Awake, hobbitses.

August 7, 2004 10:48 PM

Re-emergent American Eugenics Movement looks to unfinished business- The Tennessee primary win of an avowed Eugenicist Republican Congressional candidate underscores the longstanding association of the Republican Party with a resurgent American Eugenics Movement deeply linked to Nazi racial ideology and championed by the Manhattan Institute and the Nazi-associated Pioneer Fund
posted by troutfishing (54 comments total)

Geez, trout, this is seriously lame and troll-like, even for MeFi. To imply that all Republicans - or even a large number of them - favor this kind of crap is just bullshit.
posted by davidmsc at 11:07 PM on August 7, 2004

Can we get all of our fish in one barrel? Someone needs to find a link that connects this eugenics angle to the PNAC or at least some sort of Straussian rhetoric and the picture will be complete.

Also, hasn't it been established that Hart isn't running with party support and is a general embarrassment to pretty much everyone?
posted by mikeh at 11:30 PM on August 7, 2004

How did he make it onto the ballot, anyway? Did the Tennessee Republican Party just fucking forget to run a real candidate?
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 12:01 AM on August 8, 2004

Mr Hart may end up winning the Republican nomination in a north-western Tennessee district because he is the only Republican candidate on the ballot in tomorrow's primary. His presence in the campaign has embarrassed Republican leaders.

posted by stbalbach at 12:16 AM on August 8, 2004

Seems that way, Yelling. The Republican challenger is facing a Democratic incumbent, John Tanner, on his eighth term. Tanner got 27,000 votes in the primary to Hart's 8,000. In the last election, he won his seat 118,000 votes to the Republican candidate's 46,000. The voters like this guy and the GOP knows it.

One Republican, to his credit, attempted a last minute write-in campaign 'to save the party's honor'.

Here's Hart's campaign war chest. $302,000 of his own money, $8400 in donations from individuals.

When the NRCC is giving Hart money, or he starts getting money and endorsements from a substantial number of Republicans, I'll take seriously the claim that his candidacy represents Republican approval of his message.

BTW, troutfishing, your "association" link tries to imply Clinton is one of the bad guys, too (very lamely, but the effort was clear.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 12:22 AM on August 8, 2004

WOOHOO! ZERO TO GODWIN IN ONE POST!

Good job troutfishing! You get the golden "Gott mit uns!" prize.
posted by shepd at 12:26 AM on August 8, 2004

WOOHOO! ZERO TO GODWIN IN ONE POST!

Why is it that the more inaccurate one's understanding of Godwin's law the more readily one seems to invoke it?
posted by Space Coyote at 12:49 AM on August 8, 2004

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
posted by angry modem at 12:54 AM on August 8, 2004

Khan?
posted by homunculus at 12:58 AM on August 8, 2004

Someone needs to find a link that connects this eugenics angle to the PNAC or at least some sort of Straussian rhetoric

There is one, but it's embedded in the text of Laverne and Shirley scripts... you just have to read them the right way.

Karl H. Marx on a popsicle stick, this is a dumb assertion to make. I see the Harsh Fist of Removal striking this FPP down when His Nibs wakes up.

To drive Zed's point a little further, the 26000 to 7000 result is even more impressive since you wouldn't normally expect a lot of people to turn out for the primary in a heavily-Democratic district where the Democrat is unopposed. that is, Tanner's vote total is biased seriously downwards.

Also, even Hart's "contributions" seem to have come from himself, or possibly a parent or child. All of his contributors are named James Hart, anyhow

Also also, did you notice, trout, that one of your links says that Mensa is a cover for eugenicist fascists and that Ebola, AIDS, and Hanta are genetically-engineered genocide weapons?

nobody tell trout about david duke...
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:01 AM on August 8, 2004

Not to mention the small fact that the state Republican party actively repudiated Hart.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:08 AM on August 8, 2004

Baby-eating Nazi Space Lizards are running a top-secret base under Denver International Airport!
posted by loquacious at 1:11 AM on August 8, 2004

Plus you gotta pay a cover charge to get into any of the lounges to have a cigarette. Bastids! They're all bastids!
posted by scody at 1:21 AM on August 8, 2004

Oh boy, what fun! My post short circuited everone's brains and paralyzed their fingers, thus preventing any efforts to actually look into the association I'm bringing up or even conduct simple Google searches!

This material is like one of those "Stepford Wife" control gadgets - from the recent (disappointing) remake of the original - that turns the robotized wives on and off.

Mentioning "Republican" and "Eugenicist" together turns off brains. Here at least, anyway, if not at ABC or the NYT - which have both noted some of the connections I'm describing (see below).

I'd think some of those posting here would have noticed by now that I don't tend to make assertions that I can't support (sometimes I do, but I try to make it a point to acknowledge it when I'm clearly wrong). I guess not.

So, without further ado.......

davidmsc - "Geez, trout, this is seriously lame and troll-like, even for MeFi. To imply that all Republicans - or even a large number of them..." - well, that WOULD be troll like if I had done that. I didn't. Read the text of my post again ! The association is quite real and is showcased daily on such venues as "Townhall.com" and

ROU_Xenophobe - The Republican Party's disavowal of Hart isn't relevant to the point I'm making : organizations and funders which are far from the Republican periphery but - instead - could be better described as being part of at least a substantial minority position in the American Republican Party.

