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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Letter to the Editor of the Detroit News (letters@detnews.com)
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)
by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)
To the Editor:
Laura Bermen writes in "Paul eyes the cranky Mich. vote," Detroit News, January 3, 2003.
Paul, an obstetrician-turned-lawmaker, hates taxes, sloppy immigration policies, abortion, and the loss of the gold currency standard. His campaign rhetoric goes heavy on "freedom." He exudes a twangy "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" authenticity that college students, libertarians, Ayn Randians, and the usual suspect fringe of survivalists and neo-Nazis find appealing.
Before I learned about the media update sessions that the organized Jewish community provides to reporters to explain how they should cover the news, I used to think that Berman's sort of snide, insinuating and misleading comment was just ignorance.
Why did Berman not mention as a way of defining a baseline of comparison that we do not have to look at the "fringe" supporters of Giuliani to find reasons for concern about the Giuliani campaign. Giuliani's chief advisors are far scarier than anyone supporting Ron Paul. For example, Podhoretz uses the Goebbelsian big lie technique to promote an attack on Iran that will plunge the USA in at least 100 more years of pointless war for the sake of the State of Israel. (See The Case for Bombing Iran in the June 2007 issue of Commentary.)
Why did Berman not tell Detroit News readers what Nazism is before accusing some subgroup of Paul supporters of being Nazis?
Nazism is a form of politicized ethnic fundamentalism that combines racism, extremist organic nationalism, biological determinism, eugenics, theories of national decline through race-mixing, concepts of national revival through racial purity, social Darwinism, essentialism, and primordialism. It was particularly prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe during the WW1-WW2 inter bellum period until the end of WW2. Nazism made a brief come-back in a revival of Greater Serbianism in post-Soviet Yugoslavia.
Nazi and fascist ideologies differ. Fascism is an extremist organic nationalist revision of Marxist socialism. According to fascist theory, national revival provides the means to transcend the class conflict. Nazism and fascism can coexist. The Strasser faction of German Nazism was inclined to fascism while some forms of fascism that incorporate racist ideas often developed Nazi tendencies.
Today, Nazi ideology remains a vital, dominant and dangerous ideology only in the State of Israel. In stolen Palestine (pre-1967 Israel) and occupied Palestine, the Zionist invader population has for the last 60 years pursued a program of genociding the native population right before the eyes of the world with 80% support levels (according to American Jewish Committee statistics) among ethnic Ashkenazi Americans.
Berman fails to report such essential information while she uses guilt by alleged and tenuous association to delegitimize the candidacy of Ron Paul, who questions any US obligation to pay trillions of dollars as foreign aid to maintain the State of Israel. Because Berman is propagandizing instead of reporting, the Detroit News should fire Berman summarily and replace her with someone, who does not consciously or reflexively twist news reports for the sake of an ethnic agenda.
Sincerely yours,
Joachim Martillo
ThorsProvoni@aol.com
ThorsProvoni@aol.com
CC: Laura Berman (1-248- 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com)
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Laura Berman:
Paul eyes the cranky Mich. vote
Even if the New York Pekingese meet-up currently lists more online members than the Metro Detroiters for Ron Paul group, the Republican from Texas is investing in Michigan.
And because Michigan investors -- whether political or corporate -- are scarce of late, Paul's recent moves in Michigan are worth looking at.
Last weekend, his campaign opened a Detroit office on Telegraph Road, an event an official campaign press release indicated drew more than 200 people but an observer said attracted less than 50. Paul -- who has both ideas and principles, few of them mainstream or tepid -- sees possibilities in Michigan's cranky voter base, ready to be mobilized for the Jan. 15 primary. As it happens, just the thought of that primary is enough to make any but the most hard-core partisan cranky.
Paul's stock is rising
Given a Democratic primary that's been engineered to produce a Hillary Clinton victory and a Republican primary that's open to disaffected Democrats and independents, Paul is no longer the complete and utter longshot he appeared back in November, when only 2 percent of likely primary-voting Republicans named him as their pick.
