BBC exclusive: Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a Tea Party member!
No, the BBC doesn’t actually say “Tea Party member.” Here’s what it does say:
One of the brothers suspected of carrying out the Boston bombings was in possession of right-wing American literature in the run-up to the attack, BBC Panorama has learnt.
So, what was this supposed “right-wing” literature? Was Tamerlan reading about lower taxes and federalism, more restriction of federal versus state government? About shrinking entitlements or stopping the growth of the welfare state? About the deficit? Reversing Roe v. Wade?
No. Here’s the BBC’s list of Tamerlane’s supposed right-wing causes:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev subscribed to publications espousing white supremacy and government conspiracy theories.
He also had reading material on mass killings…
The programme discovered that Tamerlan Tsarnaev possessed articles which argued that both 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were government conspiracies.
Another in his possession was about “the rape of our gun rights”.
Reading material he had about white supremacy commented that “Hitler had a point”.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev also had literature which explored what motivated mass killings and noted how the perpetrators murdered and maimed calmly.
There was also material about US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay.
Let’s take them one by one.
—White supremacy is neither of left or right, it is racism which is not espoused by the mainstream of either side today but has been used by both sides in the past. For example, take eugenics—which, surprisingly, even the leftist Guardian has conceded (in a rare burst of candor) was championed by the left. Margaret Sanger, a socialist, was an excellent example of the eugenics movement and its racist aspects.
And few on the left ever acknowledge (or ever will) that Hitler was a socialist, but the evidence is quite compelling, although for the most part the left has been dedicated to suppressing it and even reversing it so that Hitler is widely perceived as right-wing:
It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that Hitler and his associates believed they were socialists, and that others, including democratic socialists, thought so too. The title of National Socialism was not hypocritical. The evidence before 1945 was more private than public, which is perhaps significant in itself. In public Hitler was always anti-Marxist, and in an age in which the Soviet Union was the only socialist state on earth, and with anti-Bolshevism a large part of his popular appeal, he may have been understandably reluctant to speak openly of his sources…
Hermann Rauschning, for example, a Danzig Nazi who knew Hitler before and after his accession to power in 1933, tells how in private Hitler acknowledged his profound debt to the Marxian tradition. “I have learned a great deal from Marxism” he once remarked, “as I do not hesitate to admit”. He was proud of a knowledge of Marxist texts acquired in his student days before the First World War and later in a Bavarian prison, in 1924, after the failure of the Munich putsch…His differences with the communists, he explained, were less ideological than tactical. German communists he had known before he took power, he told Rauschning, thought politics meant talking and writing. They were mere pamphleteers, whereas “I have put into practice what these peddlers and pen pushers have timidly begun”, adding revealingly that “the whole of National Socialism” was based on Marx.
Now, if the BBC had decided to headline that, it would be news worth publishing. But don’t sit on a hot stove until they do.
—Do most criminal mass killers have political motivations that involve either left or right? Aren’t they far more likely to have been moved by private demons? And among politically-motivated mass murderers, although I’ve not seen a study, my impression is that the left is very well-represented indeed. As for government-perpetrated mass killings (the source of the vast majority of such mass deaths), they have been far more connected to the left than the right from the rise of Communism on. Pol Pot, Stalin, anyone? Even the BBC would be hard-pressed to say they weren’t men of the left, although knowing the BBC they just might give it a go.
As for other mass killers such as, for example, Islamic terrorists (can’t imagine why that would come to mind in a discussion of Tamerlan Tsarnaev), there’s nothing right-wing about their motivations, unless you consider all religious fundamentalism to be of the right. But it’s almost solely the left that supports Muslim fanatics, allies with their cause, and makes excuses for their murders.
—9/11 and Oklahoma truthers? There’s not much data on the latter that I can find, but national polls indicate that 9/11-truthers are far more likely to be on the left side of the political fence than from the right. “Government conspiracy theories” are hardly the sole province of the right, to say the least.
—Now we get to the sole point of view on the list that could properly be called “right-wing”: gun rights. But if someone like Tsarnaev is reading about that issue, it doesn’t tell us anything about his politics in general. He was contemplating murder, for heaven’s sake, and interested in getting greater access to weapons (and by the way, Tsarnaev had most likely committed a previous multiple murder of great brutality, although the mode of killing was knife rather than gun).
—Learning about how mass killers work? That’s about the psychology of murder, not about left or right.
—The final item in the list, material about “US drones killing civilians, and about the plight of those still imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay” are primarily concerns of the left rather than right. Even Obama has drawn criticism from the left for using too many drones and for not fulfilling his campaign promise to close down Guantanamo. These are leftist causes, although some libertarians get into the act too in that interesting area where right and left come full circle and meet.
