Michael Deacon has written a piece on the Left’s favourite ad hominem in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
When I am finally appointed Secretary of State for Education, the first thing I will do is launch a radical overhaul of the way we teach history. Above all, I will ensure that the curriculum becomes far more varied – for one very simple reason.
We desperately need to provide the progressives of the future with some new insults.
For decades now, our history curriculum has been dominated by the Second World War. There are of course good reasons for that. It’s an extremely important period. But this constant focus on it has had one downside. Which is that whenever progressives want to smear their political opponents by likening them to monsters from the past, the only ones they can ever think of are the Nazis.
They liken U.S. Republicans to the Nazis. They liken gender-critical feminists to the Nazis. And right now they’re likening Rishi Sunak’s Government to the Nazis. Practically everyone who dares disagree with them reminds them of the Nazis.
Or so they claim. Personally, though, I’m not convinced they believe it. I think the reason they always call their opponents Nazis is that it’s the only historical reference point they’ve got. It’s all they can remember learning at school. Nazis, Nazis, Nazis.
Calling your opponents Nazis all the time, however, isn’t just crass. It’s also stupendously lazy. So predictable. So boring.
Therefore, I urge the Government to start teaching our children about other great monsters from history. If only to ensure that, when they grow up, they can smear their political opponents in a more imaginative way.
Take the current target of the Left’s righteous ire, Suella Braverman. Wouldn’t it at least make a nice change if they likened the Home Secretary to, say, the brutal Tang dynasty empress Wu Zetian, or the murderous 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Báthory? Alternatively, perhaps Isabella I of Castile, who established the Spanish Inquisition, or Irene of Athens, who declared herself Empress of the Byzantine Empire after having the previous emperor – her own son – imprisoned and blinded.
Obviously Mrs Braverman has no more in common with any of these women than she has with the Nazis. But then, to her progressive foes, accuracy is beside the point. All they want is a good strong insult. And likening her to the tyrants above would be much more original.
Deacon has a point. As if on cue, Alastair Campbell has just made the Nazi analogy about *checks notes*… cuts to BBC orchestras.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
You really have to laugh at Mad Al’s desperation to pin anything on the government. I mean the BBC getting rid of the singers. How in the name of all that is holy is that down to the government?
I wonder if we might be better off if the left continued to call everyone they disagree with Hitler and every view of which they disapprove “far right”. Spurred on by their own success and the arrogance that comes with it, they are becoming ever more absurd in their claims. At some point, Joe Public might actually wake up and realise how bad things are. Never interrupt an idiot.
I agree when everybody is ‘literally’ Hitler, a Neo-Nazi, Fascist, racist, sexist, homophobe, transphobe, White Privileged Supremacist – then nobody is.
“When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody.”
― W.S. Gilbert, The Gondoliers
They call everyone Hitler, firstly because they are lazy and often cannot debate the issue. Secondly because Hitler is the worst thing they can think of and they hope that some of that Hitler mud will stick to people if they sling it often enough. Thirdly, the left don’t like you choosing, because you might not choose the left, so name calling is the major tool in their socialist tool box.
And it’s a shocking case of discrimination against poor old Mussolini who actually invented Fascism and was a Fascist unlike Hitler who wasn’t, being a National Socialist.
Literally Hitler – the Nazis and Hitler were national-socialists, far left Marxist loons, and Evolutionary Darwinist devotees. You might remember survival of the fittest, the evolutionary imperative for the Teutons to subjugate Europe, the racial inferiority of Slavs, Gypsies, Jews and yes even Christians.
So a cult of Darwinian Marxists who melded a totalitarian state, little different in outcome than that of the Communists in Russia is now a ‘far right’, ‘alt right extremist’ sect.
The stupid of our ‘moden age’ hurts. It really does.
Whereas today, if you have a pink face you are apparently racially inferior in the left’s eyes.
Indeed it does. While your statement is little but word-salad, the level of total nonsense is still breathtaking. It’s actually unreasonable to call out the left for spouting nothing but demonstrably wrong anti-german prejudices in direct continuation of British (and presumably, also American) war propaganda because their so-called opponents on the so-called right do exactly the same, if not worse. In particular, darwinian marxist is a word combination which can only be rendered comprehensbile by translating it into more easily understood terms, albeit that is difficult. Indigenous invader would be a try. Or master slave. Or maybe Trump-like self-loathing.
