Scott Adams has completely lost the plot.
Bet you didn’t know antifa was allied with fascists, didja?
In case you were wondering where he came up with this bizarre idea, he was asked, and his answer was “Wikipedia.” Just “Wikipedia.”
Good people don’t read Dilbert. We’ve got to stop encouraging these clowns.
Never heard of this clown before ,whenever i read comments on faceache about Antifa being nazis ,i remind them that
Churchill was one of the first Antifa .
Wow. I knew he’d gone nuts, but that’s off the scale.
That’s on the same level as blaming Jewish people for Auschwitz.
Oh, but do you know who was actually allied with the Nazis and brought them to power? Conservatives
“Damn it! … He’s using the Chewbacca defense!”
I’m starting to question if what he’s been saying has been satirical because it’s just so beyond bonkers.
I’m sorry, who or what anti-fascist groups are you talking about, Scott? Name names. Cite your sources. Otherwise, shut the fuck up you lying, bootlicking has-been.
What we call Antifa didn’t even exist back then.
It’s a modern creation just a few years old.
And they are noteworthy for opposing Nazis and other fascists, not supporting them.
Yeah, Scott Adams is doing a Jordan Peterson.
Making more and more incoherent statements until they are totally out of touch with reality.
We do have various institutions for people who lose contact with reality.
He could end up in a Russian medical clinic trying to kick his drug habit any day now, I guess.
Or at least end up in rehab somewhere trying to kick his drug or alcohol habit.
Antifa, the modern organisation, is named for “Antifaschistische Aktion”, the KPD’s anti-fascist street-fighting group, who fought the brownshirts on the streets.
The Three Arrows was the SPD’s anti-fascist symbol.
Modern antifascists draw from both, though they fought each other as well as the SD in the early 1930s.
I live in Charlottesville. The first time I became aware of Antifa was when they were standing up and protecting defenseless protesters from armed, angry, actual Nazis. I mean, they were standing up against people literally carrying Nazi flags.
Ugh, I can’t believe I used to read Scott Adams once upon a time and buy his books. What a joke.
Adams may be referring to this
Politics can indeed make for strange bedfellows, but trying to link today’s antifa with the Stalinists in 1930s Germany is as absurd as linking today’s Republican Party with Abe Lincoln.
po8crg @ 9
I pulled up the following from the Wikipedia page for Antifaschistische Aktion/KDP and I think this is what Adams maybe tweeting about:
Of course, if Adams is citing this or a similar entry, he failed to read further down:
So… sort of. The KPD/AA would occasionally team up with the Nazis to oppose a group the former didn’t think was left wing enough. However, as we all know, the Nazi were more than happy to put Communists into the death camps once Hitler had power.
That, and the “Antifa” of the 1930s IS NOT the Antifa of 2020.
This post and the previous one about Robertson and Bachmann could be lumped together with the subject tag “Stupid things stupid Americans say.” The ugly American has come home to roost. The level of stupidity is getting very tiresome.
The most charitable explanation (which he doesn’t really deserve) is that he has BLM and BMW confused.
@11 RobG: those “working people’s comrades” were probably fans of the Strasser brothers, who represented the leftist aspect of the NSDAP. Gregor was killed during the Night of the Long Knives, Otto left the party in 1930 and the country in 1933.
911 dispatchers slammed with calls about QAnon-backed false claims about wildfires
This should be grounds for law enforcement going after the source of Q. In today’s world, I am not sure that they will.
DOH! Rob beat me to the punch!
While RobG’s interpretation is persuasive, Scott Adams comments still sound like pure blither-blather to me. I’m not really willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s a red flag to hear someone explain “What he means is…” Maybe that’s what he meant, maybe not. How the hell should I know?
When I see this level of incoherence in facebook comments, for instance, I will respond “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” (even if I am tempted to guess) or occasionally “How much is Moscow paying you to write this drivel?” if I’m in that sort of mood. In fact, that would probably be my response to Adams.
I don’t think Scott Adams has a problem expressing himself (or used to anyway). Trying to make sense of that word salad just strikes me as a waste of time.
It’s like any other attempt at right wing deflection: The only the audience hears is the quick, pithy claim, not the long, nuanced, examination and explanation that follows. If you’re explaining, you’re losing.
