Does comparing bush to Hitler Denigrate Hitler's victims?

[mopaul]

Whenever anyone points out the disturbing similarities between bush and Hitler, someone usually gets offended and immediately suggests that it's silly to compare the two despots, and offensive to the memories of all of Hitler's victims.

But one could also make the point that bush could actually be worse than Adolph, given enough time and blind support.

Does it break down to numbers?: Hitler ordered the deaths of millions, while bush has only ordered thousands murdered. Is a man who killed ten people any more or less evil than a man who killed a thousand?

We need to educate the historically lazy, Hitler didn't happen in ancient Greece, but only a few short years ago. It CAN happen here.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

1. Bush has over 100,000 notches on his belt. All of the Iraqis that have

died because of this illegal,unjustified, immoral war.

[benburch]

2. Not at all.

Bush's victims were and are and will be just as human.

[rfranklin]

3. The best is yet to come....

Invasion of Iran, a blowup with North Korea, a confrontation with China...and don't forget that Russia still h as nukes. Bush has not come up against anyone with the will and means to fight back, and thus thinks that he can come out on top in any situation--an idea reinforced by the lack of consequences throughout his life. It will result in misery and death for many millions more.

[TheOriginalAmerican]

24. Oh, get serious.

China is a dictatorship. We know that they have WMDs and will use them on us before we can "disarm" them. Russia might also very well use nukes on us if we tried to fight them, and we know it.

I don't think we're going to go to a country that actually does have WMDs. Honestly.

[SouthernDem2004]

4. The whole comparison is ridiculous.

Amazing why people that say such things do not understand why no one listens to them. Ah yes, the "everyone else is stupid" because they do not believe what I do mentality comes into play. Yes, Bush is a moron and has some really bad policies. Hitler? Please that is just plain ignorant.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

16. That's your opinion....one that's rapidly becoming a minority view.

[TheOriginalAmerican]

26. Can you prove that?

Bush won the election.

As much as most of the world and almost half of America hates Bush, I don't think most of them do compare him to Hitler. Bully? Yes. Racist? Yes. Sexist? Yes. The terminator of groups of people? No.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

44. Bull. Can you prove that Herr Busch won EITHER election?....

As far as terminating groups of people, what do you think is being done in Afghanistan and Iraq? By the way, it took Hitler nearly eight years in power before the Final Solution was finalized....Herr Busch is just starting his fifth year in power.

Why do you think Negroponte has been named the new Director of National Intelligence? You do know his history in Central America, don't you?

[tom_paine]

18. I had a friend who was CEO of a genetics company who travelled to Germany

in early 2002.

(mind you, this was even before we invaded Iraq for reasons which were of equal truthfulness as Hitler's reasons for invading Poland)

He was raising Capital for our company, and he was dealing with CEOs and CFOs and Venture Capitalists over there, not som nosering-wearing hippies.

This man was also a Lifelong Repug who's grandfather was in the Mafia/Unions and had seen the WORST of the Democratic Party. So he wasn't exactly sympathetic to the anti-Bush point of view.

He camed back from Germany and was stunned. Almost to a person, he said, the Germans compared Bush to Hitler.

Of course, what could the Germans possibly know about Hitler or the Rise of Totalitarianism, eh?

If it was good enough for those German industrialists in 2002, it should be good enough for anyone.

Think about this. It's a 100% true story.

[Ian David]

20. Even Hitler had to start somewhere

Bush is just getting started.

[GiovanniC]

40. Hitler Was Not Always Hitler

In the late 1930s, people probably compared Hitler to Genghis Khan, only to hear the offended cry that the comparison besmirched the memories of all Khan's victims.

[BiggJawn]

21. Get back with us after Bush kills 6,000,000...

M'kay?

"Amazing why people that say such things do not understand why no one listens to them. "

Same applies to those of you who stick you heads in the sand and refuse to see where this is going.

[SouthernDem2004]

31. Call it what you want but Hitler he is not.

"Same applies to those of you who stick you heads in the sand and refuse to see where this is going."

