It’s certainly been stalking the land a lot these days, quite often at NPR where they benignly referred to the terrorist/Islamist organization Hezbollah yesterday as one of Lebanons’s “most important Shiite political groups.” (hat tip: John Sipher) Orwell would likely have declared this parlance “objectively pro-fascist,” though NPR no doubt claims the mantle of “journalistic impartiality.” But I would remind the boomers at NPR of what Black Panther Huey Newton once told us. There is no impartiality: “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.” I’ll leave it to readers to decide which side they think NPR is on.
For those interested in hearing this bowlderization of Hezbollah for themselves, reader Sipher provides the following instrutctions:
Go to NPR’s web site (www.npr.org) and click on the All Things
Considered link in the left margin. The clip is the first story listedunder Saturday’s stories – the one titled “Syria’s Assad to Redeploy Troops in Lebanon.”
Innocents clicking on to this blog seeking wisdom and guidance are being directed to where???
What kind of a monster has taken over this website? And what have you done with the real Roger L. Simon, you know the one with the snazzy new television viewing gadgetry.
Please return him to his rightful place at the web address pronto or I’ll tell John McCain what you did and it’ll cost you plenty.
Words don’t kill people. Bullets do.
Someday, when we have time, we’ll probably figure out what FDR meant when he called Stalin, “Uncle Joe.”
And, when the “trio” met at Yalta, at dinner, Stalin began riding Churchill so hard, that Churchill got up from the table. And, left the room. And, as fine a politican as FDR was, he understood how impotent he was, in that he couldn’t move his legs. Get up. And, go an repair that friendship.
Did you know Churchill did not attend FDR’s funeral a few months later? Did you know Churchill did not attempt to befriend Truman the way he had FDR?
Did you know that when Churchill finally came to America, and he gave that Iron Curtain speech in Truman’s hometown college, that Truman was beside himself with anger?
Today, we remember Churchill’s prescient warning. While Truman’s reputation slips back into history.
We live in interesting times. Where our own diplomacy failed us. And, we’re back, now, fighting a cancer of terrorism that has its root in Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth, misspent. History will sort out a lot of things that for us is only the view of the iceberg.
Orwell, for sure, understood back in the 1940′s what was at stake. Remains at stake. But the blessings of our First Amendment still remain. What you hear can be corrected by the truth, as long as you remain free.
Sorry folks, but Hezbollah is objectively
a. Shiite
b. important in Lebanon
c. a political group
The whole point of many of these stories is that Hezbollah is not friendly to America and that it is popular in Lebanon.
This is the new version of political correctness when every speaker has to say “the terrorist, America-hating, Israel attacking, anti-Semitic, most important Shiite political groups in Lebanon” when they refer to Hezbollah.
You sound just as ridiculous as all the political correctness people insisting on such tortured terms like “mentally challenged” or “differently abled.”
Left in Texas ó Hezbollah has already begun firing on Lebanese Christians. They’re terrorists.
By your “objective” definition:
The National Socialists are
a. German
b. important in Germany
c. a political group
So? Would the world not have been wiser to stand on their unwashed necks before they grew panzers, stukas and ovens?
I’m not arguing that Hezbollah are not terrorists, I’m saying that its ridiculous to have to call them this every single time you use their name, especially when the rest of the story makes it clear that Hezbollah = not good for Israel, America, or democracy. NPR’s story was about this, and the criticism Roger makes is pretty silly.
If the rest of the story makes it clear that the National Socialists of Germany were anti-Semitic fascists, I don’t have any objections to not calling them anti-Semitic fascists every time you use the term.
Left in Texas ó What say we keep calling them terrorists as long as they’re still committing terrorism? Just for shits’n'giggles, y’understand. I mean, it’s not like they’ve killed Americans (oh, wait a minute…) or deliberately targeted women and children (no, hold it…)
Y’all are just the new version of what many of you used to call the PC police. You’re trying to police language in a tortured way. I don’t mind calling Hezbollah terrorists, but its stupid to take NPRto task for describing some of the other things they do so that the listener can find out that they are a real political party in Lebanon that will have to be dealt with.
The point of the story is, they have real, widespread, popular support in Lebanon, and we need to understand that when we advocate policies that will give them more power in the short run.