For example, take The Pioneer Fund : "The Pioneer Fund contributed $3.5 million to researchers cited in The Bell Curve", (ABC News, below) and the Pioneer fund has rather strong association with Nazi ideology - "In the 1930's, together with a wealthy entrepreneur named Wickliffe Draper, Laughlin forged links with researchers in Germany who were also increasingly enthusiastic about Eugenics, racial superiority and inferiority. In 1936, the year before they set up the fund, the two men distributed one of Hitler's propaganda films to American high schools. It was called Erbkrank, which means 'Hereditary Defective.' " (ABC News, below). This does not make "The Bell Curve's" authors Nazis or even Eugenicists necessarily, but a simply Google Search on the terms "The Bell Curve", "Eugnenics"

"ABC News did a story on the connection between the Pioneer Fund and "The Bell Curve" :

"Following is a transcript of the ABC World News Tonight story on The Bell Curve and the Pioneer Fund. It aired November 22, 1994. We are also responding directly by e-mail to requests but this may save everyone some time.

Thanks for the interest.

PETER JENNINGS

There is more to this controversy about intelligence and race. Some of the ideas found in the book, The Bell Curve, are not new. Our Agenda reporter Bill Blakemore has been looking into a fairly obscure research fund that has drawn attention because of this book, The Bell Curve - a fund with a history.

BILL BLAKEMORE, ABC NEWS

(VO) - This mailbox service in Manhattan is the official address for the Pioneer Fund. There is no office. The fund's president and four directors avoid publicity and rarely talk to journalists. Ever since 1937, the Pioneer Fund has promoted the study of racial purity as a an ideal. Over the past 10 years, according to public documents, the Pioneer Fund contributed $3.5 million to researchers cited in The Bell Curve.

Psychologist Arthur Jensen received $1.1 million from the Pioneer Fund. Twenty five years ago, he started writing that blacks may be genetically less intelligent than whites. Psychologist Philippe Rushton received $656,000. He says his researchers show small genitalia may be a sign of superior intelligence. Psychologist Richard Lynn, $325,000 from the fund. He has written that incompetent cultures should be phased out. Close to half the footnotes citing authors who support The Bell Curve's most controversial chapter that suggests some races are naturally smarter than others, refer to Pioneer Fund recipients. Historian Berry Mehler charges that the Pioneer Fund's interest in race differences made The Bell Curve's arguments possible.

BERRY MEHLER, HISTORIAN

The Pioneer Fund has been the key source of funding for the last 20 years of scientists who have produced the material that is the foundation for the claims that African American people on average are intellectually inferior to whites."

Here's one (partisan) look at "The Bell Curve", by FAIR, on the tremendous splash made be "The Bell Curve" when it came out in the mid 1990's : "Nearly all the research that Murray and Herrnstein relied on for their central claims about race and IQ was funded by the Pioneer Fund, described by the London Sunday Telegraph (3/12/89) as a "neo-Nazi organization closely integrated with the far right in American politics." The fund's mission is to promote eugenics, a philosophy that maintains that "genetically unfit" individuals or races are a threat to society.

The Pioneer Fund was set up in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper, a millionaire who advocated sending blacks back to Africa."

Here is one of four free chapters from a book published by the University of Illinois Press, which presents an exhaustive historical treatment of the genesis of the "Pioneer Fund" out of it's ne-nazi and segregationist roots - "For Wickliffe Preston Draper, the goals of the civil rights movement posed a profound threat to his most cherished beliefs. Undoubtedly horrified at the prospect of social and political equality for blacks, the Colonel opened wide his pursestrings between the late 1950s and his death in 1972, pouring huge amounts of money into various anti-integration projects conducted by some of the most ardent racists.......When Draper died in 1972, the clandestine contributions, which had come directly out of his pocket, came to an end. With the insiders' books closed and the fund's image no longer in danger of being marred by secret connections to direct political campaigns waged by neo-Nazis and segregationists, Pioneer's true goal could enjoy an even more plausible deniability. But in the post-Draper era the fund became the instrument for carrying out the Colonel's agenda. His troops had lost every battle so far, but, just as Satterfield had advised, they looked to a new organization "to win the war." That organization was the Pioneer Fund. " :

Here's a shorter treatment of the history of the Pioneer Fund :

"The Pioneer Fund has been able to direct its resources like a laser-beam," says one critic, Barry Mehler, a historian at Ferris State University who has been gathering information on it since the 1970s. "I credit the Fund for being a major factor in the present resurgence of the biological-determinism movement - a factor that is far out of proportion to the amount of funds it has."[3]
"


_________________________


But, let's move a bit closer to the Republican Party's core : take George W. Bush for example. Back in 2000,the New York Times reported (scroll down page for complete text of NYT stories) George W. Bush's citation of a book written by the CIA associated (""...the institute was founded as a free-market education and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration." - NYT)  Manhattan Institute fellow (and a colleague of Charles Murray of "Bell Curve" fame) as "...other than the Bible....the most important book he had read..."  (see link for more complete quote and context.)

Does this connection make George W. a Nazi or "fellow traveller"? - of course not. But, he certainly does not take pains to distance himself from those on the Far Right of the US political spectrum espousing eugenicist ideology.

