When history doesn't exist

Check out David Neiwert's post about Glenn Beck (Jonah Goldberg's bulldog for "liberal fascism") teaming up with Goldberg to explain that Holocaust Museum killer James Von Brunn was not "far right" politically. News to me, since the last time I checked Von Brunn's beliefs and associations place him exactly in extremist "right-wing" politics.

If you watch that video clip that Mr. Neiwert provides, you'll see Beck list off the reasons that Brunn was not "right-wing," the last of which is that he hates black people. Are you kidding me? It's as if history has no existence, no meaning, no reality for Beck or Goldberg outside of immediate expediancy at any given moment, in essence, for them, history in not merely bunk, but bullshit. Certainly one can find examples of racism across the political spectrum, but to act as if there is not a very real and continuing tradition of "right-wing" racism in this country is well beyond absurd. What, do Beck and Goldberg think that the "state's rights" White Patriots of the anti-tax movement are commies or something? Back when William Buckley was editorializing in the National Review (which Goldberg himself is currently an editor of) in favor of segregation and in opposition to the civil rights movement what was he? A leftist? And, as you'll see below in a moment, just as with hatred of blacks being wiped from the history of the American "right," they've managed to wipe anti-Semitism away as well; so when Henry Regnery was publishing anti-Semitic World War II revisionist material was he a leftist, too?

They also do the same dance that Limbaugh did before: Von Brunn hated Jews, hated Fox News, Republicans, targeted Weekly Standard, etc. - thus, he's not of the "right!" And just like Limbaugh, they fail to mention what he thought about: Jews -they are secretly controlling Obama, planning to take away Von Brunn's guns and install one world Marxist government; Fox News & Weekly Standard - ditto, he thought they were doing the bidding of the Zionist NWO Jews; Republicans - hated them because they were too soft and corrupt, not willing to fight the Left. It might have been worth noting that Von Brunn also targeted the Washington Post. But then again, all of this would get in the way of painting Von Brunn as a liberal fascist.

Aha! Beck and Goldberg might retort, but we didn't say in that clip that Brunn was of the left, we just said he's not of the right and is in fact a lunatic. To which we can reply that this is simply sleight of hand, as Goldberg clearly says that Von Brunn sounds like a Nazi, and Goldberg has already written a book - which he continues to plug - arguing that fascism equals liberalism. It was originally subtitled, "The totalitarian temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton." Actually, he pretty much kept that subtitle, but instead of naming Clinton, he used cowardly code "from Mussolini to the politics of meaning" for Clinton.

Mr. Neiwert has also written a response - titled "Fascism is not liberal" - to Goldberg's latest attempt (or psuedo-attempt) to defend his book from its critics. It compliments rather well my own post on the subject about fascism not having a "happy face." As I did, Neiwert also quotes heavily from the definitive work of Robert O. Paxton, but really draws out with examples how truly and utterly bizarrely Goldberg has inverted reality.

There is one quote in particular, from Paxton, that I found interesting:

Fascist violence was neither random nor indiscriminate. It carried a well-calculated set of coded messages: that communist violence was rising, that the democratic state was responding to it ineptly, and that only the fascists were tough enough to save the nation from antinational terrorists. An essential step in the fascist march to acceptance and power was to persuade law-and-order conservatives and members of the middle class to tolerate fascist violence as a harsh necessity in the face of Left provocation. It helped, of course, that many ordinary citizens never feared fascist violence against themselves, because they were reassured that it was reserved for national enemies and "terrorists" who deserved it.

As I noted before in my previous post, Beck's immediate response to this act of violence was to tell his audience that it confirms that America's "cancer" - progessivism - is hastening Barack Obama's march to fascism.

Today Glenn Beck, on his Fox tv show said that this crime confirmed what he has been warning about all along on his show: that "liberal fascism" - a natural consequence of the "cancer" of progressivism - is on the way.

Indeed, Beck warned his audience

There is gonna be a witchhunt, I believe, in this country, and quite possibly all around the world. For two groups. First group: Jews. It happens every time.

Second group: I think, Conservatives.

Right. First the liberals came for the Jews, then they came for the conservatives. How much more damage to history, facts, and our understanding of reality can Beck possibly do?

I reworded this in the comments of Mr. Neiwert's post in relation to the bit from Paxton I've bolded:

Yes, and strangely enough, when white nationalist, self-professed anti-liberal, anti-Marxist neo-Nazi right-winger James Von Brunn shot a black security guard in a Holocaust museum because he thought the Right was too soft in combatting the Jew controlled Manchurian Marxist Barack Obama, Glenn Beck's immediate reaction was to go on air and say that this confirms that Barack Obama is trying to install a happy-faced Marxist-liberal-fascist regime, and that after liberals like Von Brunn round up the Jews, they'll come for the conservatives.

When history doesn't exist, we can draw no lessons from it. We've already seen the abrogation of civil liberties and human rights (and unprovoked war) that Americans are seemingly willing to tolerate when done in the name of combatting "Islamofascists," what might be an eventual result or consequence of Glenn Beck telling his audience that "liberal fascists" are coming to round them up?