War, several years before joining the BBC. Condemning press distortions, above all how several English newspapers reported the war, he wrote: “I saw great battles where there had been no fighting and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed … I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.'” Given the gridlock in American politics, and the never-ending verbal warfare between news outlets on the Right such as Fox News and on the Left such as MSNBC, Orwell appears all too accurate in his “predictions.”

One of the features of the world of Oceania reflecting Orwell’s prescience is its official language, Newspeak, an argot resembling a kind of Morse code that satirizes advertising norms, political jargon, and government bureaucratese. The purpose of Newspeak is to limit thought, on the view that “you can’t think what you lack the words for.” Ultimately, this impoverished language seeks to narrow and control human thought. (Does Twitter represent a step in that direction?) Purged of all nuance and subtlety, denuded of variety, and reduced to a few hundred simple words, Newspeak ultimately promises to render all independent thought (or “thoughtcrime”) impossible. If it cannot be expressed in language, it cannot be thought. And anything can fill the vacuum, such as 2 + 2 = 5. That is the equation — a perfect example of “doublethink” — which O’Brien indoctrinates Winston to accept in Room 101 and which marks the final step of the latter’s brainwashing. As the Party defines it, “doublethink” consists in holding “two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” In 2018, Trump’s lead lawyer, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, declared in a TV interview: “Truth isn’t truth.” A few months later, a talking head defended a critical news report on the grounds that, just because it is “not accurate doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

It testifies both to the brilliance of Orwell’s vision and to the bane of our times that Nineteen Eighty-Four retains so much relevance.

John Rodden and John Rossi, “George Orwell Warned Us, But Was Anyone Listening?”, The American Conservative, 2019-10-02.

November 3, 2019

QotD: The theocratic Anabaptist State of Münster

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A crucial part of the Anabaptist reign of terror was their decision, again prefiguring that of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, to abolish all private ownership of money. With no money to purchase any good, the population became slavishly dependent on handouts or rations from the power elite. Accordingly, Matthys, Rothmann, and the rest launched a propaganda campaign that it was un-Christian to own money privately; and that all money should be held “in common,” which in practice meant that all money whatsoever must be handed over to Matthys and his ruling clique…

After two months of unremitting propaganda, combined with threats and terror against those who disobeyed, the private ownership of money was effectively abolished in Münster. The government seized all the money and used it to buy goods or hire workers from the outside world. Wages were doled out in kind by the only employer: the theocratic Anabaptist State.

Food was confiscated from private homes, and rationed according to the will of government deacons. Also, to accommodate the host of immigrants, all private homes were effectively communized, with everyone permitted to quarter themselves everywhere; it was now illegal to close, let alone lock, one’s doors. Compulsory communal dining halls were established, where people ate together to the readings from the Old Testament.

The compulsory communism and reign of terror was carried out in the name of community and Christian “love.” This communization was considered the first giant step toward egalitarian communism, where, as Rothmann put it, “all things were to be in common, there was to be no private property and nobody was to do any more work, but simply trust in God.” Somehow, the workless part never seemed to arrive.

[…]

Totalitarianism in Münster was now complete. Death was now the punishment for virtually every independent act. Capital punishment was decreed for the high crimes of murder, theft, lying, avarice, and quarrelling. Death was also decreed for every conceivable kind of insubordination: the young against the parents, wives against their husbands, and, of course, anyone at all against the chosen representative of God on earth, the government of Münster. Bernt Knipperdollinck was appointed high executioner to enforce the decrees.

The only aspect of life previously left untouched was sex, and this deficiency was now made up. The only sexual relation now permitted by the Bockelson regime was marriage between two Anabaptists. Sex in any other form, including marriage with one of the “godless,” was a capital crime.

But soon Bockelson went beyond this rather old-fashioned credo, and decided to enforce compulsory polygamy in Münster. Since many of the expellees had left their wives and daughters behind, Münster now had three times as many marriageable women as men, so that polygamy had become technically feasible. Bockelson convinced the other, rather startled preachers by citing polygamy among the patriarchs of Israel, reinforcing this method of persuasion by threatening any dissenters with death.

Compulsory polygamy was a bit much for many of the Münsterites, who launched a rebellion in protest. The rebellion, however, was quickly crushed and most of the rebels put to death […]

The rest of the male population also began to take enthusiastically to the new decree. Many of the women reacted differently, however, and so the Elders passed a law ordering compulsory marriage for every woman under (and presumably also over) a certain age, which usually meant becoming a compulsory third or fourth wife.

Since marriage among the godless was not only invalid but also illegal, the wives of the expellees became fair game, and they were forced to “marry” good Anabaptists. Refusal of the women to comply with the new law was punishable, of course, with death, and a number of women were actually executed as a result.

Murray N. Rothbard, “Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist”, Mises Institute, 2009-10-09.