But I might have saved myself the trouble of going down this list. The BBC certainly doesn’t care, nor do most of its readers. Propaganda rather than information is the name of the game—the BBC being the player who perpetrates it, and the readers being the players who swallow it.
This is hardly just about the BBC. The left (which includes much of the mainstream press) is dedicated to the proposition that all bad people are of the right, or at the very least should be portrayed as being of the right, and that bad people who are actually unequivocally of the left (Lee Harvey Oswald, for example) either are to be portrayed as innocent or their leftism must be toned-down and papered over—just as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, whose motivation as a Muslim jihadi could not have been more clear, must be recast as a man of the right.
The BBC is known to be quite leftist.
Many people find it advantageous to depict the political spectrum as a straight line from left to right. Then if you consider yourself to be on either side of the center, you can throw stones toward the other side. This is particularly advantageous to the left because they have the Hitler analogy to define the right. Of course, the right could make more use of the Stalin or Mao examples, than they typically do, to define the extremes of Socialism.
To me the whole depiction is bogus. I always consider the spectrum to be a near circle with a very small gap on the back side. So, if you start at the center of the front side (the moderate) and travel far enough in either direction you end up very close to the extremity found by traveling in the opposite direction.
What I am saying of course, is there is actually an infinitesimal gap between the extremes of left or right, and those descriptive terms become meaningless.
It works for me.
All the great dictators of the 20th century were socialists, Lenin, Mussolini, Hitler, Stal, and Mao. Also mass murderers. Mussolini started life out as a Marxist but invented Fasicism when he saw that the public were afraid of the Bolshevics and what they were doing in the Russian Revolution. (He was also the editor of Italy’s largest socialist newspaper for a decade.) His great invention was corporatism, which meant that the businessmen controlled their businesses and the government controlled the businessmen. The National Socialists in Germany copied this policy. The large corporations loved it since it killed the threat of competition while the small businesses were swamped with regulations. In the US this is known as crony capitalism, e.g., Dodd-Frank and too-big-to-fail.
If you sort through the 20th century dictators, large and small, they are virtually all socialists. There is no such thing as a capitalist dictator.
So many times, oh so many times, as I read much of what passes for “journalism” these days I have to double-check to make sure that I am not, in fact, reading The Onion.
I thought everybody knew that Hitler was a Nazi and Nazi stood for National Socialist German Workers Party.
I have also read that Fascism is right wing even though Mussolini was a socialist and member of the Italian Communist party.
Funny how the left feels the need to keep slandering the mostly “irrelevant” Tea Party.
Paul in Boston
There is no such thing as a capitalist dictator.
What about Franco? What about Pinochet who was a big fan of Milton Friedman? Don’t be foolish. Totalitarian governments can spring up [and have sprung up] from the left and the right. The key is the development of a totalitarian’ state where you don’t have two or more parties that can keep the other side in check.
The beauty of the United States is that we embrace both right leaning and left leaning policies and essentially form a moderate middle. It has tended to work quite well much to the chagrin of the left and the right through our history each of whom think they have a lock on the truth.
Lincoln astutely pointed out that, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
In politics, emotional perception consistently trumps the actual facts of the matter. The mass media shapes liberal and independent low-information voter’s perceptions. Human beings listen to appeals to emotion far more closely than appeals to reason. Most people react based on emotions, then justify their actions with rationalization and selectively chosen facts. That’s your average voter because that’s your average human being.
Get enough people to vote for you while the media acts as propagandist to reinforce and maintain your popularity and you end up with societies, who literally vote away their liberty.
The American people are being duped but it is the credulousness of the willfully blind. After all, they have been promised ‘bread’ and ‘circuses’…
MDL…
But Franco was not a totalitarian. He was a dictator-classic. Ditto for Pinochet.
The terms Right an Left came directly out of the French Revolution.
The markers for Right Wing:
Pro First Estate — the Catholic Church — supreme.
Pro Second Estate — the Royals — a rump position at the time.
Pro Third Estate — and all things traditional.
The Press — tolerated — barely — ink stained wretches.
Normally termed Authoritarian because of rigid strictures and philosophy; a politics that stays out of the family’s internal affairs. Such regimes are famously boring when contrasted to the very exciting times out on the Left.
The markers for Left Wing:
Co-opting the Press — one way or another.
Co-opting the First Estate — one way or another.
Eliminating the Second Estate — liquidation as a class.
Repression of the Third Estate — all things traditional: flipped.
Repression of ‘Class Enemies’ — liquidation or ejection.
Creation of new class enemies — and chronic internal terror.
Normally termed Totalitarian because of pervasive, invasive, capricious police repression. In every instance known, such states are obsessed with remaking the internal affairs of the family. The apparent high object being the creation of a new Soviet/Aryan/… ideal man. The true object being to have everyone on their back heels awaiting the latest whim from the top, particularly the apparats.
