So, How Many Jews Have YOU Killed Today?

IntellectualConservative.com ^ | 16 January 2004 | Brian Wise

[presidio9]

Someone please explain: Is President Bush actually Hitler, or are the president, Vice President Cheney, Stud Rumsfeld the First, Tom Ridge, John Ashcroft and Paul Wolfowitz Nazis in the same camp (as it were), or is it that all conservatives are Nazis by nature of a far flung ideological connection to Goldwater and Buckley? Could it be, now stay with me, could it be that the Bush administration represents the upper echelon of the new Nazism and the rest of us are simply SS? Because, see, I’ve been checking the mail, naturally looking for my Death’s Head, and have become concerned it hasn’t arrived. (The disconcerting thing is that now someone, somewhere, will take it upon themselves to break away from the text in order to fire off an electronic mail explaining just who is and who isn’t a Nazi in the Republican party, and why. Save it, stupid.)

At issue here, recent comparisons between the president and Hitler, the administration and Nazism, the World Trade Center collapse and the Reichstag fire, et cetera. Interesting that the same people who would call for the public execution of any white man who used the word “nigger” think nothing of tossing “Nazi” around as though it were a casual insult, like the ones jokingly thrown between best friends in seventh grade. Either words have meaning or they don’t; MoveOn.org posted – and, to its credit, quickly removed – two user-produced political ads flatly comparing the President of the United States to Adolf Hitler, but never thought enough to say, “Look, obviously Bush is not Hitler, so stop it,” only that it didn’t “support the sentiment” behind the ads.

Meanwhile, MoveOn has encouraged its readers to send protests to the Fox News Channel, demanding Liz Trotta’s firing for saying, on The O’Reilly Factor, that the website has ties to the World Socialist Movement. So what are we saying, that being accused of having socialist connections is damn near actionable, but comparing a sitting president with the man who set into motion a device that killed six million Jews is reasonable?

Last September, just before the second anniversary of the Tragedies, someone forwarded along a picture of a poster hanging in outdoor advertising somewhere. (Canada? Not sure.) On the left side of the picture is Hitler, over his left shoulder is the Reichstag, in flames, and the caption “February 27, 1933 / Berlin Reichstag Fire.” To the right is George W. Bush, over his right shoulder is the World Trade Center, in flames, and the caption “September 11, 2001 / WTC / Pentagon Attacks.” Asks the text: “On September 11 / Ask Yourself / When History Repeats … / Do We Notice?”

At the time I was unsure just how prevalent a comparison this was, and wouldn’t have believed it besides. Surely no rational mind would compare the Reichstag fire to the Tragedies; Nazi storm troopers set the Reichstag on fire. It was part of Hitler’s plan to further Nazi control by means of winning elections, in the process superseding Hindenburg’s authority as president. The next morning, Hitler demanded and received from the cabinet a decree to end “the crisis,” which Hindenburg signed. It read, in part, there were to follow restrictions “on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

Whereas President Bush, in the first place, didn’t plan the Tragedies and, in the second place, didn’t undertake a series of movements that will put an end to the checks and balances inherent in American government. What followed instead was the Patriot Act, a combination of good law and bad law, the final product nevertheless coming nowhere near totalitarianism.

“Nazi” isn’t, and shouldn’t be thought of as, acceptable political dissent. To put a reconstructed Nazism on President Bush’s shoulders forces onto his name the specter of unthinkable atrocities; the president has had some very bad ideas – goddammit George, Mars?! – but none of them involved gassing al-Qaeda. Given even that Guantanamo Bay is inconvenient for its residents – despite “religiously appropriate” meals, a Koran for each prisoner, a mat on which to pray and notice of when to do so, in accordance with their religion – Guantanamo has no Zyklon B anywhere on the premises. Not even near the showers.

[smith288]

Meanwhile, MoveOn has encouraged its readers to send protests to the Fox News Channel, demanding Liz Trotta’s firing for saying, on The O’Reilly Factor, that the website has ties to the World Socialist Movement. So what are we saying, that being accused of having socialist connections is damn near actionable, but comparing a sitting president with the man who set into motion a device that killed six million Jews is reasonable?

To MoveOn.org, yes.

[Burkeman1]

Is there anything new about a GOP President or a conservative being compared to Hitler or the Nazis by the Left in this country? It has a long sad history that goes back decades. Perhaps - with the strong outcry over this incident and not to mention how indecent it is to the memory of the victims of Hitler to make such innapropriate comparisons for partisan political gain- it will stop. But I doubt it.

[CalKat]

This is rather disingenuous. Fox News, etc. were just appalled at the Bush/Hitler ad video, but as soon as moveon.org removed it from their website it could be found on the RNC website, Fox News, etc.

Also, Howard Dean is often called Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, etc. And let's not forget Rush Limbaugh's moniker for Dean, Nikita Dean. Both sides do this.

[presidio9]

And the Nazi party was a socialist movement is conveniently forgotten.

Sort of like how the GOP freed the slaves and fights for a color blind society, but we are somehow the "racists."

[Argus]

The lineage of the phony "Nazi" charge goes back to the era of the "Popular Front" and Stalin's order to the Comintern to smear anti-Communist Social Democrats as "Social Fascists". At the same time, he ordered the German Communist Party to cooperate with Hitler's National Socialists in the Reichstag to freeze out his rivals on the left. This is an infallible method of distinguishing the Communists from other garden variety leftists - the former invariably call everybody who doesn't agree with them "Nazis" or "fascists".