OK, I'm going to post this and add more material to that line of inquiry after I eat breakfast.
posted by troutfishing at 5:51 AM on August 8, 2004

ROU_Xenophobe - "Someone needs to find a link that connects this eugenics angle to the PNAC or at least some sort of Straussian rhetoric".

My, you're being lazy today.

"A 1999 article in the Federation of American Scientists' "Public Interest Report" confirms the existence of at least ongoing defensive research into "ethnic weapons"

"By K.P. Kavanaugh
Journal of the Federation of American Scientists (F.A.S.)
Volume 52, Number 2
March/April 1999

It has long been rumored that modern biological weapons could be designed to attack specific vulnerabilities of particular ethnic groups. Early in the development of the US offensive biological weapons program Colonel Creasey, Chief of Research and Engineering of the US Chemical Corps, suggested that agents may be selected because of known susceptibility of the target population. This shows that the differential susceptibility of different populations to various diseases had been considered at that time and, according to scientists at Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is continuing today......."

From a recent Metafilter thread, "U.S. bioterrorism research leaps past defensive tactics" in the thread discussion, I review the recent history - of the past few decades - of US research into these sorts of weapons which have a distinctly unsavory or - I'd say - a racialist and eugenicist edge.

Here's a possible PNAC link : "When I first brought this up on Metafilter on October 16, 2002, most were dismissive. I referred to the statement in the PNAC document "Rebuilding America's Defenses" [ which was actually merely a continuation of the US Quadrennial Defense Review commissioned by Dick Cheney, under George Bush Sr., in '91 or '92 ] which stated :

"advanced forms of biological warfare that can 'target' specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool" (Page 78 - or thereabouts - from "Rebuilding America's Defenses" )

"Politically useful tool" - Politicsby way of biological warfare. Let's think about the symantic nature of that statement : NOT useful as a threat, as were nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Not as a StrangeLovian "Final Weapon". No - as a "tool".

See the first link for a more comprehensive citation of evidence.
posted by troutfishing at 6:04 AM on August 8, 2004

My only question is, if you're running for Congress, can you just pick a party? I mean, can I just say I'm Republican, run, and then vote Democratic, but still call my self Republican?

I mean, if the party's against this guy, but they can't stop him.....
posted by graventy at 6:31 AM on August 8, 2004

From "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography --- by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin - "Chapter -III- Race Hygiene: Three Bush Family Alliances [ warning - offensive javascript "control panel" at top of page ] of the Bush family - intially via Prescott Bush - with the American Eugenics movement (I'd call it "new" except that the old eugenics movement never really died out but instead merely re-branded and repackaged itself, notably through the efforts of the Pioneer Fund's founder).

George W. is a bit more circumspect on Eugenics - it's not clear whether he holds any such views or merely associates with some individuals who do. Byut, I liked this Disinfopedia treatment of Mr. Bush's "Compassionate Conservatism"

From the Manhattan Institute website : "Along with Marvin Olasky, a University of Texas journalism professor and author, Mr. Magnet has been instrumental in shaping the bedrock of Mr. Bush's public policies - something the leading GOP presidential contender describes with the catch phrase "compassionate conservatism."

The two men, far and away, have been the spiritual and intellectual godfathers of Mr. Bush's core philosophy."

Here's a bit on the founding of the Manhattan Institute, as reported by the NYT on May 12, 1997 : "Currently housed in an unprepossessing warren on the second floor of a building near Grand Central Terminal, the institute was founded as a free-market education and research organization by William Casey, who then went off to head the Central Intelligence Agency in the Reagan Administration."
Casey was a top American intelligence operative who, among other endeavors, helped the CIA bring thousands of Nazi SS officials into the U.S. after WWII as part of Operation Paper Clip. These Nazi SS doctors, scientists and intelligence experts who were directly involved in the death camps, in propaganda work and in creating the prototypes for new and better ways to kill masses of people, were installed in private industry, in the CIA, in medical and psychological research programs in universities and in the media, supposedly to fight Communism."

"GW Bush, Jesus and the Manhattan Institute
"Here's a further treatment of George W. Bush's possible Eugenicist leanings by the always rewarding Robert Lederman :

"NY Times 8/7/2000
Executing The Mentally Retarded
Even As Laws Begin to Shift

Here in Texas, Gov. George W. Bush has opposed laws that would prohibit the execution of the mentally retarded. It is a position he still holds, a spokeswoman, Linda Edwards, said on Friday.....The significance of Nazi Germany to an understanding of Eugenics is that it stands as a more or less fully documented expression of what a high-tech fully-developed social Eugenics program might look like. The Nazis used the most up-to-date science to create breeding programs for the elite and corresponding extermination programs for those to be deleted."

"Village Voice 2/29/2000
NEVER AGAIN
BY WARD HARKAVY
The History of American Eugenics
Is Explored Online
A century ago, scientists from the top universities in America began to study people's pedigrees in the hopes of creating "perfect" children. Instead, they spawned a monster: the pseudoscience of eugenics...It's more than coincidence that the Cold Spring Harbor Lab hosts this project. It is, after all, home of the Human Genome Project to map DNA...Minority groups were most often the target of this plan...The ERO itself was endowed by a grant from the widow of railroad magnate E.H. Harriman [Prescott Bush was A. Harriman's business partner in Brown Brother Harriman, a firm that specialized in financing Hitler]. Today's breakthroughs in, say, prenatal screening would have been embraced by eugenicists, and there's always a group of people who will subscribe to racial-inferiority theories like those in The Bell Curve. [written by Manhattan Institute scholar, Charles Murray]

Eugenics reached its most popular expression in numerous American laws passed in the 1920's and 1930's requiring forcible sterilization of mental defectives and restricting immigration from Eastern Europe, Ireland, Africa and Latin America.

