Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Greenfield: The Democrats' Dolchstosslegende
Sultan Knish ^ | 9/24/17 | Greenfield

Posted on 09/24/2017 7:42:45 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell

Sunday, September 24, 2017

The Democrats' Dolchstosslegende

Posted by Daniel Greenfield

The Democrats went into the election certain that they were going to win. The New York Times rated Hillary’s chances at 93%. The Huffington Post raised that to 98%. That was still too modest for Obama campaign manager David Plouffe who predicted a 100% likelihood of Hillary winning.

It wasn’t strategy or statistics that made the Dems think that victory was certain. It was ideology.

Obama had spent two terms telling them that they were on the “right side of history”. The more the Dems swung left, the closer to the right side of history they were. Their leftist views were naturally superior. They were based on science while their opponents were superstitious buffoons. They were enlightened while their enemies were bigots. They were smart and conservatives were dumb.

Delusions of superiority had convinced them that Republicans couldn’t win an honest election. When Bush won, it was because his brother and the Supreme Court had rigged the election. The Republican victories that swept much of the country were only due to voter suppression and redistricting.

The Democrats had allowed themselves to believe that they were so innately superior that they couldn’t lose an election except through fraud or dirty tricks. The humiliating defeats of McGovern, Carter, Mondale and Dukakis were all in the past. They had gone so far to the left that they couldn’t lose.

They had confused ideology with electability. The fallacy of fanatics is the conviction that their beliefs explain reality. And that following their beliefs must therefore lead to a successful outcome.

Leftists had convinced themselves that winning elections was an inevitable as the success of ObamaCare and the rejuvenation of the economy. Their media became a propaganda echo chamber filled with their own assurances of inevitable victory. But ObamaCare failed, the economy lingered and Trump won.

Instead of realizing that they had been lying to themselves, they seized on conspiracy theories.

Convinced of their natural superiority, members of the Master Party believed that their subjective contempt for Republicans in general and Trump specifically was an objective truth. It wasn’t that they despised conservatives. No, conservatives were inherently despicable. And Trump was so despicable and so absurd that he just had to lose. It was inconceivable that he couldn’t have lost. So he had lost.

Human beings don’t react well to having their egomaniacal fantasies come apart around them.

After losing World War I, many Germans seized on the Dolchstosslegende or the Stab-in-the-Back theory to explain what happened. The German military didn’t lose the war. It was undermined and stabbed in the back. Otherwise, despite the collapse of its allies and the entry of the United States, it would have won. The Nazis rode the Dolchstosslegende all the way into power. And to an even more devastating defeat in an even more devastating war all while trying to disprove the fact that America, the United Kingdom, France and Russia really could beat them in a war once there were no more Jews in Germany.

You can deny reality, but reality always wins.

Unsurprisingly, the Dolchstosslegende was most popular with German military leaders. Likewise the Democrat Dolchstosslegende arose from the ranks of Hillary’s campaign leaders. It’s those in charge of the losing team who have the most incentive to blame anyone and everyone else. The Nazis blamed a long list of people including the Jews. The Democrats blamed everyone from the FBI to the Russians.

Hillary has become another Hindenburg touting her own Dolchstosslegende. Her latest book, ‘What Happpened’, will put the Dolchstosslegende into print. It will list everyone who lost the election for her. ‘What Happened’ may be an awkward title, but calling it ‘Mein Kampaign’ might have been a bit much.

The Hillary Dolchstosslegende tearing apart our country passes itself off as patriotism. The Nazis claimed that they were patriots too. But Dolchstosslegendes aren’t patriotic. They’re exercises in divisiveness by losers who don’t want to take responsibility for their stupidity, incompetence and hypocrisy.

Hillary went from pressing a reset button with one of Putin’s minions to a posthumous political campaign claiming that Putin had rigged the election. Never mind that even if Russian hackers did leak Podesta’s emails, less than 1% of Americans have any idea who Podesta is or cared about the contents of his chats. But Podesta’s emails embarrassed the future promoters of the Dolchstosslegende.

And that’s why the Dolchstosslegende’s humiliated inventors are obsessed with their own emails.

John Podesta and Robby Mook had formulated the Russian Dolchstosslegende after her defeat. Podesta and Mook, like General Ludendorff and Hindenburg had the most need to assign failure elsewhere. And millions of loyalists were eager to be convinced that they had not truly been defeated.

The Clinton campaign was as big of a disaster as the Hindenburg Program. Both were Socialist projects that substituted technocracy for common sense leading to utter disaster. Rather than admit that their plan didn’t work, Hindenburg and Ludendorff blamed the defeat on the battlefield and misery at home on a conspiracy. The Nazis then tried to prove that a Socialist militarized industry could work once you got rid of all the possible conspirators. After killing six millions Jews, National Socialism still didn’t work.

