Reductio ad Hitlerum
If you’re not among the small number of subscribers to Omaha’s Midlands Business Journal, you probably missed the latest column by publisher Bob Hoig. And boy, it’s a doozy.
Back when I was a reporter at MBJ, sources would occasionally make disparaging comments to me about the paper’s extreme-right politics. One business owner joked about how he needed to start subscribing to the paper to get his weekly dose of conservative fanaticism; another business owner flat-out refused the free publicity of having a story done because of the politics of the paper.
Hoig’s latest column probably won’t change any minds; or if it does, it probably won’t be in the way he expects, for he has gone and woken Leo Strauss, making his case for how Obama resembles — you guessed it — Adolph Hitler.
Hoig explains how he came upon this theory when re-reading Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals,” saying the Obama campaign is using “Nazi techniques.”
The message I took away was that Republicans, Independents and Democrats need to think hard about this intellectually impressive man, Barack Obama, and not vote for him simply because he is charismatic, a spellbinding orator, a messiah figure inveighing against the past while ill-defining the future, black, or a messenger of hope and vague ideas about change.
Any of the above can be charming individually or, at worst, harmless.
Taken, however, as “all of the above,” similar traits unleashed the most magnetic, flawed and dangerous individuals upon the 20th Century that the world has ever known.
Apparently, people voted for Hitler because he was black. (??!?)
The basic premise that voters learn about the positions held by the candidates they support is not invalid. But that’s clearly a minor part of this column. The real goal is to show we are living in the Nazi rebirth.
Hoig outlines the similarities between Hitler and Obama — Obama is going to accept the nomination in front of 80,000 people (Hitler held large rallies); Obama is capable of giving long speeches (Hitler would go on for hours, and Hoig got the impression that Obama was “just warming up” when he ended a recent 40-minute speech); Obama acknowledges there are problems based on race and class differences (Hitler blamed all his problems on the Jews — same thing); newspapers and television networks cover Obama speeches and write about him (Joseph Goebbels ran the Nazi propaganda machine); Obama has changed his positions on some things, like Reverend Wright and FISA (Hitler acted like he was friends with Russia, and then invaded it).
Hoig points out that mass looting and vandalizing and Nazi gang attacks followed Hitler’s rallies. “We haven’t heard of any mass parades down 16th Street, but that might be coming,” he writes.
Without a hint of irony, Hoig warns that Hitler seized “every organ of state power, from military to security to prosecutorial services. And then there was no going back.” And he warns us that all this happened because “the charismatic little man who spoke so well; the man who wasn’t even born in Germany (Hitler was born in Austria) outfoxed and triumphed over them all.” He seems intent on reminding the reader that Hitler wasn’t born in Germany. Hitler wasn’t like the Germans. He was an outsider.
I wonder what his point is there.
There’s a reason that comparisons to Nazis / Hitler / etc. are so routinely mocked (though those who make such comparisons are probably comforted that it’s usually just the intellectual elite who mock them):
There were so many facets to what Hitler and the Nazis did and represented that simply making some kind of “Nazis did A, therefore A is inherently bad” does not prove a single thing. Hoig, or any other writer, could compare virtually anyone to Hitler or the Nazis if he wanted to, and that’s the key — the comparisons are an obvious stretch, and the desperate reaches say more about the writer and those who would cheer such connections than they do about Obama.
Beyond the logical problems, it’s completely despicable. I can’t imagine that even the fiercest Obama opponents think he’s actually planning anything even remotely as horrible as what Hitler and the Nazis did. So to pretend that he’s at that level is not only a shameful low blow, it’s disrespectful to the millions who actually suffered at the Nazis’ hands.
Comparing someone to Hitler is an act of desperation. It’s an act of intellectual bankruptcy. It’s an act of fear.
And we all know who preyed on people’s fears to rise to power… bwahahahahahahaha.