Ah but I like to base my judgements on facts not supposition and who knows what else. Your "vision" of the world is based on what? Facts or conspiracy? Comparing genocide with the war in Iraq is just plain ignorant. No one is trying to destroy a race.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

45. My facts are based on how Hitler came to power, and then what he....

...did after he consolidated his power.

My facts are based on a comparison of Herr Busch's early years in power to the early years of Herr Hitler.

My facts are based on the writings of the PNACers, particularly when the need for "another Pearl Harbor" was discussed in "Rebuilding America's Defenses" as a means to get the public's support for a war to achieve global domination.

My facts are based on the comment in "Rebuilding America's Defenses" that race-specific bioweapons could be very useful.

My facts are based on the fact that Jeb Bush and a number of highly placed people in Herr Busch's junta contributed to the writings of PNAC.

What facts do you have at your disposal?

[SouthernDem2004]

51. Lol, you did not list any facts.

My fact: Bush is not Hitler.

[BiggJawn]

49. Says You.

"No one is trying to destroy a race."

Ok, I agree to disagree, and hope that I'm proven wrong someday soon.

[Enraged_Ape]

5. Even Hitler wasn't Hitler until he was Hitler

If you know what I mean. It took several years for the Nazis to ramp up to the death camps. It didn't just happen in four.

Bush has "political capital to spend", and he intends to use it. Every day the little bastard gets more obnoxious and brazen. Death means NOTHING to him; he, in fact, has laughed at the deaths of so many others.

Why do people really think this sociopath would stop short of instituting Sobibor-like camps? What aspect of his character can they point to that would prevent that?

We always have to be vigilant. If comparing Bush to Hitler makes a couple more people think even for a second about the similarities between the two, then I'm all for it.

[Bridget Burke]

6. How could a civilized, educated country like Germany...

be taken over by a madman? How did the world allow him to get that strong? Those questions have been asked for the last 60 years.

No, the US is not yet in the same situation as Germany under Hitler. But the similarity is frightening.

[tom_paine]

7. Absolutely: in the use of demonization language, propaganda techniques

the concerted effort to bully and coerce and parasitize the media (quite successfully) into submission.

The Nazis called it Gleichschaltung.

Oh, ands let's not forget the eerie similarities between the Bushevik Party Sub-Media, which in and of itself mirrors the "reporting strategies" of the Nazi Der Sturmer (again, it should be noted that Bushevik Totalitarian Sub-Media like the Nazis is beholden to no truth but THE PARTY and works in close coordination with THE PARTY in ways the supposedly Liberal Media would never have dared).

It absolutely does no injustice to Hitler's victims to bring up these credible similarities.

And if Amerika is not on the Nazi Germany track overall (just propaganda strategies), and is instead on the Roman Empire track of near equal corruption and terrible brutality, does it denigrate Hitler's victims to bring up that similarity?

Or the similarity of the Cult of Persaonality and Unquestioning Obedience that surrounded BOTH "Noble and Godly Leaders"?

No.

[liberalmuse]

13. Very well put!

I'll go so far as to say I think it honors Hitler's victims when we are ever aware and mindful so this never, EVER happens again to another group of people.

[qwghlmian]

8. For example, you, by using the picture

that morphs Bush's features into an ape-like visage are using Hitlerian techniques. Should you be compared to Hitler?

[mopaul]

10. me and hitler, both lousy artists, both angry, both mustached,

yes, you don't want ME taking over the world.

[qwghlmian]

12. Hitler's propaganda included the technique

of making the opposition to look like "apes" - it is a classical technique. You learned at the feet of the master.

[mopaul]

14. yes, praise hitler

that's twice now you have called me a nazi, but i'm not all that offended.

[qwghlmian]

15. This was not to "call you a

nazi". This was to point out that by stooping to such propaganda techniques, you're lowering yourself. What's next? Drawing Wolfowitz with a huge hairy nose?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

17. "Propaganda techniques"?? Oh, please spare us. What's next...

...in your line of thinking...any criticism of Herr Busch is just another "propaganda technique"?

[liberalmuse]

9. Hitler was ridiculed, and considered a buffoon...

by many around the world, yet also dangerous at the same time. I don't think it hurts to notice the similarities. As a matter of fact, I think it's vitally important to be aware of them. I would compare Bush to Hitler before Hitler, with the help of a large majority of the German people was able to assemble his death machine. The same thing could happen here.

