The Greens are Nazis?
Ooops. In a thread supposedly about the possible important role the Green Party might play in deciding the outcome of this year’s General Election, one of Farrar’s commenters trots out the argument that the Green movement has its roots in Nazism. Wow, that’s a winning way for the National Party’s unofficial mouthpiece to start wooing the Green party. “Hi, can we be friends…even though our propaganda machine has been pumping out stuff linking you to the most abhorrent regime the World has ever seen”.
After years decrying the Greens as socialist “watermelons” - suddenly they’re Nazis. Amazing.
Oh, and by the way, the commenter in question appears to be Owen McShane, the Director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies.
Tags: greens
January 13, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Wow, that’s some rant going on over there! I wonder if you’re right in thinking this is possibly Owen McShane from the CRMS. I know McShane comments regularly on the Blog but his handle is usually linked to the Centre’s website - this Owen McShane hasn’t provided such a link either indicating that McShane wanted to make this comment unlinked from his professional work or that it’s not the same Owen McShane. If it is Owen McShane it shows clearly the Centre for RM Studies has strong political leanings and motivations and is not “independent” as many of the research centres aspire to be.
[Zos says: Agree, Ick. I am saying it appears to be McShane - but no one knows you're a dog on the Net right? so it might not be the same guy. Weird stuff though. To think, these people get to vote and everything.]
January 13, 2008 at 4:34 pm
I’d say it is McShane - he’s previously posted without a site link - http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2007/02/solutions_not_slogans.html#comment-281712 - and you can’t register the same handle twice in wordpress. Sometimes you can create a new handle that looks the same at first glance (slightly different spelling, use of a full stop or extra space) but this matches McShane’s previous identifying posts perfectly.
As it is him I’d suggest that anyone with an axe to grind against him and his frontgroup have just been given a late xmas present. I know exactly how I’d use it.
January 13, 2008 at 4:47 pm
In a thread supposedly about the possible important role the Green Party might play in deciding the outcome of this year’s General Election, one of Farrar’s commenters trots out the argument that the Green movement has its roots in Nazism. Wow, that’s a winning way for the National Party’s unofficial mouthpiece to start wooing the Green party.
So an unaffiliated commenter on a web site with no relationship to the National party risks souring a National-Green alliance?
Non-sequitur, anyone?
January 13, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Nah, not really a risk, obviously. I think Zos is highlighting the potential gulf between the Nats and the Greens.
January 13, 2008 at 5:08 pm
The “real” Owen McShane posted this in a newsgroup in 2001.
Looks like the same guy to me.
http://groups.google.co.nz/group/nz.politics/msg/01aaeb1e09e5f4c8
From: Owen McShane
Date: Thu, 24 May 2001 10:15:59 +1300
Subject: Re: Green Nazis push propaganda in schools
…
Unfortunately the words fascist and Nazi get tossed around as general
expletives.
But the facts are (and there is nothing particularly striking about
this) the green movement has it roots in the political movement
generally described as fascism and was strongly expressed in Nazi
Germany.
…
The Nazi boy scout movement was called “the Greenshirts”.
These links are one reason why the Green Party has always been so strong
in Germnay.
…
January 13, 2008 at 6:21 pm
It seems to be the season for it. Trevor Loudon, ACT’s vice president, says Hitler and Mussolini were really left-wing.. Seriously.
January 13, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Jonah Goldberg’s much anticipated, but often delayed new book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning is in a similar vein.
It gets a working over by David Neiwert, who knows a thing or two about the descendents of facism, at the link:
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=jonah_goldbergs_bizarro_history
sample:The title alone is enough to indicate its thoroughgoing incoherence: Of all the things we know about fascism and the traits that comprise it, one of the few things that historians will readily agree upon is its overwhelming anti-liberalism. One might as well write about anti-Semitic neoconservatism, or Ptolemaic quantum theory, or strength in ignorance. Goldberg isn’t content to simply create an oxymoron; this entire enterprise, in fact, is classic Newspeak.
Indeed, Goldberg even makes some use of Orwell, noting that the author of 1984 once dismissed the misuse of “fascism” as meaning “something not desirable.” Of course, Orwell was railing against the loss of the word’s meaning, while Goldberg, conversely, revels in it — he refers to Orwell’s critique as his “definition of fascism.”
