If It Looks Like A Duck...
In Defense Of Making Comparisons Of Certain People With Nazis Or Other
Contemptible Groups
By Time for change
I and others are sometimes vigorously criticized for making comparisons
between George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts on the one hand with
Hitler or his Nazis on the other hand. Usually the person making the criticism
doesn’t explain the basis of his/her criticism, but as best as I understand
it, the basis of these criticisms falls into one of the three following
related groups of reasons:
1. Comparing people to Nazis “makes us look bad”.
2. Comparing anyone to Nazis trivializes what the Nazis did because nothing can compare with what they did.
3. It is inaccurate to compare Bush or Cheney with Nazis because the degree of damage they’ve done is miniscule compared to what the Nazis did.
I believe that we have very good reasons for comparing Bush, Cheney and their cohorts with Nazis, but before I get to that I’d like to address the criticisms:
Comparing people with Nazis “makes us look bad”
This argument is similar in some ways to the argument that some people use against trying to impeach Bush and Cheney. These people are worried that impeachment may be seen by large segments of the U.S. population as too extreme and partisan, and therefore such efforts may hurt us badly in the 2008 elections.
I don’t want to minimize such concerns, and I will admit that sometimes it is best to withhold speaking the truth for tactical political purposes. Probably a good example of that is when Lincoln withheld the extent of his anti-slavery views during his campaign for the presidency in 1860. I believe that it’s very unlikely that he would have been elected had he made known how he really felt about slavery prior to his election. And it is also likely that had he not been elected President in 1860, slavery could have lasted another several decades in our country. It pains me to admit it, but sometimes it is best to bite your tongue and avoid saying very controversial things, even when true.
Yet, I believe that most of the time it is better to speak truth to power. Cynthia McKinney was widely lambasted for questioning the Bush administration’s response to 9-11, and she undoubtedly lost her House seat (twice) because of that and other controversial statements that she made. Michael Moore is widely despised in our country because of his controversial statements and documentaries, and he may well be assassinated because of them. Yet, to me both of those people are heroes and badly needed breaths of fresh air in our country, and I am very grateful to them for bringing issues of great importance for us to light.
Keith Olbermann is another example. His wonderful commentaries on the Bush administration have struck a chord in our country, and he seems to have survived the effort without eliciting the great hostility that Rep. McKinney and Michael Moore have elicited, while reaching and affecting the views of millions of Americans. I believe that he can be credited more than any other single person with the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. Sometimes speaking the truth works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But as Keith has said, though he may lose his job because of his controversial statements, at least he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that he says what he deeply believes. Thank you so much Keith for elevating the quality of corporate media journalism in our country by a few notches.
Comparing anyone to Nazis trivializes what the Nazis did because nothing can compare with what they did
The last thing I would want to do is trivialize what the Nazis did. I have been intensely interested in better understanding what they did for as long as I can remember, precisely because what they did was so terrible, and perhaps also because some of my relatives were their victims. In my efforts to understand what they did I have read more books on this subject than any other – probably around 50.
But although the magnitude of their crimes is probably the largest in the history of the world, what they did is not qualitatively unique by any means. History is full of examples of mass murders of civilian populations and other atrocities. What is different about the Nazi Holocaust is only the numbers of victims involved and the fact that it is better documented than earlier examples.
Nor is it unreasonable to fear that there will be future similar incidents. In fact, we have had a number of similar incidents in the 62 years since the Nazi Holocaust, including 200,000 dead (mostly Mayan Indians) in Guatemala between 1968 and 1996, the 1.7 million murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, the 100,000 dead in East Timor at the hands of the Indonesian government between 1975 and 1999, the Bosnian genocide of 1992-1995, and the Rwandan genocide of 1994 which claimed 800,000 victims in just a hundred days. All of these atrocities were smaller than the Nazi Holocaust. But for those who say that that’s because the perpetrators were less evil, I have to say that the reason for the smaller numbers was less opportunity, not less evil. Does anyone really believe that someone who would murder 100 thousand innocent people would be incapable of doing the same to 10 million if given the opportunity?
The bottom line is this: Historical comparisons, when used properly, are not meant and do not serve to trivialize the historical events that are the most serious of those being compared. Far from trivializing those events, the comparisons are made precisely because they are so serious. The purpose is the same purpose that provides the primary motivation for all historical studies: to learn from the past so that we may have a better future. If the Nazi Holocaust was known to be a unique, one in a billion years event, there would be no reason to study it because it would be irrelevant to our future. But there is little or no reason to believe that it is absolutely unique.
