BS: Using the other N-word

Subject: BS: Using the other N-word
From: C. Ham
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 10:44 PM

My friend Bernie Farber, who works at the Canadian Jewish Congress, wrote this in today's Toronto Sun:


This 'N' word ends any rational debate

By BERNIE FARBER

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."

The above statement is known as Godwin's Law. It's based on the principle developed by American lawyer Mike Godwin that if an online conversation goes on long enough, it eventually turns into a mudslinging contest.

Both sides become frustrated and less rational, and invariably the argument will include a Nazi or Adolf Hitler comparison. At that point, the discussion is over and the one using the analogy has lost the debate, for his argument has become irrational.

Godwin's law is based on online discussions, but the Hitler/Nazi comparison goes well beyond the Internet. Sadly, it happens with such regularity it has almost become part of our vernacular.

In accepting his Nobel Peace Prize last month, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore used the Hitler analogy to compare world leaders ignoring climate change to those who ignored the threat emanating from Nazi Germany's early days.

Here at home, the leader of our Green Party, Elizabeth May, used similar hyperbole, comparing our government's environmental plan to former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis in 1938. While she later offered a full retraction, her dredging up of the same association a few months later put that apology into question.

Shortly after being elected, the Toronto Sun published an editorial cartoon portraying Toronto Mayor David Miller as a Nazi for not acting "democratically" during a council debate. To his credit, then editorial page editor Lorrie Goldstein apologized for his decision to run it.

A few years before, Irene Atkinson, then newly-elected chair of the Toronto District School Board, compared the manner in which then premier Mike Harris governed to 1930s Nazi Germany. Atkinson also understood the danger of such unwarranted comparisons and offered a full retraction and apology.

Kitchener-Waterloo MP Andrew Telegdi once compared Canada's immigration laws to Nazi Germany. "Canada is acting like a Nazi-style regime ... That's what Hitler used to do,'' he said. After pressure from then prime minister Jean Chretien, Telegdi announced his regret in the Commons.

Former transport minister Jean Lapierre accused Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe of employing "a little bit of a Nazi tone'' after Duceppe boasted about making the Liberals "disappear'' in Quebec. Lapierre later apologized and promised not to use the analogy again.

On it goes. It seems as though every time a public figure draws a comparison to Hitler and Nazis, they are justifiably criticized and apologize -- yet the comparisons continue. Perhaps that's because public figures don't appreciate the ramifications of what they're saying.

So allow me to be blunt to avoid further confusion. There can be no comparison. It matters little if the association is direct or indirect. The attempt to annihilate an entire people is beyond such facile analogies. Any attempt to do so trivializes genocide. It is the trivialization that makes people angry.

CANNOT BE COMPARED

A government's policy on climate change or immigration, or how it governs, cannot be compared to the perpetrators of one of history's worst crimes. Godwin is correct: Rational debate stops once Nazi parallels are invoked.

I'm not sure why people insist on making them. Clearly, they have a certain perverse public relations value. Comparing a person or issue to one of history's most demonic regimes and its leader is provocative. It will probably make "the news".

Attempting to raise one's profile by invoking the name of Hitler may even work in the short term, but eventually it will be seen for what it is: A dismal attempt at self-promotion. The issue being advocated gets lost in the condemnation that ensues.

It has to stop. Trivializing Hitler and the Nazi regime is not only dangerous and foolish but insensitive and a slap in the face to all who suffered under that regime.

According to U.S. author Paul J.J. Payack, president of Global Language Monitor, there are more than 900,000 words in the English language. Surely, we are creative enough to use all that richness properly and paint images that are worthy of the issue they espouse.

Falling back on Hitler and the Nazis only tells us of those who lack imagination and sensitivity.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: C. Ham
Date: 15 Jan 08 - 10:46 PM

I posted Bernie's article because I've seen that N-word misused around Mudcat so often.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: katlaughing
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 12:23 AM

Thanks for that. I agree.

