This is really not all that complicated. Once and for all, politicians and pundits of all persuasions should get it into their heads that making analogies to the Holocaust or Nazi Germany in the context of 21st century U.S. politics is not just unseemly but borders on, if not crosses over into, the obscene.
It was both vicious and reprehensible when Rush Limbaugh repeatedly likened President Obama to Adolf Hitler, braying to his nationwide radio audience that "Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook"; "Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did"; the president "is sending out his brownshirts to head up opposition to genuine American citizens who want no part of what Barack Obama stands for and is trying to stuff down our throats"; and "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate."
Unfortunately, most Republican leaders, with a few notable exceptions, have refused to renounce Limbaugh even with respect to his most pernicious excesses. It would have been nice if former Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, for example, had publicly called Limbaugh to task for comparing the president of the United States to Hitler. By allowing Limbaugh's Nazi analogies to go largely unanswered, the GOP leadership has given him and others like him a virtual license to defame.
Thus, no one should have been surprised when, like a grotesque caricature of the Energizer bunny, Limbaugh kept on going just last month with yet another offensive Nazi analogy, only this time he also targeted former President Clinton. "Propaganda versus truth. Which wins?" Limbaugh asked. "What was Hitler more concerned with? Propaganda. Did Hitler succeed for a time? Yeah, he did. What was Clinton more concerned with, truth or propaganda? What's Obama more concerned with, truth or propaganda?"
Limbaugh is far from alone. As I noted in a different context only eight months ago, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission had no problem saying publicly that the Obama Administration's health care reform "is not something like what the Nazis did. It is precisely what the Nazis did." Glenn Beck, another ultra-conservative radio talk show host, disparaged the president's plan to expand the Peace Corps and its domestic counterpart, AmeriCorps, as "what Hitler did with the SS." The president of the Republican Women of Anne Arundel County in Maryland chose to write on the group's web site that "Obama and Hitler have a great deal in common." Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich declared that the Obama Administration's policies represent "as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did." And then there are the participants in Tea Party rallies who brandished images of President Obama with a Hitler-like mustache and signs with "Obama" written under a swastika.
Now comes California Democratic Party Chairman John Burton to remind us that Democrats are quite capable of making Nazi analogies that are every bit as odious. Reacting to Representative Paul Ryan's speech at the Republican National Convention, he said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle over the weekend that Republicans "lie and they don't care if people think they lie. As long as you lie, Joseph Goebbels, the big lie, you keep repeating it, you know." And just to drive home his ill-conceived point, he then said in a radio interview that, "If you're not telling the truth, you're lying. Joseph Goebbels' concept was the big lie. If you tell it enough, people will think it's the truth."
Nazi Germany's Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, it should be remembered, was personally responsible for creating the atmosphere in which millions of Jews, including my grandparents, my brother, and all my parents' siblings, were brutally murdered in places like Auschwitz, Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen. "The Jews have deserved the catastrophe that has now overtaken them," Goebbels commented in his diary on February 14, 1942. A few weeks later, on March 6, 1942, he wrote that, "I am of the opinion that the greater the number of Jews liquidated, the more consolidated will the situation in Europe be after this war. ... The Jews are Europe's misfortune. They must somehow be eliminated, otherwise we are in danger of being eliminated by them.
Let's be clear. Nazi Germany visited the greatest human carnage in history on humankind. There can be no excuse whatsoever for using Nazi analogies in an effort to score political points, and comparing anyone other than a mass murderer to Hitler or Goebbels is simply unacceptable behavior.
Moreover, Burton is not the first to compare political opponents to Goebbels. During the 2012 California gubernatorial campaign, then California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the Democratic nominee, said that his Republican opponent's war chest was "like Goebbels. Goebbels invented this type of propaganda." Less than a year ago, Republican Congressman Allen West of Florida declared that "if Joseph Goebbels were around, he'd be proud of the Democrat Party, because they have an incredible propaganda machine."
It should also be noted that both Burton and Brown apologized for their remarks, something West never did. And the Republican majority of the U.S. House of Representatives, voting overwhelmingly on party lines, killed a Congressional resolution to condemn West's Nazi analogy.
To its credit, the Obama campaign promptly and firmly repudiated Burton's remarks. "That obviously doesn't reflect the views of the campaign," said Obama for America National Press Secretary Ben LaBolt. "That doesn't have any place in the political discourse here in Charlotte."
On the other hand, the Republican expressions of outrage over Burton's words ring a bit self-serving. Norm Coleman, national co-chairman of the Romney Jewish coalition, charged that Burton's "likening the Republican Party to Nazis and Joseph Goebbels" was "disgraceful" rhetoric "that has no place in our political system," and the Republican National Committee called Burton's comment "outrageous and insulting to all Americans." Fair enough. But why have we not heard similar condemnations from Senator Coleman or the RNC when far worse Nazi analogies were hurled by the likes of Rush Limbaugh against President Obama? To be credible, denunciations of Nazi analogies in our political discourse cannot be directed only at one's opponents but must be truly bipartisan.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft teaches about the law of genocide and World War II war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse universities.
Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb: Why Is the Republican Jewish Coalition Attacking Me?
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| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
compares and contrasts current people and situations with people and situations in Nazi Germany to argue that people today ought not compare and contrast current people and situations with people and situations in Nazi Germany.
If that's the case, Menachem Rosensaft should have walked away from the keyboard before he started typing.
If that's the case, we should never study the past to inform our present.
If that's the case, the sort of people and the sort of situations that existed in Nazi Germany will inevitably live again.
Lune
After describing what Goebbels actually did, and explaining that he designed the means of killing his grandparents, his brother, and all of his aunts and uncles, Mr. Rosensaft then writes, "Let's be clear. Nazi Germany visited the greatest human carnage in history on humankind. There can be no excuse whatsoever for using Nazi analogies in an effort to score political points, and comparing anyone other than a mass murderer to Hitler or Goebbels is simply unacceptable behavior."
So, no, Lune, he did not "compares and contrasts current people and situations with people and situations in Nazi Germany to argue that people today ought not compare and contrast current people and situations with people and situations in Nazi Germany." Rather, he noted how currently, politicians are comparing their opponents with Nazis. He then went on to explain why this is massively offensive. Using hyperbole in an attempt to discredit your opponent will nearly always backfire. Mr. Rosensaft is simply illustrating this, while also noting how obscene it is to equate modern political policies and discourse with mass murder and genocide.
I agree with you completely. We are living in the 21st Century, and pundits and politicians date their own thinking my referencing anything to do with Nazis. In other words, when they use analogies that are over seventy years old it demonstrates a mindset which is not current with society.
It is a form of slander which politicians use without regard to the fact there is still a segment of our population who personally grief that era of history when it is mentioned. And, it is a lack of intelligence on the part of politicians or pundits who use those analogies for "shock value" when a large segment of their audiences have no emotional ties to the millions of lives lost.
And, those who make statements that if we don't remember our past we are doomed to repeat it as a justification for comparing present day, political agendas with nazism is "garbage". What our Country needs are some new politicians with new ideas that reflect the interests, welfare, and security of all our people.
Sorry I can't agree with your statements here but calling truth truth is never wrong. And that IS the truth.
2. you're right though since there was an even more terrible historic occurrence, that although conveniently forgotten, was more horrific, killed more people, and lasted for centuries....the colonization of the west. the warmongers from both parties should be compared to the conquistadors...that would be a more appropriate analogy.
Where were you for the eight years of the Bush presidency?
Come to that, where were you when his father was president? Or when Reagan was president?
Democrats and other Leftists have been calling ANYONE who does not share their political viewpoint "Nazis" for a very long time. How is it that you only notice now, and that you notice the few conservative examples far more than the legion of Liberal ones?
More often than not democrats refer to republicans as Nazis in some shape or form which in reality makes no sense since nothing republicans stand for policy wise or in any way reflect Nazi's.
Nazi's were socialites and republicans have nothing in common with socialism however another party actually does.
A news channel devoted to around the clock hysteria that is so biased and prejudiced it is often referred to as Fox GOP News, can be called propaganda.
Roger Ailes like Karl Rove was once part of the Nixon team. Rove's dream of a republican TV show has been realized, the other part of that dream was a permanent republican majority.
Party before country, a theme espoused bye Mitch McConnell working hand in hand with co-conspirators Eric Cantor, Paul LyinRyan and Newt Gingrich to ensure President Obama failed with no regard for the country or it's citizenry.
By any standard of measure that is not part of the democratic process and with the vast sums of money at play and all the unabashed lies be told by two men who want to lead the nation one can com to only one conclusion. Facism as defined by meaning, substance, content and context.
When there appears to be more that just a suspicion that there is a combination of government and undue influence of corporations donating vast sums of monies to achieve a set of goals detrimental to a democracy of, for and by the people then there is a duty, obligation and responsibility to warn the populace that ther are forces at work that are hidden due to Citizens United that their futures and the futures of their children can be adversely affected in the most dire of ways.
When a government becomes the tool of big business and special interest then it is not flirting with Facism, it is embracing it. That's the crossroads of where the GOP and WallStreet and the banks begin the descent into Facism.