Posted on 08/11/2009 4:01:20 PM PDT by SJackson
WASHINGTON – During live television coverage of the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, novelist Gore Vidal famously called William F. Buckley a “crypto-Nazi.”
Buckley later said: “I do not believe that anyone thought me a Nazi because Vidal called me one, but I do believe that everyone who heard him call me one without a sense of shock, without experiencing anger, thinks more tolerantly about Nazism than once he did, than even now he should.”
In recent weeks, left and right have employed the Vidal tactic. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused town-hall protesters of “carrying swastikas,” leaving the impression they were proud Nazis — when, in fact, a few protesters carried signs accusing Barack Obama of having Nazi aims (bad enough).
Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, declared the protesters guilty of “Brown Shirt tactics.” Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., compared America under Obama to Germany in the 1930s. Rush Limbaugh talked of “similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany.”
The accusation is a staple of American T-shirt and bumper-sticker political culture, found too often at liberal anti-war protests and conservative tea parties. Anyone with a black felt pen, and the ability to draw a Hitler moustache on a poster, can make this witty, trenchant political statement. Michael Moore compared the Patriot Act to “Mein Kampf.” Al Gore warned of “digital Brown Shirts.”
This rhetorical strategy is intended to convey intensity of conviction, as in, “I am very, very, very serious, you Nazi jerk.”
Actually, it is a lazy shortcut to secure an emotional response. Worse than that, it is an argument that puts an end to all argument. What discourse is possible with the spawn of Hitler? And when someone is unjustly accused of Nazi tactics or sympathies, what response can we expect other than Buckley’s outrage? Let the head knocking begin.
The Vidal tactic undermines the “special reverence we need to feel for that which is hateful.” Nazism is not a useful symbol for everything that makes us angry. It is a historical movement, unique in the ambitions of its cruelty.
Those who doubt this uniqueness should read Saul Friedlander’s “The Years of Extermination,” which records the Nazi terror with the same meticulousness that the Germans displayed in producing it. Nazism was the “beard game,” in which the beards and sidelocks of Jews were pulled off or set afire before audiences of cheering soldiers. It was the practice of making elderly Jews dance around a fire of burning Torah scrolls. It was whole orphanages deported to death camps, and pits full of corpses, and ancient communities erased from human memory, and death factories issuing a thick smoke of souls, and a mother trading her gold ring for a glass of water to give her dying child.
Many who study these events think silence the only appropriate response. “There is nothing,” says scholar Lawrence Langer, “to be learned from a baby torn in two or a woman buried live.”
But it is our nature to attempt to wrestle meaning from catastrophe. So we draw lessons about the poison of racism, the dangers of blind obedience to authority, the corruption of grand schemes of social purity, the shallowness of civilization in “civilized” nations, and the hatred hiding within ordinary men and women.
These lessons are relevant to politics. But they are trivialized when applied to Obama’s health insurance reform plan or the conduct of disorderly town-hall protesters. The burning of the Reichstag and Kristallnacht are not arguments against a single-payer health plan or against the Patriot Act.
For the survivors of Nazism, memory is a kind of sacred duty. The Vidal tactic desacralizes those memories – shrinking them to the size of our political agendas and robbing them of their power to shock and teach. The history of those times should be approached with fear and trembling, not mocked with metaphor.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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Gerson and Buckley are correct. Other than in limited circumstances, with knowledgeable individuals. Which doesn't happen that often on the internet, far less in the voice media, politicians, enough said.
And Obama is so wrong on the issues, and people recognize that, why bother.
The trouble here is the shoe, and the rhetoric, fits.
No, not yet anyway.
But a fascist government like ours might be.
Consider the totality of the Reich. It doesn’t fit in America. Pointing to limited similarities, for example the treatment of the disabled, that doesn’t cut it.
Makes fun of the Special Olympics.
Gets mad at Sarah Palin for not aborting a downs syndrome child.
Kills unborn babies by the millions and burns them in ovens.
Pushes for “end of life” directives in a “Health Care” bill.
Pushes for abortion funding, with taxpayer dollars. Hires Ezekial Emanuel, brother of Rahm, a man who wants to get rid of the Hippocratic Oath and kill off the old and the disabled.
Hires Kathleen Sebelius, who was bankrolled, in politics, by Killer George Tiller.
This side ALSO tries to silence debate, and calls in thugs to beat up those who disagree with the statists.
The NAZI term is justified and it fits.
There are in fact actions the left is taking that is exactly like the course of the early NAZI movement.
Something for the mid-east ping.
