"Retire Hitler". A recent cultural movement?

[Dimsdale]

Time to stop hurling Hitler insults.

John Timpane
Commentary Page editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer
11 Jan., 2004

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/special_packages/sunday_review/7685939.htm

snip

MoveOn.org, an antiwar (and therefore anti-George W. Bush) group, is sponsoring a contest titled "Bush in 30 Seconds." Send in your 30-second anti-Bush ad, and if you win, your ad will run in a TV campaign during State of the Union week!

More than 1,500 ads came in. On Monday, a bunch were posted on a Web page (www.bushin30seconds.org). The idiotic thing is that two of the posted ads compared Bush to Hitler.

Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie immediately tore his tunic in the forum, calling on MoveOn.org to apologize and remove the ads. "Poor taste," he said. "Despicable," he added. The Simon Wiesenthal Center also has asked for apologies, and MoveOn.org has made noises that sound like sorries.

Gillespie is even righter than he is Republican. It is in execrable taste to show Nazi flags waving and German tanks rolling behind a list of George W. Bush's supposed sins. Was everybody at MoveOn.org on muscle relaxants when these toxic ads came sliming across the transom?

Beyond being cretinous and poisonous, the ads were out of step with a recent cultural movement, one we might title Retire Hitler.

more...

In the print edition, the article frames the following (in bold type): "Invoking his name any time you want to tar an adversary devalues the horror of the Holocaust."

This piece is simply an effort to cheapen the efforts of MoveOn.org. It appears to be another example of The Inquirer respewing major Puke talking points. Allowing Nazi references in criticisms of ChimpCo, are they? Well then, clearly we can't take anything the rest on the site offers seriously.

I'll bet that Johnny has never visited MoveOn, much less gone through all the ads himself to discover that two were objectionable. If he had seen them, wouldn't he want to complement MoveOn for getting the truth out? Oh right, I guess we're to believe that all of the ads were part of the Dems bad habit of saying or doing anything to regain power.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Notice they do no tmention the Dean - Htler comparison

oh and sending a letter to the editor is almnost imposible

[TOhioLiberal]

8. interestingly enough....

Rush calls Howard Dean 'Nikita Dean' and no one is bothered by this?
I don't compare Bush* to Hitler, I compare the Bush* 'administration' to nondescript group of Fascists.
TrekkerLass

[parasim]

2. Yeah right... cultural movement indeed!

Until somebody worse than Hitler comes along, his name will always be used for such comparisons, in my opinion.

Now, here's a cultural movement I'd love to see:

Retire Bush!

[NV1962]

3. Time to stop the false "do not fan the flames" meme, methinks

Wrote this now archived thing about the rather one-sided pyrophobia, a few days ago.

Still see it that way.

[Dimsdale]

5. Thanks.

Well done.

[NV1962]

12. Appreciate

the compliment - thanks for reading it.

[amber dog democrat]

4. I dont think its any worse than what was

being said about Clinton. Its sort of a non issue, to me.

[Zero Division]

6. MoveOn.org

Is it just me or do I detect an increasing focus of Right Wing attacks on grassroots type Liberal organizations and outlets of opinion such as MoveOn.org and DU?

[Endangered Specie]

7. which ads are they (names)????

curious

[Dogmudgeon]

9. Another example of the Conservative Double-Standard

When Conservatives and Republicans trot out Der Führer, it's just rhetoric they use to express their righteous outrage.

When Liberals and Democrats make the comparison to Hitler, it's intellectually and morally indefensible, and it's time to stop.

"Feminazis"? OK.

"Health Nazis"? Fine by us.

"Jackbooted thugs"? Sounds good!

"Anti-smoking Gestapo"? Jawohl!

"Bush-is-a-Nazi"? How dare you!

What a shame that my own hometown paper has become Fair and Balanced™!

--bkl

[oegthe]

10. Hitler comparisons

just Google "Clinton" and "Hitler" to see what a non-issue this is.

[question everything]

11. And Max Cleland?

Did the RNC run a commercial last year, morphing Senator Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden?

[Jack Rabbit]

13. Two issues converge in this story

First, there is the matter of Hitler/Nazi comparisons.

Hitler and the Nazis set a mark for evil that will remain unsurpassed for some time. One can be pretty evil and still fall well short of this standard. To say that Bush is a long ways from it is hardly a ringing endorsement of his programs.

I have seen posters at DU so desperate to turn Bush into a Nazi that they will reason that Bush is a Nazi because his grandfather lent money to the German government headed by Hitler. Frankly, I can think of far better reasons why G. W. Bush should be evicted from the White House than that his grandfather, Prescott Bush, displayed moral blindness and may have broken federal laws in the process.

A major difference between Bush and Hitler is that Hitler was principally a murderer and Bush is principally a thief. Comparing the two is like comparing Charlie Manson to Clyde Barrow. Both are criminals, but not quite the same kind of criminal. Hitler stole items from his victims, but that was incidental to murdering them; Bush killed Iraqis in the process of invading Iraq, but that was incidental to seizing Iraq's natural resources and handing them over to his cronies, which was the real purpose of the invasion.

The second issue is the general one of the nature of GOP propaganda. As pointed out on this thread, there is the hypocrisy of faulting MoveOn for two ads comparing Bush to Hitler while the GOP will embrace right wing talk radio personalities who compare either specific Democrats or the Democratic Party in general to the Nazis. The other issue, also touched on by some, is that in this instance the GOP argument is fallacious. Two ads out of dozens submitted to MoveOn from outside sources made the offensive comparison and were ultimately rejected, yet Mr. Gillespie goes on and on about how MoveOn must be a bunch of unreasonable leftist hatemongers because of the two ads as if they were the only two.

[Halle]

14. You are

the brightest, most eloquent, most fair, most empathetic rabbit I have ever come across.

Thanks for having the level-headedness to post what you did!

:loveya: