http://slate.msn.com/id/2086691/ Conservatives: The New Stalinists A new study proves it. By Timothy Noah Posted Wednesday, August 6, 2003, at 4:36 PM PT Six years ago, David Brock wrote a much-discussed article for Esquire in which he argued that conservative journalists are more slavishly loyal to their movement and its leaders than their liberal counterparts. (He debated its contents with Tucker Carlson in Slate.) Since then, Brock himself has become a counterexample to this thesis, cuddling up to Tom Daschle and Bill Clinton while he rips his former comrades on the right. Brock's account of that transformation, Blinded by the Right, struck Chatterbox as factually dubious. Nonetheless, Chatterbox believed at the time, and continues to believe, that Brock was right when he said that conservative journalists are more obedient to their masters. Now Michael Tomasky, a liberal journalist who was recently named executive editor of the (liberal) American Prospect, has produced some data to support Brock's point. As a Shorenstein fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Tomasky spent much of this past spring comparing editorials from two liberal newspapers (the New York Times and the Washington Post) with editorials from two conservative papers (the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times). His findings: [W]hile the pages are more or less equally partisan when it comes to supporting or opposing a given presidential administration's policy pronouncements, the conservative pages are more partisan—often far more partisan—with regard to the intensity with which they criticize the other side. Also … conservative editorial pages are far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than liberal pages are willing to take issue with a Democratic administration [italics Chatterbox's]. Tomasky's method was to review 510 editorials that ran during the Clinton and Bush administrations. The editorials all addressed one of 10 pairs of incidents Tomasky judged to be comparable, e.g., the controversy about first lady Hillary Clinton's health-care panel meeting in secret in 1993 and the controversy about Vice President Dick Cheney's energy-policy panel meeting in secret in 2001. Some very big stories were necessarily excluded from Tomasky's study. Quite rightly, he omitted any editorials about the Whitewater or Monica Lewinsky scandals on the grounds that nothing comparable could be found in Bush's administration, and he omitted any editorials about 9/11 on the grounds that nothing comparable could be found in Clinton's administration. Tomasky's findings are quite striking. The percentage of editorials in Tomasky's liberal sample that criticized Bush (67 percent) was 22 points less than the percentage of editorials in Tomasky's conservative sample that criticized Clinton (89 percent). Particularly dramatic are what Chatterbox will label the Praise Gap and the Self-Criticism Gap. The Praise Gap reflects the liberal papers' general reluctance to praise anyone, ideological friend or foe. Thus the liberal sample praised Clinton a mere 30 percent of the time while the conservative sample praised Bush 77 percent of the time. The Self-Criticism Gap shows that liberal papers are well able to criticize ideological friends while the conservative papers really aren't. The liberal sample criticized Clinton 30 percent of the time while the conservative sample criticized Bush a mere 7 percent of the time. The Wall Street Journal has a particularly strong aversion to self-criticism. Of the 40 Bush editorials Tomasky surveyed, only one criticized Bush. This was an editorial arguing against Bush's support for steel tariffs, which violated the editorial page's core principle of free trade but was discussed at the absurdly minimal length of 123 words. Yes, Virginia, there is a Conintern. A third gap might be called the Civility Gap. This is hard to quantify, but Tomasky observes that conservative newspapers (especially the Journal) are more apt to express their views rudely than liberal papers are. Tomasky notes that the Clinton administration "had barely unpacked its bags when the Wall Street Journal referred to administration figures as 'pod people from a "Star Trek" episode' … genetically bred to inhabit the public sector." Howell Raines, who ran the New York Times editorial page during the two Clinton administrations, did his best to close the Civility Gap by introducing similarly overheated rhetoric. Ironically, though, the worst of this rhetoric was hurled at the paper's ideological friend, Bill Clinton, against whom Raines bore considerable ill will long before Clinton was found to have committed perjury. The incivility problem at the Wall Street Journal was due largely to Editorial Page Editor Robert Bartley, who clearly had been in the job too long by the time Clinton came into office. That situation has improved somewhat since Bartley was