No, of course not, he certainly wasn't referring to Bush. Absolutely not. No way. He could be referring to your neighborhood garbage collector whose policies have been radically altered for the worse using 9/11 as an excuse.

Here in Israel, it is politically incorrect to use Nazism or Hitler as part of political discourse. When those of us who opposed the Oslo Agreements said Arafat is no different than Hitler, i.e. a mortal enemy of the Jewish people, we were accused of "incitement to murder" because then we were supposedly implying that Rabin and Peres were Nazi collaborators (I leave it to you to decide if that was indeed the case).
Another example was in the 1988 Israeli election campaign. Peres was promising an "international peace conference" to "settle" the Arab/Israeli conflict. The Likud (this is back in the good old days when the Likud actually believed in something) came out with a very effective ad showing a photo of the main participants of the 1938 Munich Conference. Underneath the photo they wrote the caption "International Peace Conference".
The Left went ballistic, but the Likud won the election anyway.

This is why Bar Kochba should be banned from TPM:
"When those of us who opposed the Oslo Agreements said Arafat is no different than Hitler, i.e. a mortal enemy of the Jewish people, we were accused of "incitement to murder" because then we were supposedly implying that Rabin and Peres were Nazi collaborators (I leave it to you to decide if that was indeed the case)."

A guy who "leavers it to you" to decide if Rabin and Peres were Nazi collaborators who deserved to be killed, he has eliminated himself from this community.

I will never address anything that he says again. Nor should anyone else. He should be banned.

I guess that guy Mark was right when he said Bar K danced and cheered when Rabin was killed.

Yuk. B-K man sends out a stench.

I live in Rep. Ellison's district, happily voted for him and will do so again. But I do think he made a mistake here. It's certainly open for debate whether the Nazis' horrors were so unique that it's fundamentally illegitimate to compare anything to them. But the fact is, Nazi analogies have been abused for so long that it's not surprising that people have become ultra-sensitive to them.

I wouldn't suggest that public figures should calibrate their speech to avoid tripping the right-wing outrage machine's wires. But as Dick Durbin showed, if you mention the Nazis there's a pretty good chance the rest of your message is going to be drowned out in the subsequent howling. This is one area in which it's best for people to tread lightly, especially when you can easily make the same point without running afoul of Godwin's law or it's corollaries.

Naturally, none of this changes the fact that Katherine Kersten is a fool.

How do you know he's not referring to Cheney and Rumsfeld and the neocons who did exploit 9/11 to promote their own agenda? I really doubt he was comparing Bush to Hitler - Bush isn't as smart.

Of course, if you're Arab (or Hugo Chavez) then comparison to Hitler is a given. Hussein, Ahmadenijad, Arafat, bin Laden and al Zawahari have all been compared to our favorite poster boy of EVIL. The Bush presidency has come closest to any of using fascist techniques, including torture. If comparisons are defendable, let them be made. Hitler was just a very successful tyrant and mass murderer in a long line of them. There is no "H" word that's off limits.

Of course, Zionista, but doesn't the example you cite simply confirm yet another nefarious effort on the part of Jews like you to stifle debate? Isn't that what you were trying to do when you complained of the joy some seemto take in calling Jews Nazis?

Are you a scorned stifler Zionista?

And by questioning whether the N word should be thrown around without reservation Zionista, doesn't that mean that you are in bed with Matt Drudge and you loathe Keith Ellison (nothwithstanding that, entirely independently of this latest tempest brought on by Drudge, you touted Mr. Ellison as a possible candidate for representing the U.S. in Middle East peace negotiations, a touting which I sumbit was obviously a ruse (since, after all, your name is Zionista))?

MJ:

By analogy to the old adage, "bad cases make bad law", so too does this latest nonsense being stoked by Matt Drudge against a fine man like Keith Ellison present an awkward forum for raising the real issue (if there is a real one), and that is whether folks think it's OK to throw around the Nazi label.

I don't like it when people call other people Nazis, and I admit to being especially sensitive to the use of the N word by people who I believe in my own heart hold an irrational hatred toward the State of Israel and/or a blatant insensitivity to Jewish people and their experience with real Nazis.

So, MJ, I guess my question to you would be (since we've dabbled in this issue over the past week), whether you believe that labelling someone a Nazi to advance a political argument should be done with the same type of caution you insist must be applied to the use of the term anti-semite, which is a term you have said in the past is overused by some to stifle debate?

Or, is it like Don Key and Madison suggest above, that no special care should be taken with respect to calling someone a Nazi or comparing someone to Hitler?

Regards,

Bruce

I'm with you. I'm against people making fale moral equivalences ("That politician I don't like is nothing but an Adolf Hitler!") but I have no problem with meaningful comparisons ("He uses propaganda in the same way that Hitler did, here's an example...")

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

All that is true, John, but I submit that, in the ordinary course, calling a Jew or a supporter of Israel a Nazi or Hitler-like is not being done for the purpose of focusing on that person's obsession with nationalism, mysticism, flag waving, or the shine in one's jackboots.

That's a good answer, MJ. I'd say it's wrong as namecalling but that it's fair game if you're pointing out a demonstrable historical comparison.

I tend to think, and this isn't a very novel thought, that the first person to call the other a Nazi during an argument is usually the loser of the argument.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I wouldn't refer to Hitler or "Hitler like"
when discussing/debating Israel, an Israeli, or a Jew.

This is why I made the distinction when I said 'Hitler is more than just the guy that murdered 6 million Jews.'

