Bush = Hitler

Goldberg file at NRO
September 4, 2003, 9:45 a.m.
“Bush=Hitler”
The politics of dangerous stupidity.

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.


[ 09-09-2003, 03:24 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Rokenn]

really, really small text hurts my eyes [img]tongue.gif[/img]

This sort of underscores the point some of us were making last month about why throwing around the nazi label is a bad thing.

Of course rading this sort of begs the question, why isn't he also railing against the neo-cons that compared Hussien to Hitler? The comparison is not as over the top as comparing Bush to Hitler but it was still unwarrented.

Im guessing here since I haven't actually talked to anyone who has called Hussein, Hitler but Im guessing it has something to do with the similarities of them both using chemical agents to exterminate people and the Mass killing of certain groups of his countries own population...the particularly brutal methods used to kill people...such as Husseins "Shredder" but as I said...thats just a guess.

Edit to close tags.


[ 09-09-2003, 03:23 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Rokenn]

Originally posted by MagiK: Im guessing here since I haven't actually talked to anyone who has called Hussein, Hitler but Im guessing it has something to do with the similarities of them both using chemical agents to exterminate people and the Mass killing of certain groups of his countries own population...the particularly brutal methods used to kill people...such as Husseins "Shredder" but as I said...thats just a guess. Edit to close tags.

Not to belittle the victims of Hussein's crimes, but many other petty little third world dictators have done the same (except of the chem use), some even with our governments backing and training. I do not read any reports of human experimentation, death camps, ovens or other systematic genocide killings, human furniture, soap making from human remains, etc... coming out of Iraq. So while the crimes committed by Saddam and sons where horrific they do not raise to the level of Nazis.


edit:
Oh and btw, nice to see you posting here again Magik [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 09-09-2003, 03:31 PM: Message edited by: Rokenn ]

[Stratos]

[img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] Is there some kind of size limitation on posts nowadays that you have to make the text so small?

Comparing Bush with Hitler is over the top and ridicolous but I very much agree with the blue cheese thing.

[ 09-09-2003, 03:38 PM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

[Djinn Raffo]

I really hate blue cheese as well.

[Faceman]

huh... I actually read that whole thing (had to set text size to largest though)

you make some excellent points and of course saying Bush=Hitler is complete and utter nonsense. The only valid comparison you can make is that between some policies. But that leads to another debate namely the "This is bad because the Nazis also did it" debate. This is because many people can't bear that even somebody completely evil can do something smart and beneficial. While I do not consider it alright to do something good with an evil intent (old example: "Hitler build the "Autobahn") I do not consider it wrong to repeat the same thing with a good intent.
There are indeed historical parallels between today's US and 1930ies Germany but they don't come from fascism but from being a major military power. There are some signs of authoritarian government and media control but as long as they are not "fascist" or "nazi" they should not be called that but simple "authoritarian tendencies" even if it's less catchy

After all that I also want to say that IMHO it's a lot smarter to wear one of those stupid T-Shirts than to seriously argue why Bush=Hitler. The first is making thoughtless use of a very stupid symbolism the second is actually believing that kind of nonsense and therefore trying to prove it.

Originally posted by Rokenn: Not to belittle the victims of Hussein's crimes, but many other petty little third world dictators have done the same (except of the chem use), some even with our governments backing and training. I do not read any reports of human experimentation, death camps, ovens or other systematic genocide killings, human furniture, soap making from human remains, etc... coming out of Iraq. So while the crimes committed by Saddam and sons where horrific they do not raise to the level of Nazis. edit: Oh and btw, nice to see you posting here again Magik [img]smile.gif[/img]

I agree that there are other countries that need careful looking at. I also know that this is a road that will consist of more than just one step...so for now we have a step taken..now the next step is to try to establish a peacful government in one place...then move on the next step....sort of a serial versus a parallel approach. Can't do everything all at once.

As for posting here...well as time permits, however right now my life is just a tad hectic [img]smile.gif[/img] I have a brief calm before the storm that is to be this weekend...but thanks [img]smile.gif[/img]

Edit: I did set the original posts text size a bit larger [img]smile.gif[/img]


[ 09-09-2003, 04:16 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[khazadman]

Faceman I ask you to show me where the signs are of fascists controlling anything in this country. This country is too conservative to ever become fascist. That's for the lefty Europeans.

[Chewbacca]

I can find more substantial complaints agianst Bush, his cronies, and his policies than suits a metaphoric comparison to Hitler or Nazi Germany.

I won't discredit out of hand the use of a mere metaphor, but some of the examples offered in the article were over the top.

Still seems like we have bigger fish to fry than whining about the metaphors people use, even in the defense of the President and the Republican party which was the whole point of the article no matter much the author denied it. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

MMMMM I love blue cheese!!! [img]smile.gif[/img]