Cameron likens militants to Nazis

[emad]

Cameron likens militants to Nazis
24 August 2005

Tory leadership hopeful David Cameron likened Islamic "jihadists" pursuing a holy war against the west to the Nazis of the 1930s and communists who built a totalitarian state.

He said a strain of Islamist thinking developed during the last century "which, like other totalitarianisms, such as Nazism and Communism, offers its followers a form of redemption through violence".

Mr Cameron, in a speech to the Foreign Policy Centre in London, said some Islamic thinkers had argued that the "simple explanation" for the decline in the Arab world's power and prestige was its "abandonment of true Islam".

Some, including Osama bin Laden, "have argued for a jihad to purge the Arab world".

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/articles/PA_NEWA5152511124876173A00?source=PA%20Feed

[emad]

1. Margaret Thatcher must be beaming with pride.......

Another golden boy hits the bullseye!

[bemildred]

2. I'd love to see this Moran debate this with Galloway. nt

[emad]

3. Guardian SpeechSnip:

"Jihadism, like Nazism and Communism before it, often bewitches the minds of gifted and educated young men. Just like the Nazis of 1930s Germany, they want to purge corrupt cosmopolitan influences.

"The parallels with the rise of Nazism go further. Just as there were figures in the 1930s who misunderstood the totalitarian wickedness of Nazism and argued that Hitler had a rational set of limited political demands, so there are people today who try to explain Jihadist violence with reference to a limited set of political goals.

"If only, some argue, we withdrew from Iraq, or Israel made massive concessions, then we would assuage Jihadist anger. That argument, while often advanced by well-meaning people, is as limited as the belief in the Thirties that, by allowing Germany to remilitarise the Rhineland or take over the Sudetenland, we would satisfy Nazi ambitions.

In his speech on terrorism and homeland security, one of a series outside his education policy brief designed to set out his stall as a potential successor to Michael Howard, Mr Cameron said shared British values could be summed up as "freedom under the rule of law".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-5230217,00.html

[iverglas]

10. herein lies the flaw

There is nothing inherently wrong with the argument that Islamic jihadism and Nazism share many features, and that there are points on which they should be dealt with in similar ways.

The problem is in this characterization of the response to jihadism that he seeks to denigrate:

If only, some argue, we withdrew from Iraq, or Israel made massive concessions, then we would assuage Jihadist anger. That argument, while often advanced by well-meaning people, is as limited as the belief in the Thirties that, by allowing Germany to remilitarise the Rhineland or take over the Sudetenland, we would satisfy Nazi ambitions.

He is likening objections to the unjustified and illegal acts of the US and its allies in invading and occupying sovereign nations to acquiescence in the unjustified and illegal acts of Germany in invading and occupying sovereign nations.

He is likening condemning the acts about which other peoples are legitimately angry with condoning the acts committed by people exploiting others' legitimate anger.

It simply makes no sense. And it's simply base demagoguery. And for some reason, people like this are confident they can get away with this kind of dishonesty and trickery.

The parallel that actually exists is in the fact that there are legitimate grievances among groups of people, and that Nazis and jihadists both exploit those grievances to achieve their own ends.

The people of post-WWI Germany had legitimate grievances against others in the world. The people of Iraq and Palestine have legitimate grievances against others in the world.

Addressing those legitimate grievances could have gone, in the case of Germany, and could go, in the case of Muslims in today's world, a fair distance toward depriving the leaders of the movements in question the legitimacy they gain in the eyes of some members of the aggrieved population by claiming to be toiling on their behalves, and deny them the opportunity to reframe those grievances -- in ways like "purge corrupt cosmopolitan influences" -- in ways that serve their own interests and not the interests of the aggrieved populations.

I really don't think that we have to embrace the ideologues and militants of Islamist jihadism in order to reject the dishonest nonsense being spouted by people like this.

[K-W]

11. Great post. EOM

[glitch]

4. Have they allied with corporate leaders yet?

They may use nazi tactics, but until they join with corporate heads they are just wannabes.
Any bush could tell them that.

[legin]

5. Bookie odds on conservative leader contest

David Davis 1/2
David Cameron 11/4
Ken Clarke 8/1
Liam Fox 12/1
Malcolm Rifkind 22/1
William Hague 22/1
Andrew Lansley 25/1
Tim Yeo 33/1
David Willetts 40/1
Theresa May 40/1
George Osborne 50/1
John Bercow 50/1
Alan Duncan 66/1
Ed Vaizey 66/1
...(and others)

from ladbrokes.com, specials

[Kicked in the Taco]

13. Personally, I don't find those odds on Cameron even vaguely tempting. eom

[K-W]

6. Who needs real history. EOM

[Kicked in the Taco]

7. Just trying to get a bit of attention

After the Hague and Duncan Smith fiascos the Tories are waking up to the fact that the last thing they need as leader is another total nobody, so I guess that Cameron thinks he can boost his floundering leadership hopes by making an exhibition of himself to get some name recognition. Plus given that he's associated with the (somewhat) more liberal wing of the party, an association that's hardly helpful for Tory leadership contenders these days, he's probably trawling for a bit of support from the loony right.

[Art_from_Ark]

8. Reality check time

Have the "jihadists" taken over a country and dedicated its resources to building the biggest military machine in the world?

Have the "jihadists" invaded other countries and started building concentration camps in the occupied countries?

Do the "jihadists" round up people in the middle of the night and cart them off to the camps?

Do the "jihadists" wear spiffy uniforms and worship their flag and fuerher as they set about building an empire?

Wasn't Saddam supposed to be the next Hitler?

[Art_from_Ark]

9. Delete (duplicate)

[54anickel]

12. How is the claim of some Islamic thinker different than the "fundie"

movement here to "Take Back America" which claims America has "abandoned her Christian roots"?