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.
I beg to differ.
Fascism, pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/, comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology[1][2][3][4] and a corporatist economic ideology. [5]Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in conflict against the weak.[6] Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state.[7] Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement.[8] Fascism opposes class conflict, blames capitalist liberal democracies for its creation and communists for exploiting the concept.[9] Fascism is much defined by what it opposes, what scholars call the fascist negations - its opposition to individualism,[10] rationalism, liberalism, conservatism and communism. [11] In the economic sphere, many fascist leaders have claimed to support a "Third Way" in economic policy, which they believed superior to both the rampant individualism of unrestrained capitalism and the severe control of state communism.[12][13] This was to be achieved by establishing significant government control over business and labour (Mussolini called his nation's system "the corporate state").[14][15] No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition.[16]
emphasis added.
See also, "Modern Fascism: Liquidation of the Judeo-Christian Worldview, Veith, Gene Edward, Concordia Press.
Which 1930s Germany? 1933 version or 1939 version? The point is, once you have gotten to full Nazi, it's vastly harder, if not impossible, to claw your way back to a representative Republic. And the Dems are showing signs of trying to increase their power over the private secort and to criminalize differences of opinions. The point is, now is the time to stop the power grabs, not in eight more years. And the only way to stop them is to get the body public to wake up to what the Dems are attempting.
Perhaps the parallels with NAZI ideals aren’t fully realized quite yet.
But given the National Socialist agenda the Left is huckstering, and some of the more shocking proposals in HR 3200, they’re not terribly far off.
Remember NAZI Germany had euthanasia for the
‘undersirable’. They required all corperations to have party members on their boards. Nationalized energy. I could go on, but you get the point. The democrats may not parallel Nazi-ism perfectly, but there sure is a lot correlation.
Well, I guess he would not like this very much. HITLER RANTS ABOUT OBAMA HEALTHCARE AND RIGHT WINGERS - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2309654/posts
No.
Nazi = National Socialist. The dems have the socialist angle. But not the necessary nationalism.
Why must the nazis be the end all boogeyman? If we are forever looking backward into the past we will not effectively identify the problem that is facing us now and in the future.
These aren't Nazis. These are democrats. Democrats are evil too. No need to make them into something else so everyone can see the evil. One day perhaps, democrats will be the boogeyman because of their particular methods here. But trying to force them into the 'nazi mold' isn't helping us fight them.
Socialists. This is what they are. More in the flavour of the Soviets (remember them? They used to be the big scary one). There is more than one flavour of socialists. The American Socialist has his own evolution, his own tactics, his own ends he is pursuing and his own means to that end. Pretending this is the new Hitler doesn't help us defeat them.
Can’t be stated to often or loud enough, it’s amazing how few people even know it.
The only thing that American conservatives had in common with fascist was their ability to forge a sense of nationalism. Of curse for the fascist it was mainly just a tool to further their socialists dreams of utopian conquests.
American leftist had no problem with Hitler and actively worked to keep us out of the war, that is until Hitler attacked their Uncle Joe Stalin.
You are free to call them whatever you want!
BTW, the UNION THUGS are the ones who, particularly, are the NAZIS. It definitely fits with them.
The Democrats are the Party of Death.
Find something else to argue about, we will call then NAZI’s whenever we feel like it!
Thank you for your opinion.
Yeah, but it wasn’t worthy of an editorial until conservatives started calling liberals nazis. I didn’t see this kind of editorial during the days of “Chimpy Bushitler.”
So leave the Nazis out of it, it’s not the proper analog anyway.
They’re fascists.
-—Petronski sends...
Collectivist crap, by any other name, still smells like collectivist crap.
And more often than not, once they have total control people start getting killed in large numbers.
Obama hanges around with many who HATE Jews, do you need a list?
Obama opposes the Nation of Israel every chance he gets.
Obama is an active promoter of eugenics.
Obama turns a blind eye to street violence, when HIS people are guilty of the violence.
Obama tries to whip up a race war, when the snob proffessor plays the race card.
It fits, you will not change any minds here, today.
Point your fire at the libs, we don't care to be lectured on Obama.
What a great description of 0bama and Rahm. Oh, did I take that out of context?
And my guess the similarities you'd point out are at best similar to most power hungry regeimes. The uniqueness of the Reich was industrial racial extermination. That's the image raised by the comparisons, and there's nothing to suppor tit. Extermination based on political belief too, but the Communists excelled at that.
If the jackboot fits....
You're right, but that term is charged as well, and not to be used in soundbites. Only in a context where people understand the topic, even if they disagree.
Tell that to the victums of Pol Pot, or "enclosing", or The Great Leap Forward. The whole history of the late 20th Century was filled with such examples.
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.”
Apparently not by Socialists and Communists.
Guess we’ll disagree, but in contrast to your definition, America is not a single party state and criticism abounds. I’m not suggesting there aren’t those who’d like that state of affairs, but that’s not America. It is important to keep it that way.
NFP
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