@19 I wasn’t joking about the Chewbacca defense. Except that it’s not a case in court, this seems like almost a textbook example. (Wikipedia)
Cripes, even Johnny Hart wasn’t that far over the edge.
And he was over the edge.
These are Scott Adams’s words from 2016. Not mine. (I repeat for anyone in the secret service, FBI, or similar, these are not my words. I do not agree with them. I do not endorse them.):
See https://www.gq.com/story/scott-adams-trump-hitler
But I just have to ask, what is “slightly Hitler-ish”? I suppose there’s some wiggle room, but I feel that Trump hits that threshold on a daily basis. His behavior is “uncannily Hitler-ish” on an occasional basis, though it’s a pretty lousy Hitler who can’t gin up a Reichstag fire when the entire West Coast is burning (I never said Trump is very good at this, we’re a little lucky this way).
I would really like to see Scott Adams do a “mark to market” on his promise. If Trump is not at least “slightly” like Hitler than who is he, Mahatma Gandhi?
I think it’s time for me to write to my local paper and ask them to stop carrying Dilbert. There’s no reason for them/us to continue to financially support this loon.
(It took a year, but I managed to train myself to skip over Dilbert in the comics.)
I used to love Dilbert, but haven’t read it for years, not since Adams came out as strongly right-wing.
I wonder if Adams read the words “Antifa” and “Hitler” in the Wiki article and decided they were associated.
I get Dilbert in a paper newpaper. It long ago became a one-trick pony.
comments like that are just equal to “they are bad they are the worst ”
where your target person or group is they and the worse is some already understood evil person or grouping.
the nazis are universally understood as bad so your target is the same as nazis.
same as the communally used attack the nazis were atheists connects atheists with nazism meaning the atheists are the same as. disregarding the religiosity of Hitler et all.
just buzz words and incitement to violence because it is justified because of the connection.
the right wing a sholes are always the same get them wound up and they make no rational sense but they hit the intended emotional buttons.
uncle frogy
But it’s art, people! It’s art!
Or something. I think he lost what little he had left of his “mind”.
Time to uncap the bug spray.
http://www.todaytvseries2.com/images/tvseriesinfo/BrainDead/BrainDead-poster.jpg
davidc1 @1
“Churchill was one of the first Antifa”
Yes, he fought against Hitler, but I don’t know if ol’ “Keep England White” Churchill is the best example to use.
And Chewbacca fought with the Ewok resistance. Even if his motto was “Keep Endor Furry” you can’t always choose your allies when fighting the Empire.
Churchill wasn’t anti-fascist, he was just anti-German, and mainly because he didn’t want the competition. (Yeah, OK, this is an over-simplification. But Churchill was a racist, imperialist, genocidal arse who just happened to be on the right side of WWII. Bit like Stalin in that respect.)
Planet check. It’s been so long since history class that it practically is history, but seems to me somewhere I heard that Mussolini – the guy who founded the National Fascist Party in Italy, was an ally of old Adolph.
I thought I was living on earth. What planet is this anyway?
Yeah, I started thinking about changing my nym a few years ago when this asshole utterly lost his shit…and then Donald J. Trump was elected to the highest office in the land despite losing the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes and over 2%. Donald J. Fucking Trump. And it occurred to me that only someone as warped and twisted and fucked up and stupid as Scott Adam could author such a hellscape. It’s his world–we’re just tortured in it. Hell, even Berkeley Breathed stopped short of Darth Cheeto getting elected. So my nym remains, a nod to irony. If Biden wins, I’ll think about changing it. ‘Til then, fuck 2020.
@30 & 32 ,Wasn’t a great fan of Churchill ,until i found out he loved cats ,and wrote in an unset letter that he hated the tory party .
He was a man of his times ,and as for Genocidal ,if you are referring to the 1943 Indian Famine ,he did his best to help .
GB got involved in India around the same time as America won it’s independence ,during the next hundred years America killed thousands of natives .One half went to war to defend slavery .
He was a complex man ,don’t think he was anti- German ,there wasn’t anything in the 1930’s to compete for .
And i know he said he didn’t become PM to give away the empire ,i think he suspected the time of empires was ending .
And i think the sight of people with swastika tattoos giving the heil hitler salute ,gathering around to protect the statue of him
in Parliament Square would have made him chuckle .
