zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron ]

I’m hoping to give an extended treatment to Glenn Beck’s new documentary on Mahdism and Iranian nuclear ambitions shortly, not because I think Mahdism is unimportant – I don’t – but because I don’t think Beck is listening to some of the people with the most in-depth knowledge of the situation.

In the meantime, I couldn’t resist the screen-grab from the docu in Quote #2, which accompanied Joel Rosenberg saying:

This end times theology is not only what he believes, but it is why Ahmadinejad is putting his foot to the gas of accelerating Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, and the ballistic missile development as well – because once Ahmadinejad is able to acquire nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, Ahmadinejad could do in about six minutes what it took Adolf Hitler about six years to do, and that is to kill 6 million Jews.

You can have Nero for 666, or Aleister Crowley, or Ronald Wilson Reagan, or this Pope or any previous holder of that title, or Muhammad, or bar codes, or Ahmadinejad – but surely not all of them at once.

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I’m shifting from talk about 666, the number of the Beast, to talk about the Antichrist now — which may or may not be a different topic, see for instance these notes from Scofield on Revelation…

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Joel Richardson, an email friend of mine who is the author of The Islamic AntiChrist and is featured in the documentary, believes the Antichrist and the Mahdi are one and the same: he calls the expectation of the Mahdi’s coming an “anti-parallel” of Christian expectation of the Second Coming of Christ, and says “Islam has literally taken the whole story and flipped it on its head”. Joel Rosenberg, whose latest thriller is titled The Twelfth Imam, and who is also featured, says that in his view the Mahdi may be “an” – but not “The” – Antichrist.

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Back to the Beast:

Rev. Ian Paisley, Baron Bannside, still says 666 is the Pope — but then he’s both a minister of religion and a Unionist politician from Northern Ireland.

HNN is running a symposium on Jonah Goldberg’s recent book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning:

While I know a great deal about the historical period in question, I have not read Goldberg’s book, so I am not going to comment on his core proposition except to say that IMHO, I tend to find arguments that the intellectual roots of Fascism and Nazism are located exclusively on one side of the political spectrum are flatly and demonstrably wrong. Goldberg’s polemical thesis though, yields a hysterical reaction because he is jubilantly shredding the hoary (and false) assertion of the academic Left, going back to the pre-Popular Front Communist Party line of the 1930’s, that Fascism is a form of radicalized conservatism and a secret pawn of big business capitalism.

Therefore, the following series amounts to an intellectual food fight between Goldberg and (mostly) a band of clearly enraged Leftist professors. Enjoy!:

HNN Special: A Symposium on Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism

• Neiwert: Introduction
• Paxton: The Scholarly Flaws
• Griffin: An Academic Book – Not!
• Feldman: Poor Scholarship, Wrong Conclusions
• Berlet: The Roots of the Book
• Michael Ledeen Responds to Liberal Fascism
• Goldberg: Definitions and Double Standards
• Feldman: An Open Letter to Mr. Jonah Goldberg
• Griffin: Definitions and Double Standards – A Rebuttal
• Neiwert: Goldberg’s Response Fits His History of Evasion

After all, who doesn’t like an intemperate, online argument about Nazs? 🙂

An extremely intriguing post by Steve DeAngelis today:

The Importance of Willpower

….Aamodt and Wang assert that personal willpower (the ability to overcome the tension created between desire and common sense) is a zero sum game — use it and you lose it. That is, people who demonstrate willpower in one area have less of it to use in another.

“The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task. In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were excused from eating radishes. Similarly, people who were asked to circle every ‘e’ on a page of text then showed less persistence in watching a video of an unchanging table and wall. Other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone. Task persistence is also reduced when people are stressed or tired from exertion or lack of sleep.”

During the Second World War, the United States faced in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, enemies whose leadership placed an unusual stock in the advantages of superior will.  While roundly cursed posthumously by his generals at the time, historians now tend to give Hitler considerable credit for preventing a potential disaster in the face of the Red Army counterattack in 1942 with his fanatical insistence that the Wehrmacht stand and fight for every inch of ground, ultimately stabilizing the German lines and permitting a regrouping for further offensives. Noted historian, John Lukacs, has written of Adolf Hitler ” His mind and willpower were extraordinary….”.

Hitler held his regime together to the very end with his word being regarded as law througout the Third Reich, even when Soviet tanks were two hundred meters from his Fuhrerbunker. He dismissed from office his most powerful paladins, Goering and Himmler with a word, even when he was mere hours from his own suicide. The strain of such indomitible determination, in the face of apocalyptic stress, however, made a physical and mental wreck of Der Fuhrer. Hitler’s marked physical degeneration after 1941 was aggravated by the gross quackery of his physician Theodore Morell, an unhealthy lifestyle and injuries sustained in the 1944 bomb plot, but close associates like Speer had noted personality changes in Hitler as early as the latter’s fiftieth birthday when Hitler began to rigidly and monomaniacally focus on the war. Shuffling, beset by Parkinsonian symptoms, frequent rages and chronic insomnia, possibly addicted to stimulant drugs, Hitler’s sickly, grayish appearance often startled high Nazi officials who were granted increasingly rare audiences in Hitler’s final years.

WWII HISTORIOGRAPHY ON THE EASTERN FRONT IN THE ATLANTIC

“The war between Germany and Russia is not a war between he two states or two armies, but between two ideologies–namely, the National Socialist and the Bolshevist ideology. The Red Army must be looked upon not as a soldier in the sense of the word applying to our western opponents, but as an ideological enemy. He must be regarded as the archenemy of National Socialism and must be treated accordingly”

General Reinecke of OKW , on Hitler’s “Commisar Order”.

Benjamin Schwarz reviews the latest historical scholarship of the frozen meatgrinder called the Eastern Front, in ” Stalin’s Gift” in The Atlantic.

Historian Norman Davies is dead wrong on Soviet participation in Hitler’s defeat “tarnishing” the war. Ok, I’m understating. Frankly he’s a borderline idiot. What would he have prefered ? A Nazi empire from the Azores to the Urals ? The U.S. carpet bombing Europe with atom bombs in 1946? What ?

A great historiographic review that added a number of books to my reading list.

( Yes, hideous subscription wall. Yes, shortsighted on the editor’s part, I realize. Get a subscription, you cheap bastards, and you won’t be inconvenienced)