I think we can put the blame on Seinfeld with his stupid Soup Nazi thing. I hated the show and never watched it, but have heard of that reference.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 04:56 AM

Since when was Nazi the 'N-word'? Surely that in itself shows just as much a lack of imagination and sensitivity as do those who, however so unwittingly, might be seen to trivialise the racial policies of the Third Reich by their use of such terms. I wonder, coud this be an actual case of, gulp, Political Correctness Gone Mad?

The Soup Nazi was based on an actual character, see The Original Soup Man. Seems in real life he was known as 'The Terrorist'.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 06:15 AM

Sorry about that - I see now that Nazi is the other N-word; which is surely just as bad. There's only one N-word, and it sure as hell ain't Nazi...

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: GUEST,PMB
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 06:33 AM

I don't think the Nazi's crimes were unprecedented, except in scale. The main difference from previous pogroms and ethnic cleansings was that the technological means for mass extermination were available for the first time- the transport, communications, and industrial processes.

I believe that had they had the means, the Spanish would have exterminated the Jews and Moslems in the early 16th century, rather than expelling or forcibly converting them. Cromwell would have possibly exterminated the Irish had he had the means. Even in the Bible, the Israelites were instructed to exterminate "the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite", and that they failed to do so is no exculpation.

The ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, mass murder in Rwanda, and recent racist attacks in Kenya show that whatever they call themselves, people can still succumb to the attraction of Nazi style short cuts to social problems. We must always be on the lookout for this. It's possible that use of "Nazi" in other contexts devalues the word, but equally possible that it refreshes the memory.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 07:32 AM

Exerpts from the article:

There can be no comparison.

It has to stop.



My reaction:

"Jawohl, mein Kommandant!"


I think the article's inclusion in the "BS" section is totally appropriate. I've never heard anyone use the term "Nazi" in the literal sense of, as the article's author put it, "...perpetrators of one of history's worst crimes." It's use in common language is usually synonomous with "authoritian". Other characteristics associated with the actual Nazi regime in Germany (racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, low regard for human life) are not implied.

Is it the best word to use? No, but the author's attempt to overlay his interpretation of what the word means or should mean upon someone else's use of it seems to be saying, "I'm the expert here! Follow my instructions! Deviation will not be tolerated!" There's a word for those types of people.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Beer
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 08:35 AM

Thanks for posting that C.Ham.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:47 AM

There is another problem with comparing US imperialism with the Nazis.

The assumption behind it is that the Nazis are the worst you could possibly get, a reference point of evil. They aren't. Hitler did less damage in his first 7 years in power than Bush has done in the same time, and the likely toll from US-policy-driven global climate change is going to be far worse than all the genocides of the 20th century put together, even at the very highest estimate for all of them.

And the Nazis are usually compared to US imperialism in the wrong respect. The US doesn't have an ideology calling for racial extermination - it does call for millions to die, but not after being classified by race. The US system shares a *very great deal* with the Nazi state in its political economy. Schacht's system - getting subjected nations to fund the empire by ever-increasing debt and using ever-more-expensive militarism as a central *economic* policy - is exactly what the US has been doing since since Reagan. Even if Bush had guts and a brain he couldn't reverse it now, any more than Hitler could have done.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Raptor
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:56 AM

We could get piously upset at alot of things if we choose can't we?

Why do you give a rusty possum fart about anything that the Toronto sun writes?

The real N word was used to put people down.

Are you a member of the Third Reich and are mad about the steriotype?

Do you think that if we don't mention the word natzi again that the horrors of the holicost will go away?

By using the word Natzi in comparing we are not making lite of them or paying tribute we are basicaly saying that they are the worst form of tyraney, Is that wrong?

People need to heal. Not dwell in the past and relive it.

We can either learn from the mistakes made in the world and work like hell to prevent them from happining again Or cry about how bad it was keeping the wounds open.

I'd bet that the people who were actually in the holicost would rather live thankfully that it is over and enjoy life to the fullest knowing that they are lucky to be alive than have you friend "Bernie Farber, who works at the Canadian Jewish Congress" constantly remind them about it by making such a big deal out of things that arn't that important.

God tought us to relish life. I don't recall anything in the Bible about constantly being offended whenever the oportunity arises. Mabey that in the tora?


