Meet the New Fascism, Same as the Old Fascism

I have often, in discussions with others, compared the Bush regime, the neocons, and the evangelical/fundamentalist Christian right with the Third Reich. Though comparing another's views to those of Hitler is a common rhetorical device on the internet, used without discretion, I myself have read perhaps two dozen books on Hitler and as many on the Third Reich, including entire books on the SS, the anatomy of Auschwitz, and the relationship between Hitler and his niece, Geli Raubal.

When I compare the Bush regime to the Third Reich, I am deadly serious. Note that I am not equating the Bush regime with Hitler's Nazi regime in the moral sense. It is the similarity in tactics between the two regimes that shocks me.

In any case, I had intended for some time to say something about this, but in this article, Maureen Farrell has already done so. She doesn't cover exactly the same ground that I would, but she put it out there first and did a pretty good job.

I will add a few of my own observations of parallels.

Not only did Bush promise peace while planning for war, as noted by Farrell, but both made demands of the country[ies] he intended to invade that he never intended to allow them to fulfill, so that he could use the failure to meet those demands as a pretext for war. I think, given the flimsiness of the information used in the Bush regime's case for war against Iraq, that it is obvious that the regime intended to invade Iraq regardless of the intelligence and also regardless of the success or lack thereof the inspections regime in Iraq.

In addition, Hitler and the Nazis used fear of the outsider -- Jews, communists, Russians, etc. -- to keep the populace in check, just as Bush sent Cheney out to tell Americans they would die in a terrorist attack if they failed to reelect Bush.

The Nazis anticipated Karl Rove's tactics by fifty years as well. One of Rove's favorite tactics, used with great success in this election, is, when caught lying, cheating, stealing, push-polling, or doing something else underhanded, is to blame his opponents for actually doing those things in order to discredit the Bush campaign. Brilliant! Just as brilliant as when the Nazis burned down the Reichstag building in order to consolidate their power and then blamed their opponents.

Bush may not be Hitler, but Karl Rove is the second coming of Joseph Goebbels, and I will keep saying so until they drag me off to Guantanam--