What you said about Netanyahu was absolutely UNTRUE. The infamous picture of Rabin in the SS uniform was made by SHABAK provocateur Avishai Raviv, was in a corner not seen from the place the speakers were standing. Raviv had it shown to Israel TV reporter Nitzan Chen in order it should be broadcast. Chen testified about this to the Shamgar Commission. People were shouting "Rabin is a traitor". Netanyahu silenced them and said "he is not a traitor, he is mistaken." This is all a matter of public record. I have learned from my participation in this group that demonization of political opponents seems to be a favorite pasttime of fanatics, but these untruths must not be allowed to spread.

self-deleted

I agree with whoever said not to respond to Bar-K. His last posts makes it clear that he celebrated the assassination of Rabin and by saying that Israel's President, Shimon Peres, is "criminally responsible" for the death of innocent Israelis, he is inciting against him as well.
He should be ignored completely or, better yet, banned from the site. MANAGEMENT, TAKE NOTE!

mj,

I'm not beyond mumbling the epithet "frikkin Nazi" now and then, especially in the age of Bush and the right wing, it almost comes regularly, but its impulsive, a kind of Pavlovian reaction to the latest BS coming from the Bush gang or their sycophants. When I sling that charge its disconnected to what the Nazis did to the Jews.

Yet, as impulsive or Pavlovian the charge is, it usually has a degree of accuracy, as in secret prisons around the world.

By the way, the brain dead section of the Christian right were too uninformed to know that newly elected members of Congress do not "swear in" on any holy book, Bible, Koran, or the Torah. Pictures of Congresspeople being "sworn in" with hand on holy book are photo ops taken AFTER the official swearing in ceremony occurs.

mj,

I may be the only one posting here that actually dealt with the original Nazis. :-)

You say the same things about Bush, Cheney, et.al. I said Rabin and Peres should have been put on trial, you said Cheney should be impeached. And as usual, you completely ignore the points I have made...that they KNEW Arafat would unleash a terrorist war against Israel, yet they still decided to bring him to Israel.

BTW-where do I "celebrate" Rabin's murder? Please bring proof, quotes and the such, not the usual nonsensicle extrapolations you are constantly making (the "anybody who is not a 'progressive' must be a criminal" line we are constantly hearing here). Also And I also want you to bring proof that "Bibi laughed" at the demonstration when people were denouncing Rabin. Do you have photos and recordings of this? Maybe he did laugh when someone told a joke and not in response to what people were saying?
Or are you giving us the ususal intellectually dishonest "we know what criminals those Likudniks are so he must have done that..I don't need to have acutally seen it, I am sure it happened" and the such?

One thing you can be sure is that MJ Rosenberg will never debate you on the merits of what you say.  He is fond of tossing off one-liner insults, but he never responds to commenters who rebut the nonsense he peddles.

That said, the idea that "the right" in general was responsible for Rabin's murder is a favorite of Israeli leftists despite the fact there is little or no evidence.  Still, if you've got some links to the assertions above, that would help.

Keep fighting the good fight.

No one is ever allowed to compare anything anyone ever does to anything Hitler did.

This is supremely ironic coming from someone from the left.  It is the left, after all, that routinely compares Bush to Hitler, and has been doing so since before there were any revelations about secret prisons or torture or any other outrages.  All you need to do is look on this thread to see the Bush = Hitler meme is alive and well.

Let's get few things straight: George Bush and the Republican party, vile as they are, are NOTHING like Hitler and the Nazis.  Not in kind and not in degree.  Nothing.

Even secret prisons, torture, signing statements, politicizing the Justice department and any and all such abuses of power do not add up to a miniscule fraction of the crimes of the Nazis.

So yes, No one should be allowed to make comparisons to the Nazis and get away with it.  That's true of the left who invoke Hitler when denouncing Bush, and the right, when invoking Hitler when talking about radical Islam (although it is worth noting that Islamism is a lot closer to Nazism than is American conservatism, something the left would do well to bear in mind).

I don't think that's a very good idea. You can't complain that those who hold an opposite position to AIPAC's stance are being censored and then call for it yourself.

You are a distorter and a slanderer with no shame whatsoever.  You take the words of people who disagree with you, twist them beyond recognition and use them to throw cheap insults to play to your peanut gallery here. 

You are the mirror image of all those right-wing nutcases who make no distinction between liberals and communists or between moderate Muslims and radical Muslims.  To you, the right is one big undifferentiated mass of bigoted, fascist monsters who have Rabin's blood on their collective hands, just as their parents all have Bobby Kennedy's and Martin Luther King's blood on their hands.  There is no such thing as center-right, moderate right or any other kind of right except the kind that cheers political assassination.

It's as disgusting when it comes from you as it is when it comes from Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity.  More than disgusting, it's just plain infantile.

So no, there is no debate that Yigal Amir was described by most as from the "right".  But Yigal Amir has as much similarity to Benjamin Netanyahu as you do.

And there is not a shred of evidence that bar_kochba "cheered" the assassination of Rabin.  I don't even understand the logic of that one on its own terms.  He challenged you to point to a link but of course you cannot.  You're nothing but a pathetic coward.

Thanks for that elaboration Don.

As to your litmus test question to me about Sharon and Carter, I try not to respond to such queries because in my own warped way perhaps I find them to be eminently offensive (like I'm being asked to prove my bona fides or something).

FWIW, this Jewish guy has never called Carter an anti-semite and has criticized those who have so labelled him. As to Sharon, I was very conscious of and involved in Israeli issues when Sharon was ultimately found to have been "indirectly responsible" for the Phalangist massacres at Sabra and Shatila. I was mortified by what I saw as his role in those events and remain so. I did not think that the "indirect responsibility" finding was proper in that my understanding of what occurred suggested a deeper role on his part (in that I believe he could have protected the Palestinians who were massacred).