Among its top promoters were Rockefeller and Henry Ford. Today, their foundations continue to fund many of the top Eugenics programs in the world. The Manhattan Institute's main sponsor is the Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank, an organization that has publicly admitted to helping Hitler loot the banks of occupied Europe. "
posted by troutfishing at 6:33 AM on August 8, 2004

graventy - Hart's sentiments aren't especially different from many espoused at the Manhattan Insitute or as expressed through the ideology of the Pioneer Fund.

Hart is indiscrete, and I'd say that the Republican Party is disavowing him more for the fact - that he's an embarrassment - than for his actual avowed beliefs.
posted by troutfishing at 6:38 AM on August 8, 2004

"[ warning - offensive javascript "control panel" at top of page ] of the Bush family - intially via Prescott Bush - with the American Eugenics movement (I'd call it "new" except that the old eugenics movement never really died out but instead merely re-branded and repackaged itself, notably through the efforts of the Pioneer Fund's founder). " - whoops, I accidentally chopped out a bit of text. That link is to another treatment of the historical association between the Bush family and the American eugenicist movement (which is tied to......). I wasn't referring there to "George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography" - and the web page in question has an amazingly nasty javascript "control panel" that squats at the top of the page like a bloated Cane Toad and blocks bits of the text. But the material is OK, though I haven't read through it completely to gauge it's complete accuracy.
posted by troutfishing at 6:48 AM on August 8, 2004

from http://www.m-w.com/

Main Entry: eu·gen·ics
Pronunciation: yu-'je-niks
Function: noun plural but singular or plural in construction
: a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities

If this is some big plot:

Then logically determining what defects future humans have (say lacking a brain - just having a brain stem) and terminating said pregancy.

Yet, the plotters are alledged to not support abortion.

So: Is the anti-abortion stance just a cynical plot to dupe one part of the electorate?
posted by rough ashlar at 7:09 AM on August 8, 2004

Yeah, why would these people be against abortion if they were so interested in eugenics? Abortion works fast, fast, fast to get you the population results you want, without having to work to hard on the front end of reproduction, and all that human behavior stuff. You can prune the population before it's even born. In fact, its been the liberals and democrats who've been pushing abortion for the past 20 years, a policy that has had its biggest effect on African Americans -- who abort their children at a disproportionately higher rate than the rest of the population. This one republican may be pushing eugenics, but the democrats have been achieving it.
posted by Faze at 7:46 AM on August 8, 2004

I think it's safe to say that the brains of the Republican party use abortion as a tool to draw the religious vote.

I'm from the south, and I've known very, very few southern republicans who weren't racist. The conservative racism I saw as a kid is what initially pushed me away from both church and the republican party.

When Lott committed political suicide, I remember thinking, "what's the big deal, doesn't everybody know that the republicans are racist?"
posted by tcobretti at 7:49 AM on August 8, 2004

"To imply that all Republicans - or even a large number of them"

Apparently a large number of them voted for this pig.

"I'm from the south, and I've known very, very few southern republicans who weren't racist. "

Same here. It's a cesspool of ignorance, but the defenders of the confederacy will be here soon to tell us that what we know from growing up and living there is just wrong, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
posted by 2sheets at 9:36 AM on August 8, 2004

The Republican Party's disavowal of Hart isn't relevant to the point I'm making : organizations and funders which are far from the Republican periphery

Then this is a singularly bad post to make that point, because Hart's only source of funding is himself and, perhaps, his immediate family.

Does this connection make George W. a Nazi or "fellow traveller"? - of course not.

Then why write a post implying strongly that he is? Why not just limit yourself to saying things you actually mean and not wild-eyed hyperbolized versions of them?

Is this some sort of performance art on your part, or are you trying to get a time-out? I can't believe that you honestly believe that AIDS, Ebola, and Hanta are really terror-weapons from biowar labs, and I find it hard to believe that you think that any appreciable number of Republicans are closet Nazi-eugenicists whose long-term plan can only be to exterminate the "lesser" races.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 9:59 AM on August 8, 2004

I've known very, very few southern republicans who weren't racist.

And you seek them out, right? Or ar we just to accept your arguing from the specific to the general as fact?
posted by yerfatma at 11:01 AM on August 8, 2004

Don't forget the CCC.
posted by amberglow at 11:10 AM on August 8, 2004

It's a cesspool of ignorance, but the defenders of the confederacy will be here soon to tell us that what we know from growing up and living there is just wrong, in spite of evidence to the contrary

Well I've grown up there and I disagree with you PLUS I have 2 more friends and they say the same as me... so... that's 2 to 3 so I guess I win! =)
posted by Stauf at 11:17 AM on August 8, 2004

"The sad truth is that many Republican leaders remain in a massive state of denial about the party's four-decade-long addiction to race-baiting. They won't make any headway with blacks by bashing Lott if they persist in giving Ronald Reagan a pass for his racial policies.