Meanwhile Clintonworld had been trying to prove that Hillary’s ’08 loss to Obama was a fluke. They proved it by rigging the Dem primaries only to have Hillary lose the general election. And so out came more excuses. Hillary was an unbeatable candidate. The left was unbeatable. It was a conspiracy.

The myths of the undefeated Germany and the undefeated Democrats were rooted in a false conviction of superiority. A populace glutted on an endless diet of propaganda found it inconceivable that they had lost. As a dog returns to its vomit, the Democrats began licking the propaganda out of their media sewer twice as hard. They ate up the lies that they hadn’t lost, the promises that they would soon reclaim what was rightfully theirs and that everyone who had conspired against them would soon be punished.

Then they turned to street violence and attempted coups… because those worked so well in Germany.

At the maddest there are the ravings of Twitter experts who promise that the intelligence community will shortly be rounding up and executing all the traitors. But even the mainstream media, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times feed their readers a poisonous glut of the Dolchstosslegende.

It’s bad for the Democrats and it’s worse for the democracy.

Instead of learning from their defeat, an entire political party, its elected officials and a sizable portion of its base have convinced themselves once again that a presidential election was illegitimate. They have staked their hopes on a coup, ranging from military intervention to impeachment, to undo it all.

Instead of questioning the superiority of their leftist ideology, they have doubled down on it. Like the National Socialists, the Socialist supporters of the far left have turned to street violence, they fantasize about military coups and media coups, without caring about the damage that they are doing to America.

The Democrats believed that they would win the election because their left-wing politics were absolutely right. Now they are convinced that they will pull off their coup because they are even more fanatically left-wing in 2017 than they were in 2016. This same logic led the Nazis to destroy Germany. And the Democrats have learned absolutely nothing about the dangers of delusional fanaticism.

They were told that they are on the right side of history. And if the right side of history requires wrecking the political process, a coup and a civil war, they are willing to pay it. Just as in the election, they can’t lose because they’re on the right side of history. Wherever they end up must be utopia.

They are willing to destroy everything rather than question their delusions of superiority.

The Soviet Union attributed all its setbacks to sabotage, rather than policy failures. Muslims continue to believe that they lost their last Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, due to an assortment of conspiracies from the Jews and the Freemasons. The Dolchstosslegende is as ubiquitous as it is destructive. It is seductive because it tells us the lie that we most wish to believe in our darkest hour.

The lie is that we did nothing wrong and do not need to change.

The Democrats’ Dolchstosslegende is the surest way of turning 2020 into a repeat of 2016.


TOPICS: Government; History; Politics
KEYWORDS: dsj02; greenfield; sultanknish
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-33 next last

Front Page mag - A Project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center

Daniel Greenfield Ping List Notification of new articles.

I am posting Greenfield's articles from FrontPage and the Sultan Knish blog. FReepmail or drop me a comment to get on or off the Greenfield ping list.

I recommend an occasional look at the Sultan Knish blog. It is a rich source of materials, links and more from one of the preeminent writers of our age.

FrontPage is a basic resource for conservative thought.

Lou

1 posted on 09/24/2017 7:42:45 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell; daisy mae for the usa; AdvisorB; wizardoz; free-in-nyc; Vendome; Georgia Girl 2; ...

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

About Daniel Greenfield

To get on or off the Greenfield ping list please reply to this post or notify me by Freepmail.

2 posted on 09/24/2017 7:43:49 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (Progressivism is 2 year olds in a poop fight.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell
Leftists had convinced themselves that winning elections was an inevitable as the success of ObamaCare and the rejuvenation of the economy.

Yeah, well, then they should've rescheduled the elections for the wee hours of Christmas Eve.

3 posted on 09/24/2017 7:49:08 AM PDT by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

This Dolchstosslegende thing for Germany in the 1920s is fairly correct. When you look at the era of 1919 to 1930...you usually get 50-percent of the whole landscape by most historians.

There was a whole volume of public belief-history left over from the 1800s....massive wins had been going on for a hundred years and no one could imagine German defeat. The inability of the public to grasp what happened and take a fragile republic through the period? It just didn’t happen.


4 posted on 09/24/2017 7:51:21 AM PDT by pepsionice
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

Trump is a black eye and a bloody nose for each and every progressive. They ain’t woke yet but they will be.


5 posted on 09/24/2017 7:53:29 AM PDT by Louis Foxwell (Progressivism is 2 year olds in a poop fight.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

[The fallacy of fanatics is the conviction that their beliefs explain reality. ]

Damn, this guy can write.