Darwin never used the term ‘survival of the fittest’. It was coined by Herbert Spencer in 1864 after reading Darwin’s book and is generally misunderstood and misused by those who incorrectly assume ‘fittest’ refers to strongest instead of most adaptable or best suited, and hence reproductive success.
Darwin’s theory explains that an organism which via genetic mutation acquires characteristics making it best suited to its environment, will be more successful at reproduction and thus dominant.
Nothing to do with being strong. Example: SARS CoV 2 Omicron variant of recent, fond memory – which in fact was weaker – hence more adaptable to its environment – than the original version. It was that reduced pathogenicity which meant it went mostly unnoticed by those infected while it ‘jumped’ from them to new hosts.
Hitler was influenced by the Malthusian ideas of the Progressive Movement which revolved around policies eradicating the weak in society by using minimum wages to keep low intelligence individuals out of work thus leading to premature deaths from privation, and sterilising low intelligence women. (Odd how minimum wage today is promoted as doing the opposite. The Laws of the Universe must have changed I suppose,)
Forced elimination rather than natural process.
Hitler then introduced a policy of euthanasia for the mentally or physically handicapped and the elderly. Then the Jews for other reasons.
I blame Freddie Star & Spike Milligan, and that’s how they should be treated, as comics, albeit not as good as Spike. It’s a non story. Godwins law is for people of low IQ.
Peter Hitchens in the MoS explains how the Nazis were avowed communists, not fascists. His piece is notable for his comment on the crisp salesman: Lineker.
‘But the assumption, common on the BBC and in schools and universities for 50 years now, that conservative politics is a form of Nazism, and that a desire to control immigration will lead directly to the death camps, should be rejected by any thinking, knowledgeable person. Relax, Gary. That doesn’t include you.’
Hitchens is correct. One of the reasons for the ‘Night of the Long Knvies’ was that Rohm, the leader of the SA was becominhg too powerful for Hitler, and they were also complaining that Hitler was steering the ‘National Socialists’ away from there socialist routes.
Hitchens is seldom (if ever) incorrect.
Socialism being State ownership of the means of production, Hitler liking Mussolini’s Fascist idea of mostly private ownership directed by the State in the interests of the State.
Also Hitler saw Socialism as a struggle between Nations not classes.
F A Hayek: Socialism, Fascism, National Socialism share the common roots of empowerment if the State over the individual and ce trial economic planning and control.
That is not Right Wing.
The only thing not socialist about the Nazis and Mussolini’s corporatist fascism was that they did not abolish property rights.
In sofar, we have actually come almost full circle again.
Certainly and fully, if we adopt and succumb to the planned WHO dictatorship.
And when you consider the EEC/EU was the creation of the survivors and children of National Socialist, Fascist, Vichy States of Europe, then it is hardly surprising Europe is now Governed according to Statist, corporatist, Socialist principles, complete with its autarkical protectionism.
National Socialism – clue in the name. The problematic word is NAZI – deliberately used to cause the disconnection from the evil Socialism.
The correct name is National Socialist German Workers Party or NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparte)
Some go to lengths to discredit the fact it was a Left wing Socialist Party, but overlook the fact that both Hitler and Mussolini were deeply involved and committed to Socialism prior to WWI and after. Experience in the trenches for both changed their outlook on Socialism, now seeing it not as a class struggle but a struggle between Nations.
The same people who try to portray National Socialism and Fascism as ‘Far Right’, also tell us Hitler was a Fascist, which he wasn’t although he admired Mussolini and borrowed some of the Fascist economic thinking, private, rather than State owned, means of production operating as directed by the State in the interests of the State. Although both in Germany and Italy there was some direct ownership in certain areas. (This is the model used today in our so-called free market, democratic Countries.)
