Y'know, I'm TIRED of listening to Bush/Hitler comparisons...

[TygrBright]

...and they're DAMNED INACCURATE, in my humble opinion.

You can bet your ASS that if the RHINE had overflowed and flooded some major German city in 1936, there would NOT have been bloated bodies still floating around a week or ten days later.

And if any crony of Hitler's had been so manifestly, publicly, appallingly incompetent as 85% of the * Administration flunkies, they would have quietly vanished from sight in a skinny minute.

irritatedly,
Bright

[Hardrada]

1. Ja, they made the trains run on time.

Where they made them run to is a different story.

[TahitiNut]

22. That was a myth the fascists perpetrated about Mussolini's Italy.

It's a lot like the myth the fascists are spreading about Busholini's "growth" economy. This is a fairly common (dishonest) marketing technique. For Motor Company, suffering under the (accurate) consumer perception that their car bodies were noisey, unlike Fisher Body bodies, studied the problem (one of 'perception,' remember) and came up with two alternatives. One was to invest in engineering and assembly changes that would result in quieter bodies for a longer part of the car's life, and the other was to invest in a marketing campaign that bragged about how quiet Ford cars were. The marketing campaign was fare less expensive. That's what they chose, leaving the engineering changes to be incorporated, as convenient, over many years.

After the "march on Rome" (which was itself a myth of fascist propaganda) on 28 October 1922 that resulted in King Vittorio Emanuele's appointment of Benito Mussolini as prime minister and the accession to power of the fascists in Italy, Mussolini needed to convince the people of Italy that fascism was indeed a system that worked to their benefit. Thus was born the myth of fascist efficiency, with the train as its symbol. The word was spread that Mussolini had turned the dilapidated Italian railway system into one that was the envy of all Europe, featuring trains that were both dependable and punctual. In Mussolini's Italy, all the trains ran on time.

http://www.snopes.com/history/govern/trains.htm

[sam sarrha]

2. Vanished..?? i disagree, they would have be shot in a public square

[FreedomAngel82]

3. And do you know the fourteen signs of fascism?

[Mnemosyne]

13. Sure do, almost by heart now. They are:

The 14 characteristics are:

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.


Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.


Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.


Supremacy of the Military
Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.


Rampant Sexism
The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.


Controlled Mass Media
Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.


Obsession with National Security
Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.


Religion and Government are Intertwined
Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.


Corporate Power is Protected
The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.


Labor Power is Suppressed
Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .


Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.


Obsession with Crime and Punishment
Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.


Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.


Fraudulent Elections
Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

[leftstreet]

4. The best comparison right now: Bush/Nixon

But the corporate media would rather we discuss the bullshit Bush/Hitler non-comparison. I'm sure Bushco think it's funny.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

12. Guess what? Herr Busch passed Nixon long ago on the....

...political continuum and is about to draw even with Hitler.

But go ahead, maybe all of those nasty comparisons will just go away....after Herr Busch outdoes all of the rest of the infamous people on the right side of the political spectrum.

[leftstreet]

16. Bush = Nixon = Watergate = IMPEACH

Better talking point.

Shit, I compared my high school biology teacher to Hitler!

It's a hollow talking point that avoids the reality of Bushco's illegal wiretapping and spying.

Impeachable offenses.

[yurbud]

21. Bush has none of Nixon's accomplishment and 10000 times the sins

[leftstreet]

23. True. But they both have impeachable offenses in common

Guess that's why I like the comparison.

Since the corporate media have deemed it fitting that we must compare him to someone.

[yurbud]

28. kind of like comparing Jeffrey Dahmer and OJ

One was bad and dangerous, but in a limited way (only to blondes he has been married to and her nearby friends when he is in a murderous mood) and the other created one of the lower circles of hell.

[tsuki]

5. Then you can listen to ChemicalRummy make Chavez/Hitler comparisons.

[Festivito]

6. There are probably still some living Nazis.

As bad as they felt, imagine how bad they feel now, being compared to Bush Republicans.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

8. Why should they feel bad? They're political fellow travellers.

[Festivito]

26. Let me splain this to ya.

As badly as Nazis felt in 1942,
realizing that they, as good Germans, had been duped,
feeling that they were being good patriots in their homeland, and
realizing they actually played roles in destroying their homeland
-- they felt bad --
again,
as badly as those Nazis felt as their world caved,
imagine,
after all those years feeling shame,
imagine,
imagine,
being compared to ...
to ...
to a BUSHCON
to Republicans.

Oh, the humanity, the shame, the abject dismal degradation .. of being compared to ... .. REPUBLICANS.

Reread the original posts over again. I think you'll get it now.

wittily,
Festiv

[Media_Lies_Daily]

7. WADR, you seem rather naive. The parallels are growing.....

...stronger with each passing day.

[rocktivity]

9. I agree, Bright

But I think the real problem is that the Bush empire insists on continuing to make the comparisons possible.

:headbang:
rocknation

[RoyGBiv]

10. Depends ...

If the villages/cities flooded by the Rhine had been largely Jewish, you can bet your ass there would have been bodies floating around a week or ten days later ... well, possibly not. Hitler was more efficient at murder than Bush seems to be, but I'm not sure that's a point in favor of the former.

You're somewhat correct on the last point. Hitler was perfectly willing to accept incompetent people as long as they agreed with him.

[Cleita]

11. You are right. If Bush was like Hitler,

he would already have had all those black people in concentration camps. The developers would have taken over the newly available lebensraum, building resorts, hotels and vacation condos. Of course now that the right crowd was moving in, those levees would have been upgraded and the Hurricane would have been nothing more than a temporary nuisance.

