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« I'll Go Him One Better | Main | What It Was For »

"Digital Brownshirts"

Victor Davis Hanson comments on the mass Godwinization of contemporary political discourse:

At first glance, all this wild rhetoric is preposterous. Hitler hijacked an elected government and turned it into a fascist tyranny. He destroyed European democracy. His minions persecuted Christians, gassed over six million Jews, and created an entire fascistic creed predicated on anti-Semitism and the myth of a superior Aryan race.

Whatever one thinks of Bush’s Iraqi campaign, the president obtained congressional approval to invade and pledged $87 billion to rebuild the country. He freely weathered mass street demonstrations and a hostile global media, successfully defended his Afghan and Iraq reconstructions through a grueling campaign and three presidential debates, and won a national plebiscite on his tenure.

In a world that is almost uniformly opposed to the democratic Jewish state, Israel has no better friend than Bush, who in turn is a believer in, not a tormentor of, Christianity. Afghanistan and Iraq, with 50 million freed, have elected governments, not American proconsuls, and there is a movement in the Middle East toward greater democratization — with no guarantee that such elected governments will not be anti-American. No president has been more adamantly against cloning, euthanasia, abortion, or anything that smacks of the use of science to predetermine super-genes or to do away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn.

Actually, even at second glance, it's preposterous.

in such a debased climate, it was no accident that Alfred A. Knopf published a novel, Checkpoint, about musing how to kill Bush. Nor was it odd to hear of a New York play, “I’m Gonna Kill the President,” apparently centered around killing Bush. Late last year, a columnist in the Guardian, Charles Brooker, wrote to his British readers on the eve of the election :

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. — where are you now that we need you?

All this venom is not so funny when we now witness a Saudi American young man, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, currently under indictment for allegedly planning just such a murder. After all, when it becomes a cheap and easy thing to compare a president to a century’s great criminal, then it becomes even cheaper and easier to dream — or plan — to kill him.

At some point a Gore, Byrd, or Soros has a moral responsibility not to employ [the] Nazi analogy, if for no other reason than to prevent unleashing even greater extremism by the unhinged.

Posted by Rand Simberg at March 18, 2005 06:01 AM

Comments

I'll jump in with a couple of thoughts.

First, calling Bush a Nazi is simply wrong. It's partisan rhetoric raised to a level beyond that of the 19th century when Lincoln was called "the Great Ape" and Cleveland was taunted for fathering a child out of wedlock. Interestingly enough, both men won those respective elections.

What really bothers me, though, about such rhetoric is the difficulty it raises for much more reasonable people to discuss the rising tide of authoritarian political, social, cultural, religious and economic movements on the left and right. These movements do real damage to our society. They do not solve problems the way they claim. They are successfully limiting freedom in various ways.

Hanson's observation that Hitler hijacked an elected government is true. What he doesn't discuss, though, is what kind of society had been created over decades that allowed such a thing to happen. Hitler didn't just come out of nowhere. The society he managed to take over was far more primed for such a takeover than a healthy democracy.

It's seeing assaults on liberty in this country that really worry some of us. We're still mostly free -- but worrying how long that will continue is not, I think, paranoid thinking.

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 18, 2005 10:18 AM

The society he managed to take over was far more primed for such a takeover than a healthy democracy.

That's certainly true -- especially given that Germany had only been a democracy for maybe 15 years by the time Hitler came to power.

Posted by McGehee at March 18, 2005 10:30 AM

"No president has been more adamantly against cloning, euthanasia, abortion, or anything that smacks of the use of science to predetermine super-genes or to do away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn."

This is the only part of the essay (as excerpted) that I have a problem with. Why is opposition to cloning automatically good? Why is opposition to "predetermin[ing] super-genes" automatically good? Why are these things conflated with "do[ing] away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn"?

Bio-Luddism gets far too much respect in the current circles of power in this country IMO.