Bob Geldof said in his song Attitude chicken "the politicaly corect are the natzis of our time" I agree. That is not to say that I think the natzis were good people. Its a comment on a regime that believes "You should do and say what I think you should"


I would apreciate if you would respond with inteligent argument and show me your opinion on this subject and not just insult me, call me an antisemite, and end this discusion in a childish way stating that I must hate you because you are Jewish. I do apreciate your opinion and would like to hear it!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Midchuck
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:04 AM

The US doesn't have an ideology calling for racial extermination - it does call for millions to die, but not after being classified by race.

WHAAAA? Which millions? I don't want millions to die, unless they're germs, and I'm an American. What is this supposed to refer to?

Peter

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: john f weldon
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:05 AM

The N(a)-word can be irresistible at times, but one can be more effective by taking a deep breathe, counting to three, and making a substitute.

Early on, you say:
That Eichmann, he was a rum fellow, rather naughty at times.

Later, when you use similar words to describe wee George, no one can storm out of the room, but they'll catch your drift.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:09 AM

Policy is a neat corporate/government word that means, "We don't have to think."

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Peace
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:24 AM

All different things are unique. If they weren't, they wouldn't be different. That said, I think we can and do on occasion attribute names to things even thought the analogy is not quite perfect. Whether that is laziness or simply the need to ascribe characteristics so that it's 'faster' for people to look for the characteristics that ARE shared by two different things is beyond me. Either way, I do not think any fighting is needed at this point.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Bee
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:46 AM

I agree that the word 'Nazi' is thrown around too indiscriminately, partly because it is an instantly recognizable reference to unspeakable authoritarian government crime, to ethnic cleansing, and to horrors.

In a way, the CJC and other Jewish organizations have made this possible by insisting (quite rightly) that no one must forget what the Nazis did to the Jews in the 1930s and 40s.

People don't make references to the Rwandan genocide in the same way, although that is much more recent, because no organized groups of Rwandan survivors exist to publicise and remind people of what happened to them.

I suspect there is no way to avoid the use of 'Nazi' in a colloquial style, especially by younger people who are far removed in time from the atrocities of that regime, and thus less able to relate to them, but who nevertheless are made aware of them by education and by the publicising of them by Jewish organisations.

Politicians, however, should know better, and refuse to use the word in a trivial manner.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:54 AM

There are many at Mudcat who hate the use of the word "Nazi" in casual contexts, and the subject has been debated, objected to, and taken apart numerous times. Just one problem with these often heated debates-- Mudcat doesn't run by vote, and people who miss each debate are not governed by them.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:55 AM

Raptor - I think was with you right up until the point you mentioned the G-word. Since when did G*d have anything to do with intelligent argument? Soon as you bring G*d into it, it falls apart completely, given the utter sentimental subjectivism involved - an utter sentimental subjectivism that invariably leads to the two greatest evils humanity has ever come up with, namely Righteousness and Fundamentalism.

The BG-word doesn't help either come to think of it, with his self-righteous celebrity circus parades and their nauseating overtones of the Nuremberg Rally - i.e. mass compliance to a corrupt & ultimately inhuman cause that seeks vainly to eradicate one of the symptomatic prerequisites of the very global societal condition that allows them such outrageous wealth and privilege in the first place.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:58 AM

Oh, b*gger it! There's me trying to be too clever with my HTML! Can I write that bit again, please?

The BG-word doesn't help either come to think of it, with his self-righteous celebrity circus parades and their nauseating overtones of the Nuremberg Rally - i.e. mass compliance to a corrupt & ultimately inhuman cause that seeks vainly to eradicate one of the symptomatic prerequisites of the very global societal condition that allows them such outrageous wealth and privilege in the first place.

Thank you!

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: M.Ted
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 11:01 AM

What are you talking about, Jack Campin?

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 11:18 AM

On the other hand, there are people around who still refer to themselves as Nazis.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 11:18 AM

Sedayne, you are treading on sensitive ground, there. Are you trying to sow discord? Becuase that line of talk generally does, in these quarters.

