The 1% are treated like Jews during the Holocaust (1 Viewer)

[Homer J Simpson]

Huffpost Article

Letter to WSJ

Venture capitalist Thomas Perkins wrote a letter to the editors at the Wall Street Journal, comparing the plight of the rich to the Holocaust, called "Progressive Kristallnacht Coming?"... and the WSJ published it.

"I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich,'" Perkins writes. Thomas Perkins, one of the founders of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, was comparing taxes on the super rich to the slaughter of millions in the Holocaust.

"From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent," Perkins continues. "There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

Perkins ends his rant with: "This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent 'progressive' radicalism unthinkable now?"

Obviously, there has been backlash to the letter. "It certainly proves you can get rich without being very thoughtful, perceptive, or intelligent," Slate's Matt Yglesias writes.

Presented without comment.

 

[joffer]

couldn't even make it up if you tried.

 

[timschochet]

Those damn progressive Nazis!

 

[DSP]

Those poor 1% s

Boo hoo

I advocate doing to them exactly what the nazis did to the jews

They have been doing the same to us only slower

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

 

[DSP]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

Lmao

 

[Doctor Detroit]

Somebody has always got to write something about something to consider themselves employed I suppose.

That's about as dumb as it gets.

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

Lmao

It's not funny. No idea what kind of animal would laugh at this atrocity.

"history is written by the victors".

 

[DSP]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

Lmao

It's not funny. No idea what kind of animal would laugh at this atrocity.

"history is written by the victors".

Lmfao

 

[Officer Pete Malloy]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

Lmao

It's not funny. No idea what kind of animal would laugh at this atrocity.

"history is written by the victors".

Lmfao

I've now been forced to report you...twice.

 

[Rush Limbaugh Fan]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

Lmao

It's not funny. No idea what kind of animal would laugh at this atrocity.

"history is written by the victors".

Lmfao

I've now been forced to report you...twice.

bad troll is bad

 

[DSP]

I agree with him 100%.

100 years from now people will look back on what we did to the rich and feel shame. I doubt if the Jewish holocaust will even be a footnote.

Lmao

It's not funny. No idea what kind of animal would laugh at this atrocity.

"history is written by the victors".

Lmfao

I've now been forced to report you...twice.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Jesus F'ing Christ will you people just stop responding to him?

 

[rascal]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/news/economy/middle-class-economy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

At around $15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic output than ever before, but it's not the worker that's benefiting. Instead, corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record, whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.

The recovery has been good to families earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely felt it. The richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income gains in the recovery period spanning 2009 to 2012, according to economists at the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Meanwhile, income for the median American family has barely budged in recent years

 

[DSP]

Jesus F'ing Christ will you people just stop responding to him?

Officer pete is my buddy. We are just playing buddy games

 

[Sarnoff]

His point isn't that far off. The rich are hated just for being rich. Class warfare is no different that any other ideological warfare, and has the same root.

 

[DSP]

His point isn't that far off. The rich are hated just for being rich. Class warfare is no different that any other ideological warfare, and has the same root.

The difference is that they are the top rich and destroying the fabric of this country

They deserve to die

 

[DocHolliday]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/news/economy/middle-class-economy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

At around $15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic output than ever before, but it's not the worker that's benefiting. Instead, corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record, whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.

The recovery has been good to families earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely felt it. The richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income gains in the recovery period spanning 2009 to 2012, according to economists at the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Meanwhile, income for the median American family has barely budged in recent years

In most cases, the 1%er did not do anything wrong that is allowing him to become wealthier. They are in the right spot at the right time. It is so easy to make their wealth grow. The stock market boomed in the last few years. They can borrow money at 0% interest to buy real estate which is almost always a great investment.That being said, the comparison to the Jewish slaughter is absolutely wrong.

 

[Ignoratio Elenchi]

I advocate doing to them exactly what the nazis did to the jews

They deserve to die

Good stuff here.

 

[Tom Hagen]

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/24/news/economy/middle-class-economy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

At around $15.8 trillion a year, the United States produces more in annual economic output than ever before, but it's not the worker that's benefiting. Instead, corporate profits now account for their largest slice of that pie on record, whereas the slice for workers has been steadily declining.

The recovery has been good to families earning more than $394,000 a year, but the other 99% of Americans have barely felt it. The richest 1% of American families have captured 95% of the income gains in the recovery period spanning 2009 to 2012, according to economists at the forefront of income inequality research, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Meanwhile, income for the median American family has barely budged in recent years

Goebbels alias?

