Anne Applebaum points out why comparing everything to the one of the most evil men in history doesn’t really accomplish anything:
Nazi analogies nowadays are usually deployed to end arguments, not broaden them. Once you inject Hitler or the Third Reich into a debate, you have evoked the ultimate form of evil, put your opponent in an indefensible position — “What, you’re opposed to a war against Hitler?” — and for all practical purposes halted the conversation.
Invoking the Nazis also changes the tenor of a debate. There may be good, tactical reasons for choosing not to negotiate with Hezbollah or the Iranian regime, for example (the best reason, usually, is that the relevant diplomats are fairly sure negotiations won’t work). But calling opponents of this policy “appeasers” distorts the debate, giving tactical choices a phony moral grounding. In reality, circumstances do change, even where “terrorists and radicals” are involved, as this administration in particular well knows.
And it’s not just George Bush who’s guilty of invoking the ghosts of Adolf Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, and Munich when trying to score political points:
In a speech explaining what “this Kosovo thing is all about,” Bill Clinton once justified his decision to bomb Serbia by asking,”What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier?” His secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, was also fond of telling reporters that “Munich is my mindset,” referring to Europe’s decision to appease Hitler at Munich in 1938. In 2006, a British group opposed to national identity cards designed an advertisement showing Tony Blair as Hitler, except with a bar code in place of a moustache. Last spring, American feminist Naomi Wolf compared Hitler’s brownshirts, the thugs who smashed Jewish shops and murdered old men, with the “groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers,” who “menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000.” On Sunday, Al Gore told college seniors that fighting global warming was comparable to fighting fascism. And, of course, Saddam Hussein has been compared to Hitler many times, by many people of many different political views.
And what, exactly, has this constant envoking of the memory of a dictator and the man who, in the judgment of history, made most of the worst aspects of World War II possible, accomplished ? Nothing really, because it pretty much makes debate and disagreement impossible.
And that, I think, is why political leaders do it. Invoke Hitler and anyone who opposes you is automatically an appeaser. It’s an easy way to shut down political debate even when legitimate questions need to be asked.
Which is why George W. Bush was wrong to invoke the ghosts of six decades ago in reference to the problems of today.
