Perkinsnacht
Remember Tom Perkins? The guy who compared the war on the 1%, not to Kristallnacht, but to the beginning of a pattern that could lead to something like Kristallnacht?
Well, his letter to the WSJ may be “the most-read letter to the editor in the history of The Wall Street Journal.” He’s been forced to eat a little crow:
Amid the ongoing media furor and an ungallant rebuke from Kleiner Perkins, Mr. Perkins has apologized for the comparison, without rebuking the larger argument.
It’s no surprise that Perkins was made to walk back his comparison—a fact that doesn’t take away from his analogy. We discussed the issues he raised in the original thread on the subject on this blog, and I’ll just add that the last sentence of the WSJ‘s editorial defending Perkins is somewhat naive:
The liberals aren’t encouraging violence, but they are promoting personal vilification and the abuse of government power to punish political opponents.
There are many ways to encourage violence, and not all of them take the form of saying, “Go out and kill the [fill in the blank]!” To encourage hatred and envy, rather than mere disagreement and rational argument, is to help to encourage violence, at least potentially, and that’s what Perkins was talking about.
Of course, sometimes violence isn’t necessary. Sometimes the re-education camps will do. Sometimes it is enough to silence people or discourage them from speaking up in a way judged to be insufficiently PC.
“There are many ways to encourage violence, and not all of them take the form of saying, “Go out and kill the [fill in the blank]!” To encourage hatred and envy, rather than mere disagreement and rational argument, is to help to encourage violence, at least potentially, and that’s what Perkins was talking about.”
Leftists really are open-minded: their tyranny runs from the merely petty to the truly grotesque.
We’ve had 5 years of Obamanacht and Holdernatch so the people upset by Perkins’ comments should shut their pie hole.
Your are absolutely right that he correctly recognized the tactic. A parallel to note is that the wealthy “integrated” Jews in Germany thought they would be exempt from discrimination due to their higher social class. It did not happen as only the ones both useful and supportive of the power elite were kept on a string. So Soros is OK but Koch is not.
Note also that journalists who report on Chinese Communist Elite’s newly acquired wealth are being expelled from the country. THe 1% is only those who aren’t in the Party
Your post reminds me of the later analysis of radio broadcasts made before and during the genocide in Rwanda. Political opponents were likened to cockroaches, etc.
The first step toward violence is dehumanizing the people you’ve decided to scapegoat.
“Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
The Marxist-Leninist construct was known as “creating pre-revolutionary conditions.”
This agitation is common to all tumults. The Soviets, Nazis… on down the line all established this phase in the public consciousness before taking their shocking leaps to the top — from extremely thin, minority status.
This latter aspect, that of a minority vaulting to the top, is vastly under-appreciated by the orthodox set.
They can’t comprehend that a vast economic disruption utterly nullifies ALL prior orthodox / centrist / conventional / established parties and political creeds.
The discredit washes over ALL that have come before.
This is how the crowd comes to lust for Napoleon, Hitler, Lenin, et. al. These strong-arm artists bray to the crowd — in answer to their prayers — that they’re not going to be frustrated by ______ (fill in the blanks) … and are going to do what’s right!
Heck, that almost sounds like a recent SOTU address, hereabouts.
%%%
Forward!
Isn’t that the momentum of a cattle chute?
Methinks they doth protest too much.
He merely pointed out the next step in the process of ‘otherizing’ which has been going on. Some commenters with exquisitely-tuned antennae say it has been going on for decades, depending on the group being ‘otherized’ by the so-called ruling classes. It seems to have intensified in the last couple of years, though.
I posted this at Chicagoboyz just yesterday.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/41445.html
Over the next couple of days I will have another post about a group who were effectively ‘otherized’ during the Civil War in Texas. Hard-working, respectable immigrant Unionists in the Hill Country, who were suddenly viewed as traitors to the Confederacy and brought before a military tribunal in 1862 … to their shock and horror, and for the most trivial expressions of doubt in and disinclination to support the new régime. Which in the case of a guilty verdict, meant a capital sentence.
