Are We Nazi Germany Or Not?

Articles

Are We Nazi Germany Or Not?

By Frederick Smith
June 26, 2005

War, whatever the goals are, whatever the justification, involves killing people, lots of people. In a republic with freedom of speech, it's during war that everyone should express their opinion the loudest. The Right seems to be saying that those opposed to Bush, Republicans, the war, etc., should keep their mouths shut for fear of aiding our “enemy”.

This is of course utter nonsense. First, who is the enemy? Was it the Taliban? The Democrats and most of the world were on-board. Is it terrorism? Everyone is on board, many nations that we love to hate, like Germany, have been vigilant in hunting down Al Qaeda cells within their borders.

Is it Iraq? This is the crux of the issue, that Sher glossed over. 60% of Republicans which voted for Bush in the last election believed that Saddam was directly tied to 9/11. This was the real deception, this was the real lie. WMDs are a mute point – why do folks keep bringing it back up? Everyone knows Saddam used them against the Kurds, everyone knows that Saddam had them because of us. The issue was never if he had them in the past. No folks, the real lie was the merging of 9/11 with Iraq.

Even before the Downing Street Memo, there was evidence that neocons wanted Iraq. How lucky 9/11 happened. Folks on the Right get sucked up in nationalism and flag waving, while folks on the Left agree with Afghanistan, agreed with other anti-terrorism measures, but disagree with the Iraq War only to be called traitors, terrorist supporters, and anti-Americans. This exhibits, Sher, exactly the kind of blindness that Dave speaks about. We need not even mention the initial reaction to the Right about the torture in that infamous Iraqi jail, or the goings on at Gitmo [more on that below]. Willful ignorance might be a better term than blindness.

Many liberals and many Democrats understand that we should finish the job, even though we were all deceived in a grand manner leading up to the war, even though the war thus far has been handled in the worst possible way, that setting time tables and leaving would be a bad idea; understanding this position requires nuance. Biden is a great example. He's quite vocal about finishing the job, and he's running for president! It's easier for the America-is-a- Goddess, drooling crowd [or worse, that America is the Hand of God type] to say that, “the Left wants us to leave - they aid terrorists”.

Guess what? This is a republic with politicians who watch the polls like a death row inmates watch clocks [am I the only one sickened by every politician saying that they ignore polls? Ken Hughes would have us believe that only Liberal politicians do this]. If American sentiment is turning against the war in Iraq, then I can't blame this entirely on pacifists, who have every right to oppose the war. No, we have to blame it on the Bush administration. They've shown recently what the Right is all about, with their power grabbing, nanny-state tactics. They also blew Iraq, as I said, and could probably have avoided many of the issues we now face which are turning the public against the war. At the very least, if Bush had waited just a bit longer, we could have gotten some of our old allies in on this early on, and they likely would have footed the bill like they did the last time (in the first Gulf War, 90% of the cost was paid by other nations).

I'm a liberal, an atheist, a secular humanist and an environmentalist who supports nuclear power, keeping Gitmo open and finishing the job in Iraq, but if I had a penny for every time I've been called un-America, or a traitor, or a murderer (for supporting abortion) I'd be able to afford many many days in front of one of those machines that lets you try and move that claw to grab a toy at 50 cents a pop.

That said, the premise that only the Left uses this kind of speech is nonsense. Hillary was partially right – while not a conspiracy per se, there certainly is a vast Right-wing infrastructure, with massive money behind it. This structure is perfectly legal, powering think tanks to give conservative bias to meaty issues, legal groups who aim to insert conservative slanted lawyers and judges [activists] into the legal system, religious groups which advocate the Republican party in all but name from the pulpit, and scores of talking heads, who feed off of these “institutions”. If you look this stuff up, many of the same names resurface, Scaife for example, a billionaire that funds this kind of stuff.

He had his hands in funding the legal team which represented Paula Jones, which is where Ann Coulter rose to fame. This same structure also funded the trial lawyers in the “keep the corpse alive to score points with religious zealots” maneuver. That one, thank God, backfired ;) Nothing Hitler did was illegal according to German law, folks.

If we combine this kind of movement, which is funded by wealthy religious zealots, with the “staged” town hall meetings that Bush had (complete with the forced removal of protesters), to the “you can't protest here because you will kill the grass” nonsense during the Republican convention, I think some connections can and should be made.

A very good article, David Wile.

