The New Criterion's Roger Kimball sure loves racism!
 

If this wasn't already clear, give THIS a read. An unsubtle defense of unsubtle slurs, entirely in keeping with the general m.. of Bolsonaro's biggest American fan.

Yep. My god, what an absolute dick.

And how utterly dishonest and cowardly to not even include this, the actual tweet that is the focus of the anger, where Trump straightforwardly tells these four American born congresswomen (apart from one who has lived there from age 12, I think?) to ‘go back to where they came from’. Racism doesn't get much plainer.

Instead, this guy tries to paint it like Trump was just doing the old belligerent, right wing ‘love it or leave it’ thing.

I think Trump should be made go back to Scotland to see if he can fix the social problems of Govan or Drumchapel in Glasgow. And if he can't do it in 6 weeks the Scots are allowed to put him in a sack and chuck him in the Clyde.

Also, I don’t know what conclusions to draw, but Roger Kimball’s smug smile (in that hideous caricature) is virtually identical to Nigel Farage’s.

Defending Trump's tweet is pretty clearly contemptible, and this combines that with radical dishonesty in not citing what it's defending. Of course, pretty much the entire GOP has taken it upon themselves to do just that, from the politicians in their thousands to the base in its millions. Welcome to America (love it or leave it), my homeland.

Cheers,
John

It's not a fact that I am proud of, and I am always working to better myself, but if I received news of Roger Kimball suffering extreme physical distress for an extended period of time, it would cause me a lot of pleasure.

Nazi fuck.

Hey Aaron,

I am prepared to be persuaded that I'm wrong, but something about the frequency with which people get called 'Nazis' these days feels a bit weird. Between them, the trio of Trump, Bolsonaro and this Kimball guy are utterly objectionable, homophobic, nationalistic, misogynist, racist arseholes. My objection to the word isn't through any sense of fairness to them at all, but more out of respect for people who suffered under the actual Nazis who, when they were in power, sent 6 million people to the gas chambers in four short years. I understand the idea of vigilance in order to make sure this never happens again, but in the meantime I think the casual use of the word can diminish the horror of what happened in the 30s and 40s. Just my instinctive take.

Best

Mark

Mark, don't assume that the use of the word "Nazi" is casual or disrepectful to the victims of the Third Reich. Perhaps it is less clear from the other side of the Atlantic, but over here there are lots and lots of us who are deeply afraid of what's going on, and the comparison to Nazi Germany isn't flip but entirely serious. I wonder if people in Germany in the 1930s were told to be careful not to compare what was happening there to the Armenian genocide? At any rate, thousands of people are being locked up on our southern border in conditions that do not even satisfy the Geneva convention, and it's being justified with racist rhetoric by the president himself in language that is specifically defined under US law as constituting illegal harassment. Yes, millions of people have not been murdered, but waiting for that to happen before using the right word to describe what's happening isn't an attractive option.

I am a Jew by birth, I grew up being told "never again", and while I no longer identify as a Jew, *that* part of my upbringing I take immensely seriously.

Trump, with Kimball as his enthusiastic cheerleader, is using Nazi rhetoric, running concentration camps, and cultivating ICE as an extrajudicial terror squad.

What is the purpose of instilling the mantra "never again" in generations of Jews if, when "again" begins, we haggle and pick away at "well this isn't exactly the same, there are pertinent differences, let's not disrespect the Jews (inter alia) who suffered and died" until we're blue in the face?

To do that, to refuse to allow for the historical comparisons until the death camps start, is to make "never again" a toothless bit of rhetoric meant to make us feel good in our hearts, with no meaningful relationship to making sure analogs to those atrocities never happen again.

That, to me, is to *actually* disrespect the suffering of those who died and were tortured during the Holocaust.

"Nazi" is not an accusation I make lightly. It's an accusation I make out of both careful consideration and deep dread and horror.

You may well be right Roger.

Aaron, we cross-posted. I said I might be persuaded otherwise and you do a pretty good job of it. I am sure you don't use the term casually, just as my qualms about its use weren't meant to be casual or flippant.

Thanks for making me think.

Mark, I have some reading suggestions for you that back up the points made in my last post:

First, here is a good NYT op-ed on the topic, written by Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale who recently published a (very good) book called How Fascism Works: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/o...trump-ice.html

Second, here is an open letter from a large number of Holocaust historians slamming the Holocaust museum's spineless decision to complain about people calling the ICE camps what they are: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/0...morial-museum/

edit: Mark, this cross-posted with your edit. I am glad that I have gone some way toward persuading you. There are not many issues on which I'm confident I am right, and fewer still where I am both confident I am right and believe it's important that others agree with me, but this is one of them.