I clicked on your link Sgt. Mom. It seems many are thinking along the same lines.
I mocked Perkins because there is a much more apt analogy for the point he was trying to make — the French Revolution. The Russian Revolution would have been OK (but less effective due to the complete and utter dilution of accusations of Marxism by overuse) — but the comparison of the wealthy in today’s US to the Jews in 1930s Germany is simply ridiculous.
Who is this Craig, and where did he “mock Perkins”? And the point he attempts to make is what? That he considers something ridiculous?
OK Craig, if you say so it must be so.
@Craig Pennington
The French and Russian revolutions were the have-nots against the haves. The Nazi rise was a revolution of the have-nots against other have-nots: Nazis had rich sympathizers later on, but you can’t say they were the elite of German society in the beginning.
What’s going on here is a pretend revolution of the haves against other haves. Sure, you’ll have a few examples of real persecution against the Koch bros., but the rest of the 1% will be fine as long as they tow the party line and keep the checks coming.
er, “toe” the party line.
@Don Carlos
Who is this Craig? A nobody.
@Matt_SE
Indeed — a pretend oppression. What happened to the Jews prior to the real Krisallnacht? A bunch were shipped to Poland, and Poland wouldn’t take them. It was the birth of the camps. Perkins’ analogy was an obscenity.
Perkins is mistaken in limiting it to “the 1%”.
Look at how the Tea Party is relentlessly dehumanized by the MSM. Every time some nut goes on a killing spree, they go out of their way to try to link it to the Tea Party.
Even if they can’t do so, they plant the seed in the minds of their viewers. That is what is really frightening. When the time comes for a real crackdown, a sizable percentage of our “fellow citizens” will say, “Good. They had it coming.”
As someone said at Ace of Spades the other day, “We are in a slow motion Kristallnacht.”
Sgt. Mom; in your link you say: “Words eventually lead to deeds.”
So, very true, and those saying the words aren’t necessarily the ones doing the deeds.
One example that comes to mind is the celebrities who tweeted things about George Zimmerman, one ended up tweeting the wrong address, and as a result another not-involved-at-all family had to move out of their home because of death threats.
So, yea, those issuing “only words” can claim their innocence knowing full well there are others who will act upon those words.
Craig Pennington:
Your misstatement (willful? or ignorant?) of Perkins’ analogy is an obscenity.
This is what Perkins actually wrote:
This is how I described it in that same post I linked above:
To repeat and emphasize: his comparison was between today and Germany in 1930, when Kristallnacht was as yet “unthinkable,” and yet the seeds of hatred that led to it were already being planted.
Think about it.
Craig Pennington:
You wrote, “the comparison of the wealthy in today’s US to the Jews in 1930s Germany is simply ridiculous.”
Oh really?:
You can also find some relevant artwork here. It’s especially relevant because the drawing is from 1929, before the Nazis came to power, although they were already quite active in German political life, and this picture is from a famous Nazi propaganda periodical Der Sturmer. Planting the seeds, as it were.
Here’s more [emphasis mine]:
I think Perkins knows a lot more about history than you do.
In 2009 Dennis Miller said on O’Reilly that the next revolution would feature laser guillotines. These idiots are going uncork the Jinn. We may get to see the real commies show up. Not these lazy faux commies but the kind that spend all that vacation and golf time reading dossiers of people like the Clintons who have amassed 100 million while in “public service” and deciding which get the gulag and which get the laser guillotines live on pay-per-view.
@Craig Pennington:
Not only did you misstate Perkins’ analogy (as addressed by Neo-neocon), but you misquoted me:
I did not say “a pretend oppression,” I said “a pretend revolution.”
If the difference isn’t clear to you, allow me to illustrate:
Your statement implies that Obama isn’t actually oppressing people.
My statement implies that Obama isn’t a revolutionary. His pose as one of the insurgents is phony since the man is one of the 1% himself.
