Surreal moments in political history

[Meursault]

This is a catch-all thread for your favorite bits of political history (American or otherwise) that stand out as bizzare or hilarious.

My favorite has to be the story of Horst Wessel's death. Wessel, a brownshirt who lent his name to the "Horst Wessel Lied", a Nazi marching song, shared an apartment with a live-in girlfriend in Berlin who happened to be a prostitute. He refused to pay his rent to his Communist landlady, who fetched some Communist toughs from a Red-run tavern to teach him a lesson. One of them, another pimp, shot poor Horst to death.

Thirty thousand people, including Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, turned out for his funeral.

[Mordecai]

The Nikita Khrushchev shoe-banging incident at a UN General Assembly meeting.

[rejectamenta]

Luis Carrero Blanco winning Spanish Astronaut of the Year in 1973.

[traininthedistance]

I've mentioned this before on Atlas... but William Wirt, a Freemason, winning the nomination of the Anti-Masonic Party and then giving a convention speech all about how Masons were pretty okay folks.

[Oakvale]

WHAT ABOUT THE DINGELL-NORWOOD BILL

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

This is a catch-all thread for your favorite bits of political history (American or otherwise) that stand out as bizzare or hilarious.

My favorite has to be the story of Horst Wessel's death. Wessel, a brownshirt who lent his name to the "Horst Wessel Lied", a Nazi marching song, shared an apartment with a live-in girlfriend in Berlin who happened to be a prostitute. He refused to pay his rent to his Communist landlady, who fetched some Communist toughs from a Red-run tavern to teach him a lesson. One of them, another pimp, shot poor Horst to death.

A bit of an oxymoron, no?

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

This is a catch-all thread for your favorite bits of political history (American or otherwise) that stand out as bizzare or hilarious.

My favorite has to be the story of Horst Wessel's death. Wessel, a brownshirt who lent his name to the "Horst Wessel Lied", a Nazi marching song, shared an apartment with a live-in girlfriend in Berlin who happened to be a prostitute. He refused to pay his rent to his Communist landlady, who fetched some Communist toughs from a Red-run tavern to teach him a lesson. One of them, another pimp, shot poor Horst to death.

A bit of an oxymoron, no?

If she was a party member then she's just preparing for her role after the revolution.

[Meursault]

She was apparently the widow of a KPD member, though, in fairness, I can't find anything about her views.

[Atlas Has Shrugged]

I'd take Mummar Qaddafi and the Kim dynasty as living embodiments of surrealism.

[PiMp DaDdy FitzGerald]

Tito funding the Stalinist Communists who denounced him in the Greek Civil War while Stalin largely stayed out of the conflict.

[Lincoln Republican]

1986

Lyndon LaRouche candidates win Democratic Party primaries for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State in  Illinois, prompting Adlai E. Stevenson III, the Democratic nominee for Governor, to retire from the ticket and run as an independent.

Hilarious!

[Middle-aged Europe]

A fairly recent one from German politics:

Holger Apfel, federal chairman of the NPD, resigns his position and leaves the party in December 2013 after presumably having been pressured to do so by his "comrades" for being too moderate or something.

Five months later he has emigrated to the Spanish island of Mallorca where he runs a restaurant with his wife (who happens to be an ex-leader of the NPD women's organization) and declares in an interview with a local emigré newspaper that even leftists and foreigners are welcome as guests in his establishment.

What a sell-out.

[Хahar 🤔]

The NPD's membership is 100% government operatives, isn't it?

[Middle-aged Europe]

The NPD's membership is 100% government operatives, isn't it?

The estimate was 15% back in 2002.

And usually a NPD informer just seems to take the Verfassungsschutz's money and then tell them some fairy tales they want to hear. Which is why the informer system is so often criticized: The NPD informers take advantage of the state and not the other way around.

[Paul Kemp]

Eliot Spitzer.

[DC Al Fine]

2008: Stephane Dion, one of the most prominent federalist politicians in Canadian history, tries to form a coalition with the separatist Bloc Quebecois.

[Arturo Belano]

Guatemala: Efraín Ríos Montt, one of the most genocidal dictators of the 1980s, remained free long enough to run in the 2003 Presidential election. He received nearly 20% of the vote in the first round. Interestingly, the majority of his supporters tend to be indigenous Guatemalans, even though they were deliberately massacred by his regime. Oh, and his daughter is a prominent legislator, shameless apologist for her father's regime, is considered a future Presidential candidate, and is married to a former US Congressman.


What the hell.

[Simfan34]

The NPD's membership is 100% government operatives, isn't it?

The estimate was 15% back in 2002.

And usually a NPD informer just seems to take the Verfassungsschutz's money and then tell them some fairy tales they want to hear. Which is why the informer system is so often criticized: The NPD informers take advantage of the state and not the other way around.

"the thing about fascism is that you have to use fascist methods to get rid of it" and all that, I suppose.

[Orser67]

Santa Anna's whole career was pretty bizarre. How does anyone serve as President on 11 non-consecutive occasions?

[Sol]

Guatemala: Efraín Ríos Montt, one of the most genocidal dictators of the 1980s, remained free long enough to run in the 2003 Presidential election. He received nearly 20% of the vote in the first round. Interestingly, the majority of his supporters tend to be indigenous Guatemalans, even though they were deliberately massacred by his regime. Oh, and his daughter is a prominent legislator, shameless apologist for her father's regime, is considered a future Presidential candidate, and is married to a former US Congressman.


What the hell.

Why?

[HankW501]

I had heard this many years ago:  I think it was in or near North Carolina... A certain brand of foot powder was using the tag line "Vote for <the name of the foot powder>" in its advertising.  In one of the local races, the candidates were so unpopular that, reportedly, the foot powder won the election as a write-in.

[Blue3]

Palin.

That happened.

Really.

[Ebsy]

Can't leave out Mel Carnahan beating John Ashcroft from the grave.

[HankW501]

Regarding my reply of 2 June 2015 about the foot powder that won an election, I checked Snopes and learned that it happened in 1967 in Picoazà, Ecuador (I have no idea why I associated N. Carolina with this).  The URL of the Snopes article is http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/footpowder.asp.

[Del Tachi]

Guatemala: Efraín Ríos Montt, one of the most genocidal dictators of the 1980s, remained free long enough to run in the 2003 Presidential election. He received nearly 20% of the vote in the first round. Interestingly, the majority of his supporters tend to be indigenous Guatemalans, even though they were deliberately massacred by his regime. Oh, and his daughter is a prominent legislator, shameless apologist for her father's regime, is considered a future Presidential candidate, and is married to a former US Congressman.


What the hell.

This one is pretty good.