Snopes Beclowns Itself with Awful 'Confirmation' of Hitlerian Tones in Trump Tweet

The author below picks up several of the glides in Mikkelson's post but misses some big ones. 

I was particularly amused by this: "[Hitler and Trump] unceasingly attack objective truth". It is certainly true that Trump gets some details wrong but who is it who constantly tell us that "There's no such thing as right and wrong". It's not Trump or any other conservative. It is the Left. So it is actually the current LEFT that Hitler resembles!

And the claim that "Fake news" is a paraphrase of Hitler's "Lügenpresse" (lying press) is extraordinary. "Fake news" was a term used by the American press in the run-up to the 2016 election.  It was a term made popular by Hillary Clinton in response to a claim that she was running a racket out of a NY pizza parlour.

So, again, both Lügenpresse" and "fake news" were first used by Leftists: Hitler and Hillary. Trump just made use of Hillary's term to use it against her and her ilk.

And there is the general point about Mikkelson's post that cherrypicking one bit from a longer screed can prove almost anything.  You have to look at the relevant literature as a whole to make a fair comparison.  But cherrypicking is a constant recourse of the Left.  The whole truth is just too embarrassing to them.  So Mikkelson is just another deceitful Leftist cherrypicker.

I could go on and talk about Hitler's party platform etc., but I think I have said enough for the moment.  I say much more about Hitler here


Fact-checking websites have a checkered reputation at best. Many lean so far to the left that they cannot recognize their own bias. None has carried that standard so proudly, however, as Snopes. This week, even they have completely outdone themselves. In a February 12, 2020 article titled, "Does This Trump Tweet Echo ‘Mein Kampf?’" Snopes engages in so many sophomoric logical fallacies that they may have done permanent damage to whatever remains of their reputation.

I kept screen captures, just in case they become so embarrassed that it would be too much to leave the article up, even for them.

Snopes founder David Mikkelson authored the article, in which he cites a tweet from August 2018 to examine the issue.



Incidentally, the author reveals his bias right out of the gate by choosing such an old tweet. This has clearly been on his mind for a while now. Here's how Mikkelson confirms this tweet:

The statement on the right comes from Hitler’s 1925 autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf,” begun while he was imprisoned for his part in a failed coup d’état in Munich, Bavaria, in November 1923. Although Hitler’s work is subject to the vagaries of translation (since Hitler wrote in German), the above passage does appear as worded in Chapter 11 of “Mein Kampf” in at least one English-language translation

There are so many holes in that explanation, it boggles the mind. Let's examine, first of all, the direct comparison of what Trump has said about the biased press, versus what Hitler said about the press not supporting his agenda. A rather large distinction right off the bat, no? They both criticize the press, so they're both Literally Hitler™. This is what's known as a Causal Fallacy — in this case, assuming a correlation with insufficient evidence.

It should go without saying but apparently bears repeating: Trump criticizes the press for their political bias and failure to report accurately, thereby misleading consumers of news and incompletely informing them. Hitler criticized the press for not getting on board with his fascistic plans for German society. The comparison falls apart on its face.

Mikkelson isn't done with the logical fallacies, however. He then commits an Appeal to Authority — and what an authority!

To what extent the two statements presented above resemble each other is something of a subjective issue, but many critics, such as civil rights lawyer Burt Neuborne, have drawn parallels between Trump’s and Hitler’s attacks on the mainstream press.

Burt Neuborne is an attorney and law professor who litigated cases for the ACLU and NOW, and founded the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. Neuborne has repeatedly accused Trump of bearing a strong resemblance to Hitler. In fact, he wrote a book about it, which Mikkelson quotes:

[Hitler and Trump] unceasingly attack objective truth. “Both Trump and Hitler maintained a relentless assault on the very idea of objective truth,” [Neuborne says]. “Each began the assault by seeking to delegitimize the mainstream press. Hitler quickly coined the epithet Lügenpresse (literally ‘lying press’) to denigrate the mainstream press.

