Another political changer
Lindsay Shepherd has begun the process:
Incidentally, the title of that video—“Goodbye to the left”—makes me think of the title of Britisher Robert Graves’ marvelous memoir of WWI and much more: Goodbye to All That. I haven’t read it in decades, but I remember it as an entertaining and informative read, and a document of how the modern sensibility was shaped by the experience of World War I.
[NOTE: More on the subject of the transformative effect of WWI here and here.]
See “Memoirs of A Fox-Hunting Man” for a fictionalized account of late Edwardian England just before the war.
Seigfried Sassoon–WW I vet–wrote it after the war.
neo: Think you’ve got the wrong “Goodbye” link
Graves’ “Goodbye” and e.e. cummings “The Enormous Room” (also WWI) are still on my reading bucket list.
In 1970 Robin Morgan, militant second-wave feminist, grabbed the Graves title for her angry departure from the radical left. Glancing through it today, I get a chill for the feminist intersectional crazy we see today:
________________________________________________
Let’s run it down. White males are most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today. Yet who is controlling the supposed revolution to change all that? White males (yes, yes, even with their pasty fingers back in black and brown pies again). It could just make one a bit uneasy. It seems obvious that a legitimate revolution must be led by, made by those who have been most oppressed: black, brown, yellow, red, and white women—with men relating to that the best they can.
–Robin Morgan, “Goodbye to All That”
http://blog.fair-use.org/2007/09/29/goodbye-to-all-that-by-robin-morgan-1970/
I was touched by Lindsay’s testimony.
Like Lindsay I was largely of the left because it seemed like what good people did and I thought I was a good person.
I didn’t want to leave the left, but as soon as I started questioning, I was attacked so bitterly it sealed the deal.
Whatever I was, I wasn’t left anymore.
huxley:
Thanks for the correction. I’ve fixed it.
I had no idea there were other books with that title.
neo: For a long time when I heard “Goodbye to All That” I assumed it was a reference to Robin Morgan. Given the circles I ran in, it probably was!
When I was in college I blithely wandered into a political cell run by Morgan’s husband, poet Kenneth Pitchford. It was educational.
I remained on the left but I avoided the feminist offshoots.
Like Ramanujan, I do not give up…
You can contrast her with the others neo brings up in that the others are just disillusioned with how thye lived in general and were never key members of anything and the system never benefited them as much as freda (by being an actual part of it in its workings), and Dodd, and all the others who were a part of it, ran it, and then changed despite it was their life and living.
Naturally I have no illusions left….
A young girl? what has she lived? she even borrows to tell us what she has changed.. (and will change 30 more times in the next few years and has nothing stakedin the movement nor earns a living or social connections and more)
“I have not pretended to be a Stalinist but have kept my mouth shut about Russia until now. Naturally I have no illusions left–nor had any before they took Arcadi. // I am not a Trotskyist as I have become convinced that all dictatorships are much the same and that power corrupts everyone. // Without democracy there can be no real socialism. But I fear the world is progressing towards ‘National Socialism’ on the Russian-German model.
Little difference between them.“
This shows her when she was hated before changing:
THE HIGH COST OF VENGEANCE
by Freda Utley HENRY REGNERY COMPANY CHICAGO 1949
this is if you dont want to read but want it read to you.
The High Cost of Vengeance by Freda Utley (part 1 of 5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqf5zZOuyvg
She is one of the FIRST and KEY changers..
she WAS Famous and more, but has been erased
from communist party member in all this stuff beingf familiar
to a enticommunist, and a LEADING IAUTHOR And ACTIVIST
Communist publishers and intelligentsia in both Britain and the US tried to discredit Utley – and ERASED HER FROM YOUR MEMORY AND EVERYONES MEMORY – down trotsky memory hole!!!
but becase we care more about people swept up and otherwise and who usually change when it doesnt benefit them or that… this is people who have everything in a system and who were required to give it all up..
Erin Pizzey is another.. first womens AND mens shelters..
also anticommunist after they kicked her out and the feminists took over her work and even tried to kill ehr.
Bertrand Russell
“I knew Freda Utley first when she was in the process of becoming a Communist; I continued to know her through the stages of her disenchantment, the tragedy of her husband’s arrest, and the despair induced by the failure of all her efforts to procure his release.”