~S~

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 08:08 PM

There are times when it can be appropriate to draw parallels - for example, from that quoted article, Al Gore's comment about governmental failure to respond to impending disaster seems appropriate enough.

But the casual and jokey use of Nazi in relation to disagreements about music or grammar or similar things strikes me as distasteful. It trivialises something that shouldn't be trivialised, with "Nazi" being used to mean "a bit bossy in my opinion".

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 08:25 PM

It's a word that is being used far too often...in far too many places where it is wildly out of context. It is most often used by people who want to browbeat and demonize someone they don't agree with, and place themselves, correspondingly, as being in an unassailable position of supposed moral superiority...akin to the victims of Hitler's Nazi Germany. As such, it's use is getting way out of hand.

As was said above, "Attempting to raise one's profile by invoking the name of Hitler may even work in the short term, but eventually it will be seen for what it is: A dismal attempt at self-promotion. The issue being advocated gets lost in the condemnation that ensues."

That doesn't mean the word "Nazi" should never be used in common dialogue or political dialogue. It should just be used a whole lot less often than it is, that's all, and a whole lot less hyocritically and manipulatively too, since those politicians and spokesmen who have been using it as a label to attack their enemies often seem to me to be quite adept at emulating it in various ways themselves.

In other words, I think the pot has been calling the kettle black in more than a few cases lately.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: C. Ham
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 08:27 PM

People don't make references to the Rwandan genocide in the same way, although that is much more recent, because no organized groups of Rwandan survivors exist to publicise and remind people of what happened to them.

I wouldn't object to a group that commits genocide being referred to as Nazi, Nazi-like, etc.

But I was called a "health Nazi" because I helped lobby for a ban on smoking in indoor public places in Toronto. I was at a folk festival once where the artistic director was called a "folk Nazi" because she wouldn't book bands with electric instruments.

It's such casual use of a term taken from an evil, genocidal regime to describe people who are doing good that makes me want to puke in disgust.

Someone who corrects someone else's spelling is not a "Nazi," and there's nothing clever about calling someone that.

Jerry Seinfeld, BTW, should have known better.

And that's all I've got to say on the subject.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 08:37 PM

Ain't no word worth takin' off the table... Just the context in which they are used...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other NERD word
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:11 PM

There is no comparison between Rome and the USA !

Just don't get Sen. Byrd started.

Trust me, there have been several slow motion holocausts in the US.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:37 PM

Oh, indeed there have...

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: bobad
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:39 PM

As there have also been in Canada.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 09:45 PM

Yes, that's true also.

Matter of fact, there have probably been slow or fast motion holocausts at one time or another in just about every country in the world by now.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:43 PM

While we're at it, there's a music thread invoking the Gestapo. As if artists do not deserve for their work to be protected? As if there is a parallel?

I think using those words in any way in today's culture is intellectually lazy as well as intentionally provocative/trollish. It's a cheap way of saying, "Look how strongly I feel about something." Instead of feeling I want to support the person in their strong objection to something, it turns me off to the point where I don't even want to open the thread so titled.... it sends the clear signal that a hysteriacal, closed mind is at work and that someone is shouting at me from a soapbox.

It would be like if all of a sudden, we had threads with words in their titles like "baby killers," but then there was an expectation that rational thought and discussion would occur. How could it possibly?

Mother-rapers, baby-killers, dog-eaters, kitten-smashers-- and Nazi's. Any language like that must be MEANT to inflame and enrage! It's... propagandist thinking.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 10:45 PM

Exactly! Thank you for your comments, Susan.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Jan 08 - 11:08 PM

She left out mother stabbers and father rapers..........

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 12:01 AM

Spaw, you channelling Morrison, tonight?

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 12:02 AM

The Holocaust that wiped out the plains indians happened pretty fast, actually, when they decided it would be neat to build trans-continental railroads.
                All they had to do was wipe out the bison and leave the people out on the plains to starve and freeze to death.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 01:56 AM

I guess you have a point, C. Ham. We have one thread about the Performing Rights Gestapo , and another about the Grammar/Spellin' Nazis. I'd agree that stuff like that might tend to trivialize the Holocaust, and I can see how you might consider that deplorable.

