Excellent reply to "Time to stop hurling Hilter insults".

[Dimsdale]

I thought you'd enjoy this reply to the opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer discussed in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=29588

Re: "Time to stop hurling Hitler insults", Jan. 11

John Timpane is certainly correct in asserting that comparing George W. Bush or Tony Blair to Adolf Hitler is outrageous and tends to obscure our understanding of the horrors of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. But to accept moratorium on any references or comparisons to Nazi Germany would be an unwarranted act of self-censorship.
The study of history, as historians view it, is a "conservation between the present and the past", the goal of which is a better understanding of both. While many Hitler comparisons amount to little more name-calling, the Nazi era did not attract the loyal support of over 60 million Germans solely through terror and anti-Semitic propaganda. They appealed to the Germans' sense of patriotism, idealism and self-sacrifice and their absolute conviction of cultural superiority. They skillfully exploited their nation's dismay at its defeat in World War I and anger over the perceived injustice of the Versailles Treaty. And they cynically manipulated fears of a demonized enemy to mobilize the population for a war that led to the deaths of millions and the utter ruin of Germany.
Nazism provides an example of the dangers of perverted idealism and twisted morality that everyone should consider.

Ross Doughty
Professor of History
Ursinus College
Collegeville, PA

This appeared in today's letters and sums it up brilliantly in my opinion. I'd might want to leave out "is outrageous and" in the first paragraph, but otherwise I thought this reply right on the mark.

[Valjean]

1. Excellent take

Well Said.

Though, from a competence standpoint, Bush is more akin to Moussalini.

BTW, Hussein wasn't Hiteler either. He's actually a an admirer of Uncle Joe Stalin.

[Jack Rabbit]

7. That's a terrible thing to say!

It's an insult to Mussolini.

[Charlls]

2. Well said. I may add that the absolute conviction

in the cultural superiority is painfully present in one of the dogmas stated in the PNAC page:

http://www.newamericancentury.org/


The Project for the New American Century is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world

[displacedtexan]

3. I have a graduate degree in German.

Trust me; the similarities between the * admin and the third reich are remarkable!

[rfranklin]

4. Yes, the Bush family believes they have a divine right to rule...

according to AMERICAN DYNASTY and their followers believe that white men are superior to all other people and they want to execute vast numbers of brown and black people and they believe in slave labor. So where's the difference?

[brainwashed_youth]

5. i'd still say

that they're more like Mussolini...but I could be wrong

[DBoon]

6. I'd compare with Franco

Franco's brutal military dictatorship melded religous piety in a way that resembles the current white house:

"Once established as Head of State, and with the eyes of Nationalist
Spain now upon him, Franco's propagandists built him up as a great Catholic crusader and his public religiosity intensified. From 4 October 1936 until his death, he had a personal chaplain, Father Josi Maria Bulart.<61> He now began each day by hearing mass, a reflection of both political necessity and the influence of Dona Carmen. In order to please his wife, when he was available he would join in her regular evening rosary, although, at this stage of his career at least, without any great piety."'

http://www.iiipublishing.com/franco.htm

Mussolini by contrast was an atheist, Hitler a strange sort of teutonic pagan.

Franco is believed to have murdered 30,000 Spaniards during and after the civil war. Being a devout Catholic did not prevent him from exercising extreme brutality both as Spanish dictator and prior to this in the colonial regime in Morocco. He specialized inpublic display of the severed heads of his opponents. This did not prevent the Church from supporting him as a heroic warrior-crusader.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. Franco never was a threat to anyone outside of Spanish territory

And Mussolini is more reminiscent of Tony B., who plays second fiddle to The Big Little Man.

As for Hitler being of some strange Teutonic religion, he did "champion" Christianity (because it was the prevailing religion of Germany), even featuring a church on one of his early commemorative coins to imply a relation between his beliefs and those of the Church.

[DrBB]

9. Re Bush, Mussolini...

I'd say the resemblence can be uncanny.

[Emillereid]

8. If you have the time maybe you could write a piece

detailing the similarities for us from your unique perspective. I think people forget that Nazi Germany was a lot more than the Holocaust.

[TheDalaiMama]

12. Hitler 's message started out the same way shrub's is....hindsight offers

us the ability to make comparisons. So..I think the comparison to Hitler is justified.

Shrub is using the same philosophy and the end result will be devastating...not the exact result as Hitler's but devastating none the less.

dalai

[teryang]

11. Americans may not accept this

-but our incompetent pre-emptive war policy is only being stopped by the unanticipated strength of the resistance in Iraq. Had the pre-emptive war strategy succeeded, the other great powers would have been faced with unpleasant choices as to where to stop our aggression.

For example, pre-emptive strikes against Iran would increase the probability of a simultaneous war in Korea. China and Russia can only sit by and do nothing for so long. The success of the Iraqi resistance and the failure of neo-con mideast policy is putting the brakes on the slow drift toward wider world conflict invited by our fascist regime.