It would not have been the career choice I would have recommended.

With regard to the’iron curtain’ credit, there seem to be more than a few sites that give ‘Lutzie’ the credit. It really doesn’t matter to me if he deserves the credit or not. It seems settled that Churchill stole the phrase, but I don’t think he stole it because he thought it cliched (in English).

However, fascism as an emotive term applied to political/religious movements that are not fascist is hackneyed.

Michael…. you used ‘rightwing’ it in a perjorative context and your meaning was clear. The old clunker of making up a list of problems and asking for a universal solution is nonsense. Drop the psuedo intellectual BS. And I didn’t say that I wanted “world domination” for the US. You just grabbed that out of context and satisfied some of your own pre-conceived notions about ‘rightwing’ intentions. Am I ‘rightwing’? How would you know? Who would want stewardship of all those assholes anyway?

So I renew my challenge. What’s your plan? Bend over? Convert? Depends on how you define the problem, and your hypothetical laundry list does not do that very well.

And here’s some news. Everyone is not in favor of freedom and democracy. Not from the beginning of recorded history to the present, and that’s been awhile. Where have you been?

Tom .. you still didn’t answer how Lutsie could have been the originator of the phrase when the article you referred said he got it from Goebbel’s radio broadcasts. At least that’s what I expect was meant by ‘coined.’ Maybe he was the first to say it in English, though I would argue that shiesse is still shit. Maybe radio broadcasts don’t count for phrases. I don’t have the handbook on credited phraseology but I figured if you said it first then you, well, said it first. Silly me. Of course if you agree to reference.com’s train of logic in this case continue on your merry way. This would also mean that Winston copied a third hand hackneyed phrase. What a dullard?

My sincere apologies to Wikipedia for crediting that piece of shiesse to them. I should have realized it was too well written.

ps: how smart could Lutzie be anyway. When the new Fuhrer Donitz asks who wants to succeed Hitler and Goebbels in April 45 do you hold up your hand? Bet he wasn’t a Nazi either.

1. I don’t think rightwing is any more pejorative than leftwing. It is short hand (or stereotype, if you prefer) for a broad set of beliefs or attitudes. I don’t think it is mis-stating things to say that, in general, rightwingers supported the war in Iraq while leftwingers less so.

Get real… being in a war does not mean you know exactly how to win it. You just start by winning the next fight. Both world and bar room domination is tough if you can’t win the fights.

2. Sorry, that is exactly my point. Those worried about Islamic agression (is that neutral enough?) claim that bringing freedom and democracy to these states will solve the problems. That’s fine, everyone is in favor of freedom and democracy. But you can’t promote an explicit military approach without a military plan. So it is incumbent on those who favor a military approach to explain their plan. Failure to have a plan (or to have an unworkable one) is how nations get into “quagmires”.

I renew my challenge. What is the plan?

Is the the WOT an effort to dominate the world? Or, a fight against terrorist organisations?

There might be some folks in the world willing to fight AQ that don’t want to be dominated by the US or UK. If there are, they might be more enthusiastic allies if we keep the plan to dominate the world a secret.

Ask Tom.

Ronnie,

Thanks for the credit, but I can’t accept. I have suggested that cliche packed political discourse is the sign of mediocre intellect, but the ‘rightwing’ bit is yours.

Rightwingers Edmund Burke, Sir Karl Popper, and F. Hayek all managed to express themselves without excessive parroting of cliches.

Tom

That’s Wikipedia. How was Lutzie the first to coin it when he got it from Gutter Joe? Was it “coined” on a limited edition mark or something? Guess it’s still not Britannica eh. Cheap labor….

Ronnie, It looks like we agree on a couple of points: 1. Wikipedia isn’t entirely reliable. (Incidentally, the link isn’t, as you assert, to Wikipedia); 2 Goebbels is still dead.

The original point is about ‘fascism’ not Churchill or Goebbels. It’s that, ‘The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.’ You’ve claimed that I, ‘have ignored, not refuted, the similarities to the “fascists” that others, not I, on this thread have pointed out.’

I did pay homage to Andrew Tydall. Which excellent comments would you suggest I read again?

“rightwing”

cliched, hackneyed, biased

sign of a mediocre intellect.

Ask Tom.

And what answer would you have gotten from FDR after Pearl Harbor when you asked him how he would beat the Japanese on Dec 8, 1941.

“Well we’ll luck out at Midway, take a bunch of islands, survive the suicide bombers and then A-bomb em.”

Then everyone would be on the same page.

Get real… being in a war does not mean you know exactly how to win it. You just start by winning the next fight. Both world and bar room domination is tough if you can’t win the fights.

Why don’t you tell us what you’d do?

From your link

The term “The Iron Curtain” was first coined by German Chancellor Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of World War II

which he had picked up from Joseph Goebbels anti-Soviet speeches,

however its use was popularized by the former British leader Winston Churchill, who used it in a long speech on March 5, 1946:

(it would be surprising if Goebbels had popularized it in March 46 since he’d been dead about a year. And still is according to Wikipedia.)

That’s Wikipedia. How was Lutzie the first to coin it when he got it from Gutter Joe? Was it “coined” on a limited edition mark or something? Guess it’s still not Britannica eh. Cheap labor….

It was during his radio broadcasts as the Russians closed in on Berlin in early ‘45. He still had the ridiculous notion that the US and Britain would see domination of Eastern Europe by the USSR as unacceptable and would offer Germany terms if they resisted long enough. Nobody ever claimed he was sane.

Perhaps the civil rights lobbies are blind to the nature of Salafist totalitarianism, but they are not blind to what it takes to create a police state. Our civil liberties (Bill of Rights) exist in part to inconvenience those who would create a totalitarian police state. I know the Nazi’s were big on ID cards. I’m not.