Trump uses a paraphrase of Hitler’s lying press epithet — ‘fake news’ — cribbed, no doubt, from one of Hitler’s speeches. For Trump, the mainstream press is a ‘lying press’ that publishes ‘fake news.’” Hitler attacked his opponents as spreading false information to undermine his positions, Neuborne says, just as Trump has attacked “elites” for disseminating false news …

They relentlessly attack mainstream media. Trump’s assaults on the media echo Hitler’s, Neuborne says, noting that he “repeatedly attacks the ‘failing New York Times,’ leads crowds in chanting ‘CNN sucks,’ [and] is personally hostile to most reporters.” He cites the White House’s refusal to fly the flag at half-mast after the murder of five journalists in Annapolis in June 2018, Trump’s efforts to punish CNN by blocking a merger of its corporate parent, and trying to revoke federal Postal Service contracts held by Amazon, which was founded by Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post.

Notice that? "Cribbed, no doubt, from one of Hitler's speeches." No proof, no detailed analysis of potential plagiarism. Just speculation. Neuborne engages in the same causal fallacy Mikkelson does. That explains why Mikkelson likes his writing so much — it affirms Mikkelson's own biases without having to ask himself the hard questions.

If an author refuses to show enough intellectual honesty to thoughtfully compare not just the words, but the intent of a statement, then why should anyone take them seriously?

SOURCE 






The political earthquake in East Germany

Respectability for Germany's big anti-immigration party at last?  Like major political parties in most of the developed world, Germany's traditional major parties recoil from any hint that they may be racist.  But average Germans see all the Third world immigrants as a problem.  Only AFD represents that feeling

Events in Thuringia last week have had political consequences that reach far beyond the borders of this small state in eastern Germany. Five days after the surprise election of Thomas Kemmerich as the state’s new premier, the party leader of the ruling CDU, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (or AKK, as she is often called), has announced her resignation.

The problems began with last autumn’s state elections. Last week, it looked as if a state government could finally be formed. Kemmerich was chosen as premier despite his party, the centrist Free Democratic Party (FDP), winning just five per cent of the vote. He was elected with the support of local centre-right CDU politicians, alongside the controversial right-wing populist party, the AfD (Alternative for Germany), which pulled its own candidate for premier to throw its weight behind Kemmerich. It was the CDU politicians’ decision to join ranks with the AfD which has provoked a political earthquake powerful enough to reach the top of the party.

‘Unforgivable’ was how chancellor Angela Merkel described her party working with the AfD. The CDU leadership demanded a reversal of the vote which appointed Kemmerich.

All of the mainstream parties had, until now, maintained a cordon sanitaire against the AfD. But last week, a ‘crack in the establishment’s defences against the far-right’ had formed, in the words of Bloomberg’s Germany correspondent.

Before AKK’s shock resignation, other heads had rolled, too. First to resign was Kemmerich himself – only hours after his appointment. He was under pressure to do so from the CDU and his own party. The CDU’s minister for east Germany, Christian Hirte, was forced to stand down because he had congratulated Kemmerich for his election on Twitter.

The affair in Thuringia shows the difficulty the German establishment is having in dealing not only with the AfD but also with voters more broadly. Kemmerich’s contested election was, in many ways, the consequence of the establishment parties’ failures. The old established parties, particularly the Social Democrats (SPD), suffered massive losses in the state elections.

In Thuringia, neither the incumbent coalition government – made up of the Left Party (Die Linke), the SPD, and Greens – nor any other grouping was able to form a stable government. The CDU, which also lost votes, was faced with the choice of either tolerating the Left Party’s Bodo Ramelow or supporting Kemmerich alongside the AfD.

In her resignation speech, AKK said that as a person from the middle, she rejected both options. As party leader, AKK placed pressure on her colleagues from Thuringia to uphold the unwritten rule of ‘no collaboration’ with the AfD. But they did not listen to her. The current crisis in the CDU shows that that situation has become untenable.

The AfD came second in the Thuringia state elections, winning over 23 per cent of the vote. Local CDU politicians feel under much greater pressure from their voters than the party bigwigs in Berlin. They knew that supporting a candidate from the Left Party, whom their supporters rejected, would have cost them dearly.

Angela Merkel initially called for the reinstatement of the Left Party’s Ramelow as caretaker premier. The CDU general secretary, however, opposed to his party working with the left, has instead called for a ‘cross-party solution’. He has proposed that a non-partisan, technocratic leader could take over the state. This proposal shows how dangerous the anti-AfD taboo has become. To maintain its anti-AfD policy, the CDU leadership is even willing to abandon the basic principle of democracy: that governments must be elected and accountable to the voters.

It is true that Thuringia’s AfD is led by one of the party’s most obnoxious characters. Björn Höcke is a former history teacher from western Germany, known for his ugly historical revisionism which romanticises the far right. But calls for an unelected government, simply to shut out his party, are far more dangerous.

