Beware of Historians 'Splainin' Things, as NYT, WaPo Cite Covid Hawks to Pummel Trump
Groundhog Day in the West, it seems, albeit without irony, any sense of proportion, and the usual trappings of professional conduct among historians, journos, and publishers
Another day, another sign of the continued decay of ‘journalism’ and ‘history’, as many Western legacy media outlets push yet another kind of nonsense on the (suspecting) public.
Courtesy of the New York Times and the Washington Post, with the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Corona Pandemic’ now seemingly behind us—and 'Joe Biden’ trailing badly in the polls, it’s time to trot out the slightly putrefied revenant of the fictitious Trump-as-Hitler trope.
Editorial comment: a version of this piece appeared earlier today in German over at TKP; click here, if you’d like to read it.
Historians Warn Against ‘Authoritarian Language’—and Stay Mum About Covid
After some three years of a kind of hiatus, the Historians of the West are baaaaaack—and they are picking up right where they left off before the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Covid Pandemic™’, although not much has changed: the mainstay of their ‘argument’ still consists of cheap shots, moralising chit-char, and loads of support from the establishment. A eulogy, I hope, for the West’s self-declared, ‘juste milieu’, its virtue-signalling masquerading as ‘journalism’, and the more than ‘just’ capricious opinion-making of our self-proclaimed moral guardians.
Last weekend, it has happened again. With impressive, if not entirely unexpected ritualism and unity, our legacy media marched again against the 45th US President Donald Trump. It certainly wasn’t easy for him, as the American ‘juste milieu’ had used every conceivable measure from the beginning of his candidacy to thwart his agenda (such as it was). You neither have to ‘like’ Trump nor be ‘for’ (or ‘against’) his opponents, but it is obvious how far beyond the years immediately ‘before Covid’ were to recognise the seeds of the past almost four years.
Speaking of ‘Covid’, we note that the demonisation of Mr. Trump by no means disappeared once the WHO declared a ‘pandemic’, but Mr. Trump’s doings clearly took a backseat as politicos and ‘journos’ ramped up the demonisation of all so-called ‘corona deniers’ and ‘anti-vaxxers’ (and then some). As is well known, volumes can be filled about this unpleasant time, and the last word has certainly not yet been spoken about the alleged but in any case necessary ‘reckoning’, or Aufrarbeitung.
But how do these two topics fit together? Simple: we read our legacy media outlets, specifically, the kind of quasi-official ones, such as the NYT or WaPo. Yet, before we do that, let’s take brief detour via a European state broadcaster.
Austrian State Broadcaster ORF on Trump
On November 26, 2023, the Austrian state broadcaster ORF came out with a piece with a telling title: ‘Trump’s Authoritarian Language Alarms Historians‘. Personally, that kind of title would be perfectly befitting the NYT or WaPo, but I digress.
As a (professional) historian, I am always ‘thrilled’ when my colleagues get lost in the abyss masquerading as legacy media, although their absurdities are by now legendary, ranging from cheap activism pretending to be ‘research’ at the venerable Austrian Academy of Sciences to the lying presidents Steinmeier of Germany and Van der Bellen of Austria. Hard times for historians, no doubt, but the clearly overriding criterion for ‘recognition’ by legacy media were—conformism and anticipatory obedience to the (many times reformulated) official ‘narrative’.
Now, though, ‘the historians’ are back with yet another attack on Donald Trump. From the ORF article mentioned before (with my emphasis):
Former US President Donald Trump is positioning himself a year before the 2024 presidential election. In his speeches, historians are increasingly noticing language that is reminiscent of authoritarian leaders of the 1930s , as US media reported. He recently described his political opponents as ‘vermin’ that he wanted to ‘exterminate’…
The fact that Trump's campaign tactics are now relying on attacks against an ‘internal’ threat has raised new alarm signals among autocracy experts, who have also watched Trump’s praise for foreign dictators and his contempt for democratic ideals with increasing concern, reported the New York Times. The main question is whether his rhetorical turn towards fascist-sounding statements is just a provocation of the left or even ‘the dropping of a veil’.
At this point it is up to everyone to read the selected Trump quotes; this is about something else—namely the assessments of the cited expert colleagues on the postulated ‘authoritarian turnaround’.
