Some of you already know about my spat with GM over “diversity mongering” at the world’s formerly largest car company (and lately, the largest recipient of crony capitalist “help,” courtesy of an epic mugging of taxpayers via the government to finance it).
Well, it’s not just me that’s getting poked by the PC Spear of Longinus.
And it’s not just GM that’s doing the side-stabbing, either.
BMW has signed onto something called Kein Geld Fur Rechts (my keyboard doesn’t do umlauts) which translates as, No Money for the Right.
Meaning, anyone who disagrees with the orthodoxies of the political left.
Breitbart.com for instance. BMW (which manufactured lots of engines for the real rechts, once upon a time) has announced, along with other companies, including T-Mobile, that it will pull its ads – that is, das geld – from Breitbart.com because of the web site’s failure to toe the politically correct lines.
Among the outrages, Breitbart has published articles criticizing the policies of current German Reichskanzler (and former East German Stasi stooge) Angela Merkel; in particular, Merkel’s flooding of the country with “refugees” from … everywhere. With the German people expected not merely to accept it (that part’s not necessarily bad) but to underwrite it (which is). To pay more taxes to support these people, whom Merkel has invited but who leaves the tab for dinner – and more – to others.
It is like telling your neighbor your itinerant Uncle Louie and his six unemployed 30-something kids are coming to town for the next, oh, twenty to forty years… and they’ll be staying with him.
Maybe you’ll feel very good about having “helped.” Probably not so much your neighbor.
Objecting to this sort of thing is regarded in some circles as the sine qua non of “racism,” much as my article about GM’s “color blind” fixation on the color black was regarded by GM as evidence of my own Ku Kluxer tendencies.
Notwithstanding my very out-of-the-robes Libertarianism. Which is a political-moral philosophy based entirely on the rejection of collective identity politics, that cares about skin color and genitalia as indices of individual worth about as much as Breitbart writer Milo Yiannapoulos is interested in bedding women. (He’s “recht,” but openly homosexual – which leaves the politically correct left without much to grab hold of. So they accuse him of being a crypto-Nazi.)
The left specializes in such ad hominem assaults. You are a bad person; a “racist.” Possibly tetched in the head. Never mind the valid criticisms you’ve leveled, no matter how reasoned (and reasonable) they are and that they are not motivated by “hate” toward anyone.
In a way, though, this bullying of Breitbart (and yours truly) is good news, because it means our adversaries on the left are scraping the bottom of their intellectual barrel. They know, in the same way that an animal can sense its own coming death, that their ideas are terminal.
Therefore, they must resort to tactics such as attempting to shut people up rather than using facts and reason to prove them wrong. People – lots of them, anyhow – are getting sick of it. It’s probably the main reason Donald is the president-elect. The old mantras don’t have the power they once did. Donald tapped into this – and it’s a rich vein. Powerful mojo there.
So now, in desperation, these redoubts of orthodoxy (ironic, given that once upon a time, corporations were regarded as bastions of everything the political left despised) are using the final weapon in their arsenal:
Das geld. Â
Pull the ads.
That’ll shut ’em up.
Or (in my case) pull the cars. It amounts to the same thing.
GM knows perfectly well that, just as a publication must have ads to survive, car writers must have access to the cars in order to write about them . . . in order to earn a living by writing about them. To deny access – as GM did to yours truly – is to fire a broadside at that writer; it is a deliberate attempt to stifle him.
And others. It’s a form of Sicilian Message.
Spread the word.
In the past, this sort of thing was only used as a last resort against a writer who deserved it, because he wasn’t a journalist but rather, some kind of hatchet man. A guy who deliberately lied in print, out of malice – or gratuitously slammed a car because the writer has an ax to grind with the company. (Consumer Reports was infamous for this sort of thing, reflexively scheissing all over anything that had a GM badge on it, just because it had a GM badge on it. Meanwhile, Toyota and Honda could never do wrong.)
But the point is that legitimate (that is, reasoned, fact-based) but unorthodox opinions and commentary may not have been liked by the High Muckety Mucks; but it didn’t result in the sort of thing that GM did to me and that BMW, et al, are now doing to Breitbart.
And which will almost certainly soon be done to anyone who dares utter un-PC utterances, if some way isn’t found to convey in terms that PC Corporations grok that this kind of thing won’t fly.
The only way I know of is to – in effect – vote for Trump. To grab them by das geld. Stop buying their products – and let ’em know why. They assume you (and me) will let our lust for a new Corvette or a BMW M5 overlook where the money goes. But they are not the only ones making desirable cars – without the undesirable politics.
I’ve been defending VW – because VW tried to buck the orthodoxies, benefitting the people who buy the cars. Granted, their behavior once “caught” has been less-than-admirable. But they haven’t turned ’round on automotive journalists like me and pulled press fleet bona fides to show how chastened they are.
Mercedes makes one helluva car, too.
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Mercedes is absolutely no better. Funding programs to get 95 year old nazi war ‘criminals’ tortured in the final years of their life for trying to save their country. Germany is basically full on communist in general. ironic they lost to the communists and russia managed to save itself from them.
Hi Mark,
An interesting aspect to this business of going after 95-year-olds who may have been 17-year-old camp guards for six months toward the end of the war is the the lack of any going-after people such as Molotov – the Soviet Von Ribbentrop – who lived to a ripe old age in peace and quiet – or any Soviet-era cretin for the crimes of the Soviet regime. And there were – and probably still are – plenty of them.
yeah whos the guy lamay i think who ordered all the terror bombings of dresden etc. Even Britain was embarrassed by that. im sure he lived quite well after.
I’m actually glad to see this happening. It forces people to finally draw a line and take a stand. It makes a clear line of demarcation. It’s easy to keep quiet and go along to get along when the issues are small- like a cunicle worker not saying “nigger” at the office………but when the stakes become higher, and your ultimate freedom of speech and independence are challenged, then it clearly separates the whores from people of principle. Such a time must always come in the fight to maintain freedom and integrity. It’s actually too bad that it has taken so long to come, as the fight and principle have been bred out of so many people already. In the end, companies like GM and BMW will only be hurting themselves.
Ironic too, that it should be GM and BMW -two companies which are on the decline. GM makes utter garbage, and needs a subsidy to do so; BMW’s heyday is over, and it is ring on the fumes of it’s former reputation. It now makes cars which are ridiculously over-priced, and whose technology (for those who are impressed by such things) is lagging behind that of the Asians; their cars have become nightmares of unreliability, and lack long-term durability -being almost in the disposable class after they are a few years old- and whose only real appeal is to the purely status-conscious (and that is even waning greatly as of late).
So, to GM and Bastardized Metrosexual Wagons I would say “Good riddance, who needs you? You need us more than we need you! Go sell your garbage to some gay black Muslim refugee single mother, and let us know how it works out when you’re paid in food stamps and bus passes instead of FRNs. The kind of people you are alienating don’t want your over-priced jalopies anyway, so have fun living in loony liberal-land until you go bankrupt.”
And so with this behavior, and the behavior of fakebook and hamster in North Carolina, we now know who really runs the governments of the western world. All these large multinational companies, working through the international bank cartel, really own the politicians. And the pollies actually have the power to lay treason charges against these companies, but instead take their money and really enjoy the fruits of bullying [aka power]. That is why our real enemies are the politicians, and why government is inherently evil and needs to be replaced with anarchy. Because right now the system only benefits the pollies and the large companies.
The 25-point Program of the German Workers’ Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_Program#The_25-point_Program_of_the_NSDAP
In this diamond most free is on the bottom.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-t1mcrQs6zc4/U3zFk5R50NI/AAAAAAAABeI/BkRoIr_fWu8/s1600/political+spectrum+2014.png
Trump is 21 progressive populism.
In diamond mapping, any lean to the left or right reduces your freedom.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-naO1cxFsnFU/TvycApJdNuI/AAAAAAAAAHU/YwK25LXHnOE/s1600/nolan_chart.JPG
Dear Tor,
Right on! You got it!
That’s a very useful variation on the “Nolan Chart”.
Plugging in the various “isms” on the map provides additional understanding about where these “isms” lie relative to each other, and how much or little they are in tune with true freedom.
