Odds and Ends, 10/1/19

More of the same.

Zman the liar:

The alt-right never got around to thinking up a new metaphysics. They spent their time recreating an aesthetic from a bygone age that was intended to shock, rather than celebrate a new ideological movement. The closest they came to imagining an alternative Right was borrowing the idea of an ethnostate from fringe Russian thinkers. Otherwise, the alt-right was just a collection of complaints decorated with some racist and fascist language and imagery.

Thus, Zman is parroting Johnson’s lie that the fall of WN 2.0 was mimicking WN 1.0 while the truth was the exact opposite: WN 2.0 represented an entirely new aesthetic – Millennial and Generation Z juvenile jackassery and mindless snark (Beavis-and-Butthead White nationalism).  The major things they had in common with WN 1.0 was the commitment to the ethnic affirmative action program and the usual ethnic fetishism.

And what to make of this?

.. was borrowing the idea of an ethnostate from fringe Russian thinkers.

Sir Humphrey of Ireland was Russian?  Seriously though, hasn’t a “White ethnostate” been a staple of WN thought for decades?  What the hell does it have to do with Russians?  This is what happens when a smug know-it-all drops out of nowhere and establishes himself as a “movement” voice without knowing what the hell he is talking about.

Juri

Do not underestimate the cucked electorate.. Austrian elections results just came in and anti immigration FPÖ is down by 10 per cent and far left greens up by 14 per cent. Greta Thunberg and other screaming lunatics turned entire Austria to far left.

The ghosts of Hubert Humphrey and John Lindsay are well pleased.

Sallis continues to be proven correct. Der Movement is as predictable as an atomic clock.

Germany’s Schettino.  Excerpts, emphasis added:

On a list of historical figures who have left disaster in their wake, few can top Erich Ludendorff. And yet, he was not an incompetent man. On the contrary, he was one of World War I’s most able generals, among the few who recognized that Western Front battlefield tactics would require a fundamental rethinking, especially with regard to combat leadership.

Ludendorff was born on April 9, 1865, in the town of Kruszewnia, near Posen, Prussia. Like most of the border towns split between Polish and German ethnicity, Kruszewnia was a hotbed of Prusso-German nationalism. His parents were middle-class but strongly nationalist. And as young Erich gobbled up military histories filled with romantic legends and nationalist nonsense about Prussia’s struggles against Napoléon or its heroic defeat of the “evil French” in the Franco-Prussian War, his nationalistic fervor soon eclipsed that of his parents. 

The truth was that unrestricted submarine warfare would almost immediately bring the United States into the war. Here again, Ludendorff threw his weight behind the navy’s arguments by insisting the United States was incapable of fielding an effective army, much less deploying it to Europe to fight on the Western Front. His comment to a senior industrialist in September 1916 sums up his understanding of strategy: “The United States does not bother me…in the least; I look upon a declaration of war by the United States with indifference.” Even more astonishing is that in the fall of 1916 Ludendorff was seriously worried that Holland or Denmark might enter the war on the Allied side…The U-boat offensive had failed. It remains one of the more disastrous strategic decisions in human history.

Although Ludendorff managed to build an extraordinary, albeit fragile, force for his coming offensive, he did not have the slightest idea what its operational goals should be. When asked as much by Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, group commander of the northern forces along the Western Front, Ludendorff testily replied: “I object to the word ‘operations.’ We will punch a hole into [their line]. For the rest we shall see. We also did it this way in Russia.” And that is precisely what the Germans, under Ludendorff’s direction, did. Their impressive battlefield gains were completely devoid of strategic and operational benchmarks, and they constructed no defenses to maintain the greatly expanded front…

…Ludendorff displayed neither leadership nor strategic sense. In September he began casting about for someone to blame for the looming German defeat. His initial target was his staff. By early October, he had shifted the blame to the liberals and socialists. As the German political, strategic and operational situation spiraled out of control, Ludendorff himself approached a complete breakdown. On October 26, the Kaiser dismissed him. Disguising himself in a false beard, Ludendorff fled to Sweden to write his extraordinarily dishonest memoirs.

As a commander, Ludendorff represented the strengths and weaknesses of the German army. “In my final analysis on Ludendorff,” notes David Zabecki, the foremost historian of Germany’s 1918 offensives, “I have to conclude that in many ways he was a reflection of the German army as a whole in the first half of the 20th century: tactically gifted, operationally flawed and strategically bankrupt.”

Some more.

And by the war’s final summer when it was clear that defeat was inexorable, the general slipped into a downward spiral of despair. He exhibited violent mood swings, lashed out at Hindenburg and even reportedly broke down in tears before his subordinates. Some speculated that he was in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

Interestingly, I do not recall any Chris Brand posts about “neuroticism and anxiety” with respect to that episode.  Very selective, eh, Chris?  Brand can’t answer right now, being kept busy in hell and all.