My Nazi Can Beat Up Your Nazi

There's a line in A Few Good Men where Demi Moore says that Marines in Gitmo are very serious. Tom Cruise asks, "Serious about what?" Demi responds, "About being Marines." That's how Jews feel when you try and appropriate the word Nazi, we get very Gitmo about our Jewishness.

You have to understand, Jews are very good at remembering everyone who ever took a shot at us. We have a holiday for most of the biggies ("They killed us, pass the turkey."). But Hitler and the Nazis have a very special place in the pantheon of monsters. Nazi is our N-word. That's why it's not okay with us -- and shouldn't be okay with anyone -- to throw the word "Nazi" around unless you're talking about actual Nazis. It's definitely not okay to use it in a health care debate. In fact, put Nazi and doctor in the same sentence and you come up with one name and one name only -- Josef Mengele, winner of the "Black Badge for the Wounded." That was like the Nazi Oscar for Best Health Care ("I vant to sank zee Academy, mein Fuhrer, and mein agent...").

For all you Town Hallers out there, I'm going to assume you don't know who Josef Mengele was. I assume that because if you did, I'd hope you wouldn't be painting Swastikas on your picket signs.

Dr. Mengele drew a horizontal line across a wall at Auschwitz, five feet from the floor. If you were shorter than that line you were immediately sent to the gas chamber. The line was drawn in the childrens' barracks.

Dr. Mengele performed experiments on live, fully conscious human beings to determine just how much pressure it would take to crush a skull. In order to be precise, he had to administer the experiment very slowly.

Dr. Mengele put people in bread ovens to determine at exactly what temperature the skin would receive first, second and third degree burns.

Dr. Mengele once murdered a thousand women in one day. Why? Because they had lice and it cost less to kill the women than to kill the lice.

Again, Josef Mengele was awarded the most prestigious medal for health care for this "work."

Are you getting it now town hallers, town hollers and town criers? You may not like Barack Obama, but calling him a Nazi makes you sound like a clown, an imbecile and an infant. And continuing to cry about America no longer resembling the one you grew up in only further proves the point that you got it backwards. It's America that did the growing up, and you're the one we no longer recognize.

UPDATE August 18, 2009:
At one of today's town hall meetings, a woman yells "Heil Hitler!" at a man who is talking about the health care system in Israel. Free speech? Of course. But, if you don't like the filth that shows up calling itself "legitimate protest," then it's compulsory that you exercise your own.

Comments

[ConfuciusSay-]

Thank you Mr. Seitzman.

[temenos]

Following the fall of NAZI Germany and the liberation of the concentration camps, the people of the adjacent towns were forced by the allies to view films of the atrocities, and the pitiful state of the survivors of those camps. Those unfamiliar with the horrors of the Third Reich and any aspect of modern history who protest health care reform in such a vile manner need to see those films. Perhaps then they might realize how ludicrous their comparisons are.

[Leslib]

Well written, Mr. Seitzman. I believe that 99% of the people who are using the word "Nazi" at these rallies likely don't have a clue what it means, just that it means something bad and they want to call Obama and all liberals something bad.

[kldickson]

The conservatives have a right to say what they want to say, and we have a right to tell them they're immature, ignorant morons.

[webblogger]

We shall overcome.

[gizmo64]

http://www.themudflats.net/2009/08/21/nazis/?cp=4 Go here and read some stories about Americans and how they coped with world war 11.You will see that those throwing the word Hitler around do not know what he really did, read and learn something today

[temenos]

Thanks for the link gizmo64. That is well worth reading.

[gizmo64]

Your right to free speech stiops when it stops someone else's right to free speech and that is what is happening t some of these town halls.

[Adam Appel]

Correct completely agree. I don't identify with being a Jew but I am one and lost Jewish family to the camps. I don't even like seeing Nazi stuff in movies. I am pretty tough about stuff, but that is one thing that bothers me.

[IntellectuallyHonest]

'For every German killed, we kill 100 locals.' Sounds like the Israeli army in Gaza not too long ago.

[averygard]

I was waiting for the anti-Israel comment...We can't ever have a column about the Holocaust--not about current events in the Middle East, but the Holocaust--without someone having to throw that in there.

[multipole]

This column is not really about anything besides current events in the Middle East.

[FarOutFish]

Well said, however in my 66 years on this mortal coil I have heard far more people on the left than right label opponents "Nazi's". While the eight years of the Bush administration should provide plenty of proof, if you still aren't convened, study the attacks on Ronald Reagan, or even further back Barry Goldwater.

[mabinog]

so are you complaining that Fascism is right wing or that the left points out fascist tendencies in the right wing?

