Friday, March 29, AD 2024 4:36am

Mark Shea and the Brownshirt Smear

As Mark Shea continues his sad journey to the looney left, he has developed the habit of calling those who disagree with him Nazis or seeking to associate them with Nazis.  A case in point:

Austrian Nazis to attend inauguration…at the invitation of Catholic congressmand Steve King.

God’s Name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you, Mr. King.

This will be today’s thing for Catholic Trump supporters to defend instead of the unborn and the Faith.

And so it will go for four long years.

Or you could just stop defending every filthy thing Trump and his toadies do and say and get back to defending the Faith and the unborn.

Go here to read the comments.  I was imagining brown shirted and lederhosen clad Austrian legions goosestepping through downtown Washington.  I was crest-fallen to learn that Shea was actually referring to the Austrian Freedom Party.  Founded by a Nazi in the 1950s, it is a rather conventional center-right European party.  Except for their opposition to immigration, the Freedom Party would on our political spectrum be moderate Democrats, and about as much Nazis as the members of a Rotary Club in our country.

Austin Ruse in a post at Crisis tells what happens when he pointed this out to Shea:

 

I recently came under a blog-swarm (though not on blogs rather on Facebook), but the swarmers were mostly bloggers who I will not name except to say they fashion themselves as Über-Catholic Defenders of Francis-Destroyers of Nazis-Creators of the One True Church of Pro-Life-and-Wrath of the Old Guard.

I forget exactly how it began except with a Facebook post nitpicking something Donald Trump had done. Never Trumpers still sit in the caves of the Pacific with their field glasses trained on the enemy and whenever Trump does even the littlest thing they judge to be wrong they shout, “See, see, we told you” or “Isn’t it interesting that Trump would (fill in the blank).”

In this situation I usually prefer to ask a question and have the unhappy fellow defend the silly nitpicking. But, in this case, from out of nowhere, The Thing That Used to be Catholic Apologetics lumbered through the underbrush and grunted “So do you defend Trump meeting with Nazis?” or something to that effect.

So, here we have Trump meeting with actual goose-stepping Nazis? I had to admit I had missed that and had to inquire, “Huh? Wuh?”

“So you defend Trump meeting with Nazis?”

 

 

 

 

I have to admit I had a little fun with this great Defender of the Faith.

“Did he wear a uniform to the meeting?”

He did not appreciate my making light of such a serious situation as Nazis marching into Trump Tower on 5th Avenue at 59th Street in Manhattan during broad daylight under the watchful eye of the world’s media and NO ONE KNEW!

After some prodding, it turns out that Heinz-Christian Strache, a trained dental technician (don’t make fun, especially if you haven’t seen the Nazi dentist Laurence Olivier drilling the teeth of Ph.D. student Dustin Hoffman in the movie Marathon Man), says he met with National Security Advisor Mike Flynn in Trump Tower. Strache is the head of something called the Austrian Freedom Party that recently came very close to winning the Austrian national elections.

Right away, note that the Great Catholic Truth-Teller’s claim that Trump met with Nazis is false. It was Flynn who met with the Nazi. But is that even true? It is unclear that a meeting took place. Strache says it did; the Trump camp says no.

But the far more interesting question: Is Strache a Nazi and is his Freedom Party a Nazi Party? And this is the rat hole I let myself be taken down and it was in that rat hole I was swarmed by the Über-Catholic Defenders of Francis-Destroyers of Nazis-Creators of the One True Church of Pro-Life-and-Wrath of the Old Guard.

The Thing That Used to be Catholic Apologetics put the exchange up on his own Facebook page and though he did not use my name, my name was bandied about in the comment boxes and it would have been clear to anyone that he was talking about me and that I was defending Nazis.