replaced by Paul Gigot. The page has been no less critical of liberal policies, but it has managed to voice its disagreements less loutishly, and its propensity to invent stupid non-scandals is greatly diminished. Similarly, the quest to mirror the Bartley style (if not its politics) at the New York Times largely subsided when Raines was replaced by Gail Collins. Tomasky should perhaps have noted this. A more serious problem with Tomasky's study is his choice of the Washington Post as a representatively "liberal" paper. It's true that the Post has that reputation, but, as Eric Alterman notes in his book What Liberal Media?, the reputation is 20 years out of date. (For an extended discussion of Alterman's book, click here.) Under Meg Greenfield, the Post editorial page drifted rightward, especially on foreign policy. Since Fred Hiatt took over after Greenfield's death, it has drifted a little further right. The Post's editorial page is now best characterized as a notch or two right of center. A much better choice than the Post to pair with the liberal Times would have been the Boston Globe's editorial page. Still, Tomasky's findings hold up when you compare just the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. The Times supported Clinton 37 percent of the time and opposed him 37 percent of the time. The Journal, meanwhile, supported Bush 75 percent of the time and opposed him 3 percent of the time. The Journal opposed Clinton 83 percent of the time while the Times opposed Bush 68 percent of the time. The Journal praised Clinton 5 percent of the time while the Times praised Bush 8 percent of the time. When the Brock piece came out, Chatterbox (then writing a media column for U.S. News) interviewed the conservative commentator David Frum about its thesis. Frum basically agreed with it. "What happens with the liberal press is that there are loyalties to causes," he said. That's correct. In Tomasky's study, the Times editorial page supported Clinton on policy matters 52 percent of the time, a mere 7 percentage points less than the Journal supported Bush. But, Frum added, "[w]ith conservatives, I suspect there is much more of a loyalty to people." And how: The Journal supported Bush on non-policy matters 95 percent of the time, whereas the Times supported Clinton on non-policy matters only 28 percent of the time. Raines' anti-Clinton pathology may exaggerate this last statistic, but there's no denying that compared to liberal editorialists, the conservatives march in lock step. You tell me who produces better journalism.
The scary thing is that this lack of lock stepping by Democrats is seen as weakness and disarray while the mindless lock stepping of Republicans is seen as strength and leadership.
Is America Becoming Fascist? Is America becoming fascist? Since mainstream media refuse to seriously ask this question, the analysis of where we are heading and what has gone wrong has been mostly off-base. Investigation of the kinds of underhanded, criminal tactics fascist regimes undertake to legitimize their agenda and accelerate the rate of change in their favor is dismissed as indulging in “conspiracy theory.” If the f-word is uttered, observers are quick to note the obvious dissimilarities with previous variants of fascism. American writers dare not speak the truth. The blinkered assertion that we are immune to the fascist virus ignores degrees of convergence and distinction based on the individual patient’s history. The New York Times and other liberal voices have been obsessed in recent years with the rise of minority fascist parties in the Netherlands, France and other European countries. They have questioned the tastefulness of new books and films about Hitler, and again demonized the icons of Nazism. Max Frankel, former editor of the Times, quotes from biographer Joachim Fest in his review of Speer: The Final Verdict: “how easily, given appropriate conditions, people will allow themselves to be mobilized into violence, abandoning the humanitarian traditions they have built up over centuries to protect themselves from each other.” Is Frankel hinting at his anxiety about the primal being that has arisen in America? The pace of events in the last two years has been almost as blindingly fast as it was after Hitler’s consolidation of fascist power in 1933. Speed stuns and silences. To pose the question doesn’t mean that American fascism is a completed project; at any point, anything can happen to shift the course of history in a different direction. Yet after repeated and open corruption of the normal electoral process, several declarations of global war, adventurous and unprecedented military doctrines, selective suspension of the Bill of Rights and clear signals that a declaration of emergency is on the horizon, surely it is time to analyze the situation differently. Several of the apparent contradictions in the Bush administration’s governance