Pearl Buck
“It is a strongly unassailable indictment of Russian Communism. It is a strongly dramatic story and one interesting enough to make a major novel, the story of a brilliant mind, rigorously truthful in its working….”
Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter
Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America
“many of the intellectuals didn’t want to hear what she had to say. She had impressive academic credentials when she came to the U.S. but publishers and the academy closed doors against her. She understood all too well. She had tried communism and learned its falseness. She said only those ‘who have never fully committed themselves to the communist cause’ can continue to believe in it.”
i know many intellectuals, even here, who wont listen to her either
they been taught well to not read what they shouldnt!!
whats erased must have a strong pull, for it even negates all curiousity and more…all of it..
In 1945, Reader’s Digest sent Freda Utley to China as a correspondent. The trip resulted in Last Chance in China, which held that Western policies, especially cutting off armaments to the Chinese Nationalists, favored the Chinese Communist Party victory. She began a crusade to name those who “lost China”
“and then, and gentle men and then” – pippin
In 1948, Readers Digest posted Utley to Germany, resulting in Utley’s next book, The High Cost of Vengeance which criticizes as war crimes Allied occupation policies, including the expulsion of millions of Germans from European nations after World War II and the Morgenthau plan. She also accused the United States of torture of German captives, the Allied use of slave labour
that made everyone not like her as this was the politically correct party line of speech
Upon her death in 1978, Time Magazine published an obituary of Utley https://www.nytimes.com/1978/01/23/archives/freda-utley-79-author-and-asia-correspondent.html
During the late 1930s and 1940s, Utley supported the 1938 Munich Agreement with Adolf Hitler because she thought the Soviet Union was more dangerous than Hitler and doubted the US and Britain could defeat the German war machine.
talk about changing!
Knowing her views were rooted in opposition to the Soviet Union, the Friends of the Soviet Union tried for four years to have her deported. Finally, in 1944, Representative Jerry Voorhis passed a private bill for “the relief of Freda Utley” from the 1940 Alien Registration Act
a law in congress written for one woman!!
in 1940… russia wanted her back!!!
how many people who congress wrote an immigration law for are not remembered today? (all of them)
but hows this for far ranging change:
The American historian Deborah Lipstadt characterized Utley’s stance as an important precedent for Holocaust denial: “Such arguments served as the model for those who would eventually seek not just to exculpate Germany for the Holocaust but to deny its existence altogether.”
and yet, she turned ALL that around, became a mover and a shaker and the feminists ignore her cause she is not communist at the end! (and they are)
Utley helped Senator Joseph McCarthy compile his lists of highly placed people suspected of communist sympathies. She gave evidence against China expert Owen Lattimore to the Tydings Committee and evidence against alleged “fellow travelers” (communist sympathizers) like Asian scholar J. K. Fairbank and Red Star Over China author Edgar Snow to other congressional committees. In the unpublished second volume of her autobiography, she held that McCarthy had been “captured by the forces of the ultra-right and thereby led to destruction.”
she was educated.. in fact most feminists and socialist leaders of the time where.. what the women were fighting for was that they claimed separate was no equal (to which we are swinging back the other way), and they wanted the state to pay for college… as the start of the biggest push, the roles were near 50/50 (you can look it up, its not hard)
Utley was educated at a boarding school in Switzerland, after which she returned to her native England to earn a B.A. degree followed by an M.A. degree in history (with first class honours) at King’s College London.
as a young adventurous liberaed liberal woman of college (much like the youth being used today):
The 1926 General Strike and what she calls the “betrayal” of the workers by the British Trade Union Council and the Labor Party made her more favorable to communism. After visiting Russia as the vice-president of the University Labour Federation in 1927, she joined the British Communist Party in 1928
Utley writes about her conversion:
Upon her return to Moscow with her husband, she became disillusioned with the system’s inability to provide decent medical care or housing, as well as the corrupt, hierarchical Communist Party system.