Just trying to gauge how this "fair-use" Nazi analogy thing works in real life.

Just how did those for whom Kersten is a tool, as you put it, "use propaganda as well as the Nazis did"? I am assuming that you are aware of the Nazi propaganda machine and what precisely it accomplished.

I'm all for free speech. I'm just saying, "glass houses" and all that.

Just checking the reflexes of the new and improved Zionista.

Bruce,

Thanks. My question was the first thing that came to mind that pointed out the double standard we have for limiting certain words, which in turn proscribe ideas and concepts, censoring discussion. It was rhetorical and not meant as any kind of a litmus test and certainly not meant to be offensive. I understand why you would never respond to it (even though you do).  :-)

I think victim-hood does have a place as historical example and villainy must be understood to stop it. My view on I-P is that the Palestinians have been dispossessed and they need defending. America's hypocrisy is, perhaps, worse than Israel's in this regard.

I used Sharon because he had committed other crimes like Qibya and untold assassinations and was called a "man of peace" by Bush. He is a criminal to many outside observers, but somehow, should never be used in the same breath as Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin or Suharto or Custer.

I sympathize with victims of atrocities and the Holocaust was one of the worst, but Israel gets no pass for that. Maybe, sensitivities have to be dampened when discussing touchy subjects with a general audience as people outside your group might not perceive things the same way. I don't know if one side is more insensitive than the other, but I think we need to allow the "market place of ideas" to decide. More truth never hurts in the long run.

There are lots of useful lessons from the 20th century dictators and their staff. I remember Goebbels being quoted re patriotism and war, as in "It's easy to start a war..."

Many of us have made Ellison's argument here.

Don Key,

He [Sharon] is a criminal to many outside observers, but somehow, should never be used in the same breath as Hitler or Pol Pot or Stalin or Suharto or Custer.

Hold the phone.  I could be compelled to argue for the validity of the Custer comparison.

Sure, it was significantly about you, but I believe many Jews have a blind spot regarding the universality of the evil. Making it about you only, separates you, and distances you from the rest of the human race.

My state and my upper Midwest region were settled mainly by Christian Germans with Scandianvians and Irish as secondary groups. Yet they fought the Nazis. My Dad and two uncles did.

Making it ALL about you dishonors the sacrifice of others and their own heroism in fighing against people who were culturally a lot more like themselves than they were like you.

And all those snarking about Ellison and those of us who elected him -- well, he'll be reelected in 2008 and if Al Franken gets elected to the Senate it will because the same district that votes for Ellison will vote 80% for him -- and they'll be lining up at their local Lutheran Churches to put a Muslim in the House and a Jew in the Senate.

I threw him in for you, Zionista.

No problem. I expect I was being provocative. I would say Ellison made a mistake going to the Nazi reference because it is a reference to the past. I think we elected him to think outside the box and to give us another perspective on diversity which is inevitably our future.

I am not critical of you for being too concerned about the Jewish people. I'm critical of this blog, as with most others, for lacking cultural, regional, and economic diversity. Without that, we get too much inside baseball, too much preaching to the choir, and I don't think we figure out enough about what Americans want and need to go forward.

I admit to getting frustrated with so many of the same old, same old, arcane discussions of every wrong and every player and every nuance of Mideast history - to no good purpose. That's why I'd hope that we can get some new people in the mix, like Ellison, who can rattle a few intellectual cages and get people thinking outside the box.

Instead you beat around the bush pretending to be Mr. Fair and Balanced when you clearly would let the right "get away with" making the same comparison you're comfortable with making.

I guess I would defend what I wrote by saying I did not equate Islamism with Nazism. Rather I said it was closer to Nazism than American conservatism, and I stand by that assertion.  Jihadism is the ideology that is closest to Nazism in the contemporary world (outside the handful of loons who continue to call themselves Nazis, of course) in its genocidal aims, its totalitarian beliefs and its violent intolerance of dissent.  But even it has a long way to go before you could meaningfully say it is the functional equivalent to Nazism.

bluebell,

Making it about you only, separates you, and distances you from the rest of the human race.

And who made it only about us?  Surely you understand that the Jewish and Roma peoples of Nazi-occupied Europe did not go out of their way to convince the NDSP to single them out for special treatment.  Why would you even lay it out it like that?

Still, I think I get your overall point.  The huge impact of the events of 1930s-40s can remain prominent in many peoples' communal memory and shared history -- the kind that doesn't always come from books and documentaries.  From a humiliating genocidal slaughter to the sacrifice made by those in free nations in confronting the civilizational sickness of Hitler and his fellow travelers.  All of this is true and ought to benefit us all in terms of knowledge and progress.  But that, of course, is the tricky part, coming down as it must to substance and perspective.

Minnesota is a great place.  Fight the good fight against toadies like Norm Coleman, get Franken into the Senate and keep Ellison in Congress as long as he wants to be there.

Zionista:

You are truly wise.

Bruce

That's funny, in my first draft I actually typed "tool," but thought it was a little harsh.

JohnW1141,

This is why I made the distinction when I said 'Hitler is more than just the guy that murdered 6 million Jews.' 

Point taken. The Reichtag was well ahead of Auschwitz, the Wansee Conference, and kristalnacht. History does not happen all at once.

The NDSP NSDAP did not appeal to the German electorate in 1933 on a platform of extremism. It must give some pause to honest observers with knowledge of the history that neither did the Bush-Cheney GOP appeal to the American electorate in 2000 on a platform of diminished civil rights, a full frontal assault on the public sphere and shamelessly opportunistic rationales for committing US Armed Forces in war. No, we must be reminded that these people quite clearly campaigned on a platform of compassionate conservatism, honesty and integrity in government, a humble foreign policy and being "a uniter and not a divider."

