“This guy, is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right."
Welp, guess it’s time for another round of “Is he lying, or is he just ignorant?” Both seem equally plausible here: Goldberg-style “liberals are the real fascists” arguments are in vogue right now on the right, but on the other hand this isn’t any greater of a spin than Limbaugh has knowingly put on issues before. Will the average dittohead realize that Von Brunn was criticizing Bush and the Republicans from the right, not from the left? He was disappointed that Republican Party racism knows some bounds, and that their ardent support of the Israeli military (in his opinion) benefits Jews.
Many of the same conservative pundits that howled with outrage when they saw the DHS report warning about the possibility of right-wing extremists engaging in acts of terrorism are now trying to reconcile their yowling with a string of examples of right-wing extremists engaging in acts of terrorism. Limbaugh is taking a rather unimaginative route with this one- remember, he and his peers also claim that Hitler was a leftist (because he was a member of the National Socialist party, and apparently names trump literally everything else). What does reality say about Von Brunn’s record?
To start with the most obvious one, he was a white supremacist who decried multiracial America. His user page on Wikipedia mentions that he said that “Marxism-Multiculturalism-Judaism is the Enemy of Mankind.” The Guardian reports that “Von Brunn was a member of the American Friends of the British National Party, a group that raised funds in the United States for the far-right and whites-only British National Party.” Wow, really sounds like a leftist to me! Perhaps the most damning evidence is right here, though: When his articles were reposted on Free Republic (funny how this site keeps coming up, huh?) they were met with glowing praise and hundreds of overwhelmingly positive responses.
It should go without saying that the vast majority of Republicans don’t support terrorism. It’s baffling that conservative pundits refuse to admit that conditions are ripe for a surge in right-wing extremism, however, and going out on a limb like this to try to pin it on the left is pretty pathetic. Clearly Limbaugh has very little respect for his listeners- feeding them something so blatantly untrue even by his own standards is pretty shocking. In case it’s somehow unclear, I choose “lying” as my answer for this round of the Limbaugh game. What do you think?
What's always amazed me is how Goldberg managed to write an entire book on the premise of all the fascists through history were really liberals.
ReplyDeleteIt kind of reminds me of the class in college with Sahar shutting down the person who based their entire report on the how the communists and fascists in Europe were really on the same team ideology wise.
That was a lazy student who based their report on what he'd heard about WWII. Jonah Goldberg is a "serious writer" who gets major book deals.
(sigh)
@JJ Maybe Jonah Goldberg was once a lazy student. I think the real irony will be when that lazy student you spoke of gets a book deal before you do.
ReplyDelete