JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, JFK, GRAHAM PLATNER SMILE: Kennedy Heir and House Candidate Jack Schlossberg Performed Nazi Salute in Since-Deleted Swipe at Elon Musk.

Jack Schlossberg, a Kennedy family scion and Democratic primary candidate for New York’s 12th Congressional District, performed a Nazi salute in a since-deleted Instagram video reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

“Yo, yo, check this out,” Schlossberg said repeatedly into the camera as he performed the salute multiple times.

Schlossberg posted the video—since scrubbed from his social media—in January, likely intending to mock Elon Musk. The billionaire was the subject of controversy that same month when critics accused him of making a Nazi salute while telling an audience, “My heart goes out to you” during a rally celebrating President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

I’m not sure why a Kennedy scion would want 21st century voters to be reminded of his family’s embrace of post-Weimar Germany and its ethos over the years: Joseph Kennedy, American Fascist.

In this meticulous, relentless biography, Joseph P. Kennedy is now firmly established in the annals of twentieth-century fascism. When he arrived in England in early 1938, he quickly found a home among the ruling elite who believed, as Susan Ronald puts it, that “fascism was the cure for communism.” Notwithstanding FDR’s unprecedented provocation of sending an Irishman with no diplomatic skills to Great Britain, Kennedy immediately sided with Prime Minister Chamberlain and the appeasers, believing that any deal with Hitler—no matter how humiliating and lethal to the lives of millions—was preferable to war. Kennedy never stopped believing that Hitler could be bought off, that businessmen could do business with fascists.

But appeasement, in and of itself, is not, of course, a form of fascism. Even Neville Chamberlain eventually realized that Hitler’s cruel lust for power could not be satiated by offering so much of Europe to his suzerainty. FDR understood that Hitler could not be appeased and became increasingly wary of Kennedy, but kept him in England because the President felt the Ambassador’s defeatist attitudes would demoralize the American people and undermine democratic life. Kennedy, on his leaves home, lectured FDR and said “very frankly” that the United States “would have to come to some form of Fascism here.” He did not believe Great Britain could survive a war against the fascist powers and that America would become increasingly isolated and lose control of its markets if FDR’s government did not take over control of the economy to counter Hitler’s hegemony over his capitalists. Kennedy proposed that the President “organize a small powerful committee under himself as chairman and this committee would run the country without much reference to Congress.”

Kennedy thought solely in terms of economics. Although he said he cared about the fate of Jews and persecuted minorities, in the end he thought they would have to be sacrificed for the greater good of the United States and its allies. Like Hitler, Kennedy believed in a Jewish cabal, which had thwarted him and that was intent on instigating incidents that would draw America into a disastrous war. “To defeat fascism,” Kennedy argued in a memorandum, the United States would “have to adopt totalitarian methods” and strike deals with dictators.

When the war actually began, Kennedy remained defeatist, proclaiming to journalists, to his British colleagues, and to FDR himself that Great Britain was finished as a world power and that a German invasion of the UK would succeed. Even after the heroic RAF victories during the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, Kennedy predicted defeat. In short, he never acknowledged that the will, the spirit, or the values of the democracies would triumph in war. Democracy, he insisted, would be vanquished.

Like father, like sons: Did John F. Kennedy Admire Adolf Hitler?

John F. Kennedy admired Hitler as a young man and felt fascism was right for Germany, according to a new book in German that mines the future president’s diaries.

According to Spiegel Online’s article on the book, the 20-year-old Kennedy pondered on August 3, 1937: What are the evils of fascism compared to communism? On August 21 he added that the Germans had been ganged up on.

The book is “John F. Kennedy Unter Deutschen” (“John F. Kennedy Among the Germans”) – featuring travel diaries and letters between 1937 and 1945. The work, edited by Oliver Lubrich, documents three visits by Kennedy to Germany – in 1937, 1939 and 1945. “At first glance, one could get the impression that Kennedy endorsed fascism and even admired Hitler,” Spiegel writes.

Bobby Kennedy’s Fascist Moment: “If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.”

CHANGE: After road deaths, Trump administration moves to stop California from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.

On Wednesday, the federal Department of Transportation took action against California. “U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean P. Duffy announced today that the California Department of Motor Vehicles has admitted to illegally issuing 17,000 non-domiciled Commercial Drivers Licenses to dangerous foreign drivers,” the department said in a press release. “Thanks to the Federal Motor Center Safety Administration’s ongoing audit, each of these licenses is being revoked.”

Duffy placed the blame squarely on California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and the state’s lenient policies. “After weeks of claiming they did nothing wrong, Gavin Newsom and California have been caught red-handed,” Duffy said in a statement. “Now that we’ve exposed their lies, 17,000 illegally issued trucking licenses are being revoked. This is just the tip of the iceberg. My team will continue to force California to prove they have removed every illegal immigrant from behind the wheel of semitrucks and school buses.”

Newsom denied any problems with California’s system but has gone along with the revocation of the 17,000 licenses. The governor’s spokesman mocked the secretary as Sean “Road Rules” Duffy, a reference to his appearances on an MTV reality show 27 years ago. Newsom’s spokesman also accused Duffy of lying “in a sad and desperate attempt to please his dear leader,” using a favorite Resistance phrase for President Donald Trump.

People died, Newsom enabled it — which is cause for amusement, apparently.

IT’S COME TO THIS: ‘Utter Stupidity:’ Conservatives Appalled by Tucker Carlson’s Latest Target.

Tucker Carlson has his newest target: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi, Christian evangelist executed by the Third Reich in 1945.

In the latest episode of his show, which was dedicated to denouncing Jewish-American commentators Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, Carlson remarked that “once you start calling people Nazis, we really have no choice but to start shooting them. To be Dietrich Bonhoeffer and sort of reach the end of reason, or even Christianity. Bonhoeffer decided Christianity’s not even-, he was a Lutheran pastor. Christianity is not enough, we have to kill the guy [Adolf Hitler]. I’m not judging Bonhoeffer, who was a great man in some ways, but that’s inevitable once we decide that people are Nazis.”

Bonhoeffer was part of anti-Nazi German resistance movement, as well as an underground Christian community during Hitler’s reign. Bonhoeffer was arrested in April 1943 for helping 14 German Jews escape to Switzerland. It is a matter of historical debate what role, exactly, Bonhoeffer played in the famous, failed plot to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

Needless to say, many on the right were stunned by Carlson’s criticism of the Christian icon.

To be fair, it’s the next “logical” step in Tucker’s journey, after declaring Churchill WWII’s baddy last year.

 

Or as America’s Newspaper of Record reports:

FOR I’M ALL AT SEA (WITHOUT A PADDLE):  An Humble Bleg!

I’D COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN THESE SELF-LOBOTOMIZING SPECIMENS UNTIL I STUMBLED ON THIS TODAY — AGAIN:  Thousands of Authors Pledge to Boycott Israeli Cultural Institutions.

Most of them are people you never heard of. Most of them are succès d’estime at best and academic darlings at worst. But, I regret to say there are some well-selling science fiction authors in the lot. Including a few I thought had more sense. Ah well.

THE BBC DEFINITELY ISN’T CRICKET, CHAPS:  BBC-ed.

OPEN THREAD: Just do it.