Hitler, Newton, and Barnum

By Capt. Fogg

I. Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. 

That's true for things above the level where quantum physics makes hash of such laws, but for things which are not things but lies, it has no bearing. Promoters of things for which there is no evidence whatever and promoters of lies, hoaxes, and propaganda rely on the fact that no external force will impede, delay, or arrest the appointed rounds of lies while truth often demands too much of us. Every day a new crop of gullible witlings and angry little twits is born to be deluded. Call it Barnum's Law.

I saw this once again the other day. It's been defaming anyone with any intention and a great number of people without the intention of  modifying the national policies on private ownership of firearms.

One might expect that anyone trying to equate Hitler with liberal philosophy isn't dealing with words as we generally accept them and is using definitions of terms like "liberal" that steer us away from rational dialogue and into the corral to be fleeced, and like all humans those who don't like liberals and don't want any interference with gun ownership will simply latch on to anything that seems internally cohesive in some blurry way without further question. We're all guilty of it to one degree or another, but in this case it's more likely to be questioned by the people it's directed against and, guess what, there isn't a germ of truth to it. There is no evidence that Hitler ever said it and the history of post-WWI German gun laws contradicts it. Hitler in fact made guns much more available (except to Jews) in 1938. The Weimar Republic required registration but that was only some time after the victorious allies forbade Germans to have guns at all. Someone made this up, probably during the Clinton years, and no opposing force has been able to stop it. Facts don't matter. Barnum's Law prevails.

Fact is never the test of belief. If it were, this thing wouldn't keep appearing all over the place. I've been seeing it for years and so far it seems more ridiculous every day, but as long as the need for Obama to be scandalous exceeds the supply of scandals, it might as well be a perpetual motion machine.

There's as little evidence that it will cease to orbit and burn up in the atmosphere as there is for any actual scandal to have occurred, but it doesn't matter in a nation where half of us are so greedy for scandal, desperate for outrage, and hungry for something, anything to anchor our prejudice and feed our greedy need to feel superior by knowing things we don't care enough about to research.

So sure, Hitler will always have said what he didn't say and the Obama scandal will always be quickly approaching and your God and your Guns and your freedom to ignore decency, the law, and the tenets of both Capitalism and Christianity will continue to make a stink that no fact will diminish and no test of logic impair.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Do the Reich thing

By Mustang Bobby 

It was inevitable that as soon as the Obama administration started sending up trial balloons as to what they would like to see in terms of new gun laws someone would bring up Hitler: 

Eventually, any conversation about gun control in America ends with someone, somewhere opposed to new gun regulations comparing the proponents to Adolf Hitler.

In the post-Newtown push for new gun laws, that day was Wednesday. Accusing gun control supporters of easing the country one step closer to fascism is a time-honored tradition in American politics and one of the tools the gun rights crowd uses to warn Americans away from talking about gun control in the first place. But with the country still reeling from the shooting deaths of 20 elementary school students, supporters of new gun control laws say the tactic is not going to work this time.

On Wednesday, the Drudge Report splashed an image of Hitler and Josef Stalin over a link to Vice President Biden's contention that the White House may consider using its executive power if Congress proves unable to act.

So far the only people who have stood up for the NRA are the loudmouths and the mildly entertaining gun advocates such as Alex Jones.

Read more »

Broken glass and the path to Hell

By Distributorcap

Today -- November 9th -- is the 72nd anniversary of the what many consider the start of the Holocaust -- Kristallnacht -- The Night of Broken Glass. It was a two day rampage throughout the Third Reich on November 9-10, 1938 that finally told the Jews of Germany -- their time was up.

Even though the Nazis had began passing laws to restrict the rights of German Jews in 1933, many of the 500,000 Jews living in Germany proper refused to believe their world was closing down -- after all they were born in Germany, part of its "society" and many had fought for the Kaiser during World War I. But none of that mattered to the Nazis. After the initial laws were passsed, it only got worse. In 1935, Hitler personally signed the infamous Nuremberg Laws -- which prohibited Jews from being citizens and made intermarriage between Germans and Jews/Gypsies/blacks illegal and punishable.