As quoted by the WaPo, here goes (emphases mine):
‘The language is the language that dictators use to instill fear’, said Timothy Naftali, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. ‘When you dehumanize an opponent, you strip them of their constitutional rights to participate securely in a democracy because you’re saying they’re not human. That’s what dictators do.’
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian at New York University, said in an email to The Washington Post that ‘calling people “vermin” was used effectively by Hitler and Mussolini to dehumanize people and encourage their followers to engage in violence.’
‘Trump is also using projection: note that he mentions all kinds of authoritarians “communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left” to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom’, Ben-Ghiat said. ‘Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.’
First of all—such language should be rejected, if only for the reasons mentioned, but what the expert colleagues had to say about the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Covid pandemic’ is much more telling, indeed.
Neither Austrian state broadcaster ORF nor the above-cited WaPo piece nor this one in the NYT mentioned the following information.
Trump/Covid Derangement Syndrome
Here is Tim Naftali, for example, who awarded US President Biden a grade of ‘B+’ in 2021 regarding his ‘pandemic management’ (screenshot via X/Twitter):
We therefore deduce that colleague Naftali was in favour of the unjustified mandates and that ‘the demonisation’ of ‘the unvaccinated’ met with his approval.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, on the other hand, was one of the busiest ‘pro vaxx hawks’ who also appeared frequently (pun intended) on CNN, as the following examples may illustrate (my emphasis):
Far from feeling vibrant, many of us are haunted by the specter of illness. We worry that doing our job will cause us, our students and our loved ones to contract Covid-19, especially as the wildly contagious Delta variant continues to circulate. [source, 5 Nov. 2021; note that this dreaded variant had a lower infection fatality rate than the wild type]
If you are interested in Ben-Ghiat's opinion on Donald Trump, you will find it here.
However, impartiality or a certain ‘critical distance’ between their research subject or the individual under investigation vs. their published opinions looks, well, quite ‘different’ in both cases.
We therefore note that both historians, who are quoted extensively by legacy media, have their say in detail in both the New York Times, which is by no means considered ‘remote from the establishment’, and The Washington Post.
Context such as to their toeing of the party line as regards ‘Covid’, as shown here, as well as their long-standing hostility towards Donald Trump are merely a distraction, of course.
It also seems ‘inappropriate’ for legacy media to point out the verbal insults of ‘the unvaccinated’ during the WHO-declared, so-called ‘corona pandemic’, if only because doing so might give away the game.
On ‘Covid Deniers’, ‘Conspiracy Theories’, and ‘Dissent’
Since it is important that these above-cited, of course historically extremely significant opinions, do not exist completely devoid of context, I shall quote to you a few lines from the—in itself great—op-ed by Philine Conrad, a German artist and shunned ‘unvaxxed pariah’ of yesteryear, which appeared in the Berliner Zeitung in late July 2023. The basis of this article is a panel discussion that took place shortly before as part of the Martin Luther Foundation in the Erfurt town hall (translation and emphases mine):
I would like to introduce myself: I am an ‘appendix’. A ‘denier’. A ‘Nazi’—’right-wing’, ‘lacking solidarity’, and ‘selfish’. I am ‘stupid’, a ‘vulture’ and a ‘refusenik’…Gender plays no role in this context. I'm a ‘stupid hog’ who needs to be labeled and should ‘wear stickers’. I am a ‘danger’, a ‘murderer’, and an ‘angel of death’. I am an ‘opponent’. Against what? I'm a ‘grouch’. A ‘dark figure’. And I should ‘disappear into the hole from which I crawled out’. I am a ‘social pest’. And ‘crazy’. You know the reasons for these labels.
I whole-heartedly recommend Philine Conrad’s piece in full, and if you understand German, here’s a video of the above-mentioned panel discussion:
When Historians Speak / When Legacy Media Report
The events of the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Covid Pandemic™’ will be with us for a long time.
Unfortunately, the dubious contributions of historians such as Tim Naftali, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and many others will continue to accompany us, too. However, this is more than ‘just’ a question of personal decency or the proverbial inability to note the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to notice the beam in one’s own eye (Matthew 7:3).
It is also a question of professionalism and personal decency. The author of these lines once—‘before Covid’, that is—worked as the István Deák Visiting Professor at Columbia University and I have been, technically as well as ironically, part of the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).