But back to why I went down that track – since Republicans have this kind of structure, they can get surrogates to insult their opposition for them; another lovely bit of deception! They can say far worse, often without reflecting directly on a particular politician! Democrats are not nearly so organized. Moveon.org is a recent development, after all, and the Right has been at their game for 20 or 30 years. If the dems catch up, it will be good for them, but bad for the country, as we will get BS from two sides in a most organized manner. Oh well. Here then are some quotes by various pieces of this structure on the Right. Similar quotes abound, but here are just a few interesting ones:

First, the locals:

“We have a number of Anti-American, terrorist supporting in-grates in congress I fervently pray will be defeated in the coming elections” -- Ken Hughes [if they are American elected officials, doing what their constituents [like me] want, are they un-American, or merely un-Right wing [fanatics]? ]

“A turnip would have a better chance of creating a workable policy than Liberals in Congress” -- Ken Hughes [no doubt, Sher, you would consider this an insult to turnips everywhere]

Durbin’s remarks are reprehensible, callous, and disrespectful in the worst way. He spoke these words into the congressional record. The man is the most seriously evil and vile lawmaker America has produced. His words give aid and comfort to every radical Islamic scumbag hiding in a rat hole. -- Michael John McCrae [Durbin was correct. I guess I'm evil as well]

The non-locals:

"Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers." -- Karl Rove [I know Ken Hughes is franticly searching for his flag to wave right about now, even though he pretends to deal with 'facts', which Rove's statement clearly doesn't address]

“You know what the fetal position is -- that's not an uncomfortable position. Most of us sleep in a fetal position." -- Bill O'Reilly, explaining away the torture at Gitmo, where some were chained in fetal positions for long periods

Here, btw, is an excerpt about what the FBI said about some of the torture at Gitmo – it's what O'Reilly is talking about:


On a couple of occassions [sic], I entered interview
rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a
fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or
water. Most times they had urinated or defacated [sic]
on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours
or more. On one occassion [sic], the air conditioning
had been turned down so far and the temperature was so
cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was
shaking with cold. When I asked the [military police
guards] what was going on, I was told that
interrogators from the day prior had ordered this
treatment, and the detainee was not to be moved. On
another occassion [sic], the A/C had been turned off,
making the temperature in the unventilated room
probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was
almost unconscious on the floor with a pile of hair
next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling
his own hair out throughout the night.

Are talking heads which only talk about the “nicer” part of torture, such as having women ask the questions and showing them scantily clad videos, un-American? Well, they can say what they want, but they are sick for doing so, and dangerous for blinding people who buy into it. Isn't ignoring the nasty bits, a bit like what Germans did just before WW2? Here are more quotes:

Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different
than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation
and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and
we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we
are going to really hammer them because they had a
good time. You know, these people are being fired at
every day. I'm talking about people having a good
time, these people, you ever heard of emotional
release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

-- Rush Limbaugh, talking about the prison abuse in Iraq

The Nazi quote section, a tactic which the Right has perfected:

“In addition to racist and Nazi, how about adding traitor to the list of things that professors can’t be? And yes, I realize I just proposed firing the entire Harvard faculty.” -- Ann Coulter

“ ... feminazis! ...” -- Rush Limbaugh [this drug abusing, divorce-meister, wind-sack likens everything he disagrees with to Nazis]


Joseph Goebbels was the Minister of Propaganda for the
Nazi regime and whose very famous quote was, 'If you
tell a lie long enough, it becomes the truth.' All
right? 'If you tell a lie long enough, it becomes the
truth.' And that's what Stuart Smalley and Michael
Moore and all of these guys do. They just run around
[...] So who turns out for the screening of this movie
[Fahrenheit 9/11] last night? You ready? Now, here are
the celebrities that turn out. Here are the people who
would turn out to see Joseph Goebbels convince you
that Poland invaded the Third Reich. It's the same
thing, by the way. Propaganda is propaganda. Okay?
Billy Crystal. Martin Sheen. Leonardo DiCaprio. Ellen
DeGeneres. David Duchovny. Sharon Stone. Meg Ryan.
Ashton Kutcher. Demi Moore. Norman Lear. Rob Reiner.
Jodie Foster. Chris Rock. Larry David. Jack Black.
Matthew Perry. Diane Lane.

-- Bill O'Reilly [O'Reilly loves to use the Nazis too]

It's scary, folks. People with alternative ideas are cast as “Nazis”, but when we treat prisoners as the Nazis did, making a comparison is suddenly, “un-American and pro-terrorism”.

------------

About the author Frederick Smith: I enjoy writing about the positive virtues of humanism - humanists are the good guys.

Email: dahlek65@yahoo.com

Tell a friend about this site!

------------

All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal).