Crackpots, Crackpots Everywhere

Peter Beinart points out that Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen are both crazy people. It's too bad, though, that he doesn't really say anything about the implications of the fact that Podhoretz's decision to splash onto the scene with a series of demented writings about "Islamofascism" coincides so closely with Republican front runner Rudy Giuliani's decision to embrace him very publicly. It seems to me that something's gone badly wrong with a country where a major political figure sees associating himself with this kind of lunacy as a smart political move.

Comments

It's not like the "reasonable" left have made appealing to them very rewarding for politicians.

The wingnuts are loyal and relentless and spend little time talking about juvenile sportig events...

Posted by alphie | September 9, 2007 4:21 PM

The RW lunatics are loud, so they get all of the attention. Fox News helps, too.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Posted by mpp | September 9, 2007 4:34 PM

of course you're right alphie, I mean you'd think it crazy if Dennis Miller did color commentary for football or Rush Limbaugh was in house at ESPN!

Posted by Rob | September 9, 2007 4:47 PM

Meanwhile, Podhoretz is apparently laboring under the delusion that any setbacks in World War Mania XVI (only $29.95 on pay per view!) are due to the sinister machinations of Noam Chomsky.

Podhoretz is a much crazier conspiracy theorist than Chomsky ever was. He's fighting out his resentment from an argument he had with Allen Ginsberg in 1952 by urging the US to bomb Iran. The dickens with strategic thought or likely counterreactions or the impact on our military or our reputation. Nope, gotta fight the Islamo-counterculturo-Democrato-Communists wherever you can fantasize about them.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | September 9, 2007 5:36 PM

The useful aspect of crazed extremist hawks like the NorPod is that they serve to justify the policies of regular right wingers and liberal hawks by comparison.

After all, you need prominent individuals and groups to advocate batsh*t crazy hawkish extremism so as to make your somewhat less crazy hawkish policies seem somehow 'moderate' in comparison.

That way the regular right wing hawks and liberal hawks can always see themselves as standing proudly in the center, sandwiched perfectly between super-ultra-nutty hawk extremists, and those who don't support your crazy hawk policies at all, who are by definition now 'extremists' too.

Posted by El Cid | September 9, 2007 5:50 PM

The useful aspect of crazed extremist hawks like the NorPod is that they serve to justify the policies of regular right wingers and liberal hawks by comparison.

That utility would evaporate if the winger presidential candidate endorsed the loony. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

Please.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 9, 2007 6:12 PM

As I recall, Mr. Podhoretzs' son John didn't serve in the Vietnam war. The old do as I say, not as I do.

Posted by SLC | September 9, 2007 6:19 PM

The useful aspect of crazed extremist hawks like the NorPod is that they serve to justify the policies of regular right wingers and liberal hawks by comparison.

That utility would evaporate if the winger presidential candidate endorsed the loony. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

Please.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis

Nope. Then you just find somebody farther out than NorPod, and you move the window over to place NorPod at the center-right, while there's some militia radio nut who recommends blowing everyone up right now starting with China and Russia, and, poof, suddenly NorPod is out there talking about how we need to avoid the extremists who want us to nuke Russia now instead of starting a conventional attack against them first.

Posted by El Cid | September 9, 2007 6:23 PM

There are more than a billion Muslims on the planet. Podhoretz will not be happy until we have killed them all. He's in the same class of racism and bigotry as Peretz.

Posted by bob h | September 9, 2007 6:35 PM

I don't kow...it seems to me that we have two GOP candidates (Rudy and Freddy) who are upping the ante to all out, balls-out FEARFEARFEAR NUKESNUKES 24/7 in order to win, so in that regard embracing the crazies is just part of the plan.

Posted by Daddy Love | September 9, 2007 6:55 PM

Catapulting the propaganda, as it were...

Posted by Daddy Love | September 9, 2007 6:56 PM

I always wondered how the Liberal Party in South Africa ever ended up winning the argument over
the National Party in '48. I stopped wondering when I started reading Peter Beinart. It never
dawns on these people that every Friday; Mosques
all over the world, from Jakarta to Johannesburg
to Baghdad to birmingham preach jihad; that stations like Al Jazeera, & Al Manar either excuse or promote this philosophy . That institutions like CAIR, the MSA, and the UCM in England rationalize and excuse it away. And we're
the war mongers. We're not the party that has 35%
believing Moslems had nothing to do with 9/11. Now one may fault Norman Podheretz for having a difference of opinion with Allen Ginsburg; speaking of a crackpot.Chomsky not a crackpot he was comparing Reagan to Hitler in the 80s, he thinks nothing of the prospect of the annihilation of the State of Israel ; having made Holocaust denial with his imprimatur about Faurisson. Speaking of Holocaust, he either denied or at the very least softpedaled events
from Year Zero one; things that Sydney Schamberg
believed wouldn't occur in the aftermath of the
American pullout.
But what does that have to do with Iran's very real threat, manifested in its actions for the last 28 years; with the likes of Ahmadinejad and his boy Jaafari; carrying out the most vicious of atrocities whether at Evin Prison, on the streets of Vienna with Quassemlou or the Jewish Community center in Buenos Aires. You want this thug regime
to be able to develop nuclear weapons.