Just because you don’t like that, doesn’t mean the rest of us shouldn’t know that.
–The point of the story is, they have real, widespread, popular support in Lebanon, –
Until their cash flow gets cut off….
I got a big laugh the other day from NPR.
Listen here http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4517515
and you will hear the RNC Chairman asked why Bush doesn’t just raise the life expectancy of Blacks rather than give them personal Social Security accounts they can pass on to their kids.
(At least that’s how I took what the silly liberal “reporter” asked.)
Left in Texas _ Son, I’m beginning to wonder if the rest of your family told you where they were going when they moved away…
By your rationale, the Quislings were a legimate political force in Norway. Invading powers have always thrown up puppet parties to grant them a spurious legitimacy. Certainly that was a stock accusation leveled at the US during the Left’s glory days of the 60′s (if you weren’t a “fascist”, you were a “running dog”… depended on whether your accuser’s professor had been a Stalinist or a Marxist).
Left in Texas -
Perhaps you’re aware of this, perhaps not; I don’t want to presume. “Objectively pro-fascist” is a direct quote from a George Orwell essay (I don’t remember exactly which one) published during the second world war. He used it to refer to pacifists at the time. I believe that what he meant by “objectively” was “in effect”, i.e., pacificist activity had the effect of strengthening fascism. Roger can, of course, speak for himself, and the records of this blog are full of instances in which he has spoken for himself better than I’ve spoken for myself, but I believe that that is the sense in which he used the appropriated term.
If you haven’t read the essay, you might want to find it and read it. Orwell was, in my opinion, wrong about some things (he remained a socialist until his death), but he was an intelligent, perceptive, and uncommonly honest writer.
My guess is that the essay can be found in Shooting and Elephant and Other Essays; I know that it’s not in Dickens, Dali, and Others, because I happen to have checked that one out from the local public library at the moment. I think that somebody (Penguin?) has fairly recently published a four- or five-volume collection of his essays.
Apologies if you have, in fact, read the essay.
Sorry, that should have been Stalinist or Maoist.
I agree with Roger et al that this little NPR story-line smells bad My fellow Texan would have a point if this was just one little ‘accommodation’ on the part of NPR. One little friendly nod toward the enemy is, you’re right, LiT, not worth much comment. But NPR gets to those of us who think the war is real. The organization is actively pro-left, and reflexively anti-war, apparantly regardless of any amount of evidence that the war is righteous, or even that it needs to be fought on the basis of self-defense. Relentlessly, day after day, NPR wears on and on–on my dime and yours–with its own personal/emotional/disconnected/absent-minded-red-professor take on politics. Since the other side (say, me) gets represented only in the breach, can’t we, Left in Texas, bitch a little?
Espesh since Hezbollah specializes in (exists in order to) blast-splatter Israeli children against walls and pavements? Yes, I know, the IDF usually retaliates, no need to remind me; naughty Israel.
Left in Texas sez:
The point of the story is, they have real, widespread, popular support in Lebanon, and we need to understand that when we advocate policies that will give them more power in the short run.
Like the IRA/Sinn Fein construct, except that Hezbollah takes its orders directly from Teheran, incorporates Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers in its command structure, and is armed with state-of-the art tactical SS missiles (tipped with God and the Mossad know what kinds of warheads)capable of reaching Israeli cities – and probably – US garrisons in western Iraq.
Not to mention that the ‘Party of God’ is the number 2 killer of Americans on the terror hit parade.
Hezbollah has all the muscle and will it needs to carry out its missions. We offend them with our very existence.
Words matter in this war. Our friends at NPR know how important words are; they make their living with words. Calling a terrorist organization a political group is a way to legitimize them. Political groups have programs, goals, and grievances. While we would never parlay with terrorists, we negotiate all the time with political groups. Hezballoh have been called the “A team” of terrorism; they have a long and bloody history. Compare Power Line’s report on a Reuter’s article about Hizbollah(sic), now called by Reuters “Lebanon’s most powerful party”. The left is either soft peddling Hezbollah’s nature inadvertently (highly doubtful, IMHO), or by design; either way, it fits Orwell’s description quoted by Silicon Valley Jim.