Now, he's up to 4 percent, according to an EPIC/MRA poll, and polling 16 percent in Macomb County, where cranky (otherwise known as "independent"), party-crossing voting is a tradition.
Paul, an obstetrician-turned-lawmaker, hates taxes, sloppy immigration policies, abortion, and the loss of the gold currency standard. His campaign rhetoric goes heavy on "freedom." He exudes a twangy "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" authenticity that college students, libertarians, Ayn Randians, and the usual suspect fringe of survivalists and neo-Nazis find appealing.
Cash surge boosts bid
His promises to seal the nation's borders, end the IRS and the Department of Education and to bring home the troops from Iraq within a few months of his election comprise an ambitious collage of ideas, one backed by an unexpected surge of cash: Paul's campaign received $25 million in donations in 2007, most of it in the final quarter.
"We're flesh and blood supporters," says Scotty Boman, a Detroit college instructor and teacher, who is backing Ron Paul. "We all want more freedom and less government control."
Like other Paul followers, Boman -- a Libertarian who recently joined the Republican Party to back Paul -- says the Texas congressman is the first Republican or Democrat he's wanted to vote for since 1980.
Paul's decision to open a Detroit office bespeaks a real interest in Michigan, if not a full-scale commitment.
As of Wednesday, his new Detroit office did not have a listed telephone number.
You can reach Laura Berman at (248) 647-7221 or lberman@detnews.com.
4 comments:
Your sentence at the end of paragraph five on Greater Serbianism as a form of Naziism must be one of the most ignorant things you’ve ever written. I’m losing faith in your knowledge and senses of responsibility.
Are you objecting because you do not believe that Serbs could be Nazis just as Jewish racists generally reject the possibility of a Jewish Nazism? Or are you objecting because you have explicitly compared the literature associated with Greater Serbianism and the literature associated with German Nazism or Zionism or perhaps the Polish Endeks and concluded that these ideologies have no points of contact whatsoever? Or do you object to my short summary of the essential ideas of Nazism? I could have written more, but I had to be brief in a letter to the editor.
When I refer to Nazism, I do not mean Hollywood Nazism, which is generally depicted as something more vile than Satanism. I am discussing an ideology, whose adherents in the German case included well-respected political scientists, literary figures, sociologists, philosophers like Heidegger and many others.
Do you believe that Germans have a gene for Nazism as Goldhagen implies? To exclude Nazism as a political possibility among non-Germans would require such an hypothesis.
The component ideas of Nazism permeated the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Central and Eastern European political milieu. I have spent a lot of time in Central and Eastern Europe in the last 20 years, and I follow a lot of the major newspapers. In Central Europe I have not seen much that looks like Nazism, but Eastern Europeans including the peoples of the Balkans effectively wakened from a seven decade political hibernation with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Are you claiming that politicized ethnic fundamentalism, racism, extremist organic nationalism, biological determinism, eugenics, theories of national decline through race-mixing, concepts of national revival through racial purity, social Darwinism, essentialism, and primordialism are not found in Greater Serbian politics of the 90s independent of left or right political orientation? How about among Croats? I remember lots of accusations in Serbia that Croat politicians were Nazis. Are only Croats capable of being Nazis?
When I was working in Yugoslavia, outside of work I had nothing to do but read newspapers, watch TV or visit libraries, and those ideas seemed pervasive albeit somewhat cruder in form than what I found in the material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Are you objecting because you do not believe that Serbs could be Nazis just as Jewish racists generally reject the possibility of a Jewish Nazism?
Comment 1: No, a gratuitous and silly sentence. I can see that you never did read our article, which discusses Greater Serbia and has some interesting comparisons of the ideology of Milosevic, Tudjman and Izetbegovic.
Or are you objecting because you have explicitly compared the literature associated with Greater Serbianism and the literature associated with German Nazism or Zionism or perhaps the Polish Endeks and concluded that these ideologies have no points of contact whatsoever?
Comment 2: I have studied Serbia and Yugoslavia closely and know quite a lot about Nazism and its ideology, and find the comparison of the two by you far-fetched. Interesting also that you pick out Serbia as the Nazi-like villain when Croatia was the Nazi ally during World War II and where very powerful political factions shared Nazi ideology and practice, which was not true of Serbia.
