Babel and a Smear

Pop Quiz

The following are quotes from the platforms of political parties. See if you can match them with a particular party and the approximate date they appeared:

“We demand that the government be charged with providing the opportunity for a livelihood and a way of life for the citizens.”

“The government is responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our national education program.”

“We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.”

“We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.”

“We demand the education at the expense of the government of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.”

Answers at the end of the post.

The news media, print and electronic. have a long history of engaging in the circulation of “news” stories that are intended to be misleading. “If it bleeds, it leads” is a well known phrase in the media world. In the 1800’s he term yellow journalism referred to sensationalistic, salacious and slanted stories that were presented as objective truth. The “smear” has become a staple of the media babel today.

Even before yellow journalism the press was engaged in vitriolic political reportage. James Callender aimed his slanderous reporting at Thomas Jefferson, publicly accusing him of fathering a number of children by a slave named Sally Hemings. DNA evidence has now been used to debunk that calumny but in the early 1800s Watson and Crick had not yet made their famous discovery.

We are, sadly, quite familiar with a modern example of this type of journalism. The so-called Russian Collusion hoax was perpetrated by the campaign team of Hilliary Clinton and duly echoed by obedient town criers from coast to coast. Trump was falsely accused a being a “Russian asset”, a tool of Vladimir Putin.

There was an earlier Russian collusion story…

“Are you a conscious articulate agent of the Communist conspiracy?”

In the 1940s and 50s that statement was used by Senator Joseph McCarthy to interrogate witnesses appearing before the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. He used his Bully Pulpit (aptly named in his case) to malign through innuendo a number of individuals. An accusation, true or not, of being a Communist sympathizer or fellow traveler was in many cases an career death sentence. Writers and actors in Hollywood were placed on a Blacklist and had to ply their craft under assumed names. Richard Nixon in his first Congressional campaign in 1950 ran against Helen Gahagan Douglas and he accused her of having “Communist sympathies” and gave her the moniker “pink lady”…a closet Leftist “right down to her underwear”. He won that election, his first step toward the White House.

McCarthy was eventually banished from the kingdom because of his crass and intimidating behavior. In later years it was proven that many of his accusations were not completely without merit but he no longer had any credibility because he had lost any “sense of decency.” The Harvard poster boy Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury for lying about his Communist past despite a loyal press corps defending him to the end.

Today our politicians and the elite media are accomplished practitioners of the defamatory arts…

“You are a fascist.”

This is a favorite of the booboissie, Mencken’s derisive term for the American voters and politicians…”There’s no underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” AOC and the pom pom toting Democrat members of Congress describe any person with whom they disagree as a fascist. The most famous fascist politician was Benito Mussolini, head of Italy’s National Fascist Party. In the 1929 Encyclopedia Britannica describes fascist economic theory as passing legislation that “radically transformed…relations between employers and employed” thereby creating a “corporative state”. The economic theory was based on private business ownership strictly controlled by government imposed laws and regulations. FDR was so impressed the economic success of Il Duce that he sent his economic advisors to take notes on the Italian economic miracle. Fascism is the interim step between free enterprise and socialism. Not one member of today’s Democrat and media Greek choruses can even define “fascism” or other pejorative terms that they throw around.

“You are a Nazi.”

When the Leftist mudslingers want to amp up their ignorant slanders they go full Hitler. It escapes their willful ignorance that the correct name of the Nazi Party is the National Socialist German Workers Party and Hitler is identified in the 1929 Britannica as the founder of that party in 1919. . They simply seek the back door accusation that the target of their vilification is a kindred spirit of Adolf Hitler. They are blind to the irony that their pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish rantings are closer to Hitler than anyone in the MAGA crowd.

“You are a racist.”

In their ongoing efforts to make Ivan Pavlov proud they reflexively call any perceived disagreement with anyone who is Black racist. Racism is defined as the “belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.” A racist attributes personality traits to an entire race. To suggest that all Jewish people are “rapacious” is racist but to state the obvious, that Saint Barack was neither experientially nor intellectually qualified to be President is not racist. It does not apply to comments about individuals of a particular racial persuasion.

“You are a white supremacist.”

White supremacy is the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races. White supremacy has ideological foundations that date back to 18th-century “scientific racism” that shaped international relations and racial policy until the mid-20th century when de-colonization took hold. It gets worse when the Left really gets their dander up and they escalate to “systemic” or “structural” racism. This a very fluid concept which basically means that a plurality white population is proof of systemic racism.

“You are a science denier.”

When a Leftist has absolutely no scientific support for whatever flimflam they are promulgating, such as anthropogenic climate change or a Covid “epidemic”, rational debate is impossible and an opponent is accused of being a “science denier” who simply refuses to understand that the (non)science is settled. The Left injects squid ink into the conversation which renders logic and reason impossible.

These meritless accusations are dependent on the ignorance, incuriosity and gullibility of the audience and they are aided and abetted by the public education system in America. Team Biden became so desperate that in 2023 that they tried to establish a Disinformation Governance Board to be chaired by Nina Jankowicz, an unemployed village idiot. The charter of this authoritarian censorship effort would be to stifle any information that offended the sensibilities of the thought control team in Washington, i.e. the Democratic Party. Happily the project was stillborn and Ms. Jankowicz slithered off stage to a well deserved obscurity.

These offensive slurs have become routine since Trump took office in 2017 and they make Hilliary’s description of Trump voters as “deplorables” look benign. It can be argued that the “world’s smartest woman” lost the 2016 election because of that one verbal pratfall. The Left becomes positively indignant when it is suggested that the use of terms such as fascist, Nazi or white supremacist might be the cause of political violence such as the murder of Charlie Kirk…a practitioner of free and intelligent debate.

It is time to turn down the rhetoric and return to civil discourse assuming, of course, that the Eric Swalwells, Ilhan Omars and Jamie Raskins in our ruling class are interested in acting like adults.

Answer to the pop quiz:

Most people have guessed that these planks came from various Democrat platforms but it must be reported that such is not the case. However, they did not miss by much…they are all from the 1920 political manifesto of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, better known as the Nazi Party. The giveaway would have been in another clause of that manifesto: “Only a member of the race can be a citizen. A member of the race can only be one who is of German blood without consideration of creed. Consequently, no Jew can be a member of the race.” The last clause will thrill The Squad to the core.