Well, this is disturbing. Apparently the so-called “alt-right” (never mind that they’re not an actual alternative to anything, they’re just the same old chickenshit fascists who don’t like to be called that) has revived an old Nazi term for noncompliant (i.e., non-Nazi) media.
“Tell the truth!” and “CNN sucks!” have become staples at nearly every Trump rally. On Saturday night, a new and foreign accusation came to the fore: “Lügenpresse!”
The term, which means “lying press” in German, has a history dating back to the mid-1800s and was used by the Nazis to discredit the media. In recent years, it has been revived by German far-right anti-immigrant groups. And on Saturday, it made an appearance at a Trump rally in Cleveland, Ohio.
[…]
Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is considered one of the leaders of the alt-right, was able to shed some light on this for me.
“I see ‘lying press’ and ‘Lügenpresse’ all over the place,” Spencer said in an email. “It’s typical Alt Right: serious… ironic… and with a sly reference to boot.”
Spencer said the term had been in use in American alt-right circles for “a year, at the least.”
Nice, eh? Only — how inconvenient! — actual Germans, who have precious little sympathy for their own local brand of Drumpfites over there (but they call them PEGIDA, “right-wing radicals”, or even — gasp — neo-Nazis!) have declared that same term to be…a non-word.
A German linguists’ panel has chosen a Nazi-era term “Lügenpresse” (lying press), which anti-immigrant protesters have revived and shouted at the media, as the country’s non-word of the year.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the demands – an end to multiculturalism – of the grassroots “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West” (PEGIDA) at weekly rallies as “reprehensible” and said her conservative-led government would use all constitutional means to fight intolerance.
“Lügenpresse”, first used in Germany by critics of the free press during World War One, earned the dubious “Unwort des Jahres” (Non-Word of the Year) honor in the eyes of a panel of experts out of 730 terms submitted by 1,250 contributors.
“‘Lügenpresse’ is a word contaminated by the Nazis,” said Nina Janich, a professor at the Technical University Darmstadt and head of the six-member jury that selects such terms each year from the submissions.
“It’s used deliberately in the PEGIDA movement to steer it against those (in the media) who criticize their movement.”
PEGIDA, happily, has been bleeding support as the feared violence and disorder caused by Muslim immigrants that they hyped up fails to materialize, and as refugees from mostly-Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indo-Persian corridor have assimilated uneventfully in German society. Anti-PEGIDA demonstrations have consistently drawn more support than PEGIDA itself. It’s worth noting that the regions where PEGIDA was most represented have had the least contact with refugees; that hasn’t been lost on Germans in more populous areas, who have had more contact with refugees, and thus a better idea of what they’re really like — and hence, who have taken a dim view of PEGIDA (and its Bundestag cousin, the AfD party). In fact, they’ve lost so much support lately, and have been riven by so much infighting, that one of their own leaders even, hilariously, became a “refugee” himself…in the Canary Islands, off the coast of northern Africa.
This turn of events isn’t so surprising if you stayed awake during your high-school history class. Germany, you may also recall, outlawed all things Nazi several decades ago, as dictated by post-war occupation forces…among them, most notably, the US of Amnesia. And Germans really, REALLY like their democracy, their stability, their political sanity, and their Weltoffenheit — their openness to the world. So of course, the country is not as much of a sitting duck for a new fascist government as one might fear (and the neo-Nazis might hope).
Which leads us to the plight of the United States of Amnesia. You’ll notice I keep using that term. It’s not for nothing. They have a huge fascist threat looming over them. And the parallels are hard to mistake. They DO have a lying media, but it’s not lying against fascism. It’s lying FOR it. And one of the ways they do it is through failure to accurately report opinion polls:
Cable news continues to hype the “close race” narrative, but Trump wasn’t leading in a single national poll released Thursday.
At least eight national polls were released on Thursday, according to RealClearPolitics, and a grand total of zero show Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton.
That’s right – not a single one shows Trump ahead in this race.
Here’s a quick rundown of the polls released today:
CNBC: Clinton +9
ABC News: Clinton +6
Pew: Clinton +6
Economist/YouGov: Clinton +5
IBD/TIPP: Clinton +2
Rasmussen: Clinton +1
Gravis: Clinton +1
LA Times: Tied
Did you catch that? The lying US media have been hyping this as a “close race”, and one in which Drumpf was leading! In fact, it’s not that close (the Romney/Obama race of 2012 was closer, with just one percentage point between the two), and Drumpf is lagging well behind. This even though BushCo’s appointee to head the FBI, a man easily as sinister as J. Edgar Hoover but not nearly as well dressed, has even meddled in the process himself…again, on Drumpf’s behalf, just like the suck-ass media.
Meanwhile, early voting has already begun, and it looks like the intimidation plans of Drumpf’s supporters aren’t bearing much fruit. And neither, laughably, are their own attempts at something they keep accusing the other side of doing (and the media of covering up) — namely, voter fraud. In Des Moines and Miami. By Drumpf supporters.
So, to recap: The media are lying…but they’re doing it to make the man who accuses them of lying look good! And the election is being rigged…by the man who’s claiming it’s rigged against him.
At this rate, I’m feeling like coining a little German word of my own: Lügenfresse. It means a big mouth that’s full of lies.
I’ll leave it to you to guess who owns it.