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

The rich are hated just for being rich.

Yeah, it's a shame someone would ever take a purely ideological stance completely unsupported by the evidence.

 

[Chaka]

His point isn't that far off. The rich are hated just for being rich. Class warfare is no different that any other ideological warfare, and has the same root.

Get back to me when we start rounding them up.

 

[BigSteelThrill]

His point isn't that far off. The rich are hated just for being rich. Class warfare is no different that any other ideological warfare, and has the same root.

 

[TxBuckeye]

Has there been a worse alias on this site EVER? This one is just annoying. Makes me miss Lhucks.

 

[fantasycurse42]

The term one percent is so stupid... It lumps anyone making over like 350-400k into the same group. In reality, it's a small fraction of this group taking in the lion's share.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Hitler built concentration camps specially--made for venture capitalists and hedge fund managers. They were much more luxurious than regular concentration camps, featuring swimming pools, five-star dining, and concierge service.

 

[Lutherman2112]

0-Godwin's Law in nothing flat.

Has to a record of some kind.

 

[Christo]

The term one percent is so stupid... It lumps anyone making over like 350-400k into the same group. In reality, it's a small fraction of this group taking in the lion's share.

At first they came for the 1%, and I said, Hey, it's not really the 1%, it's just the .1%! Take them!

 

[Harry Manback]

Those poor 1% s

Boo hoo

I advocate doing to them exactly what the nazis did to the jews

They have been doing the same to us only slower

Yikes.

 

[Christo]

0-Godwin's Law in nothing flat.

Has to a record of some kind.

Isn't this the anti-Godwin's law? If the first post is a Nazi comparison then the probability can never get higher.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Have to say, unless people are actually talking about an actual genocide, I never, ever accept a comparison of anything to the Nazis and the Holocaust.

To be clear, the title of this post is:

The 1% are treated like Jews during the Holocaust

And HuffPo states in its headline:

Rich Businessman Compares Treatment Of The Rich To The Holocaust

However the letter writer, basically the equivalent of a poster on a board like this, not a journalist, ie just a guy, says this:

Regarding your editorial "Censors on Campus" (Jan. 18): Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich."

From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent. There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these "techno geeks" can pay. We have, for example, libelous and cruel attacks in the Chronicle on our number-one celebrity, the author Danielle Steel, alleging that she is a "snob" despite the millions she has spent on our city's homeless and mentally ill over the past decades.

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

Now, nowhere does he say the comparison is to the Holocaust.

Basically his question, which was a question and not a statement, was whether progressivism could ever approach authoritarianism. Is the answer an automatic "no" there? Obviously there is something going on in San Francisco or maybe at least at the Chronicle to have freaked him out like this.

Here is the actual article he was responding to:

Here’s a less than enthusiastic word of thanks to America’s college administrators. Close to 60% of campuses in 2013 substantially abridged the First Amendment rights of faculty and students. But at least that’s an improvement from 75% in 2007—the year the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (Fire) produced its first comprehensive assessment of the state of free speech on campus.

Assistant books editor Sohrab Ahmari on a new report that shows a majority of America’s colleges abridge First Amendment rights.

The foundation’s latest report shows how elusive the promise of open inquiry remains for most American students. Fire surveyed 427 public and private four-year colleges and says it found 250 speech codes that are facially unconstitutional. These campus policies take such a broad view of speech as “harassment” that any controversial viewpoint is potentially punishable.

Alabama’s Troy University, a public institution, is one of two schools that earned the dubious honor of having promulgated Fire’s 2013 “Speech Codes of the Year.” (The other is Virginia State University.) Troy’s code of conduct prohibits “any comments or conduct consisting of words or actions that are unwelcome or offensive to a person in relation to sex, race, age, religion, national origin, color, marital status, pregnancy, or disability or veteran’s status.”
Note how this definition of offensiveness hinges solely on an accuser’s subjective feeling, though the First Amendment doesn’t distinguish between offensive and inoffensive speech. Many schools also limit student expression to laughably small “free-speech zones,” which often must be reserved weeks or months in advance and after navigating labyrinthine rules.
Some schools even make it difficult for students to learn what their speech-related policies are. Fire reports that Texas Tech University’s Acceptable Use Policy, governing the use of campus IT systems such as email, is password-protected. At Connecticut College, prospective parents and students wishing to learn how the school handles so-called bias incidents will have to wait until enrollment, since the school’s “Bias Incident Protocol” is hidden behind a login page—as is the Student Handbook.