[JeeperFreeper]

Thanks for post. The irony, hypocrisy and danger of the leftists' slander is that anti-semitism is actually taking root, thriving and gaining adherents on the leftside of the political spectrum( particularly in Europe), albeit couched in terms of zionism. These leftists' goals are increasingly similar to those of the Third Reich's.

[The GOPer]

Oh, come on guys, we do the same thing. I was having this argument with a friend and he emailed a Washington Post article from 2000, which contained this:

For example, retiring Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage (R-Idaho), commenting on one of Clinton's national monument designations, said, "This president is engaging in the largest land grab since the invasion of Poland."

Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) went a bit further a couple of weeks ago when Clinton designated Arizona's Ironwood Forest a national monument. "I would draw a parallel to Hitler," Shadegg said. "He eroded the will of the German people to resist evil."

Our favorite is Arkansas Republican Rep. Jay Dickey's recent fundraising letter reminding supporters they can give him $1,000 for the primary and another $1,000 in the general election campaign. He doesn't want anyone to "later . . . say to me that I should have reminded you of the threats," he said.

"Just as people who read Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and then later were surprised at the evils of the 3rd Reich [sic]," Dickey said, "we have the blueprint for what the White House plans to do: defeat me! This is because I not only dared to vote my conscience on the impeachment issue, but dared to do it after a publicly expressed threat that I would lose the election if I did. Are we going to let an astounding abuse of power go unanswered?"

And I had to laugh, because he pretty much had me there.

[Gorjus]

And let's not forget Rush Limbaugh's moniker for Dean, Nikita Dean. Both sides do this.

First, Nikita Kruschiev, from which the moniker comes, has never been accused of deliberate genocide - not even the attempt. So comparing a socialist to another socialist is hardly the same as comparing the President to a mass murderer.

Second, the whole right-left spectrum of politics is just wrong. The real axis is one of individual rights and authority versus collective rights and authority. On that scale, National Socialism (Nazism) and International Socialism are the same (especially since Lenin modifed Marxism to include a provision that the homeland of socialism must be protected - which changed that philosophy into a very nationalistic form of socialism). And on that scale, Bush is a moderate, while Dean is an extremist in favor of all rights being collective (hence his desire to 're-regulate' the American system) - so once again, the comparison of Dean to an avowed socialist like Kruschiev is valid, while comparing Bush to a the-state-has-all-authority extermist is in appropriate.

If you can't see the difference, then you're probably either a socialist or in the media. (Oops, a false dichotomy.)

[presidio9]

The GOPer
Since Jan 16, 2004

You signed up today so that you could equate three off the cuff comments with a delibrate mass media ad campaign that makes a detail comparison of Bush to Hitler?

Nope. not buying it. Your examples are not the moral equivalent of the moveon.org ads. And I suspect you know it.

[Burkeman1]

You have a point. MoveOn.org is a private group and Limbaugh as well and we usually hold them to different standards. But what would be the reaction if a conservative GOP Senator called Ted Kennedy a Marxist in the press? He would be savaged as a "McCarthyite" and a "red baiter". But Kennedy as have far to numerous Elected Democrats made numerous Nazi, fascist, Hitler, and KKK comparisons against their elected opponenets that I wouldn't even know where to begin.

[Poohbah]

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[Burkeman1]

Not to be a jerk- But Nikita Kruschev was the apparatchik under Stalin who oversaw the Great Terror in the Ukraine. He is resposnisble for hundreds of thousands of tortures and deaths.

[jalisco555]

First, Nikita Kruschiev, from which the moniker comes, has never been accused of deliberate genocide - not even the attempt

I'm going from memory here so I may be wrong but I remember reading that Kruschev was an important Communist Party official in the Ukraine during the Stalin-induced famine and was actively involved in enforcing government policy. Therefore he was guilty of participating in the deliberate genocide of the Ukrainian people.

[Restorer]

Nazi storm troopers set the Reichstag on fire. It was part of Hitler’s plan to further Nazi control by means of winning elections, in the process superseding Hindenburg’s authority as president.

Most historians today discount this theory. Apparently the arson was as big a surprise to Hitler as to everybody else. Although he quickly took advantage of it, the evidence is pretty clear that he didn't plan it.

No ethical reason, obviously. He just didn't think of it.

[RebelBanker]

Please correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't it Nikita Kruschev that is remembered primarily for banging his shoe on his desk in the UN?

I think that is the source of the "Nikita" handle for Dean.

[dighton]

Oh, come on guys, we do the same thing. I was having this argument with a friend and he emailed a Washington Post article from 2000 ...

Welcome to FreeRepublic. That "we" is kinda cute, and so's your friend.

[The Grammarian]

If you can't see the difference, then you're probably either a socialist or in the media. (Oops, a false dichotomy.)

I resent that remark. I'm the latter, but not the former. I would also disagree that the authoritarian/libertarian axis is the "real" political axis. Culture is involved in politics too much not to say that it has an important place in the political process. "Conservative" doesn't equate to "libertarian," even if they sometimes overlap.

[Burkeman1]

Nikita was in charge of the Great Terror in Ukraine from 1936 to 1939. Perhaps a million died by execution or from deprivation in the camps because of him. Lazar Kaganovich was the henchmen Stalin put his trust in to conduct the Terror Famine of Ukraine several years earlier which killed anywhere between 4 and 7 million in a year and a half. 1932 being the worst. Kruschev was a protege of Kaganovich and most likely had his hands dirty as well in the terror famine. Lazar Kaganovich died on a robust Soviet Pension in an apartment on Moscow's elite Arbat Street that leads up to Red Square in 1991. No charges were ever seriously considered against him.

[presidio9]