Posted by narciso | September 9, 2007 8:50 PM

I always wondered how the Liberal Party in South Africa ever ended up winning the argument over the National Party in '48.

Did you want to clarify that question?

Or are you trying to write English by way of a Commando-magazine version of Afrikaans, due to geek shooter nostalgia for a long, failed period of fascist mis-rule?

Gee, why do such Podhoretz allies keep managing to sound so crazy, what with their bitterness about South Africans' finally tiring of their petty tyrants' pseudo-democracy.

Oh, well, at least Noam Chomsky never handed power in Cambodia to the lunatic Khmer Rouge guerrillas, like the American hawks did by bombing the rural peasantry into their hands. Gosh, it must weigh so heavily on the consciences of the right that they brought about the Cambodian genocide that all they're left with is trying to blame some Massachusetts professor who wrote articles about it afterwards.

And, of course, Noam never gave money and arms to Guatemalan genocidalists like Reagan, so the right wing guilt over having caused yet another genocide gets deeply to their minds, trying to blame Noam Chomsky for all the slaughters and genocides they themselves gleefully bring about.

These are strange, strange, yet failed peoples.

Posted by El Cid | September 9, 2007 9:08 PM

There is a reason fascist like rhetoric was/is so very successful.

Appealing to fear and hate is the most powerful and effective political method of gaining acquiescence to authoritarian control. It exploits basic animal survival instincts: tribalism, territorial protection and collective violence.

Democratic discourse takes a lot more work-- reason and a fully and fairly informed public. Let’s face it, democracy may prove in the long run to be the aberrant and fleeting form of government for the US.

Posted by erict | September 9, 2007 9:13 PM

The problem has never been just Neocons or GOP politicians. 40% of Americans have basically reactionary worldviews (remember that Bush has dipped into the low 30s/high 20s only because some of the Right has abandoned him as not lunatic enough). 40% are basically progressive (about 1% of that 40 are on the revolutionary fringe). And the other 20% blow with the wind. And that has been true for a very long time.

Posted by tdraicer | September 9, 2007 11:49 PM

"narciso" is Chris Ford with less ability to do word wrap.

Another ignorant Muslim hater.

You want to know who "thinks nothing of the annihilation of the State of Israel"?

ME!

You gotta problem with that?

Notice I said nothing about the annihilation of anybody actually living in Israel. The STATE of Israel needs to be annihilated, or those LIVING there may well eventually end up being annihilated as a result of the policies of the State of Israel.

In any event, "Muslims" aren't the problem (or at least no more so than the rest of the stupid religious freaks in this world including Christians and Jews.) The problem is the statists in Israel and the US and the Muslim countries who oppress their own people and who use the so-called "threat" of others to hold power. Get rid of the statists, the people will figure out how to get along - badly perhaps, but not as badly as at present when they have the state able to drum up wars in an instant.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | September 10, 2007 2:44 AM

Why has the GOP frontrunner embraced an aged literary critic and memoirist as a foreign-policy advisor even though the memoirist appears to be somewhat deranged?

Follow the money.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 10, 2007 3:00 AM

Posted by narciso | September 9, 2007 8:50 PM
Satan? Is that you master? What blood must be spilled? What must be done master? Iran? Iran? Master? Kill them all? Kill them all, Master? Yes yes yes YES YES YES MAASSSSSTTTEEEERRRR.

Posted by Northern Observer | September 10, 2007 12:05 PM

Richard Steven Hack...

Notice I said nothing about the annihilation of anybody actually living in Israel. The STATE of Israel needs to be annihilated, or those LIVING there may well eventually end up being annihilated as a result of the policies of the State of Israel.

How would you react to the following lede:

"The state of Zimbabwe needs be annihilated."

"The state of Sudan needs to be annihilated."

"The state of Mexico needs to be annihilated."

(Well, after all, you know about those Chiapans..."

Would you react differently? After all, these are states that oppress their own citizens.

Obviously, I differ fundamentally in thought from you. But, are you merely saying that you would like the political system in Israel altered so that a peaceable co-existence between Arab and Jew can happen? Or are we to take your metaphors a bit more seriously, and see that, despite any protestations, you make the point ever so clearly about the gray area between hatred of Zionism and hatred of Jews.

Hurts, don't it?

Posted by Ron Gordon | September 10, 2007 9:44 PM

"crazy," "demented," "lunacy"...all in a mere three sentences. Nice argument...

Posted by Ugh | September 10, 2007 10:34 PM

Oh, and don't forget "crackpot" in the headline--twice.

Posted by Ugh | September 10, 2007 10:36 PM

Crackpots, crackpots, everywhere...
And message boards did shrink.
Crackpots, crackpots, everywhere.
Nor any rightist think.

Posted by El Cid | September 10, 2007 10:44 PM

As I recall, Mr. Podhoretzs' son John didn't serve in the Vietnam war. The old do as I say, not as I do.
Posted by SLC | September 9, 2007 6:19 PM

Swing and a miss, SLC. Jpod was 14 when Saigon fell.

Posted by X-Canadian | September 11, 2007 11:42 AM