It is inaccurate to compare Bush or Cheney with Nazis because the degree of damage they’ve done is miniscule compared to what the Nazis did
When I or others (I can’t speak for all others of course) compare Bush or Cheney with Hitler or his Nazis, the claim is not that they have killed as many people as the Nazis did, or that their methods have been as extreme. As I noted above, the amount of evil that any one person does is a function of how evil they are and of their opportunity to do evil. Few would argue that Bush and Cheney have thus far had as much opportunity to do evil as Hitler did. For one thing, they rule a country with a democratic tradition of more than two centuries. And that serves as some sort of brake on their ambitions.
But they have been systematically dismantling our democratic traditions by repeatedly violating the laws of our country and our Constitution, and otherwise simply putting themselves above all of our laws.
What many Americans seem not to realize is that Hitler didn’t just come to power and immediately start in with his genocidal plans. Far from it. The way was prepared gradually. It’s true that Jews and other minority groups were treated poorly from the beginning of Hitler’s rise to the Chancellorship in 1933. But the scale of atrocities was miniscule pre-World War II compared to what it was after that war got going. World War II loosened Hitler’s restraints, as he had planned, by shielding him from international intervention (other countries couldn’t effectively complain about his genocide while they were under attack or threat of attack) and by focusing the minds of the German people on the war. It can be argued that pre- World War II, the scale of atrocities in Nazi Germany was of the same order of magnitude that currently exists in this country.
Bush and Cheney have already initiated one war against a country that posed no threat to us, which has resulted in the deaths of close to a million innocent Iraqi civilians. Some argue that their intentions were to stave off a major threat to our country – but I think the evidence strongly argues against that interpretation.
Some have argued in response to my posts, “But I don’t see any concentration camps”. Without getting into a trivial argument over semantics, I ask those people what they would consider our detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, our many prisons in Iraq, our many secret prisons scattered throughout the world, and our torture outsourcing program, which is called “extraordinary rendition”.
To get an idea of the scale of these programs I suggest that people read “Ghost Plane – The true story of the CIA Torture Program.”, by Stephen Grey, which I discuss in detail in this post. According to Grey, who has extensively investigated this issue, there have probably been about 11,000 victims of our illegal detainee programs, and untold numbers of them are tortured on a frequent basis.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, too many Americans don’t take these things seriously enough. The all too common attitude in our country is that these programs are only for hardened terrorists, to protect us against a great threat to our country. But the evidence suggests that a great many of these victims, probably the vast majority, are innocent of any wrongdoing. Major General Antonio Taguba, charged with investigating the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, said that “A lack of proper screening meant that many innocent Iraqis were being detained (in some cases indefinitely) and that 60% of civilian prisoners at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society; and the International Red Cross said that between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. These figures could well be very conservative.
What about the Bush administration’s claim that these prisoners are the “worst of the worst”? I say to that, what right does George Bush have to make that claim when the vast majority have neither been charged with nor tried for a crime, and when many have been determined to be innocent of any wrongdoing? Did Hitler not make the same claims of those whom he sent to the concentration camps without charges or trial? Tell me, what is the difference between the majority of victims of Hitler’s concentration camps and ours? I ask you, what kind of man would imprison for an indefinite period of time and without trial thousands of human beings? Would such a man not do the same to millions if he had the opportunity?
Why historical comparisons (to Nazis or whatever is appropriate) are so important
When tyrants make their grabs for power they don’t go around with a sign on their chests proclaiming their intentions. On the contrary, they always proclaim the noblest of intentions. Hitler wasn’t averse to calling himself a Nazi, of course, because in those days “Nazi” wasn’t a bad name. Today “Nazi” is a bad name almost everywhere, so today’s modern Nazis call themselves something else. Bush and Cheney, of course, are just trying to fight terrorists and protect American citizens.
My whole point is that the intentions of tyrants are difficult for many people to recognize because those intentions are almost always disguised, at least in the early stages of their rise to and accumulation of power. Once their rise to power has advanced to a certain degree it is often too late to stop them without a major war; thus the crucial importance of recognizing them early.