And then Goldberg proceeds to define everything that he himself considers undesirable as “fascist.” This is just about everything even remotely and vaguely thought of as “liberal”: vegetarianism, Social Security, multiculturalism, the “war on poverty,” “the politics of meaning.” The figures he labels as fascist range from Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson and Hillary Clinton. Goldberg’s primary achievement is to rob the word of all meaning — Newspeak incarnate.
hmmmm.
January 13, 2008 at 9:15 pm
The Greens are from Communist backgrounds. Communism failed and they became watermelons, green on the outside, red in the middle. Environmentalism is the new communism, it’s all about taking rights away from the common folk as ‘we know what’s best for you’ mentality. Thankfully the cracks are starting to widen in the GW debate, this will lessen the Greens power in 2008.
A crude assessment, I know but it is not far from the truth.
January 13, 2008 at 9:28 pm
bollocks
January 13, 2008 at 9:41 pm
OOB:
Why then do the Greens have so many communists in it, or so called ex. communists (once a commy, always one I am afraid)? Bradford, Locke to name 2. Norman is one as well I have been told.
January 13, 2008 at 9:48 pm
“Wow, that’s a winning way for the National Party’s unofficial mouthpiece to start wooing the Green party.”
Havent we been throught this debate many times? Farrar is not at all responcible for the comments people make on his blog. If you hear Farrar saying that the greens are Nazis then you may have a case but really this is just more KBB tripe.
January 13, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Communism failed
Um, China - new superpower anyone? Get your facts right kids, China is growing exponentially (it’s communist by the way, just in case you haven’t noticed) while the US is tanking under probably the most capitalism-focused administration it’s ever had. Hmm, doesn’t look like a failure to me boys.
Oh and nick? Farrar’s responsible for the culture of his blog.
January 13, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Yeah, but Nick, what do you think the Greens are thinking when they see this kind of crap being peddled on a Tory site? We’re not saying Farrar thinks this - or even the party hierarchy. Zos has made the point that, if it’s true that National comes to depend on National, your grassroot Green activists will be looking at this stuff thinking ‘do we really want to be dealing with these assholes? They hate us’
For what it’s worth - I think the chances of this current incarnation of the Greens stitching a deal with National is pretty much unthinkable. I can see the Greens dealing with anyone else but not National. Too much water has gone under that bridge. Maybe in the future when the personalities have all changed - but not in the near future. By the way, I don’t think that necessarily means Labour has the vote stitched up this time, either.
January 14, 2008 at 12:04 am
Yeah, those damn greenies, always in our faces with their “we know best”. Who the hell do they think they are, telling us what to do. “Check, Clean, Dry” my ass - maybe I WANT didymo in all the rivers. Maybe widespread poorly considered uptake of GM organisms for the sake of short term profit is a good thing. Sometimes I get home and I just FEEL like airing out the house opening all the windows and setting the oven to full.
kiwikiwi66 - “environmentalism is the new communism”? What a pointless and simplistic statement. Way to try and stoke the fires of emotional aversion. What’s the biggest environmental control mechanism in NZ at the moment? The resource management act is not exactly redolent of communism, simply due process. And emissions trading - quantifying private ownership and responsibility for the biggest environmental concern at present and aiming to foster both public and private innovation rather than stipulating actions - hardly a “we know what’s best attitude”.
Are you 13? Joseph McCarthys angry grandson out for revenge?
Robinsod - I think it’s really reaching to argue that china is a shining example of the success of communism. And exponential growth? Hardly the hallmark of a sustainable economy wouldn’t you say? Empires rise and fall, and chinas record in a large number of areas remains atrocious. Though in many others it’s very good. Anyway, my point was that saying “China is presently successful because it’s a quasi communist regime” is pretty narrowminded.
Also, they’re not new. There’s a reason they got a UN veto back in the day
January 14, 2008 at 2:13 am
Robinsod:
China is a capitalist country country now. The romantics say it is communist.
The old USSR (your mother country) is no more as forward thinking citizens saw this was a load of crap 20 odd years ago. A lot of these countries are now part of the EU, Poland etc as they saw this was the way forward. This was to the dismay of the Communists in countries such as NZ and from there they needed to rebrand, enviromentalism was the answer to this rebranding, (in my eyes this was clever). Hence the birth of the Greens.