It being much more dangerous to be a part of a Left Wing government than a prole. Such terror organs fear their own.
Re Hitler was a socialist:
The term “Nazis” Party was an abbreviation of the full name: “The National Socialist Deutsche Arbeiterpartei” (the NSDAP) or “The National Socialist German Workers Party”.
In simple terms, the fundamental difference between Socialism/Communism and Nazism/Fascism is under the Communist model, the government owns everything and allocates it amongst citizens as it sees fit. Under Fascism, private individuals and companies own property, but must do whatever the government want (ie independent rule of law is illusionary). The primary difference is the degree to which the government micromanages: under Communism it must do everything (which is difficult and stifling), under Fascism and working forms of Socialism the government doesn’t need to bother with every little thing, but remains all-powerful. As commentator “Paul in Boston” noted, Fascism utilises “Corporatism”.
Ring Wing/Conservative tends to be foremostly based upon individual freedom within the framework of the law, with a large focus on self-control/discipline. Communism/Fascism are pretty much the exact opposite: individual freedom is totally subordinate to the whims of the ruling group of the ruling party.
Commentator “MDL” mentions Franco and Pinochet — two very interesting people. I’d add Lee Kwan Yew into that mix: dictators who seized control for the very specific reason of preventing Communism, and who used their time not to establish a dynasty, but to transition to Democracy. Past leaders of Taiwan and South Korea (I forget their names, but there are a few “Kims” in there) deserve similar kudos.
Spain has been a strong democracy since Franco died (their only big mistake has been the EU). Chile, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have become probably the best examples of democracies transitioning from dictatorships/juntas in recent history. Kemal Ataturk and his successors in the Turkish military also fit this mold. While one may disagree with their methods, the bottom line is they acted to prevent long term communist totalitarianism, and left behind vibrant democracies with vibrant economies.
These are guys who broke eggs to make omelettes, but at least they made pretty decent omelettes.
Instead of “left” versus “right” on the political spectrum, it’s easier and more transparent to look at the spectrum of “more free” versus “less free”. At the pole for the former is anarchy, then democracy, then a constitutional republic and on to more and more control ending with dictatorships. Let’s say the US was founded on the side toward “more free” and has slid into the the “less free” side.
Actually, the Nazis never internalized the expression.
They termed themselves National Socialists. They never said of each other: “He’s a great Nazi.” Typically one would say: “He’s a party member.” There was ONLY the one party. So, even the term National Socialist was uncommon.
IIRC, the term nazi was already in street use as a reference to street thugs/ brutes.
This is where the Brown Shirts picked up the label. It’s not a contraction of NSDAP — not at all.
Not surprisingly, once the war started, the ‘national socialist’ term of art was dropped entirely — and Nazi used instead.
The National Geographic did a MAJOR work up for the 1936 Olympics/ Germany transformed. Many plates showed the political banners — yet from beginning to end — ZERO mention of Hitler as a Nazi.
And, across all Western literature, no-one was labeling Hitlerism as ‘Right Wing.’ You won’t find that term even during the height of the war. Particularly in America, Right Wing ONLY meant isolationist Republicans.
(Those anti-war goof-balls.)
Well done, thoughtful comment by you. I enjoyed reading it.
From the BBC story: “Until now the Tsarnaev brothers were widely perceived as just self-styled radical jihadists.
Panorama has spent months speaking exclusively with friends of the bombers to try to understand the roots of their radicalisation.”
And finally they have a few shreds of “evidence” to support the narrative.
Great work, “investigative journalists”!
Amy:
Next on their schedule–more diving in Sarah Palin’s dumpster.
You should do a post on one of the left’s recent hobbies, portraying libertarianism as an expression of the “authoritarian personality”.
Ugh, these people.
If people think they have seen “bad things” from Obama or the Left… wait until you see their true power.
This isn’t it. Not even close.
In modern American society the term right wing is completely useless other than a derogatory term used by the left to mean anything we choose to denounce and pretend to be appalled and offended by at the moment. Take a look at The Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of Right Wing Terrorist Groups. It’s just a big ol pot of crap that has nothing to do with small government, low taxes etc… yet that is what the media and the left has convinced most people it means.
The Left’s definition of right wing comes from WACO, Ruby Ridge, and various other problems they had to clean up.
Essentially, anyone that doesn’t do what the government tells them to do, exactly, is right wing. And anyone who are the “good rebels and freedom fighters” are the Left.
Even with Nazi Germany, they called them right wing because the Leftists in Stalin Russia saw Hitler’s actions as a betrayal of the Pact. Those Hitler rebelled against the Leftist Way of social justice, so he is now right wing forever more.
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