*blink*

[yendi]

The National Review is actually upset that Obama used the phrase "senseless violence" in reference to the Holocaust.

I'd say there are no fucking words, but there really are a slew of them.

(hat tip to james_nicoll)

Comments

[siliconshaman]

I kind of see their point. It might have been utterly evil, genocidal violence. But it had it's own internal logic and wasn't just random mindless violence... i.e senseless.

[deborah]

I could see their point if they had phrased it differently, or if it hadn't been set up as an exercise in political point-scoring. An overall essay about how understanding motivations is the best way to defeat international brutality and violence would be a good thing (although I will point out that anyone, but especially liberals, trying to look for the motivations behind the 9/11 hijackers pretty much turned into a shrill chorus of WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA, and there is no way that NRO was not a part of that). I am all in favor of trying to see where violence comes from and not just randomly blaming it on senselessness or video games or what have you.

But it's also an oddly phrased paragraph:

Nazism may have been an ideology to which the United States was — and to which the president is — implacably opposed, but it is hardly “senseless.” By the early 1930s, the Nazi party had hundreds of thousands of devoted members and repeatedly attracted a third of the votes in German elections; its political leaders campaigned on a platform comprising 25 non-senseless points, including the “unification of all Germans,” a demand for “land and territory for the sustenance of our people,” and an assertion that “no Jew can be a member of the race.” Suffice it to say, many sensible Germans were persuaded.

a reader who doesn't already know that we take for granted in modern society that Nazism was Not Okay would be forgiven for thinking this paragraph and the little piece in general take the populist appeal of Nazism as evidence of some kind of justification. And while yes, I know that there's a difference between "containing sense" and "morally justifiable", but playing that kind of word game when you say that "no Jew can be a member of the race" is "non-senseless" and persuasive to "many sensible Germans" is... unpleasant, to say the least.

(I am well aware of the fact that there are plenty of Jews at NRO, and as much as I despise them in general I would be absolutely flabbergasted if there were anyone on their staff who did not think that the Holocaust was morally reprehensible at every level. But it is still a really weird little piece.)