And you, who studied Italian fascism, and who studied fascism at the seat of someone who knew about it first-hand, should know better, or at least should have some class. By writing your propaganda piece here and pretending that all liberals call 43 “Bushitler” (not just some extreme liberals) and then you use your pedigree and one small work of your hero’s entire body of work to pretend that the current regimes are IslamoFascist. Please. Your professor also wrote tomes about how fascists are really latent homosexuals who have been overtly repressed. Is that the case with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Is he really just a queer who can’t get it on? Did you not see any of what other esteemed historians (William G. Welk, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Michael Parenti…) saw when studying Italian fascism? The Corporatism? The economics of both Nazi Germany and Mussolini? Or wait, maybe some fascisms are only about religion like those Romanian ones you’re talking about (who may or may not have been clerical fascists, perhaps they were just swept up in the pogrom spirit, after all the inquisition wasn’t clerical fascism was it? Or maybe antisemitism = fascism? Is that your new thesis?

One thing i can say about fascism and people using that word, Bubeleh, and that is that when you have one finger pointing at something, you have three pointing right back at yourself. And which nation privatizes the most public services? And who depresses wages? gets rid of unions? We do! (heck even salaam who was a tyrant and killed millions –mostly for us against Iran– had socialized medicine and wouldn’t dump paraplegics on skid row). Was there never an American fascist organization? Were Walt Disney and Henry Ford not fascists? Do the Islamo’s really fit this fascist model?

And what we have seen *since* WWII is that we in North America will support any tyrannical leader, so long as he’s the enemy of our enemy. Why was Rummy so chummy with Saddam when they were fighting Iran? Because he wasn’t yet a tyrant? Or because he was a useful tyrant? How many “right wind dictators” in South and Central America did we support? What happened Sept 11, 1973? Was Pinochet not a tyrant? And who helped him Michael?

So now you are busy pounding the drumbeat to throw the world into total chaos and nuke Iran before they nuke us (well, us, you know, in Ha’Aretz, cause they will never be able to hit us here at home). And you get great power from a word you are proud to be the 1st to mangle and twist. You must be proud. Mosse is dead so he can’t stand up and say that you are turning everything he ever did around. And at one time he must have REALLY liked you Michael, but at this point he would probably say you have become them. Either that or he would have allowed his Zionist sentiments to cloud his rational observation of what WE have become. Somehow (especially reading “German Jews Beyond Judaism”) I doubt the latter. I think he would fight you and make you take his name off your website out of shame that he somehow contributed to your twisted view of history.

One last thing, since it’s arguable that you have never been in Iran. And its arguable that the majority of your readership has also never seen more than the thinnest of clichés about the place. I thought before we liberate these people as well as we liberated the people of Iraq— that it would be nice to at least see some of the faces both of the oppressed Persians and their tyrannical fascists government:

ML:

Neither I nor most of my readership has been to Fascist Italy either. And actually going to a place does not ensure better understanding. Just look at Walter Duranty, who totally misunderstood Stalin while living in Moscow.

You’ve ably confirmed my view that “fascism” has more often than not become an epithet for anything we don’t like. Most of the people who hurl it around, as you do, don’t know much about it. Pinochet was very wicked, but no fascist, any more than Franco. Fascist countries had very well organized trade unions, which you don’t seem to know about.

I do not believe that very many Iranians prefer the mullahs to liberation by us. The invocation of the overthrow of Mossadeqh to justify opposition to any effort by the American Government to support freedom in Iran is just plain nuts.

enough.

Hello ML,

I wish you had named the CIA analysts who provided the above mentioned testimony and also given some quotes. It would be interesting to see an enterprising reporter dig them up out of retirement and ask exactly how they came to ignore the obvious and instead blame it all on a conspiracy of the Jews. What next, a paragraph in the next NIE on well poisoning and matzohs baked with the blood of a Christian child?

P.S. Thanks for your tribute to the Pennsylvania soldier. From the streets of West Philadelphia to the old coal mining towns of Fayette County, Pennsylvania men have always answered the call.

Your way of talking surprises me since it suggests that you are an educated and smart person. From this on, I hardly believe that your are that ignorant in history.

So, could you tell me, please, which worthy natural resources France, Italy, Belgium, and others in the same region did justify the costly U.S. intervention in Europe in 1944?
In the aftermath, when the U.S. came to realize that these European countries proved unable to get back by their own to normalized economy and that a sizeable part of the European population (German in particular) was starving, the U.S. government put under way the Marshal Plan. A spectacular plan whose cost dearly added to the already huge losses occasioned by the previous U.S. military intervention; all this albeit there was no oil, gas, or anything else worthy to be imported to the U.S. over there.
For the record, the Federal Reserve has been literally ransacked to sustain this help which truly lasted for much more years than this was initially planned. French still vividly recall this period they nicknamed Les Trente Glorieuses (The Thirty Glorious), meaning the 30 golden years of growth following the Marshal Plan. What did the U.S. got in return?
Oil, gas? Not at all. In many instances they even were thanked with groundless anti-Americanism and jealousy.

Shall we take a look at Japan, now.

All right; they got two atomic bombs and appalling incendiary bombings. But what happened to Japan then?
Within a handful of years following 1945, the U.S. made this country the second richest power in the world. Which natural resources did the U.S. get back in return? Tell me, please?

Until the U.K. and the U.S. handled the destiny of the Arabic peninsula what kind of areas deserving the noun of country could you find there? Which Arabic economy proved capable to feed its people in this region before WWII?

