Who Is IOZ?: The Cremaster Cycle

Friday, June 26, 2009

The Cremaster Cycle

The New York Times has a nice chuckle at the expense of the Birchers, and, hell, the Birchers are pretty chuckleworthy at times. And yet, if you take "The Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Rothschilds," not as the literal rulers of mankind but as a sort of metonymy for the institutions of global State Capital, then frankly it doesn't sound so very crazy at all.

24 comments:

dhex said...: well yeah. and if you take a bunch of flour, sugar and eggs and beat them together, you get pancakes.

everyone needs a "they" to hold their shit down.; 3:24 PM
Cüneyt said...: Paranoia always sounds reasonable, until you find out what the lad thinks is going on and who he thinks is behind it.

Birchers are for the system they swear is full of commie subversives. They just don't happen to know it.; 3:35 PM
Anonymous said...: Take away the conspiracy theories, and you might as well be reading Chomsky.; 4:14 PM
Cüneyt said...: Chomsky doesn't do conspiracy theories. He does conspiracy diagrams. And, as he has often pointed out, the conspiracy publishes the details of its activities in the open press. You might have to read page 17 to find them, but they're there. They rely on our tolerance, not our ignorance.

Of course, I write this on the website of a guy who's definitely part of the gay mafia.; 5:39 PM
bonecrusher said...: "if you take "The Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Rothschilds," not as the literal rulers of mankind but as a sort of metonymy for the institutions of global State Capital, then frankly it doesn't sound so very crazy at all."

Maybe. If you take that, not as the literal rulers of mankind, but as another way of saying "The Jews", it's a) pretty scary and b) a more accurate description of the beliefs of the average Bircher.; 6:04 PM
Aaron said...: If you're using "Rockefellers" and "Morgans" to say "Jews" then you may be a reincarnation of Gertie Gertie Stein Stein.; 6:22 PM
Thomas Daulton said...: From the article: He said the John Birch Society has Jewish and black members and has never tolerated anti-Semitism or racism, notwithstanding its notorious opposition to much of the civil rights movement.

You see, we wouldn't have all these racial problems in the US if only those wogs knew their place. It's that simple.

I don't really find echoes of that when I read Chomsky.; 7:16 PM
Cüneyt said...: Well, according to the Birchers, Chomsky's the real anti-Semite.; 7:43 PM
drip said...: They rely on our tolerance, not our ignorance. Nice sentiment, but they don't rely on us at all. And it's not our tolerance or our ignorance that they find so attractive. It's our assent.; 7:54 PM
mds said...: Seriously, though, if they haven't done any homework to update their list, and are still obsessing about the Rothschilds, than I'm afraid that yes, it sounds very crazy.

Also, "State Capital"? Be careful you don't get labeled as some kind of Trotskyite.; 10:12 PM
Cüneyt said...: Drip, you may substitute "assent" for my use of "tolerance." I might just as easily have used it myself.; 11:53 PM
Kafka said...: What's wrong with Chomsky- just asking? He seems to have a pretty sober detached view of things- mostly just a cataloging of history. At the risk of being overly earnest, would like to hear any criticism- just to be informed.; 9:40 AM
TGGP said...: Didn't Chomsky act as an apologist for Pol Pot for a while? Don't really read his stuff so I can't say for certain.

I remember "libertarian" Will Wilkinson gloating about how the last of the John Birchers would eventually die and so the Republicans would have to appeal to other people. I and other pointed out that out of sheer paranoia the JBS has been arguably far more libertarian than the "Rockefeller" Republicans who have long dominated the GOP (regardless of babble about the Goldwater/Reagan conservative revolution). But the Birchers are old and unhip. They probably don't even smoke weed! Brink Lindsay's boosting of the Iraq war is forgiveable among "liberaltarians", but being uncool is not. That straight away leaves out the left-libertarians who don't work in D.C think-tanks and actually believe in that "Our Enemy the State" stuff.; 1:56 PM
Adam said...: TGGP, Chomsky didn't act as an apologist for Pol Pot. He simply compared Pol Pot's atrocities to what was going on in East Timor at the same time, which was a mass slaughter of the East Timorese by the Indonesian military. The point Chomsky was making was that the US media barely covered the East Timor slaughter unlike the mass coverage of the slaughter in Cambodia. Why? Because the we were selling arms to the Indonesian government at the time.; 3:07 PM
Fledermaus said...: I'm not talking on the phone, handling the money and driving the car all at the same time, man; 3:42 AM
SteveB said...: Why is it that "capitalism" isn't a sufficient explanation for some people, and they need instead to focus their anger on specific capitalists? (usually, specific long-dead capitalists) Is it just that some people can't think in general terms? Makes their head hurt, or something?; 11:32 AM
AlanSmithee said...: Of course, when they say "Rockefeller" what they really mean is "the Jews." But, what most people don't know is, when they say "the Jews" what they really mean is "the Norwegians!"

Think about it, sheeple!1; 4:36 PM
oldfatherwilliam said...: At some point, I think just before the last military debacle in Lebanon, Ioz was implored to and agreed to give us his take on Chomsky. Still looking forward to that, hope it happens.; 8:34 AM
Anonymous said...: Why is it that "capitalism" isn't a sufficient explanation for some people, and they need instead to focus their anger on specific capitalists? (usually, specific long-dead capitalists) Is it just that some people can't think in general terms? Makes their head hurt, or something?

you are always good for a treat.; 3:39 PM
Anonymous said...: LaRouchies make similar claims, but you have to substitute the British monarchy for "those guys".

Birchers also tend to conflate world communism with an alarming coincidence that some notable commies were jews.

Sometimes you just can't win.; 12:22 AM
mds said...: Why is it that "capitalism" isn't a sufficient explanation for some people, and they need instead to focus their anger on specific capitalists?

Because Birchers will defend capitalism to their dying breaths, while insisting that the only reason they're not benefiting more from it is that the system has been gamed by, er, previous successful capitalists. (Which, to be fair, is a worldview that goes far beyond the Birchers. Though it's a little less internally contradictory if you substitute in "unqualified minorities" or "liberals" or "Whigs."); 11:23 AM
IOZ said...: Failing social studies.; 12:54 PM
SteveB said...: If John D. Rockefeller hadn't carried out the ruthless consolidation of the US oil industry, wouldn't some other oilman have done it?

It's like holding up some "drug kingpin" as uniquely evil, when there's a hundred more striving to take his place.; 7:05 PM
Anonymous said...: Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, *and* Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with is wee *beady* eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108174/quotes; 12:59 AM

Friday, June 26, 2009

The Cremaster Cycle

24 comments:

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