On the other hand, I think it's a not such a bad thing to compare some current injustices and prejudices to the same injustice and prejudice that led to the Holocaust. I think it's wrong to speak of the Nazis in hushed tones, sanctifying National Socialism as the Absolute Evil, the worst expression of evil that could ever exist.

Genocide can and does happen in our present "enlightened" age, and modern, civilized people do little to stop it. Evil is alive and well in our world. It didn't start with Adolf Hitler, and it didn't end with his death.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 03:04 AM

Is there really much moral difference between the people who pretend that the survival of the planet isn't as big a reality as a pocketful of money in the here and now, and the people who appeased Hitler.

After all Hitler's evil wasn't apparent to an awful lot of people in the 1930's, or Stalin's for that matter.

Having said that the trivialisation of the word, nazi makes me uneasy. Most of our generation , I suppose, grew up with parents whose lives were marred by the Nazi regime (I was born 1949). Whereas to people even ten or fifteen years younger, the war is just something that films like Hogan's Heroes, hannibal Brooks etc have trivialised beyond recogntion. And the truth was too awful to face - even for the films like Bridge Over the River Kwai, and In Which We Serve - like our generation watched.

I think we have to face it, that no film will ever bring into focus what our parents went through - the sights , the smells, the experience of wholesale slaughter. As my late father said, if you were there, you understand; if you weren't, you don't.

I think the war you are trying to wage against the devaluation of these terms is in the last instance, futile. Sad, but there you go.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 05:35 AM

Spaw was quoting Arlo Guthrie, not channelling Morrison.
G

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Raptor
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:21 AM

Come on people what we're talking about is overuse of a word used in comparison Saying the word "nazis" does not trivialize the Holocaust any more than saying the words "George Bush" trivializes the words "Torture of POW's".

The REAL N-word is a horrible word and one that should never be used and the comparison of these word is how this thread got started!

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Raptor
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:32 AM

A good friend of mine died yesterday, Brain cancer, and my mother is losing her life to it as we speak.

I will not be offeded when the next person tells me they're "DEAD TIRED"

He will not be making light of death.

Over exageration is used all the time.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:51 AM

Nice to see the thread open again anyway!

As an afficianado of the comic art of Dudley Dexter Watkins, I've always been entertained by the surreal flights of fancy manifest in the war-time Lord Snooty & (to a lesser extent) Desperpate Dan stories, as constrasted with the sobriety of the 'homefront' as depicted in The Broons & Oor Wullie of the same period. In both, however, Hitler, his henchmen and the entire Nazi entourage are reduced to figures of fun and hilarity and roundly trounced as a consequence.

This same process we find in folk tales where the Devil (the personification of all malady, malpractise & misfortune) is similarly (and ceremonially) belittled by being turned into a figure of fun before being subjected to a thorough humiliation. Maybe J.K.Rowling picked up on this with her 'Riddikulus' curse.

One would have thought the real concern here would be the lingering associations of National Socialism in the public consciousness as beig somehow endemic to the German people, something the The Milgram Experiment was designed, to some extent, to clarify.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Raptor
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 08:43 AM

I won't mind if you say that something is a "Cancer" in todays society.

The word nazi is overused like the word like or dude but is not as bad as the "N-word"and shouldn't be compared to it.

As for seignfield he is jewish and has a grip on things are those here who are so upset by this word even jewish?

I bet most aren't.

Raptor

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 09:50 AM

There's a fundamental difference between a racial or cultural epithet and a word like "Nazi". The former insults a person because of who he is. Nobody has any control over the color of his skin, where he was born, or who his parents happen to be. Words like "Nazi" insult a person's attitudes and behaviors, things over which he does have control.

If you're a vegetarian who attends a party where meat is served, and you harangue the host and other guests about it, someone is probably going to call you a "food Nazi". It's an insult, but if you don't want to be insulted all you have to do is keep your mouth shut.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Raptor
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:12 AM

Very well put!