I remember in 1985 when I was a process worker in Avondale, Auckland. There was a strike and we had to go to the Avondale Racecourse for a STOP WORK MEETING, it was all about directives from Moscow from Bill/Jim?? Anderson, it was like a May DAY parade when he entered. I had 2 days off with no pay and I got a 3% payrise for this effort, yay! The Greens of old.
January 14, 2008 at 7:26 am
Um KK - the difference between capitalism and communism is who owns the means of production. Guess what? In china the state owns the vast bulk of the means of production - that makes it communist.
LF - I wasn’t endorsing China, simply pointing out that its communism has not “failed” yet.
January 14, 2008 at 8:38 am
A short an unscientific study of all the Greens that I know well
They total 19
Their occupation are as follows;-
Midwife
Artist
Small business owner x 4
Business adviser
Agricultural Worker
Students x 5
Doctor
Retiree x 2
Shop Worker x 2
Property Developer
Take my word not a communist in sight
Not one dope smoking Hippie ………..(well Ok one)
A couple of the Students smoke dope ( strangely enough!)
Not one “dole bludger’
Only two have ever been on a protest march
And only two have compost bins
So in short basically a pretty average cross section of ordinary Kiwis.
Who happen to care about the environment and social justice.
So why do the RWNJ feel so threatened by these people?
Is it because these Greens HAVE a conscience , and the shallowness and selfishness of their (RWNJ) thinking is exposed ?
January 14, 2008 at 9:05 am
If Nazis were communists how come the first people sent to the concentration camp at Dachau in 1933-34 were socialist and communist political leaders…eh?
So why do the RWNJ feel so threatened by these people?
Some people, regardless of their political persuasion, are only happy if they have someone/thing to hate.
January 14, 2008 at 10:49 am
You’re on to it Ruth. The weak in character will always elevate themselves by finding some group to look down on - gays, blacks, women, health bureaucrats, you name it. The old mob mentality that did for even JC persists and explains the bizarre and grotesque manipulations of logic that we endure daily from the rightie blogs: essentially incestuous hate-sessions for the insecure.
The trend is a worry though: in my day the standard response to poison-pen letters (from any direction) was immediate consignment to the bin. Thanks to this new-fangled interweb thing however, such tripe and filth now lays flagrant to literally all for indefinite periods - lazy journalists and burnt-out “celebrities” now have easy free access to transitory hysteria-inducing material.
Relax though, history shows us it’s a self-righting situation: their inherent insecurities and petty jealousies are always the downfall of hatemongers. I note even some of the bog commentators condemning Ralston for sloppily parrotting Farrar’s nonsense in his latest “column” (he really is abysmal, even purloins phrases verbatim at times!). The Herald, his fellow hacks, the bog, Shadbolt et al will similarly dissolve with a whimper over the longer term.
too late the hollow base-bile baiter
learns that hate
hurts mostly the hater
January 14, 2008 at 10:52 am
“Environmentalism is the new communism, it’s all about taking rights away from the common folk as ‘we know what’s best for you’ mentality”
yeah, not like those community minded caring and sharing corporate neo-cons - they’re the real heroes and protectors of us ‘common folk’. well, them and the fascists.
if one bothers to actually read Marx, you’ll find there are really no communist nations as Marx defines them - certainly not USSR or China at any time of their development. the closest they ever got were early industrial transitional socialist states - which were supposed to progress from there to genuinely communist states. obviously that didn’t happen for multiple complex reasons, and instead they became military dictatorships, despite calling themselves ‘communist’. a bit like how the USA is a plutocracy despite having an intertest in describing itself as a democracy.
the fates of USSR and China have little bearing on arguments concerning the success of Marx’s conception of communism, although McCarthyist types clearly have a strong need to interpret political history elsewise.
January 14, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I read the link and Owen McShane has got it backwards. Environmentalists, dog-lovers, vegetarians and nature-loving Germans were around long before the Nazis. Lots of political parties in Germany want(ed) to conserve their forests etc. The Green Party does not have its origins in the Nazis, he is completely on the wrong track.
aladin