July 10, 2006

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

Enough already! I've had it! Knock it off! I am sick and tired of Americans, Europeans and others comparing their political opponents to Nazi's. It is rampant in the blogosphere, it is rampant in political advertising, it is rampant in the MSM and it is absolutely disgusting. The latest is in Michigan where some political action committee is attempting to lure the black vote away from Gov. J. Granholm but by using Nazi Images. This is not acceptable to anyone with any degree of rationality. Richard (Dick) DeVos, the Republican candidate for Governor has condemned the ad as has the incumbent Jennifer Granholm. The folks that placed the ad, Voice the Vote defended the ad:

Political consultant Adolph Mongo helped put the ad together and defended the use of the Hitler image.

“Nobody is saying that Granholm and Hitler are the same person; it’s just telling a story,” Mongo told the Detroit Free Press.

“Black voters are not getting any love from Jennifer Granholm and the Democratic Party and that’s what this ad is about,” Nataki Harbin, Mongo’s stepdaughter and the PAC’s treasurer, told The Detroit News."

OK, fine, tell them that the Democratic party has used the black vote for its own purposes without any real benefit to blacks, outline your proof; but damn it, you don't have to use one of the most heinous regimes in history to do it; and you ARE using a Hitlerian imagery to do it say that Granholm is like a Nazi denying it just makes you look stupid.

In fact, the reality is that Nazi accusations are so rampant in the political process we have Godwin's Law:

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is a mainstay of internet culture, an adage formulated by Mike Godwin in 1990.

It states:

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
Godwin observed that people had increasingly begun to compare anyone and anything they mildly disliked with Hitler and/or Fascism.

Godwin has stated that Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate impact.

Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet discussions, the law is now applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and so on."

In an article on being compared to Hitler, Beautiful Atrocities notes:

IN THE FUTURE, EVERYONE WILL BE HITLER FOR 15 MINUTES



Rick Santorum compares Democrats to Hitler

Robert Byrd compares Republicans to Hitler

John Glenn compares Republicans to Hitler

Martha Stewart compared to Hitler

The Gallery of Bush=Hitler Allusions

George Soros: Worse than Hitler

Dick Durbin Compares Nazi Holocaust (6m dead), Stalin's gulag (18m dead), & killing fields of Pol Pot (2m dead) to Gitmo (0 dead) [Note, there are many more links in this article, go read them all]

Then there is this photo(?) of Bush:


In all, you can do a Google search using the search phrase "Comparisons To Hitler" and find over 4 million, yes, that is MILLION entries and that is only one search engine. It is disgusting.

Yesterday, my blog friend Joerg Wolf corrected a misconception regarding Hitler imagery and the "Deutschland Uber Alles" and did a great job. Joerg, as a German National is understandably upset that there are still misconceptions regarding Nazism and Hitler and that those sobriquets are still applied to the Germans and German character. I agree with Joerg, as does any rational human. However, if you read the article and then the comment thread, you will find that the comments rapidly devolve from the "misconception" to the war in Iraq. What the heck is going on here? Cannot people stay on thread, can't any political discussion about a single topic stay on topic. I'm not saying that there is no right to comment on any blog about anything you want to, but geeze folks, how long before one of the commenter’s, or Saddam H. or Joerg is compared to a Nazi? How long will that thread go on before some one makes an accusation that someone in the thread is a secret fascist?

I spent many years in Germany as a child, in fact, I was born there. Indeed some of my most vivid memories of Germany were bombed out and burned buildings, the shells still standing in Frankfurt, Bad Nauheim, Stuttgart and other places. Of seeing concentration camps and understanding how far an anti-human regieme can go. It is not pretty folks, not pretty at all and the current trend to compare anyone's political stripes to that of Hitler is abominable.

It has to stop, and it has to stop now.

Posted by GM Roper at July 10, 2006 05:08 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I agree. All those Nazi comparisions -- whether from the left or right -- are stupid, insulting to the victims of the Holocause, and they have to stop.

Last week, we wrote about the The National Review labeling Joschka Fischer as Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels, a "terrorist" and an "America-hater". That's a bit much. Why not call him also a communist, gay, crack dealing pimp?

I agree that Iraq quickly becomes a topic. However in the comment thread you quoted, there has only been very little Iraq references. In this comment thread there have been many more.

According to the popular Godwin's Law, anybody who brings up Hitler has lost a debate.

Posted by Joerg at July 10, 2006 09:50 AM

Major Hugs to you ... I feel the same way about bringing up past evils that were noted but ignored until it was too late. What is sad is that I get the feeling the left actually like Hitler and what he stood for.

Posted by Jo at July 10, 2006 12:32 PM

Jo, as you can see from the links provided, the hitler meme is an equal opportunity canard, both sides have used it too damn much. I'm not will as much to say the "left" likes hitler as much as I'm willing to say "some" on the left (and truth be known, some on the right) are too willing to use the imagery. It really has to stop.

Posted by GM at July 10, 2006 04:21 PM

I really do not know how someone could compare Bush to Hitler

Posted by Rightwing Guy at July 10, 2006 06:41 PM

You have to go see this:

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=&q=bush+hitler+&btnG=Search

I tried the same thing with various Democrats and Hitler, but the results were as expected--very disappointing, or maybe I should say pleasing that the right wasn't nearly as bad as the left.

Posted by Woody at July 10, 2006 06:57 PM

GM your such a Nazi.

Posted by The Ugly American at July 10, 2006 07:40 PM

Woody's a fascist bastard, too.

Posted by Assistant Village Idiot at July 10, 2006 09:14 PM

TUA, I can see that you are totally unrepenitent.
AVI, I take it back, you can be annoying... ;-)

Posted by GM at July 11, 2006 05:34 AM

I agree. The closest anyone comes to Hitler and the Nazis...I should not, actually WORSE than Hitler and the Nazis, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or Mao, etc, is the Islamofascist terrorist leaders and their followers.
In fact, their fathers and grandfathers were allied with Hitler.
Kim the Ill are comparable to Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, essentially killing a milion plus of their own citizens (so far), by denying them food instead of WMD's.

Posted by Ben USN (Ret) at July 12, 2006 12:55 AM

And I'm a global anarchist, or something. ;-) That's almost like Hitler, right?

Posted by Oyster at July 12, 2006 04:31 AM

A couple of comments..

Isn't it interesting that Hitler has become the canonical bad guy, when, as Ben USN comments, there are lots of b ad guys out there, and by some measures they are/were worse that Hitler.

Also, Joschka Fischer was, apparently, a terrorist - Baader-Meinhof. He was not convicted, but one of the founders (Baader or Meinhof, forget which) claims he was one of them. That's backed up (if my memory is right) by the fact that his room-mates were convicted of memberfship, their weapons were in his closet, and there exists imagery of him seriously injuring a policeman.

I had quite an argument a couple of years ago on this with one of his current friends.

Posted by John Moore at July 13, 2006 12:12 AM

True, the Nazi/Hitler comparison is horribly overused but it is undeniable that both the left and the right have what can be consideted 'proto-fascist' fringe elements. In a healthy Democracy, these fringe elements are usually not a major influence on policy. Let's hope our Democracy remains healthy.

Posted by e. nonee moose at July 14, 2006 03:19 PM

Moose, great to have you back.

Posted by GM at July 14, 2006 04:33 PM





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