"The same could be said, of course, about such Republican heroes as, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon or George Bush the elder, all of whom used coded racial messages to lure disaffected blue collar and Southern white voters away from the Democrats. Yet it's with Reagan, who set a standard for exploiting white anger and resentment rarely seen since George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, that the Republican's selective memory about its race-baiting habit really stands out.

"Space doesn't permit a complete list of the Gipper's signals to angry white folks that Republicans prefer to ignore, so two incidents in which Lott was deeply involved will have to suffice. As a young congressman, Lott was among those who urged Reagan to deliver his first major campaign speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered in one of the 1960s' ugliest cases of racist violence. It was a ringing declaration of his support for "states' rights" — a code word for resistance to black advances clearly understood by white Southern voters."
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 11:25 AM on August 8, 2004

Trout kicks ass.

For those who do not understand the history of eugenics may I recommend you do some f*cking homework before mindlessly spouting the party line rhetoric?

The eugenics movement actually split into two camps in the early twentieth century, one which led to family planning and prenatal care while the other represented the racist policies of Nazism, the hate mongers. Look to the families and money who supported this second line and continue to do so today and this post becomes very clear. Stupid f*cks!

Great bit of research Trout! We love you brother, keep up the fine work 'cause otherwise not many will ever hear these interesting bits of history that an informed voting populace so desperately needs. Sheep indeed.

And, yes, I grew up in the racist South, and yes, the Republican "Southern Strategy" is focused on pandering to the racist f*cks that are so prevalent in the South. Face up to it and do something about it Defenders Of All Things Duhbya if you don't like this ugly truth but quit denying and avoiding it.
posted by nofundy at 1:01 PM on August 8, 2004

My post short circuited everone's brains and paralyzed their fingers, thus preventing any efforts to actually look into the association I'm bringing up or even conduct simple Google searches!

Actually, I did several Google searches.

...Among its top promoters were Rockefeller and Henry Ford. Today, their foundations continue to fund many of the top Eugenics programs in the world.

Uh-huh. And Ford was a Democrat. So was Joe Kennedy, Sr. who shares with Prescott Bush the distinctions of having been a Hitler fan and siring a president.

And if you're looking to history to justify condemning political parties in the now, the Democrats aren't exactly without stain.

The Democratic Party identified itself as the "white man's party" and demonized the Republican Party as being "Negro dominated," even though whites were in control. Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats "redeemed" state after state -- sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence.

I'm not exactly a right-wing apologist... on my own blog, I'd been doing so much Bush-bashing I was boring myself.

You have some good points in documenting sympathies toward racism and eugenics among some Republicans, troutfishing... but you diluted those points in a big way.

Hart's candidacy doesn't "underscore the longstanding association of the Republican Party with a resurgent American Eugenics Movement." It underscores how a state party apparatus can't afford to be asleep at the switch even regarding a House race they know they're going to lose, 'cause a self-financed crank could get in.

Are Republicans disavowing him more for his indiscretion than the content of his position? Possibly. But you're going to have to do a lot better than brining up past Bush family associations with racists to convince me... especially if you want to imply that this distinguishes the Democrats from the Republicans, since they have plenty of skeletons in their closet, too.

Does this connection make George W. a Nazi or "fellow traveller"? - of course not. But, he certainly does not take pains to distance himself from those on the Far Right of the US political spectrum espousing eugenicist ideology.

That's at least in part 'cause the Right is smart enough to not waste much time and energy on disavowing cranks, whereas the Left falls for it every time, making "Honestly, we're not crazy. Really!" one of its primary messages. Which is a part of why the Right has been beating up the Left and stealing its lunch money for the past 25 years.

On preview... thanks for the ad hominem attacks and the assertions without references, nofundy!
posted by Zed_Lopez at 1:10 PM on August 8, 2004

Why is this guy a Republican, Zed? Why does he associate himself and feel comfortable with that label as opposed to being a Democrat or Independent?
posted by amberglow at 1:16 PM on August 8, 2004

Why are so many racists comfortable being Republicans?

Where's the Outrage?
posted by amberglow at 1:21 PM on August 8, 2004

You're welcome Zed. Not that I was referring to you directly but if the shoe fits, wear it. And as for references, do your own homework.
posted by nofundy at 1:27 PM on August 8, 2004

nofundy, I really don't think it makes me a "defender of all things dubya" if I argue that he, and the larger Republican party, are "merely" plain-old racist and/or race-baiters instead of being actual no-shit Nazi-eugenicists. I can dislike him quite thoroughly enough, thank you, without thinking that he has some plan or desire to exterminate or sterilize-into-oblivion people he sees as inferior races.

Why is this guy a Republican, Zed? Why does he associate himself and feel comfortable with that label as opposed to being a Democrat or Independent?

He was an independent last time, and he seems to be on record as saying, essentially, "I'm not really a Republican" -- the anti-religious scree on his campaign page would lend credence to that. Presumably he wants the attention, or simply noticed that the Republicans didn't run anyone in the primary and capitalized on it.

If you want to argue that the Republican party is racist or at the very least makes racist appeals, there's ample evidence without bringing up random cranks who are running under their label owing as a fluke happenstance.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:43 PM on August 8, 2004

If you want to argue that the Republican party is racist or at the very least makes racist appeals, there's ample evidence without bringing up random cranks who are running under their label owing as a fluke happenstance.