At this point, many of the wealthier the Jews realized what was going on. However, the world's borders began to shut -- as fewer and fewer nations were willing to take in the German refugees, especially Jews. On October 18, 1938, Hitler ordered 12,000 Polish born Jews expelled - they were given only a few hours to leave and not allowed to take most of their property. The Nazis seized what was left behind. They were dropped at the Polish border.

The turning point came when Herschel Grynspyn, a 17-year old German Jew enraged by his family's expulsion from Germany, walked into the German Embassy in Paris on November 6, 1938 and fired five shots at a minor German diplomat Ernst vom Rath "in the name of the 12,000 Jews." Two days later, the ambassador died.

The German government's reaction was swift and harsh. On November 8, all Jewish publications were shut down. Jewish children were banned from attending "Aryan" schools and all Jewish cultural activities were suspended. But the legal steps were not enough for a good portion of the population that was filled with hate and animosity toward the Jews. Within hours, Germany found itself in the grip of skillfully orchestrated and severe anti-Jewish violence. Businesses and homes were destroyed, Jews were beaten and arrested, the angry mobs could not be controlled (frankly the German police did nothing to quell the violence). November 10th was also the 455th anniversary of the birth of Martin Luther. Many Germans used Luther's pamphlet Jews and Their Lies as another justification for the violence.

Over 25,000 Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps like Dachau. 200 synagogues were burned and vandalized, thousands of Jewish businesses were simply destroyed. Joseph Goebbels justified German behavior during Kristallnacht as "healthy instincts."

The world did react, albeit tepidly - the U.S. recalled its ambassador, but did not break off diplomatic relations. While world opinion turned against Hitler's regime, the West sat back and did nothing. Nothing stopped the Nazis from their growing militarism, power and continued persecution. It only fueled more German nationalism.

Kristallnacht was a precursor of things to come. Germany was never the same - Hitler had his excuse to begin his systematic persecution and ultimately murder of the Jews. Hermann Goring further foreshadowed the impending Final Solution. On November 11th, the day after Kristallnacht he stated, "The Jewish problem will reach its solution if, in any time soon, we will be drawn into war beyond our border -- then it is obvious that we will have to manage a final account with the Jews." For the Jews under German control, their fate was sealed. On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland -- and World War II began. Five and half years later -- the world would come to know what Auschwitz, Belzec, Buchenwald, Sobibor, and Treblinka really were.  By that time 6 million were nothing but ashes.

In 1988, historian Max Rein wrote "Kristallnacht came and everything was changed."

Ironically, on November 9, 1989 -- 61 years after Kristallnacht, the Berlin Wall was opened -- thus ending the division of Germany and paving the way for reunification. In many ways, the end of the Cold War coincided with the ultimate end of World War II.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -- George Santayana, Life of Reason (1905) 

Don't think something this horrendous cannot happen here. There are people with power and influence in this country who are capable of this.

Pat Buchanan, Hitler apologist

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Yes, Pat Buchanan, he with the punditocratic platform at MSNBC, who blames Britain for starting WWII and essentially absolves Hitler of any and all responsibility for the war.

He doesn't deny the Holocaust, thankfully, but his history is revisionist fiction, including this:

Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

In other words, the Holocaust wouldn't have happened -- or at least wouldn't have been as large -- had Hitler gotten his way. The implication, of course, is that not just the war but the Holocaust was Britain's fault.

Hitler only wanted peace, don't you know. He gave the British ample opportunity -- forget his war of imperial conquest everywhere else.

This is appalling, among the worst I've ever heard or read from Buchanan. Why he still has his platform in the MSM is beyond me.

For more, make sure to check out Matt Yglesias's excellent rebuttal. See also Steve Benen (who rightly notes that Buchanan's "status in the media establishment [will go] unaffected"), dday at C&L, and Adam Serwer.

Defending DeMint (sort of, or maybe not -- what he said about pre-war Germany was still incredibly stupid)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

On Tuesday, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, one of the more extreme of Congressional Republicans, said this at the National Press Club:

They understand socialism. They understand tyrants. But none of us have ever had it here. We don't even know what it looks like. Part of what we're trying to do in Saving Freedom [his book] is just show that where we are, we're about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy.

