When is a Nazi Comparison not Out of Bounds?
Last night, Brit Hume and Bill O’Reilly informed their audience, in a discussion about recent White House attacks on Fox News, that partisan comparisons to Nazi Germany in today’s political world are verboten. Apparently it rebounds negatively back onto the writer or speaker. However, sometimes the shoe fits so well, it must be worn. White House interim communications director Anita Dunn is desperately trying to avoid the fate of her historical doppelganger sister in arms, Leni Riefenstahl. Let me elaborate.
Few accused Riefenstahl of being boring. She once wrote, about seeing Adolf Hitler speak for the first time,
“It seemed as if the earth’s surface were spreading out in front of me, like a hemisphere that suddenly splits apart in the middle, spewing out an enormous jet of water, so powerful that it touched the sky and shook the earth.â€
Let’s hope we do not find such obvious subliminal sexual imagery anytime soon from Dunn’s so far more pedestrian recollections. Riefenstahl received lavish praise and awards from the European intelligentsia for her truly frightening and repulsive 1933 propaganda film, “Triumph of the Will.” As a child, this movie literally gave me nightmares while I was almost mesmerized watching clips shown on WOR, channel 9, in NYC. Riefenstahl still is perceived as a tortured genius of sorts, with both Jodie Foster and Madonna having each tried to star in and produce a film about her.
But Riefenstahl lost all her pizzazz once the Nazi Regime was vaporized. She had trouble finding work for the remainder of her unfortunately far-too-long life. Dunn is a drone with an archetypical engineer’s personality and has none of that flamboyant Satanic charisma which Riefenstahl was able to evoke with such ease. Yet in some ways, this drone’s mental “Gestalt” is as frightening as the sexualized and romanticized imagery of Riefenstahl. It’s like a Terminator Robot versus the True Believer.
Glenn Beck broke the story of Dunn’s speech before a high school class about her two favorite “political philosophers,” Mao and Mother Theresa. While she did try to elicit a laugh from the audience through this odd juxtaposition, there was nothing amusing about the message. Neither of the two was a political philosopher, so Dunn is incoherent on that point. But the fact that she felt comfortable extolling the “will” of both Mao and Mother Theresa in the same speech, without regards to what ends their “will” served, is so typically nihilistic and modern, it makes one sick. Her message was an extolling of the empty vessel of “will.” She advised the 17 and 18 year old students to just pursue their dream, be it Maoist or Roman Catholic, it’s really all the same. It’s the “will” that matters. Watching her YouTube clip from January of 2009, we again see Dunn pontificating and bragging to her technocrat audience how the Obama campaign sought to manipulate the media, with her, of course, leading the charge. What is so prominent in the video is the focus again on “means,” not ends.
Dunn will be leaving the White House soon. As controversy surrounds this previously unknown wonk due to her radical moral equivalence high school speech, she fears for her reputation and future work. She is trying to avoid being “Reifenstahled” for her Mao comment. So she did what the White House often does when criticized. She blamed “Bush.” Well, technically she did not blame “Bush,” but she did blame “Bush Pere” campaign strategist, now long dead, Lee Atwater. See, it was Atwater who really made that moral equivalence comment 25 years ago. Dunn was merely riffing on ‘ol Lee. Get it?
I don’t. But just in case you don’t either, the White House will continue to remind you that the true enemies are those who disagree with them, like Fox News. Yet O’Reilly and Hume tell us certain historical comparisons are not appropriate. Well, sometimes such comparisons help warn us of the potential dangers of certain “perspectives,†to turn a phrase back onto the White House.
Editor’s Note: Visit Michael Rulle’s Blog Here. See his previous NewsReal commentaries here.
Comparisons are apt or they’re not. I find for most people, the word Nazi evokes images of the Third Reich as it existed from 1933 to 1945. If that comparison were accurate, we’re already in too deep.
Worthy of study would be the Nazi Party’s rise to power from 1924 (when the first Nazis were elected into Parliament), until von Hindenburg appointed Hitler Chancellor in January 1933. Let’s not forget that the Nazis up until that point were elected by the voters. By 1933 the Nazi Party had a plurality of democratically elected members in the German Parliament.
