Adios Popester! Bennie the Ratster! If you are so great, riddle me this ..

[DemoTex]

Why did a Protestant have to die and symbolize the "Christian" side to the horror of Hitler's Reich? Why did you not join with the likes of Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Simple question .. no more.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer

[scarletwoman]

1. The Popemobile runs on Power and Wealth.

The Church survives by sucking up to those who wield the Power. It's really very simple.

[DemoTex]

2. So, will you stand with me in calling the current Pope a Nazi?

Why isn't Dietrich Banhoffer a saint? By all the Catholic measures, he should be, even though he was a Protestant.

[scarletwoman]

3. Could we compromise with "Facsist"? For me it's the Authoritiarianism, not the ethnicity.

The Nazis were just one manifestation of it that rose up among the German people in the mid-20th century. But they were by no means unique other than in the details of their particular implementation of the fascist ideology.

I'm trying to be ethically and intellectually consistant here; if I don't want William Ayers to be constantly ragged on because he was once part of the "Weather Underground", then I feel like I can hardly turn around and insist on labelling Ratzinger a "Nazi".

Yes, he belonged to that institution for a time. And yes, he's still a fucking asshole fascist sucking up to the damn Anti-christ for gawdsakes (some of the most sickening crap I've ever seen in my lifetime), so it's not like I'm the least bit inclined to give the mofo a pass.

Not to mention that Ratzinger, unlike Ayers, hasn't turned his life around and renounced his twisted ideology. So he doesn't get the pass that Ayers does. He only gets the benefit of my attempt at intellectual consistancy.

What I'm getting at is that I'm questioning the efficacy of using "Nazi" rather than Fascist to describe a particular constellation of behavior on the part of authoritarian types. Nazi, imho, particularizes the behavior, and safely contains it in a box bounded by time and ethnicity.

I think a big part of our fight against fascism has to be opening people's eyes to the fact that Nazism WASN'T unique. It was merely the logical progression of a particular ideology taken to the furthest extremes.

I don't know if I'm stating this very clearly, so my apologies if it doesn't make sense or adequately answer the question in your subject line.

As for Banhoffer -- of course he was a saint. Catholic measures don't mean shit, only human measures.

sw