Or do you object to my short summary of the essential ideas of Nazism? I could have written more, but I had to be brief in a letter to the editor.
When I refer to Nazism, I do not mean Hollywood Nazism, which is generally depicted as something more vile than Satanism. I am discussing an ideology, whose adherents in the German case included well-respected political scientists, literary figures, sociologists, philosophers like Heidegger and many others.
Do you believe that Germans have a gene for Nazism as Goldhagen implies? To exclude Nazism as a political possibility among non-Germans would require such an hypothesis.
The component ideas of Nazism permeated the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Central and Eastern European political milieu. I have spent a lot of time in Central and Eastern Europe in the last 20 years, and I follow a lot of the major newspapers. In Central Europe I have not seen much that looks like Nazism, but Eastern Europeans including the peoples of the Balkans effectively wakened from a seven decade political hibernation with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Are you claiming that politicized ethnic fundamentalism, racism, extremist organic nationalism, biological determinism, eugenics, theories of national decline through race-mixing, concepts of national revival through racial purity, social Darwinism, essentialism, and primordialism are not found in Greater Serbian politics of the 90s independent of left or right political orientation? How about among Croats? I remember lots of accusations in Serbia that Croat politicians were Nazis. Are only Croats capable of being Nazis?
Comment 3: Your bringing in capability is a classic straw person argument—the issue is whether this general capability was realized in fact.
When I was working in Yugoslavia, outside of work I had nothing to do but read newspapers, watch TV or visit libraries, and those ideas seemed pervasive albeit somewhat cruder in form than what I found in the material from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Comment 4: And this was just in Serbia and was expressed as a desire for a Greater Serbia?
Comment 1. I tried to get the article recommended in private mail but was unable to access it electronically or to find it in hard copy at various local university libraries.
In my experience in studying the ideological writings of Eastern European nationalism in the Slavic languages, Yiddish and Modern Israel Hebrew, they are all fairly similar, but I am always willing to be surprised.
Comment 2. Lots of people find the comparison of Zionism and German Nazism far fetched but the ideas behind both ideologies are practically identical. I think I understand the differences among the ideologies or political programs of the SNO, the SRP, and the SPS.
Milošević would probably have preferred to be the leader of a centralized Yugoslavia, but for expediency he tended to stand politically in alliance with Drašković and Šešelj.
Extremist ethnic fundamentalism was just as common among Serbs as Croats during WW2 period. The Serbs had the bad luck that German policy with regard to Yugoslavia and Serbia was formulated by Austrians, who blamed Serbs for WW1and the disastrous outcome from the standpoint of Austria. (Not that Germans of the time period would have had less animus against Serbs, but WW1 started when a Serb assassinated Austrian Archduke Ferdinand.)
Comment 3. As I remember, it was the Yugoslavian army under Serbian control that attacked Slovenia and not the reverse.
I blame Germany for most of the mess because the German foreign office effectively spread the kerosene over Yugoslavia, and, from what I saw, effectively pushed Slovenia to independence.
Possibly, German foreign policy makers had not fully thought through the new international situation following the collapse of the USSR and increasing European intergration, but Serbia lit match while Muravchik and his Zionist buddies in the US government saw an opportunity to find a Muslim population to validate Zionism. (I know it sounds really sick.)
Effectively, every group involved acted outrageously stupidly, and the Zionists were completely disgusting.
The push should have been toward European integration that would have eventually negated the various ethnic hatreds within Yugoslavia.
Someone better than Milošević might have found a solution while the American State Department was either asleep at the wheel or never understood anything -- at least that was my experience in dealing with it over ME issues.
Comment 4. In Croatia, there was nationalist television but less about historic atrocities suffered by Croats 50 years earlier. The Albanians had no television stations of their own when I was working in Kosovo, and the Bosnian television tended to emphasize the multiethnic heritage. I remember early morning Islamic programs that practically nobody watched. The Bosnyaks have not been religious for many decades, and my Sarajevan friends all fought together whether Serb, Bosnyak or Croat, to defend Sarajevo.
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