During this time she also wrote, from a Marxist perspective, Japan’s Feet of Clay, an expose of the Japanese textile industries that also attacked western support for Japanese imperialism. The book was an international bestseller, translated into five languages, and solidified her credentials in communist circles.
ah. just like david hogg. and others..
take something real, and favor it till it blows up in size
and then guide it. but its never yours and your never to blame
On April 14, 1936, Soviet police arrested her husband, then head of an import/export government group. Unable to aid him, she left soon after for England with her young son Jon, using English names and passports.
from there she tried to get Bertrand Russell to help..
and even had Harold Laski tried to contact Stalin
http://spartacus-educational.com/TUlaski.htm
[if only stalin knew and how many had friends who could call him and changed? well stalins daughter beame a wisconsin cheese head]
She did receive two post cards from Arcadi reporting his five years’ sentence to an Arctic Circle concentration camp for alleged association with Trotskyists
It would not be until 2004 that her son Jon Basil Utley would learn from the Russian government the details of his death by firing squad for leading a hunger strike at the Vorkuta prison labor camp.
He was “rehabilitated” posthumously in 1961 under post-Stalin rehabilitation laws.
how nice..
In 1970 Freda Utley published the first volume of her autobiography Odyssey of a Liberal which recorded her early experiences in Fabian circles, education, marriage, life in the Soviet Union and travels up until 1945.
She never published the second volume.
[but you can read it if you know where]
Upon her death in 1988 The New York Times mentioned a gathering of leading conservatives to pay tribute to Utley ten years after her death.
In 2005 her son Jon Utley endowed the Freda Utley Prize for Advancing Liberty, administered by the Atlas Economic Research Foundation.
Ten thousand dollars a year is bestowed upon overseas think tanks that promote economic liberalism and minimal government
i would rather we listen to Lindsay Shepard AFTER she has accomplished something, been a part of something and has a lot more to tell than……….
Ace of Spades did a post on Lindsay Shepherd.
I was struck by how many Ace commenters preferred to put the boot in, rather then give Shepherd any credit.
huxley:
Ace’s commenters can be really really funny. I often like to go there because it’s so amusing, so entertaining. But there is also often (or at least sometimes) a real mean-spiritedness that comes out. That’s just the way it is.
My first thought was “Goodbye to You” by the band Scandal w/ Patty Smyth vocals. She’s one of the great female rock&roll singers with real power. It’s a breakup song, but the lyrics kinda work for political changers too.
I thought it was gutsy of Shepard to even consider any nuances of White Nationalism in public. I certainly wouldn’t. But I suppose it seems less crazy to a Canadian right winger (Goldy) than it would to some hypothetical US right winger.
I had heard the audio that Sheppard had recorded during the her departments hearing to denounce her as a thought criminal. The Professor conducting the hearing either doesnt get the irony of this obviously politically motivated investigation or has merely always thought this type of intimidation appropriate.
Shepherd seems to be a celebrity in Canada. Maclean’s has a long piece on her — “What really happened at Wilfrid Laurier University: Inside Lindsay Shepherd’s heroic, insulting, brave, destructive, possibly naé¯ve fight for free speech”
Miss Shepard has surely earned our respect as a person of intelligence, intellectual honesty, and courage. Go Lindsay! :>)
Another intelligent, honest, and courageous young woman is Cassie Jaye, who made the documentary film The Red Pill, which investigates the Men’s Rights Movement. I highly recommend her video entitled “Why I Stopped Being a Feminist,” at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LqbqUMXinQ
(Her final point has a special personal significance to me. It is that “We have to start listening!”. She means that in reading or hearing what others say, we need to get past our own immediate reactions and assumptions, and pay attention to what they are actually saying. In the video Neo presents, Miss Shepard gives an illustration of people’s missing the meaning of others’ statements when, for instance, they take the statement “X is a white nationalist” and automatically assume that that means that X is a white supremacist.)
huxley,
I too read about Shepard on Ace yesterday and agree about “put the boot in”, but as neo notes I read Ace because many of the posts are interesting and many of the comments are hilarious.
Personally, I wish Shepard good luck. The left is vicious (like the followers of the prophet) when someone questions the supremacy of the cult.
Huxley said: “Like Lindsay I was largely of the left because it seemed like what good people did and I thought I was a good person.
I didn’t want to leave the left, but as soon as I started questioning, I was attacked so bitterly it sealed the deal.
Whatever I was, I wasn’t left anymore.”
This describes my experience precisely.
Ann,
Thanks for posting that Macleans article on Shepherd. Very interesting. She’s a courageous, and savvy, young woman.
I read Robert Graves’s autobiography “Goodbye to All That” many years ago, because I became interested in his poetry (much of which I really, really like).