http://www.hannapub.com/ouachitacitizen/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/article_e19bcc14-8389-11e3-8f11-001a4bcf6878.html

In other words, he took the leap that limiting or even eliminating the 1st Amendment is a first step towards authoritarianism, and that demonization of those the top one percent of income is just another step. It's a leap but that's where he was coming from. It was wrong to raise the Nazi example in any event and a bad idea.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

So now I ask, what is the difference between Perkins' letter and this actual piece by an actual journalist, David Leonhardt, published by the New York Times, in which he favorably compares President Obama to Hitler and the Nazis?

Every so often, history serves up an analogy that’s uncomfortable, a little distracting and yet still very relevant.

In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways.

More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across Munich and Berlin.

The economic benefits of this vast works program never flowed to most workers, because fascism doesn’t look kindly on collective bargaining. But Germany did escape the Great Depression faster than other countries. Corporate profits boomed, and unemployment sank (and not because of slave labor, which didn’t become widespread until later). Harold James, an economic historian, says that the young liberal economists studying under John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s began to debate whether Hitler had solved unemployment.

... Last week, the European Union president, Mirek Topolanek ... described the Obama administration’s stimulus plan as “a road to hell.” Here in the United States, many people are understandably wondering whether the $800 billion stimulus program will make much of a difference. They want to know: Does stimulus work? Fortunately, this is one economic question that’s been answered pretty clearly in the last century.

Yes, stimulus works.

When governments have taken aggressive steps to soften an economic decline, they have succeeded. The Germans did it in the 1930s.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/business/economy/01leonhardt.html?_r=0

It seems to me Leonhardt's position was far worse - speaking admirably of the Naziz and Hitler and then lumping in Pres. Obama as someone acting along their lines. It was all the worse because he wasn't some yahoo like all of us but an actual NYT journalist writing a published op-ed for them.

 

[[icon]]

Those poor 1% s

Boo hoo

I advocate doing to them exactly what the nazis did to the jews

They have been doing the same to us only slower

And just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber....

 

[Lutherman2112]

0-Godwin's Law in nothing flat.

Has to a record of some kind.

Isn't this the anti-Godwin's law? If the first post is a Nazi comparison then the probability can never get higher.

Whoa

 

[cstu]

"There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

These 'techno geeks' aren't the 1%.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

"There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

These 'techno geeks' aren't the 1%.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Nos. 21 and 27 on the Forbes world's richest people list, owners of Google.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/XFXI.html

http://www.forbes.com/profile/sergey-brin/

 

[Chaka]

"There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

These 'techno geeks' aren't the 1%.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Nos. 21 and 27 on the Forbes world's richest people list, owners of Google.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/XFXI.html

http://www.forbes.com/profile/sergey-brin/

They weren't on the bus.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

"There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

These 'techno geeks' aren't the 1%.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Nos. 21 and 27 on the Forbes world's richest people list, owners of Google.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/10/XFXI.html

http://www.forbes.com/profile/sergey-brin/

They weren't on the bus.

Yeah, I know that. It's a stupidly written letter (I agree with the Godwin's Law reference for the record, that nails it).

Obviously the protestors in San Fran were not protesting against the people on the bus, they were protesting against the owners of Google.

 

[Long Ball Larry]

Have to say, unless people are actually talking about an actual genocide, I never, ever accept a comparison of anything to the Nazis and the Holocaust.

To be clear, the title of this post is:

The 1% are treated like Jews during the Holocaust

And HuffPo states in its headline:

Rich Businessman Compares Treatment Of The Rich To The Holocaust

However the letter writer, basically the equivalent of a poster on a board like this, not a journalist, ie just a guy, says this:

Regarding your editorial "Censors on Campus" (Jan. 18): Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich."

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

Now, nowhere does he say the comparison is to the Holocaust.

What exactly do you think these refer to?

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

This is the Google bussing controversy in San Fran, and probably what Perkins was referring to.

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/12/09/protesters-block-google-bus-in-s-f-mission/

A group of protesters surrounded and blocked a Google employee commuter bus for more than a half hour Monday morning at a Muni bus stop at 24th and Valencia streets in San Francisco’s Mission District. The buses have, for some, become a symbol of tech-fueled gentrification, economic inequality and soaring housing prices in the city.