He wrote,

Pro-life/Pro-family Catholic Leader Pro-tip … it is highly inadvisable to engage in protracted, screencappable discussion in which you passionately defend Austrian Nazis and the Trump Administration cozying up to them. People see you. And they have jpg images of your breathtaking defense of these racist clowns…

For a good long while I read the mocking attacks and utter misrepresentations about what I had done, which was only to ask him to make the case that the Austrian Freedom Party is a “Nazi Party.”

And then I joined the thread to defend myself from what I saw and see as scurrilous attacks on my reputation. This man and his followers, with potentially 5,000 Facebook “friends” watching, went on for more than a day to claim I was defending Nazis and was no better than a Nazi myself.

I asked over and over and over for them to make their case that the Freedom Party is a Nazi Party. I granted to them that it was founded by an ex-Nazi in the mid-50s. But I pointed out so was our own rocket program that became NASA. Ever heard of Werner von Braun? There were many ex-Nazis who founded our rocket program but this does not make NASA a Nazi program. The first Austrian government after the war had many ex-Nazis in it. The Socialists had more ex-Nazis than the tiny Freedom Party.

I asked them repeatedly for evidence that the party has Nazi proclivities now, not 60 years ago. Wikipedia mentions something about “Austrian identity” and this was offered as proof. But the article does not explain what that means. Little-traveled Americans tend to see the whole world through their own prism and the blog-swarm heard there is a “white identitarian” movement somewhere here in the states and therefore this must be the same thing. Bingo. Nazi. Nothing more to see here. I asked: could it be that as more and more EU countries get subsumed into the European Union, it could have something to do with the party’s Euro-skepticism? I asked whether it could have something to do with Austria’s historically uneasy relationship with Germany, and Austria’s wish to forge its own identity? Could it possibly have anything to do with the Anschluss, the 1938 annexation of Austrian by Nazi Germany? Haven’t any of you even seen The Sound of Music? Nope. It could only be “white supremacism.”

 

Go here to read the rest.   I do feel sorry for Mark actually.  The world is a very complex place and for members of a cult, and the left wing is most certainly a cult, that is a very inconvenient fact.  People cannot disagree with a cult out of principle or from a different point of view.  Nope, to disagree is to be base and evil.  The chief demonic figures for the left are Nazis, and thus those who disagree with them must either be Nazis or somehow associated with Nazis.  Not all the leftists view the world this way, but a sizeable number do, and Mark Shea, former Catholic apologist, is clearly marching now among their ranks.  Sad.

 

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Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 1:12pm

The course divisions of Austrian politics have since the beginning of the 20th c. been between Catholics, Socialists, and a ‘third force’. The third force during the interwar period was a miscellaneous collection of parties of which the largest was the Pan-German People’s Party. During the Depression, pan-German parties in central Europe were consumed by Nazi sentiment quite rapidly. It happened in Austria, in Danzig, in German Bohemia and the Sudentenland (much as Germany itself was between 1929 and 1933). After the war, Austria’s conventional camps re-assembled, including the 3d force (sporting it’s more conventional pre-Depression inclinations). Huge blocs of the population in Germanophone Europe had belonged to one or another Nazi organization – the Nazi Party itself, the Waffen SS, the Hitler Youth, or the more informal clubs for which Kurt Waldheim and Elisabeth Noelle Neumann were raked over the coals. So, you had quite a mess of people in the post-war period who had shady pasts joining the Freedom Party. The Freedom Party itself was not remarkable in its advocacy. It doesn’t seem to occur to Shea that anyone old enough to have joined the Hitler Youth would now be 86 years old.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 1:26pm

The specific person Shea complains about is Hans Christian Strache, who was born in 1969 and has never had any Nazi affiliations. The Freedom Party’s signature for 20 years or more has been Euroskepticism. Maybe Shea thinks Nigel Farage is a Nazi.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 2:10pm

Deliver us, O Lord, from the wrath of Mark-who.