Several thoughts…..
First, I thought BMW’s new “No Money For The Right” dictum might hurt their business, because higher income folks generally tend to (at least) fiscal conservatism. But then, I remember that, more than any other brand, the people who drive bimmers are so often Total Pricks! I bet their buyers are based among upper level government bureaucrats and academics. So most of them won’t have much problem with this leftist suppression of free speech.
Second, how dare they attack Breitbart writer Milo Yiannaopoulos? He’s a homo! So that clearly makes them despicable HOMOPHOBES!
Third, I was thinking of declaring a personal boycott of BMW. But that would be meaningless, because I never would have bought one anyway. Wouldn’t want to be associated with the kind of people who drive them. 🙂
BMW (which manufactured lots of engines for the real rechts, once upon a time) has announced, along with other companies, including T-Mobil that it will pull its ads – that is, das geld – from Breitbart.com because of the web site’s failure to toe the politically correct lines.|
Wow, bummer. I was gonna switch my mobile service to T-Mobil in the Spring. Not anymore.
FICK DICH, T-MOBIL! UND AUCH DU, BMW!
This is really the last straw. I would never have said this even 5 years ago, but my sympathy level for both Germany and Germans has gone from ZE-RO to negative. I really hope that the vibrant invaders completely cuck the place in short order. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people who’ve been begging for it for decades.
I’ve not seen Breitbart to be particularly useful or particularly libertarian. They are a counterweight and its the place where those who dig up dirt on the left can display it but I don’t really care about company that decides they don’t want to advertise there.
The general open political bent, a policy of not advertising in all publications that put out certain views is however frightening. It says that the corporation is either afraid of repercussions from the state more than it is not making sales or their lock on the market is now as such that they have no fear of customers going elsewhere.
We aren’t defending what Breitbart says, but its right to say it.
and companies have a right to decide where to advertise. I am saying that the problem is if the companies are coerced to make that decision.
That they hate Brietbart is telling. Andrew was just getting started when he died. His base belief in fighting leftism was…you walk INTO the fire. You see a gaggle of leftists, you walk into the midst of them and engage.
Milo is an example. Milo walks INTO the fire and engages leftists in their faces, on their turf.
Mixed Black/Mexican LIBERTARIAN minority here that is sick & tired of this war on white people. I don’t particularly read Breitbart, but I am in the market for a new car (my Maxima’s transmission has kicked the bucket)and BMW has now been crossed off my list (GM has been gone a long time ago). Looks like I’ll take that Miata.
Excellent, Peter!
I have lately had some interesting discussions with friends of mine who are “of color.” They are sick of it, too. Just as you are.
They are on to the con.
They see.
It gives me some hope.
That’s the essence of the left: they’re collectivists. Peter, the left doesn’t care about you (or me), really, because you and I don’t think the way that the left says all people in group X or group Y should think; in your case, the way Black/Hispanic people should and in my case, the way White/Catholic/Jewish people should think. We don’t count in the leftist vision of diversity, because diversity of thought is a no-no.
PS: I love my Subaru Outback…I’m on my third Subaru in 16 years. I only parted with my WRX because I needed something with a good amount of cargo space.
I didn’t “get” Subarus at first. I got the impression they were dorky cars. They reminded me of some of the idiosyncratic cars made by French carmakers
It was only much later on that I realize they were not dorky or idiosyncratic. Rather, they were creative and willing to think outside the box.
The flat four engines made just as much sense as the old VW Beetle engines I once owned, which is to say, a lot.
When I learned of their record for reliability, I was really sold. As a sports care buff, I would love to have a Subaru BRZ.
Subaru was just another name in a line of cars I barely noticed till a local two way radio/tower installation company had a whole fleet. The techs that drove them said they were great and would crawl up a tree. Up to that point I had never taken them seriously as a 4WD. And back then they were cheap and reliable and inexpensive to repair.
I even went on a test drive of one in the early 80’s and was impressed. I went with a friend since we were only in the market for one pickup after the other at that time and since then.
The companies push them hard in Tx. since one in every six pickups sold is in this state. I know many people who have nothing but pickups.