The bus, which was headed to Google’s Mountain View campus, had riders on board. A dozen protesters stood around the bus with signs saying “Public $$$$, Private Gains,” “Stop Displacement Now,” “Fine $271, Total Fine $1 Billion,” and “Warning: Two-Tier System.”

The Google bus was parked at a 48-Quintara/24th Street Muni stop. The Municipal Transportation Agency in July proposed a plan to have about 200 Muni stops throughout the city serve as shared stops with private employee buses.

The bus operators — private companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and Genentech — would pay for permits to use the Muni stops, and would give data to the city to help them plan their use. The 200 stops have not yet been selected, said Carli Paine, a project manager with the transit agency.

“We’re planning to go to the MTA board in January with this pilot approach, then we’ll be asking providers to tell us which stops should be included, inviting residents to tell us about specific traffic conditions,” Paine said. “We’d like to establish a network that minimizes impact on Muni and other users and accommodates shuttles in a controlled way.”

The policy is tentatively set to go into effect next summer, Paine said.

...

According to fliers handed out at the protest, the group staging the protest is the San Francisco Displacement and Neighborhood Impact Agency, which seeks to stop “the injustice in the city’s two-tier system where the public pays and the private corporations gain,” according to its website.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Have to say, unless people are actually talking about an actual genocide, I never, ever accept a comparison of anything to the Nazis and the Holocaust.

To be clear, the title of this post is:

The 1% are treated like Jews during the Holocaust

And HuffPo states in its headline:

Rich Businessman Compares Treatment Of The Rich To The Holocaust

However the letter writer, basically the equivalent of a poster on a board like this, not a journalist, ie just a guy, says this:

Regarding your editorial "Censors on Campus" (Jan. 18): Writing from the epicenter of progressive thought, San Francisco, I would call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its "one percent," namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the "rich."

This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendent "progressive" radicalism unthinkable now?

Now, nowhere does he say the comparison is to the Holocaust.

What exactly do you think these refer to?

Yeah, I thought of that. He refers to Kristallnacht; no you're right it's not any different.

 

[Long Ball Larry]

I'm not sure whether that was agreement, disagreement or just general sarcasm.

 

[fatguyinalittlecoat]

Pretty easy to stop being rich if you can't stand the horrible oppression.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

I'm not sure whether that was agreement, disagreement or just general sarcasm.

Genuine agreement.

The distinction I was trying to make (originally) was that the guy is probably afraid that one day there will be a really violent outbreak against the rich (as opposed to saying there would be a genocide). Stupid attempt at distinction on my part about a stupidly written letter. I guess I was trying to parse out what he was really getting at.

 

[DrJ]

He sounds more grounded in reality than the guy that sued God for atrocities. And yet the rabid liberals seemed to be applauding him.

 

[Dr Oadi]

If only Americans knew they were the 1% of the World. No worries though Obama is doing a good job of fixing that injustice.

 

[Christo]

"There is outraged public reaction to the Google buses carrying technology workers from the city to the peninsula high-tech companies which employ them. We have outrage over the rising real-estate prices which these 'techno geeks' can pay."

These 'techno geeks' aren't the 1%.

The protesters don't care:.

Just before Christmas, a window was smashed on a Google bus in Oakland, across the San Francisco Bay. Last week, protesters doorstepped a Google engineer who they claimed was involved in working with the government to develop eavesdropping techniques and “war robots” for the military. “Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation,” they wrote on flyers left near his house. “He is also your neighbor.”

* * *​

“You are not innocent victims,” one flyer directed at tech workers said. “You live your comfortable lives surrounded by poverty, homelessness and death, seemingly oblivious to everything around you, lost in the big bucks and success.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/25/san-franciscos-guerrilla-protest-at-google-buses-swells-into-revolt/

 

[DrJ]

If only Americans knew they were the 1% of the World. No worries though Obama is doing a good job of fixing that injustice.

Pfft. Have you seen how much better their internet connections are? Americans live in digital poverty.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

I will say this, this Perkins guy is just a guy who got his letter published. - I still don't understand why Leonhardt's op-ed piece in the NYT still gets a pass to this day.

 

[DSP]

Those poor 1% s

Boo hoo

I advocate doing to them exactly what the nazis did to the jews

They have been doing the same to us only slower

And just when I thought you couldn't get any dumber....

Ok lets reward treason instead?