Thanks for those Aaron. I do see the strengths in your viewpoint. I appreciate the opportunity to question my instincts. Trump's administration is beyond the pale. It is abnormal. That's beyond question. Maybe the best way of being vigilant is to name it as being the thing it could easily mutate into, even if it isn't there yet. Really, I was questioning the word Nazi to describe anyone who champions Trump, however odious they might be. The Holocaust museum's stance is kind of extreme more than spineless, I think. It doesn't just object to the analogy between the border camps and the Nazi concentration camps so much as it objects to any analogies. It "unequivocally rejects efforts to create analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary". I suppose when a group has suffered such extremes, it can lead to an attitude of extreme protectiveness, almost, over the nature of that suffering.

Context matters here. AOC called them concentration camps (they are), and the Museum was responding to that. So while yes, they did object to drawing any analogies at all,* their statement is appropriately understood also as an objection, specifically, to the claim that the ICE camps are concentration camps. And I maintain that it's spineless. But I will grant to you that their response is also extreme.


*which I guess is a trivial way to satisfy "never again", if you decide that "again" should be understood to mean "literally the exact same thing happening again with no differences whatsoever" then surely it will never happen again, eternal recurrence of the universe aside.

To my mind, if we are going to use language precisely (and I believe we should) it is worth noting that the term concentration camp, used by AOC, goes back to the Second Boer War, as Wikipedia notes: "Concentration camps were operated by the British in South Africa during the Second Anglo-Boer War from 1900–1902. The term "concentration camp" grew in prominence during that period." Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britis...ntration_camps ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...nese_Americans

In short, they are not exclusive to the Nazis, the term was already in common use by 1939, and for a reason. If we want an exclusive term, we might say death camps or extermination camps. Not a lot of governments have operated those, but the Nazis obviously did. There is political convenience to be had in blurring this distinction: witness the outcry when AOC labelled the camps on the US border as precisely what they are. I object to that political convenience, and the abuse of language on which it depends. It is immoral, to my mind, and I use the term politely.

Cheers,
John

Update: just to add that the term concentration camp or Konzentrationslager , used for camps that exterminated people, was quite specifically a Nazi preference. There are good books on Nazi use of language; here's a link to one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTI_%E...Tertii_Imperii
I don't see why we should favor exclusively - to the exclusion of all analogies - the term the Nazis found suited to their ends.

I think Cortez was right, and had every right, to call those awful camps what she did. They do appear to fit the definition. I can, I'm afraid, also empathise with the museum's PoV. They might technically be 'wrong' to hold it, but given the Jewish experience I think it may run deeper than just 'spinelessness'. In the general public's mind, and in common parlance, concentration camp is synonymous with Nazi death camp and that isn't a comparison to be made lightly. And I know she didn't make it lightly, but I maintain the right to be still thinking about this one. I can see how the museum's stance makes a bit of a nonsense of the idea of watchful vigilance, but I don't think either party should be castigated.

Bowing out respectfully now.

Edit: mainly I was talking about calling Roger Kimball a Nazi. I don't think he is. Doesn't mean he isn't a very unpleasant man.

Quincy once said, the first to say Nazi loses the argument.

Mark, I'm glad you're thinking about this, and I post this without expectation of a response.

I think that the Holocaust Museum should see, as one of its central missions, to keep people informed in ways that lower the likelihood of Holocaust-type atrocities occurring again (keeping in mind that, while the death camps were the worst of these atrocities, they were not the extent of them). I think this is impossible if they take the view that analogizing contemporary situations to the Holocaust is verboten across the board—they have willingly eliminated the central resource at their disposal. That, I think, is, in a deep sense, spineless. It's certainly an abandonment of their mission.

Your point that people likely equivocate between "concentration camp" and "death camp" is a fair one. But I have a perhaps different view of the practical implications of this equivocation than you do. In my view, the thing to do is to make the (correct) point that the ICE camps are concentration camps. Then, if people object that they aren't death camps, the appropriate response is twofold: (a) to note that concentration camps and death camps are distinct, and (b) to point out that the Nazis did concentration camps first and death camps second.