Bush could be on his way to being another Hitler. Let's face it, there are a lot of similarities between these despots, except that Hitler was semi-intelligent. Actually, I don't think it's too farfetched to say that Bush has the capability of far surpassing Hitler in the death count and atrocities. Hitler didn't have 'the bomb'. Also, what I see from the right sends chills up my spine. I don't think even the German people were this hateful and bloodthirsty in the years leading up to the Holocaust. There is a group of Americans just waiting for the justification and the word from 'a man of god' so they can finally take out their hatred on liberals, gays and all their other demonic projections and scape goats.

[radwriter0555]

11. No, especially since we have a model by which to compare and gauge the

current regime's actions.

Shame on those who refuse to see what's coming, especially since we se the horrific consequences still reverberating through the universe today.

It IS happening here.

[BiggJawn]

19. No.

But I'm an insensitive, non-PC clod anyway, so who CARES what *I* think?

I'm just waiting for the day when Bush's butcher's bill reaches 6,000,000...

Then I'm gonna say "OK, so is he a monster NOW??????"

[Nimrod]

22. I will add my voice to these arguments

Take the state of our nation, the actions of our populace, and the actions of the administration and hold it up against the early stages of Naziism. It's well and truly terrifying to do so.

We like to demonize the Nazis. Whatever you do, you MUST keep in mind that one of the single most horrendous regimes in history was ardently supported by people no worse than you or I. Hitler was widely considered a good and Godly man - indeed he considered HIMSELF a good and Godly man. He was doing the Lord's Work. Sound familiar?

We like to picture Hitler rubbing his hands together and cackling maniacally, thinking of all the innocent blood he would spill, and thereby instantly apparent to all onlookers that he is evil incarnate. This mode of thinking is - frankly - idiotic. AND dangerous. AND self-defeating. Ominous music doesn't REALLY play everytime someone evil walks into the room.

I really doubt * is trying to emulate Hitler, just as I doubt Hitler was trying to emulate Caligula. But hold up the patterns of behavior and the slow steady manner in which change is progressing and you see a shocking slide into what could very easily turn into a dark shadow of Nazi Germany.

[TheOriginalAmerican]

23. Yes.

Bush didn't order that those thousands of people be killed. He ordered a war (where thousands of people will be killed). Most of the civilians killed were probably not killed on purpose. We don't have a final solution for the Iraqi people. Yes, this is insulting the Jews, the Communists, the Gypsies, and others murdered for being what they are during WWII.

The main area where I would say that Bush is like Hitler is his "with us or against us" idea. Unfortunately, lots of far right people and far left people also seem to have that idea in their head now. (Shrug).

[Bridget Burke]

27. I agree that Bush has not set up Extemination camps.

But the bigwigs tried at Nuremberg were charged with waging aggressive war. That is, beginning a war--not fighting in self defense.

Bush & pals are quite guilty of that charge.

[mopaul]

36. bush DOES have a final solution to the 'muslim problem'

some can't see it though.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

46. There are none so blind as those that do not want to see.

[Walt Starr]

25. I've never seen a comparison to the Hitler of the 1940's

Most comparisons between Bush and Hitler that I've seen were to Hitler of the late 20's to early 30's. Hitler had not instituted the "Final solution" during that time period.

[Ironpost]

28. Mo it is happening here NOW

I'm old and tired but I think there is a few good slugs left in me. And we're not talking whiskey here.

[SouthernDem2004]

32. How?

[seabeyond]

29. the value of history, and the lesson we were given

to ignore bush implementing and creating and speaking exactly the same as hitler, or any other psychotic power driven dictator, would be to not honor the jews and their experience. and to ignore what bush is clearly doing, so consistant with hitlers gain of power, would be to not honor the men who died, and went to war and experienced the ugliness of wwII

no one can convince me i would be doing the right thing for history and the value of............no one can convince me to be quiet and go along

all my life i have been the type of person that asked, would i be one who..................?

owned a slave
see slave as animal, not human
empathize with slave, yet stay quiet
speak out for the slave.
put my safety at risk for slave

i did the same with the holocaust. just what type of person would i be given the situation.

honestly i think we are getting the opportunity to see what type of person we would chose to be in an holocaust situation,
respectfully

[Deep13]

30. Hitler is yardstick for tyrany.

Hitler has become the historical yardstick by which dictators and tyrants are invariably compared. It is, therefore, natural to seek comparisons between Bush and Hitler to see if Bush is becoming a dictator/mass murderer etc.