The oppression is real. Both of outré members of the 1% like the Kochs, and large swaths of the people like the Tea Party.
In fact, to the extent that his “donations” from even the well-heeled 1% are the result of implicit extortion, he’s victimizing them too!
Lenin’s persecution of the “kulaks” comes to mind: it’s the same pattern, over and over again, with the Bolshies.
“The Russian Kulaks were a class of peasant farmers who owned their own land. The term “Kulak” was originally intended to be derogatory.
“Soviet propaganda painted these farmers as greedy and standing in the way of the “utopian” collectivization that would take away their land, livestock, and produce.
“Kulak” means “fist” in Russian and may have had something to do with the supposed tight-fistedness of the Kulak class.
The Kulaks in general understood that the Bolshevik government was antithetical to property ownership and would strip away the rights and land the Kulaks had worked so hard to acquire and maintain. Unfortunately, the Bolsheviks won the Civil War.
After the Russian Civil War there was widespread famine throughout Russia. This was partly due to the war and partly due to the inefficiencies of collectivization.
Lenin attempted to confiscate grain from the peasants, including the Kulaks. Because not enough grain was collected, he blamed the Kulaks and ordered not only that the Kulaks be deprived of grain themselves, but also any seed grain.
He declared “Merciless war against the Kulaks! Death to them!” This, of course, only had the effect of making the shortage more severe.”
Scapegoat, scapegoat, scapegoat: the favorite tactic of these bungholes.
IIRC, the scapegoat was a sacrificial animal brought into the middle of the camp who was ritually loaded with clay tablets on which were inscribed all the humans’ sins — then the poor beast was driven out into the desert to die, supposedly taking the lousy humans’ sins with him.
People can really be rotten.
More on the “kulaks” (a Communist coinage, BTW):
“After Lenin’s death, Stalin took power in the Soviet Union. He continued the policy of collectivization. But the repeated failure of communist policies continued, and supply problems became even more endemic as the policies were more rigidly enforced.
“A scapegoat had to be found.
“The Kulaks were blamed for “recalcitrance” and a campaign of deportation was begun that amounted to wholesale slaughter.
“Kulaks were transported to Siberia, which was bad enough. However, they were simply dumped off in the middle of nowhere, without food, supplies, or resources of any kind.
“Many more were forced to work their farms but not allowed to keep any of the their production – even for sustenance. Literally millions of Kulaks died. The exact number is not known, but estimates range from 4,000,000 to 8,000,000.
“Once dispossessed, the Kulaks no longer existed, except as an excuse to be used by the communist regime to attack the peasant class whenever it seemed convenient. Many of the people who died as “Kulaks” were shocked to find out that this accusation had been laid upon them and that they were to suffer or die for it.”
Using Grossman’s On Killing as the source, the psychologists costs to pulling the trigger goes down when the target is not considered a human or less than a human.
They need to get the built in resistance to go down far enough to about the same thing people feel on the farm when slaughtering livestock. At least they need to get it below what a city dweller would feel trying to do the same thing on a farm.
In the Japanese anime Silver Spoon, second season, one character said he was glad he wasn’t born as livestock, considering the kind of life they have to lead to be with humans on the farm. And that was from a person being educated to work in the agricultural farm businesses.
Once the zombie population has been conditioned properly, they will not particularly mind pulling the trigger. Nor will they mind allowing the death squads to go into the homes of their so called neighbors to cull the herd. They will find it natural. Right. Agreed upon. The social consensus. Just as few people think much about the life that had to be ended to provide them pork, bacon, and beef… so the same can be done for those who were once humans, but are now zombies.
@Matt_SE:
Oppression:
Nazis interred Jews in camps prior to Kristallnacht.
Obama [???] the wealthy prior to Progressivenacht.
Yeah, I’ll stick with “pretend oppression.”