Ah, “he was a man of his times…” I hope I am long forgotten before anyone damns me with such a condemnation.
I am not a fan of Churchill based on anything I know about him. Things could have gone a lot worse, though.
I’m pretty sure he is trolling but what his actual views are are utterly lost and murked. I think he thinks he is so clever that any confusion he causes is proof of his cleverness. I say it’s spinach and to hell with it.
I liked cartoonist Tom Tomorrow’s take on Dilbert… from before 1999 which I guess is really a long time now https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jan-11-cl-62379-story.html
This was way before Adams had gone completely off the deep end and probably even Perkins would need to revise his estimate downward. It is notably from a time when Dilbert was still considered “hip” in some circles.
davidc1 @35: Churchill was also a key player in the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, resulting in decades of one oppressive regime, followed by another.
@36 Ah ,i am a modern man ,modern views ,if only they thought and acted like us in the past.
In a hundred or two hundred years time,i wonder how they will judge us .
Sounds like sour grapes that you haven’t had the chance to lead a country in wartime.
@37 While he was a Liberal MP ,he set up Labour Exchanges ,and introduced the old age pension ,the racist imperial bastard him .
@40 Yes i know ,the racist imperial bastard ,than he was .
He also used to eat babies .
What. The. Fuck.
Serious question here… Should his friends consider taking him for a neurological exam? An exam that might include an MRI? To go from a creative and insightful cartoonist to bat shit insane just might have an organic cause.
@44 “If you get them in order, they give you extra points.”
<
blockquote>if you allow Bill Clinton to be defined by the likes of Rush Limbaugh as the absolute radical far left, then anyone who actually is to the left of Bill Clinton is effectively marginalized and cut out of the debate entirely.”
that has been the stagey of the right wing since the 50’s.
the progressive left and labor left have let the debate terms be defined by the reactionary right wing to the exact results described above. It occurs in all policy areas where ever there are any disagreements the right wing makes some claim that they use to define the debate. The result is the erosion of the ability to actually state the problems and propose any solutions giving the appearance of cowardice on the part of the centrist democrats and making any truly simple progressive ideas appear in the news like some dangerous radical revolution bent on destruction and world domination or son they are labeled and the debate then revolves around how they are not that instead of what they are.
I will not be defined by some ignorant greedy liar
nor will I accept their definitions unchallenged when needed.
uncle frogy
oh crap to wound up to pay attention
I think there is evidence he is seriously mentally ill. Look at his numerous contradictory and nutty statements. Check out the Wikipedia page on him, particularly the politics portion, but also look at some of the physical illnesses he has had/has. I strongly suspect that he hasn’t really written his comic strip for years.
I recently saw an image that said “death to antifa.” I’m fairly certain these people don’t possess a sense of irony or the ability to deconstruct simple words. Anti -Fa. It’s like Trump being unable to figure out the meaning of “19” in “COVID-19.” He just couldn’t put in the effort. So he looked like the fool he is.
Seems like straight-out trolling to me.
davidc1 @35
“He was a man of his times…”
He had contemporaries who commented on his racism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Winston_Churchill
@39 “then anyone who actually is to the left of Bill Clinton is effectively marginalized and cut out of the debate entirely.”
also describes one of the many major problems with the NY Times. In addition to the news sections’ constant need to focus on the Republican narrative while hippy punching the Democrats as an afterthought, the opinion sections have a hidden glass wall just to the left of Goldberg. Krugman, although mostly a standard Keynesian centrist, can stray over the line a bit by way of economics expertise but all the other supposed leftists Kristof? Dowd(yeah the bitter Clinton hater), Bruni?,Blow?, Cohen? are, like Obama, to the right of Richard Nixon on some positions but now described as leftist. Douthat, Brooks, Stephens and Friedman can lie about science and fact without penalty to the point that it takes Tom Cotton pushing actual fascism to step out of bounds.
This is the anniversary. Did anyone notice?
@#3, Giliell
Centrists. They kept on ceding ground to the Nazis in the interests of maintaining a peaceful status quo until finally the Nazis owned the political landscape. Sounds very… familiar.
@#44, markmckee
He never was creative and insightful. He solicits (or, possibly, solicited and now has years’ worth) people’s workplace horror stories to turn into cartoons. He doesn’t actually write Dilbert, and its artwork is and always has been terrible — the guy can barely draw.