Ironically, Hitler was the one Nazi who wasn’t elected. But it only took him one year to politically maneuver his power and position to become “der Fuhrer.” This is where the Nazi timeline begins for a lot of people.
@Tar & Feathers: I think you give most people too much credit, especially the under 30 crowd. I doubt many people know very much at all about the Nazis and their rise to power in Germany. Nor do they care.
Sometimes we complicate things to much there is a lot to be said for the above comparison. I believe this administration is dangerous.
The Nazis did not begin with the Holocaust; whenever Hitler is mentioned, that is all people think about. I was disappointed in Hume’s comments. I’m usually disappointed in O’Reilley’s.
Most commentators on FOX are ‘mealy mouth marshmallows’ mixing it up in masses of molasses to appease commie and Nazi asses in the Government ‘elected’ officials. Not one of them address the most important problems of the day, save a table scrap now and then thrown out to us slaves. Will ‘they’ have to worry about the future downfall of America right around the corner?
Nope! It’s all just a game… nice diversions and set-ups taking your attention away from being led like cattle to the slaughter. It’s all tyranny…wrapped up so pretty in ‘politically correct’ nonsense.
I find the administrations response to who they utilize for there media communications as almost eletist. The fact that there is even a discussion about journalists, is a factor in the problems Washington DC is having in simply trying to develop a message. Let the gridlock remain, and grow, as sign of the government meddleing with the media, displays there lack of conviction on what there new programs should be.
For the “under 30 crowd present”, I would recommend “A Gathering Storm”, by the one and only Winston Churchill. The years leading up to WWII as seen through HIS eyes, of course, via memoir and letters, an excellent time line of the looming shoals that he saw and others chose not to! Some great parallels can be drawn between our present time and those dark hours. Hey kids, Google “Barak Obama Winston Churchill” and see what you come up with.”Thank’s but no thank’s”
P.S. I would have loved to have shook Winston Churchill’s hand, how bout’ you?
I am glad that I am not the only one seeing the way Obama and his gang are using Hitlers tactics, what I am now waiting for is the Riechstag fire.
Yes, the Riechstag fire. I learned about that from Michael Savage. I didn’t know what it was and looked it up. That kinda scared me a bit. I think it will be a while before that event, if ever, I hope not. The frame work for the new house isn’t quite finished yet. That is if one is being built. There are probably quite a few bricks from the old house yet to be moved over as well. After all Hope and Change can’t come all at once.
Hmm T & F, a non-elected lawmaker that turns out to be radical?
Sounds like a “czar”.. oh wait, they don’t make “laws”, they make “regulations”.
STOP THE CZARS.
Why should we abide by “regulations” instated by persons that we did not democratically elect?
We don’t even know who these people are.
(cough, cough) “Under 30 crowd” is present and working hard to manage this blog which you seem to enjoy.
I agree. One of the writers in National Review said something similar. The Holocaust was despicable and we should do everything we can to see that another one (nuclear or otherwise) is unsuccessful against Israel.
But there’s much more to the encroaching evil of Naziism; we should be aware of and must guard against it. We must learn from the events of the 1930s.
Brit Hume is usually such a voice of reason. O’Reilly is just … O’Rielly.
I am with David on this one. Being a member of the “under 30 crowd” myself (well, the “2X” version), I find that highly condescending!
Thanks Mike.
I find that I am just getting acquainted with the under 30s crowd, Gen Y?
and that they are for the most part very sharp, clever, well rounded, and the ones who may save this country!!
No need for a Reichstag Fire, he already has his majorities.
I heard BHO use the phrase “Important step forward” today, regarding the slash of executive compensation.
“Great Leap Forward” anyone?
I hope I get a commune with an ocean view. *crosses fingers*
That is nice to hear. Because, the under 30’s that I deal with on a daily basis are for the most part either brainwashed America haters or politically agnostic and just looking to get high.
Yes, I live in a blue state. 3rd generation New Yorker.
“either brainwashed America haters or politically agnostic and just looking to get high.”
There are plenty of people over 30 who that would apply to as well.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re in a blue state or a red state. The majority of people that one encounters are not going to be politically engaged or interested in the defense of the American Idea.