It was a fascinating story, not only his war experiences, but his romantic entanglements — being a great poet doesn’t necessarily make you smart that way; he used to go to T. E. Lawrence-of-Arabia for marital counseling.
I always thought the story would make a great theater piece, especially when he breaks up with his long-time companion and collaborator, Laura Riding.
http://articles.latimes.com/1993-07-16/news/vw-13532_1_laura-riding
“Laura Riding’s name rings a small bell. A bell about a scandal involving the writer Robert Graves.
Riding was the young woman who took a suicidal leap from a window of Graves’ London flat in 1929. It was probably from the fourth floor, a jump of about 50 feet, and Riding suffered four crushed vertebrae.”
She went on to live with Graves and his family, and then just Graves (who left his wife and children for her).
Neither this article or any others available at the top of my Google Search, mentioned the ending of their affair, as recited in his biography.
IIRC (read quite some time ago, the details may be off):
She had insisted on a purely “Platonic relationship” with Graves (her fall left her somewhat invalided), but left him some years later for an American poet who wooed and bedded her (and also left his wife for her.)
Graves wasn’t particularly upset at the sexual reversal (he claimed), but objected that the man wasn’t even a good poet.
* * *
PS1 I learned not much later that I had read the first edition, which was withdrawn after a more sedate second was published, and is now (AFAIK) unavailable.
Alas, the library I borrowed it from went though a purging shortly after that and removed their copy (I hope they realized it was essentially priceless, and not just old).
PS2 Never heard of the other “Goodbye to All That” but titles (unlike the works themselves) cannot be copyrighted.
https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2010/01/08/5-things-that-cant-be-copyrighted/
There is a reason the Left is mired in the mud of fake news, and it’s identical to what Shepard talks about.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kevin-williamson-national-review-response-atlantic-piece/
At lease Williamson will be spared what seems to be the inevitable trajectory of token-conservatives at leftist-media: moving ever more leftward themselves.
AesopFan: Interesting! I knew of Laura Riding via Kenneth Rexroth who praised her to the skies. But I couldn’t get anywhere with her work or any of the Fugitives, a powerful literary group in its day, difficult to explain almost one hundred years later.
***
Whatever else, Robin Morgan was a good writer and she knew a good title.
“……, they are such humorless people,……”
Oh my, how true that is, Lindsay. In my small berg there is a a co-op grocery. The vast majority of their customers are lefties. I buy things there because they have a good selection of low sodium options.
Walking about the store is a rather grim experience because the other customers seem to be unhappy. Frowns, scowls, and even angry looks are the norm. You would think these people were living in Venezuela, not the USA. I have taken it as a bit of sport to smile at everyone I encounter there, just to see if I can get a friendly look in return. Alas, only the employees seem to respond, though even they are a rather humorless lot also. How do people live in a constant state of anger about the injustice of the world? Especially when they live in a country where injustice is much less common than in most countries. Not my kind of people. Nor are they Lindsay Shepherd’s type, it seems.
J.J.: That’s the Whole Foods experience exactly!
I am pro-conservation.
I still believe in climate change, but not catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
I am still pro-civil union, a departure from government ceremonial endorsement. Equality not political congruence (“=”). No Judgment, right?
I choose my travel modes as they are fit to purpose.
I reject diversity and other color judgments.
I believe that men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature.
I oppose wars for elective causes, and opening abortion fields to end “separation”.
I recognize that science is a near-field philosophy, with accuracy that is inversely proportional to the product of space (and perhaps time) offsets from an established frame of reference.
I recognize the evolution of human life from conception.
My religious or moral philosophy is derived from two axioms (articles of faith or assumptions/assertions): individual dignity and intrinsic value.
I enjoy a Merlot with a medium-rare steak; a big, green salad; technological ingenuity and utility; a warm nose with a bark or a meow; theater, opera, perchance a ballet; and the sights and sounds of Nature.
huxley Says:
April 5th, 2018 at 10:17 pm
AesopFan: Interesting! I knew of Laura Riding via Kenneth Rexroth who praised her to the skies. But I couldn’t get anywhere with her work or any of the Fugitives, a powerful literary group in its day, difficult to explain almost one hundred years later.
* *
Riding was apparently something of a “poets’ poet” – not at all appreciated by the hoi polloi, which ticked her off when Graves became so popular.
