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."

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]

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.