Now, what did he mean by that? To me, it's pretty clear: He was referring not to Nazi Germany but to Weimar Germany, to the socialism before the national socialism. On this, I agree with Ed Kilgore.

Others, however, have not been so generous. Jon Chait, for example, thinks DeMint was comparing Obama's America to Hitler's Germany. So does Chris Orr. And Steve Benen. (Three bloggers I admire a great deal.) In contrast, Matt Yglesias thinks that DeMint is confusing Germany's Nazis and Social Democrats (who opposed the Nazis before the war).

But I don't want to be overly generous myself. I suspect that DeMint knows very little German history, perhaps none at all, and he may just have been mixing everything up. The Obama-is-a-socialist and socialism-is-fascism (and hence Obama-is-a-fascist) memes are big on the right, and DeMint was obviously riffing off that ridiculous connection.

But what I think he was saying -- or, at least, it's how it reads to me -- is that social democracy is a precursor to fascism, just as Nazi Germany replaced Weimar Germany. In this sense, Obama isn't a Nazi but a pre-Nazi -- or something like that.

Of course, this is just as stupid as saying directly that Obama is a fascist. Yglesias is quite right, after all, that the social democrats were not the precursors to but the opponents of Nazism, and they suffered greatly under Hitler. Just because social democracy preceded national socialism, it does not follow that the one became the other, or at least that the one made the other possible. Nazism was not an extension of social democracy but a reaction to it, a rejection of it.

But let's come back to 2009 America.

It is similarly stupid to assert -- and this is currently a popular line on the right -- that Obama is a socialist, or that his agenda amounts to socialism, that, if left unchecked, he and the Democrats will shortly replace capitalism with socialism. If anything, Obama is, like FDR before him, seeking to rescue capitalism from its own excesses, and it will, if he succeeds, emerge stronger for it. If anything, Obama has been too much of a pragmatist and not enough of a reformer. If he has disappointed, it has been because, thus far, he hasn't been nearly progressive enough, not because he has overturned the capitalist order. He sought market solutions to the economic crisis, after all, saving the banks by bailing them out, not by taking them over. Yes, there's General Motors, but the plan there is not for the state to run the auto industry but for the auto industry to pull itself out of the mess it created for itself while the state prevents an all-out collapse. This isn't nationalization, it's a safety net for industry -- even for industries that hardly deserve one.

But no matter. The right -- DeMint et al. -- will continue to puncture the historical record with their crass partisan propaganda. And that means comparing Obama to Hitler, in one way or another.

Craziest Republican of the Day: Paul Broun

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(Sorry, I meant to post this yesterday.)

The AP has the craziness:

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

"That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did," Broun said. "When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

*****

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun said. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

So Obama's not Hilter, but sort of, possibly? And he wants to do "exactly what Hitler did," but he's a Marxist?

Broun is clearly an idiot -- only an idiot would make such idiotic remarks -- but this is precisely the sort of fear- and smearmongering we're likely to get a lot more of going forward. McCain and Palin and their surrogates may have taken the anti-Obama lead during the campaign, with their mob-crazed rallies seething with hate and anger, if not outright bigotry, but anti-Obama rhetoric of this kind is all-too-common on the right. And, as Steve Benen noted, it's not like Broun is "some random nut" at some random right-wing blog. He's a member of Congress!

It should come as no surprise that right-wingers are embracing Broun. Check out RedState, for example: "Let me be the first to congratulate Representative Paul Broun to be the first to fire a shot at the Obama Agenda!" They're all crazy, it seems, and craziness will about in the "Guerrilla Congress."

The title of Jay Bookman's blog post at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday says it all: "U.S. Rep. Paul Broun, R-Crazy." Broun is "the point at which the lunatic fringe and Republican officeholders intersect." All I must add is that that intersection is densely populated.

In actual fact, by the way, what Obama was proposing was not some sort of newfangled American Gestapo but rather "a civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts such as rebuilding infrastructure -- an idea endorsed by the Bush administration."

And, for the record, sincere or not, Broun has backed down: "I regret putting it that way. I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that."

It wasn't offense that was taken, though, it was craziness that was called out.