Evans seems to think we must choose between a police state and an Islamic state. There is one more option, we can stick with what we have.

I guess I don’t this of this as being fascist. I see it as a new type of totalitarianism. Some want world domination. Some want regional domination. It is a new hatred, one that is just as dangerous. And one that has to be stopped.

The term “The Iron Curtain” was first coined by German Chancellor Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk in the last days of World War II . . .
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Iron_Curtain

Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out. Was it before or after April of 1945 that Goebbels coined the phrase?

Is it really a ‘rightwing’ theme?

I am not sure right/left is very helpful in this situation. I’m conservative, but I don’t think Islam (GWB-Texas) is any more monolithic than is Marxism (LBJ-Texas). The Sufi’s seem a lot less militant than the Sunni’s and Shia’s. I am sure there are some Muslims who dream of world conquest, but I don’t think they are anywhere near a majority. Most, I’ll bet, have more limited ambitions. (For example, I have hunch that the KLA aspires to nothing more than the extermination of all Serbs and Jews in the Balkans.)

Right you are Ronnie, I did ignore some splendid comments on the similarities between fascists and Islamists.

Andrew Tyndall’s provides the best summation, imo:

‘“fascist.” Last week, President Bush used the term both to describe Hezbollah and the 24 suspects arrested in England for the alleged liquid bomb plot.

What either group had to do with the political traditions of Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco or even Juan Peron is beyond me. Perhaps Bush thought Sheikh Nasrallah was planning to make the trains run on time!’

Btw, I have acknowledged that the KLA is an openly fascist Islamic terror organisation. Unfortunately, we support the KLA. Imagine that!

. . .this Lieberman, who makes a public spectacle of his religious beliefs, who pontificates from a place higher than Morality, this Lieberman fronts for the KLA who are the self-proclaimed heirs to the Balli Kombëtar, the World War II Albanian fascists (3). This Lieberman, who flaunts his Jewishness as if it were a theme park, to the disgust of many Jews, including the writers of this article, this Lieberman fronts for the descendents of the very people who murdered nearly every Jew in Kosovo.

But please note: since being put in power by NATO and the UN, Senator Lieberman’s beloved KLA has driven from Kosovo those Jews who managed not to be killed by the Balli Kombëtar during W.W. II, driven them out along with their descendents. That is, his KLA has completed the job of producing a judenfrei ‘KosovA.’

Funny, I didn’t realize that an obsession with Poland was one of fascism’s defining characteristics. Silly me.

More seriously, although reasonable people can disagree about whether our theocratic enemies are precisely fascists, it certainly seems fair to regard them as fascistic. Infallible leader principle, as embodied by Mohammed the perfect man. Militant hostility toward all those not part of the in-group. A cult of hatred in which various groups are demoted to sub-human status. An eliminationist/exterminationist ideology. A program of virtually unlimited imperialism, with all others viewed as inferiors to be subjugated, exploited and enslaved, if not liquidated.

Many on the left dispute the extent of their aims. Some, like me, feel that most of the insurgencies have local objectives, regardless of how florid their speeches are.

I’m sure I could find similar hyperbolic examples from Christian fundamentalists in the US if I spent a little time at it.

However, lets put all this aside and assume that there is such a worldwide movement. Before we get started remember that there are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and that they don’t all belong to the same subdivisions. We all know about Shia and Sunni, but there are others.

Anyway, lets assume that some how they stop trying kill each other and overcome all the differences in language and cultures and work for this unified goal.

My question is: “What is the west supposed to do about it?” Are we supposed to have another crusade? Are we supposed to wipe out all 1.6 billion Muslims, or are we supposed to only wipe out their “leaders”? How do we know which leaders are the ones that need to be eliminated? What happens when others replace them?

Please be specific, do we nuke whole countries or just invade certain ones? What do we do about Muslims living in non-majority Muslim countries like the US and the UK?

OK, over to all you who support the clash of civilizations theory.

The war is not over. The question is whether we are at 1914 or 1933 or 1938 before the deluge….

Uh… we’re at neither. Germany required the combined might of the Allied Forces to break its empire. What exactly does Islam have? Nothing. On its best day it could knock down two buildings — sure, 9/11 was big on the shock and awe, but that’s a far cry from the maurading armies of the Caliphate lapping at Europe’s doorstep. Those days are long gone.

“Islamofascism” is nothing but a nuisance to Western Civilization, a footnote to the Cold War that will barely merit mention in the annals of history when Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves run dry. To overinflate the importance of Muslim terrorists is to give these messianic morons exactly what they want.

you’re not interested in content. You have ignored, not refuted, the similarities to the “fascists” that others, not I, on this thread have pointed out.

The point is taken however that you admit that a person may utter a “phrase” that you personally deem hackneyed and cliched and still have enough intelligence to utter other more contentful phrases. We can only hope to measure up to your esteemed standards.

And get your credits right. An absolute scumbag named Joseph Goebbels coined “iron curtain” in the same context to describe the USSR domination of Eastern Europe in radio broadcasts in 1945. He just did it in German. Another stolen hackneyed phrase copied verbatim by the mediocre Churchill. From another German no less. He didn’t have much imagination, but evidently a good English-German dictionary.

Ronnie,

Actually I did know that, but Churchill coined many other phrases (e.g iron curtain). Btw, Hunship is hardly a cliched expression.

Hey, if you think Islamofascist is clever and original, by all means use it. If you use it with referrence to the KLA, it might even have some content.

The war is not over. The question is whether we are at 1914 or 1933 or 1938 before the deluge….

Kat,

I find your phrase both original and descriptive.

Tom