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To: BenLurkin

You are correct. I missed that. I think that Lindbergh, as a Progressive, had a certain sympathy for Stalin as he did for Hitler and the Nazis.


42 posted on 09/11/2018 1:27:05 PM PDT by iowamark
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To: iowamark
You are correct. I missed that. I think that Lindbergh, as a Progressive, had a certain sympathy for Stalin as he did for Hitler and the Nazis.

Lindbergh is another example of the curious interlocking between "far left" and "far right." His father was a populist Congressman who actually at one time ran on the old time lefty Democratic-Farmer-Labor ticket, but because he was convinced there was an international banking conspiracy (an idea shared by the original left wing Populists of the 1890s) the old Birch Magazine American Opinion ran an article lionizing both father and son. They even had an illustration of his Democratic-Farmer-Labor campaign poster. The article was written by William P. Hoar, one of the more conspiratorialist writers for the magazine who also condemned the Radical Republicans--despite the fact that notorious Radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens was an anti-banking greenbacker whose beliefs about currency were similar to those of later right wing heroes. But he was against the "last holdout of medieval Europe" (the Old South) and slavery, so he's a right wing villain, regardless of his beliefs about currency.

Many members of the "Old Right" actually started out on the Left (Oswald Garrison Villard, J.B. Matthews, John Dos Passos, Burton K. Wheeler) but suddenly were considered "right wing" when they crossed ways with the old conservative Anglophile Eastern Establishment. Interestingly, the old conservative Eastern Establishment is now the Eastern Liberal Establishment. The most radical change in classification was for Wheeler, who during the 20s had been considered one of the most notorious Reds in the country (he was Robert M. LaFollette's running mate on the Progressive ticket in 1924).

I sometimes wonder if it is a coincidence that since at least the 60s the Left's enemy has been, not capitalism, but the allegedly racist and reactionary working class. It was white Arkansan C. Wright Mills who about 1960 said that the working classes were no longer the progressive thesis of history but had been succeeded by ethnic minorities and their new leaders, rich white brats (alias "young academic intellectuals"). Also interestingly, the newly radical minorities had been the "scabs" of earlier years.

87 posted on 09/12/2018 3:00:27 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator ("Conservatism" without G-d is just another form of Communism.)
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