Nazi of the Day
Here's an example of a corollary of Brendan Nyhan's argument, from Israel:
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Friday compared Iran's nuclear ambitions and threats against Israel with the policies of Nazi Germany and criticized world leaders who maintain relations with Iran's president....
Israel has identified Iran as the greatest threat to the Jewish state. Israel's concerns have heightened since the election of Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who frequently calls for the destruction of Israel and has questioned whether the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews took place....
Olmert said Iran's nuclear program is designed to secure "conventional weapons with delivery systems" to annihilate Israel. He also criticized world leaders for maintaining relations with the Iranian president.
"It is the first time that a leader of a very big and important nation openly and publicly declares that an aim of his nation is to wipe off the map," Olmert said. "And this nation continues to be a legitimate member of the United Nations and leaders of many of the countries in the world receive the leader. They hardly do anything."
Olmert had a valid point - Iran is a destabilizing threat - but why did he have to drag Adolf Hitler into this? Oh, wait a minute - back in 2002, Iran did the same thing:
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei accused President Bush Wednesday of using the same language as Adolf Hitler to bully the world....
"Arrogance has drawn the bullying West into disgrace," the official IRNA news agency quoted Khamenei as saying, "and the president of a country which claims to support human rights and freedom speaks the same language to the people of the world as Hitler used."
Well, I'm glad we don't do this in the United States. Whoops:
"Ahmadinejad -- I call him Ahmad-in-a-head -- I think he's a Hitler type of person," Ohio Republican Sen. George Voinovich said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
And all sorts of guerilla fights occur:
A now discredited article by Iranian-American and neocon chum Amir Taheri that appeared last Friday in the Canadian National Post suggested that new legislation in Iran would require Jews and other religious minorities to wear distinctive color badges....
In the case of the National Post story, blogger Taylor Marsh phoned the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had confirmed Taheri's story after the report came out. A researcher Marsh spoke with on Friday "was eager to confirm it, using words like 'throwback' to the Nazi era, 'very true' and 'very scary.' ... "
Within the day, the story was repudiated. Middle East expert Juan Cole revealed that there was no evidence of any such anti-Jewish Iranian legislation, citing a report in the Australian press that quoted an Iranian politician denying its existence. Later in the day, Marsh again called the Wiesenthal Center and got the runaround. Looking at a fax the researcher sent her as background, Marsh discovered that the National Post had suggested to a rabbi at the Wiesenthal Center that it was important to "draw attention" to Taheri's report, exposing the scaffolding behind the propaganda effort.
Marsh concluded with the pointed question, "Who got the Simon Wiesenthal Center to stick their necks out on this bogus Iranian badge story, risking their very reputation and funding credibility, and who had what to gain by doing so?"
So if Bush isn't the new Hitler, and Ahmadinejad isn't the new Hitler, who is? Time to turn to Googlism. Excerpts below:
new hitler is foreign
new hitler is less of a danger to the world than "sane" world leaders with their fingers on the nuclear button
new hitler is slobadan milosevic
new hitler is born and the experiments are serbs
new hitler is a dangerous rhetorical device because it sets the stage for making his removal a criterion of success in nato's war against
new hitler is even more ruthless than his father
new hitler is popping up
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