The comparisons are legitimately arguable in any reasonable political discourse, and I believe that is how Rep, Ellison intended his comment.

Zionism, on the other hand, has a lot in common with Nazism. Both arose out of the late 19th Century European notions of "Blood and Soil" nationalism, both claim an inherent right for a particular self-identified ethnicity/race, both demand to push back the "inferior" people in order to make "Breathing Room" for the "Natural Expansion" of their "Settlements" . . .

The similarities are too many.

We get it, hass. 

The term Islamo-fascism is perhaps a clumsy way to describe Islamism, or radical Islam or whatever other term of art you wish to employ. But the similarities between fascism and Islamism are two numerous to just dismiss it out of hand. Both are ideologies that suppress the individual in favor of the state, both glorify war and violence and both are built around cults of personality. Both actively punish dissent and both are obsessed with "purity".

This is Brad's clear and reasoned argument. My answer was that using Islamo-fascism is no different Christo-fascism. I understand his contention that Islamism means radical Islam, but that is only true to the extent that the same people using Islamo-fascism have tried to define it that way. Labels have consequences especially in demonizing a group.The aim of this phrase is to paint Muslims as extreme.

Clearly the suffix -fascist in islamo-fascist is intended to identify those who use Islam to rationalize practices associated with fascism.

You cannot lump all Muslims into a group (Islamo-) and label them according to a handful who promote terrorism. Pat Robertson and his followers are pretty radical (calling for assassinations and death to gays, etc.). If I had him in mind whenever I spoke of Christians, would I be right to only use the term Christian Nazis? If I had Jonestown or the Branch Dravidians in mind- Christo-baby-killers? Conflating Islamism with fascism is bigoted besides being a ridiculous comparison, even to the Islamic terrorist groups.

Oh baloney. Geesh.

On July 17, 2007 - 12:13pm abdul-hass said:

Zionism, on the other hand, has a lot in common with Nazism. Both arose out of the late 19th Century European notions of "Blood and Soil" nationalism, both claim an inherent right for a particular self-identified ethnicity/race, both demand to push back the "inferior" people in order to make "Breathing Room" for the "Natural Expansion" of their "Settlements" . . .

The similarities are too many.

With black people and American Indians in mind, it sounds like you're describing the European emigration to North America.

The aim of this phrase is to paint Muslims as extreme.

What is the evidence that this is true?  Certainly there are some particularly fevered corners of the wingnutosphere that argue that Islam is inherently evil or fascistic or whatever.  But this is not necessarily equivalent to the group that uses the term "Islamofascism".  Indeed, Bush himself has used that term, but has also taken great pains, since immediately after 9/11, to draw the distinctions between jihadists and regular, peaceful Muslims.  The same is true of Tony Blair.

Why are you so distrustful of peoples' ability to understand the distinction between radical and moderate Muslims?

Why are you so distrustful of peoples' ability to understand the distinction between radical and moderate Muslims?

Why are you insistent on blurring and confusing the distinction?What kind of toothpaste or deodorant do you use? It's propaganda and propaganda works. Besides the inherent prejudice in using terms like this, I'm suspicious because we are waging an epic War of Civilizations against the "Islamo-fascists" in the M.E. and painting Islam with a broad brush sanctions any imperialist action we want to take there.

We went from demonizing Saddam Hussein using Hitler to using bin Laden and a general war against the "Islamo-fascists." 70% of Americans believed he was tied to al Qaeda when we invaded Iraq. That distinction had been successfully erased. Along the same lines as Islamo-fascist, al Qaeda has been twisted to include almost any radical Muslim now. Local resistance groups like Hezbollah and Hamas are the same "Islamo-fascists" who attacked us on 9/11, our president tells us so.

We have thousands of prisoners secreted away across the world, subject to torture, and apparently many of them are not Jihadists, but of course they are "Islamo-fascists," so what the hell. Do you think Al Jazeera is Islamo-fascist? Most who use that term do. Why say the "Islamo-fascists," instead of radical Jihadists or an Islamic terrorist group? Ask yourself what the point of a phrase might be that does not make clearer who you're referring to but obscures it.

Bev D,

Nazism was a nationalist movement and had no other meaning or purpose other than nationalism.

Not exactly.  John Lukacs presents a good comparison-contrast in the chapter, "Misuse and misreading of 'fascism'," in Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred (2005, Yale University Press):

Mussolini believed in the primary importance of the state.  The state had to be strengthened, against the endemic individualism of the Italians.  In the Fascist manifesto of 1932 Mussolini proclaimed:  "It is not the people who make the state but the state that makes the people."  He tried to institutionalize and enforce the submission of the individual to the state, harking back, at least in some ways, to the ideal of the state of the Italian Renaissance.  But Hitler had already written in Mein Kampf that "the state is but a means to an end."  And in 1929: "for us the idea of the Volk is higher than the ideas of the state."  In 1933: "Religions are more stable than forms of states."  In 1938:  "In the beginning was the Volk, and only then came the Reich."  In 1944:  "The state is only an enforced framework (eine Zwangsform).  In 1934, at Nuremberg:  "Foreigners may say that the state created us.  No!  We are 'The State.'  We follow the orders of no earthly power but those of God who created the German people!  On us depends the state!" (Lukacs, p. 119-120).

Bev D (cont'd),

Islamism and Jihadism can have many different meanings and has no nationalistic goals.

Many different meanings, yes.  But including nationalistic goals as well.  Otherwise, why is there such an establishment as the Organization of Islamic Conferences?