Evil in particular is difficult for many people to recognize, when disguised (as it so often is), because it is so painful recognize. The evil of Hitler’s Nazis is easy for us to recognize today, both because it is now so thoroughly documented and because it comes from the past rather than the present. But for many Americans it is extremely difficult to recognize and admit to the presence of evil in their own country, today, in their own leaders.
A major purpose of history is to help us recognize serious problems before they get so bad that they can no longer be successfully fought. By comparing current situations to certain historical situations we can learn to recognize the danger signals, thereby giving us the opportunity to learn from our past, that we might make a better future for ourselves. That is the reason why I and others make comparisons of the type that I have spoken about.
In a previous post I have pointed out numerous similarities between Hitler’s regime and current day United States of America. In another post I quoted a prominent past Nazi and a current day Neoconservative and asked people to guess the authors of the quotes, in the hope that some would see a striking similarity between the two that they hadn’t previously noticed. And in my most recent post I quoted Thom Hartmann’s description of Hitler’s war on terror, in the hope that many people would see a striking similarity between the two that they hadn’t previously noticed.
A final comment
I recently watched a news segment in which Mitt Romney was vigorously criticized by citizens attending a campaign rally of his for his shameless attempt to compare Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden, solely on the basis of somewhat similarly sounding names.
One of the persons at the rally said, “How dare you compare Osama bin Laden to any American.” That statement, which reflects the sentiments of too many Americans, is seriously misguided, and even dangerous. One could reasonably defend Obama by pointing out that it is terribly inappropriate to compare him with anybody based on the similarity of their names, and that he has never done anything to warrant such a comparison. But to say that he should be immune to such a comparison simply because he is an American is ridiculous. Such a statement implies that all Americans have some sort of immunity against a character trait that unfortunately is scattered widely throughout the world and throughout history. There is no factual basis for such an assertion. Only blind faith supports it.
What is dangerous about such a belief, especially at this point in time in our history, is that it prevents us from recognizing just how bad our leaders can be. As it is now, approximately 50% of the U.S. population approves of impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney. I feel confident that the prevalent belief in extreme “American exceptionalism” – the belief that no American is capable of evil, or the extreme difficulty that many Americans have in recognizing evil in their leaders – prevents many more Americans from getting behind the effort to cast out the worst presidential administration that we have ever had. That kind of belief could be the ruination of our country.
By Time for change
I and others are sometimes vigorously criticized for making comparisons
between George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their cohorts on the one hand with
Hitler or his Nazis on the other hand. Usually the person making the criticism
doesn’t explain the basis of his/her criticism, but as best as I understand
it, the basis of these criticisms falls into one of the three following
related groups of reasons:1. Comparing people to Nazis “makes us look bad”.
2. Comparing anyone to Nazis trivializes what the Nazis did because nothing can compare with what they did.
3. It is inaccurate to compare Bush or Cheney with Nazis because the degree of damage they’ve done is miniscule compared to what the Nazis did.
I believe that we have very good reasons for comparing Bush, Cheney and their cohorts with Nazis, but before I get to that I’d like to address the criticisms:
Comparing people with Nazis “makes us look bad”
This argument is similar in some ways to the argument that some people use against trying to impeach Bush and Cheney. These people are worried that impeachment may be seen by large segments of the U.S. population as too extreme and partisan, and therefore such efforts may hurt us badly in the 2008 elections.
I don’t want to minimize such concerns, and I will admit that sometimes it is best to withhold speaking the truth for tactical political purposes. Probably a good example of that is when Lincoln withheld the extent of his anti-slavery views during his campaign for the presidency in 1860. I believe that it’s very unlikely that he would have been elected had he made known how he really felt about slavery prior to his election. And it is also likely that had he not been elected President in 1860, slavery could have lasted another several decades in our country. It pains me to admit it, but sometimes it is best to bite your tongue and avoid saying very controversial things, even when true.
Yet, I believe that most of the time it is better to speak truth to power. Cynthia McKinney was widely lambasted for questioning the Bush administration’s response to 9-11, and she undoubtedly lost her House seat (twice) because of that and other controversial statements that she made. Michael Moore is widely despised in our country because of his controversial statements and documentaries, and he may well be assassinated because of them. Yet, to me both of those people are heroes and badly needed breaths of fresh air in our country, and I am very grateful to them for bringing issues of great importance for us to light.