make perfect sense if the fascist prism is applied, but not with the usual perspective. Fascism is home, it is here to stay, and it better be countered with all the resources at our disposal. American fascism taps into the perennial complaint against liberalism: that it fails to provide an authentic sense of belonging to the majority of people. America today wants to be communal and virile; it seeks to overcome what many have been convinced are the unreasonable demands of minorities and women; it wants to reinvigorate ideals of nation, region and race in order to take control of the future; it seeks to overcome the social divisiveness of capitalism and democracy, remolding the nation through propaganda and leadership. We can notice obvious differences from the German or Italian nationalist traditions, of course – we have our own nationalist myths. In the near future, America can be expected to embark on a more radical search to define who is and who is not a part of the natural order: exclusion, deportation and eventually extermination might again become the order of things. Fascism can occur precisely at that moment of truth when the course of political history can tend to one direction or another. Nazism never had the support of the majority of Germans; at best about a third fully supported it. About a third of Americans today are certifiably fascist; another 20 percent or so can be swayed around to particular causes with smart propaganda. The basic paradigm remains more or less intact. Capitalism today is different, so are the means of propaganda, and so are the technological tools of suppression. But that is only a matter of variation, not opposition. With all of Germany’s cultural strength, brutality won out; the same analysis can apply to America. Hitler never won clear majorities (his ascent to power was facilitated by the political elites), and yet once he was in power, he crushed all dissent; consider the parallels to the fateful, hair-splitting election of 2000 and its aftermath. Hitler took advantage of the Reichstag fire – the burning of the German parliament, which was blamed on communist arson – to totally reshape German institutions and culture; think of 9/11 as a close parallel. Hitler was careful to give the impression of always operating under legal cover; note again the similarity of a pseudo-legal shield for the actions of the American fascists, who stretch the Geneva Conventions by redefining prisoners of war as “unlawful.” One can go on and on in this vein. If we look at historian Stanley Payne’s classical general theory of fascism, we are struck by the increasing similarities with the American model: A. The Fascist Negations Anti-liberalism. Anti-communism. Anti-conservatism. B. Ideology and Goals Creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state. Organization of a new kind of regulated, multi-class, integrated national economic structure. The goal of empire. Specific espousal of an idealist, voluntarist creed. C. Style and Organization Emphasis on aesthetic structure, stressing romantic and mystical aspects. Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style, and the goal of a mass party militia. Positive evaluation and use of violence. Extreme stress on the masculine principle. Exaltation of youth. Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command. With American fascism, the first two negations are obvious; the third may seem unlikely. But fascism is not conservatism, and it takes issue with conservatism’s anti-revolutionary stance. Conservatism’s libertarian strand – an American staple – would not agree with fascism’s “nationalist authoritarian state.” Reaganite anti-government rhetoric might have been a precursor to fascism, but free market and deregulationist ideology cannot be labeled fascist. Continuing to look at Payne’s list, we note that the goal of empire has found open acceptance over the last couple of years. From the September/October 2003 issue of Adbusters magazine.
good post, vegan. It is an interesing topic and for the first time I am wondering if we are in the early stages. The early rise of fascism in Germany. Italy and Argentian would be a fascinating thing to contrast with events in the US. As the article says every country is different. One encouraging sign is that membership in the ACLU is up. Even right wingers like Dick Armey are concerned about the threat to civil liberties by Ashcroft type policies. I do think that democracy and respect for civil rights are moe entrenched in this country than in the above examples. Guys like Ashcroft and stupid moniker who already have signed off in having lists of people who have gone to anti-war demos to hassle at airports are definitely in the 1/3 mentioned. To answer Stupid Moniker's question: "Hitler or Stalin? "Both! They were much more alike than they were different when it came to democracy, individual rights and freedoms.
