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Tim Lambert (deltoidblog AT gmail.com) is a computer scientist at the University of New South Wales.

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Category: surveys
Posted on: April 14, 2004 12:50 PM, by Tim Lambert

The latest quiz to sweep blogspace is this quiz, which tests your ability to distinguish between quotes from comments at Little Green Footballs and quotes from Late German Fascists. Matt Yglesias' post on the quiz triggered an extremely ill-tempered comment thread. In the spirit of my previous quiz pages, this one lets you post your score on the LGF quiz.

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Comments

My correct scores were mainly due to references to "statehood", which clearly alluded to the Palestinians. The rhetoric is pretty much identical

Posted by: John Quiggin | April 14, 2004 6:11 PM

Thanks for the plug, I've given you a reciprocal link on the LGF Quiz blog.

Posted by: Mr. Spock | April 15, 2004 3:12 AM

So, is there a follow up to this quiz that includes Palestinian quotes about Israelis?

Posted by: Slaggingham | April 15, 2004 7:55 AM

LGF reader "mary" has put together an interesting counter-quiz here: http://www.whataretheysaying.org/archives/000872.html

Posted by: Mr. Spock | April 15, 2004 9:10 AM

I was proud of the 100%, but to be honest I only took the quiz after I had already read a lot of comments regarding it, so perhaps I was prepped too much. Anyhow, I thought it was hard and it took me some time, but you could tell the Germans because they made it sound like genocide was a necessary evil, not something fun and easy.

Posted by: Anna in Cairo | April 15, 2004 4:56 PM

Granted, I did use the rule-of-thumb that the Little Green Footballers's comments would be more vulgar and joyful than the Nazis', so that helps explain the highish score. Still, the next time that Charles Johnson denies that he's running a playground for extremists, throw this quiz back at him, and ask -- once again -- how he manages to ban nutbars from the other side, but not his favourite extremists.

He still won't answer.

Posted by: Ian King | April 16, 2004 1:10 AM

Palestinian comments about Israelis aren't relevant here (neither are Israeli comments about Palestinian). The point is that LGF readers -- with Johnson's tacit approval -- are gleefully advocating the eradication of entire peoples. Now, LGF readers are (usually) American, often quite intelligent, can pass for rational on a good day, and held in high esteem by a greater section of the Right than one would hope is possible. That's scary!

I forget who said it (in a comment elsewhere), but the Nazis treated genocide as a duty, albeit one they weren't particularly upset about, and that's bad enough. But LGF readers treat it as if it's a goddamn spectator sport.

Posted by: mark | April 22, 2004 1:58 PM

It seems most scores are fairly high. That would indicate that it's fairly easy to tell the difference between Little Green Footballs and Late German Facists.

Did we prove something here, Mr. Spock?

Posted by: Powderfinger | April 24, 2004 3:10 AM

Hi Powder finger, Most of the feedback I've gotten indicates that it is actually pretty easy to tell the difference if you know what to look for - the Nazi quotes were translated from 1930s-era German speeches and letters and have a certain stiffness and formality about them while the LGFer quotes sound more modern and have a looser, more fluid sort of feel to them - the informal language of native speakers writing off the cuff remarks. Also, there were the contextual clues: the German did not makes references to "giving them a state" while the LGFers do not make appeals to "eternal values" or similarly high-flown abstractions.

Posted by: Mr. Spock | April 25, 2004 3:21 PM

"Mary"'s counter-quiz is kind of nonsensical though since it draws together three separate groups (leftists, greens, and fascsists) who, despite whatever LGFers may think, are quite different with no real overarching philosophical connection.

...Of course, some of the questions totally give it away. (The anti-Rumsfeld comment? Yeah, that's probably an LGFer... NOT! Or the one that explicitly references another LGF by name...)

Posted by: Shapeshifter | August 8, 2005 1:51 PM

Also: i managed an 85% on mr. spock's quiz. The thing to look for is the manner of speaking: the Nazis were articular and their propaganda refined, the LGFers are bloodthirsty racists without the ability to string coherent sentences together.

Posted by: Shapeshifter | August 8, 2005 1:54 PM

Damn! I only got 62% - a D. I hope that speaks to the lack of nuance in both fascist camp statements and not to my inability to tell actual Nazis from keyboarding Nazis.....

Posted by: Ariadne | December 7, 2005 5:51 PM