This seems insane. Can we call him "Hitler" now? You can't get a passport to flee to Canada, and you can expect free-wheeling, over-armed, NSA-assisted Blackwater mercenaries to be maintaining order while the guardsmen are overseas.
Feeling lucky? Well do you, punk?
From the conservative Canadian National Post,
Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament ...
The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.
"There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."
Iran denied a report that it passed a law that would force non-Muslims in the Islamic Republic to wear colored labels identifying their religion.
The Canadian National Post yesterday reported Iran's parliament passed a law last week for a public dress code that would require Jews to wear a yellow strip of cloth on their clothing, Christians a red one, and Zoroastrians blue. Iran is a predominantly Muslim country.
``Such a bill was never introduced in the parliament,'' said Maurice Motammed, Iran's only Jewish deputy who represents Iran's community of 25,000 Jews, on state television today. ``Iranian minorities benefit from the same liberties and social rights as other people.''
A bill to promote ``an Iranian and Islamic style of dress for women'' was passed in Iran's Parliament on May 14. However, it didn't mention religious minorities, Emad Afrough, head of the parliament's cultural committee and one of the main designers of the measure said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA.
Excerpt from a comment by Steve Gimbel, online academic philosopher at large, which he made over at Majikthise. I may not be a student of the Weimar myself, but by Jove I think Steve's got it:
I've always thought that comparing Bush to Hitler was horribly misguided, but that comparing him to Kaiser Wilhelm II may be eerily on target and Wilhelm did exactly what you worry about in ramping up what became WWI.Re: "Social Democrats" see Wikipedia here. SteveG means back in the day, and not the modern SDP under Gerhard Schröder. SteveG did not however address German scholars "Ich bin ein Weimaraner." That is a myth. One further note: Even Bush supporters enjoy likening Bush to Bismark.Wilhelm believed that, because he came from a royal family, he ruled by the will of God and, despite the fact that he never served in the military himself, he believed that militarism was an essential property of the German character and that German militarism and industry ought to be seen as one and the same. God made Germany strong and German industries ought to profit from the militarism as much as possible. He was a terrible diplomat, being not at all tactful and strained relations in many directions. Further, like many Germans at the time, he believed that the time had come for Germany to be the Great European Power. Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, Turkey, the Austro-Hungarian empire had all had their turn. Now it was Germany's day and they could do as they pleased. So, claiming it to be an act of pre-emptive defense, Wilhelm invaded Belgium in what those on the left saw as starting an unnecessary war. The German nationalistic right denied that atrocities were committed against Belgians and thought that in the eyes of at least the Flemish Belgians, they should be greeted as liberators.
You may be right that a weak government may be ripe for the picking when taken over by our pathetic version of the Social Democrats. . . .
Apparently Hitler's generals urged him to use chemical weapons against Allied armies but he demurred. I guess this is ancient history, but I don't remember knowing it before. Or if I heard it before, I heard it always explained as pure pragmatism--that is, that Hitler refrained only because he knew the Allies had gas too (and presumably he knew also from Dresden that we weren't squeamish about wiping out whole cities worth of civilians). But just now on NPR I heard a guy interpret Hitler's hesitation as personal, and probably to do with Hitler's own exposure to gas in WWI. I could believe that. He was a vegetarian and conservationist too. Compartmentalization is a wonderful thing.
