Posted on 08/11/2009 4:01:20 PM PDT by SJackson
The Holacaust is a product of the ideology of the NSDAF, but it was not the only one. Another was the o completion of the state control of the German people that began with the Prussianization of Germany. Once that was achieved, any thing could be done. The Nazi” New Deal” made the German people into the compliant slaves of Adolph Hitler.
“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.”
I commented elsewhere that it is a form of Holocaust denial.
Let me clarify. The result of its misuse and overuse is a collective minimization, a societal immunization to its horrors. It numbs us. We lose the “special reverence.”
Actually, Nazism was also a slickly packaged politician with a, for-the-most-part benign-sounding name (national socialism) and program, lead by a charismatic spokesman. Its following didn’t grow by making old men dance around burning Torah scrolls, but by colorful rallies and stirring speeches, by peaceful boycotts of Jewish stores and by the passage of laws. To claim that Nazism hit the ground running as a blatantly brutal and mendacious campaign of mass murder and all out war is a distortion of the historical record. It is entirely legitimate for Rush Limbaugh to compare Obama’s administration to that of the Nazis, so long as that comparison is factual and uses logic instead of sensationalism. Nazism, after all, started within the framework of a democracy, so it must be identified early while it can still be dealt with by democratic means. Thus, it may be imperative to call the Obamaniacs Nazis, if the facts and reasoning supports the charge.
The cheap Gore Vidal tactic, however, used neither logic nor facts. He was smearing an important intellectual and his ideas, while simultaneously exempting himself from any need to substantiate his charges solely by virtue of having committed that smear. Goebbels would have been proud.
Gore Vidal was repeating the big lie that the Left has been pushing since 1939; that Nazis are conservatives rather than leftists and socialists.
The terms right-wing and Nazi are mutually exclusive. But the leftists have successfully promoted an Orwellian “New Speak” “War is Peace” “Nazis are right-wingers” myth that we haven’t done enough to expose as the lie it is.
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