It's the ample evidence that makes this guy not at all out-of-step with the Republicans, or some aberration--from David Duke to Trent Lott to Strom Thurmond to Jesse Helms to Barbara Cubin to all the other Republicans that don't ever speak up to condemn this shit. He just is more explicit about it.

"This man is a racist. It's very frustrating," said Ann Truett, Vice-Chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party. -- from here

That's it?
posted by amberglow at 2:08 PM on August 8, 2004

And isn't Senate Majority Leader Frist from Tennessee? Why is he silent?
posted by amberglow at 2:28 PM on August 8, 2004

That's it?

No, that's not it. You can read the TN Republican party's repudiation of Hart for yourself.

Jee-zus. It's not enough that Republicans be merely racist (or at least prone to racism) in the ordinary or garden-variety sense, you actually believe that they're holocaust-deniers, that they think that democracy is a "lysenkoist tyranny", or that they are outright Nazis? Can you not tell the different between Jim Crow and Treblinka?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:50 PM on August 8, 2004

He got 83% of the primary vote. Do you seriously believe those words on their site? What are they doing about him beyond talking?

...But, when the party supports kooks to the extent that they win, the party can and should be responsible for the kooks it supports. Sadly, Hart just won the primary and will race against a Democratic incumbent on November's ballot. If the GOP is sincere about its attempts to become a compassionate party, it will get out the vote for Democrats in opposition to their own party candidate. The Republican Party has been home to racists, who as conservatives, seek to conserve apartheid of the old South, and who defected from the Democratic Party when it championed civil rights. But, not all Republicans are racist. Or are they if they continue to support the GOP in light of such events as Hart's primary win? If Republicans don't support the Democrat incumbent for this seat, it will speak volumes at least about the GOP's committment to power at any cost.

And let's make no mistake. Some conservatives will argue that the national party has little control over a state's congressional race. That is simply not true. The GOP can and should threaten to halt funding now and in the future to the local GOP in Tennessee, and reject in public ads, Hart's bid to run as a Republican. The GOP can end Hart's bid before it gets off the ground and can demonstrate its unwillingness to umbrella such a candidate under their tent. Sadly, this will likely not occur.--from here
posted by amberglow at 3:14 PM on August 8, 2004

He got 83% of the primary vote

Of course he did. He was the only candidate on the ballot. The other 17% were write-in votes for the "real" Republican.

The GOP can end Hart's bid before it gets off the ground

Get off the ground? It's never been off the ground. Hell, it hasn't been out of the grave yet. The probability that Hart will win the race in November is not noticeably larger than the probability that Frederick Douglass will crawl from the grave, dance a tango with Azazoth, and win the race by a landslide.

What are they doing about him beyond talking?

What can they do? They can't get him off the ballot; he won the primary and is legally the party's nominee, no matter how they feel about him. They can't cut off his campaign funding, because they haven't given him any to start with and they can hardly stop him wasting his own money if he really wants to.

For that matter, what do they need to do? Spending money to run ads against him is an entirely foolish waste of money, since there's no chance at all that he's going to win (unless, I suppose, Tanner were to drop dead). Getting out the vote to help Tanner win by 95% instead of whatever he'll actually win by only hurts their chances in the next open-seat election, so they're not going to do that.

Now, let's get this straight: you're actually asserting that Republicans, by and large, aren't merely regular old casual racists in the Archie Bunker style but are real no-kidding Nazi eugenicists? That they really do desire and plan to rid the world of all black people, that the only reason that they haven't put "EXTERMINATE THE NEGROES!!!" on their platform is that it might be a wee bit unpopular?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:17 PM on August 8, 2004

No, you're asserting that. I'm stating that their half-hearted condemnations of him, when he won the Republican primary by a gigantic margin, is pathetic, and telling. He's run before, and is not a surprise to them--at all--or an unknown commodity. Let's see the vote counts and then we'll know.
posted by amberglow at 4:31 PM on August 8, 2004

I'm stating that their half-hearted condemnations of him

Keep on shooting fish in a barrel. What do you want? Perhaps a cross burning on his yard? Maybe the TN Republicans could lynch him to prove themselves worthy of living in your world. This post isn't even worthy of the title "circle jerk"; you're all too busy watching yourselves climax to figure out who went most over the top.

Some racist turd runs unopposed for a nomination that can't possibly lead to a seat and a thousand lines of cut-n-paste text from Timecube-quality sites gives you all a happy weekend.
posted by yerfatma at 4:36 PM on August 8, 2004

Maybe they shouldn't present such a gigantic and easy target, yerfatma?

Daddy Bush supported the Democratic challenger to David Duke way back when--let's see this Bush do the same.
posted by amberglow at 4:49 PM on August 8, 2004

Oooh, someone called me out saying this thread DOESN'T violate Godwin's Law... Ok. You're on.

Let's see how this thread violated Godwin's law, shall we?

