The Repugnant Republican National Committee has launched a media attack on MoveOn.org because of two ads on their site, out of thousands of submissions, that compare Adolf Hitler to George W. Bush – apparently a case of the RRNC looking for the Hitler in a haystack (the winning ads are here). It is a weak argument, but the Republicans are weak at argument (so what do you expect) as they would rather twist the truth than tell it, or just out and out lie to further their own cause which is exactly what is wrong with the right wing establishment. They are getting all in a fit about Hitler, now, because there was someone on the left invoking the H-word, yet they were strangely silent when the NY Post compared Dean to Hitler, or Grover Norquist compared the estate tax to the Holocaust on NPR. And, when Republican Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger made comments about how Hitler had ‘overcome obstacles’ on his way to power, everyone over on the right became a revisionist. What? Holo-what? Never heard of it.
You cannot go and give Hitler props, I don’t care who you are. Name checking the artist formerly known as Adolf just ain’t cool. Stay in school. No matter who you end up voting for, Hitler is a historical asshole, the worst and most vile in at least the last hundred years, and his name is still as volatile as a Molotov cocktail. To mention him in reference to anything is to be considered the height of lowbrow, and can get you labeled as ‘Krazy with a K’ faster than you can say “National Socialist.” Still, to say that Dubya and der Fuhrer have more in common than you might think, isn’t completely off the mark (sorry again for the lack of umlaut – I never had needed them before and now that I realize I can’t have them, I am wanting them more than ever). Adolf Hitler committed the worst atrocities in recent memory and never paid for his crimes, taking the coward’s way out with a gun in a bunker, leaving the world in a great deficit of justice and humanity. To think that he had been able to get away with as much blood on his hands as he did is a collective nightmare from which we will never wake and a testament to the gross and unbelievable, unforgiveable actions that we are capable of as human beings. I am not saying that Hitler and Bush are the same, but I do understand if someone wants to make the comparison. Since this is a free speech zone, I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Bush has Hitler ‘potential.’ I am not calling him a Nazi, but I bet he could do a goosestep in a pinch. If he tried really really really hard. If allowed another term in office, the word ‘holocaust’ might be one we use to describe current events, rather than historical ones. I just don’t want to find out what he is capable of. History repeats almost as much as the History Channel, but we don’t want to see the Third Reich in real time again and the freedom to say that is the right of every American, even the Terminator.
Pointing out this hyperbolic soundbite is merely an attempt by the RRNC to discredit and divide the ones who wish to question authority and practice free speech, not to protect the memory of the millions of lives lost and ruined by Hitler. To accuse the dissenters and attempt to cast them as defilers of the graves of those who died under the dark shadow of the Third Reich is a worse crime than the one alleged.