I think that the term Christo-fascist is common in left wing circles. In fact didn’t one of the bloggers that Edwards was forced to fire specialize in that term?

The term is not in the mainstream language since there are not a lot of people committing violence ti the name of Jesus Christ these days.

Judaism most CERTAINLY has nationalistic goals. Read the Bible, Mishna, Talmud and the other Jewish classics.

[I'm replying here to all for space- one last try...]

If it's important to make distinctions between Muslims who are radical killers and Muslim worshipers, then make those distinctions, don't use fuzzy terms like Islamo-fascist.

To argue that it's okay to off-handedly impugn a couple of billion Muslims today because Franco could have been labeled a Christo-fascist 70 years ago, since he was Catholic and a fascist, is weak. The Evil Fascists were our enemy in WWII, replaced by the Evil Communists and now the Evil Islamo-fascists.

The point of using a term like "Islamo-fascist" is precisely that it is an emotive label...

And that is my point, too. 

If al Qaeda, a small non-state fundamentalist group, is Islamo-fascist and Saddam's Iraq, a secular dictatorship, is Islamo-fascist, then which part of that tortured term, Islam or Fascism, is misrepresented with which one?

A quick search shows that Islamo-fascism is a neologism used to justify the current campaign in the Middle East withits changing targets. It's a neocon branding word first used during the Iran crisis and resurrected by Chris Hitchens. Are you guys sure you're in the right place?

From Gary Leupp: The term "Islamofascism" has been around for a few decades, and no doubt has some degree of analytical utility in some contexts. But the neocons, and occasionally President Bush, have used it to refer to Muslim targets as varied as the Syrian and Iraqi secular Baathist states, the Iranian Shiite mullocracy, al-Qaeda cells, Palestinian militias---few of which offer a good match for any mainstream academic definition of fascism. The term is merely applied as an epithet, to conflate disparate phenomena, and to validate the "war on terrorism" as something analogous to World War II.

Now mind you, George W. Bush has claimed to be on a mission from God in his war on terror. Do you think that might be Mohammed or Jesus Christ he is marching for? And if he's marching for Jesus, isn't he marching against Mohammed?

One might answer that it is only those right-wing religious nuts that see this fight with Osama's small band of wacko terrists as some kind of grand Crusade. I would say that is right, but they do have to sell it to the public.

And it is as completely absurd to see 9/11 as the beginning of some great caliphate ruling the Middle East by a barbaric Muslim horde that will shroud the world in 17th century Sharia fundamentalist religious oppression, as it is to believe America is on a great Christian Crusade fighting Islamo-fascism in an epic War of Civilizations.

Just because it's completely absurd doesn't mean it's not what they thought they were doing-- as is well documented.

"They" being the mighty Islamo-fascist armies? Now, "Islamo-phobia" is a term that could well be used today.

They being the 19 hijackers and the other members of al-Qaeda who backed them in their mission. You remember that little incident, no?

An interesting piece on Bin Laden and his shifting motivations:

http://www.reason.com/news/show/36642.html

Mg,

Lets say, for sake of argument, that Osama's dream is fulfilled, he's able to take over all of the states in the middle east and create this New World Caliphate.
There would be no more Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, Israel, etc.
I imagine Osama would be sitting on top of this empire ruling the way the Taliban ruled Afghanistan.

(I won't ask what his chances of doing this are.)

Now many are quick to predict what will happen if we pull out of Iraq, so predict for me;

After Osama creates this Caliphate, what does he do next?

Mg, at 6:50 am eastern time, Republican Orrin Hatch on the floor of the Senate just answered my question, let me paraphrase; "al Qaeda in Iraq wants to create a 'world wide' Caliphate and impose their will on us."

Mg, do you believe Hatch and his 'world wide Caliphate imposing their will on us', and if so, how will Osama et al accomplish this?

As my previous post should have made clear, I do believe that they SAY that's what they want to do, because they do.

Is it likely to happen? Jihadi armies imposing sharia and beheading girls in miniskirts down American streets? Of course not. "There are some parts of New York I wouldn't advise even the German Army to invade," as Rick in Casablanca says.

Could they kill a lot of people along the way to miserably failing? They already have. Do they even believe it themselves, or is it just the talk they talk to rally the mouthbreathers? Who knows? Did Hitler really believe all that? Does North Korea really believe that mass starvation and aid bailouts are signs of the genius of Juche? Who the hell knows? (Deep down, I'd bet Osama's goal was to ride a wave of popular acclaim to rule in some part of Saudi Arabia. That might have been a longshot, but it's a good deal less crazy or improbable than a worldwide caliphate. Alas, to judge by the recycling of old videos, he seems to be dust in a cavern or perhaps a tightly held guest of the Iranians.)

But it is what they say. That's not my wingnut Bush-lovin' Fox-sheepled Limbaugh-baked brain, that's a simple matter of the record.

JohnW1141,

Then to follow your line of thinking America has "a lot in common with Nazism"

Join the club, John.  Politics makes for strange bedfellows; but progressive politics makes for some of the strangest bedfellows of all. ([Update] Maybe this is how the Nazis ultimately win your war -- eventually, a few self-righteous blowhards finger all the rest of us as "Nazis.")

Mg, with all that said, what was the point of your post when you said:

"Just because it's completely absurd doesn't mean it's not what they thought they were doing-- as is well documented."

You seem to be giving some sort of validity to the absurd.

AHHH, forget it!

I guess the point is, people seem to be trying to imply that it's the evil Republicans trying to convince us that they're saying these things to whoop up war fever.

No, they really are SAYING these things. These nutty, medieval, restoring-the-Caliphate-imposing-Sharia-everywhere things.