Americans entrepreneurs were the first to open factories in China when this country opened its doors to the rest of the world, and some of these entrepreneurs have been sharply criticized for the cheap wages they paid to Chinese workers. Did the Chinese government ever complained about that? What kind of country China is today? What kind of natural resources the U.S. got in return? As far as I know, they never did get any such a reward.
Instead, the U.S. is best China’s customer today, and it’s not a profit at all; it’s a cost for America, Alain; as was the case for Japan, France, Germany, Italy, and for many other countries.

Do you sincerely believe that the Middle East produces oil for U.S. consumers, only? Why don’t you spare of few minutes of your time to look at statistics on oil exports in this region, this just for the sake of seeing where does go all that oil, actually? And please, give me a favor; spare a bit more of your time to see which countries are the biggest and the most ambitious oil and gas dealers nowadays.

You make allusion to colonization at some point of your comment.

Good.

Which country has been the most active at abolishing colonization throughout the world; and for which kind of natural resources in return?

I was talking about large countries; I can talk as well about the smallest areas of the world.

Take a look at the economy and rate of unemployment of an island such as Hawaii, for example; and then compare it to a similar places governed by any other country you want? You’ll be enlightened, and if by chance you do not indulge too much in self-deception you might be surprised, I promise you.

You can always look for some detailed examples of American failure, and you’ll find out some. Then, enlighten me about examples of success similar to the aforesaid ones, but made by any country other than U.S., this time. It’s hard, right? And I surmise you should find yourself in the uncomfortable obligation to resort to a somewhat farfetched argumentation to justify yourself, if ever you persisted in your way.

Sorry, Alain, I am afraid neither Fox News nor any other U.S. TV channel can “brainwash” people. For there is too big a choice about TV programs in U.S to leave any hope for such a thing to happen someday.
To brainwash people the way you suggest one needs tight state control over media, as it happens in some said-to-be free and democratic countries. In those countries I am making allusion to less or more officially state controlled TV channels broadcast everyday the same news, the same opinions, and even, quite often, the same sport competions at the same time; so much so that one can hardly escape watching it, unless one rents a DVD or invests in a dish antenna (if one is not poor and/or not unemployed, of course). In those other countries, whichever the TV channel one may choose one shall watch also the same few singers, artists, and local famous, but, in those country where things go that way, you would never find yourself able to watch a good movie certain days of the week, owing to obscure or untold reasons.

Well, after I addressed to you such a comment (my deepest apologies to Dr. Ledeen whom I shamelessly ignored) you’ll think I am a brainwashed American neo-con, presumably.

No. Not at all.

Actually, I’m French, born in France and living in France, near Troyes, in Champagne Ardennes. I lived in United States with my family during nearly 4 years; in Massachusetts to be precise, the most leftist U.S. state, reputedly.
Before I went to the United States I had heard countless bad things about this country and more especially about Americans. But I came to realize at some point that it was just too much to be true, and once in United States I did discover that it was too much to be true, indeed.

When I lived in U.S. nobody ever attempted to brainwash me and to transform me into a neo-con, quite on the contrary I should honestly say. I learned English language by my own, mostly. Just, now and then, some Americans were kind enough to help me a bit at the beginning when I was barely able to order a meal. That’s all.
I didn’t meet much rich Americans, and still less conservative Americans (perhaps because I lived in Massachusetts, I surmise).
I have seen a lot of blue collars in there, in revenge; and a great many of poor Americans too. But according to the European standards I think that those low income people where not as unhappy as some are quick to pretend, after all. Also, I noticed that few of those poor Americans were unemployed; and even I found that they enjoy much more freedom than any other poor person may expect to have in France, for example, and in any other country of the world in general.

I understand my talk may surprise (or disappoint) you; or perhaps even will you believe I’m lying. I swear I don’t, even if my choice to write under such a nickname might suggest the contrary (will you pardon me to have some reasons of my own to be that discreet).

As sole explanation of my eagerness to defend the reputation of the United States (a country in which I dearly hope I’ll return to for good, I must confess) I cannot but reach the conclusion that I possibly brainwashed myself against countless “disinterested” attempts to deterring me to do so, and without the influence of Fox News, I’m pretty sure.

Best regards to Dr. Ledeen.

I wonder how the American population would feel toward another country that would have helped overthrow your democracy (or what is left of it) to put in place a king instead because they required access to your resources ? Most Americans don’t know (or don’t want to know) what is done in their name around the world and they wonder after how come the people who have to live with the impacts of your decision hate you so much.

Without the bloody and tyrannical regime of the Shaw , the Iranian population would never have supported the Ayatollahs and their Islamofascist regime. In their mind, they were liberated from an even more dangerous and fascist regime, a FOREIGN regime supported by the US and the UK. Despair and fear give a lot of strength to religious fascist… and the current menace of an imminent US attack on their country will only help the Mullahs grow in strength. You think the kids who love the US in Iran right now will still love it the day their parents or little brother / sister will be killed by a “smart” bomb who missed its target ?

There’s plenty of other fascist or tyrannical regimes out there that you could liberate…but they don’t have large reserve of oil or they don’t represent a menace to Israel security… still interested in liberating them ? Why are the only regime worth liberating on this planet must have oil or other resources of geostrategic interest to the US ?

With all the non-democratic and tyrannical regimes fully supported by the US (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, a lot of the “Stan” or ex soviet republics, etc.) the hypocrisy of claiming to liberate the Iraqis and now the Iranians is amazing. Nobody with a mind not brainwashed by FoxNews don’t believe this kind of cow dung.

ML:

thanks for this classic example of how someone pretending to support liberty ends by defending the ugliest tyranny in the middle east.

ML:

I’m sure some of the commenters here know more than I do.