I just watched a YouTube video uploaded by a local Subaru dealer, demonstrating the unique features of the newest Subaru pickup, the Baja.
Count on Subaru to incorporate “weird” features that only make sense after you’ve had a moment to think about them.
They really do think outside the box, unconstrained by most peoples’ “But you can’t do that!” inside the box mindset.
Bryce, couldn’t that be said for the rightists too? It’s simply different collectivism.
Dear Bryce,
If by the “right” you mean Neoconservative warfare statists, they differ from Neoliberal welfare statists on the “left” only in style, not content.
What they share in common is a love for Big Government. The former love Big Brother. The latter love the Nanny State. Neither has any respect for natural rights and individual liberty.
Exactly.
The difference is that the left is much more overt and open about its love of collectivism and Big Uncle…the right for whatever reason is less so.
I subscribe to neither far left or right.
It seemed to me when the shrub got into office the gloves came off and they were up front about stepping on every right and proud to do it, crowing about it what they did it.
Whether they left their playbook for the Dems to find or just sent them a copy, those Dems learned at record speed so that the difference in them was barely perceptible.
In the past I could tolerate the left a bit more since they didn’t seem as radical. That was gone when BO got in and they were out for political blood just like the R’s except sorta opposite in the people of the country they wanted to isolate.
To paraphrase Joe and Moe, I’ve been shot at and cut with a knife “but I never had an entire party come after me for being white and male”. or something like that.
What’s more, 9/11 gave the Shrub and the neoconservative right a convenient excuse for a lot of bad behavior.
Eric,
Here is the best way I can sum up my experience.
I graduated from UC Berkeley. I lived in the South for the last 3 years.
Number of racial slurs heard while living in the “liberal” SF Bay Area: Too many to count. Heard them at least 3 days a week.
Number of racial slurs heard while living in “racist”, “conservative” TN & KY for 2-3 years: 0
For the record, I’m a native Southern Californian.
Unfortunately, the tactic of removing the ability to make a living is a powerful tool. Most people do not have deep pockets and cannot hold out very long without an income.
That’s what the Soviets did too…they found out that mysteriously “disappearing” you from waiting lists for cars and apartments, and putting black marks on your work record and internal passport worked just as well at keeping you in line as shipping you to the gulag.
I have always wondered why the car companies couldn’t have become aggressive marketers that the oil companies were in the 1970’s. What they shared is that they were both under siege, albeit by different groups.
Check out this WSJ article.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324251504578581962396194832
I hated his fifty is thrifty ads, though.
I always thought they were aggressive marketers. Back in the 50’s and 60’s they were non-stop on tv, radio, newspaper and magazines. I thought Dinah Shore was great singing See the USA in your Chevrolet, America’s the greatest land of all. And nobody doubted the “greatest land of all” claim. The late 60’s began with more sophisticated commercials on tv. But GM had already banned “racing” from their venue so you never got to see anyone spin a tire or slide around a corner. Most of the other car companies followed suit. They showed the car tooling along with really happy people inside and only referred to performance by the names of the cars and the decals. This was the heavy hand of insurance exerting its influence.
“I thought Dinah Shore was great singing See the USA in your Chevrolet, America’s the greatest land of all. And nobody doubted the “greatest land of all” claim. ”
Dear 8,
I remember those spots. And I agreed with the sentiment.
Recently I’ve found myself pausing in the middle of all the hustle and bustle over the 2016 election, and incredulous at where America is today.
Hollywood offered us a number of visions of the first black president. James Earl Jones. Dennis Haysbert. Morgan Freeman. If only!
Instead we got Obama. If I hadn’t seen it happen, if I hadn’t lived through it myself, I would never have believed that America’s first black president would be someone so godawful.
A closet champion of Sharia Law. A rabidly anti-white “First Ladyboy”. How many of us ever imagined such a surreal scenario unfolding in our lifetimes? Almost like something out of a black comedy. No pun intended.