Now, you can argue over how seriously to take such a threat, as I say I don't expect to be burning my Madonna records and covering the womenfolk head to toe any time soon, but the idea that our enemies are religious kooks with improbable ideas about world domination and decidedly fascist tendencies wherever they've managed to take power is NOT a figment of the Orwellian Rethuglican imagination.

Some people seem to want to bar the use of the word "fascist" as if it had no legitimate application in the Islamic world-- and I simply and totally disagree with that.

I may regret replying here, but once more into the breech....

Maybe its my age, I'm probably old enough to be your father, perhaps even your grandfather, and maybe early Alzheimer's is setting in, however;

I cannot make sense of what this means;

"Join the club, John."

I can follow the "strange bedfellows" thingy, but the rest,

([Update] Maybe this is how the Nazis ultimately win your war -- eventually, a few self-righteous blowhards finger all the rest us as "Nazis.")

"my war"?

Maybe I need some Giseng Tea to clear the cobwebs in the windmills of my mind.

No, the point of using "fascist" is that it is associating Islamism with a nation-state, or rather, evoking the substantive nature of a nation. Since Islamists are not the ruling faction in most Muslim states, and those states with an Islamist government are not bent on world domination, it is misleading.

Since in the vast majority of the Muslim world, jihadist types are a very small, although dangerous, minority, it is a cheap trick to say "Islamo-fascist". And using a thought-preventing term is dangerous, not merely a rhetorical move. It justifies heavy-handed use of force, and invites the growth of the very enemy we invoke.

If I may interject, it seems as if alot of us are looking for reason in fascism. But the engine of fascism never ran on reason. Rather, the engine of fascism runs on populism, which in turn is rooted in emotion. And the way I see things now, we're all stuck in a war between their crazies and ours, and in a world without any reasoned or reasonable leadership.

I certainly don’t thing that the term “fascist” implies a nation state. It refers to a governing philosophy that may be held by an individual or a group small, or large. There are people in the United States I am certain who are communists. We would rightfully refer to them as communists without inferring the United States had a communist government.

bar_kochba132,

I would argue that the Jewish people has historically had nationalistic goals -- ie, an equal right of national self-determination in its native region (Zionism); the establishment of a post-Judean theocratic government-in-exile (Rabbinic Judaism); etc. -- the religious goals of Judaism transcend nationalism to a mystical level of human redemption. However, if you are replying specifically to Bev D's comment, it reads "Jihadism," not "Judaism."

No, those components were tools used to promote nazism as nationalism. Nazism wasn't a fascist movement, it was a cult, even the choice of the party name was meant to confuse and obfuscate their true purpose.

I know you were not commenting on goals. Jihadism, though, has many different meanings to Muslims, and is not one thing, nazism had only one meaning and that was the glorification of Germany. You can find similarities between almost all movements - I could point out similarities between jihadism and zionism, especially in their methods, but similarities don't them them alike. Muslims themselves ascribe different meanings to Jihadism and have centuries. Contemporary history uses Jihadism as a radical, political movement bent on world domination but that hasn't always been its meaning.

The use of jihadism or Islam confuses the real problems the West has with Muslim countries - they want an end to Western oppression and imposition and like the extremists in those countries, they use religion to obscure politics. It's about demonization of each other instead of solutions to real political problems.

Their treatment of the American Indians wasn't so far off now, was it?

Sorry John. I believe I accurately recall your having mentioned serving in Europe with the US Armed Forces in the Second World War. So, rightly or wrongly, I presumed that you might take some degree of offense at comparisons of the US with Nazi-Germany. Meanwhile, if a few self-righteous blowhards are allowed to pronounce sentence declaring all of us "Nazis" then eventually civilization is reduced to those self-righteous blowhards and the rest of us.

Snarky, yes.  But when taken to it's logical conclusion, it is what it is.

Zionista,
You are right. And it's why I'm not buying an Inaugural suit for '09.

Don Key,

You may be too clever for our own good.  The pan-national fascist movements do have correlaries in some components and tendencies in Zionism (as we would likely find in just about any national liberation movement, if we give it real thought).  For example, the settlement movement obviously aspired to transcend the borders that even the most conservative Israeli governments were prepared to establish.  It has certainly been no oversight for all these years that Israel has made no effort to annex the West Bank and Gaza.

But that said, we gain nothing from these exercises by engaging in all comparison and no contrast.

I agree.

Point taken.

If fascists in the United States managed to take over the U.S government by legal means, they would still be fascists.

Christians are not referred to as Cnristo-fascists in respectable commentary since there is not a perceived movement to replace the current government with fascism legally or illegally. Hint: opposition to abortion, homosexual marriage, ect. is not fascism.

Yeah, what Zionista said...

I'm afraid I share your apprehension. What is the political equivalent of H.L. Mencken's infamous quote saying, "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," anyway?

I maintain that Nazism is pan-nationalist in that it sought to establish Aryan ubermenschen as the ruling class of civilization.  Clearly, to Hitler and his followers, not all Aryan supermen were German (Hitler was Austrian).

But the worst of it all is that I now feel compelled to reread those chapters in The Origins of Totalitarianism..., and there goes a solid month of summer.

And if the government made access to marriage rights (or even cheeseburgers) dependent upon commandments in Exodus and Leviticus, it would be a threat to what America is and was meant to be.  I can pass on the cheeseburger, but you can live at McDonald's for all anyone cares.  Likewise, no judge should be prohibitted from pronouncing gay Americans partners in life, and no law should determine that life begins at conception according to religious dictates (which isn't even consistent with the Bible anyway [see Ex. 21:22-25]).