[happytrails]

Are you positive the Left uses the word "Nazi" and not Fascist?

There is a difference, look it up!

[CAVEMAN900]

great article... need more of these in the mainstream media... you need to be doing a 'Real Nazi health care' commentary on Faux Channel....

[Aurical]

Excellent article, but like most things that educate and shed light, the people who most need to see it never will. Instead it will be read by people who already for the most part accept the basic premises expressed. The only true discourse in our country seems to be between the like minded. Those on the left cannot follow the advice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and "disagree without being disagreable."

[Egghead]

Darn right. It's not just scary guys at town halls, either; it's people like the sweet young things outside the post office who fluted at me, "help us stop Obama's Nazi health care plan!"

I come from a largely Jewish town. You do not fling the word "Nazi" around lightly. I was tempted to bring them a copy of a book on Nazi concentration camps. With pictures.

[bozocola]

Mr. Seitzman's article is based on several assumptions that are not accurate.
This article is based on the assumption that ALL town-hallers are wearing swaztikas, & using the word "nazi". This assumption is far from accurate. To throw all town-hallers into the same 'pool' as some on the fringe is simply not factual. In fact, such tactics are the same tactics used by those who racially profile. Without asking any questions about individual thoughts and ideals, the would rather clump everybody into groups. Mr. Seizman's article is based on the pretense that all town hallers are wearing swaztikas just like other morons like to assume all blacks are drug dealers or all hispanics carry knives.
Has Mr. Seitzman forotten the fact that we here in America have the right to exercize free speech? Many on the left are the ones thinking it's appropiate to burn the American Flag as their freedom of expression. Those who fought for the right to burn the flag also fought for the right for others to use whatever words they choose while speaking in this great country. Telling people what words they can and can not use is not consistant with our constitution.
By attacking the words used by some, Seitzman does'nt move his views forward. People like Seitman divide a nation that needs to be brought together. In my opinion, this article is no better, no more productive than those few who show up to town hall sporting signs with swaztikas on them.

[Snowball]

1. He never said that "all" the town hall protesters are sporting swastikas, but thanks for the red herring.

2. He's not preventing anyone from exercising their freedom of speech, only criticizing what they're saying. Big difference. What you seem to be saying is that no one can disagree with you or you cry censorship. Looks like you're the one trying to stop free speech.

3. It's you and your cohorts who are dividing the nation with your far right wing, my way or the highway routine and trying to shut down public debate over important issues facing the country.

Face it, you had your eight years and got punished at the ballot box for your misguided ideological leadership. It's our turn now to clean up all the damage you did, enjoy the ride.

[DocTwain]

You misrepresent what Seitzman actually says.
His point is that applying the word "Nazi" to things and people that have nothing whatsoever to do with actual Nazis, in order to sensationalize false charges about a health care reform bill, is not appropriate discourse. I agree. That doesn't mean that people don't have a right to do it; but it does mean that if they do it, they should be told to their faces that their discourse is inappropriate every time. If people want to criticize fascistic policies generally, including fascistic elements in Israeli policy regarding the Palestinians, that's one thing. But the Nazis are unique among fascists for the extent and grotesqueness of their program of systematic murder against Jews, Poles, Roma, gays, and political dissidents. It just is not cool to lie about "death panels" and call Obama a Nazi because he wants to pass a mushy healthcare "reform." The people who do so are either completely disingenuous, or quite stupid, and should be told as much.

[kldickson]

Oh, you have the right to free speech. We on the left also have that right, and I'm going to exercise it by telling you that you're a bunch of immature morons who can't bring an ARGUMENT to the table, so you try to drown it out with shouting and brandishing guns (there's a specific law about not bringing guns to public assemblies, and besides, it's an intimidation tactic - perhaps those liberals who are armed ought to bring their firearms to show you just how ridiculous you are).

[ConfuciusSay-]

Free speech ought to be free. Not stupid.

[Jsens3]

The acromym of the Nazi pary was NSDAP which, in English, stood for, rendered in English, the National Socialist German Worker's Party. It was a socialist organization that became fascist and xenophobic to extremes rarely seen. The term Nazi has come to mean certain people or theories who promoted xenophobic race hatred to the extent of viewing others, particularly Jews and Slavs, as subhuman and fit only for extermination. Similar race hatred has been seen in the world since WWII (Hutus and Tutsis, Cambodian Killing Fields, etc.) but has not been as well and extensively documented. Those in the United States who call people they don't like Nazis usually have no realistic concept of the amoral and brutal natures of those to whom the name is correctly applied.

[jotunloki]

There was never any true socialism involved in the NSDAP. The key word in the name is NATIONAL, as in Nationalist. They were always violently racist and hated all non-Germanic people.