Again, the whole point of "never again", as I understand it, is to recognize that the Nazi atrocities unfolded in a series of stages, so that we can recognize when a country is in the early stages and cut it off before it gets to the worst of them. And here is my fundamental contention: the US is several stages deep already. And, honestly, the Nazi comparisons don't really depend on whether we take the remaining steps into utter moral depravity. What we're doing now is already beyond the pale.

well, let's take this one from the horse's mouth

When people are actively emulating the Nazis, the calculus changes

My father and his parents survived WWII only because they left Europe. Both of his parents came from large families. Most of them stayed and were murdered by the Nazis.

The Nazis murdered 11 million people. Only a little more than half were Jews. Communists and other political opponents, gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally challenged...

This is not a knock against you, Mark. History remembers "the six million," which lets the Nazis off easy and seems to me (a Jew) as evidence of a Jewish chauvinism that diminishes the importance of the other victims.

That the Nazis weren't satisfied to murder only Jews should also be remembered by those of us who don't yet feel personally attacked by current leaders.

Beautifully put, Aaron. I'm sure I'll find frequent reason to repeat your words.

Some thoughts
 

I think concentration camps is a fit epithet to denote the mass detention centers of ICE on several scores. In the first place, it means according to the Oxford English Dictionary:

concentration camp, n.
2. a. A camp in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution.

And in the second place, it is appropriate and good to evoke Nazis and their past atrocities in the context for reasons already covered here. That is a powerful specter, and if ever there were a time fit to call on its warning for the sake of the present, it is now. That is, so long as it is not casually tossed off but meant in earnest and scrupulously applied. Methinks. If only I could add to this, but am called away.

It may here be worth adding the small footnote that disease, starvation and various other factors killed considerable numbers of people in the Nazi death camps. Such deaths are not unknown in the camps on America's Mexican border: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/imm...ation-n1015291

Cheers,
John

I'd ordinarily agree that one should avoid the term Nazi. But we're in another place now. And, anyway, inspired by this dirtbag president, some are all but admitting it (and some are actually admitting it). They can now openly and confidently spew their hate and misinformation. You do not negotiate with these people-- a term I'm using loosely and that, unlike using Nazi, is becoming more and more debatable. You call them what they are. There are a handful of people I've known for years who have changed, or have come out of their racist closets and I won't associate with them anymore. Or they won't associate with me because I pounced. And everyone here knows I never do that :rolleyes:. None of them, fortunately, were good friends or close family members, but I'd be prepared to disassociate from them too if need be. The other day my cousin's wife posted something especially vile on Facebook. I knew my cousin fairly well (though not so much recently), but not her. She posted this meme which featured a picture of these four Irish children who were supposedly sold into slavery in America in the 17th century. In bold print above them was Truth Matters (never mind that they didn't have cameras in the 17th century...) and somewhere below the four children it stated that all Irish people therefore deserve reparations for slavery too. (In other words, slavery didn't matter and African-Americans should just shut up.) Yeah, pretty much I did the verbal equivalent of lighting her on fire and can't say that I regret it (though it did take away the small pleasure of unfriending her).

This article about Trump's rally in N.C. gave me the chills even more than the tweets and Kimball's article.

I mean, if there's one thing a rabble rouser needs, it's rabble. Without it, they're just vomiting into their own mouths.

Max — thanks for correcting me on the numbers, which I knew, but went with the lazy (and ironically less shocking) headline figure which only totals Jewish victims. I take your point. I bristle a bit at the word 'chauvinism' as I did at 'spineless'. Perhaps I'm wrong to.

Aaron and others: Yeah, I may well have been hasty in my initial point to you, Aaron. It's uncomfortable to admit to being guilty of complacency, publicly or to oneself. I'm not American and don't live in the States and that matters for a start. I should probably shut the fuck up and listen and think more ha. Problem is, I often find out what I think by expressing my thoughts in writing. I need them to be out there before I can interrogate them, or allow others to. Finding Mike Godwin (he of the 'Law') arguing on Twitter is pretty extraordinary. As someone in that thread put it, his idea

'was NEVER meant to be an injunction against making any comparisons to Nazism; it was the observation that the many spurious ones drown out the fewer valid ones.'

It was that idea of spurious claims drowning out more valid ones that I was originally trying to get at by questioning your labelling Kimball as a Nazi, and out of (perhaps ill-thought-out) respect for Holocaust victims. I certainly wasn't trying to diminish the vileness of Kimball's rhetoric in that horrible article or of Trump's rhetoric and actions. Perhaps comparisons are valid here. I can understand the logic of invoking the term as a way of drawing attention to the signs of nazism before they escalate.

