The Protocols of Rupert Murdoch (Jonathan Schell)

[swag]

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/jschell8/English

... nothing illustrates the radicalism of the new right better than the recent attack by the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck on the financier and philanthropist George Soros. Soros is of Hungarian and Jewish origin, and Beck’s attack, called “The Puppet-Master?”, recycles, almost in carbon copy, the tropes of the most virulent anti-Semitic ideologies of the totalitarian movements of the first half of the twentieth century.

Beck, who denies that he is anti-Semitic, is a conspiracy theorist of classic vintage, though the content of his alleged conspiracies is, to put it bluntly, weird. True, some of it is classic McCarthyite red-baiting. Of Obama’s White House, he says, “there are communists, Marxists, revolutionaries all around this president.”

Stranger still is his attack on, of all people, US President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson is fingered as the originator of “progressivism,” which in turn, is – believe it or not – also identified as the point of origin of Nazism and Bolshevism. Beck regularly likens Obama’s policies to those of Hitler. (Recently, Roger Ailes, Fox’s founder and president, said of the management of mild, sober National Public Radio, “They are, of course, Nazis.”)

Wilson, Hitler, and Obama are linked by a chain of highly permissive association altogether typical of conspiracy theorizing in general, and of its anti-Semitic variety in particular: Wilson was a “progressive”; some progressives dabbled in eugenics (never mind that some conservatives did as well); the eugenics movement influenced Hitler; Obama, too, is a progressive. Therefore progressives, Hitler, and Obama are the same!

Of all this we can say what the political thinker Hannah Arendt said of the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Its effect is to “reveal official history as a joke, to demonstrate a sphere of secret influence of which the visible, traceable, and known historical reality was only the outward façade…”

[bemildred]

1. Orwellian propagandists in pursuit of money and power is what they are.

Any label that implies that there are any principles at stake is wrong.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power." ~ George Orwell 1984

And they are legion these days.

[leveymg]

2. Accusations of Nazism or Fascist leanings are pure projection on the part of Fox News and Glenn Beck

As Hannah Arendt might say, The Banality of Rupert Murdoch.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Our "progressive" leaders feed conspiracy theories by...

--excessive secrecy

--devotion to the U.S. police state ("Patriot Act," "prison-industrial complex," the "war on drugs," etc.)

--devotion to the national security state, militarism and international lawlessness (case in point, Julian Assange; more evidence than I could possibly cite, but just a few more examples: continuance of the made-up category of prisoner, "enemy combatant," continuance of extra-judicial detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other torture dungeons; bombings of civilians in Yemen (when did we declare war on Yemen?); the abominations in Afghanistan and Pakistan...)

--utter devotion and slavery to the "military-industrial complex."

--kneeling in prayer to the banksters, larding them with BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of our hard-earned tax dollars, while they laugh all the way to their bank vaults with their multi-million dollar BONUSES.

--not even a public option--not even an OPTION.

--obvious deal for power by immunizing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & brethren for their many, many war crimes and crimes of grand theft.

--TOTAL SILENCE on the PRIVATIZATION of our vote counting system, with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled largely (80%) by ONE, private, far rightwing corporation--ES&S, which just bought out Diebold--in all the shiny new voting machines all over the land, with virtually no audit/recount controls. 'TRADE SECRET' code!!!

--did I say excessive secrecy?

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This writer spits contemptuously at "conspiracy theories"...

"Wilson, Hitler, and Obama are linked by a chain of highly permissive association altogether typical of conspiracy theorizing in general ..."

...but utterly fails to address this phenomenon with intellectual rigor and honesty. There damn well ARE conspiracies of the rich and powerful to rob us blind and kill our children in their goddamn wars! And it is no wonder at all that radical fascists play on peoples' fears with INVENTED conspiracies! They have deep anxiety to feed upon, to which our "progressive" leaders have significantly contributed, by all of the above and more.

President Obama ain't no "knight in shining armor" being picked on by the radical right. He and MOST of our Democratic Party leaders are collusive, secretive, anti-democratic power players in their own right , aiding and abetting war and the enrichment of the rich at the expense of everybody else. They have destroyed the Democratic Party. Most people in this country have NO representation in government. It is no wonder that "conspiracy theories" are rife throughout the land--some of them just more "Big Lie" bullshit, and some of them TRUE.

[Hestia]

4. +1,000 - well said

[yurbud]

5. you have to wonder why judges don't throw out cases of premeditated crimes involving

more than one person as ''conspiracy theories'' since that is exactly the basis on which evidence is collected and presented unless they are caught in the act.