From the Vacant Lot Where Bill Kristol Used to Reside
Elon Musk, as I have previously discussed here, has been widely accused of giving a Nazi salute to his fellow Trump supporters, said accusation consisting in an object lesson in establishing a truth by dint of endless repetition of a blatant lie. For the video clip of the supposed neo-Nazi outrage is readily available for all to see, although I am quite sure the next step in the propaganda campaign against Trumpism will be to insist that all traces of this video be wiped from the internet forever in the name of banning hate speech. Unfortunately for these propagandists and other progressive fearmongers, Musk himself happens to be the proprietor of one of the internet’s most popular and influential sources of such video clips, so one must suppose the truth-destroyers’ hate speech canard will fail in this case, at least for the time being. Put simply, and obviously, Musk’s gesture was not a Nazi salute, and was not intended to mimic or suggest one, but was an exaggerated gesture of general affection for the crowd he was addressing, in the form of “throwing his heart” out to them.
Politics today is all about lies, of course, on all sides. Everyone lies about the statements and intentions of the other side in order to gain tribal advantage, and all questions about the morality of such overt abuses of public discourse are swept into dark corners. That, to be more precise, is what politics is about for those who lack the intellectual sobriety, moral decency, and gentlemanly civility to stand above such ill-begotten and society-corrupting gamesmanship — modern democracy’s general surrender to the anti-principles of winning ugly — and to approach the realm of public discourse in the manner (or with the manners) of one whose soul has been touched by the moderating rationality of genuine political philosophy and long-range historical perspective.
Such a philosophically moderated individual was, at one time, Bill Kristol, the American political commentator and adviser whose father, Irving Kristol, is often cited as the father of the so-called neo-conservative movement. Neo-conservatism as originally conceived was, sans the now-typical haunting background music, merely a deliberate shift, by a certain band of (most prominently Jewish) politically-inclined intellectuals toward a rather Republican-friendly public position, on the grounds that American conservatism, including a certain respect for the American founding as perhaps the most admirable event in practical politics in the modern era, was the political “side” more amenable, at the present time, to the beneficial influence of a political philosophy, tracing its roots back to Plato, that emphasized civic moderation, public-spiritedness, and a preference for rational order and gradualism over radical enthusiasm and revolutionary change.
Whatever one may think of the general outlook categorized as American neo-conservatism — I have great respect for its philosophical progenitors but diminishing sympathy with the practical inclinations and machinations of its second-generation heirs — there is no question that at its higher levels, this movement was peopled by genuinely thoughtful and educated individuals. Bill Kristol, one of the most prominent representatives, and by pedigree the most legitimately entitled to be designated as a “second-generation heir” of the movement, was generally a mild-mannered, genteel, well-spoken, and intellectually sensible spokesman for his views. Whether one agreed with him on this or that issue or not, it was difficult not to appreciate the bit of intellectual perspective and seriousness he brought to the world of American political commentary, which so badly needed it. He always came across as one of those who had been “touched by the moderating rationality of genuine political philosophy and long-range historical perspective.”
Until Trump. The rise of Trumpism, which effectively spelled the sudden demise of any influence of neo-conservatism within the Republican Party establishment or grassroots — along with the demise of any other kind of conservatism, moderation, or even basic rationality — seems to have sucked all the sobriety, moral rectitude, and collegiality out of Kristol’s soul. On occasion, I check his latest social media posts, or his articles at The Bulwark, mostly out of morbid fascination at this point, to see how far away from his previous positions he has now drifted. He is barely a tiny dot in the distance at this point.
Case in point: Today, obviously referring to the Musk incident (which never happened), he posted this quotation from a Bulwark article on Musk’s X:
“We believe that those who mimic the Nazi salute, even as a joke or an attempt to troll their opponents, trivialize the horror of the Holocaust and diminish the sacrifice of those who fought against its perpetrators.”
