Wiener-SS-chnitzle

[David Casseres]

Steely sez

>A. Wiener is obsessed with order and the phallic power of the State (Wiener
>the Facist);
>
>B. Wiener maintains fanatical notions about the transcendent potential of
>technology in the tutored hands of scientists and bureaucrats (Wiener the
>Technocrat);
>
>C. Wiener displays an abnormal aversion to "moral anarchy" and sloth, even
>suggesting that in his Nuclear-powered Utopia the slothful would be exiled
>from the community of workers (Wiener the Eliminationist).
>
>Seems Nazi-like to me.

I really think the label "Nazi" should be reserved for participants in 
the very specific ideological/political phenomenon that bagan in Germany 
in the 30's and continues today in several countries in parties that 
openly display their affiliation with the historical German Nazis.  
Wiener and a bunch of others with similar views had their chance to be 
Nazis, but went elsewhere instead.  And using "Nazi" as a general term 
for people whose views one disparages is much too popular a sport today 
among people you don't want to resemble....

"Fascist" isn't really appropriate either.  I don't know that there's a 
good term for the technocratic elitism of so many of those Los Alamos 
guys and their descendants.

>But don't worry, Norbert is in good company. There
>are plenty of American Nazis with similar reputations of democratic purity
>in some halls of academia, the corridors of Georgetown and Yale, in
>particular: Herman Kahn, Henry Kissinger, Edward Teller, and the Blond
>Ghost himself, Theodore Shackley. To name but a random quartet.

All four of those are thoroughly evil in my opinion, but I still think 
"Nazi" is inaccurate.  They are something else (and really not good 
company for Norbert Wiener).

>Speaking of Herman Kahn, I came across this spectacular passage in On
>Thermonuclear War and my sphincter seized at the thought that the man was
>an intimate adviser to the Kennedy Klan: "Objective studies indicate that
>even though the amount of human tragedy would be greatly increased in the
>post-nuclear war world, the increase would not preclude normal and happy
>lives for the majority of survivors and their descendents."
>
>That "objective" sez it all, doesn't it?

Through a bizarre aberration of petty bureaucracy, this psychopath was 
commencement speaker for my college class at Reed in 1965.  It is an 
undying shame that only a few of my classmates protested; the rest of us 
knew no better than to sit there in silent disgust while he droned out 
his mass-murderous drivel, including the bit you quote here; it has been 
stuck in my craw ever since.  No wonder Americans of my age group, once 
we left the college coccoon, tried every damn thing we could think of to 
rid the world of this kind of shit.

Nazi, no, but something utterly evil.  There's more than one kind, I'm 
afraid, and it reinforces my certainty that like Kahn, the Nazis 
themselves were only creatures of the forces that for convenience we call 
Them.


Cheers,
David