He idolized her and praised her work, as well as calling her his muse (a really big thing to him), and insisted that his publishers had to take them on as a two-fer if they wanted his books after I, Claudius became such a roaring success.
Well, there’s no accounting for tastes.
I recognize the benefits and pitfalls of smoothing functions.
I recognize the benefits and limits of priming a pump.
I recognize that people have different interests and competencies.
I recognize that resources are finitely available and accessible (e.g. beachfront property in Hawaii).
I avoid painting with broad, sweeping strokes, unless there is a common, uniting principle (“character”).
Shoveling snow in the winter. Mowing the lawn in the summer. Planting flowers in the spring. Collecting leaves in the fall.
Is Lindsay Shepard the bell-wether for the Right?
She’s saying a lot of things Conservatives have complained about for years, and doesn’t even have conservative principles to defend.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/05/big-tech-needs-fix-image-problem-conservatives-pronto/
“So what is it that has alienated people on the center-right? At bottom it is the industry’s embrace of all things PC, an affinity that is exhibited in their political bias, transparent virtue signaling, and sympathy for identity politics. Let’s look at a few of these things among the five biggest tech companies – Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google – one at a time:”
Another entry in the saga of leftist bigotry.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/04/pulse-nightclub-trial-debunks-anti-christian-narrative/
“Will the New York Times apologize for its unconscionable attacks?
In the annals of American political narratives, few were worse and more malicious than the notion that a young Muslim jihadist decided to shoot up a gay nightclub in Orlando because of an alleged “climate of hate” created by American Christians.
This was no mere fringe view. Remember the astonishing piece by the New York Times editorial board on June 15, 2016 – published a mere three days after the attack?
…
This was a terrorist attack, pure and simple. There’s no evidence it was an anti-gay hate crime. In fact, as Jeltsen notes, Florida’s 2016 hate-crimes report “does not include the 49 victims of the Pulse shooting in its official total.”
The available evidence indicates that Mateen’s original target was Disney Springs and EVE Orlando, but he was deterred by “heavy, visible security.” He then googled “downtown Orlando nightclubs” before targeting Pulse. Mateen’s attack was a “crime of opportunity, the location chosen at random.”
It’s fashionable to mock American Evangelicals for their alleged “persecution complex.” Scornful elites shake their heads and mock the decision of Evangelicals to vote for Donald Trump. Indeed, I’ve had my own issues (for very different reasons) with Evangelical hypocrisy in 2016 and beyond. But if you want to know why American Christians sometimes feel as if they’re under siege, realize this – at the highest levels of media and in the complete absence of evidence, influential people tried to make the case that Christian and Republican “hate” was partially responsible for the worst jihadist massacre since 9/11.
Now that we know the facts, it’s time for accountability. This is not a case of “No harm, no foul. I was merely expressing my opinion.” There is much harm. This is a flagrant foul.
…
American polarization means never having to say you’re sorry. Moderation in opposition to the GOP is no virtue. Extremism in the fight against “homophobia” is no vice. And so you’re never really wrong if you attack the right enemies. After all, this is culture war, and in culture war there is no substitute for victory, facts and reason be damned.
This defection thing (not really conversion) seems to be going around, and for the same reason:
https://www.steynonline.com/8551/of-necklaces-and-caravans
“Dear Mr. Steyn,
I am the only member of the Arcata City Council who voted against removing the President McKinley statue.
I believe that President McKinley was an exemplary leader who fought to end slavery and especially for the rights of black Americans and who died for our country. I believe that he shouldn’t be judged solely by the standards of our time.
I have written the ballot language and am taking a lead role in organizing the campaign to collect signatures to put a proposition on the November ballot to allow the citizens of Arcata to override the city council decision to remove the statue.
I don’t support open borders and I don’t support tearing down U.S. history to cave in the demands of small, strident groups. These groups seem to believe that we as a country are so flawed that we have no moral grounds for resisting their demands for “justice” as they see it or to enforce any rules for whom may emigrate into the U.S.
By resisting in Arcata, I am being labeled as, ‘racist’, ‘tone deaf’, ‘mansplaining’, etc. Recently, the local chapter of the NAACP called for the city council to censure me for condemning the out-of-control mob that shouted down any opposing views and called for the ‘re-assassination’ and lynching of President McKinley.