As an addendum, the efforts by the Europeans to separate the political versus social dimension of Hezbollah is part of the legitimization of terror, as well. And who can forget how succcessful this turned out to be with the PLO of Arafat?
Right. The PLO had ‘grievances’. But neither Oslo nor billion$ and billion$ of aid did sh*t for those grievances. Hezbollah, now, is it going to have ‘grievances’, too? What if fixing their grievances calls for you to be dead, Left in Texas? I realize it’s easier to be nice the farther away one is from the actual Hezbollah.
Anyone looking for a pathway through the mental thicket necessary to arrive at Newspeak, read Left in Texas. Even the pen name equivocates in its too-clever-by-half silliness.
Work your way through the undergrowth of illogic, reinterpreted context, and outright phoniness, and you end up in the bright sunshine of relativism. It’s easy.
Right, it’s easy, as easy as can be. But oh, the consequences, they’re just murder.
From “terrorists” to “Militants” in one sentence! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4521122
whatsamatter, LeftinTexas, too much “rancor” for ya in calling it like it is?
I don’t think I’ll bother (not that I’m sure it’s ever been done here) to comment on the uses Michael Kelly (a favorite journalist) put to some words penned (and later repudiated) by another favorite journalist, George Orwell.
Nor will I bother to link to yet another offending report from NPR. Deists, even of the garden variety (whatever that may mean,) are not mentioned, most likely, here, there, or most anywhere.
I missed it as I was with my wife beginning a night of Shakespeare—more specifically a new production of As You Like It.
As with Mencken, who also wrote a lot of things with which I agree and a lot of things with which I disagree, Orwell and Kelly respected language and defended the liberty to say what one will, consequences and all.
JAQUES: O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.
DUKE SENIOR: Thou shalt have one.
JAQUES: It is my only suit;
Provided that you weed your better judgements
Of all opinion that grows rank in them
That I am wise. I must have liberty
Withal, as large a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please; for so fools have;
And they that are most galled with my folly,
They most must laugh. And why, sir, must they so?
The ‘why’ is plain as way to parish church:
He that a fool doth very wisely hit
Doth very foolishly, although he smart,
Not to seem senseless of the bob: if not,
The wise man’s folly is anatomized
Even by the squandering glances of the fool.
Invest me in my motley; give me leave
To speak my mind, and I will through and through
Cleanse the foul body of the infected world,
If they will patiently receive my medicine.
Ah, Patrick, me boy, ‘f only that were told to mccain & feingold, before the descent into folly….
If the point is that the Lebanese have been terrorised, that’s true. But it once had been a flourishing nation. With an economy given to it from tourism. And, the Meditteranian that laps its shores.
Hariri actually brought this all back. The streets of Beirut, which knew it’s own Civil War. Which dealt with the death of their chosen president, Bashir Gemalyel (sorry about the spelling), when Arafat’s goons didn’t like the election, and blew him up.
And, then just had to settle for Bashir’s russia’s loving brother. (Arik Sharon said Lebanon was going to be a sad case. Turned out to be true.
And, Syria ruled Lebanon with an iron fist. And, stole it’s gold for its own treasury. But the father is dead. Assad, jr., is a mere figurehead. Or a sock puppet. His father’s cronies aren’t about to give up their grip on treasure.
This is what the Lebanese know. From Jumblatt, to the Lebanese Christians. NOT COOPERATING AGAINT TERROR RUINED THEIR COUNTRY. And, only now, with Iraq reigning in a free election, does the average Lebanese see opportunities, again. Middle class status again. Treasury returning to enrich Lebanese, again. And, the devastations that befall people living under the rule of TERROR.
Hezbollah is now an Iranian operation. So, it should be interesting. DEBKA has a picture of a new single line of troops drawn from the Bekka Valley all through the Golan.
I wonder if Arik Sharon laughs? He laughed at Bar Lev, when that stupid general drew a single line defense that was sacked immediately in Israel’s 1973 October War. Sure. Sharon pulled the coals out of the fire. But he wrote in WARRIOR that good military stategy doesn’t form a single, contiguous line. But rather in-deep pockets. Oh. And, then your military has to practice. Practice. Practice. Here? Iranian generals have come to lead the Syrian troops. (Two languages. And, strangers sending Syrian kids to their probable deaths.) How so does this go over well in Syria? Not a country of Baaaathists, at all. Please realize that Assad’s family tree is a minorty shoot in Syria. Power held at the end of guns. With AMerica’s military might on two sides. ANd, Israel, south of their borders. Hmm?