“Jewish financiers” not “financiers,” “Jewish big business” not “big business.” Most of the Jews who were deported prior to Kristallnacht were not wealthy financiers or big business folks. All Jews were specifically targeted by the Nazis for being Jews (and all Gypsies were specifically targeted for being Gypsies,) not for being wealthy or financiers.
And lets be clear, much of the financial backing of the Nazi’s came from non-Jewish big business folks like Emil Kordorf and Fritz Thysonn.
Perkins’ analogy is ridiculously inapt. Much better analogies exists — such as the prelude to the Russian or French revolutions, where the elite were targeted for being elite. See Beverly’s comments above — they make much more sense in this context.
I suspect the first–I hope the only–manifestation of this will be in the criminal justice system. Victims who are the othered one percenters will be less sympathetic and the perps more. There may be a juror here or there who has been taught that, irrespective of the facts of the case, the perp ought to be acquitted because of the character of the vic.
C. Pennington 1/30@9:16pm: “What happened to the Jews prior to the real Krisallnacht? A bunch were shipped to Poland, and Poland wouldn’t take them.”
Is this reinventing history? Poland was independent until the Krauts invaded in 1939. It was an antiSemitic place, to be sure, but it was more than a human landfill for the Nazis to dump their undesireds.
Those of us that know history know what happened to the Jews of Germany before the Nacht. Trouble was the German Jews thought themselves Germans first, Jewish second. Kinda like in the USA today: we’re all Americans. But some of us more so than others (Koch bros, etc.).
Craig Pennington:
I’m not sure whether your misunderstanding of my point is deliberate or merely naive. But I’ll clarify it for you:
Not all rich people are Jewish. And far from all Jews are rich people. But Jews are somewhat overrepresented in the 1% group. Plus, it is an old old association for anti-Semites and those who wish to promote anti-Semitism: rich greedy capitalist (also “moneylender”) equals dirty Jew. The Nazis did in fact exploit this association, as many others have before them.
But although that’s the case, that fact is incidental to the point of my post and my comments in this thread. The point is to compare methodology, not to say that Obama and the anti-one-percenters are specifically trying to stir up Jew-hatred a la the Nazis. I didn’t say that and Perkins didn’t say that. The comparison to Germany around 1930 was to the fact that Kristallnacht may not have been “thinkable” then by the majority of Germans, but the Nazis stirred up hate against the Jews for years, to the point where it became not only thinkable but doable. And then even worse was done.
The analogy is to the stirring up of hatred against a group though propaganda. That is what Obama and company are doing. And this can lead to worse against that group.
In this case there is some overlap within the two groups: Jews and very wealthy people. The Nazis concentrated on the first and the second was secondary to it. Obama concentrates on the second and the first is secondary to it. But the mechanism is hate propaganda. Against a group.
Don Carlos:
In 1938 there was an attempt to send German-dwelling Jews of Polish origin to Poland. Poland didn’t want them and kept sending them back. They were placed in refugee camps for a while and a game of hot potato ensued. This situation actually is connected to Kristallnacht in the following way:
So that’s Pennington’s reference, at least I assume it is. He didn’t explain it all that well, because it wasn’t just “a bunch of Jews,” these were Jews who had had Polish citizenship (I’m guessing they had dual citizenship with Germany, but I haven’t seen any information about that).
And the phrase Pennington uses “it was the birth of the camps” is misleading, because most people would understand the word “camps” in that context to mean forced labor camps or death camps. These were more akin to displaced person camps or refugee camps. Conditions were bad, to be sure, but these were neither forced labor camps nor death camps, although there were some deaths. Ultimately the people were allowed into Poland, although some went to other countries.
I’m not sure what ultimately happened to most of them, but since Poland was the site, years later, of some of the most famous death camps, and most of Polish Jewry was killed, I would guess that most of the German-Polish Jews deported in 1938 went to the actual death camps many years afterward.
It’s no surprise that Perkins was made to walk back his comparison
When it is commanded of them, people will Obey. Just like Perkins obeyed.
It doesn’t matter what form this obedience will take. Obedience is the goal in and of itself.
