Heil Liddy!
You wanna feel really out of touch and completely repulsed?? Check out this snippet of an interview with G. Gordon Liddy (via Andrew Sullivan) :
He turns to me and smiles. “So – where do we begin?” he says. I try to smile back and say as sweetly as I can, “How about with Adolf Hitler?”The Fuhrer was G Gordon Liddy’s first political hero. Liddy was a sickly, asthmatic child when he grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the 1930s. The town was full of ethnic Germans who idolized Hitler. Liddy was made to salute the Stars and Stripes Nazi-style by the nuns at his school; even now, he admits, “at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm.” His beloved German nanny taught him that Hitler had – through sheer will-power – “dragged Germany from weakness to strength.”
This gave Liddy hope “for the first time in my life” that he too could overcome weakness. When he listened to Hitler on the radio, it “made me feel a strength inside I had never known before,” he explains. “Hitler’s sheer animal confidence and power of will [entranced me]. He sent an electric current through my body.” He describes seeing the Nazis’ doomed technological marvel the Hindenberg flying over New Jersey as an almost religious experience. “Ecstatic, I drank in its colossal power and felt myself grow. Fear evaporated and in its place came a sense of personal might and power.”
A-ha. So, Mr Liddy, do you feel that your early, formative love for Hitler shaped your political behavior later in life? “Oh, no,” he says somberly. He renounces Hitler’s war against the Jews as “evil” and flaunts his support for Israel’s hard right as evidence he is not an anti-Semite. “It was part of my childhood, that’s all,” he says.
Really? That doesn’t seem to match the historical record. In his autobiography, Liddy admits that, after reading the writings of the notorious anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh, Liddy decided to pick his wife on eugenic grounds. He held out for “a tall, fair, powerfully built Teuton.” Isn’t that behavior at the very least in the shadow of Hitler? “Of course not. Genetics is accepted by everyone.” But a Teuton? My dictionary defines it as “descended from an ancient Germanic tribe. Often synonymous with Aryan.” He waves his hand and says, “That’s how we spoke then. This is political correctness.”
This isn’t just any right-wing nutjob. Liddy’s radio show attracts more than 2 million listeners per day and he’s an infrequent guest host on Crossfire.
Do I think Liddy is representative of the right as a whole? Of course not, but he does attract a much larger audience than that racist asshole who called Condi Rice “Aunt Jemima”. While the Aunt Jemima thing it part of a more disturbing pattern, it’s funny how we on the left are always expected to answer for our lunatics when the ones on the right are much more popular and extreme in their views. I shudder to think what the reaction would be if a prominent liberal like Al Franken said Hitler “made me feel a strength inside I had never known before”.
7 comments
Copy link for RSS feed for comments on this post
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
You might also add Liddy’s comment: He describes beheading chickens with glee: “I killed and killed and killed, and finally I could kill efficiently and without emotion or thought. I was satisfied; when it came my turn to go to war, I would be ready. I could kill as I could run – like a machine.”
Isn’t this similar to the childhood experiences of a serial killer?
What did Rove kill when he was a kid?
Twinkies don’t count.
Comment by kamachanda — November 23, 2004 @ 11:04 am
Greg- I checked out your blog today for the first time in a while. G. Gordon Liddy is a lunatic. Glad you don’t paint the rest of us with his brush. Likewise, I doubt that most liberals view Condi as “Aunt Jemima” or an Uncle Tom. I’m glad to see that you gave her props for her resume, even if you disagree with her politically.
You make an interesting observation:
You may have a good point here, but one observation that I would like to make is one that I think is obvious. The left proclaims itself as the self-appointed “liberators” of minorities, but as soon as a minority has the unmidigated gall to be conservative, there is a tendancy to label them as “not really black.” (See Powell, Rice, Watts, etc.)
-troll
Comment by Keith — November 23, 2004 @ 11:05 am
I sorta see (and agree with) your point, but I strongly disagree with the first part of your statement.
