Mark Finkelstein has his panties all in a knot because Joe Scarborough didn’t ferociously denounce what Finkelstein claims was an unfair comparison of Bush to Hitler by Naomi Wolf. What Wolf actually said:
What Americans really have to understand is that every time a leader has sought to close down an open society, they have invoked an external or internal threat, like terrorism, and often that threat can be real. I mean, you saw this happening in Italy in the 20s, in Germany in the 30s, in East Germany in the 50s, in Prague in the 60s, in China in the 80s. Again and again leaders that are trying to push through things that make it hard to recover democratic practice terrify the population and often the threat is real. So I really think it’s important for our leaders to get some perspective because right now people are so traumatized by the threat of being cast as soft on terror that they are scared to stand up for the Constitution.
Clearly, she was comparing Bush to Hitler.
Our young newsbusters are so god damned stupid they miss every point being made while searching for something to offend them.
PS- Even though Wolf clearly did not call Bush Hitler, it might behoove Bush that if he does not like Nazi analogies, he perhaps should ease up on the totalitarian behavior and the stab in the back rhetoric. Just a thought. Personally, I am looking forward to hearing Bush try to roll his R’s the next time he claims we are seizing defeat from the jaws of victory. Maybe he will even go old school and blame the Jewish controlled media.
*** Update ***
And yes. The heat does make me exceptionally cranky.
Zifnab
Hitler actually served his time in the armed forces.
Hitler didn’t pass through college in a cocaine and beer induced alcoholic haze.
Hitler didn’t need to run on his daddy’s name to become Chancellor of Germany.
When Hitler ordered the Nazis into Africa and the Middle East, he made sure Rommel did some pre-war planning.
Hitler had the good decency to kill himself before the end of his term in office.
I’m sorry, but Mark is right. Bush is many things, but he’s no Hitler.
myiq2xu
Let’s see, Ministry of Propaganda? FOX News.
Concentration camps? Gitmo.
Torture? Torture.
Dictatorship? Unitary executive.
Permanent war? GWOT.
Shall I continue?
myiq2xu
BTW- Is Mark the person Strother Martin was referring to in Up in Smoke when he mentions the “Finkelstein shit kid?”
Dennis-SGMM
I would respectfully add to Zifnab’s list:
Hitler was fluent and expressive in his native language.
The Other Steve
What a dumb thought.
Clearly the issue here is not Bush being compared to Hitler, it’s the opposition to the anti-terrorism measures. By pointing out that Naomi Wolf compared Bush to hitler, Mark finkelstein has done a tremendous job at discrediting the messenger such that we do not need to respond to her criticism of the anti-terrorism measures.
Pb
Zifnab,
Don’t forget the chart (from here)…
LITBMueller
From the comments to Mark’s post:
I’m still waiting for Mark to denounce thsi comment, since CLEARLY the commenter wished Bush would act more like a Nazi towards the Evile Leftist MSM.
heh.
Wilfred
Not as long as he has Fuchs News.
Andrew
John Cole is in lust with Naomi Wolf so I’m not sure that he is an objective commentator.
PK
Pb
I looked at the chart. It is wrong on one point. Bush is clearly mentally retarted!
Dreggas
I’m laughing my ass off because this guy is so punch drunk on the kool-aid he obviously has just been stumbling around the past 6 years. The MSM…demonizing bush…BWAHAAHAHAHA.
Oh and what better way to take back America than have Olbermann on, in prime time, just before football on Sundays. FREEDOM BITCHES!
John Cole
Actually, I just want to have sex with her. Two or three times.
And to the rest of you, the Bush is dumber than Hitler or Hitler was a better leader stuff was moderately clever the first time, much less so the eleventy billionth time. Now it just makes you look stupid, and gives ignoramuses like Finkelstein something to link to when he makes sweeping generalizations about “leftards.”
Pb
PK,
Yes, but the chart wasn’t wrong on that point. Look at it again, carefully, before you start tossing around accusations of mental retardation. :)
Salty Party Snax
And all this time I thought comparing Bush to Hitler was wrong because it had been done to death.
Ming the Merciless is a far more trendier comparison.
elchubs
Maybe my sarcasm radar is off but are you serious? Say what you will about Bush (I also think he is a colossal douche bag) but he didn’t murder 6+ million Jews and other assorted minorities. So I guess you’re right…Bush is no Hitler.
Tom Hilton
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature. From their point of view, anyway.
Jake
On the one hand you have the Right Wing, which accuses the shrinking violet sissy libruls of shrieking bloody murder at every violation (real and imagined) of the PC CODE OF BEHAVIOR (Vols. I – XMCLVII).
On the same damned hand you have the Right Wing which shrieks bloody murder at every violation (real and imagined) of the BUSH WORSHIP CODE OF BEHAVIOR (Vols. I – XMCLVII).
God, I don’t care if You remove all of the bad people from the world, just please do something about all the damn pussies.
The Other Steve
Exactly. John Cole missed the entire point of the article. Sheesh.
Pb
Correct–in fact, he’s only responsible for the deaths of roughly a million or so total Iraqis, Afghanis, American troops, etc., etc., but who’s counting (certainly not him)…
Tom
Frankly I believe hitler was by far a smarter man than our beloved ‘dear leader’. He was a very bad man (Hitler, that is) but very smart and that’s why the neocons – by way of Strauss – are using some of the same tactics employed by Hitler’s regime. Take a look at the similarities and you will see. I’m sort of glad bush is a dimwit. I shudder to think what this poor country would be like if W had a brain.
