It seems on brand, although I would equally have believed you had you told me it was a normal history book and she was just holding it because there's swastikas on the cover. Personally I am comfortable taking a generally negative negative view of the whole Hitlerian movement.
In my case I would start at the point of examining how "generally negative views of the whole Hitlerian movement" began and were framed. I think that for you it is simply that I say this, that I do not immediately chime in and declaim agreement, that you necessarily see me as implicated as a proponent of Hitlerian fascism. You are
paranoid in that odd Lefty-Progressive way.
You could, if you were inclined, and so could I if I were inclined, research this woman's trajectory and try to get to the bottom of her strongly anti-Jewish (or antisemitic if you wish) stance. Jews who convert to Christianity often become critical of Judaism and Jewish attitudes or stances.
And it is possible that if you determined that all of it was a result of mental unbalance or, as you say, succumbing to those who manipulate the "irritable hordes waiting to be led around by whoever provides the torches, the pitchforks and the chant", and that all contemporary examination of every pillar in the Postwar ideological construct is evidence of mental, social and ideological derangement, then naturally you will begin from that point when any opposition of any sort is broached. It is a circular position though.
That is my impression of your stance and I see it as driven by rhetorical declarations which are bolstered, to some degree, with some useful and conversable points. For one example your opinions on what I assume you see as a 'false economic miracle' brought about by the Hitlerian "New Deal". I have no means at my disposal to argue against your position nor to agree with it -- I have devoted no time to an examination of National Socialist economics. But always with you I notice those rhetorical and embellished opinions which are attacks against the integrity of those who have different views. I do not think you are willing to allow that those who have issues with the present dispensation, or the structure of the civil religious narratives, have
any leg to stand on. And here I emphatically disagree with you. Not as a partisan of some retrograde reactionary movement, but because I have read a good deal of the material of those dissidents and I accept
elements of their argument.
My view -- and this in regard to the entire event of Europe's two *civil wars* (as they have been termed by some) -- is that the entire event is susceptible to a revisionist examination. Simply put, the way that the victory over Nazism or fascism has been portrayed is clearly a narrative written by the victors. What this means is that the narrative structure is presented as unassailable and, to differ with it in almost any area or degree, is presented as being an exposition of evil ideology. In my view the war was
a co-created event and not the fault of one actor. (I am deeply suspicious of the way that *ontological malevolence* is assigned exclusively to the
dark angel Adolf Hitler. Far too
convenient in my view).
And what this means is that a sensible person, and a rational person with genuine concerns about history and historiography, will take and must take a critical approach. Similarly, and as a point of comparison, I could rely exclusively on US state descriptions of its reasons for invading Vietnam or Iraq, however I know, and I assume we all know, that we will likely never get a true picture of *reasons* and *motives* by referring to the woven narratives of those whose interests are best served through various levels of obfuscation.
I am pretty sure that you would agree with this, but I am am also doubtful that you would extend the agreement to a need to examine, from a revisionist perspective, the proclamations of righteousness by those who defined and presented the Postwar narrative.
However, if you take me to be saying that I think the Hitlerian movement should be seen as something positive -- that is, to counter the view that it was exclusively *negative* -- you will repeat the mistake you often make, due I think to your rhetorical zealousness. All states, and certainly all empires and neo-imperialisms, are fundamentally involved in power-determined machinations. The use of power is the principle thing, and then comes the propaganda narrative to defend it and to present the usage to the masses.
The use of power is raw and brutal
in all instances. This is a fundamental tenet of my understanding of power. And I should add that my views on power were shaped by a close reading of
On Power & Ideology: The Managua Lectures by Chomsky. I came to understand Chomsky as a Machiavellian political scientist insofar as he employs a reversed application of the power dynamics he analyzes in
The Prince and
The Discourses.
You can talk populist reactionaries into "reacting" against anything you instruct them to. They form irritable hordes waiting to be led around by whoever provides the torches, the pitchforks and the chant. You are describing there a collective who all join each other in blaming everything on wokeness but then all go blank if you ask them what woke means. They are just sheep for men like you to fleece.
I use the term "reaction" and "reactionary" is a more or less neutral sense. That is, not as a purely negative descriptor. As you know I regard European reaction to the infiltration of Marxist-Leninist activism as a necessary counter-activity. And you also know that I am aware that one radicalism will tend to call forth it opposing and countering radicalism. But in my view, and in the most important sense, to define a *reactionary position* involves a discovery of and an enunciation of what core values one is defining and defending. So the first order of business is an examination of one's own core values.
What I have found is that as our cultures, having been let's say knocked off their established foundations in those areas of defined values previously accepted as
normal, sane and good, become susceptible to currents of control established by factions that seek power and control irrespective of ethical or moral questions. Power, as I say, tends to amoral action. And what I seek to point out is that people, average people and non-specialists, who sense impending chaos and notice it operating around them, attempt to recur to structures that had been established and which to them seem to encompass *value* and if you will an anchor to which to moor themselves.
Now I may take this choice to *seek an anchor* in a Platonic sense of seeking to locate and accentuate ideas that are metaphysical and in that sense *eternal*, and to try to make statements about what these should be and are, and to live in accord with them, but someone else will sense the danger and stress caused by the encroachment of chaos and mutability and resolve simply to attend church services with their family, but in each case there is a *reaction* against something that requires resistance. Not *going with the flow* of events but countering that flow.
And persuading them that all their anxieties are tied to something deeper and more insidious than 'woke'... some international plot you call 'Radical Left-Progressive Marxism' is how you fleece them.
My sense is that you do not have enough historical perspective to understand the effect of Radical Marxism. It is a highly caustic acid and it is designed to eat away at established structures, values, hierarchies of value, and hierarchies of attainment. It can be (and often is) extremely mindless in this: a destructive mechanism.
Because you do not see it, or cannot see it, as a bona fide danger and something requiring an opposing stance, you could therefore never understand the view that does regard it as dangerous and consequential in many negative senses. Your natural tendency to rhetorical-emotional constructs kicks in and, as a result, you cannot see but that any reference to this is an attempt to *fleece* a victim.
My suggestion is that you stop assuming that everyone knows you are right but is too afraid to think it. Those old ideas aren't terrifying, they just lack any particular virtue. They are a religion of conformism being mis-sold as "dissident ideas" by people who yearn for tedious homogeneity reinforced by systems of abuse which are suddenly rendered morally desirable by the idea that you have your sweaty little fists on all the levers of oppression.
Here you explain the ideology which animates your opinions and views. This statement is highly reductive but driven by sets of predicates that you will not or cannot examine. You reduce what you superficially categorize as ideas lacking virtue to *a religion of conformism* and you fail to take into consideration -- I assume because you do not understand -- that those definitions of the right and the good, and choices about value (and meaning) are hard-won through intellectual work.
It is doubtful that you know much at all about the ideas of those theorists understood to be *genuinely conservative* (not popularly and erroneously classed as Conservatives al la Americana) so you seem here to engage with a glossary smear and, rhetorically, for your own purposes.
This is the core, operative concept that you work with and that (in my view) has power over you. It is filled with falseness and is neither fair, realistic nor accurate, but it is what you choose to work with:
They are a religion of conformism being mis-sold as "dissident ideas" by people who yearn for tedious homogeneity reinforced by systems of abuse which are suddenly rendered morally desirable by the idea that you have your sweaty little fists on all the levers of oppression.