It always makes me smile wryly when people, especially Americans, try to claim what they think Orwell would say.
Orwell would have said this… Or thought that…. etc. Happens often.
That sort of stuff is highly speculative and very cliched. It should be noted too that some Americans have an odd view of Orwell, believing him to be an anti-socialist.
That is may be partly due to censorship, ironically.
Orwell is famous for saying “every line I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism,”
but the remainder of the sentence:
“and for democratic socialism as I understand it.”
was actually deleted by one American publisher.
Orwell was a starving artist. Down and Out in Paris and London. Working as a dishwasher. Hoping he’d get fed from scraps in the kitchen. On any given night, he could go to bed hungry. Orwell’s socialism came fro his surroundings. Those were real issues, you know.
Today, our “socialists” are the elites. And, it’s the middle-classes they want to intimidate and control. Where was this in fascist spain? Froggy france? And, among the huns?
We’re living in a world that has changed. And, just as the printing press freed the peasants from the deadly grip of the Catholic church, and the various European kings, we now have tools to answer the MSM. And, that’s why there is a real fight going on. For hearts and minds.
Keep the Aspadistras Flying! Wasn’t that one of his titles, too? I dunno about Orwell’s comments about editors. It’s said even Hemmingway and Capote, threatened murder, if so much as a comma was moved. (Meanwhile, Hemmingway couldn’t spell well.) Are editors’ line of work in jeopardy because we now all have Spell Check? Will virtual libraries be half as nice as mine, lined with books?
Sure, the old books teach a lot. Some are even Sacred Texts. And, deserved to be read for the pure pleasure of it all. Orwell said when he got his sentences right, he’d notice people thinking they were the ones who wrote it! In other words, the greatest writers have talent that taps our own our own psyche’s. Putting words into places where we carry our own thoughts. What’s so bad about men’s hopes? And, their altruism? Did socialism once hold that ideal in place?
Those Orwell-loving Americans, Harry, are by and large well aware of the great one’s socialism. The disjuncture is not so much wry as semantic. Big Brother was to Orwell’s right, but now we find Big Brother mostly on our left. Perhaps to change again someday. As for Orwell’s brand of bottom-up socialism, shucks, I don’t imagine even George W. Bush would much argue.
Right now, on CSpan Book TV, there is a re-run of Christine Valla, presenting her book, “The Hitler Kiss”, about the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. And throughout, she compares the Nazi occupation to the American occupation of Iraq. She compares the Israelis to the Nazis, the Palestinians to the Czechs of the WWII.
Nice. Little girlish voice. The Israelis learned everything they know, “they got it straight out of the German model.” In Iraq, like in Czech, everyone who worked for the Hussein government (EXPECIALLY) the Sunnis, (much closer to the Western mentality than the Shias) was replaced by new people who don’t know how to do their job.
This woman is a real traitor to the USA. She moves between the murderous Nazi to the American occupiers, because in her view, they are the same.
Much easier to re-write history, after a couple decades of not teaching any.
Of course! Christina Valla TEACHES HISTORY at Tulane University.
more on this Valla woman: comparing the cheering crowds in Baghdad, pulling down the Hussein statue, to the crowds in Prague, cheering on the Nazis. She points out that in the latter case, there had been some 70,000 people murdered by the Nazis, with the clear implication that the cheers in Baghdad can be explained by the same fearful evil done by the Americans.
Gahhhhh.
Also, on Orwell: yes, he wrote Down and Out in Paris and London. But he was actually quite middle class, was Mr. Blair, an intellectual attracted to 1930s socialism. He looked upon The Poor from quite a high level in society. His own poverty was self inflicted, very like the early Christian’s hair shirt. Also, whenever he made political predictions (the template was always class distinctions), he turned out to be wrong. For example, the working class did not rise up against its rulers in England.