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 3:09pm

To make it funnier, Mark recently linked that crisis magazine piece again with the words,

or rationalizing the fact that Trump seeks ties with Austrian Freedom Party, an ethnonationalist party literally founded by a Nazi (and invited its head to the inauguration) is a stain and nothing but a stain on the honor of the Church.

By that logic I guess all Christians are really Jews since Christianity was founded by a Jew, eh?

It’s almost comical how sloppy he’s gotten in his thinking. He’s clearly never left protestantism, instead just replaced “sola scriptura” with “sola pope-a” and “sola Shea” – with a side dash of “sola bumper-stickeras.”

David
David
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 3:25pm

I’m sure that Winston Churchill would have been decried as Hitler in his day, that is if Winston were alive today.

DJH
DJH
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 4:15pm

Hmmm, Pope Benedict, way back when, was part of the “Hitler Youth”? Mark S ever complain about that?

Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 7:22pm

I am sorry that I have nothing positive to say about Mark Shea. Giving this man publicity only worsens his unstable mental condition.

Mary De Voe
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 7:52pm

LQC: People need to know.
Is Trump meeting with Mark Shea?

Mary De Voe
Thursday, February 9, AD 2017 8:07pm

Father Jerzy Popieluszko and Saint John Paul II have been forgotten by academia.

Dave Griffey
Dave Griffey
Friday, February 10, AD 2017 1:43pm

Mark shouldn’t be listened to or referred to at this point. He is spiritually dangerous. He sins and advocates sin through slander and lies, and he boldly does what he has condemned others for doing. He misrepresents people and puts words in their mouths to justify his attacks and calumny. And he is grossly inconsistent, condemning or excusing and downplaying good or bad, right or wrong, blasphemy and immorality or orthodoxy depending on his personal opinions about the individuals in question. That is, if Mark likes you, you can pretty much advocate even the worst and most vile evils imaginable, but he’ll downplay, excuse or dismiss it. But if Mark doesn’t, you can agree with Mark and he’ll still find purpose to condemn. That is a dangerous person to have as a representative of the Faith, and it does the Church no credit that so many leaders and known voices for the Faith lift him up and cheer him on. Mark’s entire ministry has become a very near occasion of sin, and thus should be avoided at all costs. He needs our prayers, as do those who lift him up to buttress their own sins, and those who are led to sin by his methods.

Steve D.
Steve D.
Friday, February 10, AD 2017 4:21pm

Dave Griffey,
Your description of Shea sounds a lot like our pope! Remember when Bergoglio compared Trump to Nazis after the inauguration? No wander Shea’s had a love affair with Begoglio since day one. Well said.

Nate Winchester,
I’ve often said that Protestant converts like Shea never really converted to Catholicism, just a Protestant Church with sacraments. The book “Forming Intentional Disciples” is a good example of this dangerous phenomenon.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, February 11, AD 2017 12:44am

Nate-
There’s actually a much better case that all Christians are Jews– don’t we have a Jewish Mother?

We’re all carpenters. 😉

William P. Walsh
William P. Walsh
Sunday, February 12, AD 2017 12:05pm

It is hypocritical for those on the Left to insinuate Nazi sympathies in the Trump camp as their precious over-privileged collegiate youth squads reenact Kristallnacht in protest against free speech. How explain the violence in response to Trumps election? As the devils are cast out of the body politic, they writhe and shriek.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Monday, February 13, AD 2017 1:22pm

When everybody with whom Mark-who disagrees is a Nazi, nobody is. Rejoice and be glad when they shriek “Nazi” or “racist.” You are winning.

Micha Elyi
Micha Elyi
Thursday, February 16, AD 2017 4:40am

Remember when Bergoglio compared Trump to Nazis after the inauguration?
Steve D.

Nope, I recall no such thing. I do remember there was a lot of Fake News outlets claiming such a thing. Yet when I examine the reports for Pope Francis’s own words, I find that he didn’t mention Trump at all.

Pro tip: The New York Times is not your Magisterium, Christians.

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