Hasn’t Wickramasinghe proved that a virus coming down from space has been turning right wing brains to mush for decades?
Oi, please stop calling Adams “insane”, “crazy”, etc. etc. As a proper crazy person, I want nothing to do with this dude! ;D
Seriously though, if being a fascist numpty was a mental illness, it would be a lot easier to fix. Just take your Antifaxipam and be cured of all right wing conspiracies, fears of population displacement, and the desire to call random Internet strangers “cucks”. Side effects may include a general feeling of love for your fellow man, buying too many antifa laptop stickers, and the uncontrollable urge to read The Communist Manifesto. (Call your doctor if you find your way reading through all of Marx’s works.)
The Vicar @54–
Your obsession is making you misrepresent history. The deals that put Hitler in power came out of triangular negotiations between Hitler, Hindenburg, and Papen. That’s the Nazis, a conservative aristocratic ex-general, and an ultra-right-wing traitorous rat. Of the three, Hindenburg was by far the most reasonable (low bar, the other two were narcissistic maniacs), but by no means was he a centrist.
The Nazi Party came to power over the vehement objections of the German Zentrum party (literally “centre”) and the left-centre party, the SDP. Using the Reichstag fire as pretext, the Nazis and Papen outlawed the Communist Party (14% of the vote), and the SDP (22%) for being too close to the Communist Party. Then Papen personally negotiated with the Vatican to disband the Zentrum party (12%). For his own ambitions, Papen helped the Nazis into power by destroying three of the four main German parties. And then Hindenberg made the mistake of dying in office, which allowed Hitler to declare himself President as well as Chancellor, and that was the last hurdle in the ascendancy of Nazism.
This is not a cautionary tale of centrist submission, it’s a cautionary tale about letting ruthless bastards disenfranchise huge chunks of the electorate and dismantle the protective constitutional mechanisms within a state. Which is still eminently relevant to contemporary politics.
I think it is fair to call Churchill anti-fascist in the broad sense. He started off sympathetic but became increasingly ideologically opposed to Hitler and Mussolini and was genuinely horrified by their brutality and anti-Semitism. But the mistake would be in thinking that makes him anti-fa in the current sense. He was pro-military, pro-colonialism, pro-monarchy, anti-proletariat, and a white supremacist. That is to say, he supported a great number of atrocities but drew the line at fascist ones.
@chrislawson, #57:
That, sir, was a magnificent smackdown!
I’m so embarrassed I used to post Dilbert cartoons on my cubical wall many years ago.
I just logged in to cheer chrislawson for his use of actual history.
@chrislawson, #57:
Bravo!
Let me just add one thing: while the Nazis and the reactionaries were busy slapping down the centrists, the radical left (the KPD) was cheering them on, because the centrists were not left enough to their tastes, and they thought that after the right-wing disaster the country would be ripe for the plucking.
Sounds vaguely familiar…
davidc1 wrote:
“He was a man of his times ,and as for Genocidal ,if you are referring to the 1943 Indian Famine ,he did his best to help.”
“He was a man of his times” is a feeble excuse for horrible behaviour. Hitler and Stalin were men of their times. Churchill was still spouting his white supremacist shit right up until he died.
Regarding the Bengal Famine, Churchill did his best to make sure a huge number of people died of starvation. If that doesn’t qualify as genocide then I don’t know what does. Bad Empanada does a good job of describing events:
Ah yes, the great European Antifa army. The 101 first airborne soup can division and the black beret hoplite shield bearers. Famous for the battle of Cheetodust in the south of France and for being hitlers first ally after their invasion of Poland.
I studied all about this on 8chan.
@63 ,Why would he want the families of the soldiers who fought along side British troops to die ?
You can pick and choose articles on the Bengal Famine to fit it what you want to believe about him .
@51 Oh well ,if leo said it ,it must be true ,was Amery one of the tories who wanted to make a pact with hitler after the fall of France ?
re @33:
your mention of Mussolini reminded me of Rick Steves documentary [the Rise of Fascism in Europe] following all his “how to visit Europe not as a tourist” docs.
He tells us Mussolini was a big inspiration to Hitler on how to bring Germany back from the economic devastation Germany suffered from their defeat in WW1. Which was often summarized as “Hitler got the trains to run on time” being the only glimmer of silver to Hitlers reign.