6 posted on 09/24/2017 7:56:38 AM PDT by headstamp 2 (Ignorance is reparable, stupid is forever)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell
The lie is that we did nothing wrong and do not need to change.

No, I think that is wrong. I think "the lie" is that we (they) did not go left enough, thus the only change needed for victory is to go further left.

7 posted on 09/24/2017 7:57:08 AM PDT by Religion and Politics (It's Morning in America)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Religion and Politics

And going further left entails the subjugation or elimination of that part of the population that opposes them, mostly Christian and non racial grievance citizens.


8 posted on 09/24/2017 8:00:12 AM PDT by Truth29
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 7 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell
The lie is that we did nothing wrong and do not need to change.

Are you listening, GOP? The Day of Reckoning is fast approaching.

9 posted on 09/24/2017 8:01:00 AM PDT by Starboard
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

The Left does not care if the US becomes a pile of rubble as long as they are in charge.


10 posted on 09/24/2017 8:02:26 AM PDT by joshua c (To disrupt the system, we must disrupt our lives)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: GOPJ; Jane Long; MinuteGal; jsanders2001; V K Lee; HarleyLady27; stephenjohnbanker; ...
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED.

They and their candidate's leftist views were naturally superior. (A) They were based on science while their opponents were superstitious buffoons. (B) They were enlightened while their enemies were bigots. (C) They were smart and conservatives were dumb. (D) They supported cool, clean candidates like Obama and progressive people w/ vaginas like Hillary. (E)Deplorable conservatives had a straight-talking brawler and a reality TV star, for God's sake, as their ridiculous candidate.

Obama had spent two terms telling them that they were on the “right side of history”. The more the Dems swung left, the closer to the right side of history they were.

It wasn’t strategy or statistics that made the Dems think that Hillary's victory was certain. It was delusional leftist ideology.

Delusions of their own superiority had convinced the left that Republicans couldn’t win an honest election.

Now in the aftermath of Hillary's embarrassing loss, they are obsessed w/ proving it.

11 posted on 09/24/2017 8:03:41 AM PDT by Liz (Four boxes to defend liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo; used in that order.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: All
THIS REALLY REALLY HAPPENED


12 posted on 09/24/2017 8:06:27 AM PDT by Liz (Four boxes to defend liberty: soap, ballot, jury and ammo; used in that order.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

Excellent article, thanks for posting. Much better than “word of the day.” :)


13 posted on 09/24/2017 8:07:29 AM PDT by Fungi (90 percent of all soil biomass is a fungus. Fungi rule the world.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: Texas Eagle

Greenfield is too smart to be lending his free counsel to the few sane liberals who remain out there. They could learn a thing or two from this article but likely they too have written Greenfield off as just another deplorable.


14 posted on 09/24/2017 8:12:45 AM PDT by iontheball
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: joshua c

‘The Left does not care if the US becomes a pile of rubble as long as they are in charge.”

And the establishment doesn’t care either as long as they have a job as the loyal opposition and the combination to the vault.


15 posted on 09/24/2017 8:13:23 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” - DJT)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 10 | View Replies]

To: iontheball
Perhaps, perhaps. But some of our staunchest Conservatives were foaming-at-the-mouth Libtard bass turds at one time.

David Horowitz, Walter E. Williams, Thomas Sowell, and the late, great Andrew Breitbart are just a few that come to mind. I'm sure there are many others.

16 posted on 09/24/2017 8:17:03 AM PDT by Texas Eagle (If it wasn't for double-standards, Liberals would have no standards at all -- Texas Eagle)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell
Greenfield hits another home run!

Dolchstosslegende Stab-in-the-back legend

17 posted on 09/24/2017 8:19:19 AM PDT by yoe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell
But Dolchstosslegendes aren’t patriotic. They’re exercises in divisiveness by losers who don’t want to take responsibility for their stupidity, incompetence and hypocrisy.

The Gore supporters stopped just short of calling the election illegitimate. Hillary won't. She doesn't care that she's working to destroy the public confidence in not only government, but in elections.

That shouldn't really be surprising, given the people who trained her and with whom she associates.

Mark

18 posted on 09/24/2017 8:23:27 AM PDT by MarkL (Do I really look like a guy with a plan?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

MEGABump


19 posted on 09/24/2017 8:27:04 AM PDT by Diogenesis ("When a crime is unpunished, the world is unbalanced.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Louis Foxwell

*Ping*

Please add me to your list.


20 posted on 09/24/2017 8:32:31 AM PDT by TianaHighrider (Deplorable me)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-33 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson