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Posted on 09/04/2003 4:04:20 PM PDT by Servant of the Nine
Nazis murdered millions of unarmed people. They put them in ovens. They made soap out of them. They carted off children in boxcars to die and used some of the kids for medical experiments, including injecting dyes into their eyes to see if they could improve their looks. Lower on the list of charges, the Nazis enslaved millions and launched wars for territorial and egotistical gain (and sent many of the conquered populations to death camps as well). Lower still, they banned books and burned them too. They expropriated homes and businesses, banned religions, etc. An intelligent person wouldn't normally assume these are the sorts of facts people forget. It's not quite the same thing as saying that the Mork and Mindy was a spin-off from Happy Days, is it?
I could, of course, get more graphic about what the Nazis did, but I don't much like writing about the Holocaust. It's not merely a depressing subject, its enormity is so depressing, so compacted down with evil and barbarity and cruelty that it folds in upon itself like a black hole. The gravitational pull of its tragedy has permanently bent the trajectory of mankind. Suffice it to say that the Nazis weren't simply generically bad, they were uniquely and monumentally evil, not just in their hearts but also in literally billions of intentional, well-planned, and bureaucratized decisions they made every day.
And yet, in polite and supposedly sophisticated circles in America today it is acceptable to say George Bush is akin to a Nazi and that America is becoming Nazi-like. Indeed, in certain corners of the globe to disagree with this assertion is the more outlandish position than to agree with it.
In the September 1, 2003, issue of National Review, Byron York chronicles (read the piece here) some of the Bushphobia. He writes,
A staple of Bush-hating is the portrayal of the president as a Nazi. That has, of course, been a prominent part of other attacks against other presidents, but today it seems to be deployed with particular aggressiveness against Bush. There are thousands of references, across the vastness of the Internet, linking Bush to Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Do you want to buy a T-shirt with a swastika replacing the "s" in Bush? No problem. Do you want to collect images of Bush in a German army uniform, with a Hitler mustache Photoshopped onto his face? That's easy. Do you want to find pictures of Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge and Ari Fleischer dressed as Bush's Nazi henchmen? That's easy, too.
As York observes, It's not just the intellectual poltroons of the Internet who feign bravery by loudly saying what is patently stupid so that people a fraction dumber than them might mistake it for boldness and conviction. It's not just the masses of undifferentiated cattle who sport their Hitlerfied George Bush T-shirts and who chant slogans with a verve more truly reminiscent of Nuremberg than anything ever uttered by George Bush.
Indeed, "smart" people mouth this nonsense too. Scholars at Berkeley insist that George Bush shares a psychological profile with Hitler. An editorial writer for the Kansas City Star invokes Martin Niemoller's "First they came for the Jews…" mantra to decry the alleged excesses of the Patriot Act. Various Muslim activists are constantly suggesting that they are the Jews of the Nazified America. Almost, everyday I get dozens of e-mails from seemingly intelligent liberals — and a few conservatives — who insist that I "can't deny it" anymore — it's 1933 Germany in America. Retired Princeton University professor Sheldon Wolin writes of the "inverted totalitarianism" of the Republican party — "a fervently doctrinal party, zealous, ruthless, antidemocratic, and boasting a near majority" — as a stand-in for a Nazi party which doesn't need to use "totalitarian thugs" to attain power. He writes:
No doubt these remarks will be dismissed by some as alarmist, but I want to go further and name the emergent political system "inverted totalitarianism." By inverted I mean that while the current system and its operatives share with Nazism the aspiration toward unlimited power and aggressive expansionism, their methods and actions seem upside down. For example, in Weimar Germany, before the Nazis took power, the "streets" were dominated by totalitarian-oriented gangs of toughs, and whatever there was of democracy was confined to the government. In the United States, however, it is the streets where democracy is most alive — while the real danger lies with an increasingly unbridled government.
You may think that's brilliant stuff and that Wolin is a savant. As for me, I'm simply reminded of Walter Bagehot's observation that "In the faculty of writing nonsense, stupidity is no match for genius."
"It's going a bit far to compare the Bush of 2003 to the Hitler of 1933," writes Dave Lindorff in "Bush and Hitler: The Strategy of Fear," which according to York's article appeared in February on the site Counterpunch.org. "Bush simply is not the orator that Hitler was. But comparisons of the Bush administration's fear-mongering tactics to those practiced so successfully and with such terrible results by Hitler and Goebbels . . . are not at all out of line."
In the September issue of Vanity Fair a photo of Richard Perle is placed alongside Joseph Goebbels and the caption asks: "Separated at Birth?" The editors of Vanity Fair ran the pictures because a letter-writer noted a similarity between the two. "Perle isn't the first government official to use deceit and fear mongering to force an extremist, irrational, and ultimately violent view on an entire nation, or globe." In the face of this idiocy the editors of The New Republic were forced to ask: "Does someone really need to explain to Vanity Fair that nothing Perle or President Bush will ever do can invite a comparison to Nazi Germany?"
But The New Republic misses the point. They believe Vanity Fair mistakenly took a "crank" correspondent too seriously. Unfortunately, The New Republic isn't taking Vanity Fair seriously enough. For while it's by no means an extraordinarily serious magazine, Vanity Fair is a near-perfect barometer for what is fashionable and what passes for intelligent conversation among the chattering classes.
Show me the camps. Show me the millions of people being gassed. Show me the tattoos on people's arms. Show me elderly Muslim men being beaten in the streets, their stores smashed, and books burned. Show me huge piles of emaciated bodies stocked high like cords of wood.
Instead, on the web we find juxtaposed pictures of Bush with a dog and Hitler with a dog; Bush posing with children and Hitler posing with children; Bush appearing before large crowds and Hitler appearing before large crowds. By such "standards" every president — every politician — since at least the day photography was invented is a Nazi. To assume the mantle of "reasonableness" — as Lindorff does — by conceding that Bush isn't as good an orator as Hitler was, is to claim soundness of mind by conceding that a clock doesn't melt because vests have no sleeves.
The likes of Wolin and Abbot Gleason are more clever. They, too, say that Nazism is coming, but they don't refer to the Holocaust. They simply mean an illiberal regime with imperial ambitions is in the offing. I think this is ludicrous, too. But it's a different argument. Nevertheless, the intellectuals insist on using Nazism as a way of decrying what they see as American militarism. But comparing America to Nazi Germany in this way is like saying Jonah Goldberg is just like the "Son of Sam" serial killer because they both get lots of parking tickets. To leave out all the genocide and murder is to leave out a pretty important part of the story.
So if you can't show me the death camps and the horror, find another example. Compare Bush to Bismarck or Franco or Mikey from the Life cereal commercials for all I care — because any of those would make more sense.
By the way, I don't say this because I feel a passionate need to defend George Bush. I would make the exact same points if Al Gore were president. I would make the exact same points if anybody running for the Democratic nomination were president. This has nothing to do with partisanship. It has to do with the fact that such comparisons are slanderous to the United States and historical truth and amount to Holocaust denial. When you say that anything George Bush has done is akin to what Hitler did, you make the Holocaust into nothing more than an example of partisan excess. Tax cuts are not genocide, as so many Democrats have suggested over the years. (For example,. during the Contract with America debate, Charles Rangel complained that "Hitler wasn't even talking about doing these things" that were in the Contract with America. In other words, the Contract with America was in some way worse than what Hitler did. At the end of the day, that is Holocaust denial.)
"Darn those Republicans" does not equal "Darn those Nazis." The Patriot Act is not the final solution. The handful of men in Guantanamo may not all be guilty of terrorism, but it's more than reasonable to assume they are. And no matter how you try to contort it, Gitmo is not the same thing as Auschwitz or Dachau. There are no children there. You don't get carted off to Cuba and gassed if you criticize the president or if you are one-quarter Muslim. And, inversely, there was no reasonable justification for throwing the Jews and the Gypsies and all the others into the death camps. The Jews weren't terrorists or members of a terrorist organization. To say that the men in Guantanamo — or any of the Muslims being politely interviewed by appointment — are akin to the Jews of Germany is to trivialize the experiences of the millions who were slaughtered. Even if you think Muslims are being unfairly inconvenienced, when you say they are the Jews of Nazified America you are in essence saying the worst crime of the Holocaust was to unfairly inconvenience the Jews.
But let's stop talking about Nazis.
I hate blue cheese. I mean I hate it. To me, it tastes like death or Al Sharpton's socks after they've been under the fridge for a year. But no matter how much I hate it, no matter how much I loathe its texture and smell and taste, it's still only blue or, if you must, "bleu" cheese. Even if you tripled my hatred for it, it would still just be a musky fromage from the land of cheese, long speeches, and short-lived loyalties. It would not, through the mysterious alchemy of hatred and bile, become poison. Sure, I could call it Sarin or Anthrax but that would not make it so. Because, you see, hating an object doesn't change an object. Only the most arrogant and solipsistic fool would argue or convince himself that his hatred of something increases the importance of that thing.
And that's how I think of all these people who e-mail me insistent that George Bush is a Nazi. They believe they are so important, so noble, their hatred and fear must be rooted things of Great Consequence. It's just so prosaic to hate Republicans. I am better than that. So, Republicans must be Nazis. They must be a threat to the whole world and to the sanctity of everything I hold dear because anything less would not be worth my time. George Bush can't simply be someone I disagree with. No, his popularity must be an indication of mass hysteria, of Nuremberg-style devotion to evil.
So desperate are these people to live in interesting times and play the hero, that they are willing — eager — to topple every significant moral and historical category so they can role play as the Heroes who Would Not Stay Silent. That would be fine if these losers were playing some multisided dice game in their basements. But they're not. There's a war going on and these guys are acting like we're the real enemy. That's not just shameful and stupid, it's unhelpful.