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:17 AM

Oops, Giok, thanks for the correction. I knew that...The End just came to mind with its "Father/ Yes son?/ I want to kill you/ Mother, I want to...fuck you,"

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: john f weldon
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:28 AM

Some alternatives, in rough descending order of innoffensiveness:

Nazi.
Stalinist.
Mussolini-ite.
Franco-ist.
McCarthy-ite.
Duplessi National Unionist.
Thatcherite.
Reaganite.
Mulroney-ite.
My Brother-in-Law-ite.
Dickhead.
Jerk.

Cranky vegetarians are, on this scale, Food-Thatcherites.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Black Hawk
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:37 AM

If you're a vegetarian who attends a party where meat is served .. ...surely you would want to keep your mouth shut? LOL

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 11:49 AM

There have been a number of simply terrible episodes in history, and they tend to sit very large in the consciousness of people....for a certain amount of time....then the awareness of it begins to fade to some extent, and keeps on fading.

We happen to live in an era where the memories of WWII are quite recent. Therefore there is still a very highly charged atmosphere in connection with the Nazis....and in East Asia, specially in China and Korea, in connection with slaughters perpetrated by the Japanese occupation forces. We hear about that less in the West, but it's still a very sore point for the Chinese and Koreans.

So people start using something like that in their recent historical memory and they use it to attack just about anyone they have a sharp disagreement with. In the political arena, they use it to get people all het up about something...a pretty irresponsible way of getting people to support the launching of new wars, such as the "War on Terror" or the War in Iraq.

To compare Saddam's Iraq, for example, to Hitler's Germany...implying that Iraq was a similar threat to the world...was utterly spurious and disingenous. Germany was a great power...capable of threatening other great powers of its time. Iraq in 2003 was a crippled country, surrounded and helpless, completely incapable of threatening any great power or even any of its regional neighbours in its own area.

The drawing of parallels between Iraq and Nazi Germany...the quoting of examples of appeasement to Hitler to persuade people to attack Iraq...was crass emotional manipulation of the public in a way that was specious and simply dishonest.

The real fact of the matter was that Bush and Blair were in fact doing something rather similar to Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland...and were finding similarly specious ways of justifying their aggression on a small country that posed NO threat to them whatsoever.

So that's where it gets really outrageous, when people drag the name of Hitler into some situation just to panic a nation's public into supporting some kind of imperial aggression.

Anyway, these things change as time goes by. The use of "Nazis" as a word to drive people into fits will fade and one day it will be replaced by some new demon-word with which to rabble-rouse a fearful population.

Now consider this: During the period called the Hundred Years War...from about 1335 to 1453...the English kings and the English nation made a false claim to the throne of France....and they embarked on an invasion of France which lasted over a hundred years. It killed an enormous number of people there and it resulted in the systematic pillaging of most of the towns and cities in present-day France. When those towns and cities were taken, it was not uncommon to slaughter most of the inhabitants, to torture and murder men, women, and children right there in the streets, to rape the women, to burn down people's homes, to burn people at the stake, to tear people limb from limb, and to steal and carry away all their valuables. The horrors that were perpetrated on the French people during that 120 (approx) year period of English invasion and occupation amounted to a national holocaust that still is felt in the psyche of France to this day.

There's a holocaust for you. It didn't last a few years, like the Nazis' effort in WWII. It lasted over a hundred years. Imagine your nation being ocuppied by a foreign invader and brutalized and massacred and humiliated for OVER a hundred years!

If it had happened in the 1900s, instead of over 500 years ago...which holocaust do you think people would be focusing on now? Which regime would they now be holding up as the ultimate example of organized evil?

Not the Germans.

People, you see, are very subjective in where they choose to see evil. They base it on their own recent memory and their own direct experiences, and what others have told them.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 01:27 PM

It's called hyperbole. And if you really don't want to offend anyone, don't ever say anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 03:23 PM

Well, despite my better judgment, I have to say that I think the "Soup Nazi" thing on Seinfeld was really funny. Part of the reason it was funny is that it was irreverently daring, that it was one of those things that polite people wouldn't say in polite company. I think Hogan's Heroes was genuinely funny in the same way, as were the references to Nazis in the Mel Brooks movies. Even more daring and irreverent was the anti-Nazi humor of the Berlin cabarets of the 1930's - this was absolutely classic humor.