Hitler used the Reichstag fire to rise to power.
Bush used 9/11 to solidify power.

Hitler made people afraid of "subversives", esp. Jews.
Bush makes people afraid of ter'rists.

Hitler invented a pretext to invade Poland, a largely defenseless country.
Musselini did the same in Ethiopia.
Bush did the same in Iraq.

Hitler cultivated the public with state controlled "news".
Bush does the same with corporate media monopolies.

Hitler suspended judicial procedure to hold enemies without trial.
Bush does the same for "enemy combatants" (known to the rest of the world as prisoners of war.)

Hitler murdered 12 million people in addition to "legitimate" combat casualties.
Bush hasn't killed anywhere near that number, but he seems to be working on it.

Both Hitler and Bush went to war against the advice of the professional military officers.

Of course Bush and Hitler are not analogues of each other, though some of the similarities are disturbing.

Here's an interesting point: unlike Bush, Hitler was a self-made man and a decorated veteran.

[NeoTraitors]

35. It is very dangerous NOT

to notice the similarities betweeen the chimp and Hitler. Lying to lead America into war and approving of torture definitely crossed the line. Once that line is crossed, somewhere down that road is Hitler.

[bloodyjack]

33. Godwin's law:

Godwin's law is named after Mike Godwin, who was legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s, when the law was first popularized. . . . Finding the meme of Nazi comparisons on Usenet illogical and offensive, Godwin established the law as a counter-meme. The law's memetic function is not to end discussions (or even to classify them as "old"), but to make participants in a discussion more aware of whether a comparison to Nazis or Hitler is appropriate, or is simply a rhetorical overreach.

Many people have extended Godwin's law to imply that the invoking of the Nazis as a debating tactic (in any argument not directly related to World War II or the Holocaust) automatically loses the argument, simply because the nature of these events is such that any comparison to any event less serious than genocide or extinction is invalid and in poor taste.

One common objection to Godwin's law is that sometimes using Hitler or the Nazis is a perfectly apt way of making a point. For instance, if one is debating the relative merits of a particular leader, and someone says something like, "He's a good leader, look at the way he's improved the economy", one could reply, "Just because he improved the economy doesn't make him a good leader. Even Hitler improved the economy." Some would view this as a perfectly acceptable comparison. One uses Hitler because he is a universally known leader and the example requires no explanation.

Some would argue, however, that Godwin's law applies even to the situation mentioned above, as it portrays an inevitable appeal to emotions as well as holding an implied ad hominem attack on the subject being compared to, which are classic logical fallacies. Hitler, on a semiotic level, has far too many negative connotations associated with him to be used as a good comparison to anything except for other despotic dictators. Thus, Godwin's law holds even in making comparisons to normal leaders that, on the surface, would seem to be a reasonable comparison.

Godwin's standard answer to this objection is to note that Godwin's law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate semantic impact.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

[NewJeffCT]

34. If you compare the two at this time, it will marginalize you

Unfortunately, this is true at this time. If you compare Bush to Hitler, (and, I agree that a comparison is warranted) it will make you look like a radical conspiracy theorist or a loony leftist that Limbaugh has skewered for years.

Most Americans think, "it can't happen here" and will look askance at somebody who compares Bush to Hitler.

They'll keep thinking it can't happen here even when we re-install the draft, we annex the Sudatenland, I mean, Cuba to save them from the Commies and we invade Iran & Syria with a newly drafted army.

While we here like to think AAR, blogs & Move On have power, it is really peanuts compared to the propaganda mills of Clear Channel, Fox News, CNN, Limbaugh, The Washington Times, etc.

[bloom]

42. I think the "right" are working very hard

to discredit liberals and democrats, regardless.

Because they wouldn't want anyone to believe that what we are saying has merit. That would stop some people from playing along.