Well, thanks for making me think, there's nothing more valuable. Cheers.

Andrew - that is chilling. It's a truly frightening situation.

Excuse me, did you just call me a Nazi? (You'll likely need to switch the English subtitles on)

I hadn't quite realized how dumb Roger Kimball is until this article.

Great, Matt-- thanks for that!

Yes, Matt. I'll be sharing that on Facebook.

Fair enough, Mark. I suppose if I weren't Jewish, I'd be reluctant to criticize the way Jews remember the Holocaust.

Because I respect you, I'd be happy to hear you reframe the situation in a way that might make me reconsider. I think the dominance of the smaller number requires some explanation.

I hope this doesn't feel argumentative. I don't think we disagree in a significant way. I admire the way you think and conduct yourself, and I pursue this issue on the chance that I might learn something about it from you. (I'd be very happy to feel better about the way we Jews collectively deal with the Holocaust.)

At what point a contemporary political phenomenon crosses over into fascism can be a matter of taxonomical pedantry, often misguided—for instance, Bolsonaro’s economic policies are more dick-out neoliberal than Mussolini’s, but the term”fascist” is relevant and in no way hyperbolic. I’ve been cautious about drawing the analogy too closely with Trump and his foul helpers, but a combination of the concentration camps and not only the emails that got Kimball wet but their aftermath—that at-best semi-coherent melange of demonization where one’s enemies are depicted as simultaneously ethnoculturally unassimilable, communist (read: economically egalitarian in some sense), and effete and anti-“hard-working regular people”... well, that has some antecedents.

It’s an interesting moment in thought when one can be both communist and anti- hard working regular people. But I think America has put some work into that gymnastics.

Cheers,
John

Hi Max,

It doesn't feel argumentative and thanks for the kind words. I sometimes feel I dig myself a hole then ask for a bigger shovel with the way I think, so it's appreciated. Asking me to teach you something is a tall order, because I'm not an expert on anything, rather I'm a mess of half remembered facts and instinctive opinion. Perhaps not being Jewish makes me reluctant to question the way Jews remember the Holocaust. I have no great theories as to why the six million is the number that has stuck in the public imagination, rather than the full 11 million total. But here goes.

Many different groups were persecuted and killed by the Nazis, but I think anti-semitism was the sickness that fueled the Third Reich. This isn't to diminish the suffering of those other groups that the Nazis hated and murdered: homosexuals, even 'pure' German ones, were seen as effeminate and weak, and useless to the master race as they wouldn't reproduce, the disabled were imperfect and a burden, communists and Russian prisoners of war were just political enemies. But the Jews (and the Slavs) were the truly sub-human. Two thirds of Europe's Jews were murdered; the Final Solution was to be the annihilation of every last one.

I don't even know if the dominance of that 6 million figure is something that is aggressively or deliberately propagated by Jews themselves, or if it has just naturally stuck in the collective psyche of Jews and non-Jews alike because it feels important somehow (maybe Jews were at the forefront of Identity Politics :)). Anyway, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum seems to be pretty clear and inclusive in honouring non-Jewish victims too, and calling them Holocaust victims

https://www.ushmm.org/remember/resou...d-victim-names

Some rambling thoughts:
Christians make up around 32% of the world's population and Muslims around 24%. Together they number more than 4 billion people. There are approx 15 million Jews in the world. That's 0.2% of the world's population and less than double the population of London. I know the Holocaust was perpetrated on racial rather than religious 'justifications', and also that as an atheist who basically thinks the world would be a better place if everyone gave up on their magic books these figures shouldn't mean much to me. But they're striking. Even today, in the insane carnival of religious and political polarisation, Jews seem to get it from all sides: I can't think of another group that, for different reasons, unites the far right, the far left and the more extreme wing of both of the world's dominant religions in varying levels of hatred. I don't blame them their protectiveness and bunker mentality, or their tendency, if such it is, in wanting to somehow 'own' the suffering of the Holocaust.

Personally, as a bright Catholic teenager, out of step with the 80s, growing up in working class Northern England – and before I even knew all these things/people were Jewish – they were among the things that helped shape me. They gave me Bob Dylan, old Hollywood, Allen Ginsberg, The Marx Brothers, Mike Leigh, Leonard Cohen, Stephen Fry, Woody Allen, every good secular Christmas song ever. All this and more they did shortly after (or sometimes during) a period when two thirds of them were wiped out in conditions the human mind can barely contemplate. I have nothing but respect.