Thank you
davidc1@65
You should have asked Churchill that while he was still alive. His attitude towards Indian people is well documented – he hated them and just saw them as useful but inferior. If you bother to watch the Bad Empanada’s video you will see that he’s done his research and is quoting Churchill’s own words and official documents of the time. You seem to be the one believing the version you want to be true.
#59 LeftSidePositive
It was a horrible “takedown”. But historical interpretation often is. Take this line for example
I mean, there’s no context except to say the Nazi party was coming to power. So that time frame was 1927 to 1930? But who knows because the comment jumps significantly in time from sentence to sentence and plucks some disparate examples.
But that sentence in particular is concerned with the party alignments when the Nazi were coming to power, then we’re looking at Braunschweig. That sentence seems like chrislawson is attempting to make the center and the SDP adjacent in their goals against the Nazi party. Of course both objected to the Nazi party, because they both wanted to be in power. But that doesn’t mean they were allied in their objection to the Nazi.
In fact, because the SDP were in power from 1927 to 30 under Jasper, there was a center and center right coalition against the SDP. In fact that coalition later joined with the Nazi party.
None of this can be translated to contemporary politics in the US. But if I were pressed hard, the only comparison I could make would be the Democratic conservatives aligning with Bush era conservatives, the neoconservatives, against the Democratic left. Sanders, Cortez and that lot. Even that doesn’t translate well. So if we’re looking at the time frame Vicar’s statement is perfectly legitimate.
@slithey tove #66
The “trains on time thing” was about Mussolini, and it was pure propaganda.
Italian Fascism worked hard to appropriate things that happened before it came to power or claimed success for things that outright didn’t happen, not unlike Trump and any other authoritarian wannabe.
AFAIK, German trains had a strong reputation of running on time before and well after Hitler.
Why 1927-1930? The Nazis did not come to power at a national level until 1933, and it’s clear from chrislawson@57’s first paragraph that 1933 is what he’s talking about. And as chrislawson says, those responsible for Hitler becoming Chancellor – after which there was very little chance of stopping him – were not by any stretch of terminology “centrists” – they belonged to the nationalist right. While the attitude of the KDP – who regarded the SDP as “social fascists”, and so certainly facilitated Hitler’s rise – very much resembles that of The Vicar who, let no-one forget wants Trump to win in November.
chrislawson@57
Excellent point. Though I admit I don’t have sufficient historical knowledge to know if it’s a fair assessment. It certainly is what I’m worried most about right now.
And after we get the submissive centrists back, things will still suck, but I don’t see how it helps to hurtle into disaster as fast as possible. I’m in favor of most leftwing causes. I would just prefer to hear an account in which the leftists weren’t crushed (like Allende, like the Sandinistas, like 60s counterculture nearly everywhere), coopted, or warped into something horrible (Stalinism, Castro, Daniel Ortega today… whatever he was in the 80s). Call me a coward, but I like to see a movement with at least a slight track record of success before jumping on board. (Cue “Love me I’m a Liberal”. Yeah, that’s me.)
Certain movements have succeeded. Labor unions had great success, though not in many years. The 60s Civil Rights movement reshaped American culture in short order. Apartheid was overturned in South Africa. LGTBQ rights have come a long way since my youth. It seems that these things require brave, engaged people with a stake in the matter. The willingness for self-sacrifice is a given, but you need strategy too. I have often annoyed Bernie Sanders supporters by stating that if they knew the DNC primaries were “rigged” in 2016 they either should have come up with a plan to do something about it, or admitted that they were backing a symbolic candidate who was never going to appear on the ballot as the nominee and therefore was never going to be elected president. (At least if there was a plan other than “I told you so.” I haven’t heard it.)
I’m not a huge fan of Joe Biden. I would have liked to see Warren as the candidate. I voted for Sanders in the CA primary because it briefly looked like he’d win.
I am voting for Biden simply because Trump will be dropping people out of helicopters with the blessings of SCOTUS and half the Senate by February if he “wins” and maybe doing it anyway if he doesn’t. The immediate, acute problem is to get this evil if incompetent despot out of power. The rest won’t be easy or possibly even doable. But the acute problem is the one to address right now.
@67 You haven’t answered why he would want to let die the families of the troops fighting with the British .
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/
Here is another point of view .
