In which the oscillating fan pinch offers up teh Nazis for a Sunday meditation ...

  

Now please pay attention, the pond can only explain it once …

There, pictured above, are some valiant socialists on the march in Charlottesville …

Possibly they will be attacked by a bunch of ratbag extreme right wingers who go by the name Antifa, a cunning disguise, because those fascists despise the leader of the valiant socialists you can see on the march with their picturesque torches ...

The pond hesitates to name this noble leader, but this photo taken at a rally of the valiant, devoted, loyal socialists will give a clue …

Oh okay, in lieu of a Sunday meditation, the pond just wanted to have some fun with the clueless oscillating fan, who got himself into trouble with a tweet …

Talk about dumb … fancy the oscillating fan not realising people love the Nazis, and they love Godwin's Law - how else to top up the swear jar? - and so not understanding that this attempt to defend a Sky loon would go down like a lead balloon, though incidentally providing a classic example of current far right loon talking points …

Yes, the pond has already been there once recently with talk of defeating communist Japan …

… but to be fair,  the oscillating fan wasn't far behind ...

Yes, the van attacked the fan, the shit hit the fan, and it was on ...

Even by the oscillating fan's high standards, it was a remarkably clueless and silly note, and it set twitter afire …the responses ran for a uniquely infinite length … (thanks ABC).

Not content with being a twit once, the oscillating fan decided he needed to be even more of a twit … never back down, never surrender ...

That set everybody off again, and people even rushed to quote from books …

Just in case anyone has to reach for reading glasses ...

Now Kershaw's not a shabby reference …Greg Hunters stride past the snow leopards in the Antarctic to find him here …and they discover the sort of hornet's nest into which the oscillating fan so blithely and stupidly strode …

In 1985, Kershaw published a book on the historiography of Nazi Germany, The Nazi Dictatorship, in which he reflected on the problems in historiography of the Nazi era. Kershaw noted the huge disparity of often incompatible views about the Nazi era such as the debate between:

• those who see the Nazi period as the culmination of Deutschtum (Germanism) and Marxists who see National Socialism as the culmination of capitalism; 
• those who argue for a Sonderweg, and those who argue against the Sonderweg concept;    
• those who see National Socialism as a type of totalitarianism, and those who see it as a type of fascism;     
• those historians who favour a "functionalist" interpretation with the emphasis on the German bureaucracy and the Holocaust as an ad hoc process, and those who favour an "intentionalist" interpretation with the focus on Hitler and the argument that the Holocaust had been something planned from early on in Hitler's political career.

Anybody who thought they might get to first base with that via a tweet or a bit of twaddle in the lizard Oz has to be on something really good …someone who might someday play at the highest levels, and explain how George Orwell and Stalin could both consider themselves socialists ...

The word spread around the full to overflowing intertubes, even unto the United States and Slate …

Now any sensible person would have just retreated, a little bruised, for a little quiet time, but the oscillating fan isn't a sensible person, so as noted in his tweet, he doubled down in the lizard Oz  … 

The last the pond looked it had attracted over 300 comments and rising … because the Nazis and Hitler … filthy commie socialist swine that they are …

Now the pond gets where the oscillating fan was trying to come from … but it's a mindlessly stupid game. 

In the same way, the pond loves to tease fundamentalist Xians that Christ was a pinko commie socialist prevert, but in the real world, you can have just as much fun doing a Tawney and Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and bemoaning the way the protestant bastards subordinated Christ's teachings to the pursuit of materialist wealth … (Greg Hunters go here, careful of the polar bears).

The pond has always thought the oscillating fan was a thesis short of a degree of common sense, and his refusal to back down in the lizard Oz just proved it …

Actually you shouldn't, you mustn't... you'll just add fuel to the fire ...

Gosh darn it, there you go, how to shoot yourself in the foot oscillating fan style, including but not limited to notes such as "I'm not a scholar of Nazi Germany" (but I can shoot off my mouth like any dumb ass, and tweet like the Donald),  and "while my professorship is in another branch of political science," I have taught many things, and I realise the first skill of a teacher is not just to believe your own bullshit, but to say it to the class loudly and with conviction …

And sure enough that effort set the barking mad lizard Oz readership into a frenzy …

The pond has no idea if the oscillating fan read any of the comments in response to his piece, but they provided a classic demonstration of how he was scribbling for a demented tribe in a Murdochian la la wonderland absolutely convinced that the Nazis were commies and socialist swine…which pace Paul Murray, makes you wonder why the communist Japanese and the commie Nazis were fighting the commie Stalinists.

What's funny about all this?

Well the oscillating fan likes to present himself as someone in the sensible middle, and turns up on The Drum occasionally because the ABC apparently considers him safe, in the same way as you might dunk an elbow in the water and confirm it's tepid, soapy, and safe for bubs …

But when you keep the company of Sky loons you're likely to end up so slippery when wet, so clueless, you start spouting any number of variations on the talking points of the far right in the United States, not least the magical "incomplete circle" and the notion that the Nazis were socialist, and offer up supposedly topsy turvy insights which are in reality about as historically aware as a conversation with Steve Bannon …

But even worse, the real reason for the pond's agitation?

"Hitler himself even ascribed to it …"

It would have been so much simpler, though creating an even bigger hole, to have written "Hitler himself subscribed to it".

But that would have made it clearer that in reality there's very little evidence that Hitler subscribed to socialism in any meaningful way …and "ascribing" is just a fudgy, kludgy academic way of stepping around this indiscretion ...

To quote many of the oscillating fan's correspondents, Hitler used socialism in much the same way as North Korea talks of democracy …or Donald Trump talks of military parades as a display of United States power, when what he means is he really likes to see people goose step …

There was only one piece of sanity, a hint of an insight, in the entire oscillating fan outing …"Perhaps I should have realised Twitter is no place for a nuanced understanding of a complex and controversial area of history and political ideology."

Perhaps he should have … but the fact that he didn't says everything you need to know about the level of the oscillating fan's complete cluelessness ...

And now, as we've talked of war mongers, how about a national socialist cartoon suited to the times …