The Nazi-comparison meme, I'd decided, had gotten out of hand -- Check
In discussions about guns and the Second Amendment, for example, gun-control advocates are periodically reminded that Hitler banned personal weapons. And birth-control debates are frequently marked by pro-lifers' insistence that abortionists are engaging in mass murder, worse than that of Nazi death camps. And in any newsgroup in which censorship is discussed, someone inevitably raises the specter of Nazi book-burning. -- Not part of those? Check
But the Nazi-comparison meme popped up elsewhere as well... ...It was a trivialization I found both illogical... ...and offensive... -- Check
So, I set out to conduct an experiment - to build a counter-meme designed to make discussion participants see how they are acting as vectors to a particularly silly and offensive meme...and perhaps to curtail the glib Nazi comparisons. -- My intent was to shut up this dumb thread? -- Check
If the Usenet discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days. -- Big Check (Sub metafilter for usenet)

Missing links:

As soon as such a comparison occurs, someone will start a Nazi-discussion thread on alt.censorship. -- Not on metatalk yet. No check.
Libertarianism (pro, con, and internal faction fights) is the primordial net.news discussion topic. Any time the debate shifts somewhere else, it must eventually return to this fuel source. -- No check there, either.

HTH, SpaceCoyote
posted by shepd at 5:31 PM on August 8, 2004

but amber, the point of the original post was that republicans are, by and large, eugenicists from the nazi mold. not that they harbor ill will towards black people, not that their policies work against black people, but that they hope and plan to actually wipe black people and other "inferiors" from the face of the earth. that desiring and seeking to actually do the wiping out is not a weirdo extremist splinter but a part of mainstream, ordinary republican thought.

i'm entirely happy to agree that there's a strong streak of racism running through the republican party. but that doesn't mean that they're nazis, for crying out loud. i also don't think they're cannibals, nun-rapers, barney-worshippers, or shaved sasquatches, and would argue against such a claim as well.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:51 PM on August 8, 2004

the point of the original post was that republicans are, by and large, eugenicists from the nazi mold. not that they harbor ill will towards black people, not that their policies work against black people, but that they hope and plan to actually wipe black people and other "inferiors" from the face of the earth. that desiring and seeking to actually do the wiping out is not a weirdo extremist splinter but a part of mainstream, ordinary republican thought.
I don't think it said that at all--it just pointed out the unholy intersection and association of some Republicans with Nazis and eugenicists and racists, in the past and present. It doesn't say all Republicans are now those things, but that this candidate isn't such an aberration as he may seem. I think there's a difference.
posted by amberglow at 6:02 PM on August 8, 2004

No, troutfishing distinctly stated upstream that the reason that Republicans were disavowing Hart wasn't that they disagreed with him but that he was embarrassing, and that nazi eugenicists were "part of at least a substantial minority position in the American Republican Party." Read upstream.

I don't mean this to be rude, but it can be awfully hard (for me anyway) to make sense of what trout is saying when he's in full 300-row-at-a-time rant mode. The only sense I can get out of the whole schmeer is that he really thinks that nazi eugenicism is a normal part of workaday Republicanism, which is all I'm arguing against. But I'm willing to be corrected if that's not what trout meant, and it does seem out of character for him.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:12 PM on August 8, 2004

the point of the original post was that republicans are, by and large, eugenicists from the nazi mold

rou,

I took it to mean that eugenicists from the nazi mold found a welcome home with the republicans of the racist stripe, not that all republicans are eugenicists or racist.
Having said that, all republicans who do not support racism or eugenics need to very loudly reject these scum and let them know there's no place for them inside the party.

Since that ins't likely to happen the republicans paint themselves with the racist and eugenicist brush. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke

Failure to reject is tacit acceptance and accomodation.
posted by nofundy at 5:03 AM on August 9, 2004

"Failure to reject is tacit acceptance and accomodation."

So then the Democratic parties complete and utter failure to reject the wholesale support of the modern communist/socialist movement and it's bid to influence US politics under the guise of a "peace movement" that the Dem's are profiting from will let me say they are all "tacit" communists?

Cool!
posted by soulhuntre at 7:35 AM on August 9, 2004

First, take the thread into context soulhuntre.
This is about the historical trend, not one specific instance, but you knew that.
Secondly, equating socialism with communism and both those with totalitarian and/or dictatorial regimes is a total troll, but you knew that.
We're a socialist government and society whether you like and acknowledge it or not. And the right wingers are more like the "communist" dictatorships than anyone else in our society, but you knew that.
So, are you defending eugenics, racism, or both? Or is this just a partisan political thing for you?
posted by nofundy at 8:23 AM on August 9, 2004

nofundy, you stop beating your wife yet?
posted by Snyder at 10:57 AM on August 9, 2004

(unless, I suppose, Tanner were to drop dead)

What does happen in the case? Suppose Tanner neglects to look both ways and steps in front of a bus the day before the election. I'm guessing the Democrats can't just substitute their second choice.

Would Tanner win by acclamation?
posted by Mitheral at 1:27 PM on August 9, 2004

It appears there are embarrassed Republicans all over--GOP candidate has long record — in jail

This was interesting: Yesterday, the party was trying to get Baker "unfiled," which state election officials say can't be done without court action.

So why can't the Tennessee GOP take court action?
posted by amberglow at 4:40 PM on August 9, 2004

There is the trifling detail that elections in Tennessee aren't governed by Washington election law. I have no idea whether election law in TN allows for a party to overturn or challenge the result of a primary election.

Even if it doesn't, I suppose they could just sue anyway if they don't mind wasting money and being laughed out of court.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:13 PM on August 9, 2004

Sorry for disappearing from the discussion after launching that broadside. I did notice that the wisecracks dried up after I posted that together with all the additional material.

