dolchstoss

Right Wing So Mad About Supreme Court Ruling It's Just Straight-Up Appropriating Nazi Vocabulary

Max Read · 07/02/12 05:16PM

Frequent readers of National Review Online's The Corner might have stumbled over this odd foreign word in contributor Michael Walsh's column about Chief Justice John Roberts: Dolchstoss, which Walsh uses to refer to Roberts' ruling that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Literally translated, Dolchstoss means something like "dagger-thrust," but, like so many other words, this one has a particularly interesting valence. Let's take a look at Kevin Baker's 2006 Harper's article "Stabbed in the back! The past and future of a right-wing myth," shall we?