https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/?single=1
Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged.
-Dorothy Thompson, Harper’s, August, 1941
An honorable mention to the runner up, Mr. C, and a shoutout to Mr. D, for proving that meme-magic is real.
Quality sneer.
One of my favorite 40s Harper’s articles.
btw, this piece is amazing, read it like a few years ago. I recommend it.
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