The calls for a technocratic government, not to mention the AfD taboo itself, reveal a worrying unwillingness to engage in serious and open debate. Formally, the main parties’ anti-AfD stance is presented as a defence against a right-wing party. But informally, it is also directed against its voters. Trying everything to outmanoeuvre and exclude the AfD has proven to be a futile strategy. More and more people are starting to think the mainstream parties are not even interested in courting their vote.

The AfD’s political tactics should not be defended, either. The party’s attempt to have a politician like Kemmerich appointed – whose party came last in the autumn state elections, and who represents only around five per cent of the voters – is just as contemptuous of democracy as the CDU’s idea of appointing a technocratic leader. The proper thing in a democracy would be for the party which won the largest number of votes to provide the premier. In this case, it should have fallen to the Left Party, which won 31 per cent of the vote, to form a government.

Sadly, far too few people in German public life – from those who hate the AfD to AfD supporters – are consistent when it comes to democracy. Instead of defending fundamental principles, such as the right of representation and majority rule, parties have instead been engaged in a tactical scuffle. Those who are upset about the events in Thuringia should ask themselves this: are they really worried about democracy, or do they simply want to isolate a party they disagree with?

For some commentators, the events in Thuringia have become symptomatic of the chaos democracy can produce. That is not true. The chaos was produced by the fact that so many politicians are unwilling to accept democratic results they do not like.

SOURCE 





Martyr for free speech: Jordan Peterson is the professor vilified by the Left for his crusade against political correctness. Now he's seriously ill, his close friend DOUGLAS MURRAY reveals the very high price he's paid

In a dramatic video published on YouTube last week, a woman looked to the camera and delivered a deeply personal announcement.

She revealed that her father, Jordan Peterson, the famous 'professor against political correctness', was in intensive care in Russia after being hospitalised following a severe dependence on benzodiazepines – a class of anti-anxiety pills.

'He nearly died several times,' she says solemnly in the clip that has been viewed more than 2.4 million times.

'He almost died from what the medical system did to him in the West.'

Explaining why he was in Russia, not exactly a free society, Mikhaila Peterson says: 'The doctors here aren't influenced by the pharmaceutical companies.

'They don't believe in treating symptoms caused by medications, by adding in more medications and have the guts to medically detox someone from benzodiazepines.'

Of course, for the Canadian psychologist's family, the notion that he's been left with 'neurological damage', as Mikhaila says, is a tragedy.

But it is also an immense tragedy for everyone who cares about the culture wars that dominate so much of our lives today.

For the 57-year-old, who has been the most talked-about thinker on our planet in recent times, has bravely battled the political-correctness ninjas harder than anyone else. In an age of newly imposed, often suffocating dogmas, he said what people know to be true about a whole range of issues.

That women and men are biologically different. That people ought to take responsibility for their own lives.

That modern life often seems hollow and meaningless.

But there was a very great cost to pay for being the cause célèbre of telling the truth. Becoming Public Enemy No 1 may have helped lead him to where he is today.

Peterson first came to public notice in his native Toronto by refusing to use so-called 'compelled speech' – for example, being compelled by law to refer to a trans person by their chosen pronoun.

He was not 'transphobic', as his critics claimed, but he was motivated by a simple refusal to allow governments in a free society to dictate what people are allowed to say.

From that first storm, he seemed to start fires wherever he went.

And always singeing the people who tried to get the better of him.

His YouTube channel, where he posted lectures and speeches, racked up tens of millions of views.

Pilloried for speaking sense, parts of the Left-wing media tried to destroy him.

One of the most famous examples came during a visit to the UK in 2018 when Channel 4 News' Cathy Newman spent half an hour trying to put words in Peterson's mouth.

Attempting to catch him out on trans rights and women's equality, she tried in vain to twist what he said to fit her own ideological agenda.

Clips from the interview went viral and, like other attempts to destroy Peterson, only helped gain him a larger audience.

In 2018 his book Twelve Rules For Life was published and it instantly became a global No 1 bestseller.

He was quickly selling out arenas on speaking tours.

Though his audience were of all ages and backgrounds, he struck a particular chord with the young.

In a society whose guiding ethos is 'do whatever feels good' and then 'spend your spare time saving the planet', Peterson had a different message.

It included some reboots of good, old-fashioned values. Sit up straight.

