Tuesday, January 24, 2012
More Lies About Wilhelm Reich -- This time from the Right-Wing
The following Comment Letter was sent to the online news outlets, Canada Free Press and The Examiner, in reply to a recent slander of Wilhelm Reich by conservative commentator Douglas Gibbs. The article contains a small pile of quite malicious errors, mis-attributing to Reich the authorship of a book he did not write nor contribute to, claiming once again that he was "a member of the Frankfurt Group", and attributing to him an ugly little quotation which was so off from his thinking that it was fully impossible that he could have written it. With a simple internet search, I actually found the original quote, repeated below, in the "Manifesto" of the insane Norwegian mass-murderer, Anders Breivik! The article mis-attributes the words of an insane child-murderer to Wilhelm Reich, a man who devoted his life to defending children!
When informed of the problems in the article, both the author and the editors at these "alternative media" outlets just ignored my comments, either deleting or burying them into a comment section, and nothing was changed in the article itself, which continues now to be indexed and re-quoted by others. I am therefore making the matter public, and encourage others who have the time to make their own efforts to write to those two media outlets, via the weblinks below.
It also underscores another issue I've spoken about previously, that the "alternatives media" (right-wing, left-wing, "populist" or whatever) has its own share of truth-benders, gossipers and angry scribblers, quite happy to lie and slander, and then try to cover-up when caught doing it, being no better in this regard than the "mainstream media".
J.D.
Regarding the article "Political Correctness: Tool of Marxism" by Douglas Gibbs:
Quoting from the Norwegian Killer and Communist Party Hacks!
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/44100
http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-los-angeles/political-correctness-tool-of-marxism
This article is poorly-researched and carries many patently false claims about Wilhelm Reich. Firstly, Reich is not the author of The Authoritarian Personality, which was written by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford, who were all liberal-left in sentiment. And the quote Mr. Gibbs mis-attributes to Reich is equally false and quite malicious, having been written in fact by the insane Norwegian mass-murder killer-of-children, Anders Breivik! Mr. Gibbs wrote:To eliminate the non-Marxist political systems, Reich taught that "the patriarchal social structure would be replaced with matriarchy; the belief that men and women are different and properly have different roles would be replaced with androgyny; and the belief that heterosexuality is normal would be replaced with the belief that homosexuality is 'normal'." (Breivik, 2082 A European Declaration of Independence, p.16)
Reich never said this, nor anything similar. This was from Breivik, and if you don't care to download his entire 1500+ page madhouse screed from internet, the key quote is also part of a discussion posted up at this blog page:
http://johnjenkinsnfdu.blogspot.com/2011/07/anders-behring-breivik-and.html
Reich was a young Marxist in the struggle against Hitlerism, but was expelled from the German Communist Party in 1932, for his criticisms of party leaders and their anti-freedom policies. He was quickly put on an NKVD death list, already being on the Gestapo death-list. Reich became an outspoken anti-communist after the 1930s and remained so until his death in 1957. He was NEVER a member of the "Frankfurt Group" of Freudo-Marxists, who never had a good opinion of him. They considered Reich to be a bad Marxist, notably for his rejection of "class struggle" ideology (the proletariat, he argued, was just as neurotic and sexually impotent as the bourgeoisie).
Reich also had a decidedly heterosexual emphasis, arguing that a loving genital heterosexuality was the "gold standard" for human emotional and psychological health. He defended the rights of young lovers (as with Romeo and Juliet) to have their romances, but also argued that children had to be protected from adult abusers and seducers. He was critical of pornography, but for legalization of divorce, contraception and abortion, which were illegal in his day. His clinical findings opposed the "raw discharge" theory of "anything goes" sexuality as promoted by Kinsey, and he argued that love was a critical ingredient for full sexual gratification. He also argued for decriminalization of homosexuality, even while considering it neurotic. For holding these views, both the Left and the Right tend to have big problems with Wilhelm Reich, both finding things to agree with, and disagree with.
It is one thing to make solid and historically accurate criticisms of Reich, based upon facts. But Mr. Gibbs would quote from an insane killer who machine-guns children by the score, and put those dirty words into Reich's mouth!
Factually, the claims that Reich was some kind of communist pervert is a 1950s smear, fabricated and spread publicly in mainstream media articles and books during Reich's lifetime by the Communist Left. In some kind of strange Orwellian twist, today those old slanders are being unearthed and quoted by the authoritarian religious Right, as if Communist truth-benders are suddenly "OK", if their lies can be put to good use against someone like Reich. Details on that are too complex to present here, but there are full articles on this matter already posted to internet:
New Information on the Persecution and Death of Wilhelm Reich
http://www.orgonelab.org/ReichPersecution.htm
Critical Review of Christopher Turner's Adventures in the Orgasmatron
A Defense of Dr. Wilhelm Reich and his Orgonomic Science
Against Renewed Sexual Slander and Defamation.
http://www.orgonelab.org/DeMeoReviewOfTurner.htm
Mr. Gibbs! Canada Free Press! The Examiner! Have you no shame!
Please correct your ugly little error-filled article, and stop repeating disinformation which comes directly out of the Communist Party, or from insane mass-murderers.
Sincerely,
James DeMeo, PhD
Author of the two linked items above, and many other articles and books on related subjects.
http://www.orgonelab.org/demeopubs.htm
Comments:
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Hello there.
I am a frequent critic of Doug Gibbs' factually challenged rants. Normally he deletes all dissenting comments from his blog, but the last few days he's been referencing mine in his posts and approved yours. I'm quite shocked by that turn of events.
When you wrote;
Mr. Gibbs, either you are a deliberate liar, or a dupe of the worst disinformation sources possible.
I had to laugh.. because I usually phrase that in simpler terms. When I write about him on my blog, I simply ask it as "stupid or lying? My money is on stupid".
The truth of the matter, though, is that Doug really doesn't give much thought to accuracy or truth. He's very much a pragmatist, and will use any material that he thinks advances his cause. He justifies this in thinking that the "other side" does as well so he would be disadvantaged in the argument were he not to use anything available. His thinking is very binary in that sense.
Cheers, great writing you're doing.
Post a Comment
I am a frequent critic of Doug Gibbs' factually challenged rants. Normally he deletes all dissenting comments from his blog, but the last few days he's been referencing mine in his posts and approved yours. I'm quite shocked by that turn of events.
When you wrote;
Mr. Gibbs, either you are a deliberate liar, or a dupe of the worst disinformation sources possible.
I had to laugh.. because I usually phrase that in simpler terms. When I write about him on my blog, I simply ask it as "stupid or lying? My money is on stupid".
The truth of the matter, though, is that Doug really doesn't give much thought to accuracy or truth. He's very much a pragmatist, and will use any material that he thinks advances his cause. He justifies this in thinking that the "other side" does as well so he would be disadvantaged in the argument were he not to use anything available. His thinking is very binary in that sense.
Cheers, great writing you're doing.
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