Hitler was adamantly opposed to what he called Marxism, a by design international political project supposed to abolish private ownership fo the means of production to free the oppressed proletariat. When he stumbled over the DAP (German Workers Party), it was a tiny backroom group of people seeking to regain workers for the national cause and the eventual restoration of Germany as European great power from the somewhat internatiolist and firmy anti-German SPD which was the traditional worker’s party.
Prior to 1914, Hitler was a principally apolitcal Austrian German nationalist pursueing an independent career as painter or architect based on doing whatever manual labor jobs he could lay his hands on in order to pay for his expenses and training. He had a brush with the Austrian socalists in Vienna who hounded him out of the construction trade they controlled because he wasn’t willing to join the socialist union against whose positions he kept argueing. In 1914, he joined the Bavarian army as volunteer infrantryman. In November 1918, he was in a hospital because exposure to mustard gas had temporatily blinded him. He decided that he eventually wanted to become a politician in order to get rid of the social and political order imposed on German as consequence of the so-called German revolution (which was initally really a Marxist coup) of November 1918.
This wingery discussion is nothing but a particular absurd fact of the eternal infighting of the two most important American parties over domestic politics. With their usual, convincing eloquence, both want to label their opponents as Nazis really badly and hence, the NSDAP must be switched from side to side as necessary despite it would have abolished Republicans and Democrats alike and closed down their politcal playground on the grounds that it was just populated by useless and universally incompent hot air merchants seeking to enrich themselves on the back of the working populace.
Excellent last 2 sentences
When I were a lad, the phrase “to the right of Ghengis Khan” was used. My wife has often been accused of that position.
Sounds like my kinda gal!
Perhaps one of the left’s greatest propaganda coups has been to convince the world that the National Socialist Party of Germany was in fact not socialist or left wing, but right wing.
Exhibit A is… the NAZIs and Communists fought, and Communists were rounded up and put in camps when Hitler won.
It overlooks the fact it was two factions of the same ideology fighting for control.
Catholics and Protestants fought each other for centuries, tortured, imprisoned and executed each other for exactly the same reason – who won control. But it doesn’t mean they are not both rooted in Christianity.
Tend to agree, but…it’s a difficult one…during the crazy years many of us who had our eyes open talked about Covidians as the neighbourhood ‘stasi’, and likened the discussion of ‘what should we do with the unvaccinated’ to the early days of Nazi Germany. However, most people I know (Covidians) felt comparisons with Nazi Germany were out of order and that I was exaggerating but…that’s what it felt like to us. It seems that Lineker et al might feel that this Govt policy is need ‘Nazi’. I can’t agree, but he obviously feels strongly.
So, we all do it – compare people we don’t like to Hitlers, and I’m sure some here have described traffic wardens as ‘little Hitlers’ etc. We all use hyperbole and reach for the name of any evil despot we can think of (I haven’t heard of any of the women Michael Deacon mentions, so can understand their names not springing to mind as an insult.).
Yes I think the left do the Nazi thing more, but there again I’m talking from a ‘right wing’ perspective. And I don’t think we need worry too much, as, yes, saying ‘Nazi’ does induce an eye-roll with most people, and yes certainly weakens any argument they might have.
Setting aside the Nazi comparison, I used to compare the C’s with the former East German Stasi, along with it’s “mitarbeiter” (aka the neighbour’s that did their job to some extent). Incidentally, one of the odd things in modern history is that the timing of the wall coming down there was almost in line with the development of this web. I wonder what they would have done if they were still extant at that time – perhaps like Iran, or similar places?
Speaking of Nazis…great ‘stack calling out the many ways in which the BBC has demonstrated hypocrisy, the latest being with Linekergate;
”And so to Lineker’s comments about the Government’s Bill to curb illegal immigration via the English Channel, which he likened to Nazi policy.
News Uncut, naturally, supports free speech, but that’s not the argument in this case. As a former TV news and sports executive myself, I would expect Lineker to have a clause in his contract regarding public statements. To make a biased political point was always going to land him in hot water. He is, after all, a major face of the “impartial” BBC.
We all experience terms and conditions in many walks of life; it seems to me that Lineker tore his up and is suffering the consequences. And he did not even display a great deal of knowledge in his virtue signalling.