Nine years ago, I was elected as a long-term, card-carrying liberal Democrat. Now, as those on the ‘progressive’ left get increasingly radical and try to lay more and more guilt on U.S. citizens, even that isn’t good enough.”
Lindsay Shepherd is a good one. She has weathered heaps of publicity and attacks and I think she is getting stronger. Her recent Mark Steyn interview, which precedes this leaving the left video, showed a young woman gaining in self awareness and confidence. It is well worth watching. It isn’t just happening in Canada – Title 9XIXis being used for political persecution and makes what Lindsay Shepard did to the political cadres of Wilfred Laurier illegal. If you are the subject of a Title XIX complaint you can’t talk about it publicly, can’t bring a lawyer. Laura Kipnis did get in trouble for an article she wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and did speak out about it. She thought Title XIX was about women’s sports – I did too. Here is the Dave Rubin interviewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZWmctv2OF8
I think there is a day of reckoning coming for these people. They really are as destructive and totalitarian as they appear. David Horowitz always seemed a bit over the top to me as an ex communist, anti communist. But, no. Like Freda Utley he understands them exactly and in his case knows the history of the red diaper babies who took over the Democratic party because he was one of them.
Americans getting “woke” or awakened to the powers that be.
People once thought America was the land of the free and brave, then some of us realized that it was partially an illusion.
Just like people who worship Hollywood or the World Wide wrestling federation, they don’t want their shibboleths and idol altars destroyed.
I obtained the ability to destroy illusions from religions or any other human belief system .Might as well use it before I lose it.
David Horowitz always seemed a bit over the top to me as an ex communist, anti communist.
Horowitz is still programmed by his dear Marxists, since Horowitz attacked an American author for exposing FDR’s work with Soviet spies and agents at the highest levels of government. Horo fell for it, Based merely on the claim of Sovietologists, who were often bribed to speak the Pravda of the Russian Bear.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2018/04/03/war-on-men-good-die/
Book linked to a rubin report on this independent female feminist film maker that converted.
Leftists can only be converted out of their religion. Facts don’t necessarily work. Her interview explains it quite well.
They have been cheated by “Nature”, so it doesn’t matter where they live if some form of free association and the possibility of exclusion exist there. Perhaps they are on average as smart or smarter. But they not swifter, stronger, or more beautiful, balanced, pleasant and attractive. And so, as they cannot punish the “Nature” that has made them what they are, but are even commanded to celebrate their oneness with it, they can only punish and blame you i.e., other people … for both what they are and what they suffer.
On the ‘transformative effect of WWI’….I strongly recommend Remarque’s novel ‘The Road Back’. It is sort of a sequel to his much-better-known ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, and makes a good companion to Fussell’s ‘The Great War in Modern Memory’, which Neo mentioned in one of the links.
I reviewed the Remarque book here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/21350.html
I’ve suggested this before, and I’ll do so again….
What We Lost In The Great War
The Great War was the turning point for liberalism, and turned Classical Liberals to PostModern Liberalism, turning them from a positive force in the world to a virulent social cancer.
I still worry if we can survive it. Too many still believe it’s not life-threatening… And that’s not hyperbole.
She is quite courageous and I wish her well. I expect that she was not taking on a mortal risk by leaving the Left, but certainly is alienating friends and colleagues who are, if they are like most I know on Left, intolerant of those that see things differently than they do and will now abandon her. Short term she will probably be lonely. Would have been easier to switch but remain silent.
steve walsh Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 3:46 pm
She is quite courageous and I wish her well. … Would have been easier to switch but remain silent.
* * *
Which is why she should be supported in her decision by the conseratives, even if she still “believes” in her prior policy agendas — she is ripe for conversion by the truth.
David Foster Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 10:59 am
On the ‘transformative effect of WWI’….I strongly recommend Remarque’s novel ‘The Road Back’.
* * *
Much thanks for the review.
As one of the commenters on the Remarque book noted, “We are still living with the restless permutations that the First World War sent rippling through the globe.”
Even more thanks for the Haffner book review you linked to, which I beg leave to quote extensively, because it is so relevant to what we are seeing today in Europe and the USA, and which Ms. Shepard and Dr. Peterson inveigh against.