I doubt I've convinced you of very much with these personal ramblings and I've probably managed to incense at least one person (no I'm not making the false equivalence between far right and left in their level of anti-semitism..). But anyway. Them's my unschooled thoughts.

Not sure how I got from calling Roger Kimball a dick to here.

Mark, I understand that Jewish groups have become very active against Trump's migrant policies, some of them under the heading #NeverAgainIsNow.

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Mark. You've given me things to think about.

I'm glad to see that Gail. And thanks Max.

Two clarifications/questions, from someone out of the loop. I think calling the border camps concentration camps and making an analogy to earlier such camps is completely valid. The congresswoman didn't call them 'death camps' after all. I don't agree with the Holocaust museum's statement, I just questioned whether 'spineless' was the right word to describe it. I called it extreme. I suppose to know how to describe it, one would have to know their reasons and motivations, which they don't provide in the statement. I suggested it might be some form of extreme protectiveness about the horrors of the Holocaust, which does seem a little misguided and counterintuitive to the idea of vigilance and 'never again'. If it's a 'spineless' statement, though, that must imply (I think) that they're making it because they don't want to be seen to be attacking Trump. Presumably because of Trump's pro-Israel stance. If that is the case then, yeah, I suppose it is spineless. Is this the general feeling that people have about the museum's decision to release that statement?

Second, back to the idea of calling people like Roger Kimball 'Nazis'. In purely constructive terms, ie thinking about what is most likely to get people to vote for anyone but Trump in 2020, is this helpful? Or is does it just give Trump more of the ammunition he wants in order to smirk at his rallies and say to his base 'look, they call anyone they don't agree with a Nazi. Even this award winning intellectual art critic'. You have real Nazis and white supremacists over there, a lot of whom support Trump. Call them Nazis, sure, because they are. Roger Kimball is many unpleasant things but I don't think he meets the definition of a Nazi, though he may be a happy collaborator if a genuine Nazi/fascist regime did emerge in the US. Doesn't it soften the word to use it like this? By all means call Trump and his administration's policies what they are: inhumane, bullying, heartless, totally corrupt and mendacious. Point out when they show signs of being analogous to past examples of fascism even, as Cortez did. This isn't 'pearl-clutching' and it's nothing to do with the quest for 'civility' in public discourse. I have no concern for the feelings of some smug, privileged, odious right-wing commentator who gets called a Nazi. I just genuinely worry that if the word is thrown around too easily it could be counter-productive and you will lose people. You said, Aaron, of the word 'Nazi', that it was "not an accusation I make lightly. It's an accusation I make out of...careful consideration". Do you think, then, that it would be a good idea for the Democrat candidates to start using it about Trump and public figures who support him? Is it a word that should become more widespread in the general discourse as a practical means of getting rid of Trump and his ilk from politics?

Of course, if people think Trump's base is just unswayable, no matter what anybody says or doesn't say then none of this matters. But then in that case nothing anyone says matters, does it? Including Cortez and the Holocaust museum. Who is anyone trying to persuade?

As always, I'm just thinking things through aloud.

Thanks

Mark, I don't think you have to kill a few million people before the word "Nazi" can be appropriately invoked. Just being a virulent racist who cages children and breaks the law while egging on thugs is quite enough, I think. But I'll let this video speak for me (brought to my attention by Matt Q, I think).

These are worthy questions, Mark. A sidebar: Democrat for Democratic is a politically charged term, brought into use by the GOP and widely disseminated by them, perhaps in an effort to separate that party from immediate semantic linkage to democratic values. One might thus say the Republic Party, only I find the American left less unscrupulous and more honest, by and large, in their use of language. Just to note your choice of term has entered America’s charged political landscape. I continue to bristle at the term’s dishonesty.

Cheers,
John

Update: the moral being, I guess, that language is an explosive thing and it deserves to be handled with care. :-)

Hi Roger,

I already watched the video when Matt first posted it. I got it and I like it. It's a brilliant satire of a thousand internet arguments. I don't think you understood my point though, or you didn't read it properly, or you're deliberately addressing a different one because it's easier. I know it was long, but I was trying to be very clear and precise in how I worded it.