Really? So any mimicking of the Nazi salute in any context — this is the full implication of the insertion “even as a joke” — is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an insult to the memories of those who fought against Hitler. Would this include, then, Charlie Chaplin’s brilliant parody of Hitler in The Great Dictator, a film he made during WWII? Would it include Roberto Benigni’s aping of that salute in Life Is Beautiful, playing the role of a Jewish father desperately trying to save his son from being traumatized by those very “horrors of the Holocaust” by pretending that the concentration camp is just an elaborate game for prizes? What about children in the schoolyard goofing around with goose-stepping and Hitler salutes for the mere silliness of imitating something that, from a child’s point of view — perhaps the most profoundly truthful perspective in this case — seems funny and absurd?
And, for that matter, what about people imitating the very similar Roman imperial salute employed with obvious cultural purpose by Jewish director William Wyler in Ben-Hur, and performed by non-Jewish actors? Or those who demonstrate such a salute, or the actual Nazi salute itself for that matter, in a classroom, for educational purposes? Or anyone, of any age, who playfully mimics such a salute as a way of mocking another person’s pushy attitude, or of parodying the kind of obedience his boss (or his government) demands? Are all of these instances, in which the Nazi salute (or something visually similar to it) has probably been performed and witnessed millions of times by millions of people throughout the Western world over the past nine decades, 99.9% of them people without a pro-Nazi or horror-trivializing bone in their bodies, to be condemned now as a collective moral outrage against Holocaust victims and military servicemen who died fighting against the Third Reich? Seriously?
Virtue signalling, cancel culture, wokism, and the instinctive suppression of any speech or behavior one find’s uncomfortable for personal reasons of one’s own, irrespective of anyone else’s context or intent — in other words, intolerance of all dialogue and difference, of all irony and resignation, of all willingness to transcend: Are these not the hallmarks of a rampaging indignation that has become loosed from any proper sense of moral righteousness or rational judgment? An indignation that has swallowed up reason and morality in a maniacal and immoderate ire toward anyone who dares to breathe, laugh, or live without bowing at all times, in perfectly deferential hyper-solemnity and self-censoring artifice, toward your own emotional — or quasi-emotional, self-gratifyingly performative — sensitivities?
Does not this phony handwringing and moralizing about what must never be said or done for any reason, under any circumstances, however contrived or accidental the association may be, actually trivialize the Holocaust and diminish the sacrifice of dead soldiers far more than any joking mimickry of a ridiculous tyrannical salute could ever do? Is it no longer permitted even to describe the Nazi salute as “ridiculous,” lest anyone (who, exactly?) regard the crimes of that regime as less serious for being reduced to a matter for mocking?
If we cannot mock evil, then what is mocking for? The good? Or merely the insignificant? But is this not tantamount to denying the philosophic perspective? For is not Socrates himself the great ironist and mocker of evil, the man who refuses to take mere death — even his own personal death at the hands of an unjust jury — very seriously? Is this not the essential triumph of philosophy, which is to say of reason, which is to say of mankind, over all horrors and sacrifices. They can kill us, Socrates teaches, but they cannot harm us, if our souls are just. Is that not the very core of the wisdom that Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish philosopher-teacher, émigré from the Nazis, whose students initiated the neo-conservative movement to which Bill Kristol was heir, spent his long academic career disseminating?
Bill Kristol is not the man he was. Whatever touch of philosophy he once had in him, and displayed within a mainstream media arena that badly needed such thoughtfulness, has deserted him, or rather he has deserted it. He is just another predictably tribal and indignant Democratic activist now, crushed, it seems, by hurt feelings and a growing sense of cultural irrelevance. This shows, of course, that he never really was the man he was. For as the seminal text of political philosophy, the theoretical foundation of Straussianism, and the ultimate source of neo-conservative thought, Plato’s Republic, teaches us for all time with perfect clarity, philosophy is not what you say when you are feeling ascendant and in fashion, but how you live when the whole world stands against you.
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