And another .
https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/did-churchill-cause-the-bengal-famine/
Might Churchill have said thing in the heat of the moment which he later regretted
On the topic of Churchill, the only thing about him that ever came up in my reading concerned Niels Bohr. Bohr was one of the physicists who believed that nuclear technology should be subject to global control after WWII and not a single side in order to avoid an arms race (which of course we got eventually). Churchill was reflexively opposed to this idea and personally very dismissive of Bohr, who he treated rudely despite Bohr’s prestige as a Nobel laureate. Make of this what you will. It doesn’t really make Churchill unusually bad for a world leader of this era, but it leaves me ill-disposed to him.
He did play an important role in the side that fortunately “won” the war. The alternative would have been much worse. On the other hand, you could say the same about Stalin.
davidc1 #72
Are you trying to argue that Churchill was simply too honorable a guy to have done it? Because I feel like that’s begging the question.
I have no dog in this fight, but your comment strikes me as strange. If I’m misunderstanding you, then please explain.
davidc1,
Your links @73 and 74 appear to go to the same page. I can’t say I find it convincing, both because it clearly comes from an ardently pro-Churchill source, and because even that source is constrained to admit that:
There is ample evidence of Churchill’s racism, which was certainly not universal at that time.
I don’t think has anyone argued that he actively wanted it, just that their lives were low among his priorities. There is no doubt that as Prime Minister of the state that was ruling India, he had ultimate responsibility for dealing with the situation. The article you link to includes the following quote from Churchill:
The people of India had no choice about being subjected to those “hard pressures of world-war”, because they had no say in who governed them – a situation which Churchill wished to continue indefinitely.
Oh, and:
You don’t come out with racist remarks “in the heat of the moment”, unless you’re a racist.
I quit ,we are never going to convince each other ,you said that the site i provide was pro Churchill ,i could say that the book which brought all this to light which was written by an Indian lady was biased against him to begin with .
I still quit ,but why not say something about Japan’s part in the famine ,their invasion of Burma ,resulted in a loss of food stuffs to India .
“You don’t come out with racist remarks “in the heat of the moment”, unless you’re a racist.”
Yeah right ,i spent nine years as a motorbike courier in London ,if a car pulled out in front of me ,and the driver was black ,
i would have screamed “You stupid Black Bastard ,are you Blind ” and if a couple of miles down the road ,a black person would have been in an accident ,i would have stopped and helped ,same person two different reactions .
Does that make me a racist ?
Anyway ,stay safe .
Well, it has only been about a dozen years since the SPD effectively conducted a bloody purge against their own former comrades and members of the newly found KPD. It’s not like they didn’t have a good reason not to trust them.
But of course this also forgets that both parties did join in an anti fascist “Unity Front” in the Saar territory, for example as it became clear that Hitler was killing both groups alike.
By Adams reasoning, aren’t we and the rest of the Allies in WWII all communists, as we helped the Soviet Union in the war against Germany? That seems to be what his logic is, jumping between tracks, while pretending to not be derailed.
Aka, illogic being presented as logic.
davidc1 @ #s 73 & 74 – You cite Hillsdale College as a source?
Wossamatter, David Barton and Dinesh D’Souza don’t have any online Churchill-apologetics resources?
I vote yes.
In fact, though I’m far from perfect, I have made it to 55 years without singling out someone’s race in anger as far as I can remember. And I grew up in very white East Coast US suburbs where it would have be easy to get away with it at least when I was young. I’ll still go with “recovering racist” for myself. It sucks to be American. It sucks to be human. I only hope to avoid poisoning the next generation.
How did we get from Scott Bugnuts Adams to rehabilitating the “legend that was Winston Churchill” anyway?
I have laughed at a few Dilbert comics over the years and I feel no shame about it. I am happy Churchill’s side and not Hitler’s “won” the second world war. Beyond that I see no reason to soft-pedal the obvious flaws of either of them.
Maybe we can convince Scott Adams to bankroll another film version of an Ayn Rand book? That would be hilarious.
He’s definitely gone WAY out in the deep end, but honestly, it’s not that surprising. I used to enjoy his books, so I read a couple of his books from the library back in the 90s, and it was a mix of relatively well-observed advice, but with a heavy dose of new-agey, secret-esque, self-help woo that was so common in the period. I guess the further he got from working an actual job, the more the latter took over and mutated into… whatever the hell this is.
davidc1 (#79)
The Japanese did not force the British to implement their boat and rice denials. The British belief that Bengal’s native population was expendable allowed them to so easily take such callous measures in place of less sure-to-be-murderous policies.
