Breaking Godwin's Law: Don't You Dare!

(+) Breaking Godwin's Law. Don't You Dare!
May 02, 2006 at 13:35:40 America/Los_Angeles


(this may have to be a drive-by. I'm supposed to be getting some work done. Ahem. But I just couldn't resist making a plug for the OpEdNews article by Lonna Gooden Van Horn America's Hitler: Doing the Unthinkable -- Comparing Bush and Hitler -- Part one of five parts:)

We all know it by heart: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.


myleftasscheek :: Breaking Godwin's Law. Don't You Dare!
What is more, anyone who dares to draw serious parallels between Nazi Germany and the current administration and/or person of GWB, is quickly dismissed as a nutcase—no matter what their credentials, experience, or point of comparison. No Zyklon B. No Nazi.

You can’t expect to be taken seriously drawing parallels between Bush and Hitler--and this piece Worse Than Watergate? Yep. Worse yet. Worse than Hitler., for example, was never meant to be taken seriously either. Forgive me. I had a fit.

On thing Lonna Gooden VanHorn said is something I’ve been seeing for quite some time now:

It is interesting to note that many of the people who are most convinced of the truth of the premise that Bush is like Hitler and America is like Germany was in the 1930’s are people who lived in Germany while Hitler was in power.

This direct quote from someone who lived through the Nazi era struck me:


“So why, now, when I hear GWB's speeches, do I think of Hitler? Why have I drawn a parallel between the Nazis and the present administration? Just one small reason -the phrase 'Never forget'. Never let this happen again. It is better to question our government - because it really can happen here - than to ignore the possibility.

“So far, I've seen nothing to eliminate the possibility that Bush is on the same course as Hitler. And I've seen far too many analogies to dismiss the possibility. The propaganda. The lies. The rhetoric. The nationalism. The flag waving. The pretext of 'preventive war'. The flaunting of international law and international standards of justice. The disappearances of 'undesirable' aliens. The threats against protesters. The invasion of a non-threatening sovereign nation. The occupation of a hostile country. The promises of prosperity and security. The spying on ordinary citizens. The incitement to spy on one's neighbors -and report them to the government. The arrogant triumphant pride in military conquest. The honoring of soldiers. The tributes to 'fallen warriors. The diversion of money to the military. The demonization of government appointed 'enemies'. The establishment of 'Homeland Security'. The dehumanization of 'foreigners'. The total lack of interest in the victims of government policy. The incarceration of the poor and mentally ill. The growing prosperity from military ventures. The illusion of 'goodness' and primacy. The new einsatzgrupen forces. Assassination teams. Closed extralegal internment camps. The militarization of domestic police. Media blackout of non-approved issues. Blacklisting of protesters - including the no-fly lists and photographing dissenters at rallies…”

It struck me because I’ve heard it so many times before from people in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and here in the US. I hear it all the time.

As many of you know: I lived in Germany for ten years, I speak German fluently—indeed, I am a translator and teacher of German-language literature, with heavy emphasis on Holocaust and Nazi Germany--I know many people—many—personally who lived through the Nazi era, some as Jews, some as Germans.

It's almost like this knowledge is a given--a basic assumption shared by everyone I know who is intimately familiar with the Nazi era (that is, 90% of my professional colleagues, clients, collaborators, etc.). It is like the unspoken known. Unspoken, and unspeakable. We talk about it behind closed doors, but what happens in the office stays in the office.

After the election, I called an old friend, retired professor of German, Catholic, married to a German Jew she met in New York, where both of them had fled (independently) from the Nazis, to tell her I thought the thing was rigged. She said:

No. It’s just like Nazi Germany. Genau das Gleiche! (trans. Exactly the same!). The people need their Führer and they all just fall in like sheep behind him. This flag-waving, this god-talk, it’s the same. Nein, du, es ist das Volk. (trans. No, dear, it’s the people.).

In my department, at conferences I attend (here and in German-speaking countries), everywhere in Germanic Studies related professions, this parallel is so evident as to be widely accepted as valid, but it cannot be articulated because it cannot be taken seriously. This is a problem.

So here it is: Myleftasscheek’s Law (whereby MLA’s ‘credentials’ for saying this is that she knows probably half the country’s “Germanists” personally as the result of 20 yrs’. academic, professional and personal immersion in German culture, inside and outside Germany):

“The more a person actually knows about Nazi Germany, the more coherent the comparison becomes.”

This means that German exiles (both Jewish and Gentile) who lived through the period; people who study, teach and translate German literature, culture and language; native Germans (indeed, native Europeans!) of every stripe; professors, academics, and students of German will likely be in a better position to tell you whether the parallel has any merit.

But they can't.

Because seriously suggesting anything of the kind—in scholarship, or the classroom, in casual conversation, even, as Godwin’s Law attests, on the blogs--necessarily lands you in the batshitloony binLaden bin, very few people with comprehensive, in-depth and gory detailed knowledge of the Nazi era are willing to go within a ten-foot pole of this beastly comparison because the “Godwin’s Law” of my profession is: DO NOT COMPARE the Nazis to the current regime. To do so is to commit professional suicide.

So Myleftasscheek’s Law certainly cannot be taken seriously. And the source cited here, Lonna Gooden VanHorn—she’s the lady with the book truck. Obviously, a total nutcase.

So I won’t seriously suggest there’s any merit to her observations, nor will I deny, however, that these thoughts have crossed my mind a time or two.

I thought they were kind of interesting, which does not necessarily mean that I take them seriously ...

Consequently, Bush, in the fulfillment of his mission has the potential to kill an unthinkable number of people. Iraq is only a good start. He may be, as Nelson Mandela has said, a man of “little foresight” who “doesn’t think properly, ” But if the past four years have proven anything, they have proven he is “resolute.” It is not likely that widespread death, which seems to be an abstraction to him – aided by the fact that he has never attended a soldier’s funeral – would cause him to doubt the path Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Perls have set him upon. Not only did Bush say “Bring ‘em on!” He also uses the term “stay the course.” He may not believe as Henry Kissinger wrote that “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals,” but he certainly believes the second part of that statement – that they are “to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” General Zinni said the path Bush has set himself upon so resolutely leads us right over a cliff. But Bush, like Hitler, knows that frightened people like to be led by someone who is confident. Even if he is confident and wrong.
...
Bush has a potential Hitler really did not have. He has the potential to virtually end life on earth. His power mad underlings, the ones former CIA agent Ray McGovern says were called “the Crazies” during the first President Bush’s administration, talk about “limited” and “winnable” nuclear war. Bush himself, of course, has a “nukaler” bomb proof underground bunker. And Bush’s virulent faith might convince him that God would rescue “God’s country” and “good Christian” people from any devastation his acts might rain down on the “evil” people and the “evil” countries. Against, I might add, all historical evidence to the contrary. After all, fifty million people, the majority of them Christian people, died during WWII. And, while the Crusaders were certainly dedicated to their mission, on the whole they lost those early Christian wars.



As the postwar Austrian poet laureate Ingeborg Bachmann once summed it up nicely in these lines from "Curriculum Vitae"


... the night is
damned long, beneath the dregs
of a jaundiced moon, in its bilious
light, above me, on the rail of imaginary power
the sled of brocaded history
sweeps by (I cannot stop it).



Tags: Godwin's Law, Bush/Hitler Comparison, Fascism/Oppression, (All Tags) :: Add/Edit Tags on this Post

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Yes, it is the same (8.75 / 4)