[NewJeffCT]

48. they've been doing that for 30 years

However, they keep turning up their efforts. What they called liberals 30 years ago was considerably milder than today, and the RW of the RepubliCON party is much further right than it was 30 years ago.

To use a football field analogy, they kept taking a few yards here & there and moving the debate more towards their endzone. Now, calling a liberal a godless traitor who betrays America is easier than it was 30 years ago because they have slowly & methodically pushed the debate further & further right.

In the eyes of the Mainstream, if we go from calling Bush a bad president to calling him Hitler, it's like attempting to throw a 99 yard touchdown pass. It just doesn't happen very often in real life and if a coach called that play every time he was on the 1 yard line, he'd be called crazy and the fans would call for his head.

We have to slowly & methodically move the debate back to where it is not a leap to compare Bush to Hitler in the mainstream eyes.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

47. Funny, but my WWII veteran Dad doesn't feel "marginalized" at all..

...and neither do his WWII buddies.

[bobthedrummer]

37. No, Hitler/Bush comparisons neither increase nor decrease victims

of the Third Reich-never again is more than a phrase.

[Karenina]

53. And you can't enforce "NEVER AGAIN"

if you stick your head up your ass, eschew historical comparisons and ignore all the signs that IT'S HAPPENING FUCKING AGAIN!!!!

[charles_nys]

38. Prescott Bush helped finance Hitler .....

If anyone would like the pdf book:
"George Bush Heir to the Holocaust - How the Bush Family Helped Finance the Jewish Holocaust"
let me know and i will send it to you

here is an earlier post of mine on the subject:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1614392&mesg_id=1614600&page=

[Jack Rabbit]

39. My views

I expressed my views last night on another thread (Poll question: Is the b**sh administration fascist?, started by Zhade at 3:55 pm PST). This developed into an interesting subthread. The link is to the subthread.

I don't know that comparing Bush to Hitler denigrates Hitler's victims. However, I don't think it does us any good. There are significant differences between Bush and the neoconservatives on the one hand and Hitler and the Nazis on the other. For example, Hitler was first and foremost a murderer; Bush is first and foremost a thief. Hitler did not really covet the property of his victims, although he was not above confiscating it; Bush would cheerfully transfer wealth from the Iraqi people to his transnational corporate cronies without shedding a drop of blood if he could, but it has been necessary to kill Iraqis in order to confiscate their collective wealth. Comparing Bush to Hitler is like comparing Willie Sutton to Ted Bundy.

That does not make Bush acceptable nor does it mean we should be complacent about the evil neoconservatism represents. Hitler set a standard for evil that will probably go unmatched for a long time, perhaps always. The question isn't will Bush will go as far as Hitler if left unchecked? but rather is has he already gone too far? I believe that the answer to the second question is Yes and, that being the case, how the first one is answered isn't terribly important.

In the end, the kleptomaniac Willie Sutton and serial killer Ted Bundy belonged in the same place: under lock and key somewhere where they could do honest people no further harm. Likewise, like Hitler, Bush belongs somewhere where he can do honest people no further harm.

[THUNDER HANDS]

41. i think it does, yes

Hitler was Hitler. Stalin was Stalin. Bush is Bush.

Each are dictators in their own way and should not be compared to eachother, as they had their own motivations and syles and agendas.

As well as victims.

[Stirk]

43. Does it elevate Bush's victims?

Of course not. It's a completely legitimate comparison to make. People should not be afraid to look at history and try to learn from it. Anyone suggesting otherwise is inviting it to happen again.

[bloom]

50. I think that any victims

would want the issue raised sooner rather than later.

I think people from Germany who might be more aware of the process of ultra-nationalism would find the propaganda and suppression of free speech as well as the blind following of the torture policies and all of the other nonsense over here to be outrageous.

Here are a couple clips:

'Anti-American' art to be yanked

Lakewood officials call 'Hope Stones' display unpatriotic

By Charley Able, Rocky Mountain News
February 19, 2005

LAKEWOOD - City Manager Mike Rock late Friday ordered an art exhibit some considered unpatriotic to be removed from a city-owned building.