Hi John,

I'm glad you think they're worthy questions, I thought you might have a go at answering them. I've never heard anyone else quibble at the term Democrat, it must not be a thing in England. It seems acceptable enough at the left-wing Guardian newspaper, who are usually quite careful about such things.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...-rashida-tlaib

But Mark, note that both incidences of the phrase "the Democrat Party" in that article from the Guardian are direct quotes by Donald Trump. [Edited to say: Or Donald Trump's quote of a quote. But close enough.] Using the wrong name for the Democratic Party is a tactic deliberately designed to annoy Democrats, and I'm confident that the Guardian's writers would never do that themselves:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)

I think you and I are pretty much in agreement on your other point, with a few differences. Personally, I think it's 100% fair and accurate to compare supporters of xenophobic strongmen to Nazis; but on the other hand, I share your concern that making insecure people [Edited to clarify: I'm referring to rank-and-file supporters here, not to public figures like Kimball, whom, unlike you, I consider fair game] feel attacked and despised by calling them "Nazis" is probably 100% ineffective for persuading them to abandon their support of a strongman who says, "Look how my enemies attack and despise you wonderful people! They want to deprive you of the protection, power, and glory you deserve. But we'll destroy and humiliate them, won't we?"

Is Kimball a Nazi? No. But he is, at least and without hyperbole, a fascist sympathizer whose publication has published and defended overt racists and has been one of the most strident defenders of the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil. Moreover, as a key writer for American Greatness, and overtly racist and hard nationalist publication, he has aligned himself with an explicit attack on branches of conservatism that still reference the legacy of nineteenth-century liberalism. It is an intellectual milieu that looks like this:

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/17/206965...nce-2019-trump

It’s not as if this is new, exactly. It’s more that the subtext has become the text, with a political establishment that may be able to hold onto a degree of power for the time being, but which is deeply distrusted, and rightfully so. The looming climate catastrophe poses two options—a massive move towards equality, democratic planning, and international solidarity, or genocide. Team Genocide, even as it fundamentally miscasts the crisis, is getting far less coy about what it’s willing to do to preserve its Cheesecake Factories, McMansions, and pretentious trust-fund magazines.

Hi Mark,

Yes, I've been posting my thoughts in this particular discussion for a bit already, as you'll note. As to your most recent worthy arguments - you do indeed often make those, to my mind - I'll just observe my longstanding feeling that when Hillary made the, again to my mind, calculated decision to call Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables," she did so in a catastrophic error of judgment from a tactical perspective.
Folks have noted that my comments tend to be shorter rather than longer. I think I'll do just that this time as well. As Pascal once wrote, "Please excuse this long letter. I had no time to make it short."

Cheers,
John

Hi Julie!

I made reference to 'Democrat candidates' in the spirit that you might say 'she's a Democrat'; I didn't say the 'Democrat Party', which would just sound wrong to me anyway. I'd literally never heard of this particular semantic minefield, and John's picking me up on it just felt like a distraction, but fair enough, I'm happy to be corrected.

It's not that I don't consider Kimball 'fair game' or have any concern about him feeling attacked. As I said above 'I have no concern for the feelings of some smug, privileged, odious right-wing commentator who gets called a Nazi'. When I initially questioned Aaron about his calling him a 'Nazi fuck' it was through qualms about the feelings of Holocaust victims, and then later through a concern that calling someone a Nazi who isn't actually a Nazi could empower Trump. The same principle that makes you balk at calling rank-and-file supporters Nazis. I personally don't care what language Aaron uses to express his justifiable anger on this very niche website, I was just making a point about the usefulness of that sort of language becoming more common in the general political discourse vs the risk that it could backfire. It's a tricky one isn't it, because saying 'don't call Roger Kimball a Nazi' can easily be interpreted as 'Don't slander that poor man's reputation'. That's not my agenda here at all, it is the same as everyone else's: to encourage action that makes Trump's reelection the least likely scenario.

Hi Quincy - nothing there I don't agree with, and what I said to Julie.

Hi John - I'm still interested, from you or anyone else, in opinions on my first question about the motivations of the Holocaust museum and the description of their statement as 'spineless'. It's not a loaded question, I'd genuinely be interested in opinions, as someone concerned but removed from the issue by an ocean. The Pascal is always funny.

Cheers folks

Edit: the more I read about Bolsonaro, the more frightening he sounds. It's very important for any forces aligned against what he and Trump represent to play it right, if they're to be defeated democratically. God knows what that (the 'playing it right') means though really tbh.