I am genuinely excited when ‘expert colleagues’ have their say about current topics—but I am aghast and even disgusted when ‘expert colleagues’ and media people commit such misconduct, whether caused by personal bias or ignorance. Hopefully it was simply a kind of personal failure or ignorance (in the sense of not being able to know), for the alternative would be arguably way worse: intentional, malicious defamation.
Epilogue: ‘The Capacity to ‘Live Unhistorically’
To conclude today’s posting, I should like to quote a few lines from Friedrich Nietzsche’s essay ‘History’, which I am always happy to recommend at the appropriate opportunity (italics in the original, bold emphases mine):
Consider the herd grazing before you. These animals do not know what yesterday and today are but leap about, eat, rest, digest and leap again; and so from morning to night and from day to day, only briefly concerned with their pleasure and displeasure, enthralled by the moment and for that reason neither melancholy nor bored. It is hard for a man to see this, for he is proud of being human and not an animal and yet regards its happiness with envy because he wants nothing other than to live like the animal, neither bored nor in pain, yet wants it in vain because he does not want it like the animal. Man may well ask the animal: why do you not speak to me of your happiness but only look at me?…
With the smallest as with the greatest happiness, however, there is always one thing which makes it happiness: being able to forget or, to express it in a more learned fashion, the capacity to live unhistorically while it endures. Whoever cannot settle on the threshold of the moment forgetful of the whole past, whoever is incapable of standing on a point like a goddess of victory without vertigo or fear, will never know what happiness is, and worse yet, will never do anything to make others happy. Take as an extreme example a man who possesses no trace of the power to forget, who is condemned everywhere to see becoming: such a one no longer believes in his own existence, no longer believes in himself; he sees everything flow apart in mobile points and loses himself in the stream of becoming…
All acting requires forgetting, as not only light but also darkness is required for life by all organisms. A man who wanted to feel everything historically would resemble someone forced to refrain from sleeping, or an animal expected to live only from ruminating and ever repeated ruminating. So: it is possible to live with almost no memories, even to live happily as the animal shows; but without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all.
Thus Nietzsche in On the Advantage and Disadvantages of History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianiapolis 1980, pp. 9-10).
The word I’m describing today is: ‘projection’.
#we shall remember.
I have no skin in the game and I come bearing receipts.
Trump did everything his pharma masters asked him to do with regards to setting up the Warp Speed framework in 2019, delivering the jab, and giving everyone an award in the last hours of his presidency.
I believe he has been anointed to become president next time around - he is all in on the 15 minute cities (although he calls them 'Freedom cities') and encourages Bibi to commit genocide even saying 'Israel First' (not America First). Trump is the perfect establishment patsy.
All this is hype to get him re-elected. Please enjoy the concept of kayfabe, remembering that Trump comes from the wrestling world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
OWS links:
Here is Trump's 2016 campaign FEC filing showing millions from Pfizer, Dow and Amgen: https://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/286/201704180300150286/201704180300150286.pdf
Here is the EO he signed setting up the Warp Speed jab framework in 2019: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/DCPD-201900631/pdf/DCPD-201900631.pdf
Here is where he gave everyone in Warp Speed an award: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/president-trump-awards-presidential-commendations-operation-warp-speed-team/
Trump 'Freedom city': https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/03/trump-policy-futuristic-cities-00085383
Trump 'Israel first': https://freebeacon.com/national-security/im-for-israel-first-trump-backs-military-aid-for-israel-netanyahu/
Chris Bray have covered the ramblings of Ruth Ben-Ghiat in a couple of posts on his Stack, earlier this year. The pieces you quoted are fully representable of her usual diatribes. She is almost to the level of swedish modern-day historians, who should rather be called "histrioniacs" or something like that.
A good term for journalists is urinalists, since that more closely resembles what they are and what they convey.
Here, comparing the political opposition to "ze nazis" has been so overused it's a meme living its own life. They've used the "That's how it started in the thirties" so much for 25 years you can't even make real comparisons without eliciting laughter or just bemused looks. Virtually everything, including the creatuion of wild-life preserves, has been referenced to "That's how it started in the thrities".
We've been living the "Hitler ate sugar"-fallacy for over two decades here.
I can't help but suspect - again - that we've been the test-bed for various wokeisms of mass destruction.