Posted by Jason Bontrager at March 18, 2005 11:09 AM

Jason, although the writer may agree with Bush on the issues you are referencing; I think the writer's point wasn't that these opinions are good or bad, but that W's position on the issue are completely opposite to what Nazi Germany instituted.

Posted by Chris Adams at March 18, 2005 12:02 PM

You must remember that a small but extraordinarily influential part of the Democratic conglomerate actually believes that "Bush = Hitler" is literally true.
Exhibit A :

The success being achieved to date by a handful of dedicated people who are building and deploying these devices is very impressive. I get E mail all the time from people asking me "What can I do to stop the New World Order?" . Well, this is one thing you can do. You can participate in rescuing your health, your mind, and your freedom by obtaining and deploying these saving inventions. Sources for pre-assembled kits, parts, and finished units are listed in the Goodbye Chemtrails article. Tired of seeing the very air you breathe being poisoned daily with chemtrails by the satanic Illuminati criminals who are intent on eliminating 85 % of the American public? Prefer to wait until they precipitate their next major national convulsion in order to shock and stampede the public into accepting total fascist tyranny which will eventually lead to door-to-door roundups of 'troublemakers' (meaning Americans who resist being inducted into the ranks of mind controlled robots) and their delivery into concentration camps (liquidation camps)? The evidence is clear and compelling for those who are willing to look with open eyes and open minds.

This is not a parody: remember Kucinich's bill to help outlaw "chemtrails" and "mind control"?

Twenty years ago, I was deeply concerned about the indordinate influence Fundies had over the GOP - a threat which, in retrospect, was exaggerated. The threat of minority Moonbat influence on the DNC OTOH may not be.

Posted by Alan E Brain at March 18, 2005 06:41 PM

Random Google links:
Guantanamo Briton 'in handcuff torture'
The Abu Ghraib Prison Photos

Quote:
These so-called ill-treatments and torturing in concentration camps, stories of which were spread everywhere amongst the people, and particularly by detainees who were liberated by the occupying armies, were not, as assumed, inflicted methodically, but by individual leaders, sub-leaders, and men who laid violent hands on them.

Guess who said that?

Posted by Gojira at March 18, 2005 08:26 PM

Rand,

Where do you get the phrase "mass Godwinization" from? Does it have anything to do with Mike Godwin?

Posted by Jardinero1 at March 18, 2005 11:26 PM

McGehee,

You're looking at only one thing.

Great Britain in 1775 was hardly a democracy -- at least one we would call such today. Yes, there were some democratic aspects to the government -- and the rest of society as well. Still, though, there were very wide areas of freedom. People who didn't like things as they were could depart -- and many did. There were significant limits on both government and the aristocracy. The country has evolved over the past few centuries to be much more democratic than it was back in the 18th century.

Germany, by contrast, did not evolve in the same direction. Various authoritarian measures were instituted. Schools, for example, were built upon an explicitly authoritarian model. Some people emigrated -- especially to the much freer United States. But the people who stayed behind were subject to more and more controls. That's the kind of society that allowed a monster to become its leader for a dozen years.

What kinds of things worry me about this country today? We see a rising tide of controls put into place "for our own good." Schools are becoming ever more authoritarian as they become ever more dysfunctional. We note today young people are having more difficulty handling independence because so much of their lives have been planned for them -- all for their own good, of course.

Are we on the brink of becoming a totalitarian society? No. Are there too many fools pushing in that direction? I think there are.

Posted by Chuck Divine at March 19, 2005 08:17 AM

To answer the question raised by Jardinero1, yes, it was Mike Godwin who stated that eventually in any debate (he was referring at the time specifically to Usenet) someone will eventually drag in a reference to Hitler or Nazism. This has been codified as Godwin's Law, and the general consensus is that whomsoever first does so loses the debate, altho strictly speaking they are validating rather than violating said law.

Posted by triticale at March 21, 2005 04:17 AM


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