Put your own house in order. He told people if they couldn't even keep their room clean it was unlikely that they were going to be much use reordering society or the planet.

He advised people to develop meaningful relationships. He recommended delayed, rather than instant, gratification.

And he invited people to live their lives as though they had purpose: to consider that this life we are living is more than just some shallow consumer game.

When I first saw him deliver a lecture in London, the atmosphere was electric.

In a tour-de-force, Peterson explained the virtues of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the significance of myth and the relevance of great stories from the past to people's lives today.

It was religious and secular – familiar and radical.

By this point, we had become friends and we appeared on stage together in two venues.

Together with our friend, the philosopher Sam Harris, we appeared at the 3Arena in Dublin and the O2 Arena in London. On both occasions, some 10,000 people turned out to hear us discuss God, politics and society.

I have no doubt that the majority of the audience was there to see Jordan, and he deserved it.

Inevitably, he's made countless enemies. Not only among people who disliked his message, but among people who had never seen anything like this thinker's stardom and were jealous.

He was constantly abused on Twitter, while publications printed hit-pieces and slanders incessantly.

Then, last March, his visiting fellowship at Cambridge University was rescinded after a backlash from the faculty and students.

Looking for excuses not to host the world's most famous professor, they pretended to be horrified by a photo of him at a fan meet-and-greet standing next to a man wearing a T-shirt with the slogan 'I am a proud Islamophobe'.

The cowards at Cambridge said that by standing there, Peterson had 'casually endorsed' the man.

Meanwhile, people around him were worried about his crazy schedule. A speech in a different city – often a different country – every day. And media interviews at all hours.

Last April, his wife Tammy was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Trying to cope with the strain, Jordan began taking increased doses of the anti-anxiety drug benzodiazepine.

He has always been frank and open about his history of depression and has tried to advise other people on how to cope with this dreadful affliction.

Last September, his daughter Mikhaila announced her father had checked himself into rehab.

Then this week we got the awful news.

In her message, Mikhaila, who suffers from arthritis and an autoimmune disorder which she treats by eating a controversial all-meat diet, announced he has been trying to get off the medication for the past eight months.

I wish the reaction to this terrible news had been kinder.

But it is a feature of our toxic age that people who like to present themselves as the kindest can be relied upon to be vicious as hell in a cause they think is good.

Those social-justice activists who Peterson exposed when he was well are now being vile because he cannot remonstrate.

The Independent website attacked him as an 'alt-right figurehead' who has attracted 'widespread accusations of transphobia'.

The Guardian journalist Suzanne Moore tweeted gleefully: 'Hello Editor types. Jordan Peterson holed up in rehab in Russia. F*** me gently with a chainsaw… let me do that story. Come on!'

A fellow Canadian academic, Amir Attaran, wrote on Twitter under the hashtag 'Karma': 'Jordan Peterson, oracle to gullible young men, preacher of macho toughness, and hectoring bully to 'snowflakes', is addicted to strong drugs and his brain riddled with 'neurological damage'.

'He deserves as much sympathy as he showed others.'

And these are just three notable examples of the sewer of abuse directed his way.

So perhaps I could say a few words of support for him?

I have known a few remarkable people in my time. The best of them, inevitably, have fans.

You can tell the fans, as the novelist Martin Amis once wrote, because they shake when they meet their heroes.

With Jordan Peterson it wasn't like that. Walking down any street with him, or sitting next to him in book-signing queues, I saw first-hand what other people heard about.

In the 20 or 30 seconds that people might have him to themselves, they didn't tell him how much they loved his work.

They told him what a difference he had made to their lives.

A great author is lucky if this is said to them even a few times in their lives. Peterson was told it multiple times every evening.

I'll never forget a man in his 20s who came over after one event.

While Peterson signed his book, he related that 18 months earlier he had been living in a bedsit, spending his time gaming and smoking too much marijuana.

Today, he said he was married, holding down a job and his wife was expecting their first child.

This, he said, was all because of Peterson. I've heard similar stories many times.

A serious and grown-up society would take lessons from such a phenomenon.

Instead of dismissing him, deriding him or trying to catch him out, it would recognise that we live in a society where plenty of people are willing to tell easy untruths but too few people are willing to tell difficult, necessary truths.

It would also realise that underneath the glitz and technology of the modern age, there lies a deep lack of purpose – a chaos – that for young people in particular can be utterly terrifying and which almost no one addresses. Peterson has sought to address that chaos.