Keith Olbermann is another example. His wonderful commentaries on the Bush administration have struck a chord in our country, and he seems to have survived the effort without eliciting the great hostility that Rep. McKinney and Michael Moore have elicited, while reaching and affecting the views of millions of Americans. I believe that he can be credited more than any other single person with the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. Sometimes speaking the truth works, and sometimes it doesn’t. But as Keith has said, though he may lose his job because of his controversial statements, at least he’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that he says what he deeply believes. Thank you so much Keith for elevating the quality of corporate media journalism in our country by a few notches.
Comparing anyone to Nazis trivializes what the Nazis did because nothing can compare with what they did
The last thing I would want to do is trivialize what the Nazis did. I have been intensely interested in better understanding what they did for as long as I can remember, precisely because what they did was so terrible, and perhaps also because some of my relatives were their victims. In my efforts to understand what they did I have read more books on this subject than any other – probably around 50.
But although the magnitude of their crimes is probably the largest in the history of the world, what they did is not qualitatively unique by any means. History is full of examples of mass murders of civilian populations and other atrocities. What is different about the Nazi Holocaust is only the numbers of victims involved and the fact that it is better documented than earlier examples.
Nor is it unreasonable to fear that there will be future similar incidents. In fact, we have had a number of similar incidents in the 62 years since the Nazi Holocaust, including 200,000 dead (mostly Mayan Indians) in Guatemala between 1968 and 1996, the 1.7 million murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, the 100,000 dead in East Timor at the hands of the Indonesian government between 1975 and 1999, the Bosnian genocide of 1992-1995, and the Rwandan genocide of 1994 which claimed 800,000 victims in just a hundred days. All of these atrocities were smaller than the Nazi Holocaust. But for those who say that that’s because the perpetrators were less evil, I have to say that the reason for the smaller numbers was less opportunity, not less evil. Does anyone really believe that someone who would murder 100 thousand innocent people would be incapable of doing the same to 10 million if given the opportunity?
The bottom line is this: Historical comparisons, when used properly, are not meant and do not serve to trivialize the historical events that are the most serious of those being compared. Far from trivializing those events, the comparisons are made precisely because they are so serious. The purpose is the same purpose that provides the primary motivation for all historical studies: to learn from the past so that we may have a better future. If the Nazi Holocaust was known to be a unique, one in a billion years event, there would be no reason to study it because it would be irrelevant to our future. But there is little or no reason to believe that it is absolutely unique.
It is inaccurate to compare Bush or Cheney with Nazis because the degree of damage they’ve done is miniscule compared to what the Nazis did
When I or others (I can’t speak for all others of course) compare Bush or Cheney with Hitler or his Nazis, the claim is not that they have killed as many people as the Nazis did, or that their methods have been as extreme. As I noted above, the amount of evil that any one person does is a function of how evil they are and of their opportunity to do evil. Few would argue that Bush and Cheney have thus far had as much opportunity to do evil as Hitler did. For one thing, they rule a country with a democratic tradition of more than two centuries. And that serves as some sort of brake on their ambitions.
But they have been systematically dismantling our democratic traditions by repeatedly violating the laws of our country and our Constitution, and otherwise simply putting themselves above all of our laws.
What many Americans seem not to realize is that Hitler didn’t just come to power and immediately start in with his genocidal plans. Far from it. The way was prepared gradually. It’s true that Jews and other minority groups were treated poorly from the beginning of Hitler’s rise to the Chancellorship in 1933. But the scale of atrocities was miniscule pre-World War II compared to what it was after that war got going. World War II loosened Hitler’s restraints, as he had planned, by shielding him from international intervention (other countries couldn’t effectively complain about his genocide while they were under attack or threat of attack) and by focusing the minds of the German people on the war. It can be argued that pre- World War II, the scale of atrocities in Nazi Germany was of the same order of magnitude that currently exists in this country.
Bush and Cheney have already initiated one war against a country that posed no threat to us, which has resulted in the deaths of close to a million innocent Iraqi civilians. Some argue that their intentions were to stave off a major threat to our country – but I think the evidence strongly argues against that interpretation.
Some have argued in response to my posts, “But I don’t see any concentration camps”. Without getting into a trivial argument over semantics, I ask those people what they would consider our detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, our many prisons in Iraq, our many secret prisons scattered throughout the world, and our torture outsourcing program, which is called “extraordinary rendition”.