The decision came after three council members issued a joint statement calling the exhibit "anti-American and anti-military."
<snip>
The quote Lemke attributes to Maher, former host of ABC's Politically Incorrect who now offers his commentary on HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, reads: "A real coward is someone who drops a bomb from a protected space several thousand feet up."

Quotes on other stone in Lemke's exhibit include "There was never a good war or a bad peace," Benjamin Franklin; "Love is a verb, not a noun," author, inventor and philosopher Buckminster Fuller; "It is not merely cruelty that leads men to love war, it is excitement," preacher, orator and lecturer Henry Ward Beecher; and "War would end if the dead could return," three-time British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_3559945,00.html
---------------------------------------

The Use of Torture

Published: February 21, 2005

To the Editor:

"Self-Inflicted Wounds" (editorial, Feb. 15) reflects the way most Americans feel today about how enemy combatant prisoners are being treated. "It debases the nation at home and abroad," you wrote.

I served in the military for 20 years, including in the Persian Gulf war, but never once did I have to deal with prisoners. However, during survival school we were given a taste of what we would endure if we were caught behind enemy lines.

The treatment that we received does not differ from the treatment of the prisoners in our possession. I also feel that we would be treated no differently if we were the enemy combatants and we were in their hands.

****
Knoxville, Tenn., Feb. 15, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/opinion/l21torture.html?

Example of person justifying illegal behavior. It's necessary to get a certain amount of people going along.
--------------------------------

To succeed in the war on terror, interrogators must be allowed to use carefully controlled stress techniques against unlawful combatants. Stress works, say interrogators. The techniques that the military has used to date come nowhere near torture; the advocates can only be posturing in calling them such. These self-professed guardians of humanitarianism need to come back to earth. Our terrorist enemies have declared themselves enemies of the civilized order. In fighting them, we must hold ourselves to our own high moral standards -- without succumbing to the utopian illusion that we can prevail while immaculately observing every precept of the Sermon on the Mount.

By HEATHER MAC DONALD
January 6, 2005 WSJ
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_wsj-too_nice.htm
--------------------------------

This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed… were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees.

Rudolf Hoess, SS Kommandant of the infamous Auschwitz

--------------------------------

"On November 10th, 1938, the Führer made an important
speech to the German press....

Coercion was the reason why for years I only talked
about peace. But gradually it became necessary to
condition the German people psychologically and slowly
make it grasp that there do exist things that one has
to solve with violent means when they cannot be solved
by peaceful means. To do so, however, it was necessary
not to make propaganda for violence as such, but to
elucidate certain events of foreign policy 17 to the
German people in such a way that the inner voice of
the people by itself slowly began to call for
violence. Accordingly, it meant to elucidate certain
events in such a way that totally automatically the
conviction would gradually evolve in the brains of the
broad masses: What one cannot solve with fair means,
one has to solve with violence, because it cannot go
on like this."

The rebuke was certainly understood by Joseph
Goebbels, who for the first time decided to use the
film medium as a tool for inducing anti-Semitism into
the German people.....

In order to create the strongest effect on the public
as possible Joseph Goebbels had ordered ritual Jewish
slaughtering to be filmed in the Lodz ghetto, and when
he saw the rushes of these scenes on October 16, 1939,
he wrote in his diary:

"Scenes so horrific and brutal in their explicitness
that one's blood runs cold. One shudders at such
barbarism. This Jewry must be annihilated...."

http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/tampa-19970302.shtml

Some of us are very aware of the extent that propaganda against the Middle East has affected Americans. Maybe those of us with extreme right-wing relatives all the more so.

The stage has been set.

[Ian David]

52. First they came for the Communists

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.


by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

Who Was Martin Niemoller?
http://www.hoboes.com/html/FireBlade/Politics/niemoller.shtml

[Ariana Celeste]

55. Thanks so much for posting that!

I was looking for it a few days ago and just couldn't find it, since I couldn't remember who said it to begin with.

:hi:

[Ariana Celeste]

54. I completely agree with the OP,

and in a previous thread here about the subject, somebody posted the following quotes, and I saved them on my PC to remind myself of the shocking similarities.
Mind you, these are from before the genocide- while Hitler was still working his way up. Insert Iraq, Poland, and whatever countries we are currently working with or against- Personally, I had a double-take moment when I read this. So thanks to whoever posted these before- I didn't save the page, just the quotes.



