November 9th 1938 Kristallnacht

[Blagsta]

You can't say that he didn't answer every single point put to him, though. Even, as someone else said on another thread, posters who just wandered into the thread to throw drunken abuse at him.

He didn't though. At least not on the drugs forum. He point blank refused to post sources to back up his arguments, then would claim that he had done.

 

[phildwyer]

You can't say that he didn't answer every single point put to him, though. Even, as someone else said on another thread, posters who just wandered into the thread to throw drunken abuse at him.

He was one of the two or three most skillful debaters on here. The impression left by his banning is that he has won the argument, and that we have resorted to eradicating his views because we are incapable of refuting them.

 

[Blagsta]

He was one of the two or three most skillful debaters on here.

get ta fuck

 

[Bernie Gunther]

You can't say that he didn't answer every single point put to him, though. Even, as someone else said on another thread, posters who just wandered into the thread to throw drunken abuse at him.

Yes, but how did he answer it? Specifically, how did he typically respond to well-sourced evidence that one of his claims was demonstrably not true?

Without at least some basic level of honesty on both sides, whatever that sort of conversation may be, I don't think I'd call it a debate in any meaningful sense.

 

[phildwyer]

He didn't though. At least not on the drugs forum. He point blank refused to post sources to back up his arguments, then would claim that he had done.

Now there, I must say, you have a point. I remember him claiming that he never felt withdrawals longer than three days, and also that he banged up 4 grams of gear at a time. I suppose neither is impossible, but both are highly unlikely.

But so what, really? I come here because I like reading what entertaining characters have to say, and he was undoubtedly one of those.

 

[butchersapron]

 

[Blagsta]

Now there, I must say, you have a point. I remember him claiming that he never felt withdrawals longer than three days, and also that he banged up 4 grams of gear at a time. I suppose neither is impossible, but both are highly unlikely.

But so what, really? I come here because I like reading what entertaining characters have to say, and he was undoubtedly one of those.

You just claimed he was "one of the two or three most skillful debaters on here".

Stop trolling.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Butchers, that's interesting. Ta.

And it reinforces my impression that Levi was far too forgiving of his fellow Italians. It's the Captain Correlli impression of the Italians as somehow reluctant fascists.

But was Italian antisemitism really that different from British antisemitism at the time? No official legal discrimination, but everyday prejudice and racism from the population at large, including many in positions of power.

 

[phildwyer]

My point is that rach's assertion that he was a 'fascist'

OK, serious question to which I really don't know the answer. Did he in fact claim to be a fascist? I don't mean "did he sympathize with groups descended from fascists" or anything like that. Did he overtly and explicitly call himself a fascist?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

OK, serious question to which I really don't know the answer. Did he in fact claim to be a fascist? I don't mean "did he sympathize with groups descended from fascists" or anything like that. Did he overtly and explicitly call himself a fascist?

Yes, in post 12 of this thread among other places. Hence the ban if I understood Fridge correctly.

 

[phildwyer]

You just claimed he was "one of the two or three most skillful debaters on here".

Stop trolling.

I'd tell you to get to fuck if I didn't like you so much. He was an *incredibly* good debater on the middle east forum. I'd even say he was the best. I reckon he used the drugs forum to mess about a bit--though even there I can vouch for the truth of many of his seemingly outlandish claims.

 

[Idris2002]

What a #@*%.

Great post there, btw. Can you recommend some sources for that aspect of Italian fascism?

Most of what I know is related to the Eritrean case, where there was a lot of interracial relations in spite of official policy (usually male colonists impregnating domestic maids - which happened in other colonies, but usually had an end with the colonists throwing the maid and her kid out in the street: in Eritrea, it was more likely that the colonist would acknowledge the child as his, for reasons of machismo). The head of the Eritrean TUC (or equivalent body) in the 1940s under British rule was mixed-race, for example.

 

[frogwoman]

lol, what a tool.

 

[phildwyer]

Yes, in post 12 of this thread among other places. Hence the ban if I understood Fridge correctly.

You're right, he did. Although his argument about the validity of fascism for Jews, specifically, was interesting and (just about) reasonable.

Anyway, there's no question of my agreeing with his politics. I just don't think he should have been banned for them.