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Yes.(marron)
Do you have any children that you would like to have gassed in order to save your books? A Father or Mother will do if not.
There's a twit at work who piped-up with this "Bush is Hitler" crap and, as the conversation weaved on, it turned out that she didn't know who Herman Goering was.
Any person who you hear say "Bush is a Nazi" may safely, and immediately, be labeled as a "dink".
Not as in "more base".
Excellent point - well worth shouting from the rooftops. Like it or not, our country needs at least two strong, credible political parties to oppose and counter-check each other. By offering up candidates like Dean, who attempt to make a virtue out of frothing, psychotic hatred and contempt for the United States of America, its values and its people, today's Democratic Party utterly fails us on this level, as it does on so many other levels.
FR is chuck full of leftist trolls. In the last few months I have seen quite a number of trolls get zapped who were using sleeper accounts. IOWs accounts that had been set up as far back as '98 and gone unused until recently. When FReepers say things that don't add up don't take it for granted that they are just dense it may well be intentional. This site is under concerted attack by the left.
On the other hand there are quite a few FReepers that are simply dense.
Yes. And the level of shrillness of their lies inversely correlates to the level of belief they perceive their lies are receiving. The psychology of the left is a complex subject.
Given all that's known about the Clinton's I don't think it's paranoia to compare Hitlery to Hitler. After all NAZI stands for National Socialist Party.
Ask any "Effing Jew Bastard" what kind of person illegally procures FBI files on hundreds of colleagues and "enemies" or has someone's cat killed or falsely accuses their staff of federal crimes just to hire someone else in their place.
The Dems have a moral obligation to nominate a better human being.
In 1992, when I saw what the Dems presented as their candidate for president, I changed my registration to Republican. There is no way I can ever support a party whose BEST candidate is a man like Clinton. They're only continuing the tradition with Dean. I would hope that with every extremist pick, they drive more people like me away.
(I agree, Carter was an honorable man, though he seems to have lost some of his honor. He is completely misguided, though.)
It's not the ideology of a few Bush-haters I'm so concerned with, it's the "gathering storm" of lies, deception, and hyperbole designed to persuade feckless, hapless, witless and/or ignorant constituents to "get out the vote" against the evils (Nazi-ism?!) of Bush and the Republicans. It would be pretty difficult to root out every case of "operatives" registering voters in mental institutes, for example, and then helping them vote "absentee". Even voters who are able to "motor" on their own and can afford to buy their own cigarettes may well be unable to discern what is a lie and what isn't. This kind of vicious "Bush=Hitler" propaganda is designed to fool people who aren't intelligent or conscientious enough to think through it and recognize it for what it is before making their "informed decision" and casting their ballot.
Then, aside from these apparently legal tactics, we already know that a number of dead people, pets, and illegal immigrants have voted in past elections, and people with two residences have double-voted. Votes from active military overseas have been thrown out on post-mark technicalities.
The "psy-ops" tactics are targeted and insidious; the "illegalities" in voting are also targeted, and while fraud and deception haven't yet turned a national election, it came very close in 2000.
Holding a certain ideology is a right all Americans have, but the "gathering storm" is the increasing use of unethical and/or dishonest tactics to advance a particular ideological agenda by electing a particular person to a position of some power and/or authority.
To sum up, I would be very wary of anyone's "political machine". It's not true that "cheaters never prosper", at least in this world, and when they do, it's the honest folks who at best get the short end of the stick, and at worst get a Hitler or a Hussein or a Castro... without regard to party, which modern-day American "emperors" from local councilmen to POTUS candidates are the ones with the new clothes?!?!
I think we read the same paragraph differently. "Lower" as in a lesser charge.
bttt w/ the Rummyism
Once again, where in the Constitution does it say you have to pay taxes to practice your First Amendment Rights? Is that a little to difficult question for you?
I'm not sure, but I think you meant to direct this to someone else. This may be a different thread, I'm not sure...
It's not like Clinton didn't give signs of the kind of person he is, and it really wasn't necessary to know about Whitewater or the Rose Law Firm (or the Arkancide rumors) to figure him out. He didn't just tailor campaign speeches for the particular audience; he would say things to one audience that directly contradicted what he had already said to another (e.g. his position on NAFTA). His "I loathe the military" letter and the shenanigans surrounding it. His trip to the Soviet Union while he was a Rhodes scholar, at a time when the USSR did not allow tourism. The incident that really raised the red flags for me was his line re marijuana use: "I tried it, but I didn't inhale." Anyone who knows anything about marijuana use KNOWS that's a lie, and an obvious one. The only people I've ever known who would lie so easily about such trivial matters were psychopaths--and I've seen enough of Bill Clinton to believe that he is one, also.
So why didn't the Democrats keep him out of the presidential running? I didn't know then, and I don't know now. At the time, I was more likely to vote Democrat than Republican, and if Al Gore had been the candidate then, I probably would have voted for him. The fact that the Dems DID support him tells me that this isn't a party I can support, and will probably never support again, unless it changes drastically.
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