Gus
I like you cranky, John. I hope it’s a good long heat wave for your readers’ sakes.
stickler
This is actually a fascinating point:
Why, of all the nefarious characters to install as President, and to follow slavishly, would ANYONE choose George W. Bush? Aside from his clever choice of parents, he has literally nothing to recommend him. It may be the saving grace for our Constitutional Republic that he is such an incompetent fuckup. But it begs the question — why him? If the powers that connived at giving him power and propping him up, had actually chosen someone who was minimally competent, the Republic would have been finished. It still might be, but Bush’s monumental incompetence is putting that project in jeopardy.
Tom Hilton
I’m not so sure. Seems to me we have the worst of both worlds: incompetence in every area where competence would do any good (war, natural disasters, managing the economy, etc.) and marginal competence in the more malignant areas (devising ways to subvert the constitution). Bush’s incompetence certainly guarantees that only the 27 percenters now view him favorably, but it hasn’t prevented him from doing what he wanted to do in the first place.
Pb
That’s Cheney’s department (appropriate that the undisclosed Fourth Branch would be devoted to undermining the Constitution, neh?)
Zifnab
Not because he doesn’t want to. I think “Nuke Tehran” has been an idea floated around certain circles of the WH and Pentagon enough times for us to know that, given the opportunity, Bush would happily start rounding up brown people and implementing a final solution. Michelle Malkin would be cheerleading away at his side, while Hugh Hewitt bemoaned the fact that we weren’t dropping nukes or gassing people fast enough.
I’m sorry if the “Bush is Stupid Hitler” meme has gotten stale, but can you honestly tell me our President hasn’t been acting like a total 30s-era dickhole fascist since 9/11?
Cain
I just saw the first episode of “Flash Gordon” recently and man.. there is a lot of eye candy in that show. 3 hot female stars… I’m not sure if the ladies like the men. I didn’t think Ming looked all that good. Flash was alright. The prof kind of reminds me of “Tweak” from South Park.
cain
PK
Pb
Oops, My bad!
Fledermaus
But that’s all they know how to do. Rather than actually engage arguments, it’s much easier to make up silly bullshit that the person did not say and then aruge against that.
::wingnut jumps up and down:: “See the commuislamicpuppykillingdemonocrats are calling the president Chimpy McHitler!!!!one11eventy1”
PK
Stickler,
Why Choose Bush? Because I think he was electable. He came across as “one of the people”. He was the “Anti Clinton”. After all isn’t style over substance what counts in this media age. Remember the media was fawning all over him in 2000. Gore was dismissed as an intellectual and a liar. A Dick Cheney type would never have been be elected.
Had 9/11 not happened, Bush would have gone along as a mediocre that he is. Katrina would have been his biggest failing.
I sometimes wonder how other US presidents would have reacted after 9/11. Bush’s father would have been superb. Carter too I think. Not so sure about Regan though. Nixon might have started world war III.
rawshark
…and thereby allow them to dismiss the argument. All they care about is finding a reason for the 28% to only listen to certain sources.
Never looked at it that way. Fits though.
Not the heat, the humidity. You should come out here to phoenix. You can see how the lack of humidity has kept TZ from ever being cranky.
rawshark
Maomi Watts didn’t call Bush, Hitler. Dick Durbin didn’t call our soldiers Nazis. Yet the right freaked out like they said it directly. Guilty conscience?
I’m starting to wonder if the idiots who said we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq are descendants of the clowns who thought Cubans would rise up and overthrow Castro if we showed up on their beaches with a few Marines and some Cuban exiles.
If Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq would he have been invited to Dallas for a parade? Does the NSA have a sense of humor?
Dennis-SGMM
I think that John is right in Comments: if each and every lefty eschews any comparison between Bush and Hitler, or between the Bush-Cheney administration and the Third Reich I’m more than positive that the right will never again do a false flag post and then “discover” it on any left-leaning blog.
Tom S
Must differ on one of the points: Hitler elevated wishful thinking as a military strategy to levels that this administration couldn’t possibly hope to attain. (Stalingrad anyone?)
Pb
I sometimes wonder if 9/11 would have happened at all under other US Presidents. I know Clinton and his people actually took al-Qaeda seriously:
Pb
Oh, I’d never count them out. (Iran, anyone?)
jesse's girl
Is this better?
bernarda
Often in this type of discussion, some jump immediately to WWII and the extermination camps to discredit comparisons. But Hitler came to power in 1933 and didn’t launch WWII until 1939. (well, not exactly that way since Japan attacked China in 1937)
So if comparison is to be made, it should be in the six-year build-up by Hitler and laws like the Enabling Act, sort of Hitler’s Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act combined.
Though it is not comparable to WWII, it took Bush only two years to launch a major unjustifiable war.
As to “jewish controlled media”, that is not the case that should be argued. What can be argued is that the Israel First lobby causes an unhelpful bias in American policy.
http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/aug/24/what_candidates_need_to_say_on_the_middle_east
Candidates don’t dare say anything about Palestine that might be used as sound bites against them.
“One more thing. Reading the candidates statements on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict issued so far, I see that they tend to focus only on what Palestinians need to do to end the conflict. They must agree to live in peace with Israel, extirpate the terrorists, accept all previous agreements with Israel, build democratic institutions, clean up their textbooks, monitor hate speech in mosques etc, etc. That is usually just for starters. As for Israel, it need not do anything. The candidates do not mention the illegal outposts, the settlements, the checkpoints, or even the occupation itself. It is as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one in which one side is all victim and the other all perpetrator. This, of course, bears no resemblance to reality and the candidates know it.
Candidates and their advisers need to know that we understand that the lowest-common-denominator pandering he or she engages in as a candidate is a harbinger of policies he will pursue as President. And they need to know that we understand that those policies will make more terrorism and violence more likely, not less, including here at home.”