Germans have always been more efficient than Americans.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. It took Hitler 8 years to get to the point of implementing death camps....

...for the Final Solution.

How long as Herr Busch squatted in the White House? Five full years. He's got three more years to go, doesn't he?

[TygrBright]

18. Okay, point. But still...

At the same point in their respective dictatorships, compare the German economy and the size and well-being of the (non-Jewish) middle class to the American economy and the size and well-being of the (non-minority) middle class.

I'd say Hitler was way, WAY ahead on points at the same stage. My bet is that *'s version of "the Camps" won't be anything like as efficient, and will rely solely on technological advances to match the lethality.

Of course, as a Demon Lieberal Traitor I probably won't be around to collect on my bet, but at least I'll get to see firsthand if I'm right.

I'll be the one telling the guards, "You know, the SS would have done this WAY better..."

crankily,
Bright

[Cleita]

20. Before the concentration camps was the effort to push

the Jews out of German society. He had to make them illegal first. There were the laws making it illegal for them to have government jobs, to practice their professions like law and medicine. It then came down to forbidding them to eat in many restaurants, to shop even for food, to stay in hotels, in other words to force them to break the laws to survive. Once they broke the law they could be removed to the camps.

I sort of see this happening in our society, with the poor becoming destitute and the middle class becoming poor and it's happening mostly to minorities, not white people.

Let's examine what happened in NO. First they were told to leave. Those who couldn't leave didn't. But once the hurricane came they were accused of looting to survive and many other things. Like I said Hitler would have had this problem solved long before the hurricane.

So, * is slower than the master but he's getting there.

[tocqueville]

15. he is pretty much like Louis the XV

he fucked up everything he touched, quoted "after us will come the deluge". He was only interested in himself and his cronies.

[pinto]

17. You've got a point. The analogy compares someone many seem as normal

with someone almost all see as abnormal - so it's a stretch for some to get. I think Bushco is an organized crime operation. Everybody gets organized crime....

(Though I also think they are fascists in the alliance of state, military, and corporate interests, with no public oversight, a la the classic Mussolini mold)

[leftstreet]

25. So many comparisons, so little time.

But yeah, the Bush Organized Crime Family is probably already in the works for a tv mini-series.

[MatrixEscape]

19. Tyranny knows no name brands or time.

I am tired of hearing people tell me how tired they are of other people's points of view. I am tired of people who are so fadistic from watching television and following the status quo that they have to lash out and tell people that their well-justified analogies are now trite and meaningless.

There are very clear resemblances between what happened under the Hitler Regime that should be potent enough to warn us that, (as history repeats itself) our Bush Regime is certainly not far off from it.

Then, there is the comparison to the Federalists and the Presidency of John Adams to the current takeover by Dubya and his cronies, and the result. That strikes much closer to home, but I am almost sure it is news to many. This has happened before, but we can be thankful that the limit to one, two-year term for President brought us righteous and Democratic Thom Jefferson to slay the Dragon of Tyranny and bring us back to our Constitutional roots and the Bill of Rights.

It can happen here. It has happened here ... almost. It IS happening here, now, as we speak. Is it too tiring to hear that we are living in something similar, politically, to the rise of Hitler's Nazi Germany?

Many figures have been compared to Hitler as a slur or even as a fact. The important point here is who among them has held so much power in their hands as per the military industrial state of America? This is an important issue because it not only effects America, but everyone on the planet on which this powerful, money-soaked, technologically superior, nuclear threat can now act without censure or control.

I will relate ONE BIG difference between Emperor Bush and Hitler. Hitler's access to WMD's was small change.

[punpirate]

24. Well, after all, Hitler did lose...

... and there is a body of thought that the Germans lost because Hitler took over military strategy from his generals, insisting on doing it himself. How different is that from Bush, Cheney and Rummy running roughshod over the likes of Shinseki, et al, and pursuing an unnecessary war with insufficient troops to occupy the country?

Bush has his concentration camps, too--at Guantanamo, and at secret prisons around the world. Just because we don't have them on our soil yet doesn't mean they don't exist.

I'd say, in many ways, there are more similarities in character than differences at this point. Hitler surrounded himself with sycophants, just as Bush has done. Hitler wouldn't listen to reason, either, even when it might have obtained his objectives.

Both Hitler and Bush depended upon advisors who were experts in perception management.

Both Hitler and Bush enlisted the assistance of both the press and the churches to promote his programs.

Both Hitler and Bush used an "other" to popularly attack as traitors--Hitler, the Jews, and Bush, liberals/Democrats/progressives/anti-war activists.

Both Hitler and Bush used a traumatic event to gain unprecedented power and control over government.

Both used manufactured evidence to fight preemptive wars, claiming such was necessary to protect the "homeland."

Both had histories of excessive stimulant drug use.

Both had histories of violent outbursts and tantrums if challenged, once in power.

Both projected their own prejudices onto society at large (Hitler, his hatred of the Jews, Bush, his longstanding prejudice of privilege against the poor and the marginalized in society).

Cheers.

[TankLV]

27. Too bad. Every day brings new examples of how APPROPRIATE the comparisons

are.

Just because they don't wear mustaches and their hair style is different, doesn't hide the THOUSANDS of similarities.

And that is what is truly frightening.

It's the fact the TOO MANY comparisons can be made at ALL and with dizzying speed and mounting numbers that matters.