4 Comments:

Tommy's a dolt. And, while even 1 story of American interrogators beating someone to death is too many, I think the Holocaust analogy is inapt. There are important lessons to learn from the behavior of the average Klaus on the streets of Berlin (or Warsaw) in the 1930s and there are certainly whiffs of unaccountable power in the Bush administration's perpetual war. I, for one, am sincerely concerned about creeping American fascism, which is why I avoid references to Nazism. What's been done in our name is bad enough as it is -- we don't have to give the Bushies the easy response that they are not Nazis.

By  Hammer, at 7:48 AM  

I agree. Continuously comparing things to the Nazis waters down the hoped-for horror of that comparison and runs the risk that ultimately Nazism will be watered-down because it will be linked to the less serious actions it has been compared to. Instead of ratcheting up the seriousness of your current complaint, you demote the seriousness of the Holocaust.

By  Briane, at 8:14 AM  

I have noticed something interesting recently. After years of claiming everything we didn't like was "just like Nazi Germany" there is now a real backlash that goes in the opposite direction. The backlash seems to say Nazi Germany was so horrible (completely true) that nothing that gets compared to it can possibly rise to that level. I think there is a lot of truth to that and hurling charges of Nazism is almost never warranted. But the excess of the backlash is that it takes off the table ANY comparison to Nazi Germany even where such a comparison is useful. If person or party X uses methods today substantially similar to those of the Nazis in, say, 1938 it is entirely apt to point that out. It is, however, improper to claim based that those similarities that person or party X will eventually use the methods of the Nazis in, say, 1943. But it is also improper to claim that the similarities don't exist because X has not done all the other things the Nazis are infamous for. That said, I am well aware that comparing anything to Nazi Germany brings with it all the associated historical baggage (and indeed in spurious cases this is often exactly the point) so that one should always be very careful when doing so.

As for my post in particular, I thought I was quite careful to avoid implying that American policy or any part of our government bore any resemblance to Nazism. My intent was to imply that Tommy was the sort of person that would turn a blind eye to even that level of crime and I'm willing to stick to that. I am not saying that any of the actions detailed in that article rise to the level of Nazi atrocities nor am I saying that Tommy himself is a Nazi. I am therefore going to edit the post to put that one line in the past tense to hopefully better make that distinction. For those coming to this post later, here is how the original line read: People like Tommy are the ones who walk by the camps, don't notice the empty trains departing, and don't see the smoke, all in the name of "patriotism."

By  Jambo, at 12:09 PM  

I'm as guilty as the next guy -- okay, I'm more guilty than the next guy of throwing the word "fascist" around. I've tried to clean up my act, of late, because I do see a spectre of fascism looming in the hall. I'm quite sure it's real, but I'm not going to yell "Fascism!" without some evidence, lest I find myself written off as yet another fascist-hunting goof.

I think the edit is helpful. It makes your point more clearly and lets poor Tommy personally off the hook for the crime of genocide.

Your original point is well-taken. There's a fight against fascism coming in this country, and the ill-informed, the credulous, and the unimaginative are all on the wrong side.

By  Hammer, at 1:35 PM  

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