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com
We don't have a fascist government. He won't be able to establish one. People will rise up, even if they're all being paid by unnamed health care companies that Obama already bought off.
If you limit your perspective to the early mid 30s, the similarities are plenty.
The only retort that Socialists have to being CALLED socialists is to claim the “other side” to be “fascists” and “nazis”. Except Nazis too were National Socialists. And Fascism was of the Left.
Good article.
The Nazi's were not worthy of Nazi metaphors. Until they were. After they had laid their foundation.
You either learn from history or you repeat it.
I’m aware of that. The connections between the Reich and the palestinian movement, once it was invented, and the Ba’ath party in Iraq and Syria are well established. The Muslim Brotherhood less distinct. None of which has anything to do with the US or the current administration. The guy isn’t a Nazi, and it distracts from his many legitimate flaws.
heard in the gas chamber: “I told you so”.
We should wait until the shirts are brown. Purple doesn’t count.
WHO AM I?
I was born in one country, raised in another.. My father was born in another country. I was not his only child. He fathered several children with numerous women.
I became very close to my mother, as my father showed no interest in me. My mother died at an early age from cancer.
Later in life, questions arose over my real name.
My birth records were sketchy and no one was able to produce a legitimate, reliable birth certificate.
I grew up practicing one faith but converted to Christianity, as it was widely accepted in my country, but I practiced non-traditional beliefs & didn’t follow christianity, except in the public eye under scrutiny.
I worked and lived among lower-class people as a young adult, disguising myself as someone who really cared about them.
That was before I decided it was time to get serious about my life and I embarked on a new career.
I wrote a book about my strugges growing up. It was clear to those who read my memoirs that I had difficulties accepting that my father abandoned me as a child.
I became active in local politics in my 30’s then with help behind the scenes, I literally burst onto the scene as a candidate for national office in my 40s. They said I had a golden tongue and could talk anyone into anything. That reinforced my conceit.
I had a virtually non-existent resume, little work history and no experience in leading a single organization. Yet I was a powerful speaker and citizens were drawn to me as though I were a magnet and they were small roofing tacks.
I drew incredibly large crowds during my public appearances. This bolstered my ego. At first, my political campaign focused on my country’s foreign policy. I was very critical of my country in the last war and seized every opportunity to bash my country.
But what launched my rise to national prominence were my views on the country’s economy. I pretended to have a really good plan on how we could do better and every poor person would be fed & housed for free.
I knew which group was responsible for getting us into this mess. It was the free market, banks & corporations. I decided to start making citizens hate them and if they were envious of others who did well, the plan was clinched tight.
I called mine “A People’s Campaign” and that sounded good to all people.
I was the surprise candidate because I emerged from outside the traditional path of politics & was able to gain widespread popular support.
I knew that, if I merely offered the people ‘hope’ , together we could change our country and the world.
So, I started to make my speeches sound like they were on behalf of the downtrodden, poor, ignorant to include “persecuted minorities” like the Jews. My true views were not widely known & I needed to keep them unknown, until after I became my nation’s leader.
I had to carefully guard reality, as anybody could have easily found out what I really believed, if they had simply read my writings and examined these people I associated with.
I’m glad they didn’t. Then I became the most powerful man in the world. And the world learned the truth.
Who am I? .........
ADOLPH HITLER!
Who did you think I was talking about?
(could be coincidence...)
One doesn’t notice the pain when the needle is ever slowly, incrementally inserted. Just a little prick ... and another little prick.
The vein will soon be ready for the full dosage. Just let it flow folks, let it happen. You’ll never notice, you never know.
I agree 100 percent he isn’t NAZI, it is the wrong term to be using.
The correct term and I’m been posting this here for over 2 years is fascist.
A lot of the actions congress takes and this is for some number of years is fascist.
I heard that segment. He missed one- Nazis are, above all else, Statists. Government is the solution to all of our ills, and the more government the better.
The most radical extreme -personally- of my political paradigm as a Conservative, would be the utter absence of government. Freedom is, after all, freedom from what? Tyranny. Which is what? Overbearing government.
Anarchy is impractical, of course. The founding documents specify a very limited -but necessary- Federal government. Federal government however, has become a colossus, far in excess of it's original intent.
I wouldn't call it tyranny just yet. Today, it far exceeds what the Colonists rebelled over, but I wouldn't call it a tyranny in any contemporary sense.
It thinks that it has the best of intentions, of course. Tyranny seldom doesn't. It's just necessary to do whatever it takes to get people to get with the program, right? It's not there yet. But it's trying.
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