Cussing someone out by their skin color for the totally irrelevant sin of being a traffic hazard isn’t a thing non-racists do.
This. “black” is right in the middle of two insults and therefore no longer a neutral description of that person, making it look like the colour of their skin was linked to their behaviour.
Giliell@80,
That’s true, although it’s worth asking how the KPD would have treated SPD members if they had succeeded in taking power following WW1. If the example of Russia is anything to go by, it would have swiftly instituted a one-party state and persecuted members of any other party. By the late 1920s, in any case, the KPD was completely obedient to Stalin, and it was his policies it was carrying out.
A bit late, wouldn’t you say?
Well since you ask, yes.
When I referred to Churchill as a genocidal racist, I wasn’t just referring to the Bengal famine. There is also his well-documented desire to exterminate the Kurds, his attitude to the Japanese (“We shall wipe them out, every one of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth”), his eager participation in the campaigns in Afghanistan, and his role in the horrific atrocities committed during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, amongst others. (If I tried to list them all, I’d be here all day.) Even his fans generally concede the point, they just think it’s somehow justified or excused by his role in WWII.
Well, yes, it is possible… Fortunately we have the entire rest of his career and huge volumes of his own words to look at, all of which paint a remarkably consistent picture of a racist, genocidal, imperialist arsehole.
Oh well ,to all on here who think i am a racist ,you can all go and piss up a rope .
If i was ,i would not allow an Indian Doctor to treat me ,which i do .
I would not let my brother go to the Indian guy who cuts hie toe nails ,or the specialist Dr he sees for his learning disability ,who for the last few years have all been black .So ,once again go ,well you know the rest .
PS .
(“We shall wipe them out, every one of them, men, women, and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth”),
If you think he meant that ,you must be stupider than a bus load of stupid people on their way to a convention of stupid people .
davidc1@92 I appreciate seeing you defend yourself candidly, because it is a great illustration of why so many racists insist they are not, and why they get so offended when you call them one. I get that you don’t think you’re a racist. To point out that you don’t always discriminate by race is as ludicrous as a thief saying “I sometimes buy things.” or a liar saying “I sometimes tell the truth.” Well, hooray for you. I’m glad that not literally everything you do is racist.
It’s often been said that many white people (in the US, and I’m not sure how it works in Britain) consider it more offensive to call someone a racist than actually be a racist. Look, I am racist. I would insist mildly so, but there it is. I try not to be, but there’s no question that I form impressions of people on superficial grounds. It’s not a conscious process. Some of these are tied to my immersive exposure to many racial assumptions growing up in a nearly all-white environment in the 70s. I have learned not to trust my impressions, but that doesn’t eliminate them.
It’s also not something I’m interested in litigating. I actually agree with one thing you said. Anyone who wants to point out some instance of implicit bias on my part as evidence I am a “bad” person can go fuck off. I don’t really care. But that wasn’t the question.
davidc1, I think PaulBC puts it very well.
Apart from the minority of the population who are out-and-out bigots (and I include Churchill in their number based purely on his own words), it’s no good trying to divided people into two groups, racists and not-racists. As PaulBC says, we all do and say racist things whether we mean to or not because we’ve been brought up in a racist society with racist attitudes. We absorb this stuff from an early age without even being aware of it. The way to combat it is to listen to others and examine our own words and actions.
Abusing somebody in a moment of anger because they’ve wronged you is perfectly understandable and can be very effective at making sure they don’t do it again. Including a reference to their ethnic background isn’t acceptable as it’s irrelevant and racist. I wouldn’t mind betting that you don’t automatically call a white person a stupid white bastard, and if not then why the difference? Incidentally, it would still be wrong to include their skin colour even if they’re white, but it doesn’t carry the same weight as it does towards a black person because they’re not subject to the same discrimination.
That doesn’t mean you’re “a racist” and beyond the pale, it means you’re an ordinary person who said a racist thing and if you care about racism then you should modify your behaviour. If you don’t care about racism then you probably should call yourself “a racist”.