November 2, 2019

When entertainment morphs into propaganda

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

One of the key elements aiding Hitler and the NSDAP to take power and stay in power in Germany in the 1930s was the constant, ongoing propaganda campaign orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels. Hitler and the Nazi party were lauded as the perfect Germanic solution to every problem and Jews, socialists, homosexuals, and other undesireable elements were belittled and used as targets of hate. A big part of Goebbels’ propaganda revolved around one idea, the “Big Lie”:

Hitler, Göring, Goebbels and Hess.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

By suppressing competing voices and having all the methods of reaching the people repeating the same story, the Nazis solidified their control on power in Germany that lasted until 1945, and was only demolished by massive military effort by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the British Commonwealth. Propaganda is a very powerful tool that works distressingly well to implant and nurture evil ideas in a subject population.

Modern propagandists in the west generally don’t have the power of the state aiding them, but if they get enough of the channels of communication — especially the entertainment channels — to co-ordinate the message, the effects can be very strong:

… I perfectly understand the legitimacy of feminist concerns regarding the portrayal of women in the media as consistently demure, retiring, and subservient to men. I grant that, in most of the action/adventure movies that I saw growing up, women would typically twist an ankle or get captured and then require rescuing by the swashbuckling male hero — and I realize how galling this must have been to generations of women. And therefore, a certain correction was undoubtedly in order. But what is problematic now is the Nietzschean quality of the reaction, by which I mean, the insistence that female power has to be asserted over and against males, that there is an either/or, zero-sum conflict between men and women. It is not enough, in a word, to show women as intelligent, savvy, and good; you have to portray men as stupid, witless, and irresponsible. That this savage contrast is having an effect especially on younger men is becoming increasingly apparent.

In the midst of a “you-go-girl” feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive. If you want concrete proof of this, take a look at the statistics contrasting female and male success at the university level. And you can see the phenomenon in films such as Fight Club and The Intern. In the former, the Brad Pitt character turns to his friend and laments, “we’re thirty year old boys;” and in the latter, Robert De Niro’s classic male type tries to whip into shape a number of twenty-something male colleagues who are rumpled, unsure of themselves, without ambition — and of course under the dominance of an all conquering female.

It might be the case that, in regard to money, power, and honor, a zero-sum dynamic obtains, but it decidedly does not obtain in regard to real virtue. The truly courageous person is not threatened by another person’s courage; the truly temperate man is not intimidated by the temperance of someone else; the truly just person is not put off by the justice of a countryman; and authentic love positively rejoices in the love shown by another. And therefore, it should be altogether possible to hold up the virtue of a woman without denying virtue to a man. In point of fact, if we consult the “all conquering female” characters in films and TV, we see that they often exemplify the very worst of the traditional male qualities: aggression, suspicion, hyper-sensitivity, cruelty, etc. This is what happens when a Nietzschean framework has replaced a classical one.

My point is that it is altogether possible — and eminently desirable — to say “you go boy” with as much vigor as “you go girl.” And both the boys and the girls will be better for it.

November 1, 2019

Why All Germans Were Nazis – How Hitler Created the Third Reich | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1934 Part 1 of 4

Filed under: Germany, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

TimeGhost History
Published 31 Oct 2019

After Hitler seized power in Germany in January 1933, he rapidly transformed the Democratic Weimar Republic into a repressive, totalitarian and racist state. In 1934, Germany became Nazi Germany.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Subscribe to our World War Two series: https://www.youtube.com/c/worldwartwo…

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson and Francis van Berkel
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Francis van Berkel and Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Wieke Kapteijns
Sound design: Marek Kamiński

Image sources: Bundesarchiv, Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-15282A / Georg Pahl, Heinz Bergschicker Deutsche Chronik 1933-1945 – Ein Zeitbild der faschistischen Diktatur

Icons from the Noun Project: Police by IconTrack, soldier by Simon Child, police man by Gregor Cresnar, hello by Universal Icons.

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

Spartacus Olsson
2 hours ago
Now, this episode explains the measures that the Nazis used to gain control over the German people. It is not an attempt to justify, or be apologetic of the responsibility for the horrors committed during the Nazi regime. But it is also not a blanket condemnation of Germans. What happened in Germany starting in 1933 should serve us all as a warning to what can happen when you let loose authoritarian power, normalize lies as an acceptable part of political discourse, and make mainstream the disregard of basic human values. We should all think of that although the Nazis were especially efficient in their implementation of an authoritarian system, they are by far not the only ones that have succeeded in seducing whole a nation into blind hatred and acceptance of the suffering and death of others to forward an ideology. We should remember that freedom and democracy is essential, but also that words matters. The beginning of oppression starts with an endless stream of lies that confuse public discourse to the point that facts don’t matter anymore and truth becomes fiction. This video shows us what can happen next. Our mantra as a channel is to focus on the facts, not our opinions, not our ‘truth’ — just the facts m’am — and that is what we have presented here, for better or worse.

