“Little Eichmanns” and “Digital Brownshirts”

National Review ^ | 3/18/05 | Victor Davis Hanson

[mal]

The effort to remove fascists in the Middle East and jump-start democracy, for all its ups and downs, has been opposed not just by principled critics who bristled at tactics and strategy, but also by peculiarly vehement cynics here and abroad — whose disgust was so often in direct proportion to their relative political impotence.

One of their most hackneyed charges, begun almost at the beginning of this war, has been the Bush/America as Hitler/Nazi Germany comparison. True, fast-changing events in the Middle East recently have left many of these hypercritics either embarrassed, discredited — or desperately reinventing themselves into the “I told you so” crowd. But we should not forget these slurs — nor expect them to disappear entirely inasmuch as they reflect a deep sort of self-loathing among Western elites.

[TigersEye]

Whatever one thinks of Bush’s Iraqi campaign, the president obtained congressional approval to invade and pledged $87 billion to rebuild the country. He freely weathered mass street demonstrations and a hostile global media, successfully defended his Afghan and Iraq reconstructions through a grueling campaign and three presidential debates, and won a national plebiscite on his tenure.

Yeah, but other than that he's EXACTLY like Hitler. /slobbering spittle flecked mantra

[Dallas59]

Those "people" that use those terms could care less about anything else. They are infected with "It's Americas Fault" syndrome. There is never any solution from them...just shot in dark blame.Then they wonder why sKerry lost.

[Dallas59]

In addition, those same "people" support be headings, homicide bombers, assassinations, censorship, communism, government control of the press, government control of speech, government control of business and would willingly destroy all individualism including their own.

[Tolik]

Victor Davis Hanson:

.....Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.

...Entire continents can play this game. If Europe is awash in anti-Semitism, then one mechanism to either ignore or excuse it is to allege that the United States — the one country that is the most hospitable to Jews — is governed by a Hitler-like killer. Americans, who freed Europe from the Nazis, are supposed to recoil from such slander rather than cry shame on its promulgators, whose grandfathers either capitulated to the Nazis or collaborated — or were Nazis themselves.

If the sick analogy to Hitler is intended to conjure up a mass murderer, then the 20th century’s two greatest killers, Mao and Stalin, who slaughtered or starved somewhere around 80 million between them, are less regularly evoked. Perhaps that omission is because so many of the mass demonstrators, who bore placards of Bush’s portrait defaced with Hitler’s moustache, are overtly leftist and so often excuse extremist violence — whether in present-day Cuba or Zimbabwe — if it is decorated with the rhetoric of radical enforced equality.

....But something has gone terribly wrong with a mainstream Left that tolerates a climate where the next logical slur easily devolves into Hitlerian invective. The problem is not just the usual excesses of pundits and celebrities ......, but also supposedly responsible officials of the opposition such as former Sen. John Glenn, who said of the Bush agenda: “It’s the old Hitler business.”

....Is there a danger to all this? Plenty. The slander not only brings a president down to the level of an evil murderer, but — as worried Jewish leaders have pointed out — elevates the architect of genocide to the level of an American president. Do the ghosts of six million that were incinerated — or, for that matter, the tens of millions who were killed to promote or stop Hitler’s madness — count for so little that they can be so promiscuously induced when one wishes to object to stopping the filibuster of senatorial nominations or to ignore the objection of Europeans in removing the fascistic Saddam Hussein?

There is something profoundly immoral for a latte-sipping, upscale Westerner of the postmodern age flippantly evoking Hitler when we think of the countless souls lost to the historical record who were systematically starved and gassed in the factories of death of the Third Reich.

.....The final irony? The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory. In turn, too many of the Left who used to talk about idealism and morality have so often shown themselves mean-spirited, cynical, and without faith in the spiritual power of democracy.

What an eerie — and depressing — age we live in.

    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[kb2614]

It's too bad this article will not be read by those who need to read it. Of course it would probably go over there heads.

VDH is excellent once again.

[CaptRon]

Ignorance and arrogance are a lethal combination. Nowhere do we see that more clearly among writers and performers who pontificate as historians when they know nothing about history.

Great line.

[isaiah55version11_0]

whose grandfathers either capitulated to the Nazis or collaborated — or were Nazis themselves.

ooooooouch!!! Thats going to leave a mark.

When all else fails, read the instructions (CCEL > Bibles and Commentaries)

[Let's Roll]

This VDH essay really takes the left to the woodshed.

This is even more important because I've heard that VDH was considered a liberal - at least at one time. It sounds like he is now tired of lying down with those dogs and getting up with fleas.

On another note, the left doesn't care about "unleashing" the unhinged etc. as long as they can regain power.

[OXENinFLA]

PING...

[Peach]

This is a GREAT read.

[Fred Hayek]

The left will remain out of touch. Just recently Airhead Amerika had some commentary regarding Lebanon. The protestors were supposedly just a small minority right wing extremists (and puppets of Bush), while the majority were backing Hezbollah and the Syrians. Airhead went on about all the good things that Hezbollah was doing - clinics, daycare centers, etc (did they get that "information" from Sen Osama Mamma Patty Murray bin Idiot?).

[TChris]

Superb article!

[L98Fiero]

Thanks for including me on the ping. My liberal high-school buddy will now get new e-mail surprizes. :)

[wizr]

Thanks for the ping. We have finally elected a truly great President. This is a man that would walk the gauntlet to help quell the evil of this world.

What a contrast with our prior 'president', that made decisions by the latest MSM poles.

[wizr]

poles = polls....duh. Need more coffee.

[firewalk]

Thank you

[Hornet19]

I have no idea whether VDH was at one time a liberal or not. The following comment is not directed at VDH.

Dims/Libs are like puppies. They're born into this world with their eyes shut, they whine and whimper to get their needs met. But, when they finally open up their eyes to the world they become conservative and meet those needs on their own.

VDH essays should be required reading at all institutes of higher learning.

[aculeus]

Thanks for posting.

Hanson is so superior to anyone published by the MSM that it is laughable.