In defense of Dilbert – I’m pretty sure Adams turned the strip over to an intern years ago and he doesn’t even read it anymore. I realized this after seeing the strips treatment of COVID – the characters have been wearing masks in the office for months, and there have been a few strips shaming people who won’t wear masks. If Adams knew about this I imagine he’d put an end to it pretty quickly.
That’s not to say that the strip is actually funny, but it’s firmly planted in Garfield/Hagar/Hi &.Lois territory, in that it’s generally inoffensive and every strip has some semblance of a punchline.
davidc1 , ,
, you, are , a , racist, you, use, “black”, as, an, insult.
how , can, you , not, see, that, as , , racist???
I will just note the hilarity of trying the “I have a black friend, so I can’t be racist” argument, but not having any black friends to point to, so you have to go with “the guy who cuts my brother’s toe nails”.
How can I be racist when I allow black and brown people to perform services—some of which aren’t even menial—for me and my family?
Davidc1: “In a hundred or two hundred years time,i wonder how they will judge us.”
I hope posterity is extremely harsh on us, as that would imply that society has progressed to a point where the sins of our own society can be properly appreciated for the abominations they are.
#70 KG
Because if you’re discussing when the Nazi came to power anyone with a modicum of knowledge knows it was Braunschweig in that time period. More on that later.
Untrue. And the reason why I chose that time frame was precisely because 1930 was the culmination of the centrist and center right coalition that gave the Nazi party the positions of Minister of Interior and Speaker of Parliament to try and appease them. These are pretty significant federal positions.
The Nazi party rose quickly but it wasn’t something that happened instantly in 1933, they had federal power before that and it was significant.
Lets remember the context, it was Vicar’s offhand “centrist” comment to Gilleill. It’s not just about what time period Chrislawson is talking about, it’s about the period Vicar might have been referring to. (Neither of which are clear) Chrislawson then tries to flex on Vicar in some half ass “smackdown”, cherry picking from a time period Chris thinks disproves that centrists were “ceding ground”. But it’s completely ineffective because nobody is even sure they’re talking about party alignments in the same time period. It was not a “magnificent smackdown!” as #59 LeftSidePositive said. It was rather weak IMO.
It depends on what time period you’re cherry picking to prove your point. Which means Vicar’s statement is perfectly legitimate, depending what what time period one chooses. Gilleill is also correct that conservatives aligned with an extremist party, and were subsequently pushed aside. But that wasn’t until later.
If you’re talking about “The deals that put Hitler in power” or when “The Nazi Party came to power” as Chrislawson was, the pertinent time for that was around 1927 to 1930. When the centrist and center right coalition against the SPD led to Nazi federal appointments and eventually allowed Klagges to wreak havoc on the political system, some might say dismantle. Not to mention Hitler being given German citizenship so he could run in the first place. I mean, none of this is very controversial. I understand why Chrislawson chose that later time period because Chris thinks it refutes Vicar’s comment. But it doesn’t hold water IMO because in that sentence I quoted Chrislawson is trying to portray a centrist party and the SPD as politically adjacent. But at the pertinent time when the Nazi were coming to power they clearly were in opposition, because the SPD had been in power for some years and the center and center right wanted them out. They worked against the SPD, much the same way that conservative Democrats and neoconservatives and moderate Republicans are aligned today against the Democratic left. (Or at least the conservative Democratic leadership is “trying” to align with moderate conservatives on the right in 2016 and 20. Not a workable strategy IMO, but who am I to say. Again not a great comparison but it’s as close as you’re going to get to comparing politics in the US today to then.)
I do read here every now and then, though I seldom comment unless it’s some kind of warped offhand humor. It doesn’t escape anyone’s attention that you and a few others are very toxic and vitriolic where Vicar is concerned because you have political differences, KG. So I suspect that you have a limitless incentive and energy to try and support a half ass “smackdown” of any offhand comment Vicar made. I make an effort for dialectics occasionally, I have little energy for argumentation and grudges. So I’m bowing out.
@100
Vicar has a proven track record of being incredibly dishonest, and nobody here is going to be kind to an open Trump supporter. He’s earned that vitriol.
@Akira
Whenever I see a leftost call someone a redneck I cringe because its still a racial slur ajd calling people that is still racist. Is it as racist as calling a black person the n-word? No, but its still racist. And not helping.