And I'll say it again: he was a *fantastic* debater. Really exciting to read. I thought so anyway. You'll not meet too many more interesting people than him.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

The most easily accessible source on pre-war zionism's involvement with fascism is probably Lenni Brenner's 'Zionism in the Age of the Dictators' (full text, I think, online)

 

[frogwoman]

One of the interesting things about Italian fascism compared to German Nazism. is that the latter was largely based around defence of an existing race, whilst the former talked endlessly of the construction of a new race on the ruins of bourgeois society. And that race was very definitely white and very definitely not Jewish (see the harsh penalties for sexual contact with colonials -1-5 years minimim, even in Italy - for how concerned with the racial purity of this new race the Fascists were) There was of course backwards glance to Rome as well, but that really was a central motivating factor only in the early days.

In the immediate decades after WW2 the historical consensus was established by the work of Renzo de Felice (primarily) and Meir Michaelis. It went along the lines that Italian Fascism wasn't racist or anti-Semitic, legislation passed in 1938 and after didn't reflect public opinion, it only reflected Mussolini's opportunist foreign policy, the normal person neither supported nor acted in line with this official discrimination, during the war the Italian people and state protected the Jewish population as far as possible, until the German invasion, then they hindered and sabotaged the Germans plans to deport the Jews. That was the story and one of the founding myths of the republic.

The generation after this successfully challenged this consensus though and here's currently a massive ongoing debate on just this issue in Italy right now with revisionist studies arguing that the previously generally accepted consensus of a non-racist, non-anti-Semitic fascism is just a face-saving myth put about by the Italian establishment. (It's almost the reverse of the German debates where opposition and resistance found a new centrality after decades of the crudest sort of collective guilt type history.)

For example, studies detailing unforced Italian participation in the transports to the death camps began to appear (Fargaino estimated that 27% of the total transportation involved Italians alone, and 4% Germans and Italians), and the resistance to Jewish transportations has been explained as being a fortunate side result of the bureaucratic chaos following the fall of Mussolini, rather than a deliberate response - they resumed as soon as local authority was re-established.

There have also been extensive investigations of the pre-war public institutions that suggest they were rife with anti-Semitism (only two people in 150 state bodies resigned their posts and refused to comply with the discriminatory legislation passed in 1938). Anti-Semitism within the fascist movement has been pushed back further and further to well before the 1938 opportunism - although clearly not on the same level as in Germany - for instance The Italian fascists still had a Jewish fascist weekly newspaper in 1934, but were even at that early date isolated and forced to engage in constant self-defence against attacks on them from within their own movement.

Mussolini wasn’t personally anti-Semitic and his polices towards the Jews were purely opportunistic, welcoming their support and money in the early days and discarding them when it became expedient to do so. His "three punches to the stomach of the bourgeoisie" campaign served notice that he was going to sell them down the river, because he simply wasn't politically committed to the defence of them, or of any group that didn't constitute the new future race, a race that it goes without saying, would be white. In fascist imagery the Jew then became the exemplar of the bourgeois society that had to be destroyed so this great white rae could be born - they were portrayed as beneficiaries and moving spirits of all that the new state and the new race was to be built against.

excellent post there butchers

 

[Idris2002]

butchers, you may find this 85 page PDF about interracial relationships in colonial and fascist ruled Eritrea of some interest:

http://www.northwestern.edu/african-studies/working papers/wp1barrera.pdf

 

[Idris2002]

I agree totally. And I will modify my original statement: Pre-Nazi fascism was no less racist than the imperialist creeds of the UK and France.

However, it was first and foremost a nationalist ideology, and I do think that Nazi fascism was qualitatively different.

I can't disagree much there.

 

[butchersapron]

Great post there, btw. Can you recommend some sources for that aspect of Italian fascism?

I'll post some up in a little bit Idris.

edit: here we go, all good stuff:

Recent trends in the study of Italian antisemitism under the Fascist regime - Stefano Luconi
Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 38, Issue 1 March 2004 , pages 1 - 17

Why Mussoloni Turned on the Jews - Frankilin Hugh Adler
Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 39, Number 3, September 2005 , pp. 285-300(16)

Renzo De Felice and the Historiography of Italian Fascism - Bordern W Painter, Jr.
American Historical Review, Vol. 95, no. 2 (April 1990): 391-405.

Renzo De Felice and the Controversy over Italian Fascism - Michael A. Ledeen
Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 11, 1976, Pages 269-283

Useful article in the Collection The Ax Within: Italian Fascism in Action, ed by Roland Sarti, Fascist Imperialism and Racism by Luigi Preti.

 

[goldenecitrone]

I think he got banned partly for his complete misrepresentation of events like this one in Berlin.

Canuck: "Could it happen again?"": Ironically today I was reviwing a report on the Humboldt University Riot in Berlin just a couple of days ago. The university had a large exhibit in the main lobby of the Administration Building talking about the economic losses inflicted during Kristallnacht.