Of course let’s not forget Obama’s enabler, Bush Jr. Dubya is obviously what HL Mencken had in mind when he said, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
We no longer need to wonder how Roman scholars must have felt as Rome declined and fell. We are watching in real time. It’s “deja vu all over again”.
bevin, I want to say something here but not sure what. The “ladyboy” you referred to was certainly something I don’t think the “average” person saw coming. I love the term BTW. I think it was immortalized in Hangover 2. I often find myself humming or thinking of “Alan’s Song”.
You had to know something wicked this way comes when the “ladyboy” from nowhere was suddenly the darling of the press. I had heard of Barack and Obama and Hussein but had never put those words into the name of anyone who would be our prez. Imagine the shock of all those “conservatives, ie., warmongers” when they were affronted with him/her.
While it wasn’t a laughing matter(our presidents never have been since I was conscious of what/who they were/were going to do)but I did enjoy reading the screaming/teeth gnashing/hair pulling stories in The Blaze. Well, the old Blaze really burned up on it but like all things very hot it finally cooled down with only sporadic flare ups from the radicals that hadn’t been immolated in the first couple years.
Now the rest of us get to, once again. dread the pandemic that’s sure to come with The Donald. The more things change, the more they stay the same is about all I can glean from it. Of course I first gleaned this as a teen when uncle sam kept trying to get his hands on me after the Tet offensive. I don’t know if the Vietnamese knew it(sure they had word from Russian advisors)that the Tet offensive was child’s play compared to the offensive here “at home” the feds took against those who didn’t buy the war line, esp. the long hairs and blacks(still dirty words to the war mongers).
Oh, before I forget, good to have you back. Just yesterday I was wondering where you’d got off to(great sentence structure eh?).
Dear 8,
Good to be back! As you know, I disappear once in a while. Commenting here can be addictive. Too addictive. So addictive I get nothing else done. LOL.
But I’m always glad to be back. It’s like coming home in some ways. Comforting. And I’m always glad to find the old crowd hanging out.
I’m not really all that upset about the sexual orientation of America’s first gay/transexual First Couple, as I am about the fact that they attempted to foist Islamic theocracy upon America, and were even worse warmongers than the Bushes.
If they weren’t so devious and filled with hate, they’d almost be amusing. The West Wing meets La Cage aux Folles. .
Instead we got Obama. If I hadn’t seen it happen, if I hadn’t lived through it myself, I would never have believed that America’s first black president would be someone so godawful.
I can’t remember if it was the late, great Joe Sobran or Fred Reed who said, shortly after the sepia-skinned sock puppet was first elected, something to the effect of “Black America has now proved themselves equal in yet another category: they’ve shown the nation that they can elect presidents from among themselves who are just as god-awful as any white president.”
Dear lib,
My sentiments exactly!
Sort of a race to the bottom to see which ethnicity would serve up the worst POTUS in US history.
The WASPs offered Dubya. The Kenyan/Indonesian Muslims offered Obomber. The jury is still out on who won the title match.
I think that between eight years of President Barack Soetero and Candidate Hitlary Clinton, the Dems have guaranteed us that there will not soon again be either a black or woman as president. God help any black woman with presidential aspirations.
I’d vote for Starr Parker.
This was the guy who was behind Warners advertorials. Herb Scmertz. //www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ayywhRG5K0
Hey Eric – Have you given any thought of talking to VW here in the United States, their PR office and seeing if you could help them with some of their public relations? A friend of my parents Rawleigh Warner Jr. pioneered the never often used technique of the advertorial for Mobil Corporation. Mr. Warners objective was to create a political climate to decontrol oil prices beginning in the late 1970s. Warner’s PR department ran ads in the WSJ and the NYT and other newspapers around the country that told stories of squirrels storing nuts (yes, he did) and how price controls on nuts affected supply. It was extremely helpful. I believe that the public actually read those ads. If VW would have done the same thing during the diesel crisis, it would have come out differently. With the new administration, there is a chance, albeit small, that things might change.
If I had the skill, I would approach these guys. The U.S. is a different place than it was during the 1980s and 1990’s. I think that people are ready for a sea change in thinking and doing. It’s my spider sense telling me that.
Eric did talk to VW about it. They turned him down. Hard to defend a company that no longer wants to defends itself. Too bad not defending itself will end up costing us all.