The American Indians were treated horrendously by the Europeans, but for you to say the treatment wasn't "far off" from what the Nazis did to the Jews shows a mind so dysfunctional that I'm surprised you can type.

When I said: "Then to follow your line of thinking America has "a lot in common with Nazism" it was an indictment, not an alliance.

I wasn't comparing the US to Nazi Germany,I was suggesting the comparison as a natural conclusion to Achmed's earlier post. It was a serious question.

Backtrack the thread.

I expressed my view on calling people Hitler in another post here.

By the way, your recall is correct.

How do you know what my real point is?

A lot of people seem rather eager to read something into something even when something else is explained at considerable length.

The only thought-preventing is your unwillingness to recognize the fairly obvious fact that many Islamic states and movements learned quite a lot from European fascism.

"Since Islamists are not the ruling faction in most Muslim states, and those states with an Islamist government are not bent on world domination, it is misleading."

So what are the Saudis, and what are they spending all that money spreading Wahhabist Islam around the world for? More than one way to dominate, you know.

And that has nothing to do with pan-nationalism. Pan nationalism is the movement to promote nation/states with "like" peoples. In pan-nationalism the state serves the people, in nazism, despite Hitler's claim to the opposite, the people existed to serve Germany and Hitler. The German army/bureaucrats took an oath of allegiance to Hitler - nazism was a cult of personality. Pan-nationalism is the exact opposite of nazism.

Hitler may have been born in Austria, but his family were German. Hitler is a German name, his ancestory was German.

And I think that this brings us to why this whole discussion is basicly pointless. Probably the only difference between these two is that the nazis were so much more effecient. They did in ten years what Europians and Americans took four centuries to do. Otherwise, the numbers are about the same. Percentages about the same.

If we do not acknowledge that each of us carries evil as part of our human nature, we will continually repeat it over and over and over until at least I am sick of it.

Making nazis a "special class" of evil protects us from the notion that very ordinary Germans did their civic duty to further the nazi cause; and it protects us from the idea of examining ourselves. The statement you have entered here illustrates this point to a small extent; you obviously do not know the full history here, but are willing to make this statement to create that distance.

Good post, a tad heavy on the cerebral, but I guess its neeeded.

"My Rx? Drop the term fascist, and drop the term Islamofascist. Terms like this can only mislead."

Excellent suggestion.

So it's between the people who think it's fair to describe a militarized state as "fascist," and those who think that's incendiary and "useless"-- but comparing 9/11 to the Reichstag fire isn't the least bit so? Because hey, it's not actually saying Bush started it, or plans concentration camps, or drove his teenaged girlfriend to suicide with his unnatural desires! No, they're similar because-- they were both buildings! In the Northern Hemisphere!

Forgive me if I find this all rather torturous. The point of Godwin's Law is that Nazi comparisons of any sort are especially nasty and, usually, especially stupid. So the onus is on the person making said comparison to demonstrate why it's NOT stupid and a way of sneaking in the side door all sorts of other odious connotations. In the case of the Reichstag fire vs. 9/11, there's relatively little in common-- one was an attack which led to immediate military response, much like Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, the sinking of the Lusitania, or countless other attacks and invasions in human history; the other was a political incident used to consolidate internal power. If you take that and say, well, they were both used by a leader to solidify his position, well, it is true that the people have always rallied to a leader under attack, for their own protection and to combat the feeling of helplessness; if you mean anything more than such a banal and obvious observation, then you have already made a comparison with the Nazis which you better be able to support with credible analogies to, say, the Night of the Long Knives or Kristallnacht. If you can't, then it's a slur-- with its own tinge of fascistic demonization inside it.

* * *

Then there's the use of the term fascist for some of these Islamic movements, and whether it is justified. I mentioned Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism; here's a passage where he argues why fascism has certain bedrock characteristics which we can fairly identify in some Islamic movements:

"The great theoreticians of the new twentieth century movements... labored hard at refashioning the myth, and each new theoretician produced a version that looked utterly unlike everyone else's. Yet as [Andre] Glucksmann has shown, every one of those modern versions of the ancient ur-myth kept more or less rigorously to the general shape and texture of the biblical original.

"There was always a people of God, whose peaceful and wholesome life had been undermined. They were the proletariat or the Russian masses (for the Bolsheviks and Stalinists); or the children of the Roman wolf (for Mussolini's Fascists); or the Spanish Catholics and the Warriors of Christ the King (for Franco's Phalange); or the Aryan race (for the Nazis). There were always the subversive dwellers in Babylon, who trade commodities around the world and pollute society with their abominations. They were the bourgeoisie and the kulaks (for the Bolsheviks and Stalinists); or the Freemasons and cosmopolitans (for the Fascists and Phalangists); and sooner or later, they were always the Jews (for the Nazis, and in a lesser degree, for the other fascists, and eventually for Stalin too)....

"The subversive dwellers in Babylon were always aided by Satanic forces from beyond, and the Satanic forces were always pressing on the people of God from all sides... Yet no matter how putrid and oppressive the present, the reign of God always beckoned in the future... The coming reign was always going to be pure--a society cleansed of its pollutants and abominations... The coming reign was always going to last a thousand years-- that is, was going to be a perfect society, without any of the flaws, competition, or turmoil that make for change or evolution. And the structure of that purified, unchanging, eternal reign was always going to be the same. It was going to be the one-party state (for the Bolsheviks, the Fascists, the Phalange, and the Nazis)-- a society whose very structure ruled out any challenge to its own shape and direction, a society that had achieved the final unity of mankind. And every one of those states was governed in the same fashion, by a great living symbol, who was the Leader...

