re: #291 HappyWarrior

I realize I’m the Archduke Factoid of Buzzkill-Holstein (yellow field with two red bees passant; green escutcheon with black fig leaf) but…right after the war the shit-stirring started. Not amongst everyday people, but people with power and fears about the Cold War sometimes began to “understand” the Nazis. Operation: Paperclip didn’t just scoop up scientists but “intelligence” experts who were seen as useful to fight Soviet influence. And sheep-dipping was used to make men who’d done terrible things seem acceptable. Stay-behind missions in Europe put military and intelligence men in close contact with remaining fascists as allies, resulting in shit like Gladio.

But I’d say the bigger thing is that America is in denial about the cultural legacy of the Civil War. The Lost Cause and the Stab in the Back have the same strains of revanchism, self-pity, and having been made the villains for acts of “normal” self-defense and warmaking. Each has its layers of scapegoats: Jews and socialists versus blacks, “carpetbaggers.” There’s the same just-so story, with the same root concept—white supremacy—and the same mix of sentimentality, aesthetics, and pseudoscience
assembled into a vague “politics.” At some point these phenomena were going to collide and trade plasmids.

The other thing that should be prodded more is how organizations like the John Birch Society imported Nazi tropes as part of their anti-Communism. I mean, they kicked off the “Cultural Marxism” craze that’s an exact gloss of Kulturbolschewismus—okay, okay, the “Jews” part is made a dogwhistle—and their share of the conservative culture has expanded over time: Rapture-ready people have ingested a steady diet of JBS material that’s been used to shape the “meaning” of John’s Revelation. Left Behind and it’s accompanying exegetical materials, are full of the because of LaHaye’s JBS participation.

The last thing is something I talked about the other night: Nazism is not an original thing, but a manifestation of trends that are everywhere.