After all, civilized countries would never be peopled by folks that might castigate an entire race or creed or religion, particularly not a European country. Krystalnacht is probably just a brandname on vases, neh? And Sobibor is probably some hefty dark beer. Holocaust is a fantastic graphics display seen at Disneyland. (hmm, or was that holocast?)

Easy to understand why one might suspect rank emotion as the cause for such an article…unless, of course, everything she says is true.

Fascism, as defined by the epitome of Fascists, Mussolini:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html

In other words, I’m well aware of what Fascism REALLY means. I am not that concerned at all about what “Popular Political Vocabluary of Today” says about it, since that vocabluary tends to change with the wind.

As far as pigeon-holing what Franco’s politics actually were, I think I’ll let that Spanish historian I cited above be authoritative. It is his country, he would be much more knowledgable than I would. He says “Fascist”. I’ll take his word on it. But, from what I can tell, he wasn’t that committed to it. From what I can tell, he actually was a Fascist, but not that pure of one, who mellowed even more post-WWII in light of international political reality. Hence, his cooperation with the U.S. even though he remained a dictator. I’d say that he was more pragmatic about it than ideological.

I sent him Gould’s article and he responded with shock. He said that in the entire two weeks, constantly identified as an American, wearing USA t-shirts, he had no experiences like Gould describes. He acknowledged that England still had it’s share of crazies, however he didn’t include anti-Americanism in the list of crazies.

This leads me to believe that Gould may have experienced a version of the old English class system bias against Americans that exists in the Cambridge/Oxford set, which has a requirement for bias in order to recieve an invitation. Infamous spies like Burgess are alumni of these organizations, and they are apparently in good health. Perhaps we should include them in the crazies list.

Not to worry, England is a friend of America, and unlike Germany and France, I think it shall remain one.

Our political vocabulary defines Fascism as anything that opposes Marxist based socialism. Socialism is good and Fascism is its evil opposite. But that is not what Fascism is. Fascism orginates in the writings of the French [who else] political theorist Georges Sorel. Fascism is non-Marxiam socialism. As Mussolini put it ìnothing outside state, everything within the state, all of the state.î He called it Totalitarianism. Unlike socialism, which defines itself by “collective” ownership, Fascism is indifferent to economic organization. Fascism does not need to nationalize property because it nationalizes the people instead. Franco was a brutal dictator but he was not a totalitarian. He allowed a sphere of personal behavior as long as it did not challenge his authority. Franco was a classic reactionary while Fascism is as revolutionary as any communist movement. Do not confuse authoritarianism with totalitarianism. They are two different approaches to governance. You can get along in an authoritarian state as long as you don’t challenge the maximum leader. In a totalitarian order you must pay positive homage to the state or face severe sanctions

Personally, I’d have been skeptical, too. Except that I have seen Canadians and some assorted Euros doing the same thing. If I hadn’t seen it with my own 2 eyes and heard it with my own 2 ears, in person, I’d be skeptical, too. But I have seen and heard it myself. So I am not at all skeptical. Any more, that is.

You seem determined to ignore several points raised by Carol Gould that are obvious to anyone like myself with long acquaintance of London and Britons generally. I’ve been doing business there since 1996, and traveling there on and off since 1980; I have family living in Notting Hill and visit them occasionally. My acquaintances are bankers for the most part and include both Brits, Americans, Germans, French and Russians living there.

Though the reported experiences of Gould, Anne Applebaum, Irwin Seltzer (Weekly Standard–lives in London), David Adesnik (oxblog.blogspot.com–Rhodes Scholar) and many others are of course anecdotal, one senses two clear trends among the upper-middle London and Oxbridge class:

1) the demonization of Israel and with it, the Bush administration’s middle east policies;

2) an increasing tendency to argue that America is “mad” and in the control of wild-eyed theocrats who have suspended all civil liberties and are no different from the Taliban.

Go to an upscale London dinner party and I guarantee you that both of these themes will surface at least once in the course of the evening, and be taken seriously by all those present. Usually there will be more than one Brit who becomes utterly livid on the subject, in ways that Marget Drabble described in her infamous Daily Telegraph screed from a year and a half ago:

“My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world…. what struck home hardest was the subsequent image, of a row of American warplanes, with grinning cartoon faces painted on their noses. Cartoon faces, with big sharp teeth. It is grotesque. It is hideous. This great and powerful nation bombs foreign cities and the people in those cities from Disneyland cartoon planes out of comic strips. This is simply not possible. And yet, there they were.”

Note btw how asinine this woman’s fury actually is: she’s fulminating about the tiger’s mouth that’s painted on the nose of many warplanes, which are designed to, er, frighten and kill the enemy in, um, wartime. This is a good example of the extreme silliness of much of this fury.

Non-Americans such as Salman Rushdie have also remarked on this bizarre transformation. British writers find ways to make money off of it: John Le Carre made of it a ludicrously paranoid novel, and the West End is full of hysterically, unintentionally farcical anti-American plays right now (David Hare’s Stuff Happen is the most ridiculous of these).

So go ahead, analyze Ms Gould all you like, and ignore the mountain of evidence that backs up my two main contentions (above) if it makes you feel better. But you really should get out a bit more. Or at least start reading a wider range of authors. As for me I’ll go with my own observations and those of Applebaum, Rushdie, Seltzer, Le Carre, Hare, Drabble et al.

I understand. It’s just that in the case of MM, with his history of blatently twisting things to his advantage, I’d even doubt something that he said that sounded like an admission against interest — I’d still wonder if there were some underlying angle to it. I’d still smell a rat.

And if he actually DID honestly make an admission against interest, I’d probably hit the floor before you did! Or not, I’m pretty tall…

Fair enough. A rhetorical oversight on my part, which should instead have said “might take at face value,” the idea being greater credibility attaching to an admission against interest.

The point is moot anyway, because if Michael Moore said something even potentially believable I’d drop dead on the spot.

“Similarly, commentators on the Democratic Underground site may actually have valid points about some things, but only a fool would take their views at face value without corroboration.”

Ah, you get my point. The source must be considered, and untrustworthy sources must be unconditionally discounted.