On the other hand, he is a dream of a writer, a lovely essayist. And his description of the English are wonderful. And he did a great job of defending P. G. Wodehouse.
Tulane, in good ole conservative New Orleans? I agree, Gahhhh….
Heather. Buddy Larsen. Others. Such a pleasure to read these comments. Perhaps, the flaws with old libraries were their tendencies to silence the book readers? Here, even my own point of view increases inunderstanding, through the shared insights of others. Thanks.
Emerging MSM Meme alert: Syria’s withdrawal will “ignite instability” in Lebanon.
This was the cloddish phrase of choice on the BBC over the weekend– the program presenter used it at least twice, he’s so fond of it– and they rolled out a supposed British expert on Lebanon who sounded more like a partner at Kissinger Associates than a journalist describing the extraordinary events of the last few weeks.
Less clumsy but just as foolish, the Guardian warns, or perhaps dreams, that Assad’s “trump card” will be to make Lebanon “the next Iraq,” sucking in the US and Israel into a disintegrating Lebanon.
Remember your keywords: preferred nouns are instability, civil war, whirlwind; preferred verbal phrases are trigger, erupt, spiral out of control, collapse into anarchy.
They could be right. But I wouldn’t bet on it. The smart money’s on the other side– the side of the true progressives.
How nice of you to say, Carol. I certainly enjoyed reading yours, too. Wanted to speculate on Christine Valla’s reality-break: Reckon she had been getting marketing advice, from her new publisher perhaps, to find some way to modernize, update, bring-forward, make-relevant-to-our-times, her new book with herr hitler’s name in the title? Ergo, the casting of the only recent Czechoslovakian-sized army-crossing-a-border, as an analog? I hope that’s the case; swinish though such a motive would be, it speaks better of Tulane. I think.
Thibaud – Again with the stability. These people would be better off designing bass boats.
Ifthe Guardian believes that’s Assad’s plan, it reminds me of the old Nazi joke with the punchline, “Has der Fuhrer seen this map”? Quick note:
Iraq: Country size of California. Three hostile borders.
Lebanon: New Hampshire without the trees and hills. The two most powerful armies in the Middle East poised on its and the Syrian border, and the world’s biggest navy offshore.
It’s not a quagmire if it doesn’t come above above your bootheels.
And the most stable bass boat is the bass boat that’s already sunk.
If only I had the skill… I gotta try though I will surely fail.
Stability in the service of tyranny is no virtue. Instability induced in a tyranny is no vice.
The situation in the ME cannot be improved until it is knocked down. It is not a house worthy of renovations – it needs knocking down.
Just goes to show how times have changed…liberalism is stronger now than then (institutionally-wise), but then it was ascendant–rather than descendant–and so Goldwater was roundly excoriated/ridiculed by the smart set, for that vice/virtue remark. Wouldn’t happen that way today, because the line is true. That it was also true then, is one small measure of what went wrong.
Just goes to show how times have changed…liberalism is stronger now than then (institutionally-wise), but then it was ascendant–rather than descendant–and so Goldwater was roundly excoriated/ridiculed by the smart set, for that vice/virtue remark. Wouldn’t happen that way today, because the line is true. That it was also true then, is one small measure of what went wrong.
Oh, Buddy, C-Span doesn’t have an audience!
And, there’s nothing like the First Amendment. When Valla speaks it reminds me how necessary it is to test my home fire alarm system, too.
I could care less what these people think. Hitler’s dead. And, when people who want him back, ask, I tell them that when they fart into their underpants they can smell what’s left of him.
The universe always produces less than bright people. But it terms of real power politic? Nothing beats what our Founding Father’s understood as everyone’s right to say what they please.
The weakest people tattoo nazi insigna on their heads. And, besides being stupid, they look ugly, too. (See? First Amendment speech. Share. There’s enough to go around.)
And, it also releases tension! Don’t be afraid of the idiots. Even when they teach classes at Tulane. Kids need classes where they can continue to sleep and not have to get out of bed and dress to go to lectures. Valla is just a creature that’s a place holder between beers, and condoms.
This really is entertaining. Left in Texas left me irritated, but you just agreed with him/her, and are the very opposite of irritating! Presentation is everything
eh?