"I ask, which leader is it today that has the vision, the willpower, and yes, the backbone to best protect us? The clear answer to that question has placed me in this hall with you tonight. There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust our future and that man's name is Adolph Hitler.
There are some crazy men who would kill us if they could. So Adolph Hitler has told us: 'All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger.'

But where is the national unity in this country when we need it most? Now, while young Germans are dying in the mud in Czechoslovakia and the mountains of Poland, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Social Democrats manic obsession to bring down our Fuhrer.

What has happened to the nation I've spent my life working in? I can remember when Social Democrats believed that it was the duty of Germany to fight for freedom over tyranny. Time after time in our history, in the face of great danger, Germans worked together to ensure that freedom would not falter. But not today.

Motivated more by partisan politics than by national security, today's Social Democratic leaders see Germany as an occupier, not a liberator.

And nothing makes me madder than someone calling German troops occupiers rather than liberators. Tell that to the Czechs, Poles, Frenchmen, and Belgians who have been freed because Adolph Hitler led an army of liberators, not occupiers.

Tell that to the millions of men, women, and children who are free today from the Baltics to the Crimea, from Poland to the Balkans, because Adolph Hitler built a military of liberators, not occupiers.

Never in the history of the world has any soldier sacrificed more for the freedom and liberty of total strangers than the German soldier. And our soldiers don't just give freedom abroad; they preserve it for us here at home.

Right now, the world just cannot afford an indecisive Germany. Fainthearted, self-indulgence will put at risk all we care about in this world.

In this hour of danger, our Fuhrer has had the courage to stand up. And I am proud to stand up with him. God bless this great country and God bless Adolph Hitler."
-Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels

"By the most brutal methods of terrorism, a regime sought to maintain an existence that was condemned by the overwhelming majority of its people...I have tried to persuade the responsible authorities that it is impossible for a great nation, because it is unworthy of it, to stand by and watch millions belonging to a great, an ancient civilized people be denied rights by their government... I have endeavoured to find some way to alleviate a tragic fate. One agreement was signed only to be broken. I then tried a second time to bring about an understanding. A few weeks later, we were forced to the conclusion that the government had no intention of carrying out this agreement in the spirit that had inspired it, but in order to create an excuse. I have determined, therefore, to place the help of our country at the service of these millions. Since this morning, our soldiers are on the march across all of Austria's frontiers."
-- Adolf Hitler, March 12, 1938, justifying the German invasion of Austria.

"We have no interest in oppressing other people. We are not moved by hatred against any other nation. We bear no grudge. I know how grave a thing war is. I wanted to spare our people such an evil. It is not so much the country ; it is rather its leader . He has led a reign of terror. He has hurled countless people into the profoundest misery. Through his continuous terrorism, he has succeeded in reducing millions of his people to silence. The Czech maintenance of a tremendous military arsenal can only be regarded as a focus of danger. We have displayed a truly unexampled patience, but I am no longer willing to remain inactive while this madman ill-treats millions of human beings."
-- Adolf Hitler, April 14, 1939, justifying the German invasion of Czechoslovakia.

"The wave of appalling terrorism against the inhabitants of Poland, and the atrocities that have been taking place in that country are terrible for the victims, but intolerable for a Great Power which has been expected to remain a passive onlooker. We will not continue to tolerate the persecution of the minority, the killing of many, and their forcible removal under the most cruel conditions. I see no way by which I can induce the government of Poland to adopt a peaceful solution. But I should despair of any honourable future for my own people if we were not, in one way or another, to solve this question."
-- Adolf Hitler, August 23, 1939, justifying the German invasion of Poland.

[Beer Snob-50]

56. It is rideculous (sp) to compare the two!!

Hitler ordered the extermination of millions based on religion. Bush is simply a simpleton who, through fraud, was elected President of the United States. His party has taken much of the nazi playbook, by wanting to spread their ideal government to the rest of the world (and not caring how it is done and by using propoganda to brainwash the uneducated and lazy.

Bush just does as he is told. He ain't smart enough to be a Hitler.