I wandered onto a lengthy post by "badtux" that compared various contemporary American conservative pundits and public officials to Hitler, and it inspired me to e-mail badtux a reply. Now I'm promoting my e-mail to a blog entry, because I was pleased to see it gathered some diverse found opinions and personal thoughts into a sort of summary explanation or theory of Nazism. It's not comprehensive or organized, and of course it's unreferenced, unsubstantiated and beyond audacious, but hey this is a blog. Here's the e-mail:
I think you might just have a bulls-eye in equating Coulter's behavior with Hitler's, and I agree with the "just a guy" theory of Hitler, but I think you're overlooking the workings of the man's mind and seeing way too many Hitlers as a result. Germany produced many Gestapo and SS, but just one verified Hitler after all. So not all Republicans politicians get to be Hitler (we have to label Rove "Goebbels," for example). About mind workings I mean that I think Hitler really sincerely blamed the Jews for his problems; and because he was such a narcissist he saw his personal problems as problem for the whole world; and because he was a charismatic speaker in a country hungry both for a reason for optimism and change his ideas went over well...so well he got to make his problems the world's problems ultimately. But Germany was the most Jew-friendly country in Europe. Anti-semitism was an old song people could remember, which made it easy for the populace to pick up and join in en masse, but I don't think many Germans had aggressions specifically pent up for Jews. That's just where Hitler channeled them. Because Hitler was a deeply self-deluding, deeply defensive and angry and narcissistic guy, he in effect sincerely believed what he said about the Jews, making him the kind of guy who could order genocide, not to mention the kind of guy who would reflexively villify and ruthlessly crush as traitors anybody or any party who had any at all conflicting political project they might want to get off the ground. And because in the political and cultural climate of his era he was able to get into a position of totaltiarian dictatorial authority, it was a situation of what Hitler says goes, which enables pretty much everybody else to feel no guilt for the genocide decision--plus there was the strategy of keeping things hush hush and using sondercommando to help people feel guilt free. I imagine most Nazi politicians probably made only cynical use of Jew hatred, and I believe that with regard to many conservative views most of the Republicans are cynics too (Gingrich anti-gay with a lesbian daughter? Come on). But "Hitlers" are true believers. Coulter is such a shameless spewer of lies and is so over the top in her villifying rhetoric against domestic traitors and foreign enemies that I can believe she is a whacked out true believer of some very dangerous sort. But cynics have consciences and are pragmatic to boot, so I don't see them as nearly as dangerous. We want people to come when we cry wolf, so I think it's a mistake to cry wolf where there isn't one. Come up with something other than Hitler or wolf--"disease-ridden rat" maybe. One last thing, it's my impression Hitler made a blazing and strident rise to power and was an impatient, all or nothing guy. Such a guy would not be hanging out as a junior senator in today's United States. Such a guy would be down and out and homeless or leader of the Hell's Angels or else today's United States would look a lot like Nazi Germany and that guy would be our leader.
I saw the Hitler bunker bio-pic "Der Untergang" (Downfall) the other day. Not surprisingly to myself, I got deeply engaged and left the theater heavy of both heart and mind. Not long afterward I wondered why I care so much about Hitler and the Nazis, feeling I could be making much better use of my reflective time. I do believe the Germans were people just like you and me, and that perhaps on every other paper route there's somebody with a mind that ticks a lot like Hitler's. So I am a sucker for the idea that "next time" it could be us, and so we must study the past, remember it and remain vigilant for echoes--not just in our politicians and neighbors but ourselves--which I suppose is what prompts my heavy self-reflection upon encounter with books, recordings, news reels, exhibits and historical movies with Nazis in them.
And yet do I really consider myself in jeopardy of facing the moral choices of the folks in Hitler's bunker? No. I don't think the United States could be even within a decade of banning opposition parties and protest, not to mention comprehensively exterminating, exiling or denying rights to citizens classified by who their parents were (immigrant prenatals aren't citizens). I also don't expect myself to be young enough or to be of the right leanings to be eligible for Gestapo or a high office position. So why do I dwell even for a moment about the possible lessons of that bunker...if that's what I'm doing in my heavy post-movie mind. I suppose my engagement with the world of the movie might spring from the same place as other people's urge to stand on historical spots or watch reenactments...or soap operas...or limb amputations. I don't think it's just spectacle gazing or vicariousness, though. I suspect I was indulging an urge to orient against the Nazi's as a moral standard--the standard for bad. I wonder if everyone's moral compass points south. That might explain the invention of taboos, sins, the Devil and the excess of "thou shalt nots" over "thou shalts." A major flaw with using "What would Hitler do?" as my ethical guide, though, is I don't actually believe in evil--or I try not to. So to me the lessons of that bunker are contextual and all but uninterpretable. Optimism, collectivism, self-sacrifice, orientation to a distant vision of a united, happy and virtuous world, discipline, attention to detail--these Nazi bunker qualities presumably foster goodness under other circumstances. From this movie, I do think I learned finally not to blame an entire race for my personal problems, to give more credence to my generals and to give more thought to surrender over suicide. But is there really anything else to learn here?