Yes, Neo, nice find.
I read Paul Johnson’s marvellous History of the Jews about ten yrs ago. Jews invented the charging of interest; they were prevented from being agricultural landlords by virtue of persecution, so instead of charging the serfs (sharecroppers) ~10% of their annual harvest, the perpetually migratory/displaced Jews charged interest as moneylenders: Land is fixed in place, but money is moveable. For which they have been forever reviled by Muslims and nonMuslims alike.
Don Carlos…
You are mistaken to believe that “Serfs” (in particular) had even the capacity to borrow monies — from anyone. Credit, as we think of it, was NOT extended to the common man — pretty much anywhere — until the 20th Century.
1) Legally, under the Tsarist scheme of life, Russian serfs were both bound to the land and unable to attain title — in any way shape or form.
2) They lived a virtually cash-less economic life. Their land rent was paid in goods. (grain)
3) Life was simple: pay in advance or do without. Like the 3rd world today, back scratching and family connections must carry the day.
In all aspects their economic conditions mimicked that of the Scots, Irish and the Welsh. (“Welshed on his debts” being a legacy of their cash position, to be sure.)
THE borrowing class was the NOBILITY.
Famously, the 17th Earl of Oxford borrowed from two Jewish lenders. Under his pen name, Shakespeare, he harpooned them in Hamlet. His transposition of their names was in-your-face obvious to his contemporaries. ( Queen Elizabeth paid off his debts and ran the both of them out of England — quickly and forever.)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the play versus the true names: Rosenstern and Guildencrantz. Both were fantastically rich loan sharks. The rate of interest on the Earl’s note scandalized the Queen. The literary genius was a dunce at numbers.
He retrod that searing event elsewhere, too. “Pound of flesh” an all, Merchant of Venice. ( IIRC, both hailed from Venice.)
As a general rule, commoners couldn’t attain credit to save their lives. That’s why they had to indenture themselves to sail to the New World.
Typical interest rates charged at that time, for unsecured credit, (even at pawn) were at loan shark rates, something that even Queen Elizabeth noted. (She WAS a math whiz and was fanatically against borrowing by the Crown. She killed off Crown debts ASAP. “Thank you: Golden Hind!”)
Rates that high triggered criminality even among the virtuous — though mathematically dull — once the full weight of the vig came to bear.
It’s this latter aspect that caused money lenders to have the social moral character of drug pushers.
BTW, essentially all of money lending to commoners would’ve been in the structure of pawn.
The social weight of pulling too much action from that line of business was made the focus of:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059575/
The Pawn Broker.
%%%
Sending commoners into the toll booth was a complete zero for serious lenders. You had to pay for process of law. Right there that cost more money than any commoner would’ve owed.
BTW, debtors prison was expected to cause ones kin to stump up the money. It broke down when the entire society fell on hard times.
The one crowd that would use debtors prison: the lairds. You could easily be dinged for damage to property — and in particular — for wildlife and livestock that may have made its way to the family table. (Jailed for feeding the kids.)
(The Normans were really big on hunting repression. It was a tick that was handed down through the ages, peer to peer networking, if you will.)
%%%
It’s a MAJOR problem: the common student does not understand compound interest, exponentials and the time value of money.
We see this with Rent-to-Own — and a lot of the insane real estate purchase gambits that flew through the system during the mania.
Congress, itself, is as dumb as Shakespeare. It is spending all of us into a hole that even a super-hero can climb out of.
Oh for Pete’s sake, I tried to explain too briefly apparently that Euro Jews couldnt live off of serfs (aka sharecropping) because land was not portable in event of pogroms. I never meant to suggest the Jews charged serfs interest…only those with money (nobles, governments).
After the failed Spanish Armada, Ferndinand and Isabella defaulted on all government debt, told the Jews in Spain to convert to Catholicism or to leave the country, for example. There are Jewish relics in New Mexico that date to the early 1500s, brought byJews who were faux Catholics.
Otherwise, thanks for the info, blert.