Jonah Goldberg is Beneath Contempt

Jonah Goldberg, famous conservative intellectual, is lazy, stupid and dishonest. This, of course, is not new information, but it bears repeating when the man in question writes for USA Today, The LA Times, and the National Review. Goldberg's entire repertoire is proof of his lack of character and intellect, but occasionally a certain article will provide an especially good example of his incompetency.

This article from 2003 is a stunning yet also predictable example of Goldberg's opportunism and dishonesty. This article was written around the time he started working on Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, his learned tome devoted to comparing liberals to Hitler.

We may be living in the worst period of Holocaust denial since the Nuremberg trials. I'm not referring to the twisted morons who insist that the Holocaust never happened the way the Monty Python guys insisted the parrot wasn't dead. I'm referring to the legions of Holocaust deniers in the Democratic Party, on the Web, on college campuses, in the mainstream press and, most acutely, in my e-mail box every morning, who reduce to the Holocaust to a triviality.

In America today - never mind Europe and the Middle East - ostensibly sophisticated and enlightened people see nothing particularly controversial about comparing George Bush to Adolph Hitler and the United States of America to Nazi Germany.

The examples are everywhere. Vanity Fair magazine asks if Richard Perle and Joseph Goebbels were "separated at birth." Whole Web sites are dedicated to the most astoundingly stupid and superficial comparisons between George Bush and Hitler (they both liked dogs, for example).

Comparisons of Bush to Hitler denigrate the Holocaust. Yet comparisons of liberals to Hitler do not, because----Goldberg says so. Goldberg has made a career of doing just what he is decrying here in 2003. What further proof is needed that Goldberg is nothing but an ideologue with connections whose career is spent lying, manipulating and denigrating his imagined enemies for beer money and tv time?

At every event protesting war, Bush, America, this, that and the other thing, one can find pictures of various administration officials in SS garb or bearing Hitler mustaches.

This statement come from the man who put a smiley face with a Hitler moustache on the cover of his book. Goldberg has no shame and no intellectual honesty. None. It's a personal insult to each and every liberal that he gets away with comparing liberals to Hitler.

If your son is murdered and I claim that it never happened, I am denying the existence of a crime. But if your son is murdered and I compare that tragedy to losing your car keys, that is a form of denial, too. And this is precisely what the "Bush equals Hitler" crowd is doing.

Let's try this with the word "liberal" instead of "Bush." "And this is precisely what the "Liberals equal Hitler" crowd is doing." See how that works? It could go either way, couldn't it?

Because when you say he's no different from Hitler, you are also saying that
Hitler is no different from George Bush. And that means that Hitler's crimes
were no worse than George Bush's "crimes." And whatever you think of what George Bush has done or might do, if you think any of it is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, you are in effect saying the Holocaust really wasn't that bad.

The funny thing is, Goldberg is doing just that . By quoting emails and others supporting the idea that liberals are descendants of fascists, Goldberg, a Jew, is saying Hitler really isn't all that bad. For instance, he quotes Hitler's maid:

'She said he needed a housemaid and I would fit the bill,' Rosa recalled. 'I
remember so clearly the first day I spoke to him in the kitchen. I said I
was Anni's sister and that made him smile, because Anni was his favourite. I
only ever knew Hitler as a kindly man who was good to me.'

Why on earth would Goldberg print this post and others mitigating Hitler? Because he thinks it shows the connection between liberals and Hitler, between attempts to help society and attempts to put society under the utter control of a militarist, totalitarian state. And he does this for money and fame. Never forget that. By his own definitions, he betrays fellow Jews for money.