It does not get richer than this. The day in question 12,000 people, m,ostly non-political students (young, not university age) and leftists primarily from the Black Block (well known hard left consortium) rampaged through the university known for its close ties to Israel and as they tore down the exhibit on Kristallnacht were cursing Israel as well as Jews (per EU bylaws both constitute blatant antiJewishness).

Then you read the actual story.

http://www.welt.de/english-news/article2717557/Protesting-Berlin-school-kids-wreak-havoc.html

Not quite Kristallnacht 2.

 

[Grandma Death]

In any event, you guys have won again. You can feel smug that someone else who dissented from your line, is now gone.

Oh please Johnny...do fuck off.

 

[Idris2002]

I'll post some up in a little bit Idris.

edit: here we go, all good stuff:

Recent trends in the study of Italian antisemitism under the Fascist regime - Stefano Luconi
Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 38, Issue 1 March 2004 , pages 1 - 17

Why Mussoloni Turned on the Jews - Frankilin Hugh Adler
Patterns of Prejudice, Volume 39, Number 3, September 2005 , pp. 285-300(16)

Renzo De Felice and the Historiography of Italian Fascism - Bordern W Painter, Jr.
American Historical Review, Vol. 95, no. 2 (April 1990): 391-405.

Renzo De Felice and the Controversy over Italian Fascism - Michael A. Ledeen
Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 11, 1976, Pages 269-283

Useful article in the Collection The Ax Within: Italian Fascism in Action, ed by Roland Sarti, Fascist Imperialism and Racism by Luigi Preti.

Thanks for that Butch. I'll check those ones out the next time I have access to an academic library.

 

[rekil]

Most of what I know is related to the Eritrean case, where there was a lot of interracial relations in spite of official policy (usually male colonists impregnating domestic maids - which happened in other colonies, but usually had an end with the colonists throwing the maid and her kid out in the street: in Eritrea, it was more likely that the colonist would acknowledge the child as his, for reasons of machismo). The head of the Eritrean TUC (or equivalent body) in the 1940s under British rule was mixed-race, for example.

How did you get on with that 'fascism wasn't racist' bloke on the Irish board Idris? Did it go anywhere?

 

[Idris2002]

How did you get on with that 'fascism wasn't racist' bloke on the Irish board Idris? Did it go anywhere?

Under the name of 'Primo' (did you see what I did there?) I hit him with the inarguable historical TRUTH. He did not pay a blind bit of notice, of course, but I seem to have got some of the other users on that board on-side.

 

[cesare]

Now there, I must say, you have a point. I remember him claiming that he never felt withdrawals longer than three days, and also that he banged up 4 grams of gear at a time. I suppose neither is impossible, but both are highly unlikely.

But so what, really? I come here because I like reading what entertaining characters have to say, and he was undoubtedly one of those.

To what extent are our views influenced by the 'entertaining'? As an ignorant, relatively uneducated and generally apolitical person - I'd say that in the last 3½ years my views have been tremendously influenced by posters here.

Edit to add: If he's that entertaining, to what degree do you entertain what he's saying?

 

[rekil]

Under the name of 'Primo' (did you see what I did there?) I hit him with the inarguable historical TRUTH. He did not pay a blind bit of notice, of course, but I seem to have got some of the other users on that board on-side.

He's an Italian aristocrat of some description, hence the arrogance and unshakeable belief in his own bullshit.

 

[phildwyer]

Edit to add: If he's that entertaining, to what degree do you entertain what he's saying?

I suppose its fair to say that I'm significantly more sympathetic towards Zionism than I was before I started reading him. But mostly I meant "entertaining" in the sense of "fun."

 

[cesare]

I suppose its fair to say that I'm significantly more sympathetic towards Zionism than I was before I started reading him. But mostly I meant "entertaining" in the sense of "fun."

He hasn't swayed me towards Zionism by way of his posts - the reverse. I don't find the onslaught entertaining. I've heard far more convincing arguments & entertainment from people I deal with day to day off-line.

But, I'd rather read what he has to say than not.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I hope this '12000 rioting antisemites on the anniversary of krystalnacht' claim isn't circulating more widely.

But alas it probably is.

Nowhere rational people occupy, thankfully.

 

[ViolentPanda]

And just to put this lie to rest once and for all: I believe everything I write on these boards. The many posters who are familiar with me irl know this to be true.

Belief can be transitory, phil. It can last only as long as you are writing.