Below The Beltway

On Tuesday, I noted that Al Gore invoked the specter of Nazism to advance his environmental agenda, but it’s pretty clear that dumb analogies to the Third Reich aren’t exclusive to one political party.

Last night, Senator Jim DeMint compared present-day America to pre-World War II Germany:

Part of what we’re trying to do in “Saving Freedom” is just show that where we are, we’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy.

And DeMint’s not alone, as Tommy Christopher notes, he’s backed up by SNL alumnus Victoria Jackson:

Hitler did this. He killed the weak, the sick, the old, and babies and races/religions he didn’t like. Hitler also controlled the media. (Where’s the public debate between scientists on “Climate Change/Global Warming?”) Hitler had the VW bug invented as the state car. What will O’s nationalized car be? So… kill off the weak. That’s the plan. Tax the workers to death. Erase the middle class. Sounds like the evil governments we studied in high school long ago. The evil governments were : kings, oligarchies, facist, socialist, and communist. Now it’s called the Obama Administration. Sounds like candy or a rock band.

Let’s leave aside for a second the question of just how it is that one of the least talented people to ever appear on Saturday Night Live has suddenly turned into a political analyst, I doubt there is a rational explanation for that.

The reductio ad Hitlerum seems to a required part of American politics these days. George Bush did it in the run up to the Iraq War, and then again last year when talking about the Middle East. Bill Clinton used analogies to the Third Reich to justify American intervention in Serbia. And then there’s Al Gore.

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 of evil. It’s an easy way to shut down political debate even when legitimate questions need to be asked.

Which is why politicians resort to it so often.

Tommy Christopher puts it best:

Don’t these folks see how simultaneously comical and trivializing these comparisons are? It’s like saying that mosquitoes are a Holocaust on your arms and legs.

(…)

I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but maybe these folks are watching too much Star Trek.

Heh.