“The greatest cultural victory of the Left has been to disregard the Nazi-Soviet Pact,” Daniel Hannan, posits in the London Telegraph:
To the modern reader, George Orwell’s depiction of how enmity alternates between Eurasia and Eastasia seems far-fetched; but when he published his great novel in 1948, such things were a recent memory. It suited Western Leftists, during and after the War, to argue that Hitler had been uniquely evil, certainly wickeder than Stalin. It was thus necessary to forget the enthusiasm with which the two tyrants had collaborated.
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In his Sword of Honour trilogy, Evelyn Waugh, largely through gentle subtext, told the story of how Soviet sympathisers in the West used the alliance with the USSR to rehabilitate its doctrines. Hayek, writing in 1944, devoted the greater part of his Road to Serfdom to refuting the idea that Nazism and Communism were opposed ideologies, well aware of how fervently this idea was being promoted.
He was right; but he made little impact. If you want to see how successful the propagandists of the time were, look at the reaction you get today when – as I did recently – you recite a few unadorned facts that point to the socialist nature of fascism.
Yes, it seems odd to argue that national socialism isn’t national socialism, but there we are. On the other hand, as we get closer to November, the American left seems increasingly unafraid to let it all hang out in other ways. Let’s look at how they dropped the mask and revealed their inner liberal fascist for all to see, just this past week alone:
- Those who contend that global warming “does not exist,” [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] claimed, are guilty of “a criminal offense — and they ought to be serving time for it.”
- “So that’s the problem with the idea that it’s all going to go to rat shit eventually so let’s make as much money as possible. Those people will always be a fungus and if I was running the country I would take them out and shoot them frankly, but that’s something else [laughs].” — Terry Gilliam of Monty Python, casting a whole new spin on his dystopian 1985 film Brazil as a how-to guide for totalitarianism.
- “The ACA’s conservative critics have long knocked Obamacare as a first step toward medical rationing. Read Emanuel’s diatribe against living too long, and suddenly Sarah Palin’s attack on Obamacare’s ‘death panels’ does not seem so far-fetched.” — Victor Davis Hanson on Obamacare architect, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, currently age 57, whose new essay in the Atlantic is titled, “Why I Hope to Die at 75.” Gee, when do babies start having their palms fitted with Logan’s Run lifeclocks?
- “Gitmo remains open; we are still at war in Afghanistan; we are still at war in Iraq; and all this is true despite a president elected explicitly and clearly to end the failed wars he inherited. This comes perilously close to proving that our democracy doesn’t really have much of a say in whether this perpetual war should continue or not.” — Andrew Sullivan.
- Speaking about such modest restrictions on abortion as have been enacted over the past several years, Justice Ginsburg lamented that “the impact of all these restrictions is on poor women.” Then she added: “It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people.”
- “I’m Marching for Full Communism” — sign on display at Sunday’s New York People’s Climate Change March (where RFK Jr. was promising to start build the gulags.
- “Climate Movement Drops Mask, Admits Communist Agenda” — as displayed in numerous examples in Zombie’s photo-heavy round-up of the Sunday’s Bay Area sister march.
- “Mr. Goebbels’ words are wise words to live by.” — Alison A. Martin of anti-Second Amendment group, Moms Demand Action.
And to sum up the quotes of the past week, “It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it.”
Update: “And that doesn’t even include groundhogs,” PJM reader “Sisyphus Redux” jokes in the comments.
Related: Of course, one day the American left will eventually make it to the promised land, if they don’t first fundamentally transform America into it:
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