"The Leader was a superman. He was a genius beyond all geniuses... He wielded the force of History (for the Bolsheviks and Communists); or the force of God (for the Catholic Fascists); or the face of the biological race (for the Nazis). And because this person exercised a power that was more than human, he was exempt from the rules of moral behavior, and he showed his exemption, therefore his divinelike quality, precisely by acting in ways that were shocking... For, in each version of the myth, before the reign of God could be achieved, there was always going to be the war of Armageddon-- the all-exterminating bloodbath..." (pp. 48-51)

If you are still insufficiently reminded of so many of the region's movements by this point, Berman spells it out:

"Baath Socialism is a branch of the larger pan-Arab movement, founded by Satia al-Husri in the years after the First World War on the basis of his philosophical studies. These studies were in Fichte and the German Romantics-- the philosophers of national destiny, of race, and of the integrity of national cultures... Sami al-Jundi, one of the early Baath leaders, explained very clearly... 'We were racists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particularly Nietzsche... Fichte, and H.S. Chamberlain.'" (pp. 54-55)

"The Muslim Brotherhood's founder, Hassan al-Banna, expressed-- I am quoting now from Malise Ruthven, from his A Fury For God-- 'considerable admiration for the Nazi brownshirts.' His organization did choose to designate its organizational units as kata'ib, or phalanges, in the Franco style. And what did those Muslim phalanges hope to accomplish? ...The Muslim Brothers wanted to see the Caliphate [reduced to ceremonial function by Ataturk] restored... in order to resurrect the world of Islam in its pristine age, that of the seventh century." (pp. 58-9)

And so on (his analysis of Sayyid Qutb's debt to European totalitarianism is far too lengthy to blithely paraphrase; read it to see how all the fascist high notes are sung in Qutb's inspirational prose). This is deep-rooted, authentic fascism, whether others choose to see it or not.

That is a strong presentation. and I concede the value of the term fascism, in professional hands, so to speak, when discussing Wahab. Its value is weaker regarding Hezbollah, and becomes unhelpful in the streets of Baghdad.

I will agree Wahab is dangerous. When are we going to do something about it, and what? We punted in Afghanistan, hid our head in the sand in Iraq (thus exposing our backside for constant kicking), and we coddle the Saudis. Then we are told we must continue to depend on oil, by the folks doing the coddling.

I stick to my contention that like Ellison's borrowing of Nazi overtones is hard to defend as legitimate rhetorical technique, saying Islamo-fascism is a brain shunt. It deflects thought from the inconvenient details.

Neo, this IS its historical context. When Arabic parties are founded on explicitly fascist lines in the mid-twentieth century, why would you not call them fascist? When they cry the Arabic for "viva la muerte," why would you consider them a wholly different beast from the Phalange? If it can travel from Germany to Spain (which was once Muslim), which no one doubts it did, why can't it cross into Muslim North Africa? Is it that you think fascism is exclusively Christian? (The neopagan Nazis would have argued that point.)

The point is, for all that "fascist" is thrown around loosely, the term doesn't empty of meaningful context if you are scrupulous in examining and cataloguing the similarities. Berman does that-- again, I recommend his explication of Qutb, which is too rich and thoughtful to be crudely summarized-- and his argument is, I think, utterly commanding.

Eyes rolling.

Oh give truthteller a break--he's new here. Just signed up to give us his insight on Keith Ellison, I think. Apparently, living, breathing, and dying for your cause means trolling websites. It's amazing that the demands of conscience are so small.

I, for one, never said it was. I don't use the word "fascist" except in jest and the reason for not using it is that I can't find a generally accepted meaning of the word. Its almost like The Queen of Hearts
who said something like 'words mean what I say they mean'

I've bumped this post up a notch so you can see the invisible. It's not inappropriate, just empty and foolish.

The 'most' bizarre aspect of this site is seeing right wing zealots come here to try to peddle their wares. I guess they feel if The Bible of Wingnuttery sells in right wing chat rooms or blogs it will sell here.

And how do you escape the perjorative weight the term has acquired over time and still claim objectivity?

Why would I want to be objective about fascists?

"Nazis. I hate 'em!" --Indiana Jones

Once you commit to the term fascism you forfeit all control of your narrative

I hardly think Berman does.

Seriously, I understand your point-- it's a loaded word, no question, and used about 100 times wrongly for every right usage-- but you know, it's okay to use a loaded word when it's the right one. When you're looking a mob of brownshirts frothing about the Jews in the eye, for instance.

"The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting 'Heil, Spode!' and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: 'Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?'" -- The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse

Mg said:

JohnW1141, the bizarre part is that everyone to the right (on ANY issue) of Dennis Kucinich is branded a "rightwing zealot" by some folks, and there are even those who do whatever they can to chase such folks away in the name of preserving pristine groupthink-- yet these same people confidently expect to win the 2008 election despite never having had to articulate and defend their point of view to anyone who doesn't already share it, and never having competed for the middle.....

All true, but you have to search far and wide to find them posting on this site.

which is where the next election will be decided.

I'm not sure there is a middle today, but if there is I think its miniscule. I think 08 may be decided on the party the public wants more than the candidate.

Mgmax, rightwing zealot who's so dyed in the wool Republican he voted for Anderson, Mondale, Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore and Bush respectively in the 7 presidential elections he's been able to vote in; gave money to both McCain and Gore to stop Bush in '00; and did some work for the Dean campaign in '04 and one of Obama's advisers in his own run for a local office last year. Yeah, a regular James Dobson, that's me.

I was referring to "truthteller" who started this line, also, someone named Bowa, posting elsewhere on this site, and a few others who come here, not you.