Also many other troubling situations — which all of you will recognize. Really, RTWT —
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/11181.html
“Defying Hitler: A Memoir
How does an advanced and civilized nation turn into a pack of hunting hounds directed against humans? Sebastian Haffner addresses the question in this memoir, which describes his own experiences and observations from early childhood until his departure from Germany in 1939. It is an important document—not only for the light it sheds on this particular and dreadful era in history, but also for its more general analysis of the factors leading to totalitarianism and of life under a totalitarian state.”
..
“As Haffner summarizes life under a totalitarian regime:”
“With fearful menace the state demands that the individual give up his friends, abandon his lovers, renounce his beliefs and assume new, prescribed ones. He must use a new form of greeting, eat and drink in ways he does not fancy, employ his leisure in occupations he abhors, make himself available for activities he despises, and deny his past and his individuality. For all this, he must constantly express extreme enthusiasm and gratitude.”
I thought this was a profound point, and perhaps applicable to our own despotism of the young.
“Haffner believes that the great inflation—particularly by the way it destroyed the balance between generations and empowered the inexperienced young—helped pave the way for Naziism. … A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddenly ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.
…
To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.”
And haven’t we seen this very thing in action today?
“Haffner makes it clear that the beasts gained power from the reluctance of the authorities to deal with them severely. For example, Hitler openly threatened and insulted the judge of the highest German court, before which he had been summoned as a witness. There was no charge of contempt. Nothing happened.”
He comments on his father’s attempts to calm his increasing doubt and fear of Chancellor Hitler’s regime.
“It took me quite a while to realize that my youthful excitability was right and my father’s wealth of experience was wrong; that there are things that cannot be dealt with by calm skepticism.”
A chilling view of the courts that had withstood pressure from Friedrich the Great and successive emperors, but were now imperiled by the Third Reich, when the Jewish judges are summarily removed and new ones emplaced:
“His position on the senate was taken by an open-faced, blond young Amtsgerichtsrat, with glowing cheeks, who did not seem to belong among the grave Kammergerichtsrats…It was whispered that in private the newcomer was something high up in the SS.
…
There were, however, other cases—cases in which the newcomer did not back down…stating that here the paragraph of the law must yield precedence; he would instruct his co-judges that the meaning was more important than the letter of the law…Then, with the gesture of a romantic stage hero, he would insist on some untenable decision. It was piteous to observe the faces of the older Kammergerichtsrats as this went on. They looked at their notes with an expression of indescribable dejection, while their fingers nervously twisted a paper-clip or a piece of blotting paper. They were used to failing candidates for the Assessor examination for spouting the kind of nonsense that was now being presented as the pinnacle of wisdom; but now this nonsense was backed by the full power of the state, by the threat of dismissal for lack of national reliability, loss of livelihood, the concentration camp…They begged for a little understanding for the Civil Code and tried to save what they could.
…
The atmosphere reminded one of the glorious year 1923, when it had been suddenly been young people who set the tone, and one could become the director of a bank and possessor of a motor car from one day to the next…Yet it was not quite like 1923. The price of admission was somewhat higher. You had to choose your words with care and conceal your thoughts to avoid going to the concentration camp instead of the ministry of justice…The opinions that were expressed sounded a bit like exam responses learned by rote. Quite often the speaker broke off suddenly, and looked around to see if someone had perhaps misinterpreted his words.”
His witness is that “Everyone knew about the concentration camps, but not many people wanted to talk about them.”
“The whole tradition of a state based on the rule of law, to which generations of men like my father had devoted their lives and energies, which had seemed so firm and permanent, had disappeared overnight. It was not just failure that my father had experienced at the end of a life that had been severe, disciplined, industrious and all-in-all very successful. It was catastrophe. He was witnessing the triumph, not of his opponents—that he would have borne with wise acceptance—but of barbarians, beneath consideration as opponents.”
He is eerily prescient about the purpose of the Gramscian March and the machinations of the Communists and the Left generally to take over all aspects of society, that they could not defeat militarily.
“It may seem a paradox, but it is none the less a simple truth, to say that on the contrary, the decisive historical events take place among us, the anonymous masses. The most powerful dictators, ministers, and generals are powerless against the simultaneous mass decisions taken individually and almost unconsciously by the population at large…Decisions that influence the course of history arise out of the individual experiences of thousands or millions of individuals.