Not with grandiose plans but with small, achievable steps. All bolstered by a knowledge and curiosity that was frankly awesome as well as inspiring.

At no point has he held himself out to be a saint. And not once has he suggested that he has all the answers.

But he knows where the answers do not lie. And he knows that we can live lives of deeper meaning and purpose than this shallow and retributive age pretends.

Jordan Peterson is a remarkable man.

But he's still a man, with all the frailties and failings that condition involves.

His daughter says that he is on the mend. And I know I say on behalf of millions of people: 'Get well soon, my friend. Our world has need of you.'  

SOURCE 




Everyone's got a victim story - so here's mine

By Bettina Arndt, an Australian opponent of feminist man-hatred

I have a strange little story, an interesting side-show to the bombardment I am receiving in the press.

The main accusation against me, from Victoria Attorney General Jill Hennessy, Rosie Batty and numerous media commentators, is that my views are an insult to victims of sexual abuse.

That’s pretty funny really because that’s exactly what I am – a victim of sexual abuse. Fifty years ago, as a nineteen-year old university student, I was one of many victims of a Canberra doctor who fiddled with me in his surgery and was eventually charged with molesting his patients.

I’ve never chosen to see myself as a victim, but I have had enough of people like Hennessy telling us how we are allowed to talk about such experiences. In 1997 I wrote a long newspaper article in the SMH talking about what that doctor did to me, outlining the complexities of his case, why a judge and then the full court determined he should not be charged, and how I felt about that.

Now selected quotes from that article are being used as part of the endless media pile-on, as feminists react to news of my award. The usual suspects, particularly Nina Funnell, have spent the past fortnight dishing out dirt about me. The story of the Canberra doctor is classic of their tactics – picking unrelated phrases from my writing to try and show me in the worst possible light.

So, this was a quote in an article about me, co-authored by Nina Funnell and published in New Matilda on Australia Day weekend:

In 1997 Ms Arndt defended a Canberra doctor who had molested multiple patients, including a 12 year old child, arguing that the sex offender should not be charged over the molestations, because in another context masturbating a person would be a “loving and pleasurable” act.

Notice how deceptively the authors fail to acknowledge I was a victim of this man – because that would have undermined their argument that my views are damaging to sex abuse victims.

Now let me tell you what actually happened. I went to see this unknown doctor because I thought I might be pregnant and picked a medical practitioner working on the other side of town from my parents, as teenage girls tend to do.

He suggested an orgasm might be just the thing to bring on my period and in a detached, professional manner he proceeded to try, unsuccessfully, to achieve just that with his fingers. I thought it was a bit odd at the time, but it wasn’t a big deal for me, and I barely thought about the experience until a quarter of a century later, when the first accusations appeared in the press about the doctor.

In 1994, 13 women laid sexual assault charges against him. A judge ultimately granted a permanent stay on the proceedings, noting that by then the man had retired from medical practice. The Judge said he would be prejudiced by the long delay and relevant medical records had been destroyed. A full court supported that decision.

Then, amazingly the doctor sent a written apology to two of the victims, expressing his grief that he had caused them pain and suffering. I ended up interviewing a number of his victims, some of whom said an apology was all they wanted from the man. That’s what my long, careful article was all about. What do victims want from a perpetrator? Is an apology ever enough? 

I urge everyone to please read it – it’s here, on my website. I agreed with some of the victims who said that because he’d given an apology, and was no longer in practice, that was enough for them. That said, I clearly spelt out in detail how important it is to prosecute and remove from practice doctors who betray their patients’ trust.

But I breached the feminist playbook by suggesting there’s a difference between violent rape and what this man did to me. That happens to be the truth as far as the outcome of such experiences on victims, as the research clearly shows.

Feminists are forcing us all to lie and pretend all sexual offences are equally damaging – even though the psychological literature clearly shows victim impact and recovery is very much related to the type of offence, as well as many other factors. It’s been wonderful this week to hear from so many psychologists applauding me for daring to speak out about the silencing of this type of research.

I’ve made a video about the Canberra doctor story. I have every right to define my own experiences and to write about them without zealots distorting what I say and shutting down conversations about these important topics. They are deliberately creating moral panic to fuel the outrage industry with their ill-informed, ideologically driven misinformation.  Here’s the video. Please help me circulate that.

Email from Bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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