To get an idea of the scale of these programs I suggest that people read “Ghost Plane – The true story of the CIA Torture Program.”, by Stephen Grey, which I discuss in detail in this post. According to Grey, who has extensively investigated this issue, there have probably been about 11,000 victims of our illegal detainee programs, and untold numbers of them are tortured on a frequent basis.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, too many Americans don’t take these things seriously enough. The all too common attitude in our country is that these programs are only for hardened terrorists, to protect us against a great threat to our country. But the evidence suggests that a great many of these victims, probably the vast majority, are innocent of any wrongdoing. Major General Antonio Taguba, charged with investigating the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, said that “A lack of proper screening meant that many innocent Iraqis were being detained (in some cases indefinitely) and that 60% of civilian prisoners at Abu Ghraib were deemed not to be a threat to society; and the International Red Cross said that between 70 percent and 90 percent of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake. These figures could well be very conservative.
What about the Bush administration’s claim that these prisoners are the “worst of the worst”? I say to that, what right does George Bush have to make that claim when the vast majority have neither been charged with nor tried for a crime, and when many have been determined to be innocent of any wrongdoing? Did Hitler not make the same claims of those whom he sent to the concentration camps without charges or trial? Tell me, what is the difference between the majority of victims of Hitler’s concentration camps and ours? I ask you, what kind of man would imprison for an indefinite period of time and without trial thousands of human beings? Would such a man not do the same to millions if he had the opportunity?
Why historical comparisons (to Nazis or whatever is appropriate) are so important
When tyrants make their grabs for power they don’t go around with a sign on their chests proclaiming their intentions. On the contrary, they always proclaim the noblest of intentions. Hitler wasn’t averse to calling himself a Nazi, of course, because in those days “Nazi” wasn’t a bad name. Today “Nazi” is a bad name almost everywhere, so today’s modern Nazis call themselves something else. Bush and Cheney, of course, are just trying to fight terrorists and protect American citizens.
My whole point is that the intentions of tyrants are difficult for many people to recognize because those intentions are almost always disguised, at least in the early stages of their rise to and accumulation of power. Once their rise to power has advanced to a certain degree it is often too late to stop them without a major war; thus the crucial importance of recognizing them early.
Evil in particular is difficult for many people to recognize, when disguised (as it so often is), because it is so painful recognize. The evil of Hitler’s Nazis is easy for us to recognize today, both because it is now so thoroughly documented and because it comes from the past rather than the present. But for many Americans it is extremely difficult to recognize and admit to the presence of evil in their own country, today, in their own leaders.
A major purpose of history is to help us recognize serious problems before they get so bad that they can no longer be successfully fought. By comparing current situations to certain historical situations we can learn to recognize the danger signals, thereby giving us the opportunity to learn from our past, that we might make a better future for ourselves. That is the reason why I and others make comparisons of the type that I have spoken about.
In a previous post I have pointed out numerous similarities between Hitler’s regime and current day United States of America. In another post I quoted a prominent past Nazi and a current day Neoconservative and asked people to guess the authors of the quotes, in the hope that some would see a striking similarity between the two that they hadn’t previously noticed. And in my most recent post I quoted Thom Hartmann’s description of Hitler’s war on terror, in the hope that many people would see a striking similarity between the two that they hadn’t previously noticed.
A final comment
I recently watched a news segment in which Mitt Romney was vigorously criticized by citizens attending a campaign rally of his for his shameless attempt to compare Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden, solely on the basis of somewhat similarly sounding names.
One of the persons at the rally said, “How dare you compare Osama bin Laden to any American.” That statement, which reflects the sentiments of too many Americans, is seriously misguided, and even dangerous. One could reasonably defend Obama by pointing out that it is terribly inappropriate to compare him with anybody based on the similarity of their names, and that he has never done anything to warrant such a comparison. But to say that he should be immune to such a comparison simply because he is an American is ridiculous. Such a statement implies that all Americans have some sort of immunity against a character trait that unfortunately is scattered widely throughout the world and throughout history. There is no factual basis for such an assertion. Only blind faith supports it.
What is dangerous about such a belief, especially at this point in time in our history, is that it prevents us from recognizing just how bad our leaders can be. As it is now, approximately 50% of the U.S. population approves of impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney. I feel confident that the prevalent belief in extreme “American exceptionalism” – the belief that no American is capable of evil, or the extreme difficulty that many Americans have in recognizing evil in their leaders – prevents many more Americans from getting behind the effort to cast out the worst presidential administration that we have ever had. That kind of belief could be the ruination of our country.