October 11, 2019

Germany Never Elected Hitler | BETWEEN 2 WARS I 1933 Part 1 of 3

Filed under: Germany, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TimeGhost History
Published 10 Oct 2019

Hitlers rise to power, also known as the Machtergreifung, was riddled with physical and mental manipulation, political games and an exploitation of the Democratic system. This episode follows the events leading up to the Nazi takeover of Germany.

Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory

Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Spartacus Olsson
Edited by: Daniel Weiss
Sound design: Iryna Dulka

image source:
Deutsche Bundesarchiv

A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.

From the comments:

Spartacus Olsson
18 minutes ago
Hi, for those of you that don’t know me yet, I’m the lead author of this series and the author of this episode. Now, as you will, or have just seen, this episode covers an event of earth-shattering magnitude in human history. An event that is often misunderstood and glossed over. The reason for that is not that there is anything controversial, or stupendously new with what we’re documenting here. The simple fact is that its just too detailed and too complicated to cover in general history studies, especially in secondary school. The level we get into here is usually only covered in specialized lectures at college or university level. Tons and tons of books have been written on the topic and yet, many misconceptions remain. It was my goal to dispel some of the many misunderstandings that abound about how Hitler finally seized power. One of the chief myths is that Hitler was elected. As the video shows, that is not what happened. So you might ask yourself; how come the vast majority of Germans finally rallied behind him? Because they did, there’s no question. But you see, that happens after he seizes power and it will be the topic of our next episode on Germany that covers the Nazi consolidation of power.

It was also my goal to cast some more light on a topic that has been weaponized in political debate in recent years: the level of Socialism in the German National Socialist Worker’s Party. I hope that I have laid the latter one to rest, but I fear that the comment section will still be full of politically biased nonsense on this topic. It’s quite tiring for our community managers to answer that misrepresenting alt-right trope over and over again. And we won’t stop you from posting it, even if it’s nonsense. Instead we will try to patiently answer, but think fifteen times about posting ‘Nazis were Socialists, duh!’ or “Dude, Nazis are left-wing, duh!’ out of respect for us. What we will not tolerate is that you post links to any of the clown videos by non-historians that try to perpetuate that myth. We are a team of actual historians. We have no interest in ‘pinning’ Naziism on anyone. We also have no interest in ‘pinning’ Socialism on anyone. Nor should you, if you have any interest whatsoever in understanding history. Revolutionary Socialism, Communism, Fascism and Nazism have all brought down a lot of suffering on humanity – if we are supporters of freedom and democracy we need to learn from that. Throwing them all in one bucket and dumping it on our perceived political opponents is not learning, it’s obfuscation, confusion, and destruction of education. So respect humanity, respect history and don’t take part in that kind of nonsense.

October 2, 2019

QotD: Senator Joe McCarthy

Filed under: Books, History, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’ve been reading M Stanton Evans’s excellent and scholarly Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies (published some 12 years ago) and marveling at the sheer extent of a shameless campaign of vilification, lies and sabotage to which McCarthy was subjected both during his brief public career as America’s number one “Red hunter” and ever afterwards, to the obvious extent that his name has become synonymous with a sinister and unprincipled persecution akin to witch trails. Ann Coulter has called Evans’s 600-plus pages tome, “the greatest book since the Bible”, and while I probably wouldn’t go to such an extent of praise, this book must surely rank as one of the best revisionist histories of recent times.

Pretty early on in the reading, it has occurred to me that the collusion between Democrat politicians, government departments and agencies, and liberal press to cover up the official sins of commission and omission, derail McCarthy’s investigations thereof, blacken his name, and destroy him personally and politically runs according to a very familiar script. It’s essentially what the progressive political and cultural elites have done to any number of conservative politicians and activists seen as a threat to their power and reputation. Donald Trump is merely the latest in a long and distinguished line.

To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Marc Antony, I came here not to praise Donald but to see how the left is trying to bury him. Until reading Evans’s book, I have not quite realised how similar and similarly underhand, vicious and persistent the campaign against Joe McCarthy had been. The “Swamp” is real; it was real in the 1940s and 1950s, and it is just as real now and just as committed to destroying any outside threats to its continuing position and influence. This is not a conspiracy theory; this is simply how power structures work to protect and perpetuate themselves. The viciousness is a function not just of the unshakable self-belief in one’s intellectual and moral rightness and superiority but also of a certain form of snobbery directed by the members of the “in-crowd” – what once used to be known as the Liberal or the East Coast Establishment and now more broadly, among many other names and designations, as the “coastal elites” – against outsiders who don’t share their sophisticated social, educational or professional background. The Swamp managed in the end to defeat McCarthy and turn him in the historical and popular memory into one of the great villains of American history; the book is still open on Trump’s ultimate fate and legacy. None of this is to suggest that McCarthy or Trump are flawless human beings and faultless political figures; quite the contrary. But the campaigns of destruction they are subjected to ultimately have little to do with their specific failings and mistakes. It’s a total war.

Arthur Chrenkoff, “Before there was Trump, there was Joe McCarthy”, Daily Chrenk, 2019-09-30.

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