"underscores the longstanding association of the Republican Party with a resurgent American Eugenics Movement deeply linked to Nazi racial ideology and championed by the Manhattan Institute and the Nazi-associated Pioneer Fund"

ROU_Xenophobe - (re : "I don't mean this to be rude, but it can be awfully hard (for me anyway) to make sense of what trout is saying when he's in full 300-row-at-a-time rant mode. The only sense I can get out of the whole schmeer is that he really thinks that nazi eugenicist is a normal part of workaday Republicanism") - Look back at the actual wording of my post. I tried to be judicious, but in retrospect I would have added "elements", so - "underscores the longstanding association of elements of the Republican Party" : because many in the GOP are very far from - or even active repudiate - covert authoritarian or fascist tendencies and associations as well as eugenicist ideology. But these associations nonetheless are quite real, and one can in fact trace a direct historical lineage from American Nazi, and Neo-Nazi ideology of the 1930's - as well as related eugenicist movements stemming from discredited theories racial-superiority - to the ongoing projects and concerns of the Pioneer Fund and the Manhattan Institute.

I didn't say that "nazi eugenics is a normal part of workaday Republicanism" - I referred to a "longstanding association" . Further, these institutes I've noted have played a key role in building American public support for the longstanding Republican/far right project of totally eliminating the redistributive function of the US Federal government by way of, for example, the funding of the rather suspect "research" that laid the groundwork for the massively publicized "The Bell Curve" : if certain human groups were proved to be inherently superior, this undercut a significant amount of public support for the redistributive function of goverment.

Trying to assert that blacks and other groups (which I won't refer to as "racial" because I think we should can that sloppy notion, of "race") are inherently genetically inferior is a project which pre-existed the rise of Hitler but which reached it's pseudo-logical, abhorrent conclusion in Hitler's Reich : but this ideology didn't die out with the final allied victory - it went, instead, underground to an extent. It continued as a distinct political tendency which is - despite Jesse Owens' astonishing refutation of the Nazi creed of "Aryan" physical supremacy at the 1936 Olympic Games and subsequent scientific refutations of notions that there exist significant differences between the various human subgroups, the attempt to parse humanity into "superior" and "inferior" groups continues to this day - still quite alive.

Further - and more to the point - Republicans both employ the race-baiting and also often turn a blind eye to extremist elements on the US right espousing race-based ideologies : as a political tactic.

Hart's overt style is an embarassment for the fact of it's crudeness and it's unabashed, unapologetic sincerity - but not, so much, for it's actual substance.

Zed_Lopez is quite correct to point out the association of many prominent American Democrats with eugenicist and nazi ideology and, indeed, numerous historians have noted the fact (openly acknowledged by Hitler's Nazis) that the pre-existing American eugenicist tradition - expressed through highly popular state legislation which attempted to control the reproduction of "defectives" by institutionalizing and sterilization those identified as "retarded" or otherwise unfit, and also by various laws concerning inbreeding (cousin marriages) - was a significant source of inspiration in the development of the Nazi ideology and racial programs leading, in the end, to the Holocaust.

Eugenicist ideas - buttressed by now wholly refuted schools which claimed to the ability to predict various human attributes and inclinations (moral character and possible inclinations towards criminality, intelligence and so on) based on outward physical measurements such as the size and shape of craniums (Phrenology), and legitimized through the pioneering work (now recognized to be highly suspect) of H.H. Goddard in the development of early methods for the testing of human intelligence - all of which fall under the general mantle of "Anthropometry" - came to occupy a prominent niche smack in the mainstream of American culture during the 1920's and 1930's, and many Progressives believed in Eugenics - including Margaret Sanger, who held her eugenicist notions to her death.

On Phrenology (from the last link) "A well-known and infamous [sic] use of anthropometry was made by Nazi-inspired anthropologists and physicians, who, in the National Hygiene Department in the Ministry of the Interior and in the Bureau for Enlightenment on Population Policy and Racial Welfare, proposed the "scientific" classification of Arians and non-Arians on the basis of quantitative measurements of the skull. Official craniometric certification became required by law and were carried out by hundreds of certified institutes and experts. Many persons were sent to the death camps or denied marriage or work as a result of this "mismeasurement" of man"...

Eugenics fell heavily into disfavor, however, when details of the Holocaust became widely known, and the creed was largely abandoned by American Democrats and Progressives. Such was NOT the case among certain factions within the Republican Party and with some members of the American right.

In some cases, coded race-baiting, as Amberglow noted, serves the Republican Party at least as a tool - as in the now notorious "Southern Strategy" first employed by Richard Nixon. "The Bell Curve" is a part of this trend - but it is next to impossible to determine whether Republicans speaking the language of white racial supremacy (sometimes in somewhat coded form, other times quite overtly) actually believe in racial supremacist notions or whether they are, quite cynically and amorally, employing such language because it wins votes.

I think such such distinctions are moot - both positions are ugly and inexcusable.

But - as far as Hart goes - factions with the Republican Party have worked, for decades now, at keeping racist notions and ideologies alive - at the very least as a cynical political strategy - and so, while Hart may have funded his own campaign, he drew on a deep well of racial animosity which the American right has fed - often quite consciously - now for the better part of the 20th Century : So, I think my post was quite apt.
posted by troutfishing at 10:04 AM on August 15, 2004