Wow. I didn’t know about that. That sucks.
Dear rich,
An example of what Ayn Rand termed “the sanction of the victim”.
“Every kind of ethnic group is enormously sensitive to any slight. If one made a derogatory remark about the Kurds of Iran, dozens of voices would leap to their defense. But no one speaks out for businessmen, when they are attacked and insulted by everyone as a matter of routine. What causes this overwhelming injustice? The businessmen’s own policies: their betrayal of their own values, their appeasement of enemies, their compromises—all of which add up to an air of moral cowardice. Add to it the fact that businessmen are creating and supporting their own destroyers.”
Obviously the situation is complicated by other ugly realities, including Big Government/Big Business collusion, i.e., corporatism/mercantilism/fascism.
But it remains true that when businesses attempt to make good products, Big Brother and the Nanny State do in fact make life impossible for them.
I don’t need to make an exhaustive list of all the ways, not here. We all know them backwards and forwards. They include of course unrealistic CAFE standards and crashworthiness standards.
No, sorry, I gotta stop you right there. BMW did not make anything for the “Real rights.” The Nazis were not in any sense right wing, and we’ve got to put a stop to this nonsense — along with “crony capitalism,” which isn’t — once and for all.
Those responsible for this ridiculous lie were and remain Communists, Socialists, and their fellow travelers around the world to this day. It’s a logical mistake to make, since the Fascisti and the Communists hated one another, but chiefly because they differed on methods: Communists divided and ruled across class without regard to national boundaries, while the Nazis (especially) were militantly nationalist, and after 1942 when the situation was essentially The World v. the Racist Deustche Reich, that it became an easy case to make.
All these ideologies — fascism, communism, socialism, of whatever stripe, and whether or not there is a religious component — are authoritarian left wing. The further to the right of the spectrum one moves in aggregate, the less authority you grant the state.
If you hear someone talking about how “we must,” and then recite a litany of laws and regulations he will issue to make you do these things, whether or not they’re good sense or in your best interests, that’s left-wing.
The further to the right you simply use another excuse for totalitarianism.
Nonsense. If you find authoritarianism/totalitarianism on both ends, where’s freedom and liberty? Where is its maximum expression found?
I’ve posted something like this before – think of freedom (or the free market) as the origin point, 0, 0, on graph, which equals no gunvermin interference. Everything else is just a matter of degree.
That’s fine and perfectly logical if you want to reshape the whole thing. But to continue to refer to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party as “right-wing” is inaccurate, no matter how you slice it, and reveals the extent to which we have all been educated against our best interests by fellow-traveling communists and other fools.
Dear John,
I think if you look at the four pointed diamond, you’ll see where total freedom and total slavery lie.
Seriously, doesn’t this seem like a much better mapping scheme?
The left vs. right political spectrum is just plain inadequate. It merely generates more confusion.
A far better political mapping scheme is this four cornered diamond, with libertarian at the top, authoritarian at the bottom, liberal on the left, and conservative on the right.
It accounts for the authoritarian elements in both liberalism and conservatism far better than any linear left right spectrum.
https://www.libertarianism.com/
Even more simple: The political is a straight line.
On the left end is complete totalitarianism.
On the right end is complete anarchy.
Everything is based on degrees of leftism. We are all leftists. Some of us, just a little. Others, a whole bunch.
Dear AH,
That runs into the problem that Brother John just raised.
Really, give the diamond shaped mapping scheme a chance. I think you come to agree.
Hi Bevin,
I agree in principle with Brother John; that said, “right” does differ from “left” in that the “right” usually has racial overtones and is nationalistic while the “left” is internationalist and polyglot. Of course, both are collectivist and authoritarian.
Dear Eric,
I agree with the distinction you just noted too!
The emphasis definitely different between right authoritarianism and left authoritarianism. This should not be glossed over. Glossing that distinction over would muddy our understanding.
I’m merely saying that a mapping scheme with 4 corners is better than a mapping scheme with 2 poles. Such a 4 cornered scheme does not preclude the possibility of making the important distinctions you just mentioned.
I really think if John takes a moment out to quickly scan the 4 cornered mapping scheme, he might come around.