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Why Is Everyone Freaking Out About Chris Matthews? The Left Calls People Nazis All the Time!
It gets done all the time: Comparisons to Hitler and Nazis from people who can’t figure out how to express their disagreement with others, so they resort to the lowest common denominator, gaining themselves a moment of moral superiority while denigrating and diminishing the attempted extermination of an entire people.
Presidential candidate Tom Steyer did it to President Donald Trump. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has done it when talking about the border:
I’ve addressed this on-air and in print. And on social media:
So when I read that Chris Matthews of MSNBC compared Sen. Bernie Sanders’ win in the Nevada caucuses to France falling to the Nazis, it wasn’t new or shocking to me:
Folks it’s realpic.twitter.com/Vm0BxJ6ge6
— Eli Valley (@elivalley) February 22, 2020
Comparisons to Nazis are the standard trope from anti-intellectual talking heads who want to engage the bastardization of history to shore up their woke position. Better said – this is what low-brow people do when they want to seem important. It’s what Tom Steyer did. It’s what Rep. Ocasio-Cortez did. It’s what Luddites like Ana Navarro have done. The Nazi comparison has become the de-facto crutch for slow-witted individuals who only ever read the Cliff Notes summary of WWII, or, really, any history at all.
And it’s not that Nazism nor Nazis nor even Hitler are off-limits. Certainly, the Nazis were socialists– the National Socialist German Workers Party, to be exact. And that Sen. Sanders is a “democratic socialist” could lead to many questions.
But making a comparison to Nazis is not actually what Chris Matthews did. Matthews’s point seems to be that the Democratic Party doesn’t understand that they’ve lost to Bernie; that he has a clear path to the nomination. That, I believe, was his commentary, based on the video I’ve seen.
Was it clumsy? Perhaps. Was it totally unnecessary? Probably, if not completely. Was it seized (pounced?) upon by the same anti-intellectual mob that proudly uses the attack to go after President Trump whenever they can? Yes.
Now, people want Chris Matthews fired. Of course, they do. How else do you expect woke zealots to act?
But since there was no call for Steyer to not run, Rep. Ocasio Cortez to resign, or Ana Navarro to be fired, forgive me if I don’t join the mob of dunces who can’t tell the difference between pure insult and potentially questionable commentary. I’m no fan of Chris Matthews in the main, but I’m far less a fan of actual fanatics who want blood because they aren’t perspicacious enough to draw distinctions.
Crossposted at WIBC.com.
Published in Elections, Politics
The desire to see Chris Matthews fired transcends wokeness.
Amen. And a redundant Amen to go with it.
The other funny thing about this story is that Matthews never mentioned the Nazis.
His reference was to the Fall of France, and specifically to French PM Reynaud’s comment to Churchill, on the phone — “it’s over.”
It’s true that it was a Nazi invasion, but I don’t think that Matthews was making a Nazi reference. He was referencing the most spectacular defensive collapse in history, and a very famous quote.
Just think of the hysteria that would result if Matthews said that the fat lady was singing.
When that tingle running up your leg is from the electric chair.
That’s what I’ve been thinking. He didn’t bring up the Nazis as such. He basically called the Democrat Party “cheese eating surrender monkeys” with a failed Maginot Line of defense against the takeover of the party by aged commies and their youthful idiots.
Imagine no possessions?
It would be the end of opera as we know it!
I think it is time to remind the public square what Stalinism really was. Bernie being a bare-faced anti-Semitic Jewish Stalinist. That unreflective life is one ugly nuclear dumpster fire. An appropriate monument for our tolerance for bankrupt history curricula.
Oh, sorry, wrong room. I thought I smelled pork barbecue.
I don’t understand liberals like Mathews. They go along with almost all left wing insanity, then when the left wing of their party states an unambiguous marxist/Nazi position they blow up. Where do they think their politics lead?
And in any case, Nazi’s killed 100 Million fewer people than Communist socialists did.
Tucker Carlson on the incompetence of the ruling classes.
I guess Matthews is old enough to remember all the people like him who have died in socialist revolutions:
Good points.
I have nothing against making comparisons to Nazis or Commies to make a reductio ad absurdum point. I do it to lefty opponents and conservative allies all the time. But it’s usually best if there is some actual point to such a comparison. And it helps if there is something uniquely Naziist or Communist about the comparison, though I don’t think that’s a requirement. Sometimes Nazis or Commies make a good subject of analogy because they are a common point of reference that doesn’t need a whole lot of historical explanation.
But sometimes making such a comparison is just childish namecalling. If there’s no more than that to it, it’s best to leave it out.
(BTW, reductio ad absurdum is not a logical fallacy except when it is being used as a logical fallacy.)
(BTW2, I once had an opportunity to engage Mike Godwin in a Twitter “discussion” about the absurdity of his so-called law. I don’t think I won him over. He did engage briefly in an actual discussion, but either he was a bit dense or I didn’t do a good enough job explaining.)
I thought David Harsanyi had it right: the Nazi invasion of France is a poor choice of metaphor when you could have used the Bolsheviks storming the Winter Palace.
Yeah, but one of those was faked for the movies, and the other was real.
That’s funny, I remember the Cold War more as Tip O’Neill and his loyal minion Chris Matthews being in the way of the people who were trying to win it.
Calling someone “Hitler” has lost its sting, much the same way “racist” has. The overuse of the word has trvialized the seriousness of the accusation . . .
The maddening thing is this is total projection. Russia never wanted Trump to win, although they might by happy with a Sanders win. Putin’s goal was always to disrupt our elections and make the people distrust our institutions. He succeeded wildly beyond his expectations because of the people screaming “Russian interference!!” The Democrats, the Press, the ruling elites are Putin’s useful idiots, but at least they’re very good at something!
Seems like much ado about nothing, to borrow a phrase.
Also he’s not comparing Sanders to a Nazi, though “national socialist” isn’t a bad description of The Bern. He’s making a military metaphor. And can I just say: France didn’t fall to the Nazis. France fell to the German Army.
Imagine there’s no bread
It’s easy if you try
No tacos or hot sauce,
Nothing cold or fried,
Imagine all the people living in the gulags …
You may say I’m a commie
But I’m not the only one
And someday you will join us
Or we’ll shoot you in the face …
“John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ Rereleased With More Realistic Description Of Communism”
https://babylonbee.com/news/classic-john-lennon-lyric-adjusted-to-imagine-all-the-dead-people-to-give-a-better-perspective-of-communism
For a very good history on the fall of France, in 1940. I would recommend the following:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301576/to-lose-a-battle-by-alistair-horne/
People like Mathews have been gleefully stoking socialistic thinking for decades and now they’re shocked when an old commie is taking over the Democrat Party by riding a wave of gullible, immature, no-nothing zealots who actually listened to them!
The answer to the headline question, “Because they are fools incapable of reading comprehension, and ignorant of how metaphors and analogies work.” See the above comments by @arizonapatriot , @westernchauvinist , and @spin .
In fairness, I distrusted our institutions long before 2016, and so did a great many of us.
Brilliant! Now we just need to get someone to record it.