There’s a strong distrust of non-liberal minorities (which leads to shit like the “Aunt Jemima” controversy), but I think it’s not as much about them not living up to a stereotype as much as it’s disappointment that they’re on the side that’s working against their best interests. I think it’s part of the same confusion that liberals have about the Log Cabin Republicans. To many of us, it just doesn’t make sense that they would ally themselves with a group that goes out of their way to marginalize them.
This is a view I mostly reject. I think it’s somewhat counter-productive, but I respect the fact that conservatives like Andrew Sullivan may think issues like National Defense and Fiscal Policy are more important than gay marriage. As such, it makes sense that they would align themselves with people who agree with them on those issues. The same holds true for black Republicans like Rice and Powell who may lean conservative, even in their views of stuff like affirmative action.
That said, I strongly disagree with your “self-appointed ‘liberators’ of minorities” quote, because it’s just not historically accurate. If you look at the two major parties over the last 60 years, the Republicans have always been on the wrong side of the issues that help minorities. They were on the wrong side of the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Rights Amendment, Prop 187, and now the Gay Marriage issue. It’s not that the left has been “self-appointed” or have liberated anyone, but that the last few decades have shown that when minorities look around, there’s only one side of the aisle that has consistently stood with them.
I find it incredibly disturbing that some on the left think it’s okay to resort to racist stereotypes to criticize someone for having an honest disagreement. There’s few things I find as nauseating as the attitude of “I’m not really racist, so it’s okay if I act like one”. Growing up in the midwest, I’m sure you’re familiar with the sort of people who tell racist jokes and make generalities, but somehow thinks it’a all okay as long as they don’t use the “N-word”.
In looking at the controversy over liberal racism, I think it’s worth examining why similar behavior on the right doesn’t merit the same sort of outrage. Is it because the occasional example of conservative racism isn’t as shocking? Or are they just better at deflecting criticism? It can’t be for a lack of examples.
Comment by greg — November 23, 2004 @ 11:48 am
Greg-
Probably. Our idiots are more well-known and more outspoken. Yours are just now showing up. Besides, the racist remarks from liberals are not getting the national play they would have if the shoe were on the other foot. Imagine if Rush Limbaugh or Shawn Hannity had said the same thing. Limbaugh called a black quarterback “overrated” and it was the top story for three days.
RE: 1964 CRA: LBJ wrote that he found more support from moderate Republicans (who would be called ultra-conservative by today’s standards) than from many in his own party. LBJ rose to power in the 50s by supporting Eisenhower more loyally than Ike’s own party (See Master of the Seante…can’t remember the author). Granted, those were southern Democrats. And even those Northeastern Dems who, in the end, supported the bill did so more for political expendiency (large, southern black migration) than for any real concern for the welfare of minorities.
Were conservatives on the wrong side of the overall issue? Many of them, yes. But Al Gore, Sr. was a staunch segregationist. Prescott Bush was pro-integration.
But that was all 40+ years ago (and Prop 187 I disagree with today and Gay Marriage…same thing, so maybe I’m on the wrong side now).
About the only Civil Rights issue I see now (other than Gay Marriage, which is a “manufactured” issue in my view) is the death or continued life of affirmative action. I’ve never heard anyone effectively defend its continued existence in 2004…
-keith
Comment by Keith — November 23, 2004 @ 12:26 pm
Why do you say that gay marriage is a “manufactured” issue?
Comment by Kyle — November 23, 2004 @ 2:04 pm
When the new Cabinet is sworn in, they will all place their hand on an authorized copy of the King James version of the holy bible, and say:
“Ich schw?re bei Gott, diesen Heiligen Eid: das ich den Leader der Amerikanisches Volkes und Christliches Reiches; und der Oberbefehlshaber das Staatwehr auf Die Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika,
George W. Bush,
meinem Treue und meinem Ehre schw?ren zu Todesfall. Ich schw?re — ich schw?re bei Gott.”
Comment by Tom S — November 24, 2004 @ 1:18 pm
The Hitler Fetish
Wow. I have no words for this: The Fuhrer was G Gordon Liddy’s first political hero. Liddy was a sickly, asthmatic child when he grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the 1930s. The town was full of ethnic Germans…
Trackback by e p o n y m o u s — November 30, 2004 @ 12:21 am