It has been reported that a high percentage of Channel-hoppers are not refugees at all, but plain illegal immigrants, mostly young single men from countries such as Albania, where there are no political hardships.
It would have helped to do his video analysis first.”
https://uncut.substack.com/p/bbcs-impartiality-claim-just-laughable
It’s Alinsky-style transference. The left are well aware Hitler was one of theirs and that people are wising up to their longstanding lie that Hitler was ‘right wing.’ We’re in an era where a scary portion of kids believe Churchill and Hitler were fictional characters. It’s why I favour some sort of national divorce across many Western nations. Progressives, and conservatives and libertarians can’t live with each other anymore. A lot of this is due to the baleful influence of supranational organisations controlling our governments. So we need new countries.
Episode from one of the very many but carefully buried (the SPD is vengeful as it is treacherous) German war memoirs written after the first world war: Christmas eve 1917, in the aftermath of Haig’s great campaign of senseless butchery (of mostly English conscripts) in Flanders. A group of German soldiers have sort-of a Christmas celebration (in Germany, that’s done on the 24th of December) in a dugout with a small christmas tree, hot punch and some singing of traditional Christian christmas songs. This is rudely interrupted by an attack of a British patrol on the trench. A fire- and hand-grenade fight takes place and ultimatively, the British are beaten off. After fleeing, a wounded English officer is left hanging in the barbed-wire. The Germans notice his cries after they’re back in their dugout. This leads to the following bit of dialogue: “We should really leave him there!” “Yes, maybe we should. But we are not English!” and hence, they take him in, give him a pot of punch too, and he dies fairly peacefully of his wounds during the renewed christmas celebration.
Ponder this the next time you think calling someone German is the ultimate political insult.
‘Another disastrous move….’
Match of the day gets half a million more viewers without Lineker……
Laughing is good for you…this has added years to my life…thank you Gary Winston Lineker.
The gift that keeps giving….
Why dont socialists see the irony of calling everybody who does not agree with them national socialists?
One of the great achievements of the left since 1945 has been to make people believe that the national socialists were right wing.
Apologies to the earlier poster than me who had already made this point!
https://brownstone.org/articles/far-right-the-n-word-of-politics/
One.of the best articles on the proliferation of that slur and its psychological roots.
Also explains why they can’t ever admit that they were wrong and must and will resort to ad hominem attacks instead then.
Good read.
Remark on the spider diagram: This is supposed to demonstrate the Brownstone Institute is far right by associating it with other organizations also labelled far right. Should the people creating such diagrams want to smear on of the other organizations, they’re going to put it in the middle and but Brownstone Institute at its former place. All this really shows is that the people behind this really want label others as far right but never provide a reason for doing so.
A related, popular form of this is the following bit of circular reasoning:
1) N must be a Nazi because he frequents Z which is a location known to be a Nazi meeting place.
2) Z is a location known to be a Nazi meeting place because well-known Nazis like N congregate there.
Depending on what is to be demonstrated, either 1) or 2) will be presented.
“For decades now, our history curriculum has been dominated by the Second World War.”
The history curriculum for my GCE O Level 1969, skipped WWI and stopped at 1939.
So a recent thing.
To Alistair Campbell, there is an obvious way of reinstating the BBC singers (cost approx £1 million)……..
Dear Alastair Campbell How many orchestra would Gary Lineker’s salary pay for?
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near Everyman Cinema & play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
I agree. But Gary Lineker IS Hitler
Daily Sceptic referred pictorially to Putin as Hitler because they didn’t like what he was doing. Of course how can anyone know how they’d react if they were a world leader and their own people asked for help because there was a build up of troops at the border. It was okay for UK troops to defend the Falklands/Malvinas but not okay for Putin to defend ethnic Russians of the Donbass. Western nations recognise The Falklands as a British Overseas Territory just as many non-Western nations recognise the repeated referendums in Crimea as legit and that the Donbass is mainly ethnic Russians who have as much right to self-determination as the rest of Ukraine.
People need to think what Nazi actually means: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, i.e the National SOCIALIST German WORKERS party. Sounds like a Left wing political party to me in spite all the attempts to portray it as conservative only.