The trouble with a good joke, though, is that it gets repeated over and over again, until everybody in the world gets sick of it. Then it becomes a cliche, and it isn't funny any more. So, while the joke did work on Seinfeld, it didn't work so well in the "Nazi" and "Gestapo" thread titles currently active. Still, although it may be disrespectful as well as dumb, I don't really think it trivializes the Holocaust. I think what happens is the exact opposite. If you decry something by comparing it with the Holocaust, and the issue is not worthy of that comparison; what you have done is trivialized your own position. The genocides in Africa are certainly worthy of comparison with the Holocaust, and so is the issue of slavery. It certainly is a terrible thing when people destroy the environment - but I don't think it compares in any way to the intentional killing that took place in the Holocaust, and making that comparison makes the cause of the environmentalists sound somewhat ridiculous.

On the other hand, I think it's important that we're not too cautious about refraining from comparing things with the Holocaust - to do so would be to deify the Holocaust as the Supreme Evil, something that could never happen again. All of us are capable of such unspeakable cruelty and evil, and it's important for us to be aware of that. The same forces that caused the Holocaust, were at work in the American treatment of Indians and black slaves. To a lesser degree, it was those same forces that allowed the internment of Japanese and Italian-Americans in concentration camps in the U.S. in the 1940's, and the anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic and and anti-homosexual and anti-immigrant intolerance that was pervasive in the United States until the time of our parents - and some of that intolerance is alive and well in the U.S today. Anti-Muslim intolerance is rampant in Europe (and to a lesser extent in the U.S.) today, and that intolerance could certainly be compared to the intolerance that led to the Holocaust.

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 03:47 PM

Huckabee is pushing his anti-homosexual beliefs in his campaign. At least they are out where everybody can see them.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 04:26 PM

"It certainly is a terrible thing when people destroy the environment - but I don't think it compares in any way to the intentional killing that took place in the Holocaust."

Mmmm. "The environment" doesn't just mean trees and animals, it means people, in their millions. The numbers who could be killed are likely to be a lot higher even than the Holocaust. True enough the Holocaust isn't the best analogy, and in fact gets in the way, because it concentrates attention on the differences rather than the parallels. Better to think in terms of the Irish Famine and scale it up across whole continents.

But in the failure to recognise and respond to a looming disaster, there seems to be a perfectly reasonable parallel that can be drawn between our governments and peoples today in relation to climate change, and back in the thirties in relation to the Nazis.
.................................
"...if you don't want to be insulted all you have to do is keep your mouth shut." There's a certain incongruity between writing that sentence and asserting the right to use "Nazi" as a label in an argument.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 08:49 PM

I don't think anyone is actually comparing the impending environmental crisis with the Holocaust. They're comparing the "look the other way" attitudes that allowed the Holocaust to happen with similar attitudes which may well allow an environmental catastrophe to happen.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 10:17 PM

Is anyone defending fascism here?

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 11:17 PM

I doubt it.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:24 AM

Oh go on! Hug a BNP member! After all, they're just links in the great chain of humanity......

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 01:24 PM

Odd that we haven't heard yet from "the Knights that say 'NEE!'"

"NEE! NEE! NEE!"

The other N word.

Subject: RE: BS: Using the other N-word
From: Stringsinger
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 06:20 PM

Using the term "Nazi" to define a course of behavior doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
There are parellels with what happened in the 20's and early 30's in Germany that can be
found in the US. I believe that the Christian Right is engaging in a kind of "Naziism" which as a political philosophy can be defined as a "theocracy" in the loose sense of the word. Hitler was not an atheist and punished those who were. He insisted in some kind of "divine right" taking his position from his upbringing. He was not specifically but somehow associated with Catholicism and this was one reason he made a rapprochement with such as Pope Pius and clerics who remained during the Nazi occupation of Germany. He used priests to help him get war criminals out of Germany and to South America.

I believe that Upton Sinclair's definition of facism is more precise, however, than Naziism.
He said, "Fascism will come to the United States wrapped in the flag and the cross".

Frank Hamilton