…
Today the political struggle is expressed by the choice of what a person eats and drinks, whom he loves, what he does in his spare time, whose company he seeks, whether he smiles or frowns, what pictures he hangs on his walls. It is here that the battles of the next world war are being decided in advance. That may sound grotesque, but it is the truth.”
Finally, a link to some comments on the review, also worth reading, because they are representative of what many conservatives were saying in the early Obama years. https://chicagoboyz.net/ plus each of these:
archives/11181.html#comment-331059
archives/11252.html#comment-331152
archives/11252.html#comment-331178
Ymar Sakar Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 10:03 am…
Leftists can only be converted out of their religion. Facts don’t necessarily work. Her interview explains it quite well.
* * *
This is a very good comment on that linked article.
Thanks for the insights.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2018/04/03/war-on-men-good-die/#comment-3840410443
If you want insight, Aesop, then request it of the Holy Ghost, for my mere mortal abilities are at best correct 50% of the time, not 100%.
I did so quite a number of years ago, even though I did not believe in the existence of any gods or goddesses.
I told the heavens “whatever humanity rejects, give it unto me for wisdom and acceptance”. Few people will ever know what the price of that was in the end. Information overload.
Ymar Sakar Says:
April 6th, 2018 at 6:32 pm
Few people will ever know what the price of that was in the end. Information overload.
* * *
He takes “Ask and ye shall receive” seriously.
Finishing up watching the Neo linked Conversion Video.
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, now I remember what the title reminds me of…
If the Left really worried about “Neo Nazis”, they would bring up Operation Paperclip. They don’t, because they are, as always, in league with the fascists. Remember the Russian/German Pact.
These new age, millenians sometimes dress like Little House on the Prairie 1830s Pilgrims…
Or maybe it’s the feminine Japanese fashion statements (ribbons and skirts) that are uncorrupting the American corrupted fashions: shrugs.
The Left may be humorless, but I am beginning to notice the signs of it on the Right or Trum supporters as well.
For example, even shortening the name of the US President by one letter is tantamount, in the eyes of some, to be an insult. Imagine what people will say or do about real criticisms and harsher denials of State authority/power.
They can’t take it as a joke because they and the Left are “humorless”. It’s gotten too serious, this good vs evil fight. However, the moment they think they are good, they become the evil. That’s how it works for humanity.
I notice that I notice a lot of things 5-10 years before anyone else does. I remember talking about all the pedo rapists in Hollywood, online, 5 ish years before anyone else wanted to admit it in public.
AesoopFan….thanks for excerpting the Haffner book. It is really well-done, and is important reading for anyone who wants to understand what happened in Germany.
Most of the religious doctrines of the true Nazis have been forgotten and covered up. That leaves mostly the political/social/economic/philosophical collaboration, which is covered in various texts as above.
Without understanding the spirit of Nazi dogma, the other pieces will be harder to tie together.
If Aesop is reading them for the first time, I am sure he is perceptive enough to notice some of the same things I noticed about it.
Maybe she isn’t a “changer” but one who is just disgusted with the totalitarianism of the left.
I find many who just can’t do deep dives into subjects like climate change and admit that there has been a systematic alteration of data at many levels to create crisis.
I don’t know how to deal with this – in the sense it’s like there are two factions of “conservatives”. The knee jerk conservative who hasn’t understood the facts about climate change and do harm to the debate when they debate a lefty versus the people who bring facts and science to the table. I hope Lindsey delves into the facts one day. It is important.
It seems that the left is sooooooooo open that one year to the next you won’t know a) what history was b) what they stood for in the past c) no process or rules matter.
Here in California they were trying to foist homeless onto the Asian community in Orange County and the Asian community’s tiger mom’s fought back hard. Bam.
But then some of the young in the Asian community identify with the left because they haven’t gone through this political change yet and they are in school.
Baklava:
Yes, that’s why I said she has begun the process.
She may not complete it. Or she may. But leaving the left may be as far as she ever goes, and she may retain most of her leftist beliefs.
Yes, sorry you were clear.
I find myself identifying less and less with the so-called right.
The more I listen to Jorday Peterson, the more I find there is a yin and yang – a need for all things and a solution that requires elements of the left and right.
For instance on the border, there does need to be a process and the left wants no process it seems but the country does benefit by having a process. The problem is things are so out of whack that there is essentially no process in CA but one of disdain for process. So the argument has devloved and with no light at the end of the tunnel.