T-minus Four Years
Dangerousmeta’s list of quotes relevant to yesterday’s inauguration brings to mind a quote someone emailed me sometime in April of last year. At that time, the elections were just beginning to ramp into mud-slinging mode and those who showed any disdain for the “war against terror” were branded as unpatriotic.
Enter Hermann Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief:
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
Snopes, by the way, verfies this quote.
I feel a need to put the use of this quote into some context, because despite the signs I see in news footage of political protests around the world, I don’t think Bush-Hitler comparisons are fair.
When comparisons between Bush and Hitler are made, Bush supporters generally argue that the war on terror is not the same thing as the holocaust. I’d have to agree; the war on terror is not comparable to the systematic extermination of millions of Jews, and on this basis, I don’t think Bush-Hitler comparisons are appropriate.
Hitler’s tragic contribution to history, however, wasn’t solely an architecture for genocide. Fundamentally, he was a figurehead for an ideology which used not only eugenics and supporting holocaust rationale but also the concept of a “German Motherland” to define a national consciousness in a call to war. The quote from Goering becomes quite apt when you find ties not just between Nazi and U.S. administration propaganda, but also between the rhetoric used in the Patriot Act and that used in the Nazi regime’s Enabling Act (see this page for specific comparisons.
I feel a need to reemphasize that in no way am I saying Bush is Hitler or that the American government is a Nazi movement. I frankly think such comparisons are absurd, mostly on the grounds that Bush is capable of masterminding absolutely nothing, and there’s enough healthy, non-jailed dissent in the U.S. to prevent the government from going much further than it already has. I do think, however, that some aspects of U.S. domestic and foreign policy during the Bush years bears a frightening resemblance to Nazi propaganda, both linguistically and semantically. I don’t think that the similarities are subtle, either, and if Bush supporters wouldn’t reject the comparison immediately, they might themselves draw some disheartening conclusions.
No, Bush won’t be remembered as a Hitler figure. He’ll quite rightly have his own place in history as George W. Bush. Not that he cares, of course. When Bob Woodward asked him, “How’s history going to judge [the decision to go to war]?” Bush responded, “History, we won’t know. We’ll all be dead.”
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7 responses
Noah
Comment posted at 15:39 on Saturday, January 22, 2005
“I frankly think such comparisons are absurd, mostly on the grounds that Bush is capable of masterminding absolutely nothing, and thereีs enough healthy, non-jailed dissent in the U.S. to prevent the government from going much further than it already has.”
I wish I could agree with you here, but…
First, Bush doesn’t need to be the mastermind. He’s the ideologue that we would enjoy having a beer with, (or would have enjoyed, before Pat Robertson or some other religious freak took the drunken coke addled frat boy with some bad debts for a walk on the beach and told him the story about the footprints in the sand, thereby ending all chances of us having a beer with W now) while Cheney et al are the ideologues who get the masterminding done.
Second, it seems to me that while the healthy dissent is for the most part un-jailed, it is relegated to the pages of the New York Review of Books, and some other limited distribution rags. When the healthy dissent is a little bit unwashed and ranges beyond the literary, it does get penned up or indeed jailed. The Republican convention, for example: Protesters were arrested, and then detained for up to 30 hours, keeping them off the streets for the rest of the weekend. While not Chinese in degree, the tactic still seems draconian.
But really hardly necessary, as it turns out. We are perfectly happy with ourselves as people who start preemptive wars, and torture pickpockets in pursuit of intelligence to retroactively justify the adventures. I would have thought that such a rich scandal, with photos of americans torturing prisoners of war, would have been enough to shock the populace into dispensing with the American exceptionalism that informs our government’s policies. But apparently not.
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Comment posted at 22:41 on Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Noah, I definitely agree that the mainstream media hasn’t really picked up on the absolute spectacle as much as perhaps I thought they would have, and that the absolute lack of any sort of curiosity on the media’s part (in other words, their complicity with the administration’s message) hasn’t helped the situation much.
I do wonder, though, if a similar complacency in the American public to do anything proactive about either the media or the administration necessarily makes Bush/Hitler comparisons appropriate (it’s hard to tell from your comment whether you disagree with my statement about dissent or whether you disagree with my statement about the comparison).
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Noah
Comment posted at 07:52 on Thursday, January 27, 2005
Narayan, you’re right, my comment is ambiguous in a way that I didn’t intend. Comparisons between Hitler and whomever is in power always strike me as shrill and histrionic, and indeed, I can remember the same comparisons being made with Reagan. I’m pretty scared right now, but its instructive to remember that people viewed Reagan in much the same way as we view Bush. However, I keep thinking of the famous frog experiment, wherein the slowly boiled frogs stayed put in the hot water. That is, I wonder if we are able to accurately assess our circumstances from the middle of them.
Recently I watched Triumph of the Will, which mostly shows Hitler reviewing troops and extolling rally goers about the purity of their blood and the specialness of their homeland. We’ve got much the same going on now, including that word with the metallic ring, homeland. Personally, I’ve had enough of how special my american-ness is and how the rest of the world is in dire need of enlightenment and, if necessary, re-education on the subject. But, as you point out, most of the rest of us don’t seem to agree.
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heisenberg
Comment posted at 10:54 on Thursday, January 27, 2005
One tie-in goes back to the Thyssen family, and their corporate holdings, and Prescott Bush and Averill Harriman and their investment banking business for the Thyssens in Germany in the ‘30s, before the war started and Prescott ran afoul of the Trading With the Enemies Act. War profiteering in that family clearly did not begin with HW or W. Anyway, there’s nothing comparable to the Reichstag fire, so far, or uniformed private army intimidations by disgruntled vets, from the previous war. Remember, Hitler had establishment support because his minority faction party was aggressively anti-Marxist. Curbing socialism, or wanting to and being relatively successful at it, is a unifying thread.
Bin Laden may have it right with his calling W a crusader. A jihadist, just not an Islamic jihadist. Again, that’s a simplification, because oil is a major factor re Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq has it, and Afghanistan is needed for trans-shipment from the former Soviet central Asian republics, and their oil and gas fields.
I think the joke circulating says it best - why W, Cheney, Ashcroft, the bunch of them wear their ties so tight while giving speeches is so the foreskin does not creep up over their heads while they are talking.
Yet, personalities aside, there is a pervasive press domination - a corporate press bias - that borders on being an informal privatized propaganda machine, rather than being run out of a Ministry of Truth (directly).
Is fascism inevitable, in general, or especially now with communication speeds, urbanization, and communications intercept and monitoring capabilities being greater than ever before?
I cannot say yes or no, but the confluence of possibly enabling factors is now unique. Geronimo was hard to pursue, because of communication delay, lack of aerial or sattelite surveillance, and inability move any more quickly on horseback than Geronimo could.
The flip side of this, is the fact Bin Laden still avoids capture and al Quada avoids elimination, despite all the hi-tech gizmos we’ve got to find and track, and even with the USofA pursuing and wanting to eliminate the money flows.
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heisenberg
Comment posted at 11:15 on Thursday, January 27, 2005
I offer another idea. Not Hitler, Constantine.
In the latter, declining years of an empire, a dominant empire, the thought is to seize upon one religeous idelolgy, to coopt it in order to strengthen the reach and hold of the State, to set an orthodoxy for homeland and tributaries, and coincidentally to choose the same symbol and individual icons, the cross and Jesus - where it was the State that combined the two in the first place because the individual was a bit too much a rabble rouser, and the State decided to nail down the problem by nailing down the individual.
Coopting a symbol of peaceful resistance and loyalty to a higher order than the State, coopting of that by the secular authority, coopting that mythology as the new banner and new orthodoxy of authoritian force and aggressiveness - is what Constantine did.
It all morphed later into the Crusades, after the Roman Church had survived the Roman Empire, and that is a separate historical lesson, perhaps. It is an interesting thread to follow and see how and where it unravels, because metaphor and analogy are inexact and noncongruent, as with the Hitler and W comparisons.
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Comment posted at 13:41 on Friday, January 28, 2005
Noah, the latter paragraph in your last comment is exactly why I think this quote from Goering so relevant. It’s hard to say whether I’m in complete disbelief that despite the absolute transparency of this patriotism rhetoric, so many people are so complacent, or whether, in my more cynical moments, such mass conformity should be expected from a culture which would really prefer to take the red pill, so to speak (er, never thought a Matrix reference would come in handy…).
Heisenberg—good to see you back. I hadn’t heard that joke about the ties. As excellent as it is, damn you for making me think of presidential foreskin.
Your second comment comes at quite an appropriate time; the recent commemoration of Auschwitz and all the talk of “the need to remember” makes me wonder just how long such memory is even possible anymore. History to most people these days, it seems, is the “most recent calls” list on their cellphone.
Even though the religious right has been such a huge influence on and in this administration, I’d hesitate to say that the ideology Bush & Co. are adopting is entirely religious. The new God is not ruler of all but rather CEO and Chairman of the Board. In other words, I personally think the religious rhetoric is just a screen for the real ruse, in which corporations coopt every aspect of civic existence.
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heisenberg
Comment posted at 09:10 on Wednesday, February 02, 2005
1984, plus blackjack—of the Bush generation W is in, he’s the big brother. And he does not even have to watch, really, does he? The machine of Rupert M, et al., works smoothly enough that watching is not needed. A Goebels quote rather than a Goering quote might be called for because each had a different function, but it is like Cheney and Rumsfeld, Rummy is more quotable. I saw an internet editorial piece on propaganda, focusing on the same root as propagate, as in missionary propagation